6 Tools You Can Use to make 2010 a More Productive, Enjoyable Year

2010 seems to have come out of nowhere, here and waiting for you to make the most of it. You're ready, right? If you're not quite there, or would like some resources to make it even better, I have several to recommend today. I wasn't specifically looking for tools to start out the year, but a cluster of them showed up on my radar, and I wanted you to know about them.

For a long while I’ve been of the mind to seek out all in one solutions to organizing my life, work, plans. I’ve come to realize that’s an unfair burden to try and place on one piece of software. Nothing out there does all things well for all people using it. I thought Daylite was that for me. It’s not. And that’s okay. These days I'm finding that a variety of tools, each with their own strong suits, suits me better. Have a look, give them a try, let me know your experiences, ok?


Writing

I don’t know about you, but I write a lot in my work. And I generally don’t need elaborate formatting options to do it. When blogging, I tend to avoid Word, as it adds a lot of restrictive excessive formatting that mucks with altering it once in the blog interface. I’ve used Text Edit often, it's clean interface without button confetti is great, but then I can get distracted with all the other windows behind it on my desktop. There have been numerous options created that attempt to go minimal, and be the only thing you see. Writeroom, and other clutter minimizing apps. But they, to me, are too minimal, and ultimately, become boring.

Ommwriter is completely different than any writing tool I’ve seen. Created by digital creative agency Herraiz Soto & Co. , it hits a sweet spot for me: I like things simple. But not boring. Ommwriter achieves this, creating a beautiful, immersive experience, where you have a number of soothing, minimal backgrounds to choose from, ambient sounds/music to accompany it, even a choice of keyboard click sounds, including one that is slightly musical, and needs to be heard to be fully understood.

Ommwriter from Herraiz Soto on Vimeo.

It’s clear that some skilled interface designers had a hand in this, and this free app is a pleasure to create in. You choose how much or how little of the sound options you use. All controls stay invisible until you move the mouse, and even then, they're simple, intuitive, and don't distract from the flow. Need to duck out and get a link to paste in? Easy, the minimize button appears, you get what you need , then dive back in. Beautiful. And productive.

Time

 Speaking of productivity, do you ever find yourself wondering where the week, day, heck, last 2 hours went? RescueTime is here to show you, without any need for you to go out of your way to do it. You simply install the software, and it tracks your activity, it then shows you exactly what you did, per application, and depending on the program, even more granular information.

It tells you which of those activities it thinks are productive, which not (which if you think is incorrect, you can change settings for the future) Then it's up to you how you shift your activities accordingly. Like cars having realtime mileage indicators, even this base information is going to help a lot of you.

But Rescue Time goes further, giving you the option to choose a designated amount of focus time, where non productive apps and activities (and everything else aside from the current activity, if you choose) will be locked out from use. A sort of Disneyland Autopia guardrail for your activities. According to their site, they help users recover an average 3 hours 54 minutes a week.

Tasks

If you're anything like me, you've tried what seems like dozens of ways to manage your tasks. From the most elaborate software to hand written lists, they all have their merits. And their limitations. It seems to range from a scattered assortment of papers to an overwhelming monster list glaring at you on your computer or phone. How about somehting  in between, with flexibility to shift with your shifting organizational needs and sophistication of planning?

Things, for me, is that.

There are so many things that make Things recommendable, but one thing did it for me: the ability to enter tasks, whenever they come to mind, with relevant context, without having to go elsewhere on your computer, to the app itself, to enter it. Or if you have an iPhone, there it is too.

Others have written at length about its virtues, but it boils down to this: You can sort tasks & projects by whichever way makes most sense to you. And that includes by tags. Yes, you can tag to your heart's content, in the GTD methodology, or whatever terms help you best make sense of and retrieve your activities later.

When it comes time to do the tasks, you can sort them by what's due today, what area of responsibility (i.e. I sort per client, home related, and Portland, where I'm moving in the Spring)
This way, should you feel in a linear mood, you could just go through, by area, the tasks of the day. Or if you just feel like number crunching, click the tag for that and crunch away.

Energy Management (your own)

Today's monitors have gotten more and more brighter, more colorful, and more...disruptive to your sleep. That's right, when your eyes have light shown at it at daylight levels, your Circadian Rhythm thinks it's time to be awake and alert. Fine if it's daytime. Not so good when you're going to sleep shortly after using the computer.

What to do?

F.lux, a free app, fixes this, by mimicking the light quality in your room. Not as in the auto level adjusting that Macs do, but the actual "warmth" of the colors that varies by type of lighting. You tell it what sort of lighting you have on, where in the world you are, and it keeps colors in line with what's around you - daylight/lighting in the day, and at sunset, it shifts to a gentler, more nighttime appropriate light level. Your body doesn't get the time confused, you get your work done, and you get some good sleep after.

Thought management (ditto)

 I’ve had an account with Evernote using their desktop service for nearly 2 years. And barely used it. Why should I? Delicious quickly serves as a way to store the web pages I want to remember and keep for future resources. I can share what I bookmark via Facebook, building brand. Marking pages I want to read in the near future is accomplished with ease via Feedly.

Then came Evernote’s iPhone app, and it changed the game for me. The ability to document, make searchable, and ultimately, more useful the things I encounter out in the world, without having to wait to get to my computer, is the clincher. Photos, notes, your voice can all go straight into there, synced up with the desktop app and ready to be made use of whenever you're ready. And in a vast improvement since I last actively used it, Evernote searches by text within images with a high degree of accuracy.

The app also uses geolocation technology to give location relevancy to what you find out there, marking exactly where you found it so you have an additional way to find it again.

Finances and Ye Olde Business Cards

Ah, finances. The Achilles heel of so many. Whether you work for someone or create your own work, you collect receipts. Business cards. Lots of them. You've tried valiantly (or at least thought about it) to organize them usefully, without absorbing hours of time. Perhaps you've even tried a scanner that claims it's made for this purpose. And it may even be true. But you're still using precious time you could be using to save the world, and get paid for it. Enter Shoeboxed.

Shoeboxed is a dream come true. You just mail all your receipts and business cards to them, and they scan, categorize, and put it into a format you can either use in their service, or upload it into your other tools of choice. Like Evernote, for instance.

And the price for this? Exceptionally reasonable. For my needs, about the price of a meal a month. A fast food meal. If you're an Evernote user, even better.  They now have mobile apps for both iPhone and other smart phones, where you can photograph receipts and they get included in your Shoeboxed account, not counting against the monthly scan limit.

There you go, a smorgasbord of life and work enhancing tools to lighten up and turbo boost your 2010. What are you using? Have you tried any of these services? What's been your experience? Chime in, below.