Marcus Hellberg

Post-it notes are awesome. They are my #1 tool in keeping focused on things I’m doing instead of worrying about what I should be doing.

If I’m doing something but start thinking about having to do something else, I write it down on a post-it note and continue working on it. Having it written down lets me concentrate on what I’m doing, as I don’t have to try to keep the next ten things I need to do in my head at the same time.

A post-it note is also useful as it can only fit a limited amount of things to do – just like your day. Mark McGuinnes wrote about a similar thing in his blog post If It Won’t Fit On A Post-It, It Won’t Fit In Your Day.

I use one post it TODO-note per day. Having limited space to write down things you need to do that day will force you to think about what you can realistically get done in a day.

I am at this moment

1. Working
2. Writing a thesis
3. Taking three university courses

This means that the amount of things that I need to do can easily become overwhelming at times. The trick to managing all the things I have to do and simply get them done is, however, quite simple.

To make the seemingly impossible amount of tasks that need to be done more manageable, there are a few things you need:

1. A clear picture of what needs to be done
2. A plan
3. Perseverance

The first step towards minimizing the feeling of being overwhelmed and not getting anything done is to actually figure out what exactly you need to have done. And when do  you need to have this done by?

For me, this step works miracles. Now, instead of constantly having a feeling of “there’s something I should be doing right now,” I know exactly what I should be doing and in which order I need to do it.

Now, if the deadlines you have still seem impossible, negotiate. Deadlines are almost always negotiable. The important thing is that you let others know ahead of time that you need to move a deadline. Usually, you can get the deadline moved a few days to make it fit your schedule.

The next step is having a plan. This may seem trivial, but many still seem to skip this part. I usually make a quick plan for the next week on a Sunday, based on the list of things I need to get done. This is a very rough plan, usually just putting down a task or two per day.

The beauty of having a plan is that instead of having a goal like “write for three hours,” I have a goal “finish chapter on Test-Driven Development.” With a clear goal in mind, at least for me, it’s much easier to get things done.

The last thing is perseverance. Unfortunately, there is only so much you can hack and optimize. At a certain point you have to just sit down and do the work. If you find that you spend most of your time trying to optimize what you are doing, you should probably stop and concentrate on doing the thing that needs to be done instead.

Oh, I almost forgot. Make sure that when you plan, that you leave in time for sports and free time. I strive to keep at least one day a week entirely off work. A human brain is not a machine, it needs to rest. Working long days every day may work for a while, but in the long run it’ll hurt your productivity. Make sure you get enough rest, and you’ll be able to handle the rest of your work much more effectively.

I use my Xbox 360 for most of my media viewing in the living room. This can sometimes be a hassle since I’m using a Mac, and Microsoft hasn’t exactly made it easy to share media from a mac to an Xbox 306. I use a third party program, Connect360, that easily allows me share media from my computer to my Xbox. In reality, though, the Xbox fails to find my Mac about 75% of the time.

What is more annoying, is that the Xbox 360 doesn’t play Matroska Video containers, even though the video itself is encoded in h.264 or MPEG-4. There are several ways of playing the videos on the Xbox, but unfortunately all of them require converting the video.

HandBrake, previously only a DVD ripper, is an easy tool for converting videos. Unfortunately, HandBrake always transcodes the video, even though the video itself is in a format that is playable by the Xbox 360. This method will work, but the process is very time-consuming. On an upside, the program is free and works very well. Hopefully, they’ll add support for passing through the original video from the MKV container to a MPEG-4 video (m4v) container.

A better solution would be to only package the video in a new container that the Xbox 360 can understand. This process can be done with several tools. Using QuickTime Pro 7, you can export the file to another format passing though the video. You only need to re-encode the audio track, which makes this a much faster process than the Handbrake method. The QuickTime Player X bundled with Snow Leopard seems to have lost this functionality. It should be possible to install the older version of QuickTime, but the Pro license is pretty expensive if this is the only use you’ll have for it.

The easiest way I have found to do the conversion is by using MKVtools. This is a small program, specifically designed to do this task as easy as possible. It uses several open source tools to extract and re-encode the file and comes with presets both for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. While it is possible to use the tools directly, MKVtools really takes the hassle out of the process. The best part is that the program is only $5 and has a fully functional trial.

The resulting mp4 or m4v file should play on the Xbox 360 or PS3 without a problem. The only downside is that you lose the multichannel soundtrack, and have to settle for stereo. For most programs, this really isn’t a big problem in my opinion.

Do you have any better ways of viewing MKV files on a Xbox 360 that I’m unaware of? Please post them in the comments!

I’ve gotten off to a good start with my new blog in my opinion. The hardest thing about blogging in the beginning is thinking of things to write about. I’ve had a few websites before, but all of them ultimately grew stale without any new content. So the most important thing is to just start writing and keep up a steady pace.

But what should I write about? Sometimes it feels difficult to think of things to write about, while at other times there are many things in the news or that have happened that are worth blogging about. The solution I have for this problem is that on days that I have many ideas, I create a bunch of posts with only a heading and save them as drafts. This way I can always choose a ready idea if I’m out of ideas when I want to write.

Another type of buffer that I use sometimes is the delayed publishing feature of WordPress. The feature lets me write complete posts and schedule them for publishing at a later date. This way I can spread out posts written on one day over the next few days if needed. From a search engine perspective, it’s important to keep a site regularly updated to keep robots indexing the site at regular intervals. These are a few tips that can help you keep your blog alive and active.

Have any own blogging tips? Let me know in the comments!