Here’s an excerpt from the post:

“Just one thing” is different from “one thing at a time” or from “don’t take on too many projects”. It’s more … finding the one thought or the one action that will pull me back into … into wherever I need to be.

Into the zone. Into my body. Into a more mindful “hey, this is where I am right now” sort of place (what I’d call “present moment awareness” if this were a meditation class which — hooray — it’s not).”

Love that! Read the whole post here.

Now read this: Zen to Done. Zen to Done takes bits and pieces from David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and merges them into 10 guiding principles that you can pick and choose a la carte, these are the high-level habits. It then offers specific advice and examples on how to implement these habits. When I read GTD, I did not like having to slog through anecdote after anecdote, and with Zen to Done, you don’t have to. The book is structured so that you can just get the habits down, or just the specifics, or you can read the whole thing. Plus, it’s an e-book, so it’s dirt cheap and you can read it… now!

While you’re there, you might as well check out the Zen Habits Blog. Lots of great stuff on there too.

In his own words, “43 Folders is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.” He is now re-dedicating his site to people who want to actually do stuff. GTD is great, he claims, but he’s tired of pampering the converts who don’t have a clue how to GTD once they’ve inbox zeroed, and reduced background noise.

It’s a really risky post, but boy did it inspire me. Check out Merlin’s post on 43 Folders here.

It felt just like an experience I had when I needed a creative boost. I’m an illustrator, and a year or two ago I was feeling stuck so I read the first few chapters of “The Artist’s Way” and started the practice of Morning Pages. Each day, I’d wake up and write three pages of whatever came out. This was meant to get my juices flowing, and to spark my creativity. I’d scribble streams of consciousness, sense or nonsense, I’d write…. for an hour, or two, and then work at my job which was more meetings and less drawing. After about a week I felt like the baker who spends all his time making sure his shop looks nice, and who forgot to actually do any baking. So I swapped the pages for morning art and started doing a painting each morning (my inspiration was my commute). Soon after I actually left that job and now paint and draw full time.

So, we at GrowthPop applaud Merlin’s clarity of vision, and courage to get it done even against the inertial energy of his very popular site.

Many times a day, I’ll jump into my iTunes to switch up the playlist, or find something new. I have a big library, so there’s lots there. Should just take a second, right? Not if I get sucked in to fixing duplicates, changing all the artist names to be spelled the same way (GrowthPop, growth pop, gRowth_Pop?).

This ends up eating a lot of my day, so I found a solution. I tried using Fixtunes, but it didn’t recognize the hundreds of songs I have with no information, and hung exactly 100% of the time. Then I found Jaikoz! Jaikoz fixes your tags, and does it by checking not only the track info you have, but will check the actual audio file itself and compare it to its database. It basically listens to your music, and recognizes the song. Then you can tell it to just autocorrect the whole thing.

One word of caution, it’s got a lot of options, and it’s made by one guy, so you’re best off reading the documentation to make sure you do it right. This is what worked for me, and we make no guarantees…

This is what we did:

• Drag your music library in
• Click “Action->Remote Correct->Get Acoustic ID
• Click “Action->Autocorrect
• Close the program and say “yes” to save out the changes

For a lot of files, it takes a while, and I had to drag all my music back into iTunes, but hooboy, it’s nicer to look at than a spotless kitchen!

Check out the software here.