Choosing a PDA

Personal digital organizers can be a a great tool for your produtivity when used correctly.  They can also be huge time wasters.  I’ve used a number of digital handheld devices over the last few years.  Some were great time savers and others cost me more in productivity.  Here are some tips on choosing a device that will help you save time and be more organized.

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Your Not to Do list

Everyone is familiar with having a "To Do List".  But for many individuals the bottleneck to their productivity isn’t the lack of knowing what to do.  Just as important as knowing what to do is knowing what not to do.  That is where a "Not To Do List" comes in.   

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Decisions in Advance take two

Today I was skimming an article on LifeHack.org that referenced another article.  The quote made some good points, but it seemed vaguely familiar.  On a closer reading I realized that it was a link to and quote from my article from this site about making decisions ahead of time. Reading it in this way gave me a fresh perspective and some other ideas on how to make decisions in advance.

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The Power of Paper

Everyone has their favorite and least favorite tools.  For example, I love my computer, but tend to despise fax machines.  Today I had a bunch of work to do that would have been much easier with a fax machine.  I managed to do everything I needed using a scanner and email, but I was finally forced to admit that there is still room for a fax machine in my toolset.  I still don’t really like fax machines, but sometimes it is the perfect tool for the job.  Today I felt like I was using a screwdriver to drive nails–sure the nail will go in eventually, but a hammer is really what you need.  It would be silly to decide that I don’t like hammers so I’m going to use a screwdriver, but I’ve found that is what I’m prone to do with other tools.

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Optimal Time for Productivity

Often times our productivity on a given task is very much tied to the time of day.  For example I find that exercising in the afternoon seems to work best for me because it lets me unwind from the day.  I’ve always found it odd that my most productive times for programming are after 10pm.  There are obviously advantages to doing things late in the evening–fewer distractions, etc.  However, even when I’m not going to be interupted during the day, I still can’t seem to get into the "zone" as much as I can late at night.

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Large Monitor = More Productivity

Apple hired a company to study the productivity impact of using a 30 inch monitor as compared to a 20 inch and 17 inch monitor.  The results indicate that a user on a 30 inch monitor will save about 1.3 hours per week over a user on a 17 inch monitor.  The report is based on what they consider to be normal usage.

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