Mind Mapping

I find nothing better for brainstorming and working on projects than Mind Mapping. FreeMind is an open source solution for creating mind maps incorporating text, symbols and arrows in multiple colors. It will allow you to link to other files and locations. You really need to give it a try to truly understand what it is capable of. FreeMind is a free download for Windows, Linux, Mac.

FreeMind has made it as a finalist for the 2009 Community Choice Award in the category "Most likely to change the way you do everything"!!

Mind Like Water

In karate there is an image that’s used to define the position of perfect readiness: "mind like water." Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact.

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your staff, your projects, your unread magazines, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss will lead to less effective results than you’d like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a "mind like water."
-David Allen from the book "Getting Things Done"

Organizational Power and Energy

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.
- Margaret Wheat -

Recipe Managers

Need a software application to help sort and manage your recipes. Here are a few open source options available to you.

HMCsoft Recipe Database
At the very basic end of the spectrum is Recipe Database. With Recipe Database all your recipes will be safely stored on your computer, ready at a moments notice.

Gourmet Recipe Manager
Gourmet allows you to collect, search and organize your recipes, and to automatically generate shopping lists from your collection. The latest version also allows you to calculate nutritional information for your recipes using the USDA food database (or entering custom information by hand)

Taco Recipe Manager
With Taco you can download recipes from different web services or create your own. After you have set up a repository of recipes, Taco will suggest what to cook based on the ingredients that you have at home.

Bon Appetit.

Dual Screens and Productivity.

I once thought having more than one monitor was a unnecessary luxury. Well, ever since I got the opportunity to run two I can't imagine going back to just one. What a huge productivity boost. I put all my less important stuff such as reference material, task bars, file links, email and audio on my secondary screen will leaving my main screen's full real estate to the task at hand. Great way to keep the less important stuff you like or need to deal with frequently open but off to the side. This also creates a good reminder of the main job at hand if you find yourself spending to much time focused on the side screen and not enough time on the main screen.

Desktop Publishing

Looking for an open source desktop publishing program. Look no further than Scribus, a full featured program available free for Linux, Mac and Windows. Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, Spot Colors, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation with an award-winning combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.

Your Work Day as a Game of Football.

Here's an idea from "The Productivity Show" podcast I was listening to on the way to work. Think of your day as a game of football and break it down into four quarters. At the end of each quarter be the coach and go over that quarter. Look at what you did well. Where you could improve going forward. Was your time well spent. Did you get done what needed to be. At the end of the day go back over the game and see were you might improve for the next days game. I'm going to give this one a try.

The PocketMod

Here's a neat little idea along the lines of the Hipster PDA. PocketMod is an online way of creating a pocket size 8 page organizer out of a single piece of paper. Using the templates provided you can design an organizer with pages tailored to your unique needs. Select from shopping list, to do list, calendar, lined, graph and many other styles of pages to fill your book. Once you've laid out your design simply print and fold as directed and your done. A compact pocket organizer for the the price of a piece of paper.

Do Meetings Cut into the Productive Times of Your Day?

Meetings can take a big chunk out of precious productive time in your day. How many times have you sat through a meeting wishing you could just get back to your desk and get some much needed work done. Gina Trapini over at the Harvard Business blog has some great ideas on how to shorten and reduce your meetings so you can get on with your day.

Trackball vs. Mouse. How about both.

Working at a computer all day can be tiring and potentially lead to repetitive stress injury's. Using a combination of two different input devises can go a long way to remedying this problem. I for one use both a trackball located to the left of my keyboard and a mouse on my desk to my right. Constantly switching up during the day keeps my hands from getting tired and cramped. If you are only used to working a mouse with your one hand try switching it over to your other hand from time to time or put a trackball next to it. Another option for some would be the use of a pen tablet. Next time you find your mouse hand getting tied give it a try.

Project management & Scheduling

OpenProj and GanttProject are two free open source programs available to help you manage your projects by creating what are called Gantt charts. These programs use a type of bar chart to show the beginning and ending dates of a given project and the individual elements within it. You can utilize the chart to show the relationship and dependency of different elements to one another. Organize start dates for different operations and show completed tasks as the project progresses. A great way to stay on top of complicated projects which contain many different elements . Both OpenProj and GantProject are available as free downloads for Windows, Linux & Mac.

Voice Emails

As any busy person can attest to, writing emails can be quite time consuming. I for one prefer the short 1or 2 line email but sometimes this is not sufficient to get your point across. When you don't want to write out a long message wouldn't it be nice if you could send a voice recording as an attachment to an e-mail. JDVoiceMail can do just that. This freeware program allows you to send a voice message to anyone by email. JDVoiceMail does this by recording a compressed wav or mp3 file and sending it via email. Your recipient requires no special software. They can listen to your message by simply double clicking the file and using their default audio player.

Ubiquitous capture

Sometimes our brains don't always give us the answers we need when and where we need them. The solution for that project your working on pop's into your head while brushing your teeth or that gift idea for your spouses birthday comes to you while walking the dog. If we all had photographic memory's this would not be a problem but for most of us this is not the case. What we need is a quick and easy way to capture these thoughts as they arise. One of the best ways I've found is with what Merlin Mann calls the Hipster PDA. Basically a pen and a pile of index cards held together by a bull clip. My greener version of this is to use scrap paper which has previously been printed on one side and cut into convenient size bundles. I keep one in my car, one in my coat pocket and a number of them scattered around the house in strategic places. That way when an idea pop's into my head I can write it down before its forgotten. These notes can then be sorted and dealt with when and where they are required. Voice recorders and cellphone cameras come in handy as well when needing to capture information for future use. Another idea is to use Evernotes, a unique cross platform application which supports adding and accessing notes from your cellphone, web browsers and desktop. This free application just might be the closest thing to a universal capture tool next to the pen and paper.

OpenOffice.org

No discussion of open source productivity would be complete without talking about openoffice.org.
This full office productivity suite contains everything you need for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, graphics, databases and more. Available as a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux in many different languages.

Repeditive Stress Injury (RSI)

If your jobs like mine you spend many hours a day working at your computer. This puts you at risk of
Repetitive Stress Injury's (RSI). Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of these injury's. Workrave alerts you to take micro-pauses and rest breaks at regular intervals. It also provides you with easy exercises you can do at your desk during the breaks if you desire. All the functions are user adjustable to suite your individual requirements. Available for Linux & Windows.

Rainbow Folders

Rainbow Folders is a free utility for Windows systems that tweaks your folders by using a multitude of colors and the ability to change their shape to classic, XP or Vista style. This allows you to distinguish different files on your desktop or in directory's by color and shape. A wonderful tool to speed up finding & sorting through hundreds of folders for your most important stuff.

Egg Timers

Personal productivity often requires a single minded focus on a given task. When our days are filled with any number of conflicting items all requiring our attention it can prove difficult to stay focused on one thing at a time. I find that creating a false deadline forces me to concentrate solely on the task at hand. This may be as simple as telling myself that the project due next Monday needs to be done by this Thursday. Or that one thing that has been eluding me today is due in the next 10 min.. To this end you can use something as simple as an egg timer on your desk or what I use is a simple little program called "TimeLeft”. This little desktop widget can be programmed for any number of time lines. Give it a try. It is available as a free download at http://www.nestersoft.com/timeleft/

Email Etiquette

A great article by Marci Alboher on improving email etiquette.

Inbox Zero

This has got to be one of my favorite productivity tools.
A way of working with all that e-mail we deal with every day.
Merlin Mann of 43 Folders fame shows a way of emptying your email inbox — and then keep it that way.
http://www.43folders.com/izero

First Day

More to come.
I hope to provide you with ideas & links to programs at least once a week and more often when possible. I've discovered many tricks over the years to speed up my use of time & improve my work productivity. These ideas i hope will help you in the same way as they have helped me.