Work Efficiency
TeamBox – Twitter for teams
Jan 19th
I soooooo want to use this :) But alas, in my current context of a team which is all within speaking distance, it would be an unwelcome tool.
We’re currently running a stack of JIRA and Confluence (JIRA tied into our SVN repositories). I have internal RSS feeds to track JIRA updates, Confluence updates and SVN commits. Another tool isn’t what I need right now. It would be a solution looking for a problem.
In a distributed team, this would be my first installed product, and I wouldn’t hesitate a second to write code for SVN and JIRA so that activity be posted automatically.
Still I’ll be looking to see if other teams are using this in combination with the common stack of tools we use here.
Daily productivity toolkit
Sep 3rd
I couldn’t live without this one anymore. The way I work has changed as a result and I’m so much more efficient.
Note: There’s an obvious security bug there when I copy/paste a password out of PasswordSafe, but I always lock my keyboard when I’m away, so I guess it mitigates the risk.
If I have someone on my team ask me twice for the same password once again, I may just loose it and stop using politeness formulas for the rest of the day (hey, I’m not an overtly expressive guy …).
Use it, update it, back it up.
Code merges between any two branches are done easily and with confidence. I can’t say enough about this product. Integrates well with Tortoise. Even when working with Eclipse/Subversive, I’ll do my merges with this. A free alternative, but I haven’t tried it.
A quick way to jot down notes. I looked into the GTD stuff, but everything seemed so heavy weight. This sits in your icon tray waiting to be called up.
Agreed; it doesn’t look awesome, but I was looking for something lightweight and quick to pull up. The node structure allows me to organize notes the way I want.
GP allows me to quickly capture rectangular sections of the screen and automatically put them in the clipboard and on disk. I can then easily paste that image in any email or documentation in a matter of seconds. Vista has the same feature included, but you’ll probably want to have this installed and running in the background if you’re doing a lot of screen shots.
Firefox plug-ins
- Not productivity per say, but I love the Delicious plug-in that allows me to add items from the toolbar.
- Firebug (need I way more)
- IE Tab: Not perfect, but still nice
- Live HTTP Headers: Can’t live without it when debugging a web page. Although Firebug has it all, I’m still in the habit of using this instead.
- Web Developer
About Continuous Partial Attention
Aug 13th
I stumbled on this article through this Oreilly Radar entry. I’d say that a lot of people “suffering” from this already know it implicitly, but she words it efficiently.
Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We’re often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch — we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive.
To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.
What’s difficult is getting this through to a boss, colleague or friend who also is bogged down by it. As a programmer, it’s important that I be extra careful. I tend to easily sink into this pattern to the detriment of my work (and family).
(I figure there is possibly an RSS feed somewhere with all of Linda’s posts, but still, I created a Yahoo Pipes feed of the entries posted on the Huffington Post under her name. The pipe is accessible here)