Tag: Remember the Milk

Fifty ways to boost your productivity

Category:Educational research

Nicholas Bate shares his 50 ways to boost productivity…

  1. Don’t hold stuff in your head.
  2. Keep your head clear and use your head for thinking: decisive, critical, imaginative.
  3. Use paper/screen for ‘holding’ your list of what needs attention.
  4. Our greatest asset is where we place our attention.  Bear in mind we live in an exciting world where our attention is constantly ‘pulled’ to another place.
  5. To be productive is to maintain attention on what is important in the face of continuous distraction.
  6. And what needs attention is not just urgent, but what is important and thus often apparently not urgent e.g. health.
  7. Thus: ask what is important?
  8. Firstly by referencing the compass points of your life….
  9. Thus: your business/career
  10. Thus: your health
  11. Thus: your relationships
  12. Thus: your finances
  13. Capture these on you attention list.
  14. Secondly by stretching your planning horizon…
  15. Every day, ask what’s important tomorrow?
  16. Every week, ask what’s important next week?
  17. Every month, ask what’s important next month?
  18. Every quarter, ask what’s important next quarter?
  19. Every year, ask what’s important next year?
  20. Capture these to on your attention list.
  21. And finally anything which is burning and urgent; add these to your list.
  22. But the more you do 8 and 14 above…
  23. The fewer will be generated by  21.
  24. Every end-of-the-working-day review your list and decide what does need attention: create your daily list.
  25. Don’t try and do everything…

via Fifty Ways To Boost Your Productivity – Nicholas Bate.

Follow the ‘via’ link above if you’d like the remaining 25 ways. Before you go, however, I’d like to call your attention to a post and a couple of screencasts I’ve done on a tool called Evernote that I use in conjunction with a ‘philosophy’ called Getting Things Done [GTD] to help implement Nicholas’ first 6 ways…

0
Česky: Toto je ikona pro sociální síť. Je souč...

I’m a huge fan of Evernote and it seems recently that almost every day I find another reason to love it. Perhaps the most important reason lately is that it fits nicely into my Getting Things Done [GTD] world and is a massive productivity booster. Evernote is my über-container — everything goes in there! Why? Because Evernote syncs with every device I own and it’s searchable so the important things I need to have at my finger tips are there when I need them…

In the past couple of days I have added important emails, pictures, audio notes, web clips, pdfs, Word docs and presentations. I have added them via their web clipper, Shareaholic, email, Twitter and a folder on my desktop that syncs everything to Evernote. It seems there is no end to the clever ways I can get content in. Not only can I search Evernote for the things I’ve stored there, but I can share the things I’ve saved via email, Twitter or Facebook. It just rocks for the things I need it to do!

I’ve posted a list of my top 5 productivity tools along with a couple of good books and other suggestions below, but those are just the ingredients. Here’s my recipe:

First, I read David Allen’s classic productivity book Getting Things Done annually and refer to it often. Buy it using Kindle software so you can search it or mark it. Why do I do this first? Because in my world, tools without a purpose are useless…

I use…

  • Gmail to manage ‘just in time’ information; information that affects relationships or revenue. If there’s a task, I add it to the built in Google Tasks. If there’s information I need to hold on to, I send it via email to my secret Evernote email address. I use Getting Things Done [GTD] principles combined with Gmail’s features to practice ‘inbox zero’ and cut through my email like a proverbial ‘hot knife through butter’!
  • Google Reader to manage ‘just in case’ information. The things I need to read to deepen my expertise.
  • I use Gist to track the important people in my world and what they are publishing [Gist is much better than Google Reader at tracking output from people!]
  • I use Google Tasks and apply Getting Things Done [GTD] principles to my task lists.
  • Finally, I used my beloved Evernote as the one über-container to keep it all together.

As I’m writing, I’m telling myself I need to put together a screencast on this topic as so many people are struggling to manage their information. What do you think? Is this interesting enough a topic to you?

Here are the ingredients I promised you…

These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…

These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…

These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…

These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…

These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…

http://storify.com/e1evation/dollar-15-88-toward-a-more-productive-you

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
13

Separate your email from your to-do’s

“Your boss needs the updated PowerPoint presentation file by Tuesday. Your spouse wants to know how many vacation days you’ve got left this year. Your co-worker needs your office pool picks. Everyone gets task requests via email all day long, and it’s so easy to let these messages slip through the cracks. Whether your inbox is stuffed with two-year-old fwd’d kitten photos from Aunt Edna, or if you empty it every day and diligently file away actionable email to a ‘TO-DO’ folder – it’s still not easy to track the messages you’ve actually got to DO something about using email.” Click here to read more…

Update: I use ‘Remember the Milk [RTM]’ — the powerful todo manager with the goofy name — to manage my todos and one of the reasons why is that my todo list has an email address and if a task comes to me in email, I can forward it to that special address and the email will be added to my todos as a task and the body of the email will be converted to a note so I know what the task is about. RTM also has a great web interface, BlackBerry and iPhone apps, and interfaces with Jott! All huge reasons why YOU should use this external todo manager as well!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
0

What is the Best Way to Manage my Tasks?

Microsoft Office Outlook
Image via Wikipedia

Here are the results of a recent lifehacks survey…

“If all the methodology of the best GTD applications loses you in the productivity shuffle, there’s nothing like a classic, simple to-do list to keep you on track. You’ve never had more options—both simple and robust—for managing your to-do list as you do today. On Tuesday we asked you to share your favorite to-do list managers, and today we’re back with the five most popular answers. Keep reading for a glimpse at the five best to-do list managers, then vote for the to-do tool you like best.” Source: Hive Five: Five Best To-Do List Managers

Personally, I use Rememberthemilk because of the ability to integrate it into Gmail and my Blackberry, but I’m fluent in Outlook as well as ‘pen and paper’. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…

Update 10/25/09: Lifehacker lists these tools: Microsoft Outlook, Rememberthemilk, Pen and Paper, Text and Todoist. It’s one of the rare times I take issue with one of their posts. Here are a couple of other tools that are getting my attention in this space lately:

  1. ReQall; create todos, notes, share taskes with other users via phone calls, website, or iPhone. More with $25 annual subscription.
  2. Jott; Used to be my favorite in this category. Similar to ReQall, more features, more $$$. Very cool!

If you only have time to look at one, try reQall. Easy to use and inexpensive…

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
0

I love ‘Remember the Milk’!

Image representing Remember The Milk as depict...
Image via CrunchBase

The hosted task management system with the funny name is one of my favorite tools. Just this morning as I was hacking through my todo list, I tweeted that I was reminded what a great tool it is. Then, as fate would have it, I saw this post commemorating their 4th bday…

“Four years ago yesterday, we breathed a sigh of relief: after more than a year of development, our super-secret project was finally ready to launch! Little did we know that the adventure of Remember The Milk was only just beginning…

Five days after our launch, there was already a crazy 50,000 tasks being managed with RTM. Perhaps that should’ve given us some indication of what we were in for, but it wasn’t until 2007 that we figured out that, well, we might need a little help. (It turns out that two people and a stuffed monkey working full-time on a free app with some serious hosting bills does not a sustainable service make.)” Source: Remember The Milk – Blog

Remember the Milk, or RTM, is everything a task management system should be and it synchronizes with my BlackBerry and iPhone and integrates seamlessly with my Gmail account through their Firefox plugin. Of course I’m a pro subscriber! Question is, why aren’t you?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
0

Start a Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑