Taradara » Effectivness http://taradara.com Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:16:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 The Importance of Planning http://taradara.com/effectivness/the-importance-of-planning/ http://taradara.com/effectivness/the-importance-of-planning/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 13:07:31 +0000 admin http://taradara.com/?p=286
Planning is one more way of winning. To understand this it is enough to try at least once. If I have a complex goal, I break it into small manageable tasks.That helps to bear in mind important details and the goal looks easier to achieve.

There are several significant psychological aspects in planning. The first one is that people are able to keep in mind only 5-7 temporary things they have to do. In case you have more then 7, there is a big chance to forget something (it often happens when you pack up your things in a hurry or go to the market without a list of products you have to buy). The second one is when your goal is broken into small tasks, everytime you finish one of them, you perceive it as a result. It makes you feel that you are on a right way. There won’t appear any desire to give up, as it often happens when we don’t see any result at all, even if we know that the goal is achievable.

So, planning should be used when we have:

– Too many things to do and don’t want to forget anything;
– A complex goal and want to see results while achieving it;

With planning you are able:

– To set priorities;
– To have a better structure of your plans;
– To save time;
– To manage to do more;
– To not to miss any important things;

Tools for planning:

1. Paper Stick Notes

Have fun drawing, writing and sticking them wherever you want.

2. Stickies (Mac only)

It is a Mac OS system application, which I find very good for short notes. You can create as many notes as you want, drag them wherever you want on the screen, change fonts, colors and size.


3. Things (Mac only)

An application with a simple and friendly interface. It allows you to create separate entries or big projects, to set up tags and deadlines for every of your entries.

4. iCal (Mac only)

iCal makes it easy to keep track of your busy schedule. You can create as many separate calendars as you need — one for home, another for school, a third for work, and so on. You can see all your calendars in a single window or choose to see only the calendars you want.
(description by www.apple.com)

P.S. Windows users are welcome to share some facts about the software they use for planning.

Letting Up Despite Great Faults – Mixtape Receipt

]]> http://taradara.com/effectivness/the-importance-of-planning/feed/ 1 Order / Disorder http://taradara.com/effectivness/order-disorder/ http://taradara.com/effectivness/order-disorder/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:39:00 +0000 admin http://taradara.com/?p=169
Order is one of the most important things in everyone’s life. Artists often like to speak about their artistic disorder, justifying themselves in this way, but I don’t believe them. I guess it’s all about laziness. My workplace is always cleaned up and this for sure helps me in my work. But about it we’ll speak later, in another post. Today we will stop at the order on people’s computers. Last 3 days I spent on cleaning up my Mac and I decided to write a little bit about it. As you can see, I’m not perfect and I can have disorders too.

Folders.

It’s up to you what structure of foldering you use, but I hope there’s no mess in it. A good structure helps you to keep all your files in a way that you will never waste your time on searching them, when you badly need ones. These are some examples of how I do it (pretty simple, yeah).


Desktop.

For me desktop is a place where I keep and save all the current files I work with. It doesn’t take too much time to find them when I want to upload them or send to someone. It’s realy easy and comfortable. But what I started doing is that every evening, before going to bed, I introduce order in the files on my desktop. Files that I don’t need are deleted, others are put in folders they belong to. In this way, my desktop is ready to be used for the next day.
The problem is that many people forget to keep desktop in order for some reasons and in some days they have a mess there. In a week or two it can become so huge, that it will take too much time to introduce order in it. You can spend 5 minutes on it every evening and save many hours in the future.


Bookmarks.

Everyday I bookmark for about 2-3 pages. It is about 700-1000 bookmarks in a year and you can imagine what I see when I open my bookmark panel in Firefox. From time to time I use them to read a good article I found to be interesting or to visit some portfolios for inspiration. But again, it took me time to find something in that mess, because there was no structure. I decided to introduce order in it too and only now I realize what an important tool bookmarks is. Now I know where are the links I need, what I should visit everyday, what to read when I have some spare time and etc. To organize bookmarks in Firefox go to Bookmarks – Organize/Manage Bookmarks – Bookmarks Menu.
Now my bookmark menu looks like that:


If you have invented some useful things about keeping order on your computer, don’t forget to share it with us! It may help people and I think it is great, isn’t it?

Michna – Believe In It

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