John Mayer had a good post about a “digital cleanse.” The idea is to step away from the busy, buzzy world for a week. John mentioned four ideas, but I’m going to try just one: “no use of Twitter or any other social networking site”.
That’s right, I’m going Twitter-free for a week. I don’t really use Facebook, so that’s not a problem. The only other social networking website I use is FriendFeed, so I’m cutting that out too. To keep me on track this week, here’s what I did:
- Tweeted that I was doing the digital cleanse and changed my Bio line to mention that I was doing the digital cleanse.
- Removed all Twitter apps from my mobile phone.
- Removed the Twitter and FriendFeed shortcuts from Chrome’s new tab page.
- Hard-coded a bunch of websites so that I can’t even access them. In Linux, you can type “sudo vi /etc/hosts” and add the following lines:
127.0.0.1 twitter.com
127.0.0.1 www.twitter.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 friendfeed.com
127.0.0.1 www.friendfeed.com
What these lines say is “Computer, when you try to use the domain name system (DNS) to resolve twitter.com to an IP address, hard-code the IP address to be 127.0.0.1.” Note that 127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that corresponds to your own computer. In essence, these entries make it impossible to browse to Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed. You might need to reboot your computer too for the settings to take effect.
I’m thinking that I might blog a little more now that I’ve stopped tweeting for a week, so I’m doing one extra step–I’m linking my blog in Feedburner so that when I publish a blog post, it will tweet a link to that blog post. Here’s how to do it:
1. Log in to http://feedburner.google.com/ and click on your blog’s feed.
2. Click on the “Publicize” tab and then the “Socialize” service on the left.
3. Add your Twitter account and select the options you want. Here’s how it looks:
Then click “Save” and that’s all you need to do.
So far, I’ve been Twitter-free for twelve hours. In that time, I’ve
- worked out
- taken down our Christmas tree, chopped it into sections and put it out on the street
- typed in three months’ worth of data for a project that I’m working on
- taken down our Christmas lights and packed them away
- stored all our various Christmas decorations
- run a couple loads of laundry
- put out the trash
- gone shopping and had a couple meals with my wife
Oh, and written a blog post. We’ll see how the digital cleanse works for the rest of the week. 
All of us could use some help increasing our productivity. So I’m going to share one of my best productivity secrets. This secret can literally CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!! Are you ready?
Step 1. Buy a productivity book.
Any productivity book will do. I use a book called “The Now Habit.” It doesn’t matter what book you order though, because you probably won’t read it. You can use any random “increase your productivity” book.
Step 2. Look at the productivity book and tell yourself, “If I don’t get X done, I’m going to have to read that productivity book.”
That’s it. As far as I can discern, staring at the cover of a productivity book gives you almost as much of a motivational boost as actually reading the book. And if staring at the cover doesn’t work, then tell yourself the punishment for not getting your work done is that you’ll have to read that dang productivity book. Pretty soon you’ll be off and working. Enjoy.
Here’s a nice Gmail tip that will make you feel like a million bucks: empty out your crufty email inbox. There’s nothing like an empty inbox to motivate you and give you a fresh start for the year.
“But Matt,” you say, “my inbox is my to-do list!” I know, me too. So here’s how to do it without losing that to-do list. Add a label like “oldinbox” to everything currently in your inbox and then archive all the email in your inbox. Presto! Your inbox is clean and empty, but you can still visit the “oldinbox” label when you’re ready to whittle down those older emails. I know it sounds scary, but there’s only two simple steps, and both can be undone.
Step 1: Add a label to all the email in your inbox. Click on “Inbox” at the top left of your Gmail. Then look for “Select: All” and click on the “All” link. If your inbox is bigger than one screenful, you’ll see a message like “All 25 conversations on this page are selected. Select all 666 conversations in Inbox.” Click on the second sentence of that message to select everything in your inbox. Now click on the “More Actions” button and select “New label…” . You’ll be prompted for a label name, so enter something like oldinbox as the label name and click OK. Gmail will ask if you’re sure you want to apply this label to all the selected emails, so say yes by clicking that OK button. Congrats! Everything in your inbox now has the label “oldinbox”. Now we just need to archive every email with that label.
Step 2: Archive all your email with that label. Look for the “Labels” box on the left-hand side of the screen, and click on “oldinbox” (or whatever label name you gave). Click Select: All. Do the trick to select all conversations if you need to. Then just click the “Archive” button. That’s it. Your inbox is now empty, but you can get to those older emails if you need to by clicking “oldinbox” in the Labels box.
Can you undo these changes? Yes!
Putting the email back in your inbox. If moving things out of your inbox is too stressful, you can move them back into your inbox. Click on the “oldinbox” label (which you can find in the Labels box on the left-hand side of the screen). Select all of the emails with that label. Then click “More Actions” and click “Move to inbox.” In a jiffy, all that old email is back in your inbox.
Removing the “oldinbox” label. Under the “Labels” box on the left-hand side of the screen, click “Edit labels” and then you’ll see a “remove” option for each label. Note: do not remove the “oldinbox” label if you’re still using it to keep track of your old inbox.
Try this trick to start out the new year with an empty inbox. It’s also great if you want to declare email bankruptcy, but think that you might find the time to get back to those old emails as some point. Try this trick, and you’ll feel like you’ve got a fresh new chance at keeping your inbox at zero.
Tip #1: See what you’re ordering. You’re at a restaurant and looking over the menu. But you don’t know the difference between a turkey bolognese and a turkey piccata. What to do? Fire up your iPhone, Android, or other smartphone and go to images.google.com and do a search for turkey bolognese. In just a few seconds, you’ll see what to expect:
Ah, turkey-based sauce over spaghetti or pasta. Why couldn’t they just say that?
Tip #2. Comparison shop. A few days ago I was in a college bookstore that wanted to charge $178.60 for a copy of Mathematical Physics, by Eugene Butkov. $178.60? For a used, paperback book? Grrr. I took a picture of the UPC code and/or ISBN number:
You can search for an ISBN or UPC code (e.g. [9780201007275] ) on Google or other search engines and usually find out a product pretty quickly. I found a copy for $115.34 at Amazon, plus eBay had a hardcover copy with a current bid of $23.20. For a college student, $60 to $150 is a lot of savings.
Tip #3. Make a note to remember later. You’re at IKEA or Petco or someplace where you need to remember a part number or the aisle/bin to pick up some IKEA furniture. Do you need to write the info down with a pen and paper? No! Just whip out your phone and take a picture of the label or part number:
In this case, my cat Ozzie loves the “long boa” cat toy, but two different Petco stores were both sold out. Taking a picture let me order the exact right product from Petco later online.
Tip #4. Archive a brainstorming meeting. If you end up brainstorming on a white board, it’s nice if someone is taking notes. But just to be safe, you can snap pictures of the whiteboard before you leave the room:
Now you can refer back to the notes you made.
Tip #5. Keep a food diary. Some blogs have a direct “email-to-post” address that you can add as a contact in your phone. When you eat interesting food, take a picture of it and email it to that address:
Sometimes it’s fun to remember the more memorable meals you’ve eaten.
Are there smartphone tips you’d like to share? Leave a comment..
I’ve been learning how to stop receiving junk mail, and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.
Reducing Junk Mail
There are several services that will help you reduce your junk mail:
- GreenDimes offers a free basic service, but I decided to do their $20 one-time fee because it offered a few extra things I wanted. GreenDimes walks you through some easy steps that will reduce unsolicited mail, and also lets you decline catalogs. Each time you receive an unwanted catalog, you go to GreenDimes and type the name of the catalog in. GreenDimes takes care of removing you from that catalog’s mailing list. I’ve been quite happy with this service, especially since it’s a one-time fee.
- ProQuo is a free junk-mail reduction service. In the future, they intend to make money when consumers opt-in to request offers; ProQuo will make money from those advertisers. I tried this service today. It lets you stop many services with just a couple mouse clicks per service, but for about 50% of the marketers (maybe 10-15 of them) you have to print and send a letter or leave to an external website to complete a form. It’s still better than nothing though, because even if you’re lazy you can opt out of a lot of junk mail with just your mouse for free. Overall, the service is free, easy, and helps you opt out of a wide variety of lists.
- Catalog Choice is a site solely for opting out of catalogs. It doesn’t tackle things like credit card offers, PennySaver, or list brokers, but the site is clean with a really nice user interface. One of the founders, Daniel Katz, has been interviewed by Bill Moyers, so I trust that they’re a legit organization, even though their WHOIS information is private and there’s very little information about the group on their site. It sounds like three different environmental groups formed Catalog Choice as a non-profit. One piece of advice for Catalog Choice: please give a little more information about yourselves (e.g. history, founders, press) so that people can easily see that you’re legitimate.
- 41pounds.org charges $41 for five years of service. The name comes from the fact that they claim to block 41 pounds of junk mail per year for you. I haven’t tried this service.
Contacting services directly
- You can visit the webpage of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to opt-out online so that you don’t receive mail from companies that use DMA lists. The pretty url http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist takes you to the url https://www.dmachoice.org/MPS/proto1.php where you want to select option #3 (“Remove your name from DMA Member Prospect Lists”). You will have to provide a valid credit card number, but your credit card will not be charged.
- You can opt out of ADVO online.
Other options
- While you’re at it, why not place yourself on the “Do not call” list at www.donotcall.gov to prevent most telemarketers from calling you? All you need to give is your phone number and an email address, and you will be permanently opted out. Read more about the do-not-call list if you’re interested.
All these actions won’t eliminate junk mail completely, but it will prevent a lot of the junk from showing up in your mailbox. These aren’t affiliate links, just stuff that I think people will find handy. Good luck!
