Why Dropbox Rocks

I have briefly touched on Drop­box a few times, but I wanted to take time to explain what makes Drop­box great. I know a lot of peo­ple that don’t ‘get’ Drop­box are usu­ally peo­ple with only one com­puter, they see Drop­box as a way to syn­chro­nize files across mul­ti­ple com­put­ers and noth­ing more. Drop­box though is much more than just a syn­chro­niza­tion tool and, if you use a com­puter at all, you should be using Drop­box. Here are the... Read More

Background Zen

As I write this I have two fold­ers on my com­puter that con­tain desk­top back­grounds (wall­pa­pers) that I have col­lected from var­i­ous places online, total­ing 165 dif­fer­ent back­grounds to choose from. So what do I do? I have been talk­ing a lot on this blog about some­thing I call Desk­top Zen. Cre­at­ing a com­put­ing envi­ron­ment that is relax­ing and con­ducive to cre­ativ­ity and work­ing. Of those 165 back­ground pic­tures (some... Read More

Simple Windows Task Managers

I talked about the sim­plis­tic nature that is Taska­pa­per for Mac, here a cou­ple Win­dows alter­na­tives that look just as simple. Tasks Sim­ple Todo If you use either I am inter­ested in hear­ing what you think.  Read More

20 Computer Productivity Hacks

Here is a quick list of 20 Pro­duc­tiv­ity Hacks for computers. Use Key­board Short­cuts — you don’t hunt and peck, so make sure you mas­ter key­board short­cuts to make you fly through com­put­ing like a pro, see this post here. Get to know Text Expanders — they can save you a lot of time while typ­ing: more here. Uti­lize Dis­trac­tion Free or Fullscreen Writ­ing — more here, here, and here. Get some desk­top zen — more here. Use... Read More

How to Schedule Personal & Household Reminders

Quick lit­tle tip on set­ting Out­look reminders. Link.  Read More

Send to Evernote (Windows Only)

Kevin Purdy: ’s cap­ture pow­ers but don’t leave it con­stantly run­ning on your sys­tem, the EveryJoe blog sug­gests cre­at­ing a “Send To” short­cut in Win­dows’ right-click menu to shut­tle files over to where Ever­note will catch them. Great tip for Win­dows Ever­note users. Link  Read More

Desktop Zen With Deskcretary

From Life­hacker: Win­dows only: Sys­tem util­ity Deskc­re­tary cleans up your desk­top folder with sched­uled or man­ual scans, archiv­ing and com­press­ing files into a sep­a­rate folder automatically. I am not a Win­dows user so I have yet to try this. If you have tried it please post your thoughts in the com­ments below. Looks like a great way for Win­dows users to keep their desk­tops nice and tidy, just the way they should be. Link  Read More

Virtual Desktops: Eliminate Distractions

So far I have talked about using screen mask­ing to block out dis­trac­tions and using fullscreen writ­ing pro­grams that help to do the same thing. Both are excel­lent ways to keep your com­put­ing process stream­lined. Yet another way to do this is to use mul­ti­ple vir­tual desk­tops. Apples come with a built-in pro­gram called Spaces that allows you to do just that, and for Win­dows take a look at Vir­tu­aWin. The ben­e­fits to using mul­ti­ple desk­tops are: Keeps... Read More

Fullscreen Writing

We have talked about screen mask­ing before on Pro­duc­tiv­ity Hacks, and now I want to talk about a sim­i­lar topic of fullscreen writ­ing pro­grams. The two I rec­om­mend are: Dark­room (for Win­dows) and Write­Room (for Mac OS X). Read More  Read More

No Mouse Part II: Keyboard Shortcuts

In Part One of my No Mouse series I talked about using launcher pro­grams to open pro­grams on your com­puter, thus elim­i­nat­ing a lot of your click­ing. In this part I will explore using key­board short­cuts once you are in a program. Much like how you can increase com­puter speed by using launch­ers, you can increase your work­flow speed by using key­board short­cuts. These are built into the com­puter, and most appli­ca­tions have some built in as well,... Read More