Pomodoro VS GTD
Here’s my reading notes for the last two weeks. I definitely had a lot of thinking on how to integrate GTD with the Pomodoro technique and that’s my main topic this time.
Productive Talk Compilation: 8-episode podcast with GTD’s David Allen | 43 Folders… I’ve listened to this series back in time and I was curious to re-listen this conversation between Merlin Mann and David Allen about GTD to compare with the Pomodoro Technique. There are definitely lot of similarities. Basic principles are the same: avoid procrastination, focus on what is important and ultimately getting things done. But I see clear differences also: GTD focuses more on the collection phase while the Pomodoro Technique is more about execution and tracking. Thus the two technique mix together very nicely. Pomodoro doesn’t say anything about how to empty your brain out or give a name on what is in your head or the organization into folders and context. On the other end GTD doesn’t talk about prioritization processes or tracking to collect metrics. Also in the PT interruption handling is much more specific and reviews are daily. Last: GTD does way a better job at marketing the technique than pomodoros. That will change in the future, I think.
Lifehacker - David Allen’s Making It All Work a New Look at GTD - David Allen… Interesting chart here. On the axis, perspective and control. The 4 resulting quadrants are very typical situations for everyone of us. High perspective means knowing at a glance everything that we want to have done and knowing that nothing is outside that list. Control means that we decide the priority of execution and how to manage that list. Low perspective, low control, means poor slave. High perspective high control means “captain & commander” of you life. You go crazy when even if you maintain your high perspective you don’t follow your plans. I’m 80-90% in commander state but sometimes I fail and go “crazy” state. The main reason for that remaining 10-20% achievement is lack of sustainable pace because it happens almost only when I’m tired.
GPGPU - General Programming GPU… There’s a lot of interest in what GPU can do other than processing vertexes these days. It is pretty much the case that your actual computer is already equipped with a > 200 cores underutilized GPU (unless you play a lot of 3D games). NVidia and ATI already produces SDK to exploit this computing power other than games for highly parallel stream processing. So instead of off-loading high load computations to some external form of parallel processing you can think of just run them on the GPU with surprising results. GPUs are much more powerful than normal multi-core CPUs for parallel processing so it make sense to use them instead of conventional parallel architectures.
Hanselminutes - BBS era… I’m really enjoying IT history lately and here’s another interesting piece of the story. I was too young at the time of BBSs to remember, too bad. BBS are similar to our IM of nowadays but as said in the podcast there are big differences. At the beginning, the computer of the SYSOP had to be completely dedicated to maintain the connection and the SYSOP could see user actions, like painting screens and drawing text. As such it allowed a complete control over the communication channel, with the option of jumping right into the user screen to ask questions or offer for help. It remembers me of the difference between modern cars, all electronics and pre-assembled pieces and old cars that could be potentially torn apart with a screwdriver to be inspected easily.
Joe Hewitt - Mobile Orchard… Joe Hewitt, author of Firebug, moved to iPhone development lately with one of the most downloaded app from the AppStore, Facebook. Several core components from the Facebook app have been extracted and cleaned-up to become an open source collection of components called Three20. In this podcast Joe talks about the development details in Three20, html table cells without UIWebview, a Quartz based rich text editor for text field, an auto-resizeable text field and the popular photo chooser. I enjoyed the very technical conversation even if I’m not proficient with iPhone development. I immediately linked the Three20 project hoping to play with it soon. A good listening.
6 months ago