Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Tuesday Tidbits - Useful Stuff for Professionals

A while back, I shared information on how to find a good plane seat. Now, I'd like to tell you about a way to do this on a smartphone, pda or other small screen device with internet connectivity. Just point your mobile browser to http://mobile.seatguru.com and select the airline and aircraft from the menu.

From there, you'll see some information about the aircraft configuration along with a color-coded seat map that will help you determine whether your seat is good, bad, or other. This is also helpful if you want to ask for specific seats either on the phone or while talking with the gate agent.

You can see an example of the seat chart in the picture at left (click the image if you want to see a bit larger view).

I love SeatGuru - and it's free, by the way.

Note: Some of you who've dropped by here for a while may notice that I'm no longer using a Treo; yep, my company switched to Blackberry in December.

Related items:

Read More

Fresh Gear: Faster filing - email style

I've been running the new version of Claritude Software's SpeedFiler, which is an Outlook add-in designed to streamline the way you file messages in Outlook.

If you ever use Outlook's [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[V] keystroke combo to move messages to filing folders, you know that it is a good habit to develop, but it requires a lot of steps if you use subfolders (the Outlook UI is a little clunky). I've been using this since I got hooked on David Allen's "Getting Things Done".

Outlook's clunky old filing

If, for example, I want to use the traditional Outlook UI to file a message in a folder called Inbox/Customers/Fictional, I have to:

  • type [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[V] to get the move dialog,
  • type "IN" to get to the Inbox folder,
  • hit the [Right] arrow to expand the subfolders under the Inbox,
  • type "Cust" to get to the Customers Folder,
  • hit the [Right] arrow to expand the subfolders under Customers,
  • type "Fict" to get the the Fictional folder,
  • hit [Enter] to save the message to that folder.

SpeedFiler's better way

SpeedFiler replaces Outlook's dialog for filing. To do the same thing with Speedfiler, I would:

  • type [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[V] to get the move dialog,
  • type "Fict" to get the the Fictional folder,
  • hit [Enter] to save the message to that folder.

Much easier, and a lot less hand movement.

Another cool thing - if you have multiple folders with similar names, SpeedFiler narrows down the list as you type - you can see an example in the screenshot I snagged and posted here, in which I begin to narrow down my various "...reference..." folders.

Other tips and observations:

  • SpeedFiler helps with retrieval
    • One of the drawbacks of filing is that it gives you more folders to navigate through when you want to retrieve things. SpeedFiler helps there - their CEO, Itzy Sabo, turned me on to a very cool shortcut:
      • When you want to navigate to one of your folders, hit <Ctrl>+Y, and the SpeedFiler dialog pops up and you can start typing to narrow down the folder you want to go to. When you've typed enough, hit <Enter> and you're looking at your folder. Beats the heck out of mouse-based navigation.
    • By the way, Itzy's blog has some great productivity articles, as well.
  • SpeedFiler plays well with other children

OK, gadgetboy - what's the big deal?

As David Allen says in his book, filing needs to be easy or it won't get done consistently. SpeedFiler makes it easier to do mundane filing, therefore it is more likely you'll file things consistently.

If you're an Outlook user (using Getting Things Done or not), I recommend you give it a whirl and download the 30-day trial of SpeedFiler

Read More

Is blogging a waste of time?

Michael S. Hyatt says that some people question whether his blogging is a good use of his time.  After all, he's the CEO of a huge publishing company and he blogs on a corporate blog every day.  He doesn't think it's a waste of time (maybe it's just me, but it seems kinda natural for the head of a publishing company to publish every day...).  Anyway, I love his treatment of this topic - give it a read and see if you do, too.

So - I applied the question to myself:  "Is blogging a waste of time?"  Like anything in life, I think some people get a lot out of blogging, and others don't see how anyone could enjoy it. When I started blogging, I never thought I'd still be blogging 2 years later but here I am.  My first post was about "Finding your voice" and was inspired by Stephen Covey's book "The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness."

I don't know what I was expecting to get out of blogging.  It started as an outlet for my creative energy and a place to direct some of the thoughts I have as an introvert who thinks a lot but doesn't say all that much.

It ended up connecting me to some Great people all over the world that I wouldn't have otherwise met - and some of them you have become true friends.  A waste of time?  No way.

Read More

Interesting take on GTD, MindManager and GyroQ

I love mind mapping (I use MindManager Pro all the time), and am into GTD, so I'm always interested in hearing how people put them together.

Eric Mack (or Eric Mac, as I call him) has a great article on how he is using GTD and MindManager, and he has also added Gyronix's GyroQ into the mix. Ironically, I just watched the online demo of GyroQ yesterday (I own a copy of Gyronix's ResultsManager but have never quite gotten it to "click" for me).

One of the things I really like about the GyroQ demo is that it seems like it allows you to simultaneously add a task to your queue, assign an "owner" and file it according to whether it's a commitment you owe to someone else, or one that someone else owes you. That's pretty slick.

If I spent more time at my desk instead of traveling, I think this might be a viable option for me, but I just don't see it fitting with my work style because I don't always have my computer open to capture commitments. What about you?

If I had a magic wand:

In my dream scenario, I would be able to send an email or voice mail to a "GTD parser" service that would decipher my tasks and email an Outlook task back to me that would automatically show up in my list in the proper category/context. That would be cool.

I could also let other people send emails to that address, and they could be added as "candidate" actions. The service would, of course be able to tell me by my originating email address or caller ID from my phone. Any request originating from anyone else would be subject to my reviewing the task before accepting it, assigning it, etc.