Tag: productivity

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Turn off email alerts

If you have an email program that tells you, with a beep, buzz, flash, pop-up, or some other indicator that you have new mail. Turn it off. Turn it off now. Go ahead… I’ll wait. If you need help finding this in Outlook (they don’t make it easy), it is here:

Tools –> Options –> Preferences tab –> Email Options –> Advanced Email Options

Back already? Well, I’ll take your word for it that you have turned it off. If you did, you can skip the rest of this post because you already get it.

The principle behind this small act of courage is simple, but significant: We should control our technology. Our technology should not control us. By choosing to check your email when you decide it should be checked, you have taken a giant leap forward in harnessing your technology to make it do your bidding. You have also, without them hearing it, shouted “No!” at the hundreds of people who would love to interrupt your most productive periods of time by insisting that you know about the terribly important email they just sent you.

This is, by the way, the best piece of personal organization advice I have ever received. It has saved me more time than a color-coded filing system and keeping my desk clear combined. Happy focusing.

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Clean out Registry deadwood

Over time, Microsoft Windows collects a lot of junk that will slow down your computer. Left over items from uninstalled software, for instance, can include old files as well as registry entries. Left to accumulate for months, these things bog down your PC’s performance. To save time, you need to clean these leftovers out of your system.

Clean up the registry and delete old, unused items with CCleaner.

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Read News and Blogs Efficiently

If you get your news from the internet, don’t get it from web sites directly. Why? Cuz sure as I’m sittin here (and I am), you’ll fall victim to the “shiny object syndrome” and waste the next hour surfing through stories you have no business reading or playing a new game. The internet can be a giant black hole for your time. It happened to me several times while writing this post, actually, and all I’m doing is tracking down the proper URLs for the tools!

The more efficient (read “time saving”) method is to subscribe to your news sources using an RSS feed reader service. Here are some services that let you read news items and articles *without* bombarding you with mortgage company dancers.

It’s not a comprehensive review, although there are links to longer reviews below. I rarely read long reviews. Instead, I prefer for someone who knows about something good to say, “Hey, here’s something good…”. So, hey…

NewsGator

This is the one I use today. It’s simple, has a nice preview ability. They also have a PC-based product called FeedDemon that allows you to read the feeds without logging into a web site. Very nice, but I can still log into the web site from elsewhere and — important point — they keep my read/unread posts synchronized between the web and PC versions.

Google Reader

If you have a Gmail account already, this is simple to start using and very easy to read. Don’t confuse this with iGoogle, which is the personalized Google home page that you add widgets to.

Here’s a couple of good lists in case you want to research the subject further:

Windows:

http://email.about.com/od/rssreaderswin/tp/top_rss_windows.htm

Mac:

http://email.about.com/od/rssreadersmac/tp/top_rss_mac.htm