Managing Time
Focus on productivity. What is it that you do to add value to our one world wide free marketplace. Consider the Pareto Principle. 20% of your activity will produce 80% of your results. Be mindful of both the 20% and the 80%.
Spend of lot of time studying. Improving yourself. Make yourself more productive and valuable. Be a high performance team mate.
Your family are your most important team mates. Your neighbors and your community are team mates. Your company are team mates. The entire human race are team mates of one global, space-faring, class one civilization.
Get yourself a calendar system set up. Start using it to keep track of appointments and schedule your time. Not so much to say you have to do things at a certain time, but more like keeping a record of your activity and then analyzing it to help you become more productive.
Probably the biggest disadvantage of using Linux is the fact that you can’t get a good smart phone that runs on Linux. There are a few projects ongoing to develop Linux powered smart phones. The vast majority of smart phones are already based on Unix. Both Android and iOS are derivatives of Unix, just like Linux is.
The problem is that there is no Linux application that runs on desktop, laptop, tablet and smart phone. That’s why my main email client is still Microsoft Outlook. I wish there was a Kontact app that I could install on my Android devices. Even better, I wish that there was a Linux smart phone I could use.
Apparently, KDE is working on a KDE powered smart phone. It is not ready yet. So, it is really difficult to get Linux to work with my phone. I recommend using Kontact or Thunderbird. Both are great email clients. I have both, my Outlook and my Startmail accounts set up in Kontact.
Kontact is the KDE application. It has been working flawlessly on this Kubuntu 19.04 machine. Thunderbird is the application produced by Thunderbird, the producer of the Firefox web browser. Kontact has more features, like a journal, feeds, todo lists and popup notes. You can add the Lightning Calendar to Thunderbird. They are both great tools for helping you manage your time well.
Start keeping track of what you do. Start keeping a journal. Record the time you work on different things. You’ll be able to improve your productivity just by paying attention to what you are doing and when you are doing it.
Once you observe your patterns of productivity, you’ll be able to very naturally improve your productivity. Your going to have to read the manual for Kontact, again. Get familiar with that tool. It is very valuable and can help you improve your productivity, which will help you improve your prosperity.
Figure out some way to record your activity. Make it as easy and unintrusive as possible. I just installed an application called Diaro on my smart phone. I like the all in one model of Kontact, but it doesn’t look like the Journal app is very well developed. So, I’ll try them both and compare them. I’ll let you know what I find out.
Diaro has a website you can use to access your Diaro, in addition to the smartphone app. You can upgrade to the pro version for about $6 and then you can sync your Diaro with your Dropbox account. Even though Microsoft is my favorite big IT company, the fact that it uses an entirely different operating system is driving me away.
I avoid Google as much as possible, because of the recording my private information and the censorship of my communications. I don’t mind using Start mail, but it is a European company. I don’t have anything against Europeans, I just like stuff made in America. That’s why I use DuckDuckGo instead of Startpage for searching the web. Startpage also uses Google search results, which, like I said, I avoid using Google every chance I get.
My Diaro website is showing a German flag, so that is another European company I’m using for IT. I’m a nationalist and a globalist, so I guess that is okay. I encourage you to have a global perspective of your holistic home office. I wish someone would build a competitive alternative to Google Search engine. So far, Duckduckgo is the best alternative, but it is not as ubiquitous as Google.
Well, this has not been a very well written story. It’s just my usual rambling thoughts, pouring out into the keyboard and the screen. This is why recording your work is a good idea. Being mindful, observing your activity, will help you improve your workflow.
This blog is actually a journal of my perspective of the holistic home office niche. Write your blog posts in your favorite text editor and then copy and paste them into your website wysiwyg. Record the hours you work on each project in your Diaro and sync your Diaro with your Dropbox account.
As of today, it costs $119 / year for Dropbox Plus and $199 / year for Dropbox Professional. Dropbox Plus gets you 2TB of space, Pro gets you 3TB of storage space. You have to get at least Plus to make it useful. That’s okay, I don’t mind paying for things.
I like private property. I want to get paid for my work, so why would I complain about Dropbox or any other company getting paid for their work. My complaint about big businesses in IT is not the price of their products, its the bullying, the taking control of my computer and forcing me to depend on them.
Microsoft Windows is ugly and boring. Everyone of my Linux installations is a unique and beautiful work of art.
Beware of free products. If the software you are using is free, then you are the product, you are the property being traded. Linux was created to liberate us from that corporate hegemony. Just be careful and protect your private property. Private property is valuable.
Your time, your ideas, your communications are your private property. Find some tools to help you manage yours well.