Saving time and managing information flow

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Saving time – vital… Here are some of the ways I’m saving time and managing information flow at the moment:

  • Creating shortcuts on my desktop to my most-used folders – a no-brainer I think. To keep track of multiple projects effectively I like to keep my files in neatly organised folder hierarchies. But then I find myself taking time browsing through layers of folders to find what I want. So I have created shortcuts to the folders I’m using the most at this moment – key project folders, the Camtasia video I’m working on, the course materials I’m developing, etc.
  • First thing in the morning I log into the VPN if not in the office, then I don’t have to interrupt the flow when I need something from the server, and it’s easy to store things on the server rather than leaving them on my hard drives.
  • First thing I also open a Firefox window with several tabs for my most-used web apps – at the moment typically:
  • My Google calendar
  • Wrike task and project management
  • Sugar CRM
  • Twitter (or Twitterfox or Betwittered in my iGoogle page when they’re working!)
  • The community I am working on today
  • Any course I am teaching at the moment
  • Any course I am taking at the moment (currently digifolios.ning.com)
  • My blog admin pages
  • The forum I use most – a small supportive community of fellow elearning specialists
  • I use two computers at the same time when possible, a desktop and a laptop, then if one is doing something slowly, eg, while a backup is running or a Camtasia video is rendering, I can turn to the other.
  • I keep up with Twitter and RSS feeds on my smartphone in any odd moments – even in the kitchen stirring dinner…
  • Now I just need to crack my terrible typing – correcting my typos takes up FAR to much time!
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