Tagged productivity
Jeremy Wright, of b5media fame, reminds us to clean up our computers of unnecessary applications, something I wholly support and do all the time. Jeremy is obviously running Windows (XP) on his laptop, so that makes it even more important as Windows has a habit of building up crap and slowing down your computer, but is by no means the only operating system that suffers from this.
Here are some tips on things you can do, no matter what OS is your poison, to speed up the performance of your computer:
- Remove applications you don’t use.
- Don’t autostart applications or features that you don’t need. Why have Winamp running if you’re an iTunes user?
- Remove all the crap you’ve got on your desktop. Storing files on your desktop will generally slow down the computer’s boot process.
- In fact, try and not autostart anything at all, unless it is something you need every day. The only thing it does is speed up the launch of some functionality, like Microsoft Office for instance. Better to have a slightly longer launch period for that particular application if you ask me.
- Clean out your hard drive. The more you’ve got on, the longer it takes for the computer to do stuff. Don’t have unnecessary data lying around, backup and store in a safe place.
- In particular, clean out your systems hard drive. If you’ve got several hard drives on your computer, try and have as little data as possible on the one containing your system, for the same reasons as above.
- Defrag your hard drive. If you’re running Windows, this is a no-brainer, just do it, it’ll speed things up. If you think you don’t have to do these things under OS X, then you’re wrong. Do it.
- Google for OS tweaks to speed up everything.
And while you’re at it, a backup is probably long overdue, right? Right.
Doesn’t it feel nice to remove all that virtual clutter on your computer? I always get that feeling of having done something good for my productivity after a massive cleanup action like this. Of course, it does take some time to go through all these steps, so you might want to do it when you’re not too busy, or have another workstation to play with.
Moleskine notebooks, one of the finer things in life
As you know, I’m a huge Moleskine fan, with notebooks to the left and right. I’m definitely not alone in my obsession, lots of people swear by this line of notebooks. As I’ve written previously, I use notebooks for various things, such as keeping notes, write fiction, and I even switched to the Moleskine calendar this year, which proved to be a good choice.
It’s a bit nerdy I guess, to be so engrossed in a notebook, and a specific maker of notebooks at that, but I can’t help it. And besides, it does go the extra mile.
Moleskine notebooks are high quality gear, just like my Pilot G-2 pens are (although cheap, but they fit me). I like them for their quality, and the fact that they are great to write on in both 05 and 07 versions. The former I use for my smaller Moleskine notebooks, while the latter is my preferred size when writing in larger books, and in my calendar. Read more →
Not that kind of goal...
It is not just todo lists and planning that can make your week a little easier, and increase your productivity. As you probably know, I have my own strategy when it comes to managin my week all figured out, I wrote about it in the post Using Weekly Planning to Increase Productivity, and unless you have read that one already, you probably should do so before moving on to this one.
By setting up weekly goals in conjunction with your todo lists and scheduled work, you’ll be able to get those more fluid tasks under control as well. This is how I do it. Read more →
Mondays suck, I regularly have that awful Garfield moment where I realize it is Monday, and that I just don’t want it to be. It’s not that I hate my work week or anything, or that the weekend is such a killer that I want it to never be over, it’s more of a feeling of having to pick myself up. All the way up.
I really hate Mondays.
The good part about these blasted days is that it is when I do my weekly planning, giving myself weekly goals, and a todo list. I have done this for years, trying various ways to manage this system, and have found a model that works for me. It might not work for you, but if it doesn’t, you can always port it to some other way of managing it, to fit your workflow. Read more →
The heat is making my head hurt today, totally killing my focus unless I take breaks. Taking breaks is always good, but mine get longer and longer, until they totally makes me fail my goals.
Wikipedia started it. I wanted to check up on that Robin guy who apparently left Guns n’ Roses, going back to Nine Inch Nails. Now, Axl Rose might be crazy or just slightly too much of a perfectionist, but why you’d want to go to NIN is beyond me… Anyway, that lead to the Guns n’ Roses entry on Wikipedia, which sent me to the page for upcoming album Chinese Democracy. I should’ve known where that would lead, should have just closed my browser and dived into the WordPress codex solving issues with the upcoming Blog Herald design. Read more →
Blogging is very time-consuming and challenging. Either you want to break the story, or you want to be the one adding to it with brilliant thoughts and analysis. Or perhaps your income is based on how often you update, something that isn’t all that uncommon after all.
Do you remember to take breaks?
And more importantly, do you remember to take a day off?
I know it can be hard, because that ever present feeling that we need to update is tough to shrug off. That is partly because it is warranted, most of us are having the problem that we need to produce to make money, and we need to produce a lot. The thing is, having 7 day weeks isn’t the solution. Read more →
Getting back online means having lots of stuff to catch up on. The obviously screaming inbox is one of them, reading another. Not counting work (wether it is blogging, designing or something else), that’s what I need to catch up on.
E-mail is my primary mean of communication. Being away for almost two weeks leaves me with a lot of spam and newsletter cleaning in my inbox (although filters help a lot) and 200 or so e-mails marked urgent reply needed. That’s a whole days work at least, so I’ll try and trim it down to 50 e-mails a day, and also take some extra time to get rid of the ones where a short reply is enough. Marking you e-mail with labels to help you prioritize is a good way to relieve you of some stress. Labels like urgent reply needed, research first and in due time will help a lot if you like me receive a lot of mail. I also label my e-mail after what project they correspond to. That will help me to find all the urgent reply needed e-mails that belongs to a certain design gig. Unfortunately I’ve been sloppy with my labeling so I have my work cut out for me… Read more →