It can be hard to always work at maximum efficiency, especially if you’re working on a tough project and you don’t have ideal working conditions. But in order to increase your efficiency it’s really important that you identify and then eliminate anything that keeps you from working as efficiently as possible on projects. So how can you re-assess your workspace and figure out what changes you need to make in order to increase your efficiency?

The first thing that you need to do is figure out how your workspace factors into the equation. Most of the time when people aren’t working at their maximum efficiency it’s because there are problems or distractions in their workspace that are hurting their efficiency. Look around your workspace right now and see if you spot any of these common workspace distractions.

Food and beverages

Most people keep a cup of coffee or tea, or a can of soda on their desk near them in case they get thirsty. Generally this is not a huge distraction but if you have 9 empty soda cans and 3 cups of coffee sitting next to your monitor that is a distraction that you don’t need. Tidy up. And make it a rule to only have one beverage in the workspace at a time. You shouldn’t eat near your computer because then you get crumbs in your keyboard and sometimes in your computer plus it makes your workspace messy. Snack times or meals can be a good time to get away from the computer and clear your head so stick with one beverage and no food in your workspace.

 

Toys and photos

Do you have a desk clutter problem? Do you have photos of family and friends or small desk toys littered throughout the top of your desk or arranged in special patterns? Get rid of them. Your desktop needs to clean and uncluttered so that you don’t get distracted and pulled away from the job at hand. Stay focused on the job you’re working on and you’ll increase your efficiency.

Gadgets

Phone, cell phone, Blackberry, pager and other gadgets- If you’re like most coders and programmers you have the full range of gadgets that keep you constantly connected to your boss and other co-workers. But if you’re trying to increase your efficiency on a project you need to learn to turn them all off and put them away so they don’t distract you. Put them in a drawer, put them in a bag, or hide them in a secret compartment in the closet. Do whatever it takes to minimize the distractions in your workday. If it’s really an emergency they will send someone to find you. If it’s not a real emergency, they can wait.

Are you a programmer or a coder that never seems to get enough accomplished even though are you always working? The problem might not be that you’re not working hard enough; the problem might be that you’re not working efficiently enough. In order to really increase your productivity during the time that you are working it’s important to take steps to maximize your work hours so that you get everything done that needs to be done. If you want to increase your productivity without increasing your working hours here are 5 tips that you can use to increase your productivity:

Organize your workspace

You can lose a lot of precious time looking for small items or trying to keep straight all the papers, books, discs, computer parts and other items cluttering up your workspace. Make sure you have a clean, uncluttered workspace so that you grab anything you might need quickly and don’t have to stop working to search for things. You’ll find that your productivity goes up when the amount of clutter around your computer, on your desk and in your workspace goes down. If you have to hire someone to come in and clean and organize your office do it. In the long run that will be money well spent.

Get rid of distractions

When you’re working turn Skype off, turn your cell phone, close your office door and put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on it. Don’t let anything distract you from the task at hand. Let all your calls go to voicemail and don’t check your email. Stay off Instant Messenger. Focus on your work.

Schedule effectively

No one knows your patterns of concentration better than you. Pick a block of about 3-4 hours of time when you are fully alert and are able to concentrate really well. Block off that time just for working. Don’t schedule any meetings, conference calls, appointments or anything else during that time. That is the time when you can buckle down and throw everything you have into your work. If you do that on a regular basis you’ll be amazed at how high your productivity will go.

Take breaks

Sitting hunched over a computer for huge blocks of time isn’t good for your mental or physical health. When you reach a good stopping point and you’re getting ready to move on to a new phase of the project that you’re working on, or when you need a minute to work out a solution to a problem then walk away from the computer. Get a cup of coffee or tea, get some water, take a quick walk around the block, or do some stretching. Do whatever you need to do to get your blood flowing again. When you feel clear headed the get back to work.

Break it down

When you’re coding or programming and you are dealing with complex processes that take forever to troubleshoot and create work-arounds for you lose a lot of productivity. In order to increase productivity and not lose it when you start a project break down all the processes that you will be using to their base components and start there. In the end it will save you a lot of time and increase productivity.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
Chinese philosopher (604 BC – 531 BC)

Raise your hand if you have logged in to any website at least 3 times today.  If you didn’t raise your hand, it’s probably because you are sore from all that typing.  You probably have access to tens – if not hundreds – of password protected sites, you shop online, fill out online surveys and do all sort of form-filling activities online.  Well, I want to help you out by making your form-filling activities more productive and efficient.  In the process, you will save your wrist and possibly avoid carpel tunnel.  This will hopefully extend your coding career a few more years or at least until they come up with a decent voice recognition or thought-reading computers.

There are several ways to automate this process, but my favorite and in my opinion best way to do this is to use RoboForm.  This awesome, cannot-live-without utility will remember all your passwords, credit cards, addresses and information and with one click it will fill out any form.  It works with Internet Explorer and Firefox but does not work on the Mac .

How I do it?

First thing I did was downloaded and installed RoboForm.  Since I use firefox, I also downloaded and installed the RoboForm extension from here.

Once it is installed, I setup a master password for my account and then customized the options.  I turned on Auto Fill and Auto Save which makes it easy to fill out forms.

Then, I customized my security settings to encrypt RoboForm files.

I usually don’t like toolbars in my browser, so I went ahead and got rid of all toolbars.  I can still access RoboForm from the context menu and because I turned on Auto Fill, it will automatically show when I get to a site that has been saved.  For example, when I go to Facebook, this Auto Fill window pops up and all I have to do is double click the Passcard named Facebook the click submit on Facebook.  Or even easier just click Fill & Submit which will fill the form and log you in automatically.  That’s ONE freaking click to get in and NO typing.  You are welcome.

Once I had everything customized the way I wanted, I created an identity.  An identity is basically all the information you use for a specific online identity.  For example, I have different identities setup for different credit cards.  Identities are extremely helpful, because you can create an identity for work, home or even a fake identity to use for filling out sites that you don’t trust.  Identities are very handy when you are registering for a new site, since that is the basically the same information.  Now you don’t have to type your address, email, phone number, credit card information every freaking time.  Just click "Fill Forms".  Tip: If the popup window doesn’t show up, just right-click on the web page and click "Fill Forms".

Next thing I did was just use my computer.  Now when I go to a new site that RobForm doesn’t have an associated pass card, I login by hand.  When I click the login button, RoboForm will prompt me to save the pass card.  If you save the pass card, the next time you come to this site, you will be able to login automatically using RoboForm.

 

Super Tip: I synchronize my RoboForm data folder across multiple machines using FolderShare, which gives me access to all my passwords on all my machines.

What you should do?

Go ahead and download the free trial version for RoboForm and install it.  Customize to suit your needs or just set it up as mentioned above.

Create your identities.  Save pass cards as you travel through the Internets.  Thank me for saving your wrist and making you more productive.

Not convinced?

If you are not convinced that this will make you productive.  Let’s do a little comparison.  Let’s say you login 3 to 4 times a day or 25 logins a week.  If you have an 8 character username and password that is 16 keystrokes per login, 400 keystrokes per week and 1600 keystrokes per month.  Let’s also say you sign up for some online service twice a week and say each signup is 125 keystrokes (250 per week/1000 per month).  Let’s also assume you fill out some sort of form once a week which requires basic information such as contact, email and address information; say 300 keystrokes (1200 per month).  Without going into calculation details, look at this table:

Action	Keystrokes Per Month
Login	1600
Signup for new site	1000
Fill Survey	1200
Shop twice a month with credit card	500
Total	4300

Let’s say we average 1.5 seconds per character (rough estimate), by using RoboForm, we save 4300 x 1.5 seconds per month or 107 minutes per month.  That’s almost 2 hours a month or 24 hours a year.  I have just saved you a WHOLE DAY and 51 Thousands Keystrokes a year. That’s not bad.

How much is 24 hours and your wrist worth to you?  RoboForm is only $29.95 but you can try it for free.

Videos

Also check out this RoboForm tutorial from You Tube.

Resources

1. RoboForm
2. RoboForm Tutorials
3. RoboForm Reviews

Nothing reduces productivity more than a slow computer.  Not to mention, it is extremely frustrating. 

You buy a new computer or install a fresh version of windows and things are running great.  A couple of weeks and 20 applications later, things are starting to slow down.  Does that sound familiar?

Well, there is a neat solution to this problem – PortableApps.com.  It’s a simple way to access a bunch of really useful tools and applications without installing them.  The best part is that you can keep all the applications and related documents on any USB drive (even your iPod) and use them on any computer.

How I do it?

Since I use multiple machines and don’t want to install the same applications over and over on each machine, I carry around a USB drive that contains a working set of my data and the PortableApps I use most.

I created a folder on my USB drive called PortableApps then I downloaded the PortableApps.com Suite and ran it.  I entered the L:\PortableApps as my "installation" folder.  This doesn’t install anything; all it does is create the PortableApps folder with all the necessary files.  Tip: If you install it to the root folder of your drive then it will auto start when you plug it in.

If you run the StartPortableApps.exe, it adds a taskbar icon which is just a launcher to your portable apps

I use this menu to launch my applications, back them up and change settings.  All the changes I make are saved within the PortableApps folder I specified, so nothing gets written to the registry, start menu or anything else i.e. zero impact on my windows installation.  So, all I have to do to back up my PortableApps is just make a copy the folder.  Tip: I use SyncToy to sync my PortableApps folder on the portable drive back to my computer – this way if I ever forget the portable drive, I will still have my applications.

What you should do?

First of all go ahead and download PortableApps and "install" it to any location you like – ideally a thumb drive.  Run StartPortableApps.exe to run the launcher. 

Try out the applications that come packaged with the initial install and remove the ones you don’t like.  To remove an app, just open up the launcher and click Options > Remove an App.  All this does is take you to the folder where the apps are installed and all you have to do is delete the folder for the application you want to remove.

To install new apps, just download them from www.portableapps.com.  Downloaded applications filenames end paf.exe.  After they are downloaded, click Options > Install a New App in the launcher.  Then browse to the downloaded file and that’s it.  All that happens is a folder gets created for the application under your PortableApps folder.  Nothing gets installed per se, so no start menu entry or registry modification

Here are some applications you should try out:

1. Notepad ++ (link)
2. 7-Zip Portable (link)
3. WinDirStat Portable (link)
4. WinMerge Portable – (link)
5. VLC Media Player – (link)
6. FileZill Portable – (link)
7. Firefox Portable – (link)
8. Miranda IM Portable – (link)
9. Sudoku Portable – (link) WARNING – PRODCUTIVE KILLER
10. WinSCP Portable – (link)

Videos

A very quick tour of PortableApps (~2 minutes)

A quick how-to for PortableApps (7 minutes)

Resources

1. PortableApps – www.portableapps.com
2. Tech Tip 128 – Computing on the Go with PortableApps
3. PortableApps Review
4. What is a portable app? 

So you want to be productive and get things done?  A good first step would be to read Getting Things Done by David Allen.  This book has started a whole GTD movement and has strong following.  Personally, I use it to stay on top of everything but I am not a strict practitioner. 

The premise of GTD is pretty straight forward. It is an action management method (not time management).  The principle is that you need to move tasks out of your mind and record it somewhere.  That somewhere could be a piece of paper, outlook, a PDA, etc…

I am not going to rewrite all the things that have been written about GTD but here is a quick reference to the process.

1. Collect
2. Process
3. Organize
4. Review
5. Do

How I do it?

I collect all my tasks in Outlook.  I categorize them with color coded categories.  I set dates and reminders.  I review and prioritize then I do.  My outlook calendar looks like this:

The cool thing I like about Outlook is that I can drag a task into the calendar area to create an appointment.  I can even drag an email into the task area or the calendar area to create a task or appointment respectively.  It is freaking cool.

The one thing I HATE about Outlook is that there is no easy way to synchronize your information across multiple machines without an exchange server.  I can sync my calendar with Google use Google’s Calendar Sync and my email is in Gmail.  The only problem I have is that there is no way to sync my tasks.  Sure I could use one of the billion online tasking sites but then I lose all the amazing things I can do with Outlook (try it and you will know what I am talking about).

As for managing my email.  I dedicate specific times (twice or so a day) to read and reply to email.  I do one of several things with my message.  If it requires no action, I delete it or archive it.  I might also label/tag/categorize it if necessary.  If it requires a couple of minutes to respond to it, then I do it.  If it is going to take longer the I put it on my task list and move on.  Later when I review my task list, I will process it accordingly.  My inbox is always empty.

What you should do?

1. Get the book – it’s available as paperback, hardcover, audio book and even for your Kindle
2. Read the book
3. Practice what you read
4. Share your tips, experiences and opinions in the comments area below

Videos

If you are too lazy to read watch these videos

GTD by David Allen

Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar

Interacting with Entourage

Tools

1. Microsoft Outlook 2007 for Windows or Entourage 2008 for mac
2. Google Calendar
3. Google Calendar Sync
4. A plethora of To Do list tools at lifehacker

Resources

A good overview of GTD (Wikipedia)

Book Excerpt (BusinessWeek Online)

What is GTD? (Author’s page)

Frequently Asked Questions (Author’s page)

GTD: A New Cult for the Info Age (Wired)

A Primer on Getting Things Done (7P Productions)