Of Time to Time Manage

I'm now on my third diary/time management system of the year. Google Calender is okay but it doesn't allow you to list or integrate tasks very well. MyEvents is good but it only allows you to list tasks in a linear fashion when I want to put them in a quadrangle and sort them in order of importance and urgency just like Stephen Covey says I should. My third and hopefully finally venture into this world is with Microsoft Office online. This is the system (right under my nose it seems) that can do everything I need and indeed everything the company needs to get really organised and super efficient. Our IT engineer is coming in today to explain the logistics of getting it working online and I'm hoping that he has only good news. Conversations that start "Well I can do it but it will cost several thousand pounds to set up..." just don't seem to work with me anymore.

Of The Four Hour Work Week

Last year I read a good number of books but it wasn't until I updated my training portfolio over the weekend that I realised just how many. I made it 15 at least one of which was a belter, War and Peace. The one that affected me most was Time Ferris's "The Four Hour Work Week". The only thing I don't like about this is its title for its quite misleading. This is a book about how to re-arranged your life, hit the re-set button when it comes to your values and goals and time manage and by that I mean really time manage. Best of all it gives you great tips on how to develop what the author calls "muses" which if done well can provide you with a regular and easy income.
Thinking about this now I guess I've become quite evangelical about this book. I've photocopied part of it for SMT at Legal-Island to read. I've bought copies for a friend I swim with, a friend I play tennis with, a neighbour and a web consultant I know well as well as an ex employee.

They don't know this yet but my plan is for us all to meet soon over dinner to brain storm on the book and see where it gets us. Emmm watch this space or ...blog as they say...

Of Building Web Sites

I seem to be in a web building phase of my life at the moment. I'm currently helping a friend of mine build his website, Derry Law Firm, (new photo pending). I've just finished the first draft of a web site for an organisation I belong to called the "Belfast Speakers' Circle" and I made the mistake of telling a neighbour about these activities for she too has asked that I build her a site promoting her holiday apartment in Bushmills. I plan to do this because a free weekend in a really nice apartment on the North Coast of Antrim in the summer will do very nicely thank you very much.

The first web site I ever built was produced using software that came free in a floppy disk on the front of PC Magazine.It's got a lot easier since then thanks to the likes of web sites such as Weebly that can help you have something up in less than an hour.The trouble is, that it is a little bit like decorating your own house. If you go at it all at once in an attempt to get it done it is often difficult to look at it objectively and to see whether it looks great, okay or actually, truly awful.

How Legal-Island.com Grew Up - A Journey through the Internet Age

I'm not sure we're far enough into the Internet age to be sentimental about what has gone before, or maybe we are. I wouldn't say we miss our first ever web site but we do have fond memories of it and how it came to be.

The first ever Legal-Island website made an appearance in early1999. It was pretty rough but it really didn't matter in those days because few had heard of this thing called "The Wide World Web" and fewer still used it. It was created by software that came free in a floppy disk on the front of PC Magazine claiming it could get you a web page in "just 30 minutes". Within 2 hours things were going so well that I had not one page but two linked together and something what you might even call a "web site".

The first page featured links likely to be of use to people with an employment query in Northern Ireland.The second was intended for the equivalent audience in the Republic of Ireland.By the end of the exercise I still wasn't convinced that I had something worth keeping but just in case I was wrong I saved both pages to a file on the same floppy disk. Needing a file name I thought that as both pages related to Legal material in the Island of Ireland I'd call it "Legal-Island" and yes the name kind of stuck.

You can access all of our old sites below by clicking on the year they were born although you may have to wait a few seconds for the site to load behind a test card. With a mixture of nostalgia and horror here's a quick tour :

1999 - Our first website featured our little friend on an Island plucked straight out of a free clip art disk. To this day we still have a poster of him on our office wall. He's a solitary figure. One I guess that represents quite well the plight of many starting a business. It can be a lonely existence and yes you're often that busy at the start that, like him, there's no time to get to a barber or even shave.

2000 - Our hairy friend had disappeared by the following year. Just one figure meant only one gender could be represented so the search was on for an image with better gender balance. I asked a guy who was a graphics designer if he had an image of a lady we could drop on the Island for balance and to keep our solitary man company. But the only one he could find was far too down the other end of the scale from the professional image we needed. Whilst guaranteed to put a smile on our lonely friend's face she also risked alienating a good number of web browsers.What appeared instead was a gender neutral figure. It looked like it had been moulded out of plasticine but it was suitable for all PCs. Very PC.

2001 By the following year we were already on our third version of the site and one that to this day I remain quite fond of. For a "homer" job it wasn't too bad and the colours really worked for me.This site was to last us almost four years - a lifetime and more for a web site. Don't forget this was still the early 2000s and some time BG ("before Google") when it was difficult to find what you were looking for on the web so link sites or directories were still very much the vogue.

2005 By the mid naughties we were having our first ever venture with a commercial web building firm.  I remember the conception of this site being a load of fun but the production an awful lot of pain. By 2005 search engines were beginning to get really good and people began to search their way round the Internet using Altavista, Dogpile and this new kid on the block called Google.

2009 As we prepared to leave the decade so we got ready for a new look and a brand new web site designed by Tibus in Holywood. This has served us well but I have a feeling that Legal-Island.com VI wont be long in coming. Maybe our solitary friend will make a return guest appearance. We've a lot to tell him.

Of Saving Time Online

I'm in a time saving moment at the moment and I have two ideas that could save me a working day each week if I get it right. The first is Internet Shopping. The second is better diary management.
So yesterday I gave Tesco Online a go for the first time calculating that if I don't have to do a twice weekly shop in Tesco this year it will save me some four hours each week. I've ordered delivery to my works address so I don't have to worry about being at home when the gear arrives. Shopping by clicking is a strange feeling. But I think I'm more confident that my buying decisions online are better than they are in the real world. For they are made in an environment free of screaming kids and people who just don't know how to push a shopping trolley properly.
The diary management is a little more complex and involves my Ipod synching with my online calender which me and my PA should be able to access.I'm still not convinced about the online diary software I'm using which is google calender. Yes it does synch with my Iphone but the tasks management bar just doesn't seem to work for me. I've looked at other systems such as Dont Forget the Milk and Evernote but it's all a bit confusing. Think I might put out a request on Twitter to see what the Twitterati think.

Of Ferris n Fetishes

I seem to have developed something of a book fetish at the moment. Over the festive break I read five books each one of them a belter. The problem is that I made the mistake of glancing at the recommended further reading at the back of each textbook and ordering them straight from Amazon. That's why this last short while the books have been snowing into the office.
I started this run of reading with Ferris's "The Four Hour Working Week" which is an astonishing book. This led me on to Gerber's "The E-Myth" which took me to Koch's "The 80/20 rule" and there's now a queue of books behind his awaiting my attention. In fact, come to think of it, there are books in my car, books on my work desk and piles of books all over the house. Maybe I should get to the car book sale this Saturday to get rid of a few although in this state of mind there's a danger that I'll come back with as many as I take.
The irony of it all is that the author, Tim Ferris, who seems to have started this fetish for me advises strongly not to waste time reading books.
Strange world innit?

Of Being High on a Happy New Year

So here we are back into another year. I spent New Year's Eve queuing for almost four hours for a good view of the fireworks over the Thames in front of the London Eye. I'll never do it again but it was worth it. Some of the time was passed chatting, listening on my Ipod to music or podcasts and indeed arguing with a guy who claimed I was on a bit of ground he had reserved for his camera tripod. We eye balled each other for several minutes each of us refusing to back down. I think my eyes may have looked away first. I figured that maybe I'm not as scary as I first thought. A cheerful thought to take into the New Year.

New Year's Day and I was back in a queue. This time for the New Year's parade along Horseguards Parade. For me this day belongs to the Americans and their ra ra marching parade bands and cheer leaders. Some of their lighter members were lifted aloft high into the air as they wished everyone "Happy New Year" with a beaming American self confident smile. Great stuff!