Hot answers tagged computers
8
I use a Scrum Board, to see all pending task. But a very important note is to have it OUTSIDE the computer. If you google "Scrum Board" you will find a bunch of web based tools to have an online board. These tools are a great aid for distributed teams. But for you, having your distraction problems, I think having a the board on the PC, and also on the ...
6
if your routine going on for sometimes then it is really the time to break out of your routine now. yes breaking your project into small pieces as pointed out by @gekkostate will definitely help.
1) i think that taking some sort of a break is also important to bring the motivation back for example if you can take 1 month all fun trip to somewhere leaving ...
6
I personally feel comfortable only when I'm excited about what I'm doing.
If I'm not excited about what I'm doing, I can have the best chair in the world and it won't do much for my productivity.
Conclusion: emotions and motivation / mindset are the fuel of my productivity, not ergonomic chairs / monitors / etc. I don't think 'things' will help your ...
5
Adding a second monitor will ease this somewhat--especially being
good for eliminating the repetitive flipping between two windows such
as might happen when taking notes from a pdf or learning an
application from a video tutorial.
I have personally found that by becoming disciplined in closing down
apps/windows when they are no longer needed, organization ...
5
So this is interesting because you are coming at this from a very different perspective than most people who are interested in productivity (and you're a bit closer to my own way of doing things)
So when I was first trying to manage my todo list I had a pen and paper notebook - tasks got crossed out in pen and new ones were added at the bottom. You read ...
4
I use a trackball mouse controlled by thumb, so my experience may be different.
Some benefits of a trackball mouse:
More ergonomic: You only have to move your thumb, rather than your whole arm.
More portable: You don't have to sacrifice the luxury of a good mouse, when you don't have space for a mouse pad.
Easier to move the mouse great distances. ...
4
Motivation is something that someone else can't give you. I've had a similar problem with getting work done. Here are a few things I would suggest to get some work done.
List the benefits of completing the code
Break the code/work into small parts so it doesn't feel long and tedious
I am a programmer myself and this is recurring problem that I face. ...
4
There is an element of truth in what @Tool says - the environment is not likely to be the key factor in making you productive.
That said, it is certainly an enabler: you don't want your setup to hinder your work, and you also don't want it to make you lethargic.
Mentally it is better to have your bed reserved for sleeping, and an office space for working - ...
3
I think the power/potential of voice activation tools for productivity would lie in using spoken word to trigger actions and events, but not to replace typing.
For example, if you can configure a voice recognition package to trigger commands like "open", "save", "build", "run", etc, you can save yourself time hopping through menus or typing hotkeys. ...
3
Try using a cloud synchronization service like Dropbox, there are other good services but I only use this one. As I do not neither own an iPhone or an iPad I do not know how good or comfortable their apps are, but it works with Android.
Basically you get some (free) storage space (e.g. 2 GB). With their different applications you can use Dropbox on ...
3
Spaces and full screen layouts are great. I use Moom to help arrange my screen as cleanly as possible — there are other tools that let you do the same thing.
But to really make my workflow sing, I use AlfredApp and created keyboard commands to switch to my most used apps. F2 sends me to my code editor, F1 to my broswer. By not taking the second or two it ...
3
My advice is to turn off the automatic reordering of the spaces, since it makes it harder to remember the position of a certain space. This way I position the most important application in one space and move additional stuff to the space left and right. I then can quickly navigate left and right using a four-finger-swipe.
A second tip is to force certain ...
3
Dependencies here are personal preference and the types of tasks you do on the computer.
Personally I find the combination between a trackpoint and a mouse to be perfect. For quick normal interactions with the GUI in between typing, the trackpoint takes away the need to move a hand to the mouse. For anything of longer duration, or more complex, the mouse is ...
3
It depends on how you use it.
For me, a second monitor greatly increases my productivity. I do a lot of research/writing, and being able to have my notes and research materials open on one screen with a word processor open in the other is far more efficient than flipping back and forth between windows.
If I'm being bad, however, I might have IMs, twitter, ...
3
On most windows machines these days there's a key that produces the same effect as a right-click of the mouse. That's a hardware thing, so it should work in pretty much all programs. It is usually between the Alt and Ctrl keys to the right of the space bar, often has an icon that looks kind of like a dropdown menu. Non-QWERTY keyboards, YMMV.
To do the ...
3
I just did a little experiment and typed the following without looking at the keyboard:
a=a++ - used my middle finger for the = and +
a[0] - used my third finger for the [ and 0. used my fourth finger for the ]
a?a:b - used my fourth finger for the ? and my pinky for the :
There's no right or wrong to this. It's just what I do. And I do touch type ...
3
Let me suggest another software, Launchy (I'm not affiliated with it, but I'm a longtime user).
With its built-in plugin, Weby, running Google with your clipboard contents is literally three keystrokes:
Alt+Space to start Launchy;
Shift+Insert to paste from clipboard;
Enter
The only thing to do is setting Google Search your default plugin:
No ...
3
I use OmniFocus and do not set due dates. Instead I set start dates and no due dates. That way in OmniFocus the task appears in my Forecast view.
This article also has some pointers.
http://gridwriter.com/2012/11/14/omnifocus-series-flags-due-dates-daily-review/
Hope this helps.
Glenn
3
You don't state what level of TCS problems you're dealing with or what books you're reading.
There are several incredibly bad textbooks in the field of TCS. Maybe you should look for alternatives which may provide better intuitive explanations, rather than just symbolic proofs. Or maybe you should back down for a while and go back to studying the basics if ...
2
I think the issue is less about the number of monitors you use and more about the number of contexts that you maintain on those monitors:
Single Context:
It is possible to configure a monitor arrangement to act as a single desktop area and tile application windows across all of the monitors or at least arrange windows from the same application across ...
2
Yes, good hand-held devices make a huge difference to productivity
They respond more quickly and require less hand movements.
They fit better. I have a number of Microsoft mouse series 5000. I've tried 10 other mouse models and non of them fit my hand.
I can type faster and with less pain on a curved keyboard. Helps me with rsi. I use Microsoft 2000 ...
2
Managing tabs is sometimes a difficult issue but Firefox has made it easy for you. Trust me, when it comes to be productivity and efficency, I believe Firefox is the way to go. You may have to scarifice some speed but I think it's worth the time you save trying to find your tabs. Though chrome provides an extension for managing tabs, GO FIREFOX! :)
The ...
2
First of all, I love reading comic-books also ;)
Second of all, believe me you are not alone in this situation. There are a lot of people kind of these problems. Definition of this word; Princeton University’s WordNet says:
great and constant diligence and attention
I think you don't like what you doing. You doing it because you fear your supervisor. ...
2
More efficiently in what sense?
IMO voice input for programming is substantially less efficient than typing, particularly in an decent editor with good macro and template facilities. I think you'd be better served figuring out the domain(s) you normally work in, figuring out what code gen tools you already have access to or can create, and nail down every ...
2
I totally sympathize with this problem. It's not uncommon for me to have 120 or more tabs open at a time. I mostly run Safari, and before Apple messed it up with the redesign, I had gotten it to run even a bit over 200 tabs fairly well (I have an iMac with 12GB RAM, btw).
But whatever browser you run, the big problem comes when everything starts to slow ...
2
Apologies for posting two answers, but after spending some time researching this I've found something that looks extremely promising and seems to be working for me so far. It's a Chrome extension called Tabs Outliner. Similarly to Firefox's Tree Style Tab add-on, it displays all your tabs in a collapsible tree view, making it easy to drag them between ...
2
I, too, would like a great tool for managing tabs, but in the absence of such a tool, here are a couple of hacks that can free up some of your computer's ram, and prevent Flash from turning your computer into a hotplate. Unfortunately they're not very elegant solutions and you'll have to keep doing them every now and then.
Quit your browser, unplug your ...
2
Managing Tabs
Lately I’ve been experiencing with the “Two-tabs rule”, being allowed to have only two tabs opened at a time, two supposedly being the number of tabs that you brain can handle without context-switching penalty. This works pretty well!
There is some minor cases when being limited with two tabs is annoying but setting the limit higher is just a ...
2
Just my thoughts on this in form of an answer, since the comment section got a little bit crowded. Feel free to not upvote this answer since there is no final conclusion from my side...
To estimate what to expect from a hands free input device, you have to realize: Our hands are very good a manipulating objects since we are trained to do so. So if you use ...
2
There is a tool called Tasktop Desktop that could be worth having a look at.
The tool generates task contexts that link an active task to whatever you do while it is active (e.g. opening documents, visiting web sites etc.). When switching to a previous task you are also switching the context and have all the documents available that you worked on before on ...
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