Darn Office

Online Business Tip No2: Write Fast HTML with MarkdownPad 2

For everyone who writes a lot in HTML, and if it is just blog updates, then changing the formatting and just adding links is a quite tedious tasks even with a WYSIWYG editor.

Using Markdown made my life much easier.
It is an easy-to-write and easy-to-read plain text format that can be directly converted into working HTML (or XHTML). You have likely seen it before, because it is also used in read.me files.

Based on Markdown Fletcher T. Penny created Multimarkdown (MMD), which adds additional syntax features like tables, footnotes, math support, and much more. I am writing this, because often both are referred to as “writing in Markdown”. (more…)

December 9th, 2013|Tags: HTML, writing|

Problem Solving – Planning Solutions Part 1

Welcome back to the third part of my Problem Solving 101. We reached the second phase of the UPEC process, the planning phase. By now you should have formulated your problem statement including your base conditions, which means by now you ideally fully understand your problem and everything that is involved.

Great, now you can start finding possible solutions. The next step would be to evaluate these solutions and decide for the best one. Then the third step is outlining a course of action and the fourth defining an ideal outcome and a minimal acceptable result (MAR). At last, you need to find a metric to track your progress before you reach the Execution-Phase where you finally start solving your problem according to plan.

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December 6th, 2013|Tags: problem solving|

Paperwork Tip No3: Use the Drafts App For All Your Notes

I still use Post-its to add notes to my printouts and letters, but there is one application that has completely changed how I take digital notes. You may think of Evernote, and yet there is one level before Evernote. Think about phone numbers, names, expenses, ideas for new posts, the Eureka idea, that needs to be jotted down. NOW.

You don’t want to tap through several screens, deal with labels, file names, etc. All you want to do is focus on getting this text down. Drafts for iOS helps you with that. When you open it you are greeted by an empty screen ready to be filled with your note.

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December 2nd, 2013|Tags: iOS|

Online Business Tip No1: Use LastPass for Easy Login

If you do a lot of business online, you likely have so many accounts at vendors, email providers, professional organizations, financial institutions, etc. that is absolutely impossible to remember different passwords for all of them. Of course, the problem doesn’t stop in the office.

I almost feel like I am opening at least one account somewhere every week. For a long time, I created new passwords for every one of them, but I had to jot these down somewhere. Then it became difficult to keep track of all the new accounts and more often than not, I had to use the password recovery for accounts I haven’t visited in a long time. After a while, I just started to use one password for all of them, which is of course also not a good strategy. (more…)

November 25th, 2013|Tags: passwords|

How to Always Deliver and Never Lose Sight of The Big Picture

Running out of time, money or motivation are the main reasons for not delivering. In this post I will show you a method to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.

Would you say tying your shoelaces is difficult? A formidable craft? I hope not. It is not like we see someone on the street and admire his ability to tie his laces. “Nice bunny ears you’ve going on. Kudos!”

If we had to wear laced shoes every day, even if no one ever taught us how, I guess, we would come up with a method to get our laces tied and un-tied easily pretty soon.

The method this post is dedicated to is in its way similar. Almost embarrassingly simple, often a mere consequence of experience. But crucial if you want to always deliver, because you will always know where you are going.

I am all about the big picture, so forget all the nifty productivity tools and time management hacks for a moment. If you want to deliver then this one comes first. The best part is, I am a 100% sure you’ve used this method already. But here it is about doing it consciously and intentionally.

The key word is Parallel Progression. (more…)

November 22nd, 2013|Tags: big picture, parallel progression|

Travel Tip No2: Bring Your Own Water Bottle

Staying hydrated is important to avoid headaches, which I easily get while traveling. I used to always drink the offered free sodas or coffee only, but realized that is not enough. Now, I always bring my own water bottle with me. I fill it up with water at a water fountain after the safety check or buy some, if there is no free source of safe drinking water available.

While on the plane, I keep it topped off to make sure, I can stay hydrated when I want. This simple method has added much to my well-being while on a plane. The water as well as a remedy against head-ache (just in case), chewing-gum, and some cereal bars are my most basic travel essentials to keep me in a good mood while traveling.

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November 18th, 2013|Tags: airplane|

Problem Solving – Understanding Your Problem

Welcome to the second part of my Problem Solving series. How about you think about any problem you want to get solved right now? I will also think about one.

But before we can start coming up with ideas for how to solve our problems, we need to know what the problem actually is to make sure, we don’t solve the wrong problem.

In the previous post, I defined a problem as something which when solved makes a situation better. I hope that makes sense for you, because if you wouldn’t believe solving the problem improves anything, then why would you want to solve it in the first place?

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November 15th, 2013|Tags: problem solving, understanding|

Paperwork tip No2: Use Full Screen Mode As Often As Possible

I am fully aware that we are all different, and thus this tip may not work for everyone. Just like each of us thrives differently in different environments, some tricks may work well or not at all for you.

Whenever I have something big to accomplish in a short time, like when I was at school learning for finals, writing my PhD thesis or now finishing an important report or publication, or even doing my taxes, I start to clean my desk very meticulously and make sure the room is in a good shape.

For a long time, I dismissed it as a trick to procrastinate, but I’ve acknowledged it as my way to get in the mood of producing content. I simply need a visually clean environment. (more…)

November 11th, 2013|Tags: distraction, full screen|

Problem Solving Introduction

It is a plain and simple truth: Problems are an integral part of life, if we like it or not. And usually the more we do, the more problems we’ll have to face. You could say, the number of problems you have to overcome is a gauge of how active you are. Having problems is normal and actually a good sign.

Life is about solving problems and not about being productive for the “busy’s sake”.

The other good news is that we are born problem solvers. That is what we do from the moment we start to exist: We overcome obstacles. Thus, problems are nothing to hide from but a consequence of a successful life. The more problems we can check off, the farther we’ll go. The difference between doing really well in life and… well… just living, is that many of us stop at a certain point in life to seek out different pathways for how to approach obstacles. We have constructed our view of the world and how to “do stuff” and stick with it.

But problem solving is a skill like any other, which needs to be practiced continuously and can be improved by adding different approaches to our repertoire. With everything ever changing around us we need to keep up.

This course is designed to give you a methodology for finding solutions for any given problem. Because problems are very different and also the people solving them, I will present you with a variety of methods and different approaches that will help you to tackle all sorts of problems.

If you are doubtful whether this course has any benefit for you, because you are already pretty good at dealing with your problems, then I have two arguments for you.
Number one: This is what I thought for a very long time until I got to work with many people with very different backgrounds. So I learned that there is not only one truth and not only one way to do things. Some methods work and some don’t. It is all about having many options.
Number two: It is free. You’ll need some time for reading that is true. But the time investment may worth it, because reading through this course can save you time down the road. Opening up and listening to others still helps me to avoid a lot of trouble.

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November 8th, 2013|Tags: problem solving|

Email Tip No4: Get Control Over Newsletters

At one point in August I realized that about 80% of emails I received for my private email account were newsletters. I had already filtered most of them to be immediately archived as read. But then what is the point if I don’t plan to read them?

So I unsubscribed every newsletter I haven’t opened in July, but there were still many left, which I wanted to keep an eye on. But how?

The solution is Unroll.me. It is a free service, which scans your inbox for newsletters and lets you easily decide whether you want to keep them in your inbox, unsubscribe or add them to the Rollup. The Rollup combines all emails into a graphical view of your newsletters. This way you can scroll through your newsletters and chose to open only the ones that look interesting enough. If you add all your newsletters to the Rollup, then this will be the only newsletter you’ll ever get.

BTW, I was subscribed to over 130 newsletters (!) and didn’t even suspect it were this many. Now after several months using Unroll.me my inbox is in an excellent shape. Unsubscribing from new newsletters is much easier, and the few newsletters that remain don’t bother me any more.

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November 4th, 2013|Tags: newsletter|