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.

Growth Potential: Personally, I don’t follow his bible to the letter, but I use some of techniques and feel much less worried all the time: worried that I’m forgetting something, or which movie was that I wanted to see, or “did I forget my bills this month?” Allen’s mantra is a good one, “Do it, delegate it, defer it, or drop it.” One example: put your morning todos in a place that you will go look at in the morning. If you put something on the bag you take to work, you’ll see it. If you put it on your desk, you might not. So now I always store information in places that I will literally trip over, and it works!

Pop Potential: This book or audio is really for everyone. That said, this is a national bestseller with testimonials from Ken Blanchard (The One Minute Manager), The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Entrepreneur magazines, he’s got the credentials. With great quotes from famous artists, writers, scientists and political leaders. Even so, you don’t have to be a self-help or transformation junkie, this is for anyone who does anything at anytime ever. Do you ever go shopping? Buy groceries? Do anything? Get this book.

“Get Real” Potential: I listened to the audio version, and the narrator is a little slow. The book repeats itself a lot, which is pretty good for remembering stuff if you missed it, but Mr Not-So-Exciting leaves me a little dry (his guilty pleasure is trimming his hedges). He also calls his email inbox an “inbasket” … I don’t feel like I need to explain my feelings on that.

What I Got out of it: I got a few techniques for organizing my head that I wouldn’t do without. I’m not a convert, I won’t be putting on his brand of black sneakers or buying the kool aid, but I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to enjoy their life with a little less worry. I’d then go pick up the Four Hour Workweek and move to Europe. I’d say more, but I have an “inbasket” to take care of.

Purchase Getting Things Done, by David Allen

Growth Potential: Ferriss brings a great mix of his own ideology with specific, usable tips and resources. He makes a convincing argument for why you shouldn’t give the best years of your life working for someone else, on the arbitrary 40-60 hr/week schedule. He then delves into dozens of specific ‘how-to’s from pre-testing products and outsourcing their production, to managing interrupting people who want to ‘chat’ at work. My favorite exercise was called ‘dreamlining’ where you put your dreams into realizable financial goals.

Pop Potential: I think Tim has a better chance of hitting the pop mainstream than his book, although he did achieve bestseller status. He’s a charismatic & good lookin’ fella, and you can see from his blog that he spends a fair amount of his time being active and having fun. The YouTube videos on his site are certainly intriguing enough that one could see a 4hourworkweek TV show in the not-too-distant future. That is if it didn’t require putting more than 2 hours a week into it (he’s got other businesses to run after all).

“Get Real” Potential: Central to the book’s premise is that working in an office, on a 9-5 work schedule and having bosses and stuff is bad. Running around skydiving and traveling while your own business is on autopilot is good. I’d argue that that’s a little extreme as each has its merit. Also, I can’t help but get the feeling that a life with free time during the weekdays, and bopping from country-to-country lends itself to a degree of loneliness. If you don’t talk to your employees, customers and have virtual assistants emailing thank you notes to your friends and loved-ones…um, who are you interacting with?

What I Got out of it: Personal development books often get me real psyched up at first, and then I kind of forget about all that stuff I was going to do to transform my life a few days later. This is the first book that I can really say is a new bible. So much of what the author shared resonated with thoughts I’d had for years but felt ashamed to think. He not only helped me make sense of my intuition, he told me how to make it work. This book served as a catalyst for me to streamline and optimize my life and projects so that I can spend more time doing the things I’m really passionate about.

Learn more about The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss

Growth Potential: The Power of Now focuses on the whole “be here now” concept in simple concrete terms. Tolle rams home the idea that life never occurs in the past and the future, only in this moment and that if you are not present to this moment, you are not truly alive. It encourages the reader to be more present to the moment regardless of the circumstances.
Pop Potential: I had a really interesting moment while actually reading the book on a crowded airliner, with babies screaming all around me. Instead of shutting down and trying to ignore the crowd and noise, I used the principles I was reading about at that moment to stay present and have a very interesting experience for the rest of the flight.
“Get Real” Potential: There are some concepts in the book that are pretty far out there. For instance, he writes about the “pain body” and how women’s menstrual cycles are past pain resurfacing. I’m not going to say that I disagree with these concepts, but I felt some of them were not based as much in real world understanding of things and are hard to accept as presented.
What I Got out of it: I found this book extremely enlightening on many levels, and now experience myself more aware and more present. I cannot recommend it enough.

Learn more about The Power Of Now

“Get Real” Potential: (see video below)

What I Got out of it: Several months after seeing The Secret, I was in a bit of a slump. At some point I noticed how preoccupied I was with thoughts of what wasn’t working. I remembered the lessons of The Secret and for 1 week, I started each day thinking that things had already drastically changed, expressed gratitude for them being so great, and felt the emotion as if things had already changed. Circumstances did rapidly and drastically shift, and have basically stayed that way since. The Secret is an easy target, but I dig it for adding some sizzle to goal setting and positive thinking.

Learn more about The Secret