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.
I've been a little quiet this week due to a hectic schedule, but wanted to let you know that I posted about LinkedIn and Plaxo on the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog yesterday. If you haven't already seen it, and are interested in tools that can help you with your business and (to some degree) social connections, check out the post.
I have a backlog of book reviews to be written - look for them to start showing up in the next few days, carrying through to next week.
Read MoreHere are a few items I've found or found out about recently that I thought would be interesting to you:
New "Feedables" feed on Efficiency
Feedables is an RSS aggregation service I really like. I have been following their "Gadgets Feed" for a while, and really like it. I just found out they have added an Efficiency feeds page. Good stuff - check it out.
5x5: Five Things for Five Minutes
An oldie but a goodie, rediscovered. Tim Milburn's "5x5 Worksheets" are an awesome approach to getting more done in 5 minutes than most people do all day. I'm glad Tim's teaching people - he's got the knack.
Wrike is better than before
I have written about Wrike as a GTD application before. It's good for group collaboration and project management. They've recently added time tracking for tasks, among a number of other useful features. The time tracking is great for time auditing. Wrike is also a good, low cost alternative to products like Groove.
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The folks at Fruitful Time have launched an interesting product called Fruitful Time TaskManager Electro, and it promises to eliminate procrastination. Yes, you heard me - it eliminates procrastination.
The product functionality is very intriguing - as Fruitful Time declares, "Trying to use programs which hinder your productivity is automatically detected and blocked through an innovative way... " And the results are no less impressive - they cite an independent research study which determined that use of this product "...increased productivity ranging from 50% to 75%." Wow.
Apparently, their advanced algorithms can detect when you are doing things that are in conflict with your next actions on your task list, such as "Loading up a game or randomly browsing instead of finishing off a paper due in two days time..."
The method seems a little unorthodox (and sounds a little dangerous) but according to the FAQ's it is completely safe.
The product is available now as a free download.
Read MoreA while back, I wrote about a tool called "ClipMarks" that I was using to share snippets of web pages with other people. I really like it.
However, I have now found a tool I like better for this, and I have converted to i-Lighter. I'd looked at it before and didn't like it, but they've made significant improvements since then and now I think it is awesome. What's so cool about i-Lighter? Read on...
Easy as a yellow pen (but much better)
i-Lighter is a free browser add-in (Firefox and IE) that gives you the virtual equivalent of a yellow pen that you can use to highlight all or part of a web page. You see the highlights right there on the page.
First, you download the browser add-in and create an account at the i-Lighter site (this stores your highlights centrally in a sort of catalog). Then you click the i-Lighter toolbar button to turn on your yellow pen, and start highlighting.
Share the love
Once you've marked the best parts of the page, then the fun really starts. i-Lighter has a bunch of options for what you can do with your highlights:
I use this quite a bit these days to share news article on interesting topics with my coworkers, and find that i-Lighter makes it very easy. If you want to see i-Lighter in action, check out the online tour.
By the way - this is Windows only for now, but the i-Lighter CEO's blog says a Mac version is likely in the future.
I work at a software company, and our dress code around the office is fairly relaxed most of the time. Therefore, when I'll be in the office all day and not seeing any customers in person, I usually wear blue jeans.
The other day, I didn't have any clean jeans so I threw on a pair of khaki trousers from The Gap and went to work. I got quite a few comments like, "Why are you so dressed up - is a customer visiting today?"
Why was I surprised by this reaction? I was (literally) wearing all the same clothes --right down to the shoes-- that I usually wear to work except the blue jeans. Changing my trousers noticeably changed others perception of my professionalism.
This small effect reminded me that it doesn't take much to positively influence how others perceive us. I'm not just talking about clothing - I think the "little bit extra" factor can make a difference in a lot of things we do.
Becoming purposeful
Now, I'm trying to be more conscious of when I could add a "little bit extra" to key activities and deliverables in my job to positively impact others' perception of my work. For example, some examples of areas I can improve are:
This is not an overnight change, as it takes time to develop new habits in this area, but I think it will be worth it. Just added a Next Action to my "@computer - web" list to order more khakis...
What about you - have you discovered any small changes that make a big positive difference?
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