What's your office/productivity set-up like? Mine's up at The Weekly Review

Chris Bowler over at The Weekly Review asked about my personal productivity setup, which I was happy to supply. It's at Thoughts on Productivity with Matthew Cornell, where I cover:

• Capture


• Tools


• Workflow


• Desk Layout, Filing


• Portability


• Challenges

I'm curious...

• What's your office setup like?
  
• Anything about it you'd like to change?
  
• Any tips or tricks to share?
  

Cheers!

Comments

[Bert]

Recently I discovered my cellphone has memorecorder functionality!
This enables me to capture everything that comes to mind and I shouldn't forget, very easy and with low impact.
Whether in the car, on the job or at home, my cellphone is always with me so I can make a note virtually everywhere. (Yes, it's on the nightstand at night so that's covered too)

The only other thing I had to do was to add "listening to the memo's twice a day" in my daily schedule.

I hope this is of use to you,

Bye, Bert

[matthewcornell]

Thanks for the summary, Bert. Yes, treating the recorder as a new inbox is really important. I found that emptying this, however, was odious. Much faster and easier to process written notes, at least for me. Also, does late night whispering wake up others? :-)

[matthewcornell]

Thanks a ton for your workflow summary, and the list of tools/sites. Neat! There's a lot to be said for uniform use of email for incoming, though there are risks.

FYI here's pricing for PhoneTag: $29.95/mo unlimited, $9.95/mo (40 limit), $.35/message

> tasks syncing on the iPhone Appigo Todo/sync

Thanks! I'm on the fence because 99% of the time when I'm out working, I have my laptop with me. Errands are the only exception, and I usually remember to quickly jot them down on paper when in [ transition | http://matthewcornell.org/blog/2005/12/transitions-secret-ingredient-to.html ].

> Great interview!

Thanks, Thomas!

[Richard Maybury]

Matt, I have been using Spinvox.com for formally capturing commitments on the run. I set it out here: http://priorityattitudes.com/2008/11/spinvox-to-keep-on-top-of-commitments-on-the-run/
I might make notes in my journal in a meeting but never action them from the journal. On the move away from the meeting I speed dial Sponvox from my cell phone which turns my message into an email. This is then sent to a separate foder in Outlook and I run my 4D process on that when I get back to my laptop, turning the email into a Task if I am making the 'Date Activate' decision.
Cheers
Richard

[matthewcornell]

Thanks for pointer, Richard. I knew about Jott, but not this one. I have clients who love using services like these. Low overhead (dial, talk, retrieve later) and no work transcribing (assuming the voice recognition quality is excellent). In my case I pull action from my notes the next time I empty my inbox, where I toss them after getting back. I can see the value of each approach.

Question: Why filter messages rather than simply processing them when you next empty you inbox? Sounds like you're using a multi-tiered method for emptying, with some incoming having a higher priority than others. When recommending this to someone I'd be concerned about the added level of complexity, and the risk that they'll focus on the higher priority ones and start ignoring others. Also, why the name "05 Pending"? I'm guessing you use the "number prefix to sort" hack.

Thanks for the comment.

P.S. Here's a review of SpinVox vs. Jott, which found Spinvox superior: [ Jott versus SpinVox: A voice-to-text battle royal | http://www.computingunplugged.com/issuesprint/issue200811/00002212.html ].