eric tatro dot com » Personal Productivity

Office survival kit: PortableApps

Eric — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:09:12 +0000

You probably have one or two USB drives floating around. Although these were fairly expensive little gadgets in the recent past, now they’ve become common promotional giveaways and one or two GB drives can be had for less than the cost of a few drinks at the bar.

Most people use these to transfer files home from work and back again, but the USB drive can also be used to run small open source applications from PortableApps.com. These programs can be used as a digital Swiss Army Knife and can come in extremely handy, especially for work computers that don’t allow you to install software. My favorites have helped me out many, many times, and include:

GIMP Portable – GIMP is an open source graphics/photo editor, similar in many ways to Photoshop. While it isn’t quite as slick as its inspiration, it works great for resizing and cropping images, and if you take the time to learn it you’ll discover it’s extremely powerful in its own right.

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition – When I browse the Internet, I typically have about 8-10 tabs open in Firefox. In fact, browsing without tabs drives me nuts. If your work computer has an old version of IE, this portable version of Firefox can be a godsend.

PDFTK Builder Portable – One of the strengths of the PDF format is that documents look the same across systems and platforms and they can’t be easily edited by others. One of the downsides is that they can’t be easily edited by you, unless you have Adobe Acrobat. Fortunately this program is around to help you split up and recombine pages from PDF files. This is one of those programs that you might not realize you need until you actually need it, and by that time it can help you avoid some very frustrating situations.

Each of these programs are small in size, so you can fit several of them on any modern USB drive. They’re a great way to put an extra drive to use, and in the right circumstances can honestly save the day.

Huge list of GTD resources

Eric — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:59:56 +0000

This is a great list of Getting Things Done resources, courtesy of What’s the next action.

Neptune makes “Getting Things Done” simple to set up

Eric — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:11:52 +0000

I like staying organized (or trying to) using David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. It’s been a tremendous help to me in the workplace and at home. While the system is very robust, it does allow a great deal of freedom for individuals to implement GTD the best way they see fit. (Download Squad did a great introduction to GTD and several ways to go about it in one’s life.) Want to use a Moleskine? Great! Your smartphone? Works just as well. GTD plug-ins for Outlook exist, and some people have even found great success using plain text files.

This morning I was pretty excited to learn about Neptune, a Web-based framework for GTD. Anyone familiar with GTD will find the service clean and easy to use. Once you set up your lists, you’ll even get a daily e-mail with next actions and reminders, and can even convert your "today" list into a PDF. Slick.

The basic service is free, but "free" limits your contexts and projects. A $20 annual subscription (which is currently 50 percent off) upgrades you to unlimited contexts and projects.

Sites Offer Tips on “Getting Things Done”

Eric — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 03:31:55 +0000

Lately I’ve become more and more busy, not only with work but with all of the things I’d like to do and accomplish. There’s reading books, working out, playing music, joining clubs and organizations, and writing more. Unfortunately, I tend to be the type of person who, after work, is easily distracted at home by things like the television and internet. Before I know it, it’s time for bed and I haven’t accomplished anything!

I haven’t yet read the book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen, but I have noticed a devoted legion of productive people that seem sold on Allen’s ideas. I’ve been looking into the concepts behind GTD and have begun to apply many of them to my own life with some success. I’ve also noticed that the successful people I work with have incorporated these ideas into their own lives, which should come as no surprise. Here are some of my favorite Web sites that encourage the ideas behind GTD and personal productivity:

43 Folders: A great blog focused on Getting Things Done. Offers frequent, practical tips on how to incorporate GTD concepts into one’s life.

Lifehacker: "Don’t live to geek; geek to live." Focuses primarily on technology that saves time and makes life easier.

Lifehack.org: Another "lifehack" site offering personal productivity tips and how to Get Things Done.

To-Done: Blog featuring tips to improve personal productivity and save time.

RSStocracy: Simple explanation of RSS. RSS has allowed me to cut my internet time dramatically by allowing me to read all of my favorite sites in one place. (I use Bloglines as my reader.)

"Time Management with PDAs": The title pretty much explains it all. I use a Treo 650 to organize my life, and this site gives strategies for staying organized with a PDA.

UPDATE (08/02/05): Today I went out and bought David Allen’s book, partly due to a strong post made yesterday by Kelly Papinchak of the excellent blog "Beginning a Career in Public Relations." We’ll see if the book helps me as it seems to have helped so many others!