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I just came across this and thought it was great: http://www.jott.com/JottInAction.aspx

You call an 800# that you have in speed dial, then you record a to-do item for yourself or others, then it is sent to your inbox (or theirs). Best of all, it's free.

I know some of you mentioned some cool calendar sites you were using at the conference. Those might be fun to share. Also, any cool BlackBerry apps would be great.

dorian.w's picture
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Great post! I've been using http://www.vitalist.com for managing my work. I've found it useful, as it's web based, accessible from my blackberry, and uses the David Alled GTD guidance fairly closely.

Dorian

shimrodmimir's picture

I've tried Vitalist, and I must say I thought it fell short for me. What I mainly missed was the ability to view projects and actions hierarchically, in stead of just a list of one and the other. I also found it didn't really support the weekly review very well, as it is hard to see at a glance which projects are without actions for instance. I'm now trying [url=http://www.thinkingrock.com.au/]thinking rock[/url]. It is not web based unfortunately, but it has been developed in Java, so I carry it around on my memory stick and it runs everywhere. So far I'm quite happy with it, but I'll need a few more weeks to ba able to give a full and balanced judgment.

corinag's picture

These are just little "hacks" I use to make certain tasks easier or mistake free, nothing major like "Thinking Rock" (which I've downloaded and plan to use)

I'm on the net (from a computer) a lot, so I use a lot of browser add-ons to make my work easier. I use Firefox, and have installed plugins to:
- post to any of my blogs from the firefox window - [url]www.scribefire.com[/url]
- Twitter from the search bar -
[url]http://lud.icro.us/post-twitter-updates-from-firefox/[/url]
- save articles and pages I am interested as an image on my hard-drive - this to me is invaluable, as although I prefer reading printed stuff, I don't hoard paper - Screengrab ([url]www.screengrab.org[/url])
- preview pages before I click the link - Interclue - [url]http://interclue.com[/url]
- read RSS feeds I am interested in - it's an old plug-in, but still the simplest, least intrusive and most productive. Sage - [url]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/77[/url]

I like all of these because they have what I want: information in one click, and nothing that I don't want - frills and features that distract from the tool's basic purpose.

I use Thunderbird as my e-mail client, and have some interesting add-ons that make my life easier:
- Attachment remember - if your outgoing mail has words like attachment, attach, and whatever else you configure it for (I also use the Romanian and French words, since I write in those languages as well) but no attachment, it asks you whether you've remembered to attach the file. I know Mark's against attachments, but here they are used extensively, and you make a fool of yourself by sending an e-mail in which you refer to a missing attachment. [url]https://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/index-en.html#ar[/url]
- Clippings - a database of text you use often (like boilerplate or letter templates) that you can add to and insert at will. Very easy to use, non-intrusive, great. [url]http://clippings.mozdev.org/installation.html[/url]

terrih's picture

To track how I spend my time:

www.slimtimer.com

vinnie2k's picture

[quote="kklogic"]I just came across this and thought it was great: http://www.jott.com/JottInAction.aspx

You call an 800# that you have in speed dial, then you record a to-do item for yourself or others, then it is sent to your inbox (or theirs). Best of all, it's free.

I know some of you mentioned some cool calendar sites you were using at the conference. Those might be fun to share. Also, any cool BlackBerry apps would be great.[/quote]

OMG!! This is amazing!
Thanks so much for sharing.

WillDuke's picture
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Is this really free? Do you have to listen to ads or what? I've heard of this before. It looks neat.

James Gutherson's picture

Jott really does sound good - I just wish there was a non North American version equivalent.

garyslinger's picture
Licensee BadgeTraining Badge

[quote="WillDuke"]Is this really free? Do you have to listen to ads or what? I've heard of this before. It looks neat.[/quote]

Totally free (other than any phone minute usage you may incur) - I use it every day.

G.

itilimp's picture
Licensee Badge

Thanks for the link to 'Thinking Rock'. I've been struggling to find ways of using my existing tools (Mind Manager, Outlook at home, Groupwise at work) to work in the GTD process. I had a play with this last night and I think that it may be what I need to fill the gap - particularly if I can carry it around on a USB key and have different files for work and home.

WillDuke's picture
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I'm going to try this JOTT. I have no idea how they run this as a business, but it looks interesting. I might even bother figuring out how to set a speed dial on my blackberry. :)

Thanks KK & Gary.

tcomeau's picture
Training Badge

I often find useful things at Gina Tripani's LifeHacker site, [url]http://lifehacker.com/[/url]. There's a highlights feed if you want the low-traffic version, and the most useful items are usually in the highlights.

I assume that most people who are GTD fans follow Merlin Mann's 43Folders
[url]http://www.43folders.com/[/url]. There's an associated podcast.

Perversely, given my technophilia, the only tool I recommend for a Crackberry is this one: [url]http://tinyurl.com/ld3cb[/url]

tc>

ccleveland's picture

Will, RE: Jott

I've been using it for a few months. No advertising on the call itself...very fast...somewhat accurate. Tip to increase accuracy: speak slowly, enunciate and spell strange words. Even when it doesn't translate exactly, it's enough to trigger your memory.

I think they're still working out the service first. Looks like future business model could be advertising based on the "daily jott summary email" and on the website or charges for premium service.

CC

WillDuke's picture
Training Badge

Thank you CC. I appreciate the additional tips.

gilz's picture

Lifehacker is great, and introduced me to a lot of tweaks.

Another site I'm using to improve productivity is Productivity501. While life hacker usually about tips, this guy takes a look at the big picture.

http://www.productivity501.com/

chrispancho's picture

You wouldn't believe the amount of people I see saying "just write it down on a piece of paper?" Well...A piece of paper can't go to your email, your friends email and phone, OR a group of friend's emails and phones. Jott is relaly useful and is way convenient. AND it's free!

AManagerTool's picture

I have been using Jott now for a week. WOW, thanks for the tip!

jwyckoff's picture

http://www.netvibes.com

RSS aggregater, like Google Reader, but MUCH better UI. I can't live without it.

I read my manager tools blog posts and forum comments from it.

Mark's picture
Admin Role Badge

Thank you all for all these great tips. In switching to the Mac (more on which below), Ive been re-examining the way I work, and I need to think afresh on things.

(The move has been the hardest ever, but not because of the Mac. It's my schedule...every other time I've done this, I just carved out a weekend and killed one system and moved over. But this time, I haven't made the scheduling of it a priority, and my schedule rules my life now. Working on it!)

And for the record, I am NOT against attachments. I PERSONALLY don't read too many of them...but they are necessary in many cases. And when they are, I DO read them. I think I've done a poor job of communicating the difference between my personal interests and those of most High D's. While I am a High D, I also play one on the casts, and therein sometimes overstate my case to make clear the inherent biases we all have.

Sorry this took so long.

Mark

jeroendemiranda's picture

I find Twitter and FriendFeed to be very powerful tools for finding information in a quick and targetted way.

When searching I now use these tools more than e.g. Google.com.

Main reason: search results are 'attached' to other participants on these platforms, many of whom I have a good idea whether they are expert on the topic I am searching for.

'Social Search' so to speak!

Interestingly, on this forum almost nobody mentions using these platforms.

Yoy can find me at:

http://www.friendfeed.com/jeroendemiranda

http://www.friendfeed.com/rooms/manager-tools (private FriendFeed room just created; please indicate if you would like to be invited. This is just an experiment from my side; I don't know if this adds any additional value to this great Manager-Tools forum. Wait and see!).

P.S. the bookmarklet FireFox addon script makes it very easy to share to FriendFeed any interesting things I find on the internet. This is even more convenient than e.g. social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us. Reason: other FriendFeed users comment these bookmarks.

http://www.twitter.com/jeroendemiranda

My welcome words at Manager-Tools:
http://www.manager-tools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3220

bug_girl's picture

for those of you who use a Mac:

OmniFocus is basically Thinking Rock on Crack. Really wonderful.
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/

Mailtags is an addon to Mail that lets you put keywords, tickles, and assign projects, as well as immediately scheduling events in iCal. And color coding :)

http://www.indev.ca/MailTags.html

Neither of these are free, but they are well worth the money! (Under $50 each)

Also, another vote for NetVibes. I love it.

thaGUma's picture

I hope I am being superflous here ...
[url]www.crackberry.com[/url]

dajoines's picture

Well... It was too great of a tool to be totally free forever! Jott is out of Beta.

http://jott.com/jotters/index.php/beta-page

suedavis's picture
Training Badge

http://www.pocketmod.com -- this has replaced my Hipster; I just print a new one weekly in place of my weekly card review.

Oh, and the other link that has really helped is http://www.manager-tools.com . :-)