The December and this Post is about to look back on the year 2010 and forward to 2011, together with many other people around the world who participate in the #Reverb10 Project.
Prompt: 11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
This has a short answer: I already life the minimalist life-style. I plan on going even further with my already minimalist style but other than that I can not think of more things to get rid of.
I can only think of one thing I will get rid of — not exactly a thing but even though. It is School. I will finish 2011 and that will be the start of something new. Something to be great!
The December and this Post is about to look back on the year 2010 and forward to 2011, together with many other people around the world who participate in the #Reverb10 Project.
Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?
There are different communities online. I participated in many of them over the past few years. There was a time I was part of over 50 different social-networks — if you can call those communities.
But one thing changed over the past two years: I started to get rid of social-networks and there fore communities. I focused on just three (Twitter, Facebook and Flickr). That is something I think is very important. That way you can focus more. You do not have to keep up with all the different places and it is less time consuming. Even though you may loose some contacts over time.
Over the past year I have utilized especially Twitter and tried to build my blog and projects. The past month though I started to get Flickr right. What I needed to change to actually get some comments and views on there to build my contacts. That was through actually participating in the community. Not just thronging stuff in there and just pretending they will notice anyways. It is a hard way to get some acceptance and feedback. It is even harder to build relationships.
In private life that might be even different. But some things are the same. But what I like about the internet: is that I can get to know people of my niche faster. Some of which are just on the surface, some of which get deeper and eventually might end in real life friendship.
There is a long way and I am always open to new contacts, if you have any questions or any other interest: I am always happy about emails cspiegl@cspiegl.com.
The December and this Post is about to look back on the year 2010 and forward to 2011, together with many other people around the world who participate in the #Reverb10 Project.
The prompt this time is to find something that stops you from writing. Since writing is not exactly what I need to focus on right now I do some changes to this prompt: I call it:
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your school stuff — and can you eliminate it?
Well there are many things that I do which do not contribute to my school stuff. And I am in need to get rid of some but I am already in the process. I am getting rid of reading RSS (I do it once a week only). I am getting rid of constant Twitter checking, the constant need to check email and stuff like it. But still it seems not to be enough. It is most about discipline. It is about not spending time on useless stuff that barely gets me satisfied. Like for example browsing Amazon for new stuff to buy which I can not afford right now. That is what I want to eliminate.
I will eliminate the browsing for new stuff. I will bookmark the ideas, but not search deeper. It should be that simple!
I am writing this blog at least twice a week since the end of 2008. I wrote over 200 articles over that time and I am proud that I mostly stuck to my plan—sometimes I was late by a day and I gave my self one or two breaks for vacations. I than in September 2009 started a 365 Project with my iPhone and just a couple month later in January 2010 I also started a Self-Portrait 365 Project. The iPhone 365 is finally over and I am just about 50 shots before the Self-Portrait 365 ends. All that will relief me somehow. I am sick of sticking to this ‘you have to shoot’!
But in addition to that I am also sick of having plans around me. I am going to stop writing this blog on the two posts per week schedule by the end of this year. I do not know how long this break will be and how much I will post during this break but I will give my self this break. Especially since I have my final exams in Mai 2011. I have to reschedule and get my self a little more discipline for school.
Overall I think that those plans can somehow lock your creativity. I am sometimes late with posting on here. I am sometimes uninspired and you can see that on what I write. And after the 365: you can see which photos have something special and inspiring and which are just plain ‘take the shot’ photos. I am looking forward to the end of the year! I am looking forward to the new and what will come than.
Some years ago I wondert which date writing format would be the best. Some time later I discovered the ISO standard (which I use since). It is like the following:
The ISO date format
The international format defined by ISO (ISO 8601) tries to address all these problems by defining a numerical date system as follows: YYYY-MM-DD where
YYYY is the year [all the digits, i.e. 2012]
MM is the month [01 (January) to 12 (December)]
DD is the day [01 to 31]
For example, “3rd of April 2002″, in this international format is written: 2002-04-03.
~ W3.org
I think that makes it very easy. And one more benefit is: that you can sort folders and files this way very easily!
The meaning of this heading is: reduce your belongings to 100 things or less. The first time I read about it I thought it would be impossible. But now I wrote down a list of all the things I own and noticed that I actually am living with less than 100 things.
It is not 100 percent true what I just wrote. Actually I have many more items. But if I would have to get my essentials and through out the other stuff, I would easily be able to get to less than 100.
For me the 3 areas of things I still would take with me are: Computer stuff, Camera stuff and Clothing. Those are for me the most important things. I am still improving on getting out some more to actually get to less than 100 but for now I am astounded that I am—nearly—already there.
Try it your self, write down the things you would think are essential and do not count while writing! When you think you are ready, count everything you put on that list and check if you are over or under 100 items. I would be happy if you send me your results via email, if I get enough responses I’ll publish a post with the statistics. Get counting.
This post is part of the series of posts about Minimalism
In the last post I mentioned the minimalism in Social-Networking, this time I want to get deeper in minimalism at twitter.
I have different uses of Twitter, one is my personal account @cspiegl and than there is my @CHRISSPPhotos for my photography portfolio. Those are my personal accounts but than there are some other accounts I maintain which are for my projects solely (for example @AIDvertisement).
There I have different approaches:
The Personal Account @cspiegl
The personal account is the one I read all what gets written by the people I follow. There I just follow something around 20 people, that is because I do not want to read just tweets all day! But it also is the main account I tweet from about most of the things I am doing or which are inspiring me.
The Project Accounts
There I am not able to read everything what gets written by the people the Project follows. The following at that accounts is mostly to get traffic and gain more followers. But also to brand the account with the right niche.
The tweets sent from those are mainly about the projects itself or about the niche in which the project is in.
Conclusion
Twitter is all about what you make it. I use it in different ways and think they different accounts and usages suite the purpose the best.
If you like follow my personal tweets @cspiegl or take a look at what is happening around @AIDvertisement
This was post number one of the series of posts about Minimalism. Go check out the others
This post is part of the series of posts about Minimalism
Is it even possible to get minimalistic about Social-Networking? I think it is. In my case, the story began with over 50 social-networking-sites I was registered to. Now I am using currently using 3 actively.
That is it! Formally I used friendfeed, plurk, facebook, schuerlervz, studivz, schueler.cc, linkedin, xing, twitter, deviantart, flickr, myspace and may others.
But why did I downsize: the main point about social-networking is that it need a lot of time to maintain. I started getting rid of social-networks I did not have many friends at and which I thought are not that useful. Now I only have the once left where I actually have friends or followers and where I think the information I see mostly is relevant.
While I was closing down many social-networks, I sent all my friends on those networks a note that I am moving on to an other network and send them a link to friend me there or just go to my website. That way I lost just a few along the way.
One thing to note about Social-Networks and communication: if you sent me a message in a social-network, I have to visit the website of the network to answer. Please just sent emails instead, it is easier for both sites! There are no ads in emails and it is much easier to answer to an email than to visit a extra website and answer there.
So here is my email cspiegl@cspiegl.com if you want write me there. You still can follow me at Twitter or friend me on Facebook but if you want to communicate, please use my email-address.
This was post number one of the series of posts about Minimalism. Go check out the others
This post is part of the series of posts about Minimalism
In the beginning — something like 3 years ago — I was checking Apple news at MacEssentials each day! And that took some time. Over the course the sites I checked increased and included some blogs of just people. Than the thing hit me: it was RSS.
Finally I was able to simply use one site to go to (in my case the Google Reader) and just read the posts. It was a blast! I instantly subscribed to as many blogs I was able to. That was overwhelming! Sometimes I unsubscribed from some of the personal blogs I was subscribed too but I always kept sites like TUAW.com because I thought I would miss anything special happening in the Mac or Apple world. That time I sometimes had been subscribed to over 180 sites — crazy hu!?
Than I started downsizing. From over 180 to just 80. That was about the beginning of 2010. And now I am down to less than 20 sites i am subscribed too—even TUAW had to leave!
Now I do not feel like I miss anything but just get what I want to read. I just keep people I am interested in every post and especially got rid of daily posting sites. Now I try to check RSS not as often as possible but to just check it once or twice a week (well it does most of the time does not work out because I am not disciplined enough but that’s my goal).
One thing I keep doing is that I just star longer reads in Google Reader to read them at the weekend — most of the time that means friday Afternoon or Saturday morning. I do the same with websites or projects I run across each week but there fore I use Instapaper.
So that is my story of development I went through with RSS.
This was post number one of the series of posts about Minimalism. Go check out the others
This post is part of the series of posts about Minimalism
GTD (Getting Things Done) is not that easy. I have tried many different ways how to address that problem and there are 3 stages I went through over the past years.
First Approach
I used Pen & Paper for notes and to brainstorm. I also used Pen & Paper for Todo-Lists. Than I bought a Mac and started to use software to do my Todo-Lists. That was when my Second Approach started.
Second Approach
This time around I used “Notes” on the Mac in Mail.app and the in iCal Todo-Lists. But fast discovered the App The Hit List through MacHeist. Shortly after I bought my iPhone and than started to sync notes between the Mac and the iPhone. But there is a problem: the notes.app on the iPhone and the Mac notes in Mail.app are not really in good sync! Plus The Hit List is still in beta (at point of writing this post) and there are no news about when it is going to be a official release. Pen & Paper obviously are still there but mostly to create todo-lists on the go and later type those into The Hit List.
Third and for now last Approach
Here is what I currently use: Simplenote on the iPhone is probably the easiest and greatest over the air syncing notes taking app I know. It perfectly syncs with Notationally Velocity and is just plain awesome!
In addition to Simplenote I switched from The Hit List to Things and their awesome iPhone.app (even though I just dumped the iPhone app and started using Simplenote to write down new tasks). Things makes it easy to keep a digital todo list and keep track of stuff way ahead in the future—I just start it once a day though and that is minimalism I name it.
Last but not least: there is Pen & Paper which is essential as always. I use those mainly for brainstorming and sketching blogposts, designs and to plan what I have to do on one day. That way I can cross off he todo-list which is much more fun than just to hit a button or to press a key-combination.
So far I am happy with my system and it keeps me on track of what I have left to get done.
This was post number one of the series of posts about Minimalism. Go check out the others