So I just got David Allen's latest newsletter a few minutes ago and it mentioned a simple "Two Minute Timer" program they are offering for $10. For those of you not familiar with the two minute rule:

“If the Next Action can be done in 2 minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up. Even if that item is not a “high priority”, because it takes longer to store and track any item than to deal with it the first time its in your head.” (p. 131, “Getting Things Done”)

Now I can see how this little program could be useful to show how much you can really get done in two minutes, but charging $10 for a program that a high school student can write in fifteen minutes seems kind of silly to me.

So donate $10 to your favorite charity and download this free program instead (.NET Framework 2.0 is required... I didn't have any other development environment installed on my laptop, but I'm sure someone else can spend two minutes and write one that doesn't require .NET).

TwoMinutes.zip (16.49 KB)

I admit it — I am addicted to Outlook. Here are the add-ins I use:

• FranklinCovey PlanPlus – This is my favorite personal productivity tool. The features I can’t live without:
  • PlanPlus Home – The dashboard view puts your calendar, tasks, email, and a notepad together on one screen. Most people freak out when they see this much information at once, but once you get used to it you’ll find yourself coming back to it all day long.
  • Weekly Planning – I use this to “load balance” my week by literally dragging tasks to the weekly calendar.
  • Quick Prioritize – Great way to prioritize tasks quickly.
• Getting Things Done – I’ve read David Allen’s book — highly recommended. Features I use most:
  • Defer – Basically turns an email into a calendar appointment with a reminder. This is important because it gets the message out of my inbox and automatically reminds me on the date I specify.
  • Action – Turns an email into a task. Very useful.
  • Delegate – I use this to remind me to follow-up on tasks I’ve delegated to other people.
• NewsGator – I’ve tried other RSS tools but keep coming back to NewsGator. It lets you get RSS feeds directly into Outlook. I prefer this to having a separate application for RSS.
• Lookout – Lightening fast searching of emails (and documents if you want). For now, I prefer this to the various desktop search utilities.
• Cloudmark Desktop – Best spam protection I’ve found. Only misses one or two a week and  I haven’t had a single false-positive yet.

Most of you should know by now that it is probably not a great idea to use the same password for all the different web sites you use. Remembering all of these passwords can be a pain. Luckily, there are a ton of password managers you can download.

I use Password Agent from Moon Software (http://www.moonsoftware.com/pwagent.asp). It is simple to use and organizes your accounts into folders. Everything is encrypted so you need to enter a password when the program launches. Here are some tips:

• Use the password generator feature to generate random/complex passwords for the websites you use less often (or sites with sensitive information). There is no need to memorize the password since you can look it up anytime.
• Copy the program and your password file to a flash drive so you can access your passwords anywhere.
• Use Hot Key Plus (http://www.brianapps.net/hotkeyplus) so you can quickly launch Password Agent by hitting Win+P.
• Change your password(s) if you've been using a public computer (e.g., at an internet cafe)