chris nixon : nixonbyname.com

In a month which has seen some pretty major changes in NixonByName it’s also been a month that’s seen a huge increase in visitor numbers. I now feel a motivated to provide some proper content. I hope you are not disappointed over the coming months. This blog will always cast it’s net wide and take inspiration from whatever inspires.

Here are the top five posts from April 2008.

1. (L) China (H) Human Rights Violations: Apparently today Chinese internet users are saying “enough” to international bullying. Here’s my tuppence worth.
2. FriendFeed Interesting People: A top ten of the most interesting people I follow on FriendFeed. Scoble, Hawke and Arrington all make an appearance.
3. Productivity: Todoist: A post from 2007 that’s getting new attention. I’m a big fan of productivity tools. Here’s my take on a great GTD online application.
4. Apparently You’re an Audience: NixonByName has been going for nearly a year now, but with the recent relaunch I’ve only just discovered the size of the audience.
5. Getting the Hang of It: My favourite photograph so far of my wife and daughter together. Both look so happy that it’s now the desktop background on my PDA.

Well thanks very much for paying attention over the last month. I appreciate that people are interested in what I have to say. Even if it is sometimes ill thought out and badly judged.

Yours Aye.

I’m a big fan of productivity tools. Since I gained promotion at the office, it’s been my job to make sure the guys are doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. In the old days it was a case a case of “these are the tools that are provided to you…make the most of them.” My attitude is more, “Whatever tools you need to get the job done.” It seems to be working.

A couple of days ago I read this post about Todoist and Huddle, so I decided to give the former a go.Now, normally when I give one of these productivity tools a go, I spend a few days setting it up and putting it through it’s paces in work and home environments. Most of the time this set-up time is not really worth it, and the initial promise does not pan out. Remember the Milk is one such tool. Nice, but not for me.

Todoist is very different. I spent next to no time in the set-up. It was less than ten minutes before I was using it to help me do my job better.

More than just a standard task list Todoist excels over it’s competitors by improving where others let themselves down. Notifications can be sent by email, SMS message, Twitter or by chat client. Integration with gMail is apparently awesome, though I haven’t yet tested this. There is a really nice little Firefox sidebar, giving you instant access while viewing other sites.

The very best feature is called chain. It’s based on Jerry Seinfeld’s Chain. He aimed to write a joke every day, so he bought a wall calendar and a big marker. Every day he would write his joke, and mark it on the calendar. Very quickly the motivation to not break the chain was enough to ensure he wrote that joke every day. The system, which perfectly taps into the OCD section of our brains works for all regularly repeated tasks, and is integrated very nicely nicely into Todoist. It just works.

I would highly recommend Todoist to anybody who needs to get stuff done. There is no hassle, do distracting adverts or graphics. It’s just a very good clean interface that does exactly what it needs to.