I’ve been using my iPad for a little over a day now, and thought it might be time to wrap up my thoughts in a few blogposts. First one is probably the number one question I get; “Where did you buy an iPad in Copenhagen?”.
I pre-ordered 2 x 2 iPads using two different e-mail addresses and two different package forwarders, MyUS and Bongo. Both services provide a local US telephone number you can add to your order, but I’m honestly not sure if Apple will check it. MyUS gives you an address in Bradenton, Florida and Bongo gives you one in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Shipping with Bongo
Signing up for Bongo was quite a hassle. First you need to allow them to withdraw a small amount from your account and once you can see how much in your banking records, you enter the amount to their website and you get your Bridgeport address. Luckily I signed up at Bongo about a week before Apple released pre-ordering, so I had my address ready when ordering needed to be done. The iPads were delivered on a Saturday (April 3rd) and Bongo’s office was closed, so no one was there to sign for my package. That meant it was delivered on Monday, but they shipped it to Denmark immediately after that so it arrived in Denmark on Wednesday (April 7th). For some reason you need to warn Bongo about incoming packages, which takes quite some time to fill out, I don’t quite see the reason to do so. Bongo allows you to consolidate several packages into one shipment, meaning that you need to manually release incoming packages for shipping.
Bongo shipped with DHL International Express, which cost me 105 USD for a 3.6 kg package with insurance (insurance was 7 USD). Subscription to Bongo is 15 USD a month.
Shipping with MyUS
Signing up for MyUS was a lot easier than Bongo, once I had paid the setup fee (10 USD) my account and address was active. You don’t need to warn MyUS about incoming shipments, you receive an e-mail once a new package arrives. They automatically ship packages to you, since consolidation is a subscription service. MyUS was open on Saturday and signed for my iPads when they arrived. For some reason their internal logistics are a bit worse than Bongo though, my iPads first left Florida on Monday (April 5th) and still haven’t arrived in Denmark. For whatever reason the package ended up in Romania, where they are currently trying to have it sent to Copenhagen. Since they also use DHL International Express, my suspicion is that they messed something up when sending out the package from Florida. Getting a straight response from support (which is super-fast and friendly though) has been tough, I still have no clue what’s going on and they keep blaiming DHL, which is really not of any use for me.
Shipping cost me 117 USD with insurance. There’s no subscription fee, if you don’t need consolidation.
Import tax (Denmark)
I paid about 100 USD a piece in Danish import tax. Paid using credit card to the DHL delivery guy, pretty cool!
International power plugs
There was some paranoia before launch about the iPad AC adapter being US only, but don’t worry: It’s a normal Apple AC adapter with interchangeable plugs just like the iPhone or Mac adapters. Be aware that your iPhone adapter won’t charge this baby though, it’s only 5W and the iPad needs 10W. So even though the adapters look exactly the same, they are not.
Downloading Apps
To download apps to your new iPad (even free ones) you need a US iTunes account. There’s been written quite a few guides on how to do that, Google will be your friend.
Using Netflix and ABC
If you want to use Netflix or ABC Player on your iPad you’ll need to tinker even more. They both check on IP to see if you’re outside US, so you need to make them think that you are actually inside US. To do this you need a fast VPN (since you’re looking at streaming video, heavy data traffic) and I chose HideMyNet to get started, it’s rather cheap (5 USD) and neither Netflix nor ABC have blocked it yet. To set up the VPN, chose Settings -> General -> Network -> VPN on your iPad and input the settings listed at your provider. Usually the provider will give you an iPhone guide, and it’s almost exactly the same, or at least HideMyNet had an iPhone guide. Let me know if you find an even better VPN provider, HideMyNet is definitely not the fastest.
That’s it, now all you need to do is go down to your local café and pick up a girl or ten with your new chick-magnet.
Seems like NESTA is still involved in very interesting projects, and one of the latest “Social by Social” seems likewise interesting. It’s a practical guide on how to utilize social media in your organization. The book can be bought at their site, but also read for free as a PDF. The publication itself is Creative Commons licensed, why doesn’t danish government agencies also publish using CC?
As some of you might already know, I’m a complete sucker for all things GTD. That being said, a lot of stuff in the productivty community isn’t really universal, it’s either only applicable to a designer, a programmer or something else in that direction. Since I’m (no longer) either a designer nor programmer, I have used a lot of time trying to adapt various productivity tips to my work. My workday is 25% meetings/lectures, 25% project management/concept development, 25% sales/writing pitches and 25% management. Being an entrepreneur you need to keep a lot of hats at hand, ready to change every second.
Another thing that has taken me years to really understand is that “productivity” doesn’t mean making more things faster, it means making more things happier. Work shouldn’t be a tedious tasklist, it should be fun and in flow.
Over the last couple of months I’ve jotted down some “habits” of my productivity, which I had planned to present for my colleagues, but once these evolved it seems more suitable to put them up on the blog.
1. Inbox Zero
I’ve been using the Inbox Zero technique since end of 2007 and pushing it ever since. It’s one of those great methods that are easy to learn, but takes years to master.
We use Google Apps for mail, calendar, docs and more at Wemind, and Gmail is a fantastic client for Inbox Zero’ing. I check my e-mail about 10 times a day on the laptop and about 20 times a day on the iPhone. Everytime I open my inbox, I read through the mails from the top. I read the mail to the end and decide what to do with it. Could I reply within a minute? Then reply and archive! Should someone else take care of it? Forward it and archive! Will this have to wait? Give it a star and archive it (doing this on the iPhone Mail.app is simple, just move the mail to “Starred E-mails” when using Gmail as IMAP).
I read through starred e-mails every morning before meetings begin and every evening before going to bed. This ensures I never have more than 10-15 starred e-mails at once. This might seem easy, but keeping down the level of starred e-mails has proved to be a difficult task!
2. Scheduling your publishing
A lot of people believe that social media is fake, if it is scheduled. I don’t agree. For me atleast, I’ve been neglecting both this blog and my Twitter account for a long time. Simply because updating them wasn’t compatible with my worklife nor productivity scheme.
Having recently discovered CoTweet I’ve begun an experiment with scheduling some of my tweets. I usually write about 10-15 tweets every sunday, and sets them to publish over the course of the coming week. This enables me to have a dynamic Twitter profile which actually updates periodically. Of course, you still have to take time to reply. The OnDuty function in CoTweet helps me do this, by sending an e-mail to me if I have unanswered @-replies. I’ve seen a major rise in followers since this experiment began (I might soon have doubled the amount when reaching 600 one of the these days).
Inspired by scheduling my microblogging, I chose to try and schedule with WordPress again. The last 5-6 posts on this blog were scheduled! The workflow for this is also writing posts on sundays, which usually are quiet days with room for thought. I still haven’t gotten to the level of blogging I want, my goal is to schedule 3 blogposts every sunday.
So why schedule? Simple answer: Information overload. Imagine updating your Twitter profile with 30 thoughtful tweets in 30 seconds and putting 3 large posts on your blog at the same time. People might respond to the last, but don’t expect your readers/followers to be able to manage that kind of overload. Not all tweets have to writen in the moment, for example if you know you’re going to be in a meeting which you want to share, you could easily schedule the announcement.
3. Things
Finding the right task manager is harder than you might expect, and I’m not one of those people who believe that a one-size-fits-all application will ever exist. As I started this blogpost by mentioning, different jobprofiles have different tasks and thereby different solutions to productivity. I believe I have found the application for me though, and it’s called Things.
Things is a desktop application for my Mac, but also a mobile application for my iPhone. These two sync everytime they are near.
I organize taks by projects (only major projects, such as Klub Blod or Rejseliv) and areas (administration, sales, concepts, lectures). Once a new task comes up I try and get it onto the Inbox as fast as possible. When reviewing starred e-mails two times a day, I also review items in my task inbox. I then tag them up with keywords, set a deadline and apply it to either a project or an area. This way I always have a clean list of today’s tasks. I occasionally drop a task from the today list to “someday”, which means it won’t pop up again, but when I have time, I can review my someday list.
4. Always Away
This is a simple one, but I always keep my Messenger/Facebook/AIM/Gtalk/other IM on “Away” mode, which elimates 80% of “Hi! How are you doing?” requests doing my workday.
5. Flow
I can’t push the importance of flow enough. This is the single most valuable productivity technique for me.
Flow, to me, is finding a state of mind that enables you to focus all your energy on delivering at your best. This might seem a bit fluffy, but it’s the best way for me to explain it. An example of me being in a flow state is usually a weekday after midnight when everything is turned off (expect for the laptop ofcourse), and I know nothing can disturb me. I can then put all my energy in to making slides for a lecture, writing a proposal or answering starred e-mails. I would say that I’m in a flow state about once a week for an hour or two, but when this happens, I can finish work in these two hours that would take me two weeks when not being in this state.
I have yet to try and master this (if you can), but even though I feel like a newbie when it comes to flow, it’s still the one thing helping me most.
What’s your habit six or seven?
It seems I have completely fallen in love with CoTweet.
CoTweet is a tool for handling collaborative Twitter accounts (such as the @wemind account which all employees at Wemind write at), but also great for just single-user accounts (like my own @boetter).
The tool enables scheduled tweets, stats on shortened links, assigning answers to other people and most important (for me) an Inbox Zero like approach to reading Twitter (you tick @replies and DMs off, as you’ve either read them or replied to them).
It’s currently in closed beta, but I’m sure they’ll let you in if you swing them a tweet at @cotweet.
