You’re probably wondering what the title of this post means. Well, Chris Brogan extended an idea by Mitch Joel who created the Pixelated Conference based on an original idea by Future Now. The idea is simple: take a theme, find a group of videos on the theme as if they were speakers at your conference, and post on your blog linking them together with the title “Pixelated” (a little more detail can be found here).
I think this idea is so great that I’ve decided that each day this week I will highlight a different theme as part of the Pixelated Conference Series. To take the idea one step further, instead of just posting videos, I am also going to include all of the other stuff you would usually find at conferences: references to interesting blogs, books, applications, slide decks and just about anything else I find which I think may be of interest to you. I enourage you to post other links related to the theme in the comments section or go out and create your own Pixelated Conference and let me know about it. I think this is going to be fun as it’ll be a way to showcase some of the people I really look up to and admire for their thought leadership on certain topics.
Day 1 of my Pixelated Conference Series is on the theme of productivity. A small warning ahead of time before anyone points it out to me…several of the videos come from talks at Google campuses. Google is excellent at bringing in different authors and thought leaders to speak to their staff on their subjects of expertise.
I hope you enjoy and look forward to reading your comments. 
Sessions
Since conferences always start so early, I think we need something to wake you up and ensure everyone is paying attention.
We start our conference with the godfather of productivity and self-help, Dr. Stephen R. Covey.
Merlin Mann continues our conference with his popular “Inbox Zero” discussion about email.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=973149761529535925Moving right along, our next session is brought to us by the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, The Four Hour Work Week, Timothy Ferriss.
Next, during Day 1 of our Pixelated Conference Series, we have David Allen, who created the Getting Things Done (GTD) phenomenon
Merlin Mann joins us again to extend on the thoughts of GTD and offers a session on “Time and Attention”.
To finish off our sessions is a quick tip from Tim Ferriss on packing
Books
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Dr. Stephen G. Covey
- The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
- Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better
- The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life
- Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work
Some of my favorite posts (the short list)
- How to Stop Checking Email on the Evenings and Weekends
- Set office hours-even if you don’t have to
- Ten Tech Solutions to Improve Your Productivity
- 43 Folders Series
- The Holy Grail: How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again
- Best of the Best: The Hive Five Winners
- How to Do More with Less Time
- How to Do the Impossible: Create a Paperless Life, Never Check Voicemail Again, Never Return Another Phone Call
Great Sites to Check Out (again, the short list)
Many of the links above will also bring you to slide decks of the presentations as well as recommendations on software and sites to help enhance your productivity. Also, this is by far not an exhaustive list. I have read thousands of posts on productivity, many of which interest me and I refer back to often. However, the posts and sites above are some of my favorite. In the future I will follow up on this discussion with an overview of the tools that I use on a daily basis to help me to be continually more productive.
So, that does it for Day 1 of the Pixelated Conference Series. I hope you have found this to be helpful and look forward to everyone attending Day 2 tomorrow.
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Thanks for carrying the idea forward. That first video did it for me
this is a great idea! I’ll need to carve out some time to check out these vids…
@Bryan-
Yeah, I found that one on a Tim Ferriss blog…made me laugh so thought it was worth opening with!
@ben-
Thanks for the comment and I hope you enjoy the rest of the week as well! Also, be sure to check out the other Pixelated Conference Series posts that will be popping up on other blogs.
If you would like to implement some of Stephen Covey’s best ideas, you can use this web aplication:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage and prioritize your Goals (in each of your life’s categories), projects and tasks, in an intuitive interface. It has a Checklists section, for the repetitive activities you have to do, important but not urgent (Quadrant II, for example your routines/habits). Also, it features a Schedules section and a Calendar, for scheduling you time, activities and for the weekly review.
Some features from GTD are also present, like Contexts and Next Actions.
And it’s available on the mobile phone too, so you can access it wherever you are.