Do you want to get more done?

According to Tim Ferriss, that’s what the The 4-Hour work Week is all about.
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Ever lose your client calendar? Well, neither had I…until Friday.

By some odd combination of keystrokes, I deleted my client calendar within Apple’s iCal.

iCal is neat in that I can have multiple calendars that can service different puposes. I have different calendars for family, home, personal appointments, holidays, birthdays, etc…and, of course, my work calendar where I keep detailed track of all my client work.

But not any more. The client calendar is gone. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking…just select ‘undo.’ Tried it, it was grayed out. Next I spent two hours on the phone with Apple trying to get the calendar back – only to be told that once it’s deleted it’s deleted. Not in Trash. Not in cache. Gone. This I found odd that the file wouldn’t end up in Trash or that it couldn’t be rebuilt.

Funny thing, I wasn’t asked to confirm if I wanted it deleted. It just got wiped away. And I still have no idea what keys I hit that made it happen. Could this be rare? Do I feel safe using iCal for business anymore? Not sure yet.

Yes, there is a backup feature. But it’s manual and I’ve never bothered with it. That will change.

In the meantime, I’m looking for a new calendar program for the Mac. I do like iCal, but am thinking maybe it’s time for a change.

I’ve been running all my client work through iCal, Address Book and Merlin (project management software) because they all easily integrate. I do have Filemaker Pro and use it to store client passwords, etc. I’ve been thinking of moving my address book and calendar to it, but I’m not fond of the learning curve nor the time it’ll take to create the database layout I’ll want.

Any suggestions on other calendar systems for the Mac? And remember, back up your calendar.

I saw this quote this morning over on Doc Searl’s blog:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

Great quote, is it not?
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Some of the best advice I’ve ever heard has come in unassuming moments in casual conversation. Moments when I was relaxed and just open to something new.

I can recall many moments like that with my grandfather. My grandfather loved birds. He used to sit for hours watching finches fly in and out of the five story bird house he built. The bird house was on the end of a pole about 30 feet above the ground. We’d lay back in lawn chairs and just watch the birds.

Every fall I’d help my grandfather take down the bird house for cleaning, repair and storage. It was huge and so high up that he’d developed a rather elaborate pulley system to bring it down.
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This morning I Steve Rubel had a video interview that Tim Ferriss did with Robert Scoble. Tim, of course, is the author of the very interesting book, The 4 Hour Workweek. Still haven’t read it. It’s buried under the stack of books I’ve yet to get too.

Anyhow, Tim interviewed Scoble on how he effectively uses his feed reader to read more than 600 feeds…daily. Yes, daily and sometimes twice per day.
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It’s so nice to see that the blogosphere has room to stretch. Especially with A-Listers like Robert Scoble.

On Sunday, Scoble began by Pissing off the Blogosphere with his rant about bloggers not linking to other bloggers and linking to sources like the New York Times instead. That created a bit of backlash. Just read some of the comments.

A little while later he posted, Do A-List Bloggers Have a Responsibility to Link to Others, with a little help from Sue Pollinsky’s question, Do big(ger) bloggers have an obligation to smaller or newer ones to link to them? Which lead to Scoble saying:

I can’t speak for anyone other than myself, but, yes, I try to link out to as many people as possible. I got found because other people linked to me, and I view it as my responsibility to link to other people as well. I also leave my comments open so people can post their own opinions and links to things.
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