Productivity migration

I had to reinstall Windows XP on my Dell Inspiron notebook that has been used for the communications. Having portable machine with all the important information and connectivity at hand (as opposed to the dev machine) seemed to be reasonable before. It also felt cool to have your office at your fingertips with the ability to work while staying mobile.

I had:

• Microsoft Outlook - for email archives (with per-project organization), some tasks, notes and its journaling feature for the time-tracking.
• WinOrganizer (just another legacy personal information manager) with the passwords and some notes
• JetBrains Omea Reader for the RSS and web feeds aggregation
• Miranda IM + Skype for the messaging.
• Microsoft Project for dev project management
• Other MS Office tools for the documents, spreadsheets and diagram building
• Visual Studio 2008 for the quick-fixes, should the issue hit me while I'm not at work.
• Project folders with all the relevant documentation under the Subversion source control

All these have been living on WinXP for the years and working just fine. However, as it usually happens, over time Windows XP has got messed up. So there came the usual ritual of "Reinstall Your Operating System over the Weekend".

But this time it ended up a bit different. That's partially due to the thought-provoking video on the business of software and the concept of productive work out there (I liked the idea of working smarter and momentum as well).

So after backing everything up, I gave a try to a different approach:

• Imported all my email archives from the Microsoft Outlook to Gmail (you just need to connect to your gmail account via the IMAP, disable the scheduled send-receive and drag-n-drop everything in), started using tagging rules.
• Imported all my Outlook contacts into the Gmail contacts
• I've created XP Virtual Machine on my dev server with Skype, IM and other monitoring things that like to work on Windows and could run for months (CCTray, SVN Commit monitor etc) and have turned the sound there out
• I like to control myself. Instead of using Outlook journals for the time tracking, I've installed TimeSnapper trial on the dev machine. So now in addition to keeping the timesheets, I can recall what exactly I've been doing at any moment of time, see the productivity score of the day and have a better control of myself.
• Dropped Omea Reader and went back to the Google Reader
• Started using OpenOffice for doing documents, spreadsheets and diagrams (it does not really make any difference except for being open source and ensuring that I do not save in .docX or .xslX)
• Dropped the Personal Information Manager (history is kept as a reference on the VM) and started using Google Notebooks.
• Dropped the tasks and started using starred Gmail messages for that (Remember The Milk integrates tasks nicely into the Gmail, but I didn't get to like it for some reason).
• Started using Google toolbar with Firefox (esp. the Bookmarks and Gmail features).
• Turned off the third LCD in my work place (it has been connected to the notebook before).

It feels:

• Faster: Huge Outlook email base along with the latest MS Outlook has been slowing my notebook quite a bit. Gmail is lightning fast with any search for some strange reason.
• Productive: IM, Skype and Outlook notifications do not disrupt the work flow anymore. When I'm done with something that requires concentration, I just connect to the virtual (with Launchy it takes just a second) and see what has been going on there. Plus the VM is always running and doing the monitoring (as opposed to the notebook that has been doing occasional monitoring). Plus Time Snapper controls the productivity as well.
• Flexible: All my information is accessible from anywhere with the internet connection, but I do not need Windows for that (since Linux has RDP, too). And in case of a tech emergency I still have skype-to-mobile redirection turned on.
• Secure: backing up IM logs, email bases, passwords (and everything else I like to carry on Flash USB) has been a bit cumbersome. VM can be scheduled for on-the-fly backups and Gmail backups could be done by any simple email agent that knows how to sync with the IMAP
• *Simple: * there's no need to be like Gaius Julius Caesar while trying to control and comprehend multiple things at once (i.e. developing, reacting to IM, email and build messages at the same time). It is possible but is totally unproductive and a bit stressful, since our conscience does not work this way.
• *At ease: * I can't take the dev work with me, so I do not. If I really feel in the work mood, I can plan and think about making my next dev sessions more efficient.

We'll see how it goes.

*PS: * and it has turned out that I do not need a notebook after all. So I've installed Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop and has started the long-pending research of launching .NET apps with DXperience on Linux via the wine.

Comments

[Time Tracker]

Looks like a clean install and a 'back to basics' approach. Keep us up to date on TimeSnapper, as I'd be interested to hear your opinion on it.