Use StickyPad

You must have seen those small pieces of paper people stick to their refrigerators after scribbling some notes on them. (I have always wondered why the refrigerator seems such a favourite place.) Chances are, you may be one among them!

I use an electronic version of the same concept.

StickyPad from Green Eclipse Software is a freeware that lets you create small sticky notes, scribble some stuff on them and then ‘paste’ them on your desktop. This is a great way to keep a track of small but numerous tasks that one needs to do in office or at home.

StickyPad primarily helps as a slate or small whiteboard to make quick notes throughout the day. Here is a screen grab of my desktop as it looks right now.

As you can see, I have created two sticky notes, one for personal tasks & the other for personal tasks. Once a task is done, I strike it off and replace it with new ones.
Furthermore, StickyPad allows you to:

• Drag and pin the notes to any position on desktop
• Give individual colours to each sticky note, for easier identification
• Set reminders for alerts to be raised when an item is due
• Save the notes as a file for future reference
• Send the notes as an e-mail attachment
• Print the notes if you wish to have a hard copy
• Hide/Close/Delete notes once the tasks are done

Of course, StickyPad doesn’t have all the features of more powerful tools like Microsoft Outlook, but on the upside, it is easy to install, configure & manage; does not require too much efforts to use; doesn’t hog much resources (memory, desktop space) and most importantly, it is free!

Using StickyPad has enhanced my productivity by quite a few notches, and saved me the headache of having missed a small but significant task.

Install Encarta

… Or, Encyclopedia Britannica, for that matter…
Many of us have desktops or laptops at our homes. However, they are mostly used as to surf the net or as gaming stations. We need to go beyond that and make the computer a knowledge tool.
Packages like Encarta or Britannica go a long way in doing just that.
Ever since I installed a copy of Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2007 on my laptop, I haven’t experienced boredom. Whenever I do get bored, I just open the suite and click my way through its vast knowledge-base.
Microsoft Encarta Premium 2007 has different sections like History, Geography, People & Society, Arts & Literature, Science & Nature, Sports & Recreation.
The advantage that an electronic version has over the paper version is that the videos, 3-D animations and virtual tours make the learning much more enjoyable and interesting than a piece of text.
Moreover, Encarta Kids is a special section devoted to kids. It has information in a simplified manner, with lots of games and animation thrown in.
Microsoft Student 2007 is not just an encyclopedia, but a knowledge-tool. It lets you learn about many of activities one performs in school or college. For example, it has an extensive array of Math tools, geography tools, foreign language tools and search tools. For college students, it has tools to create projects and papers, presentations, and charts & graphs, plus a complete section devoted to college, jobs and career.
If you have kids at home, Microsoft Student with Encarta premium 2007 is one of the best things you can get for them as a (birthday!!!??) gift!

Use Reminders extensively

Many of us have some fantastic ideas about our own memory capacities. We feel our memory is infallible and forgetting is something that just doesn’t come naturally to us.

Well, having a great memory is one thing; and ability to remember the right things at the right time is just the other. I realized it last year.

My cousin sister’s birthday is in June; and of course I did remember it… exactly 72 hours later. What made things more awkward was the fact that I had spoken to her just the day before.

Lesson Learnt: Set reminder for everything that you need to do.

• In office, I use the Calendar feature of Microsoft Outlook. It has some powerful features that you can use to set recurring reminders, or reminders to be sent to others.
• For personal matters, I use Reminder feature of my cell phone.
• For birthdays of special ones, I have two reminders: one for the day itself, and another a week earlier, to buy greeting card or a gift.

Count thy currency…

Count the currency every time it changes hands.
Sounds pretty obvious, eh? But just think about the countless times you must have just pocketed the wad of notes given by perhaps a close friend or a family-member, thinking it wouldn’t look good if you counted them right in front of them.
At least I suffered from these thoughts until a short while ago.

A friend had returned the 2000/- bucks I had lent him. Coming back to my PG room, I passed over the same to landlord as the rent for the month. He counted it while we talked and informed that it was only 1900/-.. a hundred less.
Of course, I paid the remainder amount, but then was left wondering whether my pal himself had erred while giving the money or whether I had misplaced Rs. 100/- somewhere.

Lesson Learnt: Whether you are giving the money or receiving it, count it thoroughly.

Welcome to my life!

Dear All,
Welcome to my (yet another) blog. Every time I create a blog, I promise myself it would be the last one… and then end up creating another.

This one is about the experiences of my life, and the lessons they have taught me. To begin with, it would mostly be about HowTo’s, GTDs, et cetera et cetera. Later on, when (actually, if) I get a bigger picture, a bit of philosophy might creep in.

Each post in this blog would be a live document, in the sense that whenever I learn something new about the same thing, the related blog post would be updated.

At the ripe young age of 27, I cannot claim to have seen it all. The things mentioned here would be stuff that perhaps all of us know, are aware about. The idea is just to log them.
Being a technical writer, am quite fanatic about comprehensive documentation! And, what could be more mission-critical than our own life!

Hope that the entries made here strike a chord with you…

Regards,
-Gautam
23-January-2008