One thing I love about my Mac is the tremendous amount of freeware out there for it. There is a free app to accomplish almost any task.
Here is a list of my most used essential freeware applications:
- Quicksilver - This app is much more than a launcher, you can also run scripts on the items you search for, and much more. The more you read on Quicksilver, the more it will do.
- Orator - Got a webpage that you have to read for work, research, or school, but would rather lie down and close your eyes? Get this program. This programs takes any text and converts it to a .mp3 file so that you can listen to your webpage instead of read it. Sweet.
- Smultron - Weird Name, Great Notepad. This little program is a replacement for Notepad. It can be used just to compose (it wraps text), or for programming with keyword coloring. I used to use Textwrangler, but this program works so much better. It does the same stuff and more. And oh yeah, it has Tabs like any good program should.
- Writeroom - True Full screen writing. You can set the color, font, size, screen widgth, and more to create the writeroom that works best for you. Mine is Black with Green writing. It look Matrixy. This is a feature that I used to only be able to find in programs like MacJournal, which I had to buy. This little program is great.
- Evernote -This little program is a piece of the Evernote application set, which includes a mac app, a windows app, a web app, a windows mobile app, and, coming very soon, an iPhone app. It is a program that lets you write notes, store webpages, images and pdfs, sort them all in to groups, which can be made public. The best thing of all… all of the Evernote apps sync with each other effortlessly. Snap a photo on your iPhone and it can instantly be on your mac.
My obsession with productivity started way back in elementary school. One of my favorite past times as an eight-year-old was to do workbooks. Usually I would pretend to be teaching the material to a stuffed animal, but the real joy was in the workbook. I just loved answering the questions and filling in the blanks.
But a time came when I had too many workbooks going all at once and the act of choosing a workbook took as much time as actually working. I got rather frustrated with them and my indecisive nature, so I made up a way to eliminate the choice. First, I made a spreadsheet with the days of the week across the top and put seven rows below them (even though I had six workbooks to choose from). It looked something like this:
I then chose a workbook for each day of the week (I put my favorite one in twice to fill up all the days). Then I filled in all the rows by moving each entry down and to the left one spot, wrapping as needed. The result ending up looking something like this:
Some features of this included:
- Everything getting equal exposure
- Once a task is the main task, you won’t see it for a while
Now, moving up 14 years to the present, I’m looking to adapt this technique to my own life. The first obvious difference is number of tasks. Back then, I had six things I could do. Now, I have 11 goals and housekeeping tasks. That’s 12 things to fit into seven days.
This is easily solved by grouping tasks and assigning one task group all even numbers and the other task group all odd numbers. Because there are seven days in a week, the task will alternate. I leave my two most important tasks ungrouped. I created a separate table to help me with this:
Another problem I have is that some days I have more work time than others. For instance, I work at an office on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I take this into consideration when assigning tasks to days. Smaller and easier tasks are assigned to work days.
Getting Things Done - Each day I have to complete something towards my main goal of the day. This keeps things moving. But once I start getting tired of the first item, I just move onto the next one. The cycle continues until I use up all my time.
The benefits of this system, as elementary as it is, are enormous for anyone working without hard deadlines like me. It makes me work towards all my goals, not just my favorite ones.
In order to make this simple to implement, I created an Elementary Productivity Planner form. Here is what it looks like (both blank and filled in):
Want a copy of the Elementary Productivity Planner? It comes with a sample and a blank version.
PDF: Download Here
Numbers: Download Here
I hope to offer an Excel version soon.
June 29th, 2008
1:00 am
Links
Here are 5 of the best articles that I have read in the past week:
1. Create a personal productivity app using Wordpress and Twitter (Hack Your Day) - An interesting idea about using two technologies for something that is totally different from what they were meant for. It also sounds like a very useful idea. I’ve been having some trouble with the twitter plugin for Wordpress (I think the problem lies in the twitter API being limited due to Twitter problems), but as soon as it starts working again, I’m planning to set this up and give it a try.
2. 10 Ways to Save 10 Minutes Daily (Marc and Angel Hack Life) - A list that contains some very good tips. I really need to work on number 10: Productively Use Waiting Time!
3. Numbered Folders: the easiest way to keep track of works-in-progress (Academic Productivity) - This is an intriguing idea for anyone who has lots of project ideas. It’s like a folder version of GTD’s idea capture and process. The only down side for me is that I do a lot of work on paper… but I still may give this is try.
4. 5 Tips to Accomplish Low Priority Tasks (Hack Your Day) - This is something I really need! I have many low priority tasks clogging up my productivity line, as I’d expect many of you do too. Daniel gives some really good tips on how to tackle them.
5. How LaTeX Helps Me Write a Paper Without Microsoft Word (The Productive Student) - As a dedicated Apple fanatic, I hate Microsoft Word. But even if you like Word, using LaTeX can really help you focus on writing instead of how your paper looks or how many pages you have written. After reading this post, I finally set up LaTeX and am now using it to write a novel. If you’re hesitating because of the resemblance to programming, don’t worry. There really isn’t that much you have to write beyond your paper; Most of it is generated for you. Check it out!
Here’s my list of essentials that go with me everywhere:
1. My phone - I’ve had a treo700p for two years and I’m about to get an iphone. Although I don’t keep my schedule on my phone, it does have my e-mail and stores reference links, as well as connects me to people I need to talk to. I can’t imagine not having the internet in my pocket.
2. My planner/journal - I use a paper planner and it works pretty well for me. (I’ll give details in another post). But the real key is that I plan and track my daily activities all in one place.
3. A travel hard drive in a secure case - I highly recommend a Western Digital Passport and a case to go with it that has room for the cord. This lets my documents be portable.
4. Ipod - My Ipod Nano is filled with all kinds of music separated in playlists. I have a “relax”, “study”, “dance”, “airplane”, “favorites”, and “new music” playlists. So if I need music to block out background noise or unwind, I have my Ipod.
5. A small cheap spiral notebook - This is used for fast thought/idea capture as well as composing. I’m currently using a Mead Lil’ Fat notebook. Such a small notebook makes it easy to capture my ideas quickly.
