So, here’s a couple of productivity-related links received from my readers during the last year or so, togetger with a bit of link love :

• 45 mobile resources for the road warrior
• A simple GTD online tool – Task Writer
• Time management teleseminars from time experts
• GTD agenda – another nice looking GTD online tool
• Eluma – “It’s like iTunes, but for your web stuff instead of your music, a free desktop-downloadable personal productivity tool”
• GTDInbox, a Firefox addon for Gmail that “transforms Gmail into a powerhouse of productivity”

Enjoy your productive day, and keep in touch : I’m back, baby!

Easier done than said, actually. Just take a peek at this nice chart attempt:

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Open up a Google Docs spreadsheet
2. Fill in some data: the first column contains the labels, the second contains the data
3. Click on the “Create a Map, Chart or Table…” link
4. Select the chart type, data range and extra options
5. From the drop down menu that appears when you click on the arrow on top of the gadget, select “Publish Gadget”
6. Copy the html code that appears in any webpage you want.
   Like this:
   <script src="http://spreadsheets.google.com/gpub?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffr2uemo5-a.gmodules.com%2Fig%2Fifr%3Fup__table_query_url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fspreadsheets.google.com%252Ftq%253Frange%253DB3%25253AC7%2526key%253DpDdwu6GMFeYb3vIf_e3SARw%2526gid%253D0%2526pub%253D1%26up_title%3D24%2520hours%26up_chartTitle%3D24%2520hours%26up_legend%3D0%26up_3d%3D1%26up__table_query_refresh_interval%3D0%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Fig%252Fmodules%252Fpie-chart.xml&height=514&width=450"></script>

Enjoy:

While the startup chime doesn’t bother me a bit, it drives my girlfriend mad, and her threats of throwing the damn thing away have been getting more and more frequent. As any Mac Book user out there knows, there’s no way to change the chime sound or disable it from within the system. Even plugging earphones before booting up fails, and if you don’t want to hear the annoying chime each morning, you’d have to carefully(or automatically) switch off the sound before shutting the computer off.

But all these worries are now gone, as today was my lucky day – randomly browsing macosxhints made me discover the little free application that’s bound to save my laptop’s life.

StartupSound.prefPane 1.1-BETA comes form Arcana Research Japan, is free and available at this link (direct download link here). Being a beta version makes it possibly unstable, but so far it worked out great on my Intel Mac Book.

You might remember my article on turning your desktop into a productivity tool which is one of the most popular articles on this blog so far. At the time I wrote it, I was finding it strange that no other productivity blogs had tackled this subject yet. Boy was I wrong – the subject of organizing one’s desktop proves to be a favorite topic of discussion for a lot of productivity-oriented blogs and bloggers. Talk about insufficient research –

Since the subject of the perfect “productive” desktop is far from being closed, I decided to give you the

Top links list for a more Productive Desktop

- introducing you to the best ideas around the web about setting up your computer desktop for improved productivity.

1. First of all, our article – Turn your Desktop into a Productivity tool. Main ideas:
   

   • Desktop used only to store shortcuts to Folders. All downloaded files go in the folders.
   • Simple/No Wallpaper
   • On the Desktop, put only shortcuts instead of real folders themselves to avoid accidental erasing
   • Folder Shortcuts present: Work/Job; Projects; Research for Work; Research My Websites; Research Others; Documents

2. Antbag.com has a different approach on How to Organize your Desktop to Boost Productivity. Ideas: simple wallpapers that identify colored “zones” according to the type of the file stored on the desktop – PDFs, Shortcuts to Applications, Images, Word docs, Misc, etc…
3. Lifeclever.com talks about How to organize your cluttered desktop and regain your sanity. You implement your Desktop following GTD’s principles, in 5 main folders:
   

   • “0. Inbox” – unprocessed items that don’t have a place yet in here. This folder must be emptied everyday, at the end of the day.
   • “1. Actions” – items requiring an action that takes more than 2 minutes in here.
   • “2. Incubate” – items you aren’t yet ready to do or complete in here.
   • “3. Current Projects” – files related to active projects in here. Each project gets it’s own unique folder.
   • “4. Archive” – completed projects, general reference items, etc. Also aliases of Mac OS X’s “Music”, “Pictures”, and “Movies” folders

   Cool Tip: prefixing folders by numbers makes it an easier access from Quicksilver

4. AJ’s blog told us, since April, the ways to a Desktop Zen – Reducing Visual Clutter on your Desktop – Windows -centric tips, but pretty interesting ones on organizing your most used items into the quick launch bar and the start folder.
5. Antonio Marque on Digital-Folders tells you How to Keep your Desktop Organized (without getting insane) tells us of a similar GTD-centric desktop:
   

   • INBOX The first stop for everything.
   • Ongoing Files belonging to ongoing projects go here.
   • Freezer Files that you are nor currently using but will do so in a near future.
   • Archive If it’s ready and done, archive it.
   • Daily – templates, files that you really use on a regular basis.

6. Kinkless.com tells us the 5 steps to a Kinkless Desktop – OSX – centric tips : besides the obvious advice on clearing up the desktop and having some important organizing folders, it also introduces us to cute tips on styling your folders, keeping them aligned and assigning them custom icons.
7. Lifehacker.com has an intensive photo gallery on Top 10 Ways to Digitally Declutter – tips not too different than the previous ones, but on a more broad subject – decluttering your entire digital life instead of limiting to just your Desktop

Conclusion?
Some think that your desktop is a reflection of your personality. I say it’s vice-versa – your desktop influences your computer usage habits, efficiency and productivity.
The procrastinator will have his desktop filled with funny videos, games shortcuts or downloaded pictures, ebooks or files of jokes.
The really productive, on the other hand, must strive for order and organization in all aspects of his/her life – be it analogical or digital. Bad habits can be born out of any kind of mess – and a desktop mess is guaranteed to become, sooner or later, a barrier to your productivity.

This is why organizing your computer’s desktop for a maximized productivity is a necessary first step towards your goal – to become a better, more efficient and eventually happier person.
[tags]productivity, gtd, organized desktop, osx, kinkless, lifehack[/tags]

But now I’m back and gettin’ serious. So, here’s my best links of the week selection:

• CNN’s article on How David Allen mastered getting things done – an amazing insight on the daily life of the GTD inventor. If you loved the book, take a look on this article as well to see who’s the man behind the system.
• How to be great at networking – How to Work the Room – you know it too well, success comes mostly by social means. Being the right person at the right time is also a matter of knowing the right contact. So take a look on this list, it might change your life!
• How to brainstorm domain names gives you a basic view on how to pick the names for your online business. I have a lot more to add on the subject, but I’ll come back someday with a detailed article…
• Innovation is a 4 hour process – how to check if an idea is good, bad or great? Give it a try for 4 hours, the time to get your feet wet.
• Gina Trapani from Lifehacker – Separate your email from your to-do’s practical advice on productivity; this time, about the importance of separating your systems
• Planning a startup? Here’s Crash Course In Startup Assumptions and Lessons Learned – never hurts to hear a fresh opinion on a startup, right?
• This week’s personal favorite? Life Learning Today’s Break These Rules for Success! – change the rules, think outside the box, stop bending to social conventions

8 practical tips to cure your internet ADD – I talk about the quick ways to discover and track your internet dependency, and a few easy steps everyone can do to keep their internet addiction under control, remaining productive by eliminating distractions.

Zen Habits is an amazing blog on zen, healthy living and productivity, written daily by the extremely talented and very cool Leo Babauta. If you were to pick the one blog you MUST read to make your life better, Zen Habits would be it. I swear!

• 10 Diet Hacks to keep you slim  (lifehack.org) I particularly digged  the part with “accelerating your metabolism by eating 5-6 small meals a day”. I’ll tell about it to my mother as well, she’s been trying to get slimmer for ages.
• Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself – I agree, sometimes I fear thinking in “tips” might become the default way our society sees things, and analytical thinking will disappear hidden somewhere in Wikipedia’s pages.
• How To Get Off The Treadmill: A Detailed Guide To Becoming Self-Employed -probably the most detailed and complete article on the subject. Better, for instance, than Steve Pavlina’s  series on self-employment : 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job or 10 Myths About Self-Employment
• Lifehacker’s detailed how-to  on Virtualize AND dual-boot the same Windows on your Mac -I was always reluctant to install BootCamp on my Mac, being afraid I might mess things up. This detailed tutorial walks you through it and, even more, details using BootCamp with Parallels.
• Zen Habits has one amazing piece detailing, by the minute, the blogger’s life – How I Work: Zen Habits Applied to My Life – yes, apparently living a full and productive life IS possible.

First, here’s the context: I’ve seen lots of people for whom simple computer taks such as launching Word, Firefox or Outlook take at least half a minute. Most of the time is spent with: minimizing the opened windows, slowly moving the mouse aiming it towards the Start button, clicking on the Programs Menu in the Start Menu, missing it, finally getting it right, slowly looking for the right application folder & icon, risking to click outside the Programs menu and restart the process, etc. Average users are a bit more productive – they save frequently-used applications shortcuts on the desktop. But this forces you to minimize everything on it to find the right shortcut and clutters the desktop with shortcuts. On Apple computers the issue is similar for the ordinary user – sure, there’s the Dock, but it has a limited shortcut capacity and to find a less frequently used application you’d still have to open the Finder, open the Applications folder and look, again, for the app you wanted.

So what can you do?
Remember, you want to stop wasting your time moving the mouse all around looking for applications, folders or files. A first step would be to get your desktop organized – instead of just throwing stuff on it, you create folders for the most important tasks and start placing things right where they belong. For more info on how I did this, take a look at my article – Turn your Desktop into a Productivity tool. But the power user trick is to use the right tools for the job, and this can only happen once you start using your keyboard more.

What are Application Launchers?
Application Launcher is a fancy term for a simple tool – a piece of software that stays in the background and, when you type a given key combination, gets up and helps you find the right application, file or action you want to execute. Instead of moving your mouse around, aiming and clicking at things, you just type a shortcut (usually Ctrl+Space), start typing the name of the program you want to execute and hit Enter. Simple and fast, and takes a tenth of the time you’d have needed to search the shortcut with your mouse.

Neat trick, but what’s the software I should use?
There are, as always, free pieces of software and for-money ones that do the trick. Some of them do more, some do less, but for the simple task of launching apps, the free ones will do:

Mac OSX:

• Spotlight
  
  Apple’s OSX comes with a built-in desktop search engine that helps you find (most)anything. It’s one shortcut away(Cmd + Space) so, if all you want is look for stuff, it’s a decent already-installed choice. But because if searches on your entire computer and within the document contents, it gets overwhelming if you just want to find Applications to launch. So, although perfect as a general search engine, it’s not at all the productivity tool we are looking for.
• QuickSilver
  
  much can be said about this swiss tool of the Mac power users, a Mac OSX utility that really makes you more efficient at work. You can do most anything on it, from sending email to creating TODO lists to uploading photos to Flickr. But this is overwhelming, and I know plenty of people who refrain from using QuickSilver because of this. All the hype about the capabilities of QuickSilver make me, instead of curious, reticent to use such a powerful tool. So I’ll just stick to ONE tip for you today – install it for free and start using it. Just for launching apps, at first. It does a great job at it. It’s smart and sorts them by most-used basis, so, for instance, if you’re a frequent Firefox user, a simple Ctrl+Space followed by F and Enter will be enough to launch your favorite browser. Once you get the hang of it and want to do extra things, feel free to experiment with the plugins and other shortcuts it has; and you can read some of the tutorials on Lifehacker.com.
• Butler
  
  Butler is similar in many ways to QuickSilver, but some argue that it’s less scary and has a better documentation. It’s free as well, so I’ll let YOU decide.

Linux

• Katapult
  
  If you are a Linux user then you probably are a more power-user than me. Still, you may not have heard of Katapult, a cool QuickSilver’s Linux clone with plugins, cute design and powerful uses. Once installed you can configure what shortcuts it can react to. Oh, and it works on both KDE and Gnome. Read more about it here.

Windows:

• Google Desktop Search
  Doing for Windows what Spotlight does for Mac, and more – has widgets, web search, etc. But, just like Spotlight, although it can do the job of launching apps, it’s not the perfect tool for the job, but quite the opposite – searching a program with Google Desktop Search takes a lot more keystrokes and mouse clicks than looking for the icon shortcut.
• Colibri
  This was my Windows launcher of choice and the one I got addicted to most. However the website seems to be down and I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to find it anymore. It’s free and does a simple thing – in just a few keystrokes, it starts any program of the Start Menu/Programs list. For a more thorough review, check out this article.
• Launchy
  Now that the Colibri website is unnacessible, the popularity vote goes to Launchy, a cool launcher app that, just like QuickSilver, has plugins and a strong community. Just like for Colibri, I bet that once you get used to it, you’ll never want to go back to the slow mouse.
• If the Windows apps I listed weren’t enough, you can find a larger list on lifehack.org : besides Colibri or Launchy, the list includes AppRocket , ActiveWords , Dave’s Quick Search Bar, Find and Run Robot, Slickrun , SmartStartMenu, slimKEYS. Some of them cost, some of them are ugly, but you can still take a look and see if anything tickles your fancy…

The conclusion? A simple one: you have no more excuses to just drag that mouse around like a cannonball. You can now start programs faster, find documents easier and generally become a better computer user. All it takes is a bit of will power. But we’ll talk about this some other time…

Here I am, joining the meme with Hack the Day’s Greatest Productivity Tip

If I were to give you one and only one productivity tip (but, trust me, in the days to come you’ll learn tens and hundreds of them), this would be…

Get Started! Now!
Don’t just sit there planning about doing stuff. Go ahead and DO it!

What’s it all about?

You can have zillions of extraordinary ideas, wonderful plans and amazing strategies. None of them matters if you never get started. Trust me. I should know best.

I am an amazing dreamer, always conceiving plans, thinking of business ventures, projects and the like. How many did I actually try? Less than 5, most of them failures right from the start. But from each failure I learned a lot more than from all the plans before it.

Each failed try only makes you wiser and more prepared for success. Fear of actually starting something only makes you waste time and intellectual resources.

That’s about it, my huge secret, the most important single tip I want to give you.

I’m going to (almost randomly) tag this further to eDragonu, todoorelse and Lifedev. Hope this meme gets through to them…