Forum Discussion
JRahm
Admin
AdminProductivity Tips & Tricks
How do you prepare your environment to get and stay "in the zone"?
What tools mac/win/linux enhance your productivity?
Some may be bit out of topic but here's some of mine:
- A good password manager is awesome. Highly recommend 1Password.
- Also love Pycharm/Webstorm/Intellisense. It's like programming with buddy next to you helping you avoiding mistakes.
- Turning off Slack/Skype/phone.
- Learn a scripting language well and automate even smaller tasks quickly. Powershell for Windows is unbeatable, Python is pretty nice too.
- Keep the inbox empty with rules (even better, stop unnecessary mails from being sent).
- If you can do something in under 5 minutes, do it, otherwise log it in Jira (or whatever ticket system you use).
- Learn Javascript and Tampermonkey. Can enhance any site/webapp.
- Communicate via video/screensharing when helping people instead of sending long emails.
- Teach frequent customers how to help themselves and/or provide tools which enables them to do so.
- JRahm
great tips, Patrik_Jonsson! Espeically the turning $notifications off.
- Daniel_Edgar
Employee
Pretty much my first install on any new desktop is a clipboard/copy buffer history app. Great for demos, or when you are knee-deep in Yak Shaving.
This isn't an endorsement, but this is one I have used on OSX.
I believe Windows 10 has it built in.A killer application of a tool like this would be the ability to bulk-load ordered clipboard buffers, so you can rapid-fire through them when giving a demo to save on the tedium. Has anybody seen an app with this feature? If not, maybe we build one... 🤔
Disclaimer: Due to the potentially sensitive nature of items in your clipboard, and the apps that are allowed to have access to it, make sure you are using a regularly maintained solution to minimize security vulnerabilities that may appear in an app like this. Also, some of these utilities have remote synchronization features. Think about potential exposure issues before using those kinds of features.
Really basic, most have it I have no doubt but Microsoft one Note.
With a little discipline you can hold lots a screen shots and snipets as well as useful tcpdump, openssl or tmsh commands.
It has the ability to have sections and sub sections so you can organise until you go crazy!
But it's search feature is the best!
Type in tcpdump and Every single page which I have ever typed out a tcpdump command into appears really easily has saved me many times!
- JRahm
I've had periods where I've invested in evernote/onenote and then I get undisciplined, but that's great stuff!
Really couldn't get into Evernote.
Google keep is ok, but the ticket based format has its limitations.
OneNote does need a bit of discipline.
But you can get out of a lot of issues with the search feature that has always got me out of trouble! (As long as you put stuff in there!)
It's linking with outlook now for things like meeting notes can really work nicely to!
I do think matching it with the snippet tool is where it's really shot off for me.
Doing changes or developing anything taking a snippet of code or a screen shot means you always have something to do back to for referring.
- JRahm
One thing I try to do with the things that are expensive with context switching (for me that's writing articles or writing code) is to make sure I have a dedicated block of time where I can minimize distractions. I try to do this early morning or late evening to avoid family member distractions, and during the day I'll block off notifications from email, slack, teams, etc...so I don't have all those SQUIRREL! moments that distract.
