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.