Other than trading and investing, what got me excited right now are really ways to organize the way you perform things and ways to get things done. How you are able to improve productivity at home, at work but especially mobile productivity if you use good ways to organize your environment better.

So do tune in to my new space

[Visit The Productive Organizer Today >>]

An added benefit of it is the tight integration of Google Gears into it.This i would think will translate to better performance when working with some Web 2.0 application such as Gmail, Remember The Milk etc.

Specifically, Google Chrome enables you to launch a streamline web application such as Remember The Milk or Zoho Docs by itself.You can compare the vast differences in speed when you launch a Google Chrome instance vs a Mozilla Firefox 3 instance.

The problem is that for these application, you would require only one copy of it to run and reference it time and time again. What do i think is the best way to do this? Enter AutoHotKey.

Here i will go through an example of how i will use Chrome and AutoHotKey to bring up a list of To-Dos on Remember The Milk.

1) Download Google Chrome. First if you have not download Google Chrome, you can download the web browser over here.

2) Download AutoHotKey. Download the smashing launcher/shortcut software that is AutoHotKey over here. You can use the quick start tutorial provided to learn about the number of shortcut and conveniences you can achieve with AutoHotKey here.

3) Save Remember The Milk iGoogle Homepage as a Gears application. Remember the milk have a comprehensive web front but for reviewing your list time and again, it might not be a good idea to view every thing.

Here we make use of a streamline version of Remmeber the Milk Task List made for iGoogle. Launch this link here in your Google Chrome browser.

We will now make it into a gears application. Click the Control on Current Page icon on the top right hand corner shown in the diagram. Then select Create Application Shortcuts...

Select Start Menu (I prefer to have my desktop very clean) Then click OK. You should end up with a streamline Chrome Remember the Milk instance like the one below.

4) Get launch path of your RTM Gears instance. Go to your Start Menu, Find your Remember the Milk Gears instance and right click on it. go to Properties. Note the Target path. We will insert it later.

5) Create scriptlet to launch and activate this RTM Chrome instance. Now we need to create the AutoHotKey Scriptlet to launch and activate this instance. Right click on your AutoHotKey icon in system tray and select Edit this script. Insert the following scriptlet at the bottom of the script file:

^+r::
IfWinExist,Remember The Milk Homepage Module - Google Chrome
{
WinWait,Remember The Milk Homepage Module - Google Chrome
WinActivate

}
else
{
Run,[insert the target path in Step 4 here]
WinWait,Remember The Milk Homepage Module – Google Chrome
WinActivate

}
return

Replace “[insert the target path in Step 4 here]” with the target path you noted in Step 4. Save the config file. go to the system tray, right-click on the AutoHotKey icon and select Reload This Script.

6) You are done! What happens now is that we have assigned to launch this Gears RTM instance using [Ctrl + Shift + R] key. If one instance is open up, it will go to that instance instead of launching a new instance. You can change the shortcut key to one you prefer. For info, ^ represents Ctrl, + represents Shift and # represents Windows Key. So ^+r will mean Ctrl Shift r.

You can launch alot of things that you frequently use. I can list a few here:

1. Remember the milk
2. Zoho Docs
3. Gmail
4. Google Docs
5. Google Calendar

Hope this has been useful.

Having said that, Organize IT has 2 very good articles on how to better make use of any to-do list. This i feel is much more useful then finding the holy grail.

[Organize IT | 10 Ways to slim your To-Do List: Part 1]

[Organize IT | 10 Ways to slim your To-Do List: Part 2]

43 Folders has always been about things more subtle and less thought of. Here in these 2 articles, they write about refining the ways you name and work with tasks.

[43Folders | Building a smarter To-Do List Part 1]

[43Folders | Building a smarter To-Do List Part 2]

Next Actions

Alot has been mentioned about next action based on David Allen’s GTD,  but 43 folders illustrate the importance of physical definition. A proper and good definition increases the likelihood you dun encounter mind blocks translating what is written down to an action.

The next action is actually a physical action. For example, if the next thing you need to do is talk with Jan about something, then your next action is "find the address book, look up Jan."

The idea (as described in GTD) is that by focusing on only the very next action, we make the task more palatable to our mind. "I don’t know that I have time and will to do my taxes, but I do have the time and energy to find the address book."

After you have the address book in hand, it’s a short step to looking up Jan, and once you’re staring at her phone number, it’s just a matter of course to dialing Jan. When she says, "Hello?", what naturally follows is what you meant to call her about.

But don’t worry your head with all those details; You just focus on getting the address book. And that’s all you put on your next actions list: "Find address book, Jan’s phone number."

The Next Action should always be an actual physical action. Pick up the paper and read an article, look up the number to the vet, find the duster, fetch the report. Avoid vague (and cumbersome sounding!) items like: "Complete the Project, Deal with Fluffy, Clean the House, Clear off the Desk." See all those capital letters in there? That’s what it feels like, to your mind.

To make your Next Actions (and Projects incidentally) look and feel actionable, use verbs to start the name of each one. For example: Take Fluffy to the vet, File old bills, Mail Bob’s birthday card. For inspiration, take a look at the Next Action and Project verbs from David Allen’s original Getting Things Done Fast CD booklet.

[43Folders | Next Actions: Both physical and visible]

Another good article on next action list is written by Dan Fletcher and it goes abit further to describe the full flow of it.

[Investment Moats | Getting Things Done: A Guide to Next-Action Lists]

Readers can view my BlogLog on the left sidebar below.Aside from the look and feel, the big upgrade to it lays in the flyout feature, which displays a much more detailed bio of the nameless faces that otherwise appear in the MyBlogLog widget.

So i began to see if Sunbird and Google Calendar is a more viable option since most of the time i do my checking of calendar on any desktop computer.

I explored Google Calendar and found that it is very good. You can use it to address your GTD needs. The best part is that there are many resources on the web that discuss on productivity with google calendar.

Other positives about it:

Mobile Version for WIFI checking

I can check it on my Dopod C500 as well. They have a mobile version of the online reader that has an Agenda layout.

Sharing of Calendars with others

You can share your own calendar, thereby enabling you to sync with what your friends, colleague and family members are doing. But i find value-addedness in sharing Singapore Holiday and Weather Calendars. This means that i do not need to look up all these dates myself! Others will be doing this for me!

SMS and Pop-up notification

 I am in the midst of trying out the SMS notification. The local telcos that work with this is Singtel and MobileOne. Is receiving the notification free? Google Calendar is a free service and Google doesn’t charge you to receive notifications. However, i believe that it is stil within the number of SMS you receive charges your Singtel and M1 charges, so use it only for your important events.

Integration with Google Map to find your place

An integration with Google Maps. This will be especially useful to Singapore Drivers. If you set the location of where you planned to go for the Appointment or Event, you can look it up in the map option.

Clicking on the map hyperlink will bring you to a search of the location of the place. In this case, it is our dear Funan IT Mall.

You can see i would need to specify singapore, if not it will throw up other Funan malls around the world. by leveraging on Google Maps, you are able to find the driving route from your place.

Here you will see how to get from Seng Kang to Funan. I can even manipulate the route that i drive away from TPE for flexibility.

Offline Google Calendar

I have yet to explore GCal in offline mode. One option you can do is print out and pin it in your office.

Setting up Event Calendar on your site

Google Calendar allows you to set up an events calendar on your site as well. You can check out how it turns out on my site [here].

Linking Google Calendar to Thunderbird

At times you would want to be able to access to your calendar through a consolidated desktop client. Many would go for the free solution in Mozilla Thunderbird. Kudos to chantc for highlighting this hack.

One of Thunderbird’s strengths however, is, like its cousin Firefox, it works on a plugin system. That is, people have written third party modules, which can be used to enhance the functionality of Thunderbird. And I use 2 of these plugins:

• Lightning
• Provider for Google Calendar

Quite simply, Lightning provides a calendar interface for Thunderbird, its part of the Mozilla Sunbird project, and helps provide the Schedule interface which standalone Thunderbird is missing.

The magic here, however is the Provider for Google Calendar plugin, which, unlike just adding the necessary links to Thunderbird, to access Google Calendard, not only provides read access, it provides write access as well..

Install both plugins, and restart Thunderbird, you will then be shown, a Calendar in the left pane, this calendar has 3 tabs Agenda, Todo and Calendars.

To setup Google Calendar,

1. Click on the Calendar tab.
2. Click on the New Button, in the Calendar Tab, and you will be given a choice, you need to select, On the Network.
3. Click on Next, there is an option for Google Calendar, select this.
4. In the Text bar under the Google Calendar you will need to enter the Link URL which allows you to write to your Account, you can find this, by logging into the Google Calendar account you created earlier.
5. In your Google Calendar, create a new Calendar, or if you already have a calendar created, click on the down arrow next to the calendar. And click on Share this Calendar.
   You will be taken to a new page, where you will need to click on Calendar Details on the top of this page.
6. Then Select the XML button, next to the Private Address, this will allow you the read/write access to the calendar, if you need read only access, or wish to share calendars with read only access, use the XML button next to the Public Tab.  
7.  When you click on the XML button a URL will be displayed (i’ve edited the whole strin below for security reasons) Copy this URL , and paste it into the Thunderbird Text box, then click on Next.
8. Give the Calendar a name which you will use in Thunderbird to identify this calendar, and choose a colour, this is the colour which will identify your Google Calendar, if you are using multiple calendars.
9. Then click on Next and then Finish.
10. You will then see your calendar listed as available. you should now be able to add an event in either Thunderbird, or the wEb Interface, and both will update to show the events. You can set reminders, repeat events, and all the usual type of Schedule details.

The end result? You should be able to see this in your thunderbird.

Sync the PDA

The next step is to sync the Calendar with the PDA, this is done using the GMobileSync app for Windows Mobile or Smartphones. it requires .NET CF 2.0 which is available for download from the site, and provides not only read access to they Google Calendar, it also provides write access. This means as well as having PDA based access to your existing schedule, you can provide updates from your PDA to your calendar too. The application requires your login ID and password for the Google Calendar site. The Sync is a manual operation, and not automatic (yet)

Resources for Google Calendar

I don’t have much resources here now, but i will add on to it once i discovered more stuff.

• Calgoo Seem to have a service that enable you to sync GCal with Outlook.
• Google Gears does not seem to work with Google Calendar for now.
• MakeUseOf has a really good aricle on Google Calendar Tricks titled Best of google Calendar (Addons + Tips)
• This is the bomb of the resources. At the Ubuntu forums, we uncover this topic that enables you to setup Mozilla Thunderbird with Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar to be able to read and write to Google Calendar. The title of the article is [Using Google Calendar, Thunderbird and Lighting to full effect]
• Geek to Live has an article on Black Belth GCal Scheduling/

Got this off Lifehack and i think its pretty nifty. You can create a batch script out of this. What it essentially does is force your PC to shutdown without asking you whether you wanna do it.

Many of you guys will find this good as you install more stuff on  your pc and it gets bog down during shutting down times.

Here’s another way to quickly shutdown your Windows computer

1. The Banana: A powerhouse of 9 vitamins.
   
   True but False: You may find this answer ambiguous but this is actually the case. In most health articles you will find people quoting such a vegetable or such a fruit as a powerhouse of vitamins. A banana has been claimed as such. A fruit in itself is not a powerhouse. You will find 9 vitamins in a banana but most are in trace amounts that they will not do such major benefits on your health. However bananas are rich in potassium, a nutrient which combats high blood pressure.
2. Puree is the best way to digest potatoes.

   False: To gulp down potatoes in puree without mastication and impregnating it with saliva, it will not be digested correctly. So do not give too much puree to your child or old persons.

3. Carrots ease the transit in case of diarrhea.

   True: This is due to a molecule known as pectine which absorbs water and gives less watery faeces but this vegetable does not have anti-infectious properties. Beware also of intolerance to carrots.

4. Mushrooms are the "meats" of vegans.

   False: Mushrooms do not contain all essential amino acids (building blocks of proteins) found in meats. Also you must consume about 1 kg of mushrooms to get the equivalent amount of proteins in a beef steak. At most, you can consider them as protein complements.

5. Consuming the cooking water of vegetables are beneficial for health.

   Actually there are two schools of thoughts on this particular nutrition fact which are totally divergent.

   True: The classic opinion is that you must collect the cooking water of vegetables because it is a concentrated solution of minerals and vitamins which have drained from the vegetables and it would be a total waste to throw it away.

   False: On the other hand, as well as vitamins and minerals, you will also be collecting the pesticides, insecticides and nitrates compounds found on the vegetables.

   For this, I’ll say that if you are sure that the vegetables have not been sprayed by hazardous chemicals, then make a health drink from the cooking water of the vegetables.

6. The automatic cooker is safe for the cooking of vegetables.

   False: If you do not know how to use an automatic cooker.

   True: If you respect the modes of use: cooking in a minimum amount of water, in a minimum amount of time and in an airtight condition. In a cooker, the vitamins are more vulnerable to the time of cooking than the actual temperature. So it is better to cook your vegetables at 120°C for 10 minutes than at 100°C for 30 minutes.

7. Two bananas are the equivalent of a beefsteak.

   False: You need atleast 12 to 14 bananas to equate the proteic value of 100g of a beefsteak but it is more nutritious to eat 12 bananas than a beefsteak.

8. Citrus juices acidify urine.

   False: The acidic salts in fruits undergo a transformation in the human body which turn them into carbonates alkalines, i.e. the acidic nature of the citrus fruits are cancelled by the human body. Most vegetables and fruits in general, rich in calcium, potassium and other metals, are alkaline. They are very important in a dish to balance the acidic nature of meats, eggs and fish.

9. Dried plums are excellent against constipation.

   True: An excellent grandmother remedy, it is recommended for lazy intestines to eat, every morning 3 to 4 dried plums soaked 24 hours in water and to drink the water.

10. Pulses can replace meats.

    True: But you must also complement your meals with other sources of proteins. Although more loaded with proteins than meats (20 to 24%), they lack some essential amino acids. The biggest inconvenience of eating pulses is the intestinal fermentations they provoke.

11. Potatoes left to ripen in air are good for health.

    False: There has been some cases of intoxications with potatoes left to ripen in the air but if you take the necessary precautions to remove all the germs and the greenish patches on the potatoes, then there are no major health risks. The substance responsible for this is Solanine, a compound which develops under the skins of tubers on exposition to air, sun and humidity.

So when it comes to freeing up hard disk space, Windows™ does a very bad job profiling the hard disk.

Jonathan’s Tool Bar & Grill here does a good job bring to us 2 tools WinDirStat and JDiskReport.

 I have tried them and i would say, WinDirStat gives you a good visual indication of which part of your hard disk is the big chunk. JDiskReport is the one that provides more stuff.

WinDirStat

JDiskReport

Note: Both Software is Free

The great thing about Launchy that sets it apart from other previously-mentioned program launching apps like Colibri is its configurability. Launchy lets you choose what directories to scan and what filetypes to index, so you have control over how bloated or minimal your indexing gets.

It comes default the ability to launch programs found in your Windows Start menu. Here you will see me attempt to find a Word Program. Even before i finish typing, Launchy has already indexed this and brings it to the top of the list.

Through the directories options, you can specify certain executables to be indexed so that you can find files and programs easier.Here you will see that i have indexed "My Investments" Folder in my "Workspace" directory. I also specify that i only want to index doc, txt and xls files.

Now then, I can use Launchy to quickly access to the documents, excel sheets in my investments folder.

 You can also place a short cut of a folder you want to bring to Launchy’s attention, after which you can move quickly to this deep folder that you will access quite often.

If you are a fan of Mozilla Firefox like i am, Launchy indexes your bookmarks as well. This example below show’s me attempting to launch InvestmentMoats through it.

You might have notice that in the figures before, the entries came up even before i finish typing them. I realise that Launchy will prioritize your frequent access first.

It is skinnable and you can specify batch commands as well. Do give it a try and let me know what you think.

LifeHacker Download of the Day Launchy

Download Launchy

I have been a fan of using Microsoft Tasks to manage daily tasks.But somehow i always find it lacking. Later on, i realise that the problem might not be entirely of Outlook but also of the way i use outlook to manage my tasks. We have always depended on such gadgets to help us with our daily lives, but not many has seek to read a tutorial on how to use it effectively and how to leverage on today’s tech to make productivity more effective. This is one such article i found. What i like is that it is based on PDAs and Smartphone, which many of us do have. Read on and tell me what you think about it.

How to Use Your Smartphone, Pocket PC, or Palm to Manage Your Tasks

Here’s what we discuss on this page:

* Introductory Material

* Key Principles

* Doing a Mindsweep

* Keeping it bite-sized

* Managing Categories

* Prioritizing * Using the Two-Minute Rule

* Little Tips and Tricks

* Closing Thoughts

Note that I previously discussed Managing Projects on this page, but my sense is that this put an overwhelming amount of material on this page … hence, I have moved the Managing Projects material to a new page so that we can focus on TASKS on this page.

(The topics are related, but I think separate pages are more clarifying.)

Also, while I have aimed this material at Smartphone, Pocket PC, and Palm users, the principles can be applied to desktop/laptop architectures and to paper-based planning systems.

Introductory Material Prior to 2001, I used the Franklin Covey (FC) time management methods for years.

I started with a paper-based implementation, blending in the use of a Palm device around 1999. I studied Covey’s books and went to a couple of his seminars, and was pleased with the life-management improvements I was able to make using his system.

Then, in early 2001, I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) book and immediately began implementing GTD on my Palm.

I liked its fresh approach as the FC approach had begun to feel stale to me. Then, in September 2001 my wife passed away, and GTD became a major tool for helping me deal with all the stuff in my life. It let me do this without requiring great concentration, which is good, because my mind was in an absolute fog for months.

I could no longer implement the FC approach if I wanted to, because my Roles were now confused and my mission statement was shattered. So I just switched to using GTD exclusively. I have since merged some of the FC and GTD methodologies.

GTD helps me get a lot done, and FC helps my effectiveness. Key Principles 1. A key learning from GTD: go through all of your projects and determine next actions for them and Organize Them By Context (such as @Computer, @Home, @Desk), so that when your mental energy is too low for you to be an effective thinker, you have a list of actions you can perform anyway.

This simple principle can dramatically improve your efficiency and your impact. Organizing by context takes advantage of the age-old wisdom of "Be Where You Are." 2. Plan for each day what you Must Get Done.

The importance of doing this cannot be overemphasized. I have worked closely with dozens of senior and mid level managers over the years, and know that they plan their days and their weeks. Yes, many of them suffer the huge inflow of emails, new work, and too many meetings that a typical mobile worker suffers.

But they do not let that deter them from their plans (with the exception, of course, of some rare emergent activities). 3. Use the Pareto Principle. As leadership guru John Maxwell notes in his The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, "If you focus your attention on the activities that rank in the top 20 percent in terms of importance, you will have an 80 percent return on your effort. … If your to-do list has ten items on it, the two most important ones will give you an 80 percent return on your time."

Read more of these here…