Using Your Phone For Blogging On The Train

If you want a creative solution for doing blogging on the train, you can’t get more McGyver-ish than this simple solution.

My note taking solution is a Motorola Q9h and a Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard. Works great if I have a flat surface to rest the keyboard on, but working on the train is a bit harder. I can’t balance the phone in a position that makes it viewable while being able to type at the same time. What I really needed was a method for putting the phone on the seat-back in front of my while I type on the keyboard which sits on my lap. I toyed around with various thoughts for a few days before coming up with an ultimate, minimalist and yet workable solution.

So here are the details: as mentioned, I have the Q9h and I also have a hard plastic belt holster. It works by clipping the phone in screen in, so it protects your screen. You can flip the phone over to face screen out, but it will not clip in at the top. So I raided the top of my daughter’s dresser for two elastic hair ties and a barrette. I prefer the hair ties to rubber bands because they don’t tend to break nearly as easily as a rubber band. One of the ties goes around the holster to keep the phone in the holster (since it won’t clip). The second tie gets doubled up to shorten it and slipped into the belt clip portion of the holster. I then clip the barrette into that same tie and slip the barrette into the back of the train seat, between the cushion and the hard back plate. Presto, hands free phone holder that keeps the phone at eye level!

Total cost, less than $20 and that includes the holster! And totally portable! Look around for a solution similar with your device and make good use of your commute time. Enjoy.

Make Your Contexts Matter

Those of you who are coaching clients of mine or got trapped in an elevator with me anytime recently know that I use many of the concepts of David Allen’s Getting Things Done in my Time Management Methodology.  Today, as I was talking with a client, the topic of contexts came up.  This person stated that he only had 4 contexts by which to categorize his tasks.  I was amazed.  One context that I think everyone has is @Phone or @Calls.  This is where you put the calls you need to make.  But this person didn’t have it as a context.

This lead me to talk about contexts more.  The basic premise behind contexts is that it allows you to be focused on what you can/need to do in a particular situation.  So in this example, if you had 5-10 minutes between meetings and you wanted to get some stuff off you list, you could think to your self “there are some phone calls I can make – what are they?”  Then you go to your @Phone list and there they all are.  But I think it helps to understand contexts from a simple (basic?) level.  Contexts are what separates a useful list of next actions from a basic to-do list.  With a to-do list, everything is in one list.  Lots of what I call “visual noise”.  You need to wade through things that you can’t do in the moment to get to things you CAN do.  By defining context to an action item, it allows you to work within a sub-set of the list that applies to your particular situation in the moment. I should point out that this person’s choice not to have a @Phone context may be appropriate for him and I’m not judging the fact that he doesn’t have it.  I did challenge him on it and he is reconsidering it.  But a challenge and an admonishment are two very different things.

There are lots of suggestions for contexts on many web sites, etc., but I feel that its really up to you to decide what works.  Maybe you have a context for “Home Office” as opposed to “Outside”.  Both are likely “Home” action items, but are very different in what would go on them.  You certainly can’t mow the yard when its dark out or raining, but you can pay the bills.  Make the list your own.  After all, its YOUR list.

Use Gmail as your SPAM filter

Thought I would share with you a little trick I use to greatly reduce the amount of SPAM I get in my inbox. My domain is hosted by a third party and it allows me to create aliases that forward to other email addresses rather than being dumped into my inbox. So I have all of that mail sent to Gmail, where I specify which senders I want and which mail is SPAM. From there, I have Gmail forward all of the good mail to my real inbox, which is hosted by Mail2Web Hosted Exchange service. This way, I go into Gmail about once every week or two and flag SPAM that got through as SPAM and if there is anything that got caught in SPAM filters that I want I mark as not being SPAM. Its like a constantly learning SPAM filter.

But to make it even better, I only use my Gmail address for any web forms I fill out anymore, so I can immediately filter out the stuff I don’t really want.

So here’s how it breaks down:

name1@mydomain.com –> me@gmail.com –> realname@mydomain.com.

I like this solution because I don’t have to mess with Outlook’s junk mail folders, white lists, etc. and I can easily go back and retrieve something that I accidentally deleted as well. I can do this because while Gmail forwards the email to my real email address, it keeps a copy IN Gmail as well. I delete the misc. stuff and keep the important stuff in Gmail too. I clean out Gmail every so often as well. Works for me… Enjoy.