Perfect Tools

One of the biggest hindrances to personal productivity is the search for perfect tools. Let’s consider an analogy.

John is a carpenter and he wants to be the most productive carpenter he can possibly be.  To reach this goal, he decides he needs the best tools possible, so he sets out to find the perfect hammer.

John visits many stores and tries out different hammers.  They all work fine, but he notices subtle differences.  He finally settles on a wonderful  hammer that he uses for a week, but then he discovers that it gives him a blister, so he sets out to find a better hammer.

John may or may not ever find the perfect hammer.  However, the productivity gain between a “good” hammer and the “perfect” hammer is going to be very slight.  If John is focused on finding the perfect tool, then his productivity is going to suffer.  John needs to be focused on producing.

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Some Online Tools

Rajesh pointed me to Jiffle a web based program for scheduling meetings that integrates with Outlook and Google Calendar. One of the more interesting uses is allowing customers to directly schedule and appointment when you whenever you are free. It looks like it provides many of the features of an Exchange server–without the server.

Louise wrote to tell me about PassPack an online password manager. It will let you autologin to your saved sites and will generate passwords for you.