In the past, I've written about Wikis and how useful I've found them to be for collaboration in my company. In the olde days, only geeky types used Wikis. Now, there are a lot of positive changes that make wikis more accessible to the mainstream (you've experience a form of Wiki if you've used Wikipedia, for example).
Here are a few Wiki options I know a lot about, and the links to get there if you really wanna wiki:
TWiki
TWiki is billed as an "enterprise wiki" and is the Wiki tool that has been in use in my company for the last 6 years or so. It is very flexible and stable, can be customized and is very scalable. However, you must install, administer, and maintain the platform yourself. This is better suited for organizations with a more technical user community and a dedicated (at least part time) Wiki administrator.
pbWiki
pbWiki is a Wiki "platform" including the software and service to get going on a Wiki without installing the software yourself. They have a free version of their Wiki platform geared toward individuals, students, and educators. From their home page, you can sign up for a free account or try out a demo Wiki they've published.
pbWiki also has a small business-centric version of their Wiki platform, with some setup and manageability improvements and more robust permissions management. This costs money, but the price seems reasonable for business collaboration. Here are some videos discussing their new features:
Wiki using Microsoft Sharepoint
Sharepoint has always been a group collaboration tool, but it can be a little (a lot?) clunky to learn. Microsoft has incorporated Wiki features into Sharepoint 2007 to get into this meme. Read more about Sharepoint Wikis here. We're just getting into this in our company, as a way for less technical users to collaborate.
Other options abound
The resources I mentioned are just scratching the surface, and were selected because they are the ones I've been personally exposed to. If you know of other options that you love, please add them into the comments on this post along with your brief review (even a thumbs up/thumbs down or short list of pros and cons).
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I mentioned time auditing in my last post and in the past I've written about unplanned work's dastardly effects on productivity, and the power of time auditing (see "Related items" at the end of this post for links) . As I do from time to time, I have recently caught myself wondering, "Where does the time go?" The time is upon me again, so I'm starting another "time audit" using a traditional approach to time auditing described in Neil Fiore's classic "The Now Habit," (reviewed here).
If you're interested in time auditing, here are some thoughts that may help.
Time Auditing basics
Time auditing is a very simple thing to do, but it requires some discipline. Here are some tips:
- Plan to stick with the time audit for at least a week. Two weeks is ideal.
- Decide whether you want to track your time only at work, or all the time (i.e. work and personal). The "whole life" time audit is very powerful, but is a lot more work.
- Decide how you will record your time - you can keep a written list, or record your activities electronically.
- For best results, pick a method that allows you to record your activities all the time. The more complicated your method, the less likely you are to do it - so make it fast and simple.
- I suggest paper for the "whole life" audit, since you can carry a small notebook around with you all the time and record your whole day's activities. Obviously, the paper approach is also good for "work only" audits.
- You can record things on your computer, if that enables you to track everything you do.
- If you spend all your time at your computer, you might try this free, web-based time tracking tool. Or, just keep a Word doc open and create a running list of activities in a document.
- A PDA can work, if you find an easy way to track your time. I tried this method once and abandoned it - I found it to be difficult due to the time required to note times, write out.
- Find a way to remind yourself to record your tasks, particularly in the beginning. I sometimes use the countdown timer on my watch by setting it to go off every 20 minutes to I can write down what I've been doing since the last time it beeped. After a couple of days, I don't really need the timer any more.
- Be fairly detailed in recording your activities, particularly about recording when you change tasks - the amount of time you spend on a particular task will be important when you review the log, as will tracking how often you change from one activity to another. Track things like email, reading blogs and feeds, web surfing, making phone calls, daydreaming, goofing off, eating, going to the bathroom, getting coffee, etc.
Analyze your logs
- At the end of a week, go through and tally up how much time you spent on specific categories of activities. When you review your logs, the categories will "suggest" themselves, but try to lump activities into as few buckets as possible. For example, you might have categories like:
Procrastinating / goofing off
- Phone calls
- Eating
- Project work
- Meetings
- Commuting
- etc.
- Figure out which categories take up the largest percentage of your time, then do more detailed analysis of those categories. This is particularly useful for categories that are "time wasters" or unproductive for you.
Learn stuff
- How does what you actually did compare to what you intended to do (or what you thought you did)?
- What bad habits are wasting your time?
- What interruptions are making you unproductive?
- What habits are working well?
- What changes can you make to get rid of your unproductive aspects, while increasing or nurturing your productive activities?
- What negative-energy activities can you eliminate?
- Are you spending enough time on important activities like:
- important tasks & projects
- managing up
- managing down
- time with your family
- time with your boss
- time learning and developing your skills
- exercising
You may learn some very useful things during a personal time audit - I highly recommend it. By the way - if you have personal time audit tips of your own, please share them!
Related links:
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If you're tired of writing and re-writing your shopping lists (and you've got some cash to spend to solve this problem), you should check out "SmartShopper." This is a device you can hang on your fridge to capture your needed items as they make themselves apparent.
You press the Record button, it listens to what you say, it shows you what it thinks you said and asks you to confirm, then stores a running list of items you need. Then, when you're ready to go shopping, you press the print button and it prints out a categorized list (click here for a sample).
It has a glossary of about 2500 common grocery items, along with a bunch of common errands ("Go to the dry cleaners" for example) so you can use it to manage your list of errands. And, you can add your own items to the database if your item isn't found.
It's pretty cool (you can see an online demo on the SmartShopper site) but it's spendy - $150 at this writing (though I found SmartShopper on Amazon for $131.15, with free shipping for Amazon Prime members like me). If list creation is a real pain for you, it may be worth it. If you get one, let me know how it works.
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