In my previous article when I reviewed the book 'The four hour work week.' I set a list of what i would like to achieve from what i got from the book.

- Only agree to meetings that have a clear objective and agenda.
I have not had a meeting since the book, yippee. Every time some one has suggested that we sit down to discuss something I request that they out line the purpose and wanted outcome from the meeting. As of yet there have been no meetings. I think a)the reason for the meeting was more social and they had no real agenda. 2)They think that I am a prick and dont want to deal with me. 3)They had an hidden agenda that they want to push.

Now this could back fire but at the moment i am happy to not have my time wasted.

- Stop multi tasking and set stringent times for doing specific jobs.
I used to think that there was something wrong with me, that I wasn't able to just sit down and work at a constant pace through out the day. After reading the book I realised that like others i am better at working in strong burst. The problem with this is if I am working on a project I get quite frustrated when i am disturbed. So to help get around this I have set my most intensive programs for the times when I am least to be interrupted. I have set also days of the week for certain projects. Doing work on the weekend is not may favorite mostly for the fact i dont get payed for it, but the 20minitues of work I did on Sunday would have taken a couple of hours through out the week.


- Remove my self from being instantly contactable.
The only people that i have on instant message are, two from upper management and the my girlfriend (who called also be mistaken for upper management.) :)

On weekends, if I am with the ball and chain i don't carry my mobile. She is the person i really need to be instant contact with. I have also set my phone message to states that I will only check messages at 9am business days and added my work number. After all, it is a work phone, i can talk to any one when i am being paid to care.

- Check emails only twice a day.
Ok, this I havnt been to good with. But I only respond to certain emails at 10am and 4pm. I get a lot of small request from people, setting deadlines for when i am going to respond helps consolidate everything. People are starting to respond the same, it is great. One thing have changed is that I dont check emails on weekends.

- De clutter my house and belongings.
Well, I have done a good job of making piles of goods that I dont need any more, but at the moment they are still just piles. I will work on getting this stuff out of the house. The big problem I dont just want to throw this stuff out, I have to look at selling some items and giving the rest away.

The area that is going to be the hardest is IT and gadgets, how many leatherman multi tools does one need? you would think one wouldn't you. This article describes how some one has done this to make there life more efficient.

To help consolidate my IT I am going to have to spend some money, sounds stupid right? I have always enjoyed getting the most out of legacy equipment but this has left me with multiple computers doing different tasks and the only way out of this is to buy more, still sounds stupid. Here is an example.

I have a home server that runns 24/7. It is a Frankenstein of parts thrown together, every time I find a larger IDE hardive ready for the scrape heap, I liberate it and add it or replace another drive. For a unit that cost me nothing, it has over a terabyte of space. I know that these days this not a lot of storage, but hey, it did cost me nothing.

On the weekend I set up a mythtv box and it is awesome, really awesome. Now this gives the following dilemma. It has made my sony DVR obsolete that only two years ago cost me $800, I am going to have to find another home for, plus I now have another computer that runs 24/7. That is a waste. And due to the computers different ages parts arnt swappable between them. My mythtv box only has 80gig of storage and the tv tuner wont fit into the server.

Solution? I am going to sit down and design and build my first new computer for over ten years. It is going to have to the following requisites to make it worth while and future proof. The positive is that it is going to replace three items with one.

- 2 gigs of storage
- 2 gigs of ram
- HDMI out
- 2x digital tuners
- f'ing quite.
- Low power consumption.
- remote
- Blu-ray player and DVD/CD burner.

I will keep you uptodate with the progress.