Merlin Mann has a What’s your favorite minimalist wallet? thread happening over on 43 Folders. [here]

I tried the Jimi. Too small.

This one is perfect.

It’s a business card case I bought at the Dell company store on a business trip 5 years ago. I have used it ever since. Holds more than a Jimi, but those are 3 X 5 index cards next to wallet, to give you some sense of scale.

I would never go back to a real wallet, like my father carried.

Dell could score some serious bonus points (especially after the fiasco with Samantha’s computer) with me by sending me a bunch of these to distribute to friends and family.

Technorati Tags: jimi, minimalist wallet, wallet, 43Folders, Dell, Life Hacks, life hacks

I have been using the Jimi Wallet for about a week, and I have retired it for now.

I can’t operate with just five cards. I have too much happening in my life. I know that this violates all of the GTD principles, but I already have it narrowed down to a folding leather business card holder. And for my life, it holds what I need.

Technorati Tags: GTD, Jimi, Jimi Wallet

My Jimi Wallet arrived today. And it is exactly as advertised.

Small. Compact. Solid.

It forces you to seriously consider the items that you need to take with you on your everyday. I narrowed it down to exactly what I thought it would in this post.

What I am waiting for are the hacks that are sure to appear from the hardcore GTD freaks. Likely they will be able to turn it into a dayplanner, notetaker and laptop computer with a paper clip and folded paper.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the gift bag the Jimi comes in is a great carrying case for my Sony Ericsson K700i!

Technorati Tags: GTD, Jimi, Jimi Wallet

Wow!

1. Engage. Participate. Be fully present. No auto-pilot.
2. Meetings and multiple appointments are a fact of work-life; the least we can do is be on time so they can start on time and our peers are not kept waiting.
3. Respect the attention of your peers. Come prepared means come prepared.
4. Always have a pen and paper for note-taking. First, you respect others who are giving you information by acknowledging it, and secondly youÂ’re expected to capture it, and follow-up; forgetting is not an option.
5. Whatever your role is, youÂ’re expected to be the expert in that role. Own it, and donÂ’t be shy about it. Stake your claim proudly. (This was part of the no bench-warmers philosophy.)
6. When you say youÂ’ll follow-up on something, do. If itÂ’s not going to happen, say so. People trip when you sweep stuff under the rug.
7. Own up to your mistakes and be okay with them. Making mistakes is perfectly fine for we all make them. However huffing and puffing about them with excuses and justifications is not fine. Get over it (we already did) and just correct it.
8. Communicate. We have found that relying on mind-reading doesnÂ’t work that well for us.
9. Trust and be trust-worthy. Much easier when Rules 1 – 8 are honored and we all keep it real.

ng this out now to be posted prominently.

Merlin at 43Folders links to a great post by Robert Daeley. [here]

This post is extremely relevant to me, as I just spent 9 hours lugging my laptop backpack (still waiting for my Waterfield Cargo bag to arrive from a dedicated reader — Large please) around SeaTac, Denver International and Logan.

It would have been even worse if I had been allowed to go to Europe this Sunday…but I digress.

What is in there?

Well, the contents are pretty much detailed here. Now, I can take out the European adapters — need for those went way down all of a sudden. But, in a nutshell, my bag is substantially cleaner now than it has been in years.

The Moleskine Accordian Folder definitely helps, as I have a place to store all of my important documents, receipts and pieces of paper.

And the MEC backpack buddy helps keep the wires and cables and other odds and ends from rattling around.

But I still carry way too much. The 9 pound Inspiron doesn’t help.

In my pockets, bare minimum, and always in the front pockets. A business card holder thing to hold the cards I need, and my car keys in one pocket; my very light Samsung R225M in the other.

Still, there is too much crap in our lives. Too much in mine.

If only I could capture it all and put it in my inbox…

Technorati: GTD, Moleskine, zen pockets, whats in my bag

At my last job, I moved desks a lot. Not because I was being shuffled from department to department, but because the company was in a constant state of flux, expanding with the Internet Bubble 1.0, and then collapsing on itself.

I often found interesting things when I took up residence at my new desk. Once, I found a huge group of files belonging to finance, detailing many contracts with clients. This lead me to have other concerns, but, oh well, no matter.

My best find is one that I carry to this day: a pen.

Not just any pen. A S.T. Dupont.

It’s engraved with a “sales club” outing date. You remember those? The boondoggles that sales gets as a reward for “good” performance? Well, this was part of the kit for one of those.

It’s black lacquer, heavy, and writes exquisitely. Why someone, even if they were let go and were angry at the company, would leave a work of art such as this behind is beyond me.

And I just rediscovered it at the bottom of my backpack. It feels exquisite sliding over the paper of my Moleskine.

Today is looking up.

…and I have heard a rumour that David Allen is adding them to GTD, Merlin and Dave Winer are porting them to MacOSX, SOGrady is building them on Gentoo, and Scoble uses them on his tablet. Kathy Sierra is evangelizing how they make happier screwers (???) and Darren Rowse has pointed out how to optimize your layout to take advantage of Google ScrewSense.

Great. Thanks Seth. Now everyone will want Robertson Screws. One more thing Canadians will lose their exclusive superiority in. Losing hockey was bad enough. Now you want our screws.

Time to move back to Canada, where all cool things — including weather and excluding Nortel and Corel — start.

Seth Godin’s post

My Rant on the Cool Tools post

Technorati: tools, seth godin

lifehack brings us yet another great idea: notepaper as a bookmark. [here]

Before I started using 3X5 index cards, I bought a ahck of 4X6 cards. Turns out that the 4X6 cards don’t fit in the Mead Hipster PDA case (here and here). But now, I think I have found a use for them.

The Hipster PDA Bookmark Kit. Use it like a regular Hipster, but make notes (using chapters and page numbers to track them. When you are done with the book, file the bookmark PDA for that book somewhere so that you can retrieve it later.

Hey, filing it with the book is perhaps the best solution.

Yeehaa! GTD inspiration at 7:45AM on a Monday!

TECHNORATI: GTD, Hipster PDA, Index Cards, Moleskine, lifehack, Organization, Reading

I tried. I really did. I tried to use the Moleskine Planner as a supplement to my daily Outlook calendar, but it didn’t work out. It’s too heavy, too bulky. I think that one of the spiral bound planners might work better for me; I will try that next year.

It is a beautiful book. I may convert into a daily diary, writing an entry that fits each page, with comments on the day. But too carry around in my backpack, it just doesn’t work.

TECHNORATI: GTD, Moleskine

For those who who like GTD photos.

Notes on photo at Flickr.

TECHNORATI: GTD, Hipster PDA, Index Cards, Moleskine