Productivity

Productivity and organization for creative types - Summary
 

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Perhaps it is just the end of the year approaching, and we are all getting a bit reflective, and thinking ahead to New Year's Resolutions, or maybe something larger is happening.

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Nobody likes to be in an unproductive meeting. Yet many phone conferences and business meetings drag on way too long, go off-topic or simply have unfocused leadership.

Here are three simple ways you can apply right away to make all your meetings more effective:

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I love learning and sharing tips that make my day more productive. Often times, it's the simplest ones I find the most useful.

If you're like me, you spend a significant portion of your day interacting on the Gmail web interface. However, one of my biggest pet peeves in Gmail is that when composing a new message I lose access to the rest of my mailbox, since it takes up the entire window.

Alas, I discovered the key! By simply by holding down the SHIFT key when clicking COMPOSE MAIL, a pop-up window appears, and access to the full mailbox is retained.

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If you are a developer, blogger or a client who manages or participated on a technical project, screenshot-taking tools are a very useful way conveying your thoughts and ideas to others on your team. Screenshots save you from lengthy explanation emails and keep your team on same page while discussing an idea. This blog post is about different screen capturing tools available out there and which to use and why.

1. Skitch(mac only):

Skitch is more than just an image capturing tool. It is very quick, simple and efficient. You can edit your images - crop them, draw figures on them, write notes on them and share directly via uploading to skitch, flickr, ftp with many other options. This all is mere drag and drop with nothing complex to learn. Download Skitch. Images in this blog are captured using skitch only.

Shortcut keys with skitch:

• Command-Shift-5 – Crosshairs Snap
• Command-Shift-6 – Fullscreen Snap
• Command-Shift-7 – Frame Snap

There is also a great short video on the Skitch website that gives you a quick overview of how it works and what it can do.

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In Developing A Personal Email Management Strategy I discussed the sorting, filtering and processing of the seemingly endless flow of email I receive. Recently, I took the plunge and converted my non work email to IMAP in preparation for converting work email to the same. The goal is to be able to see important direct email on my iPhone without seeing all the list traffic, commercial communications and other solicited bulk email.

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Last week I emptied my inbox completely. And from this point forward I pledge (to myself I guess) that I will only "check" email if I am going to "deal" with my email. Every email that lands in my inbox and is not filtered into a specific mailbox will be dealt with: archived, deleted, responded to.

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Without a doubt, the most productive time in getting through my inbox is when I'm on an airplane, sans Internet access. This week I'm exploring Freedom to help me accomplish the same result. Essentially, Freedom disables all wireless and ethernet networking on an Apple computer for up to 3 hours at a time. After the time is up, Freedom will re-enable your network adapters and display a confirmation that you're back online. If you absolutely need to pull the cord and MUST get back online, just restart your computer to reset. Let me restate that: just stopping or quitting the Freedom application will not re-enable your network adapters - and yes, this is purposeful! Freedom is a program designed to help you get things done, away from the distractions of network connectivity. http://www.ibiblio.org/fred/freedom/

"Who do you want to Jott?" These simple six words have changed my life. About four months ago, I found Jott.com, a simple and free service that lets me dictate messages into my cell phone that are transcribed instantly into txt and emails. However, the best part is these same messages can be time-delayed and you can have the Jott service send a reminder (i.e. "tomorrow at 5pm") straight to your phone. Given that I often find myself in the car or on the run, Jott has become one of my most used tools and provides just the perfect blend of simplicity with stellar technology.

I've been checking out Codeweaver's Crossover for Mac, an application that runs on Intel macs using the X11 system to simulate Windows operating systems. This has proven particularly useful for running IE6 on an emulated Win98 system. Crossover uses the metaphor of "bottles" which are essentially contained operating systems with all the right files and functions to run and install windows applications on a mac. You can have a windows 98 bottle, a XP bottle, etc.. And it rules.

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