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Fridays are tip days at SimpleProductivity blog.

My berry bushes are the one thing I can grow. I currently have two blueberries, and six thornless blackberries. The bushes produce a decent amount of fruit — when I can get it before the birds. To solve the problem we created bird screens.

Year 1: Blueberry Screens

My compact blueberry bushes reside in two self-watering pots on our deck. They will not grow very large, so my husband constructed cages that fit over the bushes using PVC and some netting. We tie the screens to hooks on the deck to keep them from flying around and the birds from getting under them.

Year 1: Blackberry Screens of Canes and Net

Last year I decided that the blackberries were of a size and shape that we didn’t need frames to hold the netting. So I put some bamboo canes into the ground at various angles and threw netting over the plants and canes. This wasn’t a good approach at all. The blackberries poked through the netting, and the birds got in (and got caught) with the canes. I ended up having to cut the net away in some places, and in others cut the blackberry canes, just to get the netting off.

Year 2: Blackberry Screens

This year I’ve decided to modify the PVC approach of the blueberry screens. We took four 10-foot sections of PVC pipe and pushed the ends over stakes we had pushed into the ground. They are connected at the top by a PVC t-joint. This gave us four legs, which were covered in netting tied with wire ties. The bottoms are weighted down with garden rocks.

These two workable solutions have enabled us to keep the fruit we are growing without sharing too much with the birds.

It is one thing to get your life to a point where it is functioning well, and you are keeping up with everything. But what happens when a disruption enters the picture? Family visits, business travel and sports camps can seriously de-rail a household schedule. Here are some strategies for coping:
Strategies for Coping With Schedule Disruption
Figure out what won’t work. Schedule changes mean that you are going to have to change what you are doing. For instance, I usually run our robot vacuum right before I leave for work in the morning. When my parents visited for a week [...] Continue Reading…

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

With the heat of summer comes the wilting of plants in my garden. I am by no means a good, or even adequate gardener, but I do my best to make sure that my plants have a shot at survival. One of the things I have discovered is that plants need water before they look like they need water. In order to provide water to them on a regular basis, while minimizing waste, I use the following methods:
Sprinklers
The sprinklers I use, attached to my hoses, are adjustable ones. I can set them so [...] Continue Reading…

Mark Forster released the version 2 of Autofocus this past weekend (for complete instructions, see Autofocus 2 Time Management System (AF2)).
I am very hopeful about these modifications because they are specifically addressing problems I was having with Autofocus v.1, namely urgent and important tasks getting buried in the lists.
Check out the new system. I found Autofocus one of the best things I have ever done for productivity.

Tuesdays are open loop at SimpleProductivity blog.

My Simpler Life’s article “Improve your Relationships with the 90 Second Rule” is a good reminder. Relationships are built on connections. Connection requires full attention.

“How To Kill Unresponsive Programs without The Task Manager” over at MakeUseOf is a lifesaver. It only works out-of-the-box on XP Pro and Vista, but with Outlook locking up on me hourly at work, it is much easier to run a batch file than trying to fight the computer for control of the task manager.

DailyBlogTips says “Simplicity Is Essential” and lists top businesses and products that are simple. We [...] Continue Reading…

Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Not all projects are created equal. Yet many of us routinely pile things onto our already over-full plates without stopping to consider if the project needs to be done at all, or if you are the best person to do it.
And just because we are all individuals, each person must have individual standards about if a project is worth doing. Here are two ways that I look at projects:
Two Methods For Determining Worth
Do I Need To Do This?
By examining the words in the above sentence, I can judge if the project is mine [...] Continue Reading…

This past week I came across a few things that have really helped me out:

In Finally a real tip to speed up Outlook 2007! : Bizzia – Business News and Commentary – Finance and Business Tips, I found real help to a serious problem at work. Outlook 2007 would take 5 minutes to launch, and switching to the application once it was running was taking at least another minute. This article got the launch time down to nothing, and further uninstalling Google Desktop (which I didn’t really use) took care of the switching time problem.

I was horrified when I [...] Continue Reading…

Fridays are tip days at SimpleProductivity blog.

For a long time, I felt that if a book had been published, it had merit. And if I wasn’t “getting it”, the fault was mine.
Not so anymore. I have decided, like Agatha Christie, that I could do better. Unlike her, I haven’t. Yet.
But in the mean time, I have given myself permission to abort a book reading.
One of the benefits of dumping books mid-stream is that you are not wasting your time. You can move on to something that you can connect with, and will benefit from because of your enthusiasm.
If you [...] Continue Reading…