Marco sent me an email recently:

The last weeks I have worked on my “trusted system” and I looked for the best software and hardware to use.

Currently I’m using:
- MediaWiki
- gtd-php
- Abakt
- Palm Vx
- Scanner Cannon 4400F
- FileServer running Linux Ubuntu 8.0.4
- Additional backups on external hard disk
(I’m still looking for a good document management system…)

Everything is stored on a Linux Ubuntu server and in addition I’m using an external disk for backups.

Now I was wondering how others have setup their “trusted system” and how they organize their information, documents,… Maybe this might be an idea for a blog entry?

Good idea, Marco! That’s an interesting topic. By the way, for those of you who aren’t familiar with GTD (from the book Getting Things Done), the term trusted system might be confusing. Productivity Cafe has a good explanation about it:

A trusted system is a key GTD concept because you can rely on the trusted system to house what your next actions and projects are. You know that you almost exclusively use your system to track progress, record things, hold ideas, take notes, keep your lists and hold all the elements of your GTD implementation. Thus, when you need to refer to something or take action, you go to your trusted system knowing what you’re looking for is there.

I must say that I’m not an expert in productivity tools since I don’t take the time to experiment with new tools. Instead, I just find the tools that work for me and stick with them.

So I would love to learn from you: what tools do you use?

To be fair, I will share my trusted system setup first. Here it is:

• Microsoft OneNote (for all lists)
• Microsoft Outlook (for calendar)
• Scrapbook (for saving references)
• del.icio.us (for saving references)
• A piece of paper and pen (as capture tool)
• Google Desktop’s Scratch Pad (as capture tool)
• Google Desktop (for searching anything I need on my computer)
• An external hard disk (for backup). The backup software I use is Syncback.

All right, it’s now your turn. How do you setup your GTD trusted system?

This article is part of June 2008 theme: Productivity

Have you ever experienced having no idea come to your mind when you need them? Such moments can be frustrating, especially if you have spent quite a lot of time to think and still get nothing. In such situations, getting external inputs to stimulate your mind is a good solution. They can break down your idea brick walls and make your creative juice flow again.

Of course, not all kinds of external inputs are useful. I believe there is an important characteristic such external inputs should have in order to be useful and that is diversity. Diversity allows you to get fresh ideas, either by giving you new perspectives on the problems you face, or by creating connections between the inputs (ideas are cross-pollinating anyway). So to break down the idea brick walls, the bottom line is this: get diverse inputs to stimulate your mind.

There are tools that can help you get these diverse inputs and I will describe six such tools. You can then find inspiration in two ways:

1. Create connection between an input you get and the problem at hand. Find something in the input that may be applicable to your problem.
2. Create connection between some inputs you get and the problem. First, try to create connection between an input with another inputs, and then try to find something in the connection that may be applicable to your problem.

Without further ado, here are six tools you can use to break down your idea brick walls and generate ideas:

1. Idea container

This is the only offline tool in this list. I learned about this tool from the book Thinkertoys, in which it’s called Brainbank. The idea is, you should keep a container (such as coffee can or shoe box) in which you store a lot of idea-stimulating stuff. You can put practically anything into the container, such as interesting advertisements, cartoons, and doodles. What you need to do then is picking two or more random items from the container and see if they trigger an idea. If you get nothing, just try again with another random items.

2. StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon allows you to get random pages whenever you press the Stumble button in the toolbar. There are a lot of topics provided by StumbleUpon which you can choose. You can then retrieve random pages either in a specific topic, or in all topics in your preferences. To maximize diversity, generally it’s better to stumble in all topics.

3. TDBSpecialProjects Idea Generator

TDBSpecialProjects Idea Generator is a three wheel tool that gives you random three-word phrases. While three-word phrases may not give you as much input as entire web pages, it’s still a useful way to give you diverse inputs. Look at the random words which are presented to you and see if something comes to your mind.

4. Random Quotations

Another good inputs to feed your mind with are quotes. Simply visit Random Quotations page and you will be presented with a set of random quotes. Go through them and find something that resonate with you. Find nothing? Then just reload the page and you will be presented with another set of random quotes.

5. Wikipedia random page

As its name implies, Wikipedia random page gives you random pages from Wikipedia. Due to Wikipedia’s vast repository, you can be sure that the pages presented to you will be unexpected.

Once you are in Wikipedia, you can press Alt-Shift-X to retrieve new random pages. However, I personally prefer to make Wikipedia random page as the home page in my browser (I use Firefox on Windows). This way, I can easily retrieve new random pages by pressing Alt+Home which is the shortcut to home page.

Here is how you make Wikipedia random page as your home page in Firefox:

1. Open the Options window through menu Tools | Options.
2. In the Main tab, there is a Home Page text box. Insert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random there.
3. Press Ok.

6. Random Photo Browser

Bored with words? Then you can find ideas through random pictures from Flickr. Random Photo Browser is a tool that let you do that. Alternatively, you can also use this tool. Simply open the page and you will be given a set of random pictures from Flickr. Look at the pictures and find something that inspire you. To get another pictures, simply reload the page.

Using this tool, it’s as if you go outside and observe your surroundings, only in this case you don’t even need to leave your computer. Plus it’s much faster to get new surroundings to observe.

The best way, of course, is to use a mix of these tools. With combined attacks from these tools, I doubt the idea brick walls can stand long.

Reading skill is absolutely important in the information age. These days we need to be able to absorb new information as fast and as efficient as possible. Since most of the information is presented in the form of text, reading skill is a must.  It is a substantial part of what I believe is the most important skill: the ability to choose what to learn and to learn them quickly.

With all the readings in front of you, how do you get the most out of them? How do you master your readings? Here are top 48 hacks you can use:

General preparation

1. Enrich your environment
   Your environment is essential for effective reading.
   From the book Mastering the Information Age:
   The environment in which you work or study is a critical part of being a Master (of information age).
   You can easily enrich your environment to facilitate learning, creative thinking, and optimum performance.
   Enrich your environment to make it ideal for reading.
   Resource(s):
   10 Ways to Relaxify Your Workspace
2. Have a good light source
   Needless to say, good light source helps you read your readings easily and conveniently. It is also important for the health of your vision.
3. Get the best chair 
   Good chair is especially important for long reading sessions. It helps you focus longer on your reading by minimizing physical fatigue.
   Resource(s):
   What’s the best chair for reading?
4. Schedule your reading time
   Schedule a time which allows you to read without interruption. Ideally, you should provide enough time to get into the flow. Scheduling will also help you develop the habit of reading.
5. Build your vocabulary
   You’d be able to comprehend your reading faster if you already know the vocabulary. Invest time to build your vocabulary and you will tackle broader types of readings faster.

Health

6. Have proper diet and exercise
   Good physical condition gives you the required energy level for effective reading.
   From the book Mastering the Information Age:
   Your physical condition is vital to peak mental performance and optimum functioning of your brain. Having a high-level of energy helps you concentrate and get the most of your readings.
   To get good physical condition, you should have proper diet and exercise.
   Resource(s):
   Nutrition Data
   8 tips for eating well
   Top 42 Exercise Hacks 
7. Get plenty of vitamin A
   Vitamin A is important for visual process. It improves your vision especially in dim light. You can get vitamin A from carrot, sweet potatoes, dairy products, and eggs, among others. Get plenty of it, but be careful not to get too much.
   Resource(s):
   Vitamin A
   Vitamin A – Medical Encyclopedia
   Vitamin A – Food Standards Agency

Before you read

8. Know what the main goal of reading is
   In my opinion, the main goal of reading non-fiction is to get actionable ideas. Knowing this goal helps you recognize the gems from the rest.
9. Be sure that what you read is worth your time
   Your time is precious, so eliminate unnecessary readings as much as possible. Before investing more time to read something, survey the reading to make sure that it is really worth your time.
10. Motivate yourself
    What’s in the reading for you? How can the reading impact and change your life? Being aware of how useful a reading is will make you motivated to get the most out of it. This in turn will improve your comprehension.
11. Eliminate distraction
    Eliminating distraction is a condition to get into flow. If you are reading offline materials, turn off the computer or blank the screen. If you are reading online materials, tools like Dropcloth, Clutter Cloak, or Backdrop can help you eliminate distraction by darken the unnecessary parts of the screen.
12. Prevent interruption
    Preventing interruption is also a condition to get into flow. Turn off your cell phone, turn off automatic email notification, and anything else that may interrupt you. If possible, also tell the people around you not to interrupt you.
13. Listen to music
    Music could reduce stress and therefore increase concentration and help you get into the flow state. It also helps you block out outside noise. Instrumental music might be more appropriate since you won’t be distracted by the lyric.
    Be careful, though: this is not everyone. Some people can concentrate better in silence. So do it only if it helps you.
14. Make positive affirmation
    Limiting belief is one of the greatest obstacle in becoming an effective reader. You should be confident in your ability to read fast with high level of comprehension. Affirm it to yourself over and over again.
15. Have specific purpose
    Having a clear purpose helps you differentiate which parts of the readings are important and which are not. How can you know what are important if you don’t even know what you want?
16. Write your purpose
    If you think it helps you, write down the purpose. It helps you internalize it. Writing the purpose may especially be useful for readings with longer time commitment like books.
17. Preview your reading
    It is essential to always preview your readings before you read in more detail. Read the table of contents, introduction, chapter titles, subtitles, pictures, and texts which stand-out visually. Previewing your reading makes you familiar with it. It helps you put the ideas you get into the appropriate contexts.
18. Find the key chapters
    Previewing a book helps you identify the key chapters of the book. These are the chapters that could help you achieve your purpose faster.
19. Set a time limit
    How much time are you going to allocate to finish your readings? Setting a time limit helps you concentrate and be ruthless with the unimportant parts of the reading; you will focus more on the important parts. This is actually Parkinson’s law at work.

As you read

20. Use the Pareto principle
    The Pareto principle says that 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes. Applied to reading, the Pareto principle says that 80% of the value you get comes from 20% of the content. The challenge then is identifying that 20% part. Finding key chapters (hack #18) is one application of this principle, but you can apply this principle further to identify key sections and paragraphs.
    That’s why having a purpose in reading is very important. Your purpose helps you find that essential 20% part.
    Resource(s):
    A Quick and Dirty Reading Strategy When Time is Short
21. Go through the reading several times
    Going through your reading several times makes you more familiar with the reading. It’s like building a skeleton of the reading and adding more and more to it as you go through each pass. The great thing is, since you already have the skeleton, you will always understand the context of your reading.
22. Question as you read
    Questions direct your mind to actively find the answers. By reading actively you will comprehend more. Besides, it helps you get exactly what you need.
23. Visualize what you read
    Visualization activates your right brain. Many writers begin their writing by having a mental image of what they are going to write. They then use the words in the text to transfer the mental image to you, the reader. Your job then is to recreate the mental image. Visualization is a good way to develop such mental image. When you get the mental image, you already capture the essence of the reading.
24. Adjust your reading speed accordingly
    While reading, you should differentiate between the important and not important parts (see hack #20). Your reading speed should then be flexible according to the importance of each part. You should read faster through the unimportant parts and slower through the important parts.
25. Recognize and read the key words
    Key words are the important words that have the highest chance of taking you to the answers you need. Questions help you recognize what the key words are. You can then read the parts of the text which contain those key words more carefully. Chance is, the answers you are looking for are there.
26. Use your finger as pointer
    Your eye movement is vital to your reading speed. If you want to increase your reading speed, you should decrease the readjustment time needed by your eyes to move to new positions. One way to train your eye movement is using your index finger as pointer.
    Resource(s):
    Double Your Reading Rate 
27. Take breaks every now and then
    Taking breaks refreshes your eyes. Besides, it also allows your brain to process and absorb the material.

Eliminating bad habits

28. Eliminate word-for-word reading
    Reading word-for-word slows down your reading speed while not improving your comprehension. In reading, the important thing is getting the ideas you need. You get them not by reading word-for-word but by understanding the structure of the reading and read only the parts that satisfy your needs. What important is not word per minute, but idea per minute.
29. Eliminate subvocalization
    Subvocalization reduces your reading speed because your mind can actually read faster than the speed you subvocalize. Read only using your eyes and your mind. What you read should come through your eyes and goes directly into your mind.
    Resource(s):
    How to eliminate subvocalization in order to increase reading speed
30. Eliminate regression
    Sometimes, as you read, you may think that you miss one or two words from the sentence you have just read. Or maybe you think you don’t get it. So you go back and reread that sentence. This is called regression. Regression reduces your reading speed because you will be much faster if you just keep moving forward. Don’t worry about missing a word or an idea; as you continue reading, you will eventually get the idea you need.
31. Don’t believe that reading is linear
    You do not need to read a book in sequence from the first to the last page. What important is fulfilling your purpose, not finishing the book the way the author arranges it. Most of the time, you can fulfill your purpose without reading linearly. Finding key chapters (hack #18), setting time limit (hack #19), and using Pareto principle (hack #20) help you avoid linear reading to fulfill your purpose in less time.

Marking

32. Mark important parts
    Marking your reading makes you an active reader instead of a passive one. It makes you think actively about which parts of the reading are important enough to mark. In addition, thanks to your marks, you will be able to quickly recapture the essence of the reading months or even years later.
    Resource(s):
    Twelve Ways To Mark Up A Book
33. Write down your thoughts
    Besides marking the important parts of the text, write down your thoughts for parts of the text. It’s better if you write your thoughts directly in your reading because you can easily find them later.
34. Develop conversation
    The bottom line of marking your reading (including writing down your thoughts) is developing conversation with the authors. You should not be a passive readers which agree with whatever the authors wrote. Actively engage in a conversation with them.
    Resource(s):
    How to Mark a Book

Note taking

35. Create mind maps
    Creating mind maps helps you make visual representations of your readings. Since our mind often grasps ideas better when they are presented visually, creating mind maps is a great way to capture the essence of your readings.
    Resource(s):
    How to Mind Map
    How to do a Mind Map
    List of mind mapping software 
36. Create outlines
    You can “map” your readings by creating outlines. Outlines help you quickly see the big picture of the readings with increasing level of details. I use Microsoft OneNote for this purpose, but you can also use a word processor.
    Resource(s):
    Using OneNote for Idea Management
37. Create a book summary
    You can combine your notes from hack #35 and #36 to create a book summary. Put it in a place you can easily access. I have summaries of all the books I read recently which help me quickly refresh the ideas I got.
38. Make an idea warehouse
    The goal of reading is to get actionable ideas (hack #8). You can write all the actionable ideas you get to make it easier to put them into practice. You can also group them by topics to make them easier to refer to.

After you read

39. Make “next action” list
    To get the most out of your readings, you must put them into practice. So after getting some actionable ideas, you should make a “next action” list to apply them. You can later merge this list with your master “next action” list
    Resource(s):
    How to Get the Most Out of Your Books
40. Review your notes and marks regularly
    It’s amazing to see how fast we forget what we’ve read. Therefore, make a plan to regularly review your notes and marks. If you create book summaries, you can start by reading those summaries.

Tools to help you

41. Use RSVP readers
    RSVP readers can help you speed read your readings. Such tools display one word at a time at the speed you set, so you can be sure that you are reading at that level of speed. It also helps you eliminate bad habits like subvocalization (hack #29) and regression (hack #30).
    Resource(s):
    Spreeder
    ZAP Reader
    RSVP Reader Software Comparison
42. Use summarizers
    Summarizers help you summarize a long reading into a shorter one. Such tools try to figure out where the main ideas of the reading are and eliminate the less important parts. It could help you grasp the ideas of the reading in less time. 
    Resource(s):
    Automatic Text Summarizer
    Open Text Summarizer
43. Listen to your reading
    If your reading is in digital form, maybe you don’t even need to read it. You can use text-to-speech applications to listen to your reading.
    Resource(s):
    TTSReader

Reading on computer

44. Increase the monitor refresh rate
    Increasing the monitor refresh rate reduces screen flickering so you can read longer without making your eyes tired.
    Resource(s):
    Change Refresh Rate of Your Monitor : Avoid flickers and headaches
45. Turn on ClearType
    On Windows machines, turning on ClearType will improve the appearance of text which help you read better.
    Resource(s):
    Turn on Windows XP ClearType : Improve Font Display and Readability
    

Miscellanous

46. Make reading goals and measure your progress
    For example, you may set that your goal is reading one book per week. You can then measure your progress by writing the title of the book, the start date and the end date. This way you will know whether or not you achieve your goal. Having a clear reading goal motivates you to become a better reader, just like having a clear financial goal motivates you to better manage your money.
47. Measure your reading speed
    You should measure what you want to improve, and the same thing applies to your reading speed. Measuring your reading speed allows you to see where your current position is and how your progress is over time. 
    Resource(s):
    Speed reading test
    Speed reading test online
48. Read book summaries 
    Besides using summarizers (tips #42), you can also use book summaries created by others to shorten the time you need to grasp the ideas of a book. You can read the summaries from websites such as LitSum, or you can read books which contain summaries of other books. One such book is The Marketing Gurus which contains summaries of 17 marketing books.

Following the development in personal productivity field could be cumbersome. There are simply too many good resources out there than what I could possibly follow through my feed reader. So what can I do?

One solution I can think of is creating a “knowledge base” of personal productivity resources. The “knowledge base” should contain information from multiple sources in one place which can easily be searched to find exactly what I need.

That’s why I create the Productivity Search Engine (PSE). It’s a Google Custom Search Engine which is designed to search 50+ productivity blogs at once. These blogs are select blogs taken from Zen Habit’s Top 50 Productivity Blogs with some additions from me.

Unlike the normal Google Web Search, this search engine limits the results only from those 50+ productivity blogs. Since newest ideas and trends often come from blogs instead of other kind of web sites (due to blogs’ very democratic nature), I believe PSE could give you better results on productivity topics.

If you are a blogger interested in productivity topics, the benefit of using PSE is even more obvious: you can quickly figure out what other bloggers have said about certain productivity topics. This will make you look even more knowledgeable in front of your readers :). And you can do that in very short time.

Please check it out. It’s very useful for me (I use it extensively to do research for this blog) and I hope it’s also useful for you.

There are so many information and knowledge you can get from the Internet. Most of them are in the form of articles. Whether from blogs, newspapers, or portals, there are a lot of information and knowledge available as articles.

But how can you read those articles effectively? How do you make sure that the time you invest to read those articles give you the best possible return?

In my opinion, the key is capturing the ideas. If you can get good ideas from the articles and capture them in such a way that they won’t be lost, you would have read the articles effectively.

To be able to do so, here are some steps you can do:

1. Skim through the article to see if it contains good ideas
   Before investing more time to read an article, be sure that the article is really worth your time. Skim through it to see if it contains good ideas that are worth further investment of your time.
2. Save the article in ScrapBook
   If you think the article contains good ideas, save it using ScrapBook before you read further. This is an important step for effectively reading articles on the Internet (in step 6 I will elaborate why). 
   ScrapBook is a Firefox extension I highly recommend which allows you to capture articles from the Internet.
3. Open the article in ScrapBook
   After you save the article, now open it from inside ScrapBook. This way the article you are going to read is the offline version, not the online one. Using the offline version allows you to use a lot of useful ScrapBook features.
4. Preview the article to make questions
   Before reading the article more deeply, preview the article by looking at its title, subtitles, figures, and highlighted texts. You may have done this in step 1 above, but here you do it with a specific purpose of making questions. What do you want to get from the article? What questions do you want to be answered by the text? Having questions at hand make it much easier for you to capture ideas from the article.
5. Start reading the article
   Now you can start reading the article more deeply.
6. As you read, highlight and add notes
   This is the reason why you should save the article in ScrapBook before reading it. ScrapBook has amazing features for highlighting and adding notes to the article. It is as if you are reading with a highlighter and a pen at hand. When you find an important passage, highlight it. When you have a thought, add a note in the article. If you just read an article without saving it first in ScrapBook, you won’t be able to access these features.
   You can read the ScrapBook tutorial to learn how to use all the  features.
7. Review your highlights and notes
   After you finish reading the article, you can review your highlights and notes. These are the ideas you get from the article. Don’t forget to press the Save button in ScrapBook to save them.

Since you have highlighted the important parts of the text and added your notes, the ideas you get are captured permanently. Several months or even years later, you can open that article in ScrapBook and instantly see the ideas you’ve got. By reading online articles this way, the time you invest on reading the articles will give you the best possible return.

Timer could be one of the most effective weapons in your productivity arsenal. Adam Pash from Lifehacker for example, always has a timer handy to help him get things done. And he indeed accomplishes a lot of things (how many of you can write as many popular software and articles as him?).

So, to help you recognize the importance of timer, here are four ways timer can help you boost your productivity:

1. It sets a minimum limit of time to get you start working
   If you find it difficult to start working on something, timer can help you focus on doing it for at least a minimum amount of time. Since you tell your mind that you are going to work on it for just a certain amount of time, it will be much easier for your mind to focus.
2. It sets a maximum limit of time to not overspend your time
   On the other side, if you tend to spend too much time on a task, timer helps you limit the amount of time you spend on that task. This way you can be sure that you will have enough time to get other things done.
3. It gives you a sense of urgency that increases your intensity
   Using timer imposes deadline on what you do, and as a result your intensity in working will increase. Your mind will be focused on getting the task done in that limited amount of time. As a result, you will trim the fat and do only the essentials to get the task done. This actually is Parkinson’s law at work.
4. It allows you to “budget” your time which ensures that each task gets its time
   By using a timer you can allocate the amount of time you will spend on your tasks. You can then budget your time to be sure that you use your time in the best possible way to get all tasks done. It works in the same way as budgeting your financial resource helps you ensure that all your financial needs are met in the best possible way.

So, looking at those 4 ways, whenever you need any of these:

1. get yourself start working,
2. prevent your time from being overspent,
3. increase your working intensity, or
4. ensure that each task of yours gets its time,

just remember that timer can come to the rescue. Give it a shot.

Tips:

CoolTimer is simple timer software you can use for free.

Have you ever wonder about where your time has gone? Well, wonder no more: Rachota can help you.

Rachota is a time tracking software which I use only recently. Though I have used is for less than a week, I already feel the difference. Previously I often wonder at the end of the day: how can I do so few today? Where has all the time gone? Since there was no easy way to answer this I often ended up feeling unproductive without understanding what was really going on.

Enter Rachota. Rachota can track the time you spend on each task and give you good summary of how you use your days. It is light and easy to use. Using more than one computer? No problem. Rachota can run from USB drive. Oh, and it’s cross-platform too which means that you can run it on either Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Here are some simple steps to use Rachota:

1. Make sure you have Java installed
   Rachota is a Java application so you need to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) first. If you haven’t had JRE, get one and install.
2. Download Rachota
   You can download Rachota from its website. Its size is only about 290 KB and it’s in the form of a Jar file (Java executable file). You don’t need to install it. You don’t even need to extract it. That one file is ready to use.
3. Make shortcut
   You may want to create a shortcut to it on the desktop to make it easy to access. This way you can quickly launch Rachota whenever you need it.
4. Run Rachota
   You can run Rachota by double-clicking it. This is what you see when you first run Rachota:
   As you can see, there is a default task named Idle Time which automatically runs. As its name says, it tracks your idle time, which is the time you do not use to work on any other tasks.
5. Create new tasks
   
   To add new tasks, you can press the Add button. Enter the description of the task and press OK. You can also fill other details (such as priority), but I think the description alone is enough in most cases.
6. Switch to task you are going to work on
   If you decide to start working on a task, just double click it. Rachota will start tracking your time for that task.
7. Relax
   
   When you want to take a break from the task you’re working on, press Relax. Rachota will stop tracking the duration of the task and automatically start tracking your idle time! I love it. This way I can easily figure out how much time I’ve spent on not doing.
8. Move to another task
   If you haven’t finish you current task but want to work on another task, simply double click that second task. Rachota will start tracking the time of the second task while pausing the first one.
9. Done!
   
   If you have done a task, press Done. Be careful though. Once you press Done you cannot reactivate the timer for that task. So do it only if you are sure you will not go back to it later. Otherwise just press Relax (step 7) or double click another task (step 8).
10. See where your time has gone
    Now you can see where your time has gone. To do so, check Show finished task to display all tasks. In the table you can see all tasks with their corresponding duration. By clicking the Duration title bar you can sort the tasks by duration. This way you can easily see what tasks have consume your time the most.
11. See historical data
    You can also see data from other days by pressing the Previous and Next button. You can see how you did last week and compare it with today.
    Even better, you can also see how you have done in one whole week through the History tab. There you can see the graph and the total duration of your tasks for that one week. You can navigate from week to week using the Previous and Next button. Cool!

It’s very easy to use Rachota. Of course, there are still other options you can tweak which are not covered here; you can experiment with them. But even the basic usage has been very useful for me.

Do you have anything to share about time tracking? I’ll be glad to hear from you.

Many people do their creative thinking using tools such as mind maps. That’s a good thing, and I also like mind maps (though I use OneNote’s outlines more often than mind maps). However, recently I find another tool which is also helpful for creative thinking: JDarkRoom.

Actually JDarkRoom is just a simple text editor. What special about it is its interface. When you run it, JDarkRoom will change your entire screen into a blank screen. You will only see its blinking green cursor and a mouse cursor (if you don’t hide it). Other than these, there is absolutely nothing on the screen. When you type, the text will be displayed in green color with black background. It’s like you are sent back to the good old days of DOS!

I find it very useful. The fact that there’s nothing else displayed on the screen allows me to focus entirely on the task in front of me. No disruption, no eye candy, nothing. Just me and the task. Just me… and the task. Such situation gives me a peace of mind, a “mind like water”. It is a good condition for me to enter the “flow” state, a condition where I lose track of time and have my creative juice flows freely.

I also like the black background. Unlike most word processors’ interface which is dominated by bright colors, the black background is less irritating to the eyes. I can stare at the monitor for long time without making my eyes tired. This ability to look at the monitor for long time is another good condition for me to get into the “flow”.

It is such a simple tool, but I find it helpful to boost my creativity. I’m sure you will also find it so.

am always amazed by how many learning resources we now have on the Internet. I remember in the past, before the Internet was popular, how difficult it was to learn about anything. I must go to the bookstore and hope that there were books about the topic I wanted to learn. Since I live in Indonesia, usually new books from overseas must be translated first before they were available in the bookstore. The translation process itself took months to complete, not to mention that many books were never translated.

Compared to those days, these days are unbelievable. There are so many free learning resources on the Internet. It’s just a matter of how we can get the right resources at the right time. Hence, this time I’d like to touch on some learning tools which can help you find the right resources at the right time.

Here they are:

1. Google
   

   Any questions in the world, you ask Google
   Alan Cohen in The World is Flat

   I find this statement is (almost entirely) true. You can find the answer of basically all questions in the world through Google. Of course, for some difficult questions you should know how to use Google in special ways to get the answers. There is actually a term for your ability to use Google: “Google-fu” which is derived from “kung fu”. I like this term, and I think Google-fu is a very important skill in the Internet age. All of us have access to the same tool, so what makes the difference is how skilled we are in using the tool.
   Just in case you want to improve your Google-fu, here are some resources to help you:

   • The Essentials of Google Search
   • Google Web Search Features
   • Advanced Google Search Operators
   • Pro guide to Google searches. Part I
   • Pro guide to Google searches. Part II
2. Wikipedia
   I still find Wikipedia as the best resource to get quick overview on almost any topics on the earth. It is especially useful when I have to deal with topics which are new to me. I need overview and introductory material for those topics, but it can be difficult to find it with just a plain search in Google. For example, if I search for neural network in Google, most probably I will get a lot of technical resources which use neural network but never explain what neural network is in the first place. Wikipedia is great in such circumstances. It gives me exactly what I need: introductory material with enough follow-up information to make me familiar with that topic.
   To make your Wikipedia exploration more pleasant, try Wikiseek. Also don’t forget to check Ten Wikipedia Hacks.
3. LearnOutLoud
   LearnOutLoud is the podcast directory I like most. Of course you can also go to iTunes podcast directory (or other directories) to find new podcasts, but I find the number of podcasts in iTunes is overwhelming. It’s difficult for me to distinguish which ones are the good podcasts and which ones are the average. LearnOutLoud solves this difficulty for me. It gives me podcast directory which contains only the best podcasts in certain topics. Thus, when I get interested in a topic, I just go to LearnOutLoud and find the best podcasts for that topic. And I like their recommendations. I’ve found quite a number of interesting and useful podcasts through it.
4. OpenCourseWare Finder
   Though I am not so keen on learning lecture materials, OpenCourseWare Finder will be very useful when you want to find lecture materials on certain topics. Just enter the topic you want to learn in the search box, and it will show you free lecture materials available from six universities (at the time of this writing), which include MIT, John Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon. It’s really helpful because it aggregates the results from multiple universities into one place.
5. Technorati
   This list will not be complete without Technorati. While LearnOutLoud helps you find good podcasts, Technorati helps you find good blogs. Just type the topic you are interested in and you will get relevant blogs from Technorati’s blog directory. The blogs are automatically ranked according to their authority (i.e. the number of other blogs pointing to them) and good blogs usually have high authority. This way it enables you to quickly find good blogs in any topic. To get the most of Technorati, check Ten ways to search with Technorati and Ten (more) ways to search with Technorati.

Using these five tools, I never run out of quality materials for my learning time. In fact, the opposite is true: so many quality materials, so little time. What an exciting world it is! If there are any tools I miss, you are more than welcome to add them in the comment.

Technorati Tags: learning, productivity, tools

There are many tools which can be used for Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), but for me Microsoft OneNote is one of the main tools. Of course, I also use other tools such as Google Desktop (desktop search), Google Reader (RSS) and del.icio.us (social networking), but in term of idea management, OneNote is the tool for me.

There is a big difference between the way I use OneNote and the way I use other tools. Tools for technologies like RSS and social networking mainly deals with other people’s thoughts. For example, I can use an RSS reader to read other people’s blog entries and then use social networking to mark those which I find interesting. In most cases, I also use desktop search to search other people’s thoughts which are stored as files in my hard disk.

OneNote is different because I use it to manage my own ideas. While OneNote can be used to manage links to others’ blogs and web sites (like social networking), I find it most useful when dealing with my own thoughts and ideas.

There are several features of OneNote which make it useful for idea management:

1. The data is organized in sections and pages
   All data is organized neatly in sections and pages. The sections are displayed as a row of tabs in the upper part of the display, and within each section there are several pages displayed in the right side. This organization is convenient for me because I can put all my stuffs in one place (that is, inside OneNote) and then arrange them to be easily findable. Since everything is in one place, it is more difficult to miss any piece of thoughts I’ve written.
2. All typings are automatically saved
   This is a convenient feature which is not available in most other software. In OneNote, I never need to worry about pressing Ctrl-S because all typings are saved automatically. This way I can concentrate on just writing my ideas.
3. Writing can be done anywhere in the page
   Unlike word processor in which I can only write in certain areas of the pages (limited by paragraph format, margin, paper size, etc), I can write anywhere in the pages within OneNote. This is useful for developing ideas because I can easily place different thoughts in their appropriate places within the pages to interconnect them.
4. The content can be searched fast
   If I forget where I’ve written something, I can quickly find it by doing fast search across all sections and pages. For idea management, it is more useful than desktop search because desktop search will return results from the whole hard disk, most of which are other people’s writings. Using OneNote’s search, I can be sure that the search results are all my thoughts.
5. Flexible outlines can be made
   Outlining is the feature I like most from OneNote. Using it, I can easily write my thoughts and arrange them in hierarchies. I can then collapse or expand the outlines to see the big picture or the details. I can also move each item easily from one part of the list to another. This flexibility is important for me because it enables me to develop my ideas quickly and easily.

There are still other features of OneNote, but these are the most important ones which make me stick with it for idea management. I know that many people use mind maps to develop and maintain ideas. I’ve also tried them and find them useful, but frankly I use OneNote over mind maps almost every time. Aside from my browser (my beloved Firefox), OneNote is the software I spend most of my time with.

Technorati Tags: productivity, learning