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At the Melbourne Town Hall, presented by the Melbourne Writers Festival.

That was the evolutionary message of author, biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins to a packed auditorium at the Christchurch Town Hall last night.

Sean Penn has done tons of interviews lately to let people know that he doesn’t want attention for his charity work in Haiti, and to his credit he mostly talks about himself as part of a team. The only story that has come out about him specifically involved his rescue of two people [...]

Jessica Biel was in New York last night to introduce the documentary, ‘Summit on the Summit: Kilimanjaro’, which has something to do with the people being able to get clean drinking water (note - she’s for it). Jess actually climbed Kilimanjaro last year as part of the project. Justin Timberlake, who Jessica [...]

I’ll have a more proper Monthly Pimp on-deck here soon, but – time being of the essence here – I wanted to make sure and extend an invitation for something I’ll be doing in town today.

If you’re one of my nerdy band of brothers who’s in San Francisco this week for MacWorld, please do come visit me between 1:30 and 2:30 (today, Friday, and Saturday), at the giant, glistening, Oz-like Omni Group booth (#760).

As below (via), I’ll be blowing minds and curling shorties with some of the most advanced-level, post-doc OmniFocus fu that I know. And, as is my wont, I’ll also be sharing some of the deeper mojo that explains why OF was built the way it was (read: why it’s so [ugh.] ‘complicated’), and how you can choose to leverage that functionality in building a personalized and friction-free workflow. And, yeah, while I’ll certainly be touching on the connections with GTD, the big focus will be on thinking about how to support that phrase Ethan and I came up with so many years ago:

Always focus on shortening the path from cognition to completion.

Love that. Pretty much sums up my take on the whole productivity game in one sentence.

Me? I’ll be easy enough to recognize today – I’m the one with the throwing stars in my gi and the sandalfoot pantyhose¹ on his head.

from the Omni Group’s post:

Merlin Mann: Advanced Secrets of the Omnifocus Ninja

Thursday through Saturday afternoons from 1:30-2:30pm, Merlin Mann (43 Folders, MacBreak Weekly, You Look Nice Today) will stealthily rappel into the Omni Group’s booth (#760) to demonstrate the arcane and deadly methods of the OmniFocus Ninja. Long thought by many to be an elaborate myth or hoax, these ancient productivity moves unlock the hidden power of Omni’s award-winning task management app.

1. Working the bookmarklet
   Friction-free task management right from your iPhone

2. Tricking-out your Perspectives
   Slice and dice your work into perfect-sized cubes

3. Novel uses for on-hold projects
   Out of sight means out-of-mind — until you need it

4. Location, Location, Location!
   Using the power of location-awareness in your contexts

5. BONUS: Five more tiny OmniFocus tricks almost nobody knows about
   (seeeeeekr1t!)

Hope to see you there!

Come. Love. Booth. Okay?

And, yes, I the Titular Ninja also really hope to see you and your neckbeard in ole 760 today.

Because, seriously? Don’t be that guy who hangs back and doesn’t come up and say “hi” like a person. You must introduce yourself and high-five or shake hands or take a picture of us frenching or whatever. I don’t want to see a bunch of toots about how you almost came up. Don’t be that Lizard Brain guy, right? Exactly.²

Asked and answered by the wonderful Frank Chimero:

Anonymous asked: ‘How do you maintain focus (on work, dreams, goals, life)?’

You do one thing at a time.

You might be amazed how many times–and over how many years–a given person can ask this same simple question, hear that same simple response, and still find themselves casting about for the great and arcane “secret” to achieving real focus.

But, this is pretty much it. Mostly.

Although, I must add one important “Step Zero,” borne of my own tedious experience.

Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely.

Specifically, if you discover, in frustration, that you’re pathologically incapable of doing one thing at a time, consider the possibility that you’ve been unknowingly trying to “focus” on two, twenty, or twenty thousand disparate things that you don’t really care that much about. Just consider it.

Because, in the absence of caring, you’ll never focus on anything more than your lack of focus. Think about it.

Think about those times when you really disappeared into challenging work. You had to tear yourself away, right?

Because, during those happy times you were fortunate enough to find yourself engaged with something that you cared intensely about, you probably started asking a really different sort of question.

A more transitive, muscular question that shows you own the attention that others may see as a bowl full of complimentary Jolly Ranchers, free for the grabbing.

That’s when you ask,

How many things do I need to shed, cancel, defer, drop, shank, or shit-can with extreme prejudice in order to singlemindedly focus on this one thing that I love?

In my experience (yes, as I said, hard-won experience), obsessing over the slipperiness of focus, bemoaning the volume of those devil “distractions,” and constantly reassessing which shiny new “system” might make your life suddenly seem more sensible–these are all terrifically useful warning flares that you may be suffering from a deeper, more fundamental problem.

Where’s the care?

For as long as you know in your heart that what you’re making or doing matters, and, consequently, for as long as you accept and embrace the immutable laws of scarcity, your options for maintaining focus will, like Frank’s perfect answer, remain stunningly obvious.

You “focus” on the one thing you care about, as you “unfocus” on everything else. If not for every minute of your life, at least for the time you set aside to pursue the thing that matters.

If that sounds fancy and oversimplified, then you “care” about too many things. Period.

My suggestion? Own your distractions, resist fiddly half-measures, and never for a minute allow yourself to believe that productivity systems, space pens, or a writing app that plays new age music while you stare at a blank page in full-screen mode can ever teach you anything about how to care.

That’s all on you.

So, first, care. Then, as you’ll happily and unavoidably discover, all that “focus” business has a peculiar way of taking care of itself.

New Video Blog. The name says it all.  You're welcome.  Go Cub. 

Another Long one. But hey, lets be real...when's the last time I posted something over here?  LOL FEB. 2 2010WELL BABY YOU NEED TO PRAY A DIFFERENT DIRECTIONNEW ...

Flash running on the Nexus One is no real surprise. Google has been working with Adobe for years to make Flash more indexable in it’s search engine. Everything performed well in the video, but it’s a video it’s suppose to perform well.

Will Apple start to allow Flash on the iPhone? Maybe?

Google is a huge advocate of web standards. Their search business model depends on an open and indexable internet. Perhaps they feel that the Adobe Flash 10.1 Player finally meets the minimum standards for a good net citizen? Or perhaps they have much less controller over the Nexus One, than Apple has over the iPhone and this is a concession to HTC? Both questions are speculation at this point. What isn’t speculation is that Apple has a worthy competitor to it’s iPhone and it runs Flash.

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This page is a relic. Join me at my regular page at www.myspace.com/dougstanhope - found here in the Top Friends. Thanks for that. stanhope

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