2010 is a new year and if you live in Australia, it’s starting in just over 24 hours!
Are ‘being more productive’ or ‘procrasting less’ on your list of resolutions for 2010? Here are five great websites to help you make 2010 a year of less procrastination, and more productivity:
What are your resolutions for 2010? Does productivity make it onto the list?
My favourite application for managing passwords is Pastor. It’s a strange name for a password-managing application, but it’s simple (no unnecessary bells and whistles), easy to use, and best of all, it’s free!
I am also excited to discover that, Pastor is coming to iPhone. I’m looking forward to having my passwords on my computer, and on my phone. I think I’ve got over 100 passwords for the different apps and websites I use!
What do you use to keep track of your passwords? And don’t tell me you use the same password for every account you have!
If you’ve been watching the news, you can’t have missed the mess that Eurostar passengers are in. Some got stuck in a tunnel somewhere between London and Paris. Others have been waiting for the train service to resume. It’s been a disaster, as described by the SMH:
“Exhausted, sometimes teary-eyed passengers appeared in British and French TV broadcasts complaining they had been left underground for more than 15 hours, without food, water or any clear idea of what was going on.”
This morning, the trains were back running again, and people were being loaded on – starting with those who should have been on the trains when they first stopped. Whilst this is a logical way of boarding the trains, there was a lot of confusion because this process hadn’t been communicated. The passengers had no idea who would be loaded on and when. This caused further distress for people who were already fairly wound up and inconvenienced.
Throughout this disaster, clear communication has been sorely lacking. People haven’t known what’s going on. And there is an important lesson here – keep communicating frequently when things go wrong, whether the situation is a disaster, or relatively minor change of schedule. Telling people bad news will never go down well. The only thing worse is not telling them, and them finding out through other means, or when it’s too late for them to do anything about it. Clear, honest, frequent communication is essential.
A couple of other blogs share their reflections on this situation:
Any other lessons to learn?
I didn’t think I’d see an advertisement like this in Australia.
I spotted this billboard on a building in Chatswood:
I’m not sure how many Australians know what Grace is, but I’m pleasantly surprised that Lilydale is encouraging people to say grace before the meal. To the unfamiliar, ‘saying grace’ is just thanking God for the meal that he’s provided. You can, of course, thank God for other things at this time too, but saying grace for the meal is a good start!
Thanks Lilydale – I was already saying grace before my meals, but I might just try some of your chicken.
What do you think about this campaign?
I first came across this poster on Steve Fogg’s blog. It’s currently displayed outside St Matthew-in-the-city church in New Zealand:
My first reaction on seeing this billboard was ‘blasphemy’. God didn’t sleep with Mary. To suggest that He did (and that’s how I understood the poster) is just offensive.
Is this what you think the poster is communicating?
The church has written an explanation of the poster on its website. After reading the explanation of the poster I still had no idea what the purpose of the poster was – in fact, I felt more confused! So I kept reading and discovered that this church describes itself as ‘progressive‘. Not sure what this means? I didn’t either, but according to the website:
“Progressives are more interested in spirituality than right belief or proper worship. The identity of Progressive Christians is centred in ethical living.”
Doesn’t sound like Christianity at all.
It’s a shame (but not surprising) that this kind of non-news about a non-Biblical message gets media exposure, for example:
It’s a shame when the real controversy – the startling truth that God was born into our world to save us – will barely get a mention in the mainstream media this Christmas.
Sigh.
…
Other Christian blogs and websites are discussing this poster too, check out:
The following quote from the blog above, is a good summary:
“Archdeacon Glynn Cardy and St Matthew-in-the-City have got their much-longed-for debate. But it is not about the miracle of the Christ-child and the wonder that God became man: it is not edifying and does not in any sense bring glory to God. It is a tawdry, crude and gratuitously offensive ejaculation which resonates with a sex-obsessed age and lacks only used condoms strewn over the duvet in a Tracey Emin fashion.”
Are there some email responses that you send quite regularly? Perhaps you are replying to the same questions over and over again, for example:
If you have ever had the need to write the answer to the same question twice, you might benefit from using Google’s canned responses. Launched in 2008, I only just discovered this handy tool a couple of week’s ago when a friend put me onto it.
Canned responses allows you to save a response to easily re-use it on another occasion. They save you from re-typing the email from scratch. They save you from having to dig around to find the response you gave to the same question three months ago.
Of course, you can adjust any of the response to customise them as you need, and you can add text before, after or in the middle of the canned response, but simply having the pre-written response on-hand can be a real time-saver. Other uses of this tool including adding signatures to the bottom of emails, or creating templates for weekly roster reminders, or weekly emails to your Bible study group.
If you use a Mac, but don’t use email, you might like to try out a tool called TextExpander (explained in more detail, along with some other email tips, in ‘8 tips for email liberation‘).
But if you don’t use Gmail, perhaps it’s time you switched – there’s lots of benefits to using this tool to manage your email!
It’s easy to import your email to Google from another web-based email account (e.g. Hotmail), and even if you don’t want to use a Gmail account, you can send and receive your email, using the Gmail interface, by importing your mail settings.
