Carnival of Journalism: Tools to improve life and workflow

This month’s post topic: Hack my workflow.

I’m looking forward to reading what others have to say because I my workflow can get out of hand on erratic days. Also, I don’t use many tools and purposely unplug every night.

On the other hand, I use a lot of tools — smartphone with apps, Google (GMail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, Alerts), Twitter, Facebook, Chrome extensions, RSS feeds. Maybe it’s my youth, but all these “tools” are just part of my day. I grew up multitasking, so the idea (and capability) of having 10 browser tabs, Tweetdeck, story notes and a few PDF files open at a time is not intimidating — it’s how I work.

I decided to focus on a few things I do that have dramatically improved my daily life.

Evernote
This notetaking software syncs your notes to an online account so you can access them from anywhere — cell phone, home computer, public library. Notes can be tagged and organized in “notebooks,” which are fully searchable. You can save cell phone images and web addresses too.

I’ve only used it from my phone a handful of times, but each time was a particularly desperate measure. Once, I drove two hours away for an interview and the subject wasn’t answering his phone. I remembered I had his home number saved in an Evernote, found it on my phone and got a hold of him that way. Another time, I enjoyed an awesome bottle of Spanish wine while eating dinner with family in Colorado. Instead of writing down the winemaker, varietal, etc, I snapped a photo of the label and saved it in Evernote.

Google desktop search
Before Evernote, I saved all my notes in Word documents, organized by story, then month and year the story was written. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but when I wanted to revisit a topic later, it took a while to find the old notes. I haven’t moved notes pre-August 2010 over to Evernote yet, so being able to Google my computer has been very very helpful. It works with Google search terms too, like “filetype:PDF”

Send to Kindle, Chrome extension
This extension will send text shown on a webpage to your Kindle, for free. (I view the story in print or full-page mode first.) I can save several long reads at a time, load them to my kindle and read them in the car, while I’m getting a pedicure, while I’m getting my oil changed, etc.

PDF/Excel shortcut
Did you know you can copy spreadsheet data from annoying PDF files by using the ALT key? Changed. My. Life. Just hold the ALT key and select a box around the data you want to copy, by column. CTRL+C that crap and CTRL-V it in a column in Excel.

Exercise
Morning runs and evening walks bookend stressful days. The run wakes me up, gets me going. The walk forces me to quit working for 30 minutes or so and clear my mind.

I once wrote a story about a school that believed so strongly in the link between exercise and brain activity that they require regular exercise breaks during every class period. They put kids on treadmills and then sat them down in front of a reading computer program. The kids’ reading skills skyrocketed over a short period of time.

A to-do list. On paper.
So so so old-school, I know. But once something makes it on my daily list, it will get done (or slightly modified in order to get done.) At work, my lists are on a Post-It pad so I can stick it to my notepad and take it with me. The pad stays in front of my at all times, probably the only thing I can locate on my desk within milliseconds.

Pre-vacation to-do list, before I added at least 6 more items

At the end of the day, I peel off the sheet and start the next day’s list. I transfer any leftover items and bang out the first things that come to mind, check my calendar and write a few more down.

The list is a plan waiting for me first thing in the morning. No matter what happened before I get to work — car problems, burnt oatmeal, computer didn’t start up properly — I can get started on at least one thing on the list.

JCarn post