Productivity
A Better Calculator – Go RPN on Your PC
Dec 17th
For those of you that don’t enjoy RPN calculators, you can skip this post… Yes, RPN does stand for Reverse Polish Notation. It doesn’t mean it’s a backwards way of doing things. Actually, it’s a much smarter more compact way of doing things. It was originally just “Polish Notation”, invented by Polish mathematician Jan Łukasiewicz in the early 1900s as a way to represent logic statements without the need for parentheses. Reverse Polish Notation simply means that the operator was moved from the beginning to the end of the statements, so + 1 2 became 1 2 + and the “=” key became an unnecessary vestige. One less button to press!
Although HP didn’t introduce the first ever RPN calculator, they definitely popularized it with their line of calculators. For a fun diversion, you can check out some of the history on the Museum of HP Calculators website.
So where am I going with all of this? Well, I grew very accustomed to the speed and convenience of my HP 42s, which I’ve had for more than 15 years now. I cringed whenever I had to do a calculation on a standard calculator, especially the one that comes loaded by default in Windows. I needed to have an RPN calculator at my finger tips, and thanks to Thomas Okken and the Free42 project, now I do. The image below is an actual screenshot from the Free42 program.
If you happen to be an aficionado of a different HP, there is >> READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY >>
OneNote DROE AutoHotkey Tool
Dec 12th
As promised in my previous post on “Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System“, here is the tool I use to drive my DROE (Daily Record of Events) in OneNote. This is a configurable tool built using AutoHotkey. Note that the tool is a compiled executable, so you do not need AutoHotkey installed to use it.
What the DROE tool does is give you a handy shortcut to quickly open OneNote, jump to the top of your Daily Record of Events (DROE) page, insert a time stamp, and begin capturing thoughts before they slip out of your head. The tool replaces the standard Sidenote shortcut (Win-N) with the new function. You can still open OneNote in full/normal mode using Win-Shift-N.
There are also some additional features included in >> READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY >>
OneNote and Outlook Task Synchronization
Dec 2nd
I had a few questions come up related to how the task synchronization works between OneNote 2007 and Outlook. This is actually one of the best features that was added in OneNote 2007, as I noted in my post on “EverNote vs. OneNote“. The task synchronization feature, however, is still pretty new and can be easily broken. If you want to know how to synch without getting sunk, read on… (Ok, bad pun, sorry for that.)
The screenshot below shows a typical project in OneNote (from my OneNote Project Template). You can see that some tasks have a dark red flag, and some have a faded red flag. The faded red flag either means that the due date is farther out, or that OneNote hasn’t found the task in Outlook yet to determine the due date. Sometimes it just takes OneNote a minute or two to search Outlook and those pale flags turn back into dark red. Other times (such as when a task is moved to another folder or deleted in Outlook), OneNote never finds the task.
So how is OneNote finding those tasks in Outlook? Although I’m not an expert on the inner workings of OneNote, I did some snooping into >> READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY >>
OneNote GTD Project Template
Nov 20th
After my post on “Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System” I got a few requests to share the actual project template file. You can download the file here: OneNote Project Template File
NOTE: I make no guarantees related to this file or its suitability for any particular purpose. If your computer implodes, or your cat dies, I won’t be able to help you.
Here are some instructions to install the template: >> READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY >>
Bending OneNote and Outlook to Fit my GTD System
Nov 17th
I am now using Microsoft OneNote 2007 as part of my GTD (Getting Things Done) system. I talked about this a bit before in my post on EverNote vs. OneNote. My approach is a bit different than Rob describes in his 7Breaths blog. Where Rob tends to use OneNote as the hub of his system, I use the Outlook task list. I am really only using OneNote for three purposes:
- Capturing daily notes on the fly for future processing,
- managing projects, and
- storage of reference material.
I am not living inside OneNote throughout the day. Instead, I use Microsoft Outlook to manage my task lists (by context). Rather than pushing stuff from Outlook into OneNote, I am capturing and storing stuff in OneNote, then pushing it to Outlook during my weekly reviews. OneNote serves as an inbox and as a storage location for project information and reference material.
Here is my OneNote landscape (see screenshot below). One of the first things you’ll notice is that there is not a lot of complicated structure or oodles of tabs. It’s fairly clean and uncluttered. Everything is in a single notebook labeled “2007″. I deleted all of the sample tabs and pages that come with the OneNote install. The primary tabs/sections in my OneNote GTD system are: @DOING, @PROJECTS, @FOLLOW_UP, and @DONE.
In my world, things are either done or they’re not done. Stuff in the first three tabs is “not done”, and stuff in the “@DONE” section is “done”. My approach is >> READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY >>
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