Fake productivity.

People don’t have time anymore. If you try to make an appointment, they open their agenda and all you see is coloured blocks taking up all possible time slots up to three weeks in the future. If you try to agree upon a deadline, they sigh and say they don’t know when they can do it. If you’re unlucky, they will try to re-arrange their agenda and three hours later come back that it should be possible now. And still, you can be pretty sure that they will contact you a little later to do the same with your newly stated agreement. These people stress out but only get moving when the deadline has passed. But they’re so nice and kind to assure you that they added your questions or task to their never-ending to do lists.

It’s frustrating, not only for you, it’s also for them. Setting priorities, committing to deadlines, reserving time to handle unexpected things, … It almost seems that these people don’t want to have time. In my opinion, people grew a societal conscious that busy-ness is acceptable and appropriate behaviour… It became a strategy for people that want to feel important but in fact have little self-control and respect.

This kind of fake productivity kills more than you think apart from the fact that it annoys most of us. So let’s help them a bit.

There is a simple life hack that helps people to get their things done. It requires a little planning, some focus and most importantly no excuses. It’s called ‘Eat That Frog’, introduced by Brian Tracy. It focusses on doing stuff and the energy one gets out of it.

• Firstly map what do you want/need to do? Use the important/unimportant metric to set priorities. And most importantly set the hardest task on top (eat that frog first and you will get energy. If you don’t, it will drain you).
• Secondly, make it actionable. What needs to happen to achieve that goal? Do you prefer to take small steps (split up) or a big leap (block enough time) to finish a task at once?
• Thirdly; Set deadlines for everything but don’t overload your planning with this type of work alone. Plan time for varia, relaxation, social connections, …
• And lastly; just do it.

Run it through at the end of every day. In your sleep your mind does halve of the work so it takes less long when actually executing tasks with focus.

It helps if you look at it with three goggles; With the first goggles you focus on the next day solely. With the second one you focus on the next week upto ten days. With the third one, you look at your long term goals and planning.

Feedback is welcome. Feel free to share this with all procrastinators and fake productivity people you know. And if you’re not one, just like it 😉

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The stuck-in-the-elevator minibar.

Yesterday a colleague of mine got stuck in the elevator. It’s great there is a phone so you can alarm the dispatching. But it would be even nicer that they can unlock a minibar so the time you spend stuck in an elevator would be nicer…

The one idea per day calendar

The one idea per day calendar has the 335 best ideas of last year’s edition and 30 empty sheets for next edition. #eenideeperdag

Automatic Direct Car & Home Syncing (ADCHS)

Music, mails, sms, documents, maps, movies,… Everything gets synced back and forth between your house (home entertainment system) and your car (entertainment system).

Notification scrambler app.

Sometimes you see to much on your phone what you don’t want the people around you to see. For text messages on iphone it’s possible to amend that but for most apps, you don’t control it. The notification scrambling app enables you to define whether you want to see the type of message, the sender and/or not the contents.

Whistle purse.

It’s a modern, stylish purse or handbag where your cards, money, beauty and other stuff can be stored simple and you can find anything back by it’s screen on top that shows you in 3d where a specific card is located.  While everything needs to be equipped with RFID tags, the purse itself can be located via an app or by simply whistling, than it returns a sound, so you can locate it.

Virtualisation of phone numbers.

This idea started out as a Home phone redirect app.I  don’t want to have a home phone anymore but sometimes there are some advantages you can’t ignore. I call for free with my home number but I don’t have a phone to call with it. What would be nice is a home phone number that i can control via a dedicated app. It could turn on when I enter my house, and send me subtle notifications when I’m out of home.

It would be the start for accumulating all your phone numbers. Your office phone, your fax, your skype, your google hangouts, your home phone etc would be centralised in the app and with strict rules you control what number one can access between certain times, locations etc.

Oldskool typewriter keyboard.

I remember my dad having an old typewriter. I liked the feel of typing on that machine because you thought very carefully about what you were going to write. You didn’t want to make any mistakes. The oldskool typewriter keyboard brings back the charm of this philosophy to present times.

App controlled coffee machine.

 

Control the whole coffee machine with a simple smartphone app, whether you want an espresso, a latte or fine grained beans.

Foot massage machine in every hotel.

I went on citytrip to Porto a couple of days ago. My feet still heart. 🙂

When away on holidays and most certainty on city trips of nature hikes, it would be more than convenient that at the end of the day you could just sit down, put your feet in the machine and get it massaged. Just a small tip for hotels.

Avenue m’as-tu vu.

 

Every city should name one street ‘avenue m’as-tu vue’ where there are plenty of terraces and you can watch people to discuss them. Every year, this should change to acknowledge the new hipster area.

 

The Together Gardening Initiative.

The Together Gardening Initiative is an initiative where gardening tools and machines are bought and stored central so everyone can start gardening without owning the tools needed. Everyone who’s a member of the TGI initiative can rent out these tools for the time they need. Via the convenient app and website, you can check whether the tooling you need is available. That is done with sensors on each tooling. The price for renting out tooling and machines is simple; When it leaves the storage space area, the time starts. When you return the tooling to the storage space, your time stops and gets translated in a digital invoice. By offering the winnings of your gardening efforts to other TGI members, you receive discounts up to the point where you can use the tools and machines for free. This idea is especially thought of in the light of city gardens or social gardening areas but can also be used by people in rural areas who just don’t want to buy stuff that they only use once per year.

Fotokiosk chaining.

It’s a machine where you can go into and where you can make a picture of yourself for your passport or something more intimate with your girlfriend. What’s special about it is that you the first picture on the strip (of 4 pictures) is the last one taken by the previous one.
All pictures are online stored and published onto the fotokiosk website where they can be foreseen from footnotes. In return your received pictures are free while people can have a laugh online with the combo picture-footnote.

ACE: self-service group for creatives and entrepreneurs.

People with alcohol problems go to the AA. Others who suffer from obesitas go to the Weight Watchers. All those people have the same goal in mind. They want to find support in their attempts to be and keep on being sober or losing weight. And the particular thing is that it works for a large part of the people who voluntarily join these associations. ACE is pretty much the same but for creatives and entrepreneurs. These people are very outspoken but when it comes to dealing with (vanity) problems, they are mostly very alone in their thinking. ACE would be a Anonymous group of Creatives and Entrepreneurs who need to have some support in their personal life.

ToyDoctor.com

You know that feeling you get as a parent when your child’s toy is broken? Not only the toy itself if broken, but the child’s heart and yours, by consequence, get some cracks too.
Well, this idea is a solution to that. Whether the toy is technological, from pluche, or something else that got broken, you can send it to the toy doctor. An online service where the kind can order a package to send his toy to the toy doctor, who diagnoses, repairs and sends it back, all in complete storytelling mode so the child is offered an online experience around his/her favorite toy.

Coache.rs – Mentoring coaches for a better life/work style.

Coache.rs is a site where you can subscribe to and get personalised coaching techniques recommendations, based on your personal preferences, whether it’s sport, literature, business articles, music, nature walks, games etc. For every program, made after an interview with you, you can reach out to a coach whenever you need to. You get invoiced by the minute you are in speaking with one of the coache.rs facilitators on the website. The programs themselves are free.

Translator mediator app.

Today, I had a pretty nice encounter with two Portuguese sales girls of the Phone House. They didn’t understand me at all. I just wanted a data sim card so I could post a one idea a day. But they wanted to sell me a mifi, a bundle and a sim card. The language barrier made me laugh more than once but I also spend almost halve a hour there.
The Translator Mediator app connects you instantly with professional translators so any question for information and sales answers are quickly understood. After you have called upon the translator mediator service, you receive a full transcript of the original conversation, together with an invoice based on the characters used.

IRACO: International Radio Comparison.

 

When abroad, one looks for the radiostation that matches his or her taste. It’s not always easy because wherever you go, there are like hundreds of radio stations. This website’s goals is to provide you with international/online comparisons of radio stations based on musical tastes.

A range of smart (bluetooth) speakers.

A mobile phone offers playback music but the quality isn’t that great. I was thinking about a range of smart speakers that are integrated in ordinary objects. For instance, a key chain, a watch, glasses. They idea is to offer a listening experience not-through-headphones. It’s better for the ears, certainly compared to the in-ear and all-ear headphones.

Abomob.com & Billsaver.com

Abomob & Billsaver are services to compare and close contracts for services via your mobile/online. These are websites made out a wizard search. You state what you need or want, and you get the ideal service provider solution proposed to you. Imagine you want to change mobile operator; You state what’s most important; network or price. You say how much you voice, sms and data you will need, and the best formule is calculated automatically. By signing up to a service, Abomob or Billsaver gets a acquisition fee from the services who gains a customer through them.

Music Stock Exchange Game.

The Music Stock Exchange is an addictive (betting) game in which people (the music fans) can buy stocks and shares in music band. The goal is to predict what bands will be flying high in the charts with their songs so the fans can make money out of their musical predictions while buying and selling songs.

ParkEasy: the social parking community.

It looks parking gets a lot of attention on my blog. This idea is all about helping others to find an easy parking spot. It works a bit like Uber but for future available (parking) space. When you are a member of the ParkEasy community,  you check in your car wherever you park and notify ParkEasy when you will approximately be leaving your parking spot again. Another member of the ParkEasy community that looks for a parking spot in a certain area at a particular time gets notifications of the available ParkEasy spot that become free within a 15 mins timeframe. He can give a heads up that he will be arriving to take your place via the app.

It’s by code of the ParkEasy community that you only give our your parking spot to other members of the community. When the parking spot changes, ParkEasy community members both get rewarded with some transaction points. With those transaction points, you raise your profile within the community. Being a member of ParkEasy will become payable over time and when it is, any valuable member of the community will have raised enough transaction points to prolong their membership for free. The new ones start with a small registration fee to start and gain transaction points.

Free parking included.

When I park in cities and I know it won’t take long, I just print a ticket that gives me 15mins for free. I don’t understand why when I pay for a ticket this 15mins isn’t automatically added. They should change that!

Innovation Co-working Corners.

Every company that owns or hires an office building has space that isn’t used. I would suggest to offer it a new destination. A co-working space for innovation, Innovation Co-working Corners, I’d call them. The goals is to find people within the firm, extended with freelancers and external consultants, to collaborate on solutions that the company is benefitting from. The idea would be that people from outside the company spend one hour a day to discuss and explore the resident (corporate innovation) co-workers. In return they can use a desk, the wifi, toilet, meeting rooms, … to build or work on their own business. Assuring the influx of new ideas, something nice could come out of these innovation co-working corners.

Repeat a radio song function.

I often sing along in my car. But a simple radio functionality which enables me to (buy and) repeat a song I like is lacking. Let’s make that happen.

thebetterscheduler.com

You know those days packed with meetings, work assignments, etc? For me they are a harsh reality.

Any time scheduler/planning tool lacks intelligence. With this idea, I want to create a better scheduler, an intelligent planner that takes into account travel times, previous encounters with the same persons (analytics of the time planned and spent both from my perspective as for the other) and anticipates changes. Planning meetings, or time in general, is something that is theoretically right. Once you start your day, it rarely happens that you can keep up with all your good intentions. Thebetterscheduler is an agenda 2.0, a helpful tool that synchronises reality in real time with your planning, while with an add-on you can track time effectively and invoice accordingly. The better scheduler – plan you life better.

ToDo minus 1.

I make lists. A lot of massive to do lists. And it’s rare i get to the bottom of them. I just add the remaining points to another list, at the bottom. Some of these to do’s are not real. They lack importance so they are not necessary. My idea today is to create a to do list where the last item gets removed automatically on a daily basis. They get archived so they are not really gone but i’m pretty sure they are not so important after all, otherwise I would prioritise them more.

teXTteXTer.com: a messaging aggregation service

teXTteXTer.com or texting text is an idea to create one text service. You connect your texting services such as SMS, Whatsapp, Messenger, Skype, etc. and receive all in one. You can respond to any of those received texts with the same or a cheaper alternative if you’re connected elsewhere.

Prison Entrepreneurship Program.

Thugs and thieves are some kind of entrepreneurs. I am a firm believer of people taking the faith in their own hands and creating a future for themselves. That’s why I think it’s not such a bad idea to start prison entrepreneurship programs. Dealers and healers appear to be great salesmen, others have a talent for organising logistics and distribution channels, and some others do miracles with finances… It seems to me that if these people want to get a decent chance in society after they are released and regained freedom, the best way is to take matter into own hands. No job interviews where they will be refused because of their criminal record… As founders of a company, their past doesn’t really matter. It’s all about the things they are going to do. They can prepare and start their business from prison. Maybe a prison VC fund can support this…

Wallpaper printing service.

I come from a family where my granddad and uncle were painters and wallpaper decorators. I helped a summer with one but it wasn’t really for me. I do like collecting nice images and cartoons. So i was thinking of creating a webapp where I could upload image collections into and create an unique wall paper mosaic texture. For the toilet, I would definitely do something with cartoons. For the bedroom, something with black-white erotic pictures. For the hall, something more experimental. For the bathroom, a cloud and sky collage.

Workplace Change Agents.

Workplace Change Agents is a dedicated team of workplace interior designers and change managers who create the perfect working environment for enterprises and startups that reflect the (desired) corporate culture of the company. They do this by entering the firm for a three-six months analysis period and recommend both improvements in the structure, processes and people needed to be more effective and productive using all the current (and state-of-the-art) technologies and best practices. They don’t just deliver, they participate and make things better in close collaboration with the people and always in respect with the current context.

Hyperpersonalised pills platform.

With extreme personalised diagnostics and the current evolutions in e-health, I thought generic drugs don’t make much sense anymore. Or you get to much of a certain substance, or too little. Or it is combined with something someone is allergic too.

My idea is to create a platform in which doctors can create hyperpersonalised pills for patients based solely on the substances the patient needs. The platform offers statistics on the dosages used for treatments so a benchmark is set and can be compared. By making the data anonymous but not the doktors, responsibility is with a new breed of doktors/scientists who perfect drugs to the patient conditions. For fun’s sake, patients can choose the color of the pills.

Underground bottle parking for all kind of vehicles.

 

The idea is to create a bottle parking principle in which you don’t need much space above but only beneath the ground. This bottle parking principle with elevators makes more sense as it saves space and is much safer as the risk on theft and vandalism gets reduced to (almost) zero. It can also be used for bicycles. Imagine the places where you can’t get through anymore because the bike parkings are just so crowded. Another nice advantage is that you never have to look for you bike again.

How would it work?

You go to the ‘Bottled Parking Spot’ entrance, you drive in your vehicle, create a code and your vehicle gets stored to or retreived from the underground.

One headlight car design.

I simply don’t like how cars look like nowadays. The front is plain boring and i was thinking up the design of a car could be so much nice if they didn’t put 2 lightpositions which overlap.

The Wallflowers to the rescue! One Headlight!

What if we could have 1 centralised position with a phare that shines wide. In support you could have the original fog lamps on the original position or lower and two more at the side of the car (a bit like tuned cars) for a better night view of the surroundings. Starting with one light, one could create and design a complete different car and I am pretty sure the outcome will be a lot nicer (except you handle it like the p50, see image…). I don’t know why the logo is more important than the lighting or the total design of the car…

Think different, car manufacturers! Come up with some design innovation in your car designs!

vHost transporter tunnels.

When I was in San Francisco last week with the HOWEST students, I visited VMWare. It wasn’t that inspiring but the quote we ‘abstract the abstraction’ keeps on tumbling in my head.
VMWare is all about secure environments that you spin up instances instantly. But there is one thing that I really lack. It’s not really possible to set up a tunnel between different vhosts and move selected date between these vhosts.
Open vmware secure transporter tunnels for selected data should solve that. It would take away the last gap in what i see lacking in their for the rest great virtualisation software.

Hamburger Nets

It’s pretty impossible to eat a decent hamburger in America without spilling food, … Eatable hamburger nets solve that problem. We do it already with other food.

Sun Tan Tights: Suntanning panties.

When the sun comes out, temperatures are rising, skirts and dresses are all over the place. One can only be in favor… But it seems that a lot of women and girls fear showing off their legs as they are not tanned. They put on panties to protect their legs but that makes the difference between suntanned arms. face and legs even bigger. What I think would be nice that in case they fear this, they actually keep on wearing panties but suntanning panties. Or they make sure sunlight gets through, or (and) they make sure they stimulate a sun tan so they can lose the panties.

Historic LinkedIn.

A LinkedIn for famous and historical people. I found professional resumes interesting and certainly of people who made a real difference. It’s always cool to found out that one worked in Pizza Hut before founding a company that changed the world, or an actor that did an awfully painful commercial before his big break-through, or that Dave Grohl was in fact a timberman… (not true!) The paths of what people did in their professional lives is gathered in this historic LinkedIn idea.

Remote Office Robot

The remote office robot is a simple robotic WIFI connected vehicle with an arm that contains two screens and something to push the elevator button. The goal of the remote office robot is to run around the office and connect remote workers that can steer it with people in the office.

Elevator motion detector

I saw this movie recently and i found it very amusing. But what I don’t understand is that elevators mostly are in separate hallways and still we need to push a button before it comes to our floor. Just put some detection sensor so it anticipates any person’s presence in front of an elevator with actually ordering one to come down or up and pick me up.

Diagnostic Pills & app.

Sensor pills that you can swallow and where you can follow all diagnostics in a full report app on your smartphone. It doesn’t stay in the body and it goes in through the mouth and you just shit it out. Everything that has to do with the way it passes (digestion system for instance) should be possible to diagnose. (Inspiration HT for this idea: Scanadu)

Parking space optimising through augmented reality

Car sizes are different. Parking spots are pretty much the same everywhere. This concept idea obliges people to park their car exactly where the algorithm says. When entering the parking, the car gets recognised, dynamic (augmented reality/video) arrows guide the driver to their parking spot. As the driver approaches the parking spot – the spot gets drawn on the floor, taken into account some movement place to exit and enter the car, so the parking space can be use in the most optimal way. People who still can’t park their car correctly, get charged more.

The goal is to reduce and remove all friction of people parking cars poorly.

ADSS: animal door security systems

I know quite some people who have animal doors in the home. That’s a serious security breach. They hear it when it clacks but it remains a potential thread because it’s often used by burglars to get access to a house. ADSS wants to provide you with products to enhance the safety of animal doors. That can be done through auto-animal detection through sensors, video etc. It can detect whether it’s in fact your cat that’s entering the house. Animal recognition at the outside makes sure your animal is the only one entering the house. For other animals the door would remain locked.

Glass lenses: Extend your brain with video archives.

What if the world you see would be filmed 24/7? What if you could recheck any situation for your own use? That would be totally awesome!

How many times do I want to recheck something. Whether it’s a professional meeting, deal closing, an argument or beautiful personal memory moment.

iGLove: Your second skin smartglove.

We are used to operate almost all things with our hands. That’s why I believe an iGlove would be a great addition to the smart gadgets collection (smart watch, smartphone, google glass, …). It would work gesture based to control all the functions and apps you associate with ‘smart’ gadgets. Even more should be possible. You can type without a laptop in front of you. You can work with any visualisation in a 3D environment via your google glass. You can use it like a pebble. You can display an itinerary on it and have them using color codes when in the right/wrong direction. The next step would to integrate it in a second skin. The bionic hand is not far off anymore. I call it iGLove!

Revenge co-working spaces (for refused job applicants)

I’m in San Francisco this week and I’ve met some people here who dream of working at one of the major tech companies. It’s not easy to get a job interview, neither is it to get hired there. When I stood outside of the Adobe building, I started talking to a guy that was refused a job there. I told him him he rather starts up his own business or at least continues to solicit. (He was quite upset and sad about his interview). I tend to believe the best revenge a failing job applicant can make is to startup a business and prove the world leading tech companies wrong. So I want to facilitate a co-working space when you only get access to with proven failures of obtaining a tech job. A couple of mentors/coaches do an entry interview and gives each guy a three month period to find an idea, hook up with potential partners and create some material to just go for it. After which you are redirected to startuphouses. As Frank Sinatra said: “Success is the best revenge”; Revenge co-working spaces.

Spotify’s Emoqual plugin & app.

A plugin for Spotify that enable you to label music with emotions and sentiments of how you perceive them. While doing so, it gets to learn what you love/hate, what makes you relax/productive, etc Qualify your music with emotions. What excites, what makes you calm down?

The Emoqual app uses this information to make you progress faster in any training program through the power of music. The training program pushes you forward but adapts both the music and program on the fly based on your specific situation and heartbeat. This can be used for all kinds of sports, but athletics, running and cycling seem the most obvious to me.

Every voice is a vote: democracy 2.0

I’m watching House of Cards and I’m really enjoying it. Kevin Spacey is brilliant. The script and story lines are just… they have no mercy at all. I think I enjoy it so much as I tend to believe that I’m not like that. But in reality I might taken over some of the asshole tactics because they just work. Anyway, I use it for the better so don’t shoot me 🙂

Everyone that has an opinion about politics and politicians wants to share their thoughts. Why not directly? Every voice is a vote is the platform, powered by the government where direct democracy gets executed. Everyone can log in with their e-ID and get access to the legislation texts, amendments, reports of parliament, etc. and participate in the discussions.

So everyone is a potential influencer of what society could be. When participating in the discussions, you get a vote. Hence through letting to hear your voice, you get a vote, literally and figuratively spoken.

Airport market research.

I’ve been in transit waiting for my next flight. While waiting, I want to spend my time more useful or more to my convenience. I don’t mind people asking me questions about certain topics so I would engage with a service that has a booth where I can voluntary go to and answer their questions. In return, I expect at least a coffee or gift card to be used in the shops. International research will be a lot easier and richer if every airport embraced and facilitated this kind of service.

OEM in-flight entertainment systems

I still don’t understand why in-flight entertainment systems are still so very rubbish. They look like they’ve made in the nineties. The touchscreen doesn’t work nearly as tactile as we are used to nowadays, the games copyright ranged from 2002-2009, so why bother? And for a media server… well, that does it pretty well but the whole system as such is pretty slow.

So what do I expect? That it works like our phones, tablets and computers. That we have a media entertainment center at our fingertips that we can also use to research we’re going to. Multitasking, switching between the different things I want to do: Music, movies, TV, learning opportunities, tourism guides and planners, some games for the kids. I’m not even talking full internet connection. Yet. 🙂 It should be possible to link the devices with your smartphone or tablet so the information is not lost.

How hard can it be to put in a decent tablet in any airplane chair (so I can take it on my lap), have a server streaming and update all apps in one push when in airports? It’s been on my reserve list for my One Idea Per Day project, but it’s so very necessary so here it is.

Create a small OEM ecosystem for in-flight systems that can be reused in cars and busses.