Lets face it my entrepreneurial friends, were all really pressed for time these days. I’m going to share with you some tips on how to create free time out of nowhere during your everyday business life.
1) Use Rss feeds: If you’re like me and you depend on many cutting edge websites to get your technology tips and news from, you should always get the Rss feed from them if possible. You should make sure you save these feed bookmarks in a easy and quick to use Rss reader ( I recommend Sage for Firefox). This means that you wont have to trek through all your normal bookmarks checking for new articles.
2) Get Google mail and forget about folders: not much to say about this, except it must save me hours every week not having to worry about keeping an elaborate email folder structure. Only I recommend that emails that you archive have either a descriptive subject or you give them some appropriate labels. I find that even if you have GB’s of email data, as long as you remember the year or decade you were sent the email and roughly some words contained in it you have a real good change of finding it. Even if rarely can’t find it this way, you are much more likely to find it than having to search though GB’s of emails in your crazy folder structures.
3) Keep your pictures in folders for each year. For example if you’ve been taking pictures for say 5 years, instead of making categorical folders for stuff like “nature”, “friends” and “family” etc just create folders called 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and save accordingly. Then get a program (like adobe bridge) that can give keywords to image metadata to help you find your images. This will save you loads of time and stress.
4) Get a U3 pen drive: If you always want the power of your desktop even if you don’t have your laptop with you, you can do so with a U3 pen. Since I got one I’ve put many of my favourite applications on it and I really am always ready to work just like at home if I get some spare time to use a computer somewhere when I don’t have my laptop with me. Quoting from http://www.u3.com
Imagine carrying your software on the same flash drive that carries your files. That’s what you can do with a U3 smart drive. You can plug it into any PC and work, play a game, message friends, send email, edit photos and more. A U3 smart drive makes any PC your own PC. And when you unplug it, it leaves no personal data behind
5) Learn how to backup files quickly: Most people don’t realise that they don’t have to do a full backup of “My documents” every time they want to do a backup. Not only does this take much longer to do so but only allows you to update files in one direction, which means that there is no point in using the backup destination for anything else but backing up files. What you should go for is a simple program like Good Sync which allows incremental backups and the ability to backup in both directions with synchronisation metadata in all your files. This means you can take your hard drive away, write files to it and update the files in your master computer and the reverse direction to your backup drive at the same time. Very handy!
6) Learn touch typing: This is essential. From now on do everything in touch-typing, no excuses! This will improve your quality of life dramatically. You will be able to type with your eyes closed or looking out the window giving them a much needed rest from the computer screen! An easy way to learn is set you desktop background to a touch typing finger layout so you see it every time and get used to it.
7) Install Google Desktop: This amazing software. If you’ve ever compared the Mac OS X spotlight search with windows explorer search you will be a jealous person. With Google Desktop installed in windows you will be on a par with your Mac owning friends in terms of speed and efficiency in your searches! Oh btw, when you install it make sure you allow it to search the contents of files too! It also helps if you give your file names more descriptive names. After a few hours of installing Google Desktop the better it gets at finding stuff as it has to index your system first, don’t worry its safe.
8) Make your own contact database: Most programs out there for managing your contacts (if you have hundreds or thousands) are not powerful enough. If you really need to organise your contacts properly make a relational database (Microsoft Access or MySQL would do) for them with one table for all your contacts which holds contact details. Then add other tables drawing from your main table as your organisation requirements need it. In fact, why not make your own database for your whole life. Then you can query your own past life in a way that would be possible with traditional searches.
9) Always write down names of people you meet: We would be amazed at how much favour you will get if you remember someone’s name. How much more so if it’s a conference where you meet hundreds of people and you don’t have to obviously look down at there name tags to see who they are. What if you actually remembered there names from the last time your met. Every time you go somewhere you should have something with you to note down their names and a short piece of text to help you remember who they are (a PDA or mobile database program would do.) Then when you get home file those name in some master location stating the venue you met them. Then the next time you go to that venue just glace over the names and ever better bring them with you. This will save you the time trying to remember all those obscure names and also make you look good when you are the only one that seems to be able to remember names!