Music to help you concentrate

I have a long train trip to and from work. Just under an hour each way. Each morning I get my inbox to zero and then make a significant start on my to do list.

On the way home, I move all my notes into respective emails or tasks to get stuff done.

One of the biggest hindrances in being productive on the train is intrusive noise. I have found that listening to music that has no lyrics (or lyrics in a language other than English) with a slightly mellow feel with a small degree of tension helps me concentrate well and get stuff done.

I have been slowly compiling this playlist on Spotify and I share it with you here for your listening (and productive) pleasure! Playlist - Train Trance

Manage labels in Gmail Android app to keep you focused.

If you take a close look at my notification area down the bottom right hand corner of my ASUS Transformer Infinity, you will see two GMail icons. This is a little trick that I picked up a while ago.

If you are involved in several areas of work, or if you like to split your work and personal email, you can actually create separate notifications for GMail labels.

I have a general inbox. In addition there is a mailing list that I am part of and I need to be on top of that one as well. So I set the label (from within the GMail app itself) so that when GMail sorts my inbox and transfers incoming mail from my inbox to the folder containing email from this mailing list, I get a separate notification.

Helps me focus. Hope you find this little tip helpful.

Boost productivity on Android. Use a mouse! (Oh, and I'm done transferring my Tumblr posts to Blogger!)

Done! I have transferred all my posts manually from Tumblr to Blogger.

Remember how I said that I was tempted to use my PC? Well I remembered at the last minute (before I gave way to temptation) that you can plug just about any kind of USB mouse into the Transformer series and off you go.

I did so with my Transformer Infinity and the copy/paste process was speeded up by about a factor of three! Keep this in mind if you have a Transformer and you want to be that little bit more productive.

Best office app on Android? My vote goes to Polaris Office.

When I bought my ASUS Transformer TF101, it came with an unassuming app called Polaris Office. I have not realised just how much I have come to appreciate this elegant, well designed and very sturdy piece of software.

I upgraded my TF101 to the Prime (TF201) and it also came with Polarise Office as a part of the stock software.

I recently upgraded phones and was looking through the app store for Polaris. I found it but I was not able to install it on any of my devices. Got the old “not valid in your country” rubbish! I guess I will have to wait before the company feels confident enough to go public on Android with it.

Better go write my letter to Santa!

The new beastie! Motorola RAZR HD

It’s been a while since I posted last. It’s been a very busy time of year. In addition I’ve been promoted to a new role which includes some management responsibilities.

This means I need to be even more productive.

All of this activity coincides with my old mobile phone contract reaching its conclusion. And you know what that means!

That’s right! New phone!

After doing some little research, I decided on the new Nexus 4. Problem was ever since it’s release, the Australian site had constantly been sold out.

So I researched both the Samsung S3 and the Motorola RAZR HD.

In the end I decided on the Motorola. The deciding factors in the end were (a) exceptional battery life of almost 2 days in standby mode, (b) kevlar chassis (I bang and drop stuff) and most importantly, ever since Google bought Motorola, (c) the Android updates are becoming more and more vanilla like, with less an less bloatware.

I’m about a week in with the new phone and am really liking the simple things like Smart Actions. The improvement in Google voice actions is also pretty impressive. My experience is that Google Voice Actions is simpler, faster and more effective for productivity than Siri on my partners new iPhone 5 (we got new phones at the same time).

Hopefully with my transition to my new role almost complete and with a new phone, regular updates will be the norm.

My GTD App of choice - Nirvana HQ

When it comes to GTD, after a year and a half of finding the ultimate solution on Android/Windows, I have settled for Nirvana HQ. Nirvana meets the following criteria which in my mind, are critical in order for a solution to qualify as a GTD solution.

• Firstly, it achieves that Holy Grail facility of “auto next action”. When you create multiple projects (I believe you need to be a subscribing customer in order to be able to create more than five projects) the various “next” views that you utilise (by context, area etc) will only be populated by the top tasks in your various projects. When you mark a tasks completed in that view, Nirvana will then automatically refresh your current “next” task list by selecting the next sequential task from the project in question.
• Nirvana HQ is platform agnostic. The main interface is web based. The features are amazing in such a cheap solution. (Free or $39US per year). They have a mobile site for use on tablets and mobile phones.
• There is offline access too. Currently there is an iPhone app (which you can also use on the iPad) and the Android client is in beta. I have been part of the alpha and now beta program.
• They allow tagging tasks with multiple contexts. Some GTD solutions only allow you to tag a task with one context. This is a good discipline but sometimes it can be a little inflexible.

In addition, the developers and community are incredibly helpful and active.

If you are looking for the ultimate solution, check them out. Seriously, after one and a half years, I don’t think it gets any better than this.

If you reckon there is something better, I’d love to hear from you!

Do I still need a Windows laptop?

These days I use my Transformer Prime more than I do my Dell laptop. I probably use my laptop once or twice week and that is primarily to create content (word processing documents that require a bit of image manipulation, presentation file creation etc) but 7 days a week I use the Prime.

I got away with using the Prime. I wasn’t super confident as Android 4.0 whilst being reasonably stable and visually pleasing, was a little unstable. I would get an app crash once every 2 days or so and perhaps twice a week I would have to reboot the device.

That all changed when Asus upgraded the Prime to 4.1 (Jelly Bean). If you have been holding off getting an Android tablet, I think that if you can get one running version 4.1, now is the time to take the plunge. Solid, reliable and very productive.