a swell day . com

I started a new habit today. I didn’t even know I was going to start it until about 3:00 PM. I didn’t have an agenda for today. I stayed in bed until about 11:00 AM, reading about foreign currency trading and gadgets. I went on to walk a mile to Barnes & Noble and read about currency trading and life insurance investments for three hours. I made the decision to focus January 1st - 30th on currency trading as my primary source of income. I came home and wrote out my vision for the next six weeks, scheduled out my next seven days, and am currently writing in front of the crackling fireplace. All in all, a very productive day - albeit completely different from most of my days.

What is this new habit? I’ve decided to start taking a ‘Creativity Day’ every two weeks. This means a day with no agenda, focused only on what I feel like pursuing. This is not a day to spend with my wife, or to watch movies and lie on the couch. (Although if either of these prove to give expression to creativity and curiosity, I’ll break the rules!)

Why? Having no agenda inspires creativity. The purpose is to give an outlet to all the ideas floating around in my mind that I have no time or attention for the rest of the time. This gives space for me to follow my deep curiosity about particular subjects that don’t come up in my daily life. The Creativity Day is intended to be without intention, a time to let the ideas and curiosities that have been simmering in my mind bubble to the surface and get some air time.

I notice that I have actually taken many days like today in the past - days spent as the visionary instead of the man-in-the-trenches. Gaining this perspective is immensely valuable to my life due to two equally strong yet conflicting veins of attention: Action and Creativity. The ‘Mind of Action’ and the ‘Mind of Creativity’ are responsible for bringing ideas into the world - progressively giving them life, expression, value, density, and results. For me, these minds are mutually exclusive - usually Action precludes Creativity, leaving lots of things to get done, yet little vision for the next step or generation of the next idea. The perfect solution to this is a day of no Action, where Creativity can be given voice.

How to Take Your Creativity Day

Guidelines:
1. Take care of your needs. If your refrigerator is empty, or your gutters need to be cleaned, or anything in your world is not settled enough to relax, take care of it the day before. This way your pressing needs are taken care of and you’ll have a relaxing and productive Creativity Day. If you use a calendar, consider scheduling it in so that you and your family know ahead of time that today is special.

2. Be willing to go places and do things that are different from your daily routine, or what you thought today would be about. This is a day to follow your curiosity, to learn something new, and to let inspiration enter through the most unlikely of avenues. This is a day that could spark a complete shift of direction in your life. Be willing to listen and follow it.

3. Take notes. The best way to express new ideas or new information is to write it down. Not only does this solidify it in your neural pathways, but it gives you a moment to refine it, give attention to it, and tease it out. I take notes constantly in my Moleskine notebook, and often refer back to them. Another great tool for searchable online note-taking is Evernote.

4. Sun matters. Really. If it’s possible to take your Creativity Day when it’s sunny outside, do it! Not only will you be able to spend time outdoors, but there is a natural hormone release in your body when it is sunny. You feel happier, more optimistic, and more willing to give space to whatever ideas arise.

5. Pay Attention to your own judgment of this time. Often, as an action-driven person, I start criticizing the time I spend being creative, which can limit my ability to express new ideas. Notice if this happens to you on your Creativity Day, and check to make sure you’ve taken care of any urgent needs.

Enjoy your newfound creativity, (it was there all along!) and leave a comment with any ideas around this concept.

I have four free invitations for Xobni. They are available to the first four commenters below. Leave a comment and I’ll email it to you!

I’ll be reviewing Xobni when I’ve gotten a feel for it.

<Edit> Xobni has now been publicly released, so invites are no longer necessary!

With every domain name known to man claimed, companies are getting more and more creative. I’ve been on the hunt for online storage since undertaking a new paperless filing initiative, and I’m slowly digesting the major players.

Well known and well regarded, at the middle of the pack is Mozy.com, a major player in the online storage biz with some major downsides. I’m not going to go in depth, but you can read a well though out contrarian opinion here and here. Mozy goes for $4.95/month for ‘unlimited’ backup. I have heard rumors of those who hit the 500GB mark mysteriously missing data. The terms of use and odd data access policies leave me feeling like I’m being used somehow.

At the top of the line in online storage is Amazon’s S3 service. With multiple redundancies, great speeds, and an uptime guarantee, S3 is shaping up to be THE option in bombproof remote storage. But the price is shaping up to reflect that. Due to the cost per Gigabyte + transfer fees, my frequent uploading and downloading would likely take me into the $600-$700/year range. Not cool. (Jungledisk is a free interface for simply and automatically uploading to S3.)

And finally we are left with my choice, ElephantDrive. For a mere $9.95/month, I receive 1 Terabyte of storage, 100GB of transfer, and peace of mind. ElephantDrive backs up to two geographically distant location, and focuses on reliability instead of cost slashing (Mozy). I trust my files with ElephantDrive, and am not limited to certain types of access or slow access (Mozy).

What is your workflow for backing up online, and do you weed anything out or just back it all up?

I’m finally exasperated enough with having out of sync calendars that I went on the hunt for a solution.

Here’s the scenario: I have a blackberry that I love. I sync it with my PC about once a year - I just don’t need to plug it in when I can get everything I need over the air. (Essentially the only use for this lovely old computer is as a seedbox and home media server. The Macbook Pro is my constant companion.)

The problem: I only have one copy of my calendar data, which stays on my blackberry. Instead of an exchange server I utilize Google Apps, which until recently did not have an OTA (Over The Air) sync solution. Whenever I make an appointment I immediately enter it into my Blackberry’s calendar. But what about when my fiancee or assistant need to check my schedule? They have to email me or call me - leading to wasted time and communication that doesn’t need to happen.

The solution:
1. I plugged my Blackberry into the PC (hopefully for the last time…) and synchronized the calendar data. The PC’s copy was hopelessly out of date, and now it’s all fresh and clean with exactly what’s going on.

2. I downloaded Google Calendar Sync for Outlook and installed it on my PC. I synchronized my freshly updated Outlook calendar with Google Calendar. For some reason, all of my existing data on the Blackberry is not uploading to my Google Calendar, only NEW appointments that are made after Google Sync was installed. I needed to get a ‘baseline’ on to my Google Calendar, with all of my existing appointments. You can skip this step if you want to start with a blank slate in Google.

3. I followed the directions for installing Google Sync for Blackberry. Once complete, I ran the program, entered my username/password, and told it to sync with my Blackberry. NOTE: It does not matter whether you use Google Apps for Your Domain, or Google Calendar on a standard Google account. Just enter your username/password and let Google figure out which you’re accessing.

Notice that when you open the menu in your Blackberry Calendar, Google Sync is right at the top. It’s the little things that make me happy using a well thought out Google product.

4. Notice that if you set the Google Sync options to Automatic, any new entries will post to Google Calendar within minutes, as long as you have a working data connection on your Blackberry. I took this two steps further. First, I set Outlook to sync occasionally from my home computer so that it will be up to date if I ever look at it. Second, I shared my calendar with everyone who needs access to my availability and appointments. This can be done from the Google Calendar options, and you can select whether the person you’re sharing it with sees busy/free times, or can see/edit appointments.

That’s it! Coming soon: How to sync Google Calendar and iCal on Mac OS X.

For help and more information, try the Google Calendar Discussion Group or the Google Apps Discussion Group.

Timothy Ferriss has opened up his Four Hour Work Week 2.0 to editing by any and all. Read about it here.

This is a genius move - both in outsourcing his editing and fact checking, and in opening the book to a broad range of inputs. He’ll have many more case studies to inspire and teach.

Here are some incredible plugins I’ve found while setting up Wordpress:

All-In-One-SEO-Pack - Make your blog easily searchable by major engines

Top Ten Wordpress Plugins - Mostly relates to optimizing user interface

Top Thirty Wordpress Plugins - A very comprehensive list of useful plugins

A new service, entitled ‘Flylite’, offers a service that will transport, clean, and manage all luggage while traveling. Although the service is currently only offered in the United States, this is a fantastic leap forward for frequent travelers who pack a lot of clothes.

Check it here.