Today we’ve launched the 2nd issue of the Productive Magazine with an exclusive interview with Guy Kawasaki inside (by yours truly) and 10 great articles by many productivity bloggers.

Click on the image to see the whole announcement:

There are several things I love about this issue of the magazine and the whole Productive Magazine project:

1. I get to work with great people. My co-editors are Dustin Wax of Stepcase Lifehack and Lori Anderson. It’s a pleasure to be working with them on such an amazing project.
2. I get to connect with great people. I did the interview with Guy Kawasaki. He actually knows me Most amazing bloggers in the blogosphere are writing articles for my magazine. Incredible.
3. I’m doing something new and different. Just think about it - Productive Magazine is the first global magazine on productivity… and it’s free! I’m changing the world - Guy would be proud.

This is why soon after I came back from the GTD Summit I decided to make this project one of my priorities and I’m optimizing all the processes to make sure we can get one magazine every other month… and eventually every month. Let’s see if we can make this happen.

Meanwhile I encourge you to download the magazine and let me know what you think in the comments!

New episode of my 2-Minute Productivity Show, this time recorded using iMovie and built-in iSight Camera in my Macbook Air and later uploaded to Youtube. I also tried using Seesmic, but the quality was bad I think… anyway, posted both so that you can compare. Here’s the Youtube version:

Here’s the Seesmic version:

Hope you enjoyed the show and till the next one!

You can view all the past shows here on youtube

5 years ago, on the cold and grey day of December 15th, 2003, I concluded the lengthy registration process of my company “apivision.com”.

Half a year after my graduation, when most of my friends from the Management Studies went seeking great jobs with great companies to hunt for great salaries….

… I decided to start a great company myself.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had some clients in my portfolio already (the ones I was already doing some gigs during the studies) and some ideas for products and services online (actually I had one online service in the preparation already).

Why did I start my own company? (without any prior experience of working for someone else) I had my reasons:

• I did have some work experience, I took a series of internships during the studies, so I had a vague idea of how working in a big company can look like
• My both parents are entrepreneurs - my father is running an advertising agency and my mum had several businesses in her career and currently owns a cafe with gallery. I had great role models… and I was aware of the risks.
• “No risk no fun” - I wanted to give it a try. I knew that if I failed, I’d go and seek a job and will find one fairly quickly, I wasn’t afraid of trying and failing (I was young and bold
• Freedom - I loved the idea of working from anywhere in the world with a laptop - I wrote my thesis about virtual enterprises and teleworking and I just wanted to try it in practice. I knew the theory and wanted to see if the “real thing” matches the hype.
• I wasn’t risking all that much. Although my parents didn’t help me financially in any way with my company, they did support me with their advice and experience… and at the time I was living with them, so they wouldn’t let me starve to death if I failed.

Fast forward five years…

… and I’ve helped many businesses sell their goods and services online. I’ve created several web applications and I’ve given employment to several people… and I’m running a very successful (in my terms) web application called Nozbe.

I’m not all by myself in this endeavor. I have an assistant, developer and a handful of freelancers that work with me on a regular basis… which makes my company a true “virtual enterprise”… just as I’ve described it in my thesis.

And loving it!

I’m enjoying every moment of working for my own company. I have some really great people working with me and we’re working on really great stuff. I could easily quote Guy Kawasaki saying: “My company not only makes money, we make meaning”.

Thousands of people are using Nozbe to help them get things done… and it really works! I know, because they write to me and tell me. What started as a project to help me be more productive, ends up being a productivity solution for everyone!

I’m pursuing my dreams!

With the birth of the Productive Magazine I became a chief editor of it and it’s a lot of fun and great work. With everything my company currently does, I feel I’m developing my own personality even more. I’m learning to work with people, to motivate them, to educate customers… and I’m spending my time doing what I love.

I’m glad I made this decision 5 years ago….

… and started my company. I believe I chose a great path and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead of me. I’m eager to learn more and to accelerate my business even more… and to make more meaning.

Any productivity guru you ask about some basic productivity tips for starters will tell you this - you need to have a clutter-free place to be able to work efficiently and focus on your work.

My personal experience has taught me the very same thing. Clutter-free desk makes all the difference and helps me really concentrate and get things done.

But what if I’m a computer geek?

Chances are you’re a computer geek like myself and you’ve got lot’s of computer gear… which basically means = lot’s of cables, charges, and the like… Well, you can still work in a clutter-free environment! Read this blog post to find out how.

(before I start, I’d like to thank Van Mardian of Decluttered.com for his great article and inspiration!)

First of all - I love cabinets.

Some like desks, especially these ultra-modern glass ones, Apple-style… but in this regard I’m more of an old-school guy and I like cabinets. Especially that me and my wife live in a very small appartment (one bedroom, one living-room and a kitchen). When I work at home, I have to do it in the living room and having a cabinet lets me just close this thing and all of the sudden my work area is not visible to anyone.

What’s in my home-office cabinet?

A lot… you wouldn’t believe me so I’ve got photos to prove. My guests don’t believe me when they see this small IKEA-cabinet in a corner of our living room. Here’s what’s inside:

• My primary work computer: IBM Lenovo Thinkpad X60 TabletPC (update: I’ve just switched to the Macbook Air)
• My “home server”, which is actually another laptop: Toshiba M200 TabletPC
• External 21″ Gateway LCD display
• Two USB2.0 Hard Drives: 750GB for storage and 250GB for backups
• External DVD RW drive in a USB enclosure.
• A network switch, lot’s of cables, chargers and power cords.

Below the cabinet you can see a black box - it’s a subwoofer for my Home DVD Movie Theater setup which is… (you gussed it) on the cabinet. As you can see, it’s plenty of stuff to fit into one small cabinet.

Decluttering my cabinet

The idea is simple:

Put all the gear below the cabinet, with only 3 cables to connect to 2 computers and one power outlet. That’s it. All the rest of the cables stay below the cabinet.

So where how do I put these cables below the cabinet? Easy, I found this metal drawer in a local furniture store. This drawer is normally used to store socks, pants and other clothes… in my case it’s perfect for my cables:

The cool thing about this drawer is the fact that it’s made of aluminium and has lot’s of “holes” for the air to circulate and cool down all the devices that are supposed to fit in there.

Apart from the drawer, I’d also need cable ties and cable pipes:

The “pipes” for cables are mostly intended to combine cables together, you’ll see later.

Let’s get to work - here’s how the clutter will be placed in the drawer:

It’s important to put the chargers on a different side than the hard disks, as the chargers generate lots of heat. Please note I’ve put an extra space between the chargers. When I added the cables and two USB hubs, the clutter started to show up:

I’ve also added power outlets to actually power up all of these devices. After that I started to organize everything using the cable ties and the outcome is more less like this:

As you can see, there is a “Drives’ Zone” and a “Power Zone” in the drawer. And there is space between. On three sides of the drawer there are power outlets. The black power outlet (on the right) is the one that will eventually charge the whole thing.

Where’s the DVD drive? Below the drawer, here’s why:

This way I can access the DVD drive anytime, right below the cabinet.

Now, how did I actually mount the drawer to the cabinet?

Quite simply, here’s what I used:

Just screw the hooks to the wooden bottom of the cabinet like this:

Now I just use a wooden dowel to hold the drawer. I need 4 mounting points like this one to ensure the drawer holds well and will not fall out. It’s a great way of mounting the drawer since I’ll be able to dismount it whenever I want to.

Now, before I mount the drawer, I need to make sure there are just three cables going out of it. Actually there are more cables, but thanks to the pipes, this looks like this:

Only 1 power cord, one “pipe” with power, USB and LAN going to the server and another pipe with power and LAN going to the Laptop.

As you can see the pipes look really nice and professional and make it easy to connect to the computers.

Mounted Drawer below the clutter-free cabinet

Here’s how the drawer looks below the cabinet:

Everything nicely mounted to the bottom of the cabinet. The DVD drive can be used at any time and ther is only one Power cable going to the power outlet. (the grey cables you’re seeing in the background are the cables from my hi-fi set and they’ll need to be taken care of as well).

Presto! Here’s my home office environment:

Update: Actually after one month of working like this I got a new Macbook Air and now the updated home office looks like this:

There you go. Here’s my home office. Now, whenever I need to work at home, I’ve got a perfect work environment and I can always put the screen to the side, close the cabinet, and nobody would notice there is so much great computer gear inside… and so many cables… all totally clutter-free.

Hope you like my setup and hope it inspires you to do the same for your home office (and real office).

Now I can get my stuff done in a nice clutter-free environment.

I’m happy to announce that we’ve just released the first issue of the Productive Magazine! I’m particularly proud as this is my first attempt as the Editor-in-Chief of a Magazine.

33 Pages, 17 articles, 3 MB FREE PDF download that looks like this:

Before you download…. watch the video of me introducing you to the magazine (only 6 minutes):

To download, just click here!

What’s in the magazine:

• Interview with the David Allen himself - the best-selling author of the Getting Things Done book
• 17 great articles by the most active productivity bloggers in the blogoshpere, make sure to check these out!

Thanks to all the contributors and to everyone who helped me make this happen!

After you’ve downloaded the magazine, please do come back to this web site and post your comments to let me know what you think! Thanks!

- Michael Sliwinski (Editor)

P.S. Productive Magazine is sponsored by Nozbe - Simply Get Things Done tool that keeps you productive when you’re by the computer or with the mobile phone or the iPhone.

I’ve been recently very busy working on new Nozbe and iNozbe - and decided to optimize my Email setup to make sure I don’t spend too much time with Email and can get stuff done.

I’m so happy with this new simple setup and with my recent IMAP discovery (I know, IMAP has been around for ages…) that I decided to go back to the good, old 2-minute productivity shows. Hope you like the new episode:

How do you setup your email? Please let me know in the comments below!

Here’s the next episode of the 2-Minute Productivity show. This time I’m sharing my tips and tricks that help me read lots of magazines quickly and efficiently.

Enjoy!

Trying to be consistent, so this Wednesday it’s time for another episode of the “2-Minute Productivity Show”, again about email:

Enjoy!

Here’s another episode of the “2-minute productivity show” I have for you:

Enjoy!

Note: This new article of mine has been published yesterday on the GTDtimes blog.

We all strive to make everything easier-to-use, more accessible, etc.
We strongly believe that if all of our applications and all of the tools we use on the daily basis are properly optimized, we can get more done and have everything accomplished.

This is true in 80% of the cases…
I couldn’t agree more – I love it when everything goes more easily and automatically. Actually I’m always coming up with ideas on how to make certain aspects of my life “more automatic” to make sure I’m not doing the same boring stuff over and over again.

But in 20% of the cases… I’m trying to complicate my life… on purpose.
I know this sounds weird. It struck me the other day upon a conversation with a fellow GTD-er Testeq that as strange as this may sound, this is actually a good thing to do.
So why would I want to complicate my life if I can get stuff done the easy way? Why would I do something manually if I can have it done automatically or semi-automatically for me?

The answer: to fight temptation… and reduce procrastination.
Let me give you an example. I love blogs and RSS feeds which let me read great up-to-date information from many sources across the web in one place. To read RSS feeds, I used to use a great plug-in for Firefox called “Sage”.

Sage works really great, just press “CTRL+Z” and your RSS feeds appear on the left side of your Firefox browser and once you click on the feed that you want to read, you can see all of the feed’s content right there in the browser. Neat.

The problem… I would turn on “Sage” too often… and instead of actually browsing for the stuff I needed for my work, I’d happily turn “left” to check how the feeds are going and if there is some new interesting info that has been published…

When this “habit” of checking feeds turned into a temptation I couldn’t resist, I decided to put an end to it. I removed all of my feeds from Sage and copied them to my Google Reader account.

Now when I want to read the feeds, I need to explicitly log in to my Google Reader account and start reading… and since I’m not logged in to my Google account for most of my day, this takes several steps to do.

A “Tempting” habit turned into a conscious decision…
Now, instead of “clicking and checking what’s up” I need to decide: “OK, now I’m going to log in to my Reader account and read the feeds for 30 minutes”. After that I’ll log out and won’t be reading them any more.

You can apply the very same thing to email. If you use Gmail like I do - just log in to your Google Account only when you want to check your email. Decide to check your email. Once you’ve processed your email, log out and continue with your next action on your Next Actions list.

Conclusion: focus on your next actions and help yourself resist temptation.
So there you have it. I’ve made my life a little more complicated, but then again, I don’t get distracted all that much anymore. When I want to read my feeds, I log in to my Google Reader account – once I’ve read them, I log out. When I want to process my email, I log in to my Google Mail account and also log out once I’m done. However to make sure I know what to do next, I’m always logged in to my Nozbe Account to see my list of “Next Actions”.

How do you fight your distractions? Do you complicate your life as well?
Please do let me know in the comments what your daily temptations and distractions are and how you fight them. I’ll be happy to learn from you!