Andrew L. Van Slaars

I recently discovered jott.com and so far, I’m finding it to be a very useful service.

If you are not familiar with Jott, it’s a voice based note-taking, communication and reminder service. Once signed up, you call a phone number and use your voice to send email or sms messages, leave yourself reminders, create calendar appointments or even post to a blog or twitter account. Jott allows you to call in and have news feeds read back to you. You can even perform product searches on Amazon by telling Jott what you are looking for. The Amazon results are then emailed to you so you can review them later.

There are hooks in place for other services to integrate Jott and there are quite a few apps (such as wordpress, google calendar and twitter) that are already setup tp work with Jott.

There is also a free iPhone application that works with your Jott account.

At the moment, Jott is free. The business model behind it is unclear, but I’m sure there will eventually be some sort of tiered subscription model or audio ads during phone calls into the service (I could also be completely wrong).

It’s definitely worth checking out.

Productivity, Tools Productivity, Tools

If you are a regular reader you are aware that I am working on writing a book. Not that I have much spare time right now so every little bit of forward progress helps and if I get a spare moment, I try to take advantage of it.

Unfortunately, sometimes when I do find an opportunity to sit down to write something for my book, I find myself getting distracted with something else that needs to be done. An icon on my desktop or an alert from an application will remind me of something and I’m off in another direction. I’m keeping busy and getting stuff done, but the book isn’t writing itself.

I just discovered a great tool for writing called DarkRoom. It has very few features by design. The key to using DarkRoom is that it covers your entire screen, allowing you to focus on writing without distractions.

If you write regularly and find yourself getting distracted y other software, system messages, emails, the Internet or anything else on your Windows desktop, you should check out DarkRoom. Oh, did I mention it’s free?

You can get DarkRoom here.

Productivity, Tools, Writing blogging, Productivity, Tools, Writing

For those of you who read Lifehacker, this is old news. If you aren’t a regular reader, then this post may be of interest.

Lifehacker is dedicated to providing tips and tricks to make your life more productive. They also have several applications and Firefox add-ons to help make your life easier. They provide a complete list in this post.

I have downloaded and installed several of these tools in the last few minutes… I’ll post more details about some of these tools when I find compelling reasons to do so.

Productivity, Tools lifehacker, Productivity, Tools

Stuff is a technical term I like to use… Ok, I just didn’t know what else to call this post.I have written about 5 entries for this blog this evening. They are almost all awful and only one of them was published. Some of them may never make it. So why write them? I haven’t been sticking to my “write something everyday” goal… I have been pretty busy for the past two weeks and I don’t want this chain of not writing to continue. I was also reminded by some of my new co-workers today that I haven’t posted lately (Thanks guys).

I found that in a couple weeks of writing everyday, my writing improved (at least in my mind) and it has gotten rusty just as quickly. I am writing a bunch of stuff to get back into it. This is my cure for writers block and being in a non-writing rut.

I’m ok with never publishing most of this stuff. I’m ok with it sitting there for another week waiting to be edited. I’m even ok looking at these posts and admitting that they are bad. They can be improved. They can be trashed. If I get back into the swing of things and start writing regularly again, they have served their purpose.

So if you ever find that your writing is getting rusty or you have writers block, just write a bunch of stuff. It seems to be helping me.

Productivity, Writing blogging, Productivity, Writing

I linked to Joe’s Goals in a previous post, but I felt it deserved another mention.

Joe’s Goals is a goal tracking application with a simple, intuitive interface. It does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. Rather than try to explain it with words, I’m going to recommend that you check it out for yourself.

I have been using it for a few weeks now and I have found that the desire not to break the chain is enough to keep me on track. Give it a try.

Productivity goals, Productivity

Like most technology professionals, I have spent a great deal of time in meetings, speaking with stakeholders about development projects. One of the biggest obstacles throughout any development project is language, more specifically vocabulary.

Communication seems to slow, or completely break down without a common vocabulary. I have seen meetings turn into chaos and discussions turn into arguments over something as simple as a difference in vocabulary. I have watched in disbelief as two professional adults argue over something they agree with. They aren’t aware that they agree because they are speaking through different vocabularies.

I think teams should start off with some level of shared vocabulary. Technical team members should understand that the business users probably don’t speak geek, while business people should realize that the geeks don’t always have the same level of industry knowledge. Read more…

Human Behavior, Productivity, Teaching communication, Productivity

Did you make any resolutions for the new year? Have you decided to change something in your life just because the date has changed?

I used to make new year’s resolutions. Like most resolutions, they were effective for about a month, maybe two and that was the end of it. I resolved to quit smoking for years before I actually did it. When I did, it was in February and had nothing to do with a resolution I had made in January.

For 2008, I’m trying something different. I am setting goals for the year. I have a list of things I want to accomplish by the end of the calendar year. Most of these things will require time and effort, so my plan is to spend the year working towards those goals. If I need to make changes(big or small) in order to accomplish those goals, then I will, but any changes made will be part of the process.

So instead of feeling the pressure to make a major change (or several) today, I have a year to accomplish the items on my list. I have essentially traded pressure in for motivation and have set myself up for success, rather than failure. Read more…

Productivity, Thoughts goals, Productivity, resolutions