Over the years, I have read many articles presenting the authors’ opinions of tools that have helped increase their productivity. Some were good, some were debatable. Over the years I too have developed my own way of doing things that are, at least in my opinion, smart and efficient ways of being more productive. In this article, I will present those tools that I use on a day-to-day basis both for work and home. I will not include socializing apps nor software development tools (that’s worth at least one or more articles) nor games.
Let’s start with work. I’m a telecommuting computer consultant working currently for one client. I charge by the hour. I am aware of tools that actually monitor what you are doing on your computer and associate that time activity to whatever project you define. I am using a far simpler tool for managing my work hours: MPS TimeLog Pro. You can find it on the Google Play Store for $3.99. It’s a simple app that allows you to define clients, projects, and activities. You press “Start” when you start working on some activity and later press “Stop” when you are done or want to change activities. A log file shows everything you’ve done. Filtering, importing, exporting are all available including the ability to manually update and change start/stop times. There’s nothing particularly fancy about this tool. It performs one function, keeping track of my hours according to my activities, and it does that well.
People use Dropbox for keeping all sorts of things synchronized between computers and devices. Until recently I would travel frequently between my two homes in Maryland and Maine, USA. This entailed bringing my computers with me. I used to also bring a couple of computer reference books. I quickly realized that bringing books with me was a lose-lose proposition. I couldn’t bring all my computer books with me; and I never knew what I needed until I needed it. So I started buying all my work-related books as either PDF or EPUB books. I place all my books in a “books” folder within Dropbox. Computer books are arranged by subject: Java related books were placed in folder “java”; Linux related books were in “linux”, etc. That way, all my books are always accessible, either via laptop, tablet, or smartphone and no matter where I happen to be.
So how do I read all the various PDF or EPUB computer books that I purchesed? I own a Samsung tablet which is the perfect size for reading books and magazines and for that tablet I purchased an Android app called Bookari Premium Pro (downloadable from the Google Play Store). There are many ereader apps out there but I chose this one for its number of convenient features such as being able to read both PDF and EPUB files, organizing my collection of books and magazines, and keeping track of where I last left off in each book. One of the really nice features of this app is that it interfaces directly with Dropbox. I can point to my ‘books’ folder and download any and all of my books to my tablet for offline or simply more convenient reading.
Unless you’re one of those people who cannot forget anything, maintaining a task list is an important way for remembering everything you need to do. The tasks can be work-related or home-related. I use a wonderful application called Wunderlist for managing my tasks. For work, I use it to remind me when I need to invoice my clients or that I have a computer-related article I had planned on reading. For home, I use Wunderlist to remind me when particular bills are due or what errands I need to run. You can associate completion dates and reminders as well as notes with each task. Plus you can store the tasks inside different folders (e.g., work, bills, etc). Of course Wunderlist has a Winodows app as well as an Android app. Using their server all tasks are kept in sync.
There is however one little problem with Wunderlist. The German-based company that created Wunderlist was recently purchased by Microsoft. And Microsoft has already announced that they will be folding Wunderlist into their new task management software. Based on many comments I have read Microsoft’s product is not nearly as good as Wunderlist (nor is it even ready for prime-time). I, and maybe millions of other users of Wunderlist, will continue to use the existing product as long as it is available.
Besides keeping track of tasks, keeping track of meetings and appointments is very important. Google’s Calendar app is the perfect solution. As it is browser based it works everywhere (there is a Google Calendar app for Android as well as competitor apps that use the Calendar API for accessing the calendar information). A nice additional feature is the ability to share calendars amongst different people. My wife and I share our calendars so we can keep track of each others’ activities.
For all my calendar needs I use Google Calendar. It’s not what my client uses so whenever I have a new meeting or conference call scheduled, I will quickly jump to Google Calendar and mark that same date/time as a “Busy” item. This reminds me that I have some work activity even when not next to my work computer. It also lets my wife know that I am not to be disturbed.
For brainstorming activities I use a program called Freeplane. This program is categorized as a “mind mapping” application. Per Wikipedia, “A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. A mind map is hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those. In addition to brainstorming, I use Freeplane for taking notes and creating outlines. (Full disclosure: I recently began contributing to the development of Freeplane and am now involved in the development of a future collaborative version of Freeplane.)
One of my absolute favorite programs is Evernote. I use Evernote as a repository for everything. You can store text notes, PDF and DOC files, pictures and virtually any kind of file inside Evernote. I associate my notes with different “notebooks”. One is for my personal stuff others are for each of my clients. Work-oriented notes include all my billing statements, invoices, and technical documentation. I also save interesting technical documents that are either PDF files that I have saved or by using the Evernote Google Chrome extension, I can directly save web pages off of the browser.
On the personal side, I save all my monthly bank and credit card statements. I use Evernote’s powerful tagging mechanism to separate each credit card and bank statement. When I buy some new gadget that requires downloading a PDF document to learn how to operate the gadget I save that PDF file in Evernote. I bought a new smartphone recently and took a picture of the serial number and other identifying numbers off of the box. I added that photo to Evernote with a title saying this is the phone serial number.
For Windows and Android, Evernote has standalone apps. The product also works very well via a browser. There is no official Linux client available but I am currently using a third-party program called NixNote that seems to work quite well. There are third-party programs available for Apple’s MacOS, too. I personally have Evernote installed on my laptop, smartphone as well as my tablet. One last really cool feature for premium subscribers is that Evernote will scan all saved PDF and DOC files creating an further index of words that you can search for.
The client I work for has distributed developers all over the USA as well as in some “off-shore” countries. Being able to communicate easily, consistently and with quality is very important. We typically communicate via Skype for Business for both phone calls as well as for desktop sharing. It is a product that works quite well.
For the open source project I am working on we had the same requirements. Unfortunately we didn’t have as much luck with the personal version of Skype. So we switched to and are now using Google Hangouts. We can send instant messages to each other, talk and view each other as well as share our desktops. There are many, many different programs that offer somewhat similar services, mostly desktop sharing. One program I have successfully used in the past is TeamViewer.
Using a computer to manage finances is fairly ubiquitous. I used to use Quicken, possibly the most well-known application name for managing personal finances. But over time the program has become more and more expensive. And I finally gave up on the product when they insisted I upgrade “or else”. I particularly wanted a program that ran both on Windows and Linux and that would not require separate licenses for each. I have now been using Moneydance for a number of years. It’s fairly straight-forward and easy to use and serves my needs. There’s even an Android version that synchronizes with the main application if you store your data in a Dropbox folder. Data can be encrypted so the data is safe even in Dropbox. The only parts of the program that I do not like have to do with budgeting. If budgeting is very important to you, I would suggest looking elsewhere first. It does work, in theory, but I’ve had issues using it. One suggestion for an alternative program might be GnuCash which is actually free. Caveat: I have not used this program.
There is one last program that I use on a daily basis: Feedly. This program is a news aggregator. Per Wikipedia, a news aggregator “is client software or a web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) in one location for easy viewing. I personally use Feedly to read the daily news on particular subjects of interest to me from a number of different sources, blogs by people I follow as well as monitoring the release announcements of specific software.
Perhaps you have a favorite program or application you want to share with the world. Let me know.