8 Tools For The Productivity Junkie

If there’s one thing I learned working around children, it is, you can’t expect 100% productivity all the time. Which means, during the times you can give your work your undivided attention, you’ll want to squeeze every bit out of every single minute. While I don’t see myself as a productivity junkie, some people in my household may beg to differ anyways, always one to look out for better ways to do things, I’ve scoped out a few tools that may be helpful.

A timer – it truly is super weird. For someone who works hard not to be ruled by a punch clock, the timer often helps me focus the most. Not only that, it also helps me track billable hours. Yeah I’m old school like that. While I do have a physical timer – preferred for offline work, I also use a digital and tiny timer on my computer. The best in my humble opinion is a simple, dirt cheap but very functional timer, Egg Timer Plus from Sardine software (love the name). Only $5

Evernote – *sigh* I could write a book about Evernote. It is a web clipper (clip text, images etc from the web), a note taker, a task planner, a recipe organizer – you name it, you can probably find a way to use it for that. To me it’s a huge virtual inbox but that’s nothing new. What I love best about this is, you can capture almost any kind of data from anywhere. From your desktop and directly from your cell phone this is a huge selling point for me. The only thing it doesn’t have is a calendar but it is definitely a 2nd brain.

Filebox eXtender – got tired of clicking and clicking and clicking through folders to find the file I want. If you make a concious effort to notice it, you usually revisit a couple of folders pretty regularly throughout the day, week and month. I wanted a way to quickly jump to these folders which are also contained within many parent folders. Filebox eXtender does that. Love it. Sadly, it is no longer being actively support. There have been some reported issues for some people but they do have a Windows Vista and Windows 7 version. It is free.

QTTabBar – lets you have tabs in Windows Explorer. I have not installed it yet, will definitely install it shortly. Going by my love of tabs on Firefox, QTTabBar may quickly be a must have.

Gmail Labels, Filter and auto Archive feature – The sky will not fall on your head if you don’t read every single email that comes through your inbox. A big volume of our emails are probably not supposed to be acted upon anyhow so just – stuff them. You don’t have to see them but you may need them at some point in the future. Create a label and make sure you check the “Skip inbox” checkbox, mark as read and assign it a label – e.g. Receipts. Then filter all PayPal emails or even emails you get from the ‘Gurus’ or subscription list this way. Let Gmail to that petty work for you.

GridMove - this is one killer app – at least for me. I used to call GridMove the poor (wo)man’s 2nd monitor. Now that I have a 2nd monitor, I find I need it more! It separates your monitor into grids – you can even create your own layouts or download the many contributed by users. When you click on the middle mouse button and drag a window, it will show you the many grids you can drag the window to. It will ’snap’ into place. Eliminating the need to manually resize windows. This is great for working with code and web sites – see the effect of your changes on one side and the code on another. It’s also come in real handy during household budgeting day. I can see my own spreadsheet on one side and the checking account on the other.

A Macro – Feels like Deja Vu. I’ve mentioned this one before Oh yeah! Right here. See, they all tie in together. A Macro does repetitive tasks for you so you don’t have to remember or do it manually. Saving you tons of time. It can launch applications for you, perform certain functions on a schedule and even type for you. Get it. Use it. DirectAccess has saved me 17 hours of typing. How do I know? Because it gives me a neat little chart estimate. It’ probably more than than though because I use it launch programs and open folders, I save the time required to search for the program from a programs list – or the time to find that elusive folder.

A Workflow or system if you prefer to call it that – Some people respond better to mindmaps, some people prefer lists – whichever you decide, using tools like wikis and Bubbl.us and Gliffy help you create a workflow faster and also edit them easier so if there are changes in your workflow, everyone else on your team won’t be stuck with archaic versions.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

1. 25 Parent Productivity Tools for Busy Moms, Dads and Kids
2. Why You Should Be Filtering Your Email
3. Invaders of the Lost Week :: A Productivity Challenge