Having effective means of capturing ideas and thoughts when they occur and take note of any other valuable information you come across is crucial for your productivity. Firstly, you don’t want to waste time later on trying to think of what you didn’t capture and secondly, you want to return to what you were actually doing as quickly as possible. OneNote has a number of great capturing tools meeting those requirements, some of which are instantly activated through universal keyboard shortcuts:

• Capturing side notes. OneNote’s side notes are much like an electronic version of yellow sticky notes. They are easily created on the fly from a universal keyboard shortcut and are great for quick notes to self. For example, if someone interrupts you with a message, you can quickly write it down and return to what you were doing. [Windows logo key + N]
• Taking meeting notes. Directly from appointments within your Microsoft Outlook calendar, you can create meeting notes in OneNote. The file is automatically generated with a nice formatted header displaying appointment details such as date, location and attendees. [Right-click an appointment in the Outlook calendar and select 'Meeting Notes']
• Scribbling on e-mails. If you feel a need to add some additional notes or even drawings to an email you can send it straight to OneNote where lots of scribble tools are available. [Click 'Send selected e-mail to OneNote' on the Outlook toolbar]
• Capturing parts of the screen. With a universal keyboard shortcut you are instantly able to capture any part of your screen. The screen capture is forwarded to OneNote where you can add additional notes. This is very useful for creating personal help files if you need to remember how to use a certain system or website. [Windows logo key + S]
• Saving web pages. If Internet Explorer is your browser of choice, then any web page can be sent to OneNote with the simple click of a button. It’s great for capturing news articles or other web content you may want to read offline or save for future reference. [Click 'Send to OneNote' on the Internet Explorer toolbar]
• Recording sound snippets. OneNote also has a slick way of recording audio on the fly. Admittedly, I’m yet to get much use out of this feature, but it’s still pretty cool. [Right-click the OneNote icon in the system tray and select 'Start Recording Audio']

All of the features above are quick and easy ways of capturing thoughts, ideas or other important information registering on your radar. From a GTD perspective, it’s superb that all of these different ways of collecting stuff automatically creates files in the same ‘Unfiled Notes’ folder which then becomes a single ‘Inbox’ you can process along with your other inboxes.

Another great GTD-friendly feature of OneNote is the tight integration with Outlook tasks. When you process the ‘Unfiled Notes’ folder as any other inbox, you can create Outlook tasks straight from within OneNote. These tasks will contain a link back to the original note in OneNote, so when you get down to the actual doing of that task you can instantly access the context of which the task was created in.

Finally, if your phone is running Windows Mobile you can also use the mobile version of OneNote. Mobile notes are synchronised with your desktop notes whenever you connect your device through ActiveSync. This provides you with another great tool for collecting ideas and thoughts on the go. If you’re like me and have paperphobic tendencies then a tool like OneNote for creating and managing unstructured notes is highly desireable.

Related posts:

1. Productivity on the bus

There is no shortage of blog posts out there analysing Twitter and all the remarkable phenomena that have appeared and evolved as a result if it. What’s interesting about this article is the larger perspective it puts it all in. The impact of Twitter goes far beyond what’s immediately obvious and a string of new and exciting concepts will have far-reaching effects in years to come.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Twitter is the evolution it’s been through. It’s now being widely used in ways the founders most certainly had never dreamt of. Twitter has been redesigned and reinvented by its users many times over already. Hashtags and @-replies are both concepts that were spontaneously invented and developed by the user base. Similarly, there are literally thousands of applications (now more than 11,000 apparently) out there developed on the Twitter platform by people not affiliated with the Twitter company. And indeed the vast majority of users interact with the service through third-party software rather than using the website itself on Twitter.com.

This whole idea of end-user innovation is increasingly the most important success factor in new and existing ventures. If you can create a platform that effectively facilitates end-user innovation your product will evolve faster and be more closely aligned with customer needs than what can ever be achieved with a more traditional R&D approach.

Twitter facilitates quite a unique form of communication which is very democratic. There is no central authority and it’s open to everyone. It’s real time and about real events. For example, knowledge sharing at conferences and other industry events are now often catalysed by real-time conversations on Twitter which aren’t confined to delegates attending the events. The concept of hashtags plays a key role in this.

Twitter is also becoming a valuable tool for many when seeking information. The combination of social networking, real-time searching and link-sharing provides an interesting alternative to Google when it comes to finding information. It’s more current and provides interesting comments from your extended social network.

It is also noteworthy that Twitter is just the underlying technology platform. The fascinating development to follow is the characteristics of the type of communication it facilitates. The real-time conversation and knowledge sharing will be entrenched in many platforms to come. Although, it’s hard to imagine right now, it’s entirely possible that Twitter might not exist or have morphed into something completely different in three or four years. However, the key elements of the platform including the follower structure, link-sharing and real-time searching are here to stay and the three major information channels of news, searching and advertising will evolve around these key elements.

Another point mentioned in the article is that Twitter does not make a very good first impression. The majority of new registered users never do much after signing up. It’s definitely one of those things that needs to be experienced before the value is understood. If you’re keen to experience the Twittersphere I have a brief article on how you get started with Twitter.

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1. How you get started with Twitter
2. Augmented reality browsing
3. Work/life integration, instead of balance?

Twitter is essentially a public short messaging (micro-blogging) system that allows users to publish updates (tweets) and to follow other users’ updates. Every update has to be in 140 characters or less. It’s probably one of the simplest websites out there, yet the use of it can be very advanced.

So, what do I use it for? Well, first of all, I don’t really tweet much about what I’m doing on the weekend or trivialities such as what I eat for lunch. I’ve got Facebook for that sort of friend-to-friend type chit-chat. I use Twitter as an important tool in my profession as a Solutions Architect and I believe any professional can potentially extract a lot of value from Twitter.

My professional area of expertise is around designing and architecting technology solutions for enterprises to solve problems in collaboration, content management and information access. There are many other people around the world working in the same area and through Twitter I can connect and collaborate with those people. The basic idea is that if we all share our knowledge, we can all grow collectively. On Twitter we can ask questions, help others and share news of interest. It becomes a professional grapevine and you can compare it to the casual conversations happening in your open-plan office environment but you are potentially engaging with the global experts in your field.

Apart from using Twitter as a work tool, I also found it very useful for travel research when I went to India a few months back. If it sounds like something you can benefit from as well, then here are my tips for getting started with Twitter:

1. Assume nothing. It takes a while to really understand how you get value from it. Go into it with an open mind and spend some time trying to understand how it all works.
2. Sign up. Using your real name is a great opportunity to take control of your personal brand, but we will save that discussion for another blog post. Use an alias if you’re not comfortable with using your own name.
3. Find interesting people to follow. Start with about 20-40. Use Twitter Search to search for tweets in your areas of interest and then follow the people with tweets you find interesting. It’s very easy to stop following people, so don’t hesitate to follow people for a while just to check them out.
4. Tweet. Share interesting thoughts, let people know what you’re working on or ask questions. If you went to an event with lots of people in your profession, what would you talk about?
5. Engage with people. If you start a message with @user_name it will be directed at that user (e.g. “@kalsing Hmm… I don’t know about this Twitter thing”). Respond to questions, ask questions, comment on thoughts, etc.
6. Don’t think you have to read all tweets. The more people you follow, the more tweets you get in your timeline. But don’t feel you necessarily have to read all those tweets. It’s like your office chit-chat, if you’re not there it doesn’t really matter. However, the fact that you do participate regularly means that you know what’s going on and you have an opportunity to share experiences.
7. Install a Twitter application. The Twitter website is too basic for the advanced uses of Twitter. If you are running Windows I recommend you start with Twhirl and move onto TweetDeck once you’re hooked. But there are many other Twitter applications available.

Follow the steps above and give it a chance for a couple of weeks. Then ask me for more tips because one of the most fascinating aspects of Twitter is the amount of applications and tools built on top of the Twitter platform. Thanks for reading and I look forward to connecting with you on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Summary of TIME’s cover story about Twitter
2. Off to India, travelling 2.0

This debate is mostly relevant to knowledge workers, people in jobs that can be performed from practically anywhere. We’re seeing more and more people responding to work emails from their mobile devices at night and organising social events with friends on Facebook during normal working hours. Through social networking sites, we’re giving our work colleagues more insight into our personal lives and our friends learn more about what we do for work. The boundary between our work and personal life is no longer as clear as it used to be.

So, what’s the driver behind integrating our professional and personal lives? Flexibility. And with more flexibility comes higher efficiency. By being able to perform tasks at the most convenient time and utilise pockets of downtime we can achieve more overall. The main concern here is how we manage this growing mishmash of interwoven professional and personal things to do. Well, that’s where technology is helping us through improved connectivity and an ever growing range of productivity tools.

To fully subscribe to the idea of work being what we do and not so much where and when we do it, we need to be a lot more outcomes-driven. The idea of getting remunerated based on the hours we clock up is no longer practical if our work and personal tasks are interwoven. As a positive consequence, we will be forced to think more carefully about performance management at work and be clearer about what we are trying to achieve.

Another aspect to consider is how we are all different. To what extend we want to integrate our work and personal life is dependent on our personalities. Not everyone is thrilled by the thought of having the two overlapping, so we must not forget to respect that. For some personalities it could even be counter-productive to have too much work/life integration. Like with everything else, you really need to find out what works best for you, but with the tools and technologies now available a high degree of work/life integration is definitely possible.

Related posts:

1. How you get started with Twitter
2. Using OneNote for the collection process in GTD

My mobile happens to be a Windows-based device (Samsung Omnia). However, most mobiles these days will allow you to do all the following provided you have Internet access and a good data plan to go with it. The big question for many is how you type. Do you pick a phone with a traditional phone keypad, a qwerty keyboard or do you jump on the touch wagon? Regardless of which you pick, it will always be a bit awkward. This list is mainly focused on doing things that don’t require much typing, so it really isn’t critical to your productivity how well you can type.

• Reading emails. This is pretty straight forward and increasingly common. But note the emphasis on reading emails. It’s much easier and more productive to write your emails once you’re on your laptop, so unless it’s urgent I generally don’t worry about replying to emails from my mobile.
• Reading RSS feeds. Subscribing to RSS feeds is a must for professionals who want to stay on top of new developments in their area of expertise. I manage all my feeds with Google Reader which also has a nifty mobile browser interface that allows me to read new articles from my handset.
• Listening to podcasts. Many newer mobiles have a neat interface natively that will let you search for podcasts by topic that you can listen and subscribe to. Alternatively you can always manually copy them down to your device when you sync it with your PC. The great thing about podcasts is that I can continue listening while I get on and off the bus and even when I walk down the street.
• Creating outlines for blog posts. I maintain a few different blogs including this one, my professional blog and an internal blog at work. Most of my posts are usually drafted on busses or planes where I have a bit of downtime. And there’s something about travelling which has a positive effect on generating ideas.
• Tuning in to Twitter. If you’re into Twitter, you can tune in on the grapevine of your colleagues around the world and get up to speed on what’s happening right now in your industry and profession. Using a mobile browser go to ‘m.twitter.com’ or install a rich client for a more streamlined experience.

The fact that you can do all this during your commute to work is a great reason to pick public transport over driving yourself. If you absolutely must drive your own vehicle then the podcasts are still a good option. What are your tips for productivity on the go?

Related posts:

1. How you get started with Twitter