I keep updating my tools, profiles, and sites. Why do it–is it worth it? Is it helping my life or my business? What’s next?

Today I’ve decided to begin moving all my photos to Flickr (well, it’ll be some time). We’re launching a web application in the next few months. SET’s website redesign (with almost all new content) will be completed by year end.

In January of 2006 I moved to WordPress (from Blogger, and before that just HTML) for dancingwithwords.com, redid the layout, and launched technotheory.com (also WordPress). I also sorted through about five thousand photos from My Image Gallery and kept about a thousand, which were then migrated to Coppermine.

I can spare you from the discussion of how I made it to My Image Gallery from Dreamweaver’s photo pages and of my failed conversion to Greymatter and/or B2′s blogging software. And of course the moves from Friendster to Facebook, the trials and tribulations of MySpace, and the simultaneous development of relationships on LinkedIn.

This stuff takes a lot of time. Why do I do it?

My online participation is primarily for three reasons: self-expression, maintenance of relationships, and business. When I put up a website in ’95 and a blog in ’00, it was for self-expression (and having a technology project seemed like the thing to do). Over time it became a way of keeping in touch. In just the last year I’ve started to see business come out of it.

But is it really worth it?

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This spreadsheet has been such a success that we’ve vastly improved it! Grab the new version of the Dreamline Spreadsheet here.

You can subscribe to this blog to find out when new versions come out and discover other 4-Hour Workweek hacks/lessons-learned. You can also skim through my 4-Hour Workweek articles here, as well. Enjoy the spreadsheet and best of luck living your dreams!

As I previously wrote (1 2), I’m a big fan of Timothy Ferriss’ Four Hour Workweek approach. Just a few chapters in he mentions what he calls a Dreamline, which is a chart designed to calculate how approachable and within reach your ideal lifestyle is, in terms of finances and time. On the book’s website there were online calculators for filling out the Dreamline, but I didn’t find them to be as helpful as I’d like…so I’ve come up with my own.

I emailed with Tim to get his thoughts on this, mentioning that my company frequently creates attractive and functional reports in Word & Excel, and he figured it’d be worth a try if I could improve on it. As such, all the prose in the spreadsheet I created is directly from his example and used with permission. Anyhow, here it is (with assistance from Keith, SET’s awesome designer) as a Microsoft Excel download:

Dreamline Worksheet 1.2 [old version]

[new version available here]

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Here from Lifehacker? This week in April 2008 I’ll be writing numerous related posts on topics like productivity on the phone, online purchases that will save you time, and hacks for finishing your projects.  I’d love if you’d check them out by subscribing via RSS or email.  You won’t be disappointed!

So many threads have been rounding up the slimmest and coolest lately that I thought I’d take a stab at what I consider to be an efficient wallet. To me, intelligent use of a wallet is a combination of the following:

• Quick access to the things you need
• Professional appearance (“you’re gonna cover the bill with that worn out thing?”)
• Convenience for it fitting with any outfit or occasion

Let me say right off the bat that I’m a geek, entrepreneur, and efficiency-nut. As such my idea of the intelligent wallet fits within these paradigms. In line with the company whose article inspired this post, I’m going to offer insight through what’s worked for me.

The wallet you use all the time, and storage for the rest of the junk

Being a spendthrift I have one of those frequent shopper cards at every store from my bagel place to my hair salon. As someone who travels a lot for work, I have a frequent-use card for every major hotel and airline. But I don’t hold onto any of them, not really. This leads me to two tricks I’ve picked up.

Tip 1. Store the frequent flier and frequent guest numbers in your cellphone or PDA.

When I show up at the Hilton I click the Find feature on my Samsung Palm phone, enter “Hilton” and ouila, there’s my membership number. Same thing for

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I’d been slow to adopt del.icio.us, a free social bookmarking site that’s been popular for a couple years now. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, here’s more information on what del.icio.us is. Here’s why I told myself I didn’t need del.icio.us (I disagree now):

1. I have no needs for bookmarking beyond what’s provided by the web browser (addressed in recommendation 3 below)
2. Why would I want to share my links with others? (addressed in recommendations 5 & 6)
3. I have too much stuff to keep track of already, especially online (addressed in recommendation 7)

What I didn’t realize is that del.icio.us makes browsing more efficient and research more productive. Can it be distracting to find more things to click on? Sure, but the results are often better than just searching google.

Here’s why I recommend del.icio.us: Continue reading…