Showing posts with label Productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Productivity. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

5min can tell you how to get girls to go out with you...

5min....thankfully, all the Villagers have girlfriends/brides-to-be/wives.

But, if not, check out 5min.
5min is a site dedicated to giving people tips and instructions on different topics.

They have a plethora of categories like Business, Fashion, Fitness, Tech, Life Tips, and many others. And 5min isn't just about learning, but also spreading your own tips and knowledge. All you need to do it make a short video and upload it to teach others about a topic of your choice.

Here's an example I could NOT pass up sharing. It is about 3 1/2 minutes long, but I highly recommend watching it:

Monday, October 29, 2007

Organize your life...

My Twitter feed alerted me to a post by mashable.com about 100+ ways to organize your life.

I'd encourage you to check it out if you like to manage lots of your life via the web.


I will highlight several from the article:


  • Todoist - previously mentioned by Zach and my preferred online task management site (we both use it and pay for the premium features)
  • Remember the Milk - another good online task management tool
  • Monkey On Your Back - attempt to organize others by sending them e-mail reminders
  • Knotler - create free, online, mobile shopping lists
  • Fitness Journal - track your fitness goals and progress online
  • Chore Wars - the World of Warcraft for chores
  • MyHomePoint - organize everything at your home
  • BrainCast - record messages for yourself and send them to your PC
  • Our Wedding Day - online wedding organization
  • Planypus - organize your social life with a wiki

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Limiting goof off time...

Why?
If you use Firefox, like I do, there are extensions created to help you eliminate fun non-productive time. Here are a few examples:
MeeTimer - MeeTimer logs where you spend your time online, grouping it into activities, and actively discouraging time wasting.
I have it running right now. Although it isn't really set up to group or annoy me, I am in no way discouraged to surf the internet.
LeechBlock - LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.
This assumes your corporate firewall doesn't already block them.
TimeTracker - Do you spend too much time on Firefox? Do you open tabs faster than you can close them? Cannot get things done? Keep track of how much you browse with TimeTracker.
I think all of these look at the glass as half empty.

Here's an online gimmick:
Timer - a browser-based egg timer. Counts down however many minutes YOU choose. Displays the running time in the browser title bar (or tab).

Why should I limit my non-productive time? Non-work time is fun time! Instead, try to be more productive so you can have more time to fool around.
Some positive productivity extensions for firefox:
Life-hack productivity extensions
Life-hack GreaseMonkey scripts - between the two lists, this one is better...

Previously mentioned by Zach, Todoist, which I have started using and paying for, really does help. Simple, yet efficient.
Another tool mentioned by Zach, which has a Firefox extension, Getting Things Done.

There are many tools, add-ons, and what not out there to make yourself a better cubicle worker (Lifehack.org, Lifehacker.com)...why not take advantage so you can be less of a cubicle worker?

So you can do stuff like this:



Thursday, September 27, 2007

Todoist is the Truth

Over the last month or so, I've played with a few online productivity/task list tools (Tracks, GTDTracks, Vitalist) and they all have come up a little short for me.

I've used Todoist for the last 2 weeks or so and, like Jordan Bratman, I don't think I'm going to do much better than this.

A few of the things I like about it:

Clean Interface
After hiding the info page with one click, all you see are your tasks, projects, and a minmalist search window. No clutter on the screen.

Dates/Times
Maybe the coolest feature. Tired of clicking around in Outlook, setting a deadline for something that has to be done tomorrow by noon? I'm not going to check (it takes too long), but I'd guess it takes at least 12 clicks in several different date, time, scheduling boxes. In todoist you just type "tomorrow @ 12", "friday @ 12", or even "tom @ 12". Schedule recurring tasks by putting an "every" or "ev" in front of the date. I defy you to set up a recurring task in any other system with fewer key strokes than "ev 15" (Every 15th of the month) or "ev mon" (every Monday).

Contexts
If you're practicing your GTD mantra, or just sorting things out, you can add contexts to your tasks by simply adding "@home", "@work", etc... to the task description. Unlike GTDTracks and Vitalist you can add multiple contexts to tasks you can get done either at home or in the car, or wherever.

Prioritization
Similar to adding contexts, adding priorities is simple. "!p1" makes the task a top level priority, "!p2" a second level priority, and so on. There are 4 levels, each color coded.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Along with dates, the keyboard shortcuts are what really make Todoist stand out. Adding tasks, promoting and demoting tasks and projects, sorting, and much more can be done with shortcuts.

Launchy/iGoogle/Integration
Adding the Todoist DLL to your Launchy program folder allows you to add tasks to todoist using Launchy. 'Nuf said. I haven't used the iGoogle widget yet, but I imagine it works wonderfully. A Firefox extension for g-mail lets you send e-mails directly to your task list. And so on. There are Quicksilver and Mac Dashboard plug-ins and widgets, but, like Pony Parties (definately not linking to that, look it up yourself), I won't admit to knowing anything about how they work.

Chaining
I haven't done much chaining (a la Seinfeld), but it is equally easy to implement.

Price
It's $3 per month for the premium level. That gets you SSL, reminders (MSN, Jabber, Twitter, chaining, and other labeling capabilities. You probably spend at least $3/month on plastic silverware, replacement earring backs, and contraception. Todoist is more important than any of those things. Just think how quick it will be to type "[Ctrl-A] Go to planned parenthood, take care of it [Tab] tom @ 8".


What's Missing
There is not (or I have not found) iCal or RSS functionality.
Anyways, I've enjoyed using it, sign up, get your act together, then comment and tell me how smart I am.