One of the rare things that I look forward to at the beginning of a school year is how I can improve and enhance my productivity from the last year. Sometimes this is a pipe dream that fades away as fast as a New Year’s resolution, but once in a while I discover a combination that works really well for me — like last year, when I ditched the flash drive and picked up a few other apps that made life as a student much easier.

What follows is a list of my essentials, as I see them, after a year of solid trial by fire. But before I do, I’d like to share a few lessons that I’ve learned, which are:

The Golden Rule(s) of Productivity Tools.

1. If it isn’t dead simple to use, universally accessible, and wicked fast, throw it out — no matter how cool or 1,000-point-oh is seems.

2. Technology isn’t the end-all-be-all key to making you a productive person. Be willing to keep what works, throw out what doesn’t, and go old-school (i.e., with manila folders and notebooks) where it works better for you. The best solution is likely a happy medium between new and old.

3. Keep what works, but don’t be afraid of change, either. It takes a continual amount of experimentation to find what works with your learning/organization process. Moreover, the continual process of improving is what keeps things interesting.

Your future productive self will thank you, even if it’s super boring.

1. Google Calendar + RTM plug-in

This one goes without saying. Zoho offers a decent alternative, but I love GCal for its simple interface to a large array of features. I keep a color-coded set of calendars (Work, School, Personal, and Critical), making sure to set up repeating events for each of the classes in my schedule the day before school begins.

2. Firefox + Three Essential Plug-Ins

Combined with Faviconize and PermaTabs Mod, my email accounts and calendar (along with the to-do list) stay front-and-center at all times. I’m pretty sure I picked up this combo from Lifehacker, and I’m glad I did. Launching multiple hoggish desktop apps instead is less than pleasant.

Although Xmarks is universally useful for synchronizing bookmarks (across IE and Chrome, too, if you use them), it comes in particularly handy for keeping track of links and tidbits that I’m collecting for the next big research paper.

3. Dropbox

I don’t know how I lived without it, but Dropbox has become indispensable to my workflow in more areas than just my education. The best part about this application, I am convinced, is because it doesn’t force you to modify your standard pattern of working: just save to the local Dropbox folder, and everything is synced automatically and with tiny overhead.

I keep a folder for the current school year along with subfolders for each class that I’m taking. Working across multiple computers is a snap because I don’t have to think about where the files are stored — and if I want to walk to the library and print out the essay I’ve just labored over, there’s no need to bring a laptop, because all of the data is accessible from the web.

I even synchronize my time spent working remotely, logged with Grindstone, using Dropbox. It rocks.

4. Remember the Milk

RTM is an online to-do list on steroids, but its brawn isn’t immediately transparent thanks to a simple and effective user interface. I’ve evaluated a range of alternatives from Task Coach, to TeuxDeux, to Toodledo, but none strike the same balance of features and simplicity of use as Remember the Milk offers. I logged and completed more than 1000 tasks over the course of my Junior year, and felt considerably more productive.

The process I used morphed a bit from the first to second semester, but here’s a rough overview:

1. If the professor has been kind enough to plan all of the assignments, homework, and due dates into the Syllabus, these go directly into RTM within the first week. It’s a lot of typing, but it pays off in the time it saves by having all assignments due for the the day centrally located.
   The keyboard shortcuts that RTM features are well worth the effort of learning — and it doesn’t take much; they’re all single-key. Here’s the combination I use most:
   1. t – create a new task
   2. d – set the date
   3. (repeat above as needed)
   4. m – manipulate multiple tasks
   5. s – tag all selected
   6. n – deselect all
   7. (repeat 1-6 for all each day up to a month in advance, for  each class)
2. Each week, I do my best to review both my calendar and all tasks on RTM two weeks in advance, making new tasks for the current week as necessary (for the larger projects) in order to meet deadlines for homework assignments and such that are logged with current tasks. This way I am reminded to start the longer-term projects early; the dailies are performed and checked off in a normal fashion.
3. The prior two steps enable me to practice a greatly simplified morning  routine, consisting of a brief visit to my Calendar and a click on the RTM drop-down for the day.

Notes: Digital or Not?

My sophomore year, I grabbed Office Ultimate 2007 on UltimateSteal, and immediately made a snap decision to take all of my notes on my laptop. As excited as I was for OneNote, though, my plentiful math and science classes soon made the effort to keep digital notes more trouble than it was worth, particularly after the “shine” wore off of the experience.

Actually, I still don’t use the program since I dropped it, even though I regard it as a brilliant app — and have at least one coworker who swears by it.  The reason that I take notes by hand these days is primarily because of the following:

1. I am a Computer Science student. I spend way too much time at the screen already, and staring at a laptop to take notes isn’t that profitable when I am inevitably doomed to trudge back to the dorm and spend a late evening hacking code.
2. Although I’m now running Office 2010 with all of the Live features that the suite has to offer, I’ve found that text documents synced with Dropbox does just as well for the vast majority of notes that I do need to store digitally, with much less overhead.
3. There is an inexplicable, intangible feeling of investment in the note-taking process when it is done by hand; a satisfying sensation of seeing ink splash across the page that a keyboard can’t even come close to replacing.
4. My laptop weighs a bazillion pounds. I hate lugging the thing around with a passion, and the loud, rattling CD tray invariably revvs up during class.

Of course, taking notes with a laptop comes with its advantages: at the top of the list is that typed notes are much faster to take than handwritten ones, closely followed by pros of instant searchability, and easy backups.

This year, I’m considering adapting the Cornell Note-taking method.

Wrap-Up

Though the combination of tools and processes above is from last year, since I am please with the way that it turned out, I’m going to do my best to resist the tech-junkie’s urge to try new services and stick with what works for my senior year.

Do you have a better process or combination of technology that works better for you? Let me know in the comments.

Grindstone 2, the task management and time tracking solution from Epiforge, has become an indispensable component of my workflow (I did a full review on this great utility a little while back that you can find here). Recently I discovered a way to seamlessly synchronize tasks on multiple computers if you’re already using Dropbox.

IMPORTANT: Play it safe… please backup your data before continuing!

1. Ensure that Grindstone is fully closed (right click on system tray icon and select Exit).
2. Create a folder named “Grindstone 2,” or something you can remember, in your Dropbox folder on the local file system. For example, C:\Users\<YourName>\Documents\My Dropbox\Work\Grindstone Mobile\Grindstone 2.
3. Locate C:\Users\<YourName>\AppData\Roaming\Grindstone 2 and copy its entire contents to the folder you just created in (2).

   

   Before continuing, ensure that the folder that you’ve just copied contains, among other files, config.gsc2 — this is the XML file that Grindstone uses to keep track of settings, tasks, segments, and all your other saved information.

4. Rename the original (in AppData\Roaming) to something like “Grindstone 2 Backup.”
   
5. Download Junction, a free utility from Microsoft. We’re going to use it to create a soft link from the original location to the new location within Dropbox’s jurisdiction, so that Grindstone 2 will link to the data indirectly when the program starts, without being able to tell the difference. NOTE: Normal Windows links (i.e., .lnk files to a folder) will not work for this purpose.
6. From wherever you extracted Junction, hold down shift and right-click in Explorer, and select “Open command window here.”
7. Now, execute the following instruction to create the soft link (note that this is actually all one line):
   
junction "C:\Users\<YourName>\AppData\Roaming\Grindstone 2" "C:\Users\<YourName>\Documents\My Dropbox\Work\Grindstone Mobile\Grindstone 2"

   The result of this command is shown below:

   

8. To verify that this worked, you can cd to Roaming and execute dir. What you see should resemble the following:
   
9. Now for the true test: launch Grindstone, and verify that all your profiles and tasks are intact.

Repeat this process on any other computer that you wish to sync Grindstone with. Note that in order for the tasks to be synchronized, it will be necessary to shut down Grindstone at the end of your work day since Dropbox cannot sync files that are in use.

The alternative Flash IDE from SoThink, normally $72.21, is free today ONLY on http://www.giveawayoftheday.com. SWF Quicker has some interesting features such as importing a project from .SWFs and .FLVs, as well as a standard editing interface that resembles Flash CS3 but with a seemingly snappier interface. For a complete list of features, see the first link below.

Product home page: http://www.sothink.com/product/swfquicker/
Download page (today only): http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/swf-quicker-4-7-holiday/

I’ve put together a quick video to show you how to extract the installer file from its Giveawayoftheday wrapper (useful since the wrapped executable will only allow installation today). The video also demonstrates importing a .SWF as a new project. Running length: 5:32.

During the school year, I work from home on a part-time basis, and for most of the semester I kept track of my tasks and time on pencil and paper. At least, I tried. More often, when the time comes to write my end-of-day summary, I have difficulty remembering everything that I’ve worked on, let alone how much time was dedicated to each task. It’s typically at these points of crisis that I turn to technology to solve my problems (and though there is something to be said about the value of stepping away from the computer when planning and brainstorming, mundane time and task management is hardly an effort that should require creative juices. At least that’s my excuse for playing with new technology, as always.)

At any rate, this time the solution comes in the form of Grindstone 2 by Epiforge Software, a free program for the Windows platform. Linux users can consider checking out Project Hamster, but I’d like to detail my pleasant experience thus far with Grindstone here.

The most appealing aspect of Grindstone is that while it is relatively straightforward to use, the app includes enough tools to make the power user happy, too: diverse report generation allows me to export a nice-looking timesheet, glance at the summary for a task or for a given date/time range, and view a pie-chart breakdown if I’m feeling visual. Grindstone supports custom fields and values for sorting tasks, the ability to parse custom fields from task names (with a little Regular Expressions), multiple profiles, and a dozen seemingly minuscule features that nonetheless make a world of difference in usability.

After setting up a profile, selecting a task and clicking the Start icon displays the egg timer; this tiny window sits at the top of my screen and lets me select the current task I’m working on throughout the day without revisiting the main program window. The egg timer’s window opacity can be adjusted from the program’s Options dialog.

About half a dozen times throughout the day, I walk away from the computer without remembering to hit ‘Stop’ on the current task. But no worries: when I return, Grindstone’s inactivity timer triggers, yelling politely prompting to account for my time. If, on the other hand, I forget to start timing a task (which also happens more than I care to admit) upon returning from the 4th coffee break of the day, the application will display a friendly reminder.

(P.S.: Just in case you just noticed the change from XP to Windows 7, I must mention that Grindstone’s profile backup and restore capability is quite convenient.)

Confession time: as annoying as I thought these features would be at first, they have turned out to make a world of difference in rendering the time management system an effective way to manage my day. Of course, if the notifications are a bit too intrusive for your taste, their settings can easily be adjusted.

At some point, I decided I needed to be able to categorize my tasks based on priority. Grindstone easily accommodates this with custom fields, so I created a field named “Priority” and enabled sorting on that field.

So far so good, but manually adjusting every task that I had to enter after I entered it became tedious rather quickly. Luckily, the Advanced Entry tab of the custom fields box (under Profile Configuration) allows one to set a match and format pattern in order to parse a field value from the task name. In my case, I decided that I would like to be able to enter a new task such as “Begin world domination (high)” in the quick task pane and have the new task “Begin world domination” be automatically added to the “High” group. Unfortunately, the description of the “match” and “format” patterns is a little terse and there is currently no help topic available on how to use it. However, to my delight, my cry of distress posted on Grindstone’s user forums was answered in less than an hour. How’s that for customer support?

The result of the endeavor is shown in the screenshot below, which also attempts to explain the fields. (Thanks Daniel!)

Okay. I’ve saved the coolest part for last: the report generation.

In my opinion, this is invaluable asset both for reference — at the end of the day, as I wistfully look over the progress report wishing for better productivity (kidding!) — and due to the fact that it allows me to generate a summary of the time spent over the week (or any interval, for that matter). Below, the summary report is being used to copy and paste a pre-formatted table into Excel:

If your time tracking needs are a bit more advanced, Lifehacker reviewed some pretty heavy-duty time management solutions some time back. But as far as I’m concerned, Grindstone does the trick for the extend of my needs. Kudos to the guys at Epiforge for a great product!

Psst: when can we expect a Linux port?

Google announced the other day that it would begin allowing users of the GrandCentral service to migrate to Google Voice (in Beta). I have had a GrandCentral account for some time, but I never ended up using it. Google aquiring the service hopefully gives it the potential for a little more longevity, so I decided to take it for a spin.

Voicemail Recording & Transcribing

The voicemail service was present in GrandCentral, but transcribing was not. I gave it a try, with decent results:

Also very cool is the instant email notification you get of a new voicemail message:

Free Outgoing SMS

GMail users will recognize this feature the similar SMS lab available to the public. Works like it says, and quickly, too.

Group-Specific Forwarding Options

This has to be one of my favorite features of Google Voice — the ability to control which callers are screened and which customized voicemail greetings they hear, based on which contact group they are a part of. I did, however, have some difficulty getting the latter feature to work.

In the end, probably one of the best improvements over GrandCentral is the no-nonsense, intuitive, familiar Google user interface. Not to mention, the automated answering and screening recordings have been replaced with a sexy Google voice, which is a definite presentation plus!

Does GV offer enough features to make it worth giving out a new number? For me, that’s still up in the air.

Perhaps somewhat odd for someone who loves technology so much, I have decided to take a break from Google Calendar and switch back to a regular planner. Not because Google doesn’t provide a great service; on the contrary, I have found that no matter how great or advanced any given technology is, if it’s not convenient for you to use, you won’t use it.

And thus has been my experience (since I’m not always around a computer when I need to check my schedule). Last semester I grew just a little disorganized for comfort. So, back to pencil and paper it is — low-tech, but hopefully a better choice for managing my ever-growing schedule.