About productivity, Macs, and the dude at your window.
The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss is an (at-first unbelievable, yet) inspiring look at becoming a part of the “New Rich”, a term Ferriss uses to describe those who have automated income sources profitable enough to permit them to wander the globe during frequent “mini retirements”. Definitely worth checking out no matter what your work situation.
Gridskipper is a fantastic resource for finding not-so-touristy things to do in many cities, both in the US and abroad. Each “post” has a city tag and often another tag such as “shopping” or “nightlife”.
I used this on a recent trip to London and found a neat coffee place called Flat White, which is an espresso shot in a small cup of milk. Also worth checking out is Red Veg, a vegetarian restaurant in Soho. They have breaded sweet corn.
Knowing keyboard shortcuts is a great way to boost your productivity. I’ve put together a list of a few keyboard shortcut cheat sheets. There are cheat sheets for just about every common program out there…Google is your friend.
Being an efficient typist will help out a great deal, too. Check out these typing games and apps:
Check out your typing speed at www.typingtest.com. I got 88 wpm!
WriteRoom from Hog Bay Software is the perfect tool for doing a bit of distraction free writing. Fire up the app and you’re immediately greeted with a full-screen black window and a blinking cursor. That’s it. Type away! WriteRoom has an auto-save feature, spell-checking, and the ability to save files as plain or rich text. You can also set WriteRoom up to be your default text editor and even use it to compose your emails if you’re using Mail.app. Change the font, colors, scale, and margins to suit your taste and get on that novel. WriteRoom is $25 but there’s a free download to try it out.
A couple of links to reviews of WriteRoom:
For a Windows alternative, check out Dark Room. There’s a web-based version too, called Writer.
I use del.icio.us to organize and share my bookmarks. Del.icio.us allows users to share bookmarks by giving out their personal del.icio.us address. In case there’s a bookmark you don’t want others to see, you can mark it as private.
The key to del.icio.us is their tagging feature, which lets you group your bookmarks by topic. For example, I have a photography tag. You can group tags into bundles, which makes for even better organization. Another neat feature is the “hotlist” which displays links that are…hot.
Adding a bookmark to del.icio.us is a matter of clicking on the “tag” button that you can install into your browser’s toolbar when you sign up for del.icio.us (no spam!)
The Freelance Blog at www.freelanceswitch.com is a fantastic resource for anyone who does freelance work of any kind. Those who are considering freelance work can benefit from many of the articles, too. Leo over at Zen Habits posts quite a bit. Here is a list of the things I’ve found useful so far:
As a side note, Fridays will now be Freelance Fridays. Why? Because both words begin with F.
BillMonk is a free service that keeps track of shared bills and money lent or borrowed. Let’s say you go out for dinner with a couple of friends and decide you will pay the whole bill and have your friends pay you for their portion later. Log in to BillMonk, enter your friends’ email addresses (no spam!) and the amounts they owe you. They’ll get an email with the details, and have the option to settle up in person or by using Obopay, a service that lets you send money using your cell phone, similar to Paypal.
I have not tried settling up using Obopay yet, but have been using the rest of BillMonk’s features for about four months now. It’s a simple way to keep track of who owes what without having to do any hounding. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that settling up at the end of a meal is no fun.
Some other neat BillMonk features:
Zen Habits is a fantastic blog about productivity, finances, and “implementing good habits”. I’ve been reading Zen Habits for about a month now and have found lots of interesting posts:
I’ve tried each of these and can say they really do help. Though I can’t get up before 5 a.m. as is suggested. That would leave me no zen left for the day ahead. Thanks to the author (Leo) for the great work, and for inspiring me to start my own blog.
Google has released a beta version of Google Gears, which allows users to work offline with content that previously required an internet connection. As of now, Google Reader and Remember The Milk have implemented this feature. All you have to do is install Google Gears (note this is beta software) and access a Gears-enabled site. Once you’ve done this you’ll be able to read your Reader posts and update Remember The Milk while you’re offline. When you reconnect and access either of these sites your data will be synchronized.
The real power of Google Gears will be apparent when they implement it into Google Docs. One of the major limitations of Google Docs is the internet connectivity requirement. Who isn’t online all the time anyway?
Links:
Remember The Milk is an online to-do list that does more than your post-it note will ever dream of doing. Here are a few features that I use regularly:
There are a few advanced features that I’ll write separate posts about:
Now use your last post-it and write “Check out Remember The Milk”. Poor post-it.
