Test Your Computer's Exposure to Internet Hackers

If you have ever seen a firewall at work, you would be amazed at the number of intruders that are regularly knocking at the doors of your Internet-connected computer, trying to gain access. How do you know if your firewall is properly configured, or whether your computer is exposed to internet hackers? Shields Up is a fantastic service that will diagnose the extent of your computer's vulneribility to third parties.

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Using a Downloads Folder

Do you have a Downloads folder on your computer (that is, a folder where you download programs to)? If not, it is highly recommended, since it will be a long term repository of programs that you have downloaded and installed to your computer. When such an installed program gets corrupted, it can be easily reinstalled from this folder. When you buy a new computer, the downloads are in one place for transfer to and reinstallation in your new computer. When your computer crashes, once it is reconstituted you can reinstall the downloaded programs (which of course are on some type of back up media). Lastly, when you download a program and want to install it, you always know where to find it.

Get Folder Size Data in Explorer

While Windows Explorer reveals the size of files, it does not display the size of folders. This useful information must either by accessed through third party utilities, or an individual folder must be right-clicked and then its size determined using 'Properties.'

A useful Explorer extension exists that will display the size of folders. It will impose a slight load on your computer since it operates as a background process.

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The Overstuffed Inbox

We all have had to deal with an overstuffed email inbox. This might have been when we started GTD or perhaps when we have not been diligent in keeping up with our regular email processing. Here are some tips from Dwayne Melancon on how to get through the job of processing an overstuffed email inbox:

Consider temporarily following a “one minute rule” for handling messages (instead of the "two minute rule" from the Getting Things Done book). During this process, I used the one minute rule for two reasons:

-I had too many messages to afford myself that much time per message
-I wasn’t very good at judging two minutes, and ended up spending 5+ minutes on things I thought were going to be two minute actions.

Sort by sender, then...
-Consider deleting:
---Messages from people you don’t know
---Message from people who are no longer with the company
---Newsletters you’ll never read (be honest)
---Messages from people who only send you lame jokes and hoaxes (you know who they are by now)
---Messages from benevolent Nigerians or foreign national lotteries claiming to have money for you

Sort by Subject / Topic / Conversation, then...
-Delete:
---Issues you don’t care about
---Outdated newsletters that are still there from the first pass
-Delete or file:
---Issues that have been resolved
---Decide whether you need to file the whole thread or just the one with the conclusion
-File things you want to retain for reference, like:
---Interesting factoids that you want to retain for reference
---Information for personnel files
---Information pertinent to your job, goals, hobbies, etc.
---Funny stuff
---Praise and criticism (I file these under Kudos, with a subfolder for Antikudos)
---References to useful resources

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11 Things That Will Steal Your Time

Dr. Donald E. Wetmore discusses 11 "time stealers." Many of these we've heard about, some we haven't, but all worth reviewing:

1. Poor planning. People don't plan to fail but a lot of people fail to plan. Without a plan of action set up before your day begins you are likely to get caught up in "stuff", responding the loudest voice that gets your time and attention. Will you have been productive for the day? Sure, but not as productive as you might have been.
2. Crisis management. When a deadline sneaks up on you it robs you of all choice and you are controlled by the clock. Crisis management, for the most part, is poor time management because you're rushed and stressed, letting things slip through the cracks and often having to go back and redo what was not done well in the first place. Most of what puts you into crisis management is within your control, you could have seen it coming.
3. Procrastination. All the planning in the world does not substitute for the doing. Many find that they just can't get going on the things that will make a big difference in their success. They have "permanent potential". First thing in your day, get going on the most difficult tasks and get them out of the way.
4. Interruptions. Unanticipated events coming your way, in person or electronically, can steal your time away. Many interruptions are necessary and part of what you get paid for. However, most are unnecessary thieves of your time. Be less willing to automatically give away your time just because they demand it. Rather, determine whether or not they deserve it.
5. Not delegating. "If you want a job done well you better do it yourself." What a thief! Look at everything you have to do and ask, "Is this the best use of my time?" If it is, do it. If not, delegate it. There's a world of difference between "I do it" and "It gets done." Leverage your time through others and don't allow the things that can be delegated to steal your time.
6. Unnecessary meetings. If two or more people get together and nothing productive comes of the time spent together, that meeting was unnecessary and, sadly, most meetings are time thieves. Before meeting ask, "Is it really necessary?" If it is, then meet but take action as a result of the meeting and not let it be a time bandit.
7. The "shuffling blues". Many people manage their time through piles. Piles of appear on their desk. Piles of "to be read" emails on their computer and lots of "to be heard" voicemails stored away. The piles require frequent review creating the shuffling blues which surrenders valuable time. Keep a clean work environment. When encountering something new, schedule it to your day planner under the day you plan to tackle it and then put it away so you are out of the shuffling blues.
8. Poor physical setup. Not having the things you need the most often within arm's reach and having a lot of the things you rarely need close by causes you to waste a lot of time wearing out the carpet retrieving what you frequently need. And of course, as you pass others they will often pull you aside to steal some of your time. Have the most needed stuff near by, within arm's reach and save that stolen time.
9. Poor networking. Quality relationships with others can be a huge time saver as they open doors for you with all kinds of opportunities. Failing to develop a good network base will cause you to waste time creating what you might have had through your network. Be a good networker. Help them whenever possible. You want a friend? You have to be a friend.
10. Bad attitude. Nothing sinks a day more effectively than having a poor attitude. It causes you to dwell on the problems and not the solutions and makes it possible to throw the day away. When you are burdening others with your problems and complaints you are stealing your time and theirs. And the truth is that when you complain to others, 85% of them really don't care and the other 15% are actually glad it's happening to you.
11. Negative people. Some people are the life of the party and some people are the death of the party. The problem with having negative people around you is you wind up spending a lot of your time listening to their complaints rather than focusing on your success.

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Some Ideas to Help with a Messy Desk

Often times, the problem is not cleaning the desk --though that can be a challenge-- but maintaining the clean workspace. Here are some tips to help keep the desk clean:

• Sort your mail and toss junk as it arrives. Even with an in-basket, you need to process your mail daily to avoid accumulating a stack of paper.
• Get rid of sticky notes and scraps of paper. Get a single notebook and use it to record notes, phone numbers, web addresses, ideas, to-dos, etc.
• Create a list or binder of regularly referenced material, such as phone numbers, and keep it accessible in a desk drawer.
• Schedule filing time at least once per week.
• Add dated or calendar items to a tickler file system or a diary as soon as they arrive.
• When you stop working on something, put it away until the next time you need it. Don't leave half-completed projects sitting on your desktop.
• Keep nothing on your desk unless you absolutely need them. If you aren't joining sheets of paper with tape, move the dispenser off the desk. If you want personal photos in the office, restrict it to one or better yet, hang them on the wall.
• Keep a reading folder for material you need or want to read at some time. Scheduling a regular reading time to clear that material.
• Create a "waiting for" or pending file to hold items dependent on outside action.
• Create a weekly appointment to clean your desk and this includes dusting or polishing. You might be less inclined to mess up a shiny desk.

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Saving a Few Clicks

Few persons who heavily use computers haven't had some ache or pain relating from that use, if not something more serious like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. An interesting software tool that reduces the stress on your hands and arms is Nib software.

Essentially, what this software does is the mouse clicking for you. You move your mouse to where you want it, and then instead of clicking the mouse, the software has a timer that will click it for you. The software can handle double clicks, right clicks, highlighting, and drag and drop too. According to their website, mouse clicking is a large part of the stress put on the arms and hands from computer use. Since the software dramatically reduces manual mouse clicks, stress on the arms and hands is thus reduced.

I am trying out the software, using the 30 day trial period. Even though it is pricey, I really do enjoy it and I think it may have some long term benefits since I am a heavy user.

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Google Desktop Search Ver. 2 Beta - Sidebar

Google's new Version 2 Beta includes many new productivity features. One of my favorites is the Sidebar, a new desktop feature that shows you your new email, weather and stock information, personalized news and RSS/Atom feeds, and more. Sidebar is personalized automatically, without any manual configuration required (though you can certainly make your own customizations if you want to).

Google has also improved the desktop search experience. With Quick Find, you can now launch applications and see search results as you type without even opening a browser. It has also extended its Outlook integration, so you can search Google Desktop with the Outlook Toolbar and see results within Outlook itself. Finally, you can search even more stuff, including your Gmail, files on network drives, many Outlook data types (including Contacts, Tasks, Calendar, Notes and Journal) and MSN Messenger chats. And if you yearn for even stronger security, you can encrypt your entire index.

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Online Bookmarks and More

If you access the Web from more than one computer, you know what a hassle it can be to be able to make sure your regularly-used site bookmarks are available on all your various computers (including public computers). Sites like del.icio.us help us deal with this problem.

Another "multiple computer" problem arises if we track our task management system (such as Getting Things Done/GTD) on one computer, but come up with items to add to it while at another computer.

An interesting site helps deal with both these issues in one fell swoop. If one sets up a "home page" at www.protopage.com, you can then keep lists of frequently used links on that page. You can also keep "post-it" notes on that page, too. You can access and change these items from any computer you are working on that has Internet access. The post-it notes are useful to enter a task or Next Action that you want to remember, and then when you are at the correct computer, access and put into your task management system. Your home page also can allow access to search engines. By setting your personal protopage as your home page on your browser, you can further facilitate quick access to these saved links and notes.

While none of what protopage does is unique, the combination of items is a useful productivity tool.

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When You Have No Pen or Paper...

What can you do when you have no pen or paper handy and you need to write something down? If you have your cell phone handy, one idea is to call yourself, and leave a voice message which you can receive later. You can take this a step further and sign up for a voice mail telephone number using a service like K7 - this service will forward your telephone message to your email inbox which you can read later.

The Philosophy Of Life Hacks

Interesting article about the philosophies of life hacks and trying to be more productive, from the Financial Times:

The risk of life-hacking is that the time taken to read and absorb the hacks, let alone implement them, hugely outweighs the time they save. (This is true of computer hacks, too; Douglas Adams, no mean hacker in his day, wrote of the seductive delight of tinkering with subroutines that would save seconds each time they were used but took hours to write.) Devotees refer to this sort of thing as 'productivity porn' or, in the argot used by hackers to circumvent bowdlerising software, 'productivity pr0n'. The risk of eternal fiddling with no productive end result is all too real. I could probably increase my productivity at a stroke by not checking the Lifehacker and 43 Folders websites every morning.Life-hacking also runs counter to other productivity methodologies. In most other systems - Stephen Covey's seven habits, for example - the secret is to do less: to identify your ultimate life goals and then to eliminate any activity that does not help you work towards them. Life-hacking, by contrast, simply promises to make the things you do have to do take lesstime. It is a short game of tactical adjustments rather than a long game of vision and strategy.
Which one works for you is perhaps a philosophical rather than a practical question. Which sounds more like your life: a mounting burden of minute tasks to be rolled uphill, or the inviting view of a distant peak? Life- hacking, seen in this way, sounds like the counter-reformation. For its protagonists, however, it is closer to liberation theology.

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Creative Whack

Are you stuck creatively on a project? Creative Think will give you a “whack” that will help dislodge you. Here’s an example:

"I'm not returning until you fix it," bandleader Count Basie told a club owner whose piano was always out of tune. A month later Basie got a call that everything was fine. When he returned, the piano was still out of tune. "You said you fixed it!" an irate Basie shouted. "I did," came the reply. "I had it painted." Are you solving the right problem? Is there a more significant problem you could be addressing?

Smile Reminder Client Reminder Service

Smile Reminder is a patient messaging software system that provides a secure and effective way for practices to directly communicate with patients by automatically sending personalized, real-time text messages to patients on their cell phones, email addresses, pagers and more.

Consider that 50% of all missed appointments are missed because they are forgotten. Smile Reminder uniquely addresses this problem by sending same day reminders an hour or two before appointments. The messages are extremely effective in that they reach the patient wherever they may be. Smile Reminder is focused on increasing profitability and productivity by reducing no-shows, filling late cancellations and building patient loyalty.

Smile Reminder is a patient messaging software system that provides a secure and effective way for practices to directly communicate with patients by automatically sending personalized, real-time text messages to patients on their cell phones, email addresses, pagers and more.

Not a free service, but one that may pay for itself in avoiding missed appointments for professionals.

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Cool/convenient lists to have

There are critical reminder-type lists that we all need to let our brain relax (re: outcomes and actions). There are other lists, though, that can be useful, fun, and interesting, that fit in the area of 'reference' or 'support.' The David Allen Company provides a number of such lists.

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Use the 80/20 Principle

There is the big pile, the 80 percent pile, that takes a lot of energy but delivers pitiful results, sometimes even making things worse. That is the mass of trivia that surrounds us and normally engulfs our life. We can call this big chuck of our lives the trivial many. Then, there is the small but vital 20 percent pile, which comprises the few things that work brilliantly. The vital few, that bring happiness to you.

Read up on how to apply the 80/20 principle to help you focus on what you should.

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ActiveWords and Wikipedia

For ActiveWord users (and for those of you who aren't, why the heck not?), there is an ActiveWords script to get you right into the search window of Wikipedia, bypassing some preliminary mousing and clicking.

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Software to Keep you From Going Off-Task

Free Software: Temptation Blocker - WebJillion: So, have a major deadline looming or ripe opportunity closing and just don't have time to waste playing Half Life 2 or checking Bloglines one last time? Well then, add Half Life 2 and Firefox to the list of programs you want to block in Temptation Blocker, set the timer for how long you want to block them and then hit the 'Get Work Done!' button.
Now, everytime you try and access Half Life 2 or Firefox, you'll get a dialog box telling you how much time you have left before you can access that program. During this blocked time, you can't access those programs. You also can't access Temptation Blocker during this time without entering in a random, 32-character string. This acts as a deterrent from you getting to your program before time is up, but it also lets you access it if you really need to.

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Linux in the palm of your hand?

The Ubuntu H2 Linux Drive. 135.00 Euros buys you a 3GB USB microdrive with bootable Linux, Open Office, Firefox et al all onboard ready to rock and roll. Just plug in and play. Although it's one of the smallest portable USB drives, the Ubuntu H2 Micro USB drive can easily handle sharing digital photos, MP3s, video clips with friends and even homework. Making it a great way to move files from one computer to the next. Challenging the notion that USB hard drives are just good for portable storage, the Ubuntu H2 is the first USB hard drive with an onboard OS and office software. The device is bootable from any PC with an x86 processor supporting USB boot.

Link: The Red Ferret Journal

Speed Up Your Bathing

What better way to kick off our new blog on personal productivity links, then a story on speeding up your time in the shower?