Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Saving time and managing information flow
Saving time - vital... Here are some of the ways I'm saving time and managing information flow at the moment:
- Creating shortcuts on my desktop to my most-used folders - a no-brainer I think. To keep track of multiple projects effectively I like to keep my files in neatly organised folder hierarchies. But then I find myself taking time browsing through layers of folders to find what I want. So I have created shortcuts to the folders I'm using the most at this moment - key project folders, the Camtasia video I'm working on, the course materials I'm developing, etc.
- First thing in the morning I log into the VPN if not in the office, then I don't have to interrupt the flow when I need something from the server, and it's easy to store things on the server rather than leaving them on my hard drives.
- First thing I also open a Firefox window with several tabs for my most-used web apps - at the moment typically:
- My Google calendar
- Wrike task and project management
- Sugar CRM
- Twitter (or Twitterfox or Betwittered in my iGoogle page when they're working!)
- The community I am working on today
- Any course I am teaching at the moment
- Any course I am taking at the moment (currently digifolios.ning.com)
- My blog admin pages
- The forum I use most - a small supportive community of fellow elearning specialists
- I use two computers at the same time when possible, a desktop and a laptop, then if one is doing something slowly, eg, while a backup is running or a Camtasia video is rendering, I can turn to the other.
- I keep up with Twitter and RSS feeds on my smartphone in any odd moments - even in the kitchen stirring dinner...
- Now I just need to crack my terrible typing - correcting my typos takes up FAR to much time!
Labels: lifehack, organising, project management, time management
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:58 AM
