I’ve been meaning to write this blog post months ago. Hopefully this explains a little more how we work in Nozbe, what’s next on our agenda and why we do the things we do.

We’re growing!

Yes, our Nozbe Team used to be small. I founded Nozbe in 2007 as a “one man shop”. I was joined by Delfina and Tomasz in 2008 and we were three. Now we’re nine. Apart from that we work with Macoscope guys on the iPhone/iPad apps. So we’re acutally more than 9.

Emailing, CCing… is not effective

As we grew I wanted to stay on top of things. So everyone would email me things. Most of them as CC. And that was fine when we were 3. But it started being unbearable at 9. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t scale beyond that point.

Than there was the other thing – of explaining new hires how Nozbe works and what Nozbe does. Why do we have to do it every time?

My decision: You must not email me anymore

I decided to say bye to email within my team. I instructed we needed to really “eat our dogfood” and communicate through Nozbe. Want something from me? Delegate an action to me and I’ll have it. Want to comment on my task. Do it. In Nozbe. Everyone who shares this project will see it, no need to CC people.

Added bonus: New folks really quickly learn all about Nozbe features, how it works and are getting interested in GTD (Getting Things Done) and are more productive and effective. Isn’t that cool?

Turning points: Email notifications + Unread comments

When I introduced the new policy to our small company, we already had the “unread comments” section but we didn’t have the email notifications. We brainstormed the idea and didn’t feel comfortable with doing Facebook-like “whatever-you-do-everyone-will-get-an-email-about-it” type of notifications. We wanted hourly reports. Only if stuff happened. As we work different hours (all of our work remotely), we get reports many times a day, but only about the projects that really interest us.

That makes my job as the CEO a lot more easy – with one look at my email inbox, by just going through the Nozbe notifications I see what everyone is working on, what are the current issue, I know what’s going on in my company without asking anyone about anything.

Desktop: more focus on comments

Comments to tasks became our main thing – we would clarify points and explain things there. We communicate through tasks and comments attached to them better, than through email. So we dropped email altogether.

Caution: it’s still tempting to use email…

I still feel tempted to email someone from my team, please do this for me… but then I take a break, convert my draft email into action task, delegate it to them in Nozbe and I’m done. It’s a process, the old email-centric thinking is still there, but it’s slowly going away

The Future is clear: Collaboration all the way

As you’ve already seen in the three-column desktop app design, we’re slowly redesigning our Nozbe experience into fostering even easier team-centric collaboration. The same principle will soon be very visible in our Android app and mobile web app. And main web app, too. This is where we’re going… and as we’ve noticed this is where you – our customers are going.

There’s still a lot to be done, we’re thinking about moving labels and contexts to group environment, and it’s all coming soon. We’ll nail it

After all, a lot of you, after trying out “Personal” plan quickly upgrade to Family to get your friends and colleagues on board. It’s a natural process – after you’re getting your stuff done with Nozbe, you want everyone else to have the same experience, too. You don’t want to be the only one organized

Ready to drop Email within your team or company?

If your boss is hesitant, send them over a link to this blog post. Or have them contact us. I’ll be happy to personally help. We re not coming back to emailing and CCing everyone. Not in million years. We have Nozbe to do the heavy-lifting for us.

(Via Getting Things Done with Nozbe Blog)

StudioPress offers a wide variety of child themes to work with the Genesis Framework. There are detailed tutorials for how to use everything they offer and they have great support. I highly recommend them to anyone working with WordPress to publish online content.

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1. Get the Genesis Framework for only $45.

2. Snag most Genesis / design combos for a song and save close to $20.

3. Wipe the entire shop clean and get the StudioPress Pro Plus All-Theme Package. Get Genesis plus every design they’ve made, plus every design they make in the future, and save more than $74 off the regular price and over $875 off the retail price — and that’s just the existing 43 designs!

All you need to do is use the code THANKS when you check out and you’ll save 25% on anything and everything at StudioPress.com.

This deal ends promptly at 7:00 pm Pacific time on Monday, November 28, 2011. Hurry up and claim your new WordPress theme before the code expires!

StudioPress Theme of the Month – AgentPress Theme

Let me know what your thoughts.

Here is an email that I recently sent to the company to let them know how much I love their products:

I have had my iPhone for a couple of years and I have gone through several cases. In the process of trying out these various cases I have managed to rip nearly all the buttons off my phone. The first to go was my mute switch when I inadvertently slid it into the case wrong. The volume rocker went when I tried to pop it into a back cover the wrong way. The only buttons still clinging to my poor abused iPhone are the home and power buttons. The power button was really scared because it’s an outey instead of an inney, like the home button. It is feeling much better about it’s life expectancy now that I’ve found ZAGG and there will be no more careless case swapping. I have an invisibleSHIELD touched off with a LEATHERskins. If only I had found ZAGG sooner my phone would still have all it’s buttons and I would still have all that money I spent trying to find the perfect case. My iPad is really happy in it’s full body invisibleSHIELD also.

What I really love about the invisibleSHIELD is that it offers superb protection without adding bulk. Even the LEATHERskin for the back adds virtually no bulk to my phone at all. It keeps it thin enough, and protects it well enough, that I don’t think twice about throwing it in my pocket and going. No more bulky belt clips or thick covers to mess up the sleek design of my phone!

Whether you’re an Apple fan, like me, or use some other brand of gadget, ZAGG’s got you covered (pun intended). I hope you’ll check them out and avoid the kind of “perfect case search” nightmares that I’ve had. Oh, and if anyone out there does want to try some inferior options to ZAGG, I’ve got some cases I’ll sell you.

The articles that I especially liked in this issue:

• Scheduling Time In The “Alone Zone”
• Quick & Dirty Guide To Meetings (this would be a really good one to print and share with the men for your next men’s meeting).
• 7 Ways The New Apple iPad Will Increase Your Productivity
• 10 Laws Of Productivity

There’s a lot more there and I’m sure when you get it you’ll see why Productive Magazine is one my recommended readings.

It is a simple process outlined as follows:

1. Collect
2. Process
3. Organize
4. Review
5. Do

The “collect” phase is the “ubiquitous capture” that I’ve talked about in other posts. It basically means that you “capture” any thing and everything that is on your mind. By capturing it in an external device like index cards (or whatever works best for you) you are able to get it off your mind. According to David Allen, the creator of GTD, once you have all these umpteenbillion things you’ve been thinking about out of your head on into an external capture device, you can then use your brain for what it does best – problem solving, creativity, productivity – instead of as a mental “to-do list.”

Whatever collection devices you use is your “in-box.” You will most likely have multiple in-boxes, though they should be consolidated and minimized as much as possible. You will have your email in-box, probably some manner of physical in-box on your desk, a basket on the cabinet at home, your PDA, whatever. The main point of the collection phase is to get everything out of your head on captured in a trusted system that will free up your mind from worrying about it.

After you get all the umpteenbillion things out of your head and on index cards, or in your PDA, you need to “process” them. The process phase is when you go through your in-box and decide what needs to be done about the stuff that has found its way in there. There is no “perfect” set time to do the processing of your in-boxes. It just depends on what works best for you. I like to go through my in-boxes close to the end of the work day. That way when I begin the following day I have a clear plan of what needs to be done from the previous days “processing.” I will also do a quick processing after finishing some big task to see if there is anything that needs to be dealt with right away.

The number one rule for processing is the 2-minute rule. If you pick something up out of your in-box that would take 2 minutes or less to complete then do it right then. It would take longer than that to put in on a list to review for later action, so go ahead and do it. You would be amazed at how much gets done just by implementing this simple rule.

If the 2-minute rule doesn’t apply then there are simple questions that move the processing phase along. For each item that comes up in your in-box, that would take longer than 2-minutes to deal with, you ask the following questions:

• The first, and most obvious, question is “What is it?”
  You have to know what it is before you can know what needs to be done about it.
• Next, “Is it actionable?”That is, does it require me to do anything about it? Not everything that gets collected in our in-boxes is “actionable.” Some stuff is just stuff.
  • If the answer is “no” then I need to determine what where to put it. It can’t just stay in my in-box, I’ve got to get it out of there. It needs to go in one of three places:
    • TrashIf its trash throw it away and move on.
    • Someday/Maybe ListIt may be an idea or goal that you don’t necessarily need to do anything on right now but that you might want to do something about sometime down the road. Keep these things in a list to be reviewed periodically. My most active someday/maybe list is my “Sermon Ideas” list. When I read or hear something that I think makes a good idea for a sermon I write it down on an index card and then when I process them I may think that it would make a good sermon but I don’t want to write it right now. It goes on the “Sermon Ideas” for future consideration.
    • Reference MaterialReference materials are things that find their way into your in-boxes that aren’t “to-do” items. They are pieces of information that you want to file and keep for future reference. David Allen has some excellent suggestions for maintaining a functional filing system in his three books detailing the GTD system. For those of us that dream of having a paperless office, I have not seen a better digital filing system than DEVONthink Pro Office 2.0. My one word description of it is “amazing.” You’ll, no doubt, be seeing my review of this organizational software very soon.
  • If the answer is “yes” then we figure out what it is that needs to be done about it. One of the most important questions in the GTD system is “What is the Next Action?” If the next action would complete the item with no further action required then put it on a list to do it when and where it can be done. However, if the most literal next action needed on that item would just move it along toward completion then it becomes a project. A project is anything that requires more than one action to complete. Put it on a project list with its necessary next action. When that next action is done you ask the question again, “OK, now what’s the next action?” What would be the next most literal thing that would have to be done to move that item forward toward completion. Again, the GTD books go into much more detail about why this works and how to do it. I highly recommend the books.There are three considerations under the “yes” answer:
    1. Do it.Remember the 2-minute rule! If it can be done in 2 minutes or less then just do it.
    2. Delegate it.We aren’t always the best one to handle everything that comes into our in-boxes. Pass it on to whoever is. Now its in their in-box and out of my life, nice.
    3. Defer it.Those things that take longer than 2 minutes, that you can’t get rid of, need to be deferred. It needs to go to a project or next-action list to be dealt with at the right time and in the right place.

Hope this helps, let me know what you think.

When I moved to Danville, VA I was doing a live TV program. The graphics for the program were controlled by my computer. I would go into the studio and plug my Acer notebook into their control board and run the backdrop with PowerPoint. I was in front of green screen but what the audience saw was me standing in front of my PowerPoint presentation. I had not been doing the program long when my Acer crashed in the middle of a live broadcast. The next day I went to Office Depot and bought a Toshiba notebook. I had used a Toshiba before and really liked it so I thought this would be the answer to my TV production needs. WRONG! It didn’t take long until the presentation, graphics and video demands of doing the TV program were crashing my Toshiba. I had been thinking of switching to Mac for a while so when the Toshiba crashed in the middle of a live broadcast I decided I was done with PCs and would give Macs a try. I ordered the 13″ MacBook White that I’m writing on right now.

From the time I started using it I have not thought of switching back even for a second. As long as I used it on the live TV program I never had the first bit of technical difficulty. To the contrary, I was able to enhance and improve the presentation quality of the program as result of switching.

As I have compared Apple based software with Windows based software, Apple wins every time. The only thing that I have retained from Windows is my Bible software and some eBook applications.

The biggest objection I hear, and the one that kept me from switching until I was so fed up with Windows that I didn’t care, is that you will have to start over with all new software. However, that really isn’t true. When you see the difference between the Apple and the Windows software you will probably want to start using the Apple stuff, but you don’t have to. As I mentioned above, I still use Windows XP on my Mac. My PC Study Bible probably works better on my Mac than it did on my PCs. And I get some eBooks from people that don’t offer a Mac version so I use Windows XP for those.

So, how am I able to do my presentations in Keynote (Apple’s version of PowerPoint) and still do my Scripture references with PC Bible Study? I use a virtual machine application to run Windows XP within Mac OS X. I can have my Windows apps open right along side of my Mac apps. So, there is absolutely no reason not to switch.

If you haven’t had the kind of nightmare stories with your PC that I have then you may not be as motivated to switch, you’re also an endangered species that thinks Windows is a good OS. For you the motivation would be in the quality of the software applications and how they will effect your work. When I got my Mac I thought that I would continue to use my MS Office software (PowerPoint, Word, etc.). However, when I got a taste of Keynote (Apple’s presentation software) and Pages (Apple’s word processor and publisher software) I dropped MS Office like a hot potato.

Then there are all the other really great apps that are available for Apple that have no equivalent Windows counterpart. Some of the stuff I use nearly every day – Bento (database), Toast (DVD production), Espresso (text editor), Final Cut Express (video editor), Front Row (media player), Rapid Weaver (web design), etc., etc. I absolutely love the Mac OS X operating system and all the great applications you can get for it.

If you’re still in school I want you to go get a Mac today and then download these applications as soon as you take it out of the box:

• NoteBook – by Circus Ponies.
• The Hit List – by Potion Factory.
• Bento – by FileMaker.
• Evernote
• Dropbox

These applications, in conjunction with Keynote and Pages that come with your new Mac, will make your student life much easier and your teachers will love you for it. When I think back on my time in preaching school and how much these applications would have helped me I almost want to go back and do it again just so I can use these applications in school.

If you’re on the fence about switching to Mac then I hope this little testimonial will help you make up your mind. If you’re a Mac user let us hear your thoughts about switching. I’m betting there won’t be any Mac users that regret their choice.

Here they are:

1. Direct Titles

   Bly calls them “Direct Headlines” but we’re talking sermon titles. This would simply be a direct statement concerning the sermon’s content. For example, “Great Missionaries Of The Bible.” These kinds of direct statements tell the audience what they are about to hear expounded. The hook is the interest in the statement key words – “Missionaries” and “Bible.” I’m interested in mission work and I’m interested in the Bible. I’m interested in the biblical accounts of God’s missionaries. I’m going to pay attention to this sermon!

2. Indirect Titles

   The indirect title (or headline) hooks on the audiences curiosity. These kinds of titles use double meaning to create curiosity. Like, “The Story Of The Tator Family.” People see that and think, “who are the Tators and what’s their story?” Well, the Tators are a metaphor for character traits that we either want to avoid or imitate. DicTator, ImiTator, SpecTator, etc. The sermon has nothing to do with a family named Tator, it has to do with a family of character traits.

3. News Title

   This is a title that draws attention based on a news story. I have used news titles from local news papers and from national news to great success in my lessons. Local news is very effective especially when you’re posting your sermon titles on a sign board or in the same local paper the news title came from. For example, “Issues Raised By The Death Of Terri Shiavo.”

4. The How To Title

   People love this kind of title! When you state in your title that you are going to tell people how to do something that they really want to know how to do, they will pay attention. For example, “How To Love Life And See Good Days,” “How To Handle The Word Of God,” “How To Be And Stay Saved.”

5. The Question Title

   Like the How To title, this one appeals to the audience’s desire to see a particular question answered. It may also appeal to an empathetic response from the audience. That is the, “yes, I’ve had that same question,” response. For example, “Is Once-Saved-Always-Saved True?,” “How Great Is Your Faith?,” “Is There A Universal Code Of Ethics?,” “What Must I Know In Order To Be Saved?,” “What Do I Want?,” “What Are You Willing To Put Up With?”

6. The Command Title

   The kind of title boldly tells the audience what they must do. For example, “Take Heed How You Hear!,” “Flee Idolatry!,” “Obey The Truth!,” “Fortify Your Family!” Notice, these kinds of titles are exclamations of actions that must be taken in order to accomplish a desired goal, i.e. salvation and faithfulness.

7. The # Reasons Why Title

   These titles don’t necessarily have to contain the words “Reasons Why” but they will point to the number of major heading in your sermon body. For example, the title of this article, “Eight Tips For Writing Effective Sermon Titles.” What do you get in the content of the article? Eight tips for writing effective sermon titles. Imagine that. Here are some sermon title examples, “Three Things God Desires,” “Three Parables For Judah,” “Four Great Gifts,” “Seven Things Needed For Your Faith.”

8. The Testimonial Title

   These titles give a testimonial regarding the biblical effect you want your audience to get. I know you have to be careful when using the word “testimonial” because of the denominational abuse of basing salvation on a persons “personal testimony.” This title would be something like, “I Read The Bible And Left The Catholic Church,” “I Am A Member Of The Church Of Christ Because…,” “Confessions Of A Former Mormon,” “I Was One Of Them But…”
   

Remember, no amount of cleverness on the part of the title can make up for poor content. Let me know your thoughts and examples on using titles like these.