smarter not harder 5 hosted by kathryzj, because, "I returned to the office today after over a week of vacation. I'm not the best at re-entry, but I do find myself with a renewed interest in being a bit more stream-lined in the way I approach things. ... I'm also open to ideas. ... what are 5 things you do or things you have bought that have made your life simpler/easier to manage?"
1. freecycle! The local one is a yahoo! group; you can search and find one in your vicinity.
2. dropbox! I've saved photoshop files as large as 48 MB (not sure of their max size); what a convenience when I'm working in different locations and/or at different computers! Anyone want a dropbox invitation? I so would love more space!
3. I used to use google docs "all the time" and would do final word processing formatting in InDesign, Pages or Word, but I quit when they started using smart quotes cuz you need straight quotes for writing code. BTW, I need only very essential spreadsheet options, so g-docs were fine for that, also. Super-convenient when you're not always at the same puter. Now I need to check beck to find out if there's a way to turn them off, though I still use g-docs for some things, including the gradually growing list of individual items and groups of items (100+ and counting!) I've freecycled.
4. Aside from the clothes and other stuff I keep finding to take to the thrift store down the street, we have a distribution/exchange in this building for books and almost everything else.
5. Using weebly and wix for website basics. They support html and css, have a variety of templates and options within the templates and also make it simple for clients to do some of their own updates.
Bonus: Something I wish I could manage better? I wish I'd consistently stay up late, put in the kind of extra effort for my own projects of every kind that I'm always willing to do for clients.
Yay for freecycle.
ReplyDeleteI now have 4 jumpdrives I don't use since I have dropbox.
I used my couple dozen jump drives for storage (they don't have the power I need for working on large photoshop, etc. files and it's always best to work locally), but I anticipate dropbox, et al, expanding very soon.
ReplyDeleteI have not used freecycle yet, but I was made aware of it. I made my life easier by paring down..i took loads of things to goodwill in order to get rid of things that i don't use so that I could get to things that I do use. I love my cheap android phone, i can do nearly all that an iphone does, and a fraction of the cost. my email is synched, i can use it to take notes, have my to do list, calender, even track my calories for my diet. I think my $140 android phone is the best purchase of the year. keep your iphones...i like my droid.
ReplyDeleteI have Dropbox (since last years RevGals B.E.) but I'm not sure how to use it. After today, I will give that some effort.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Freecycle -- thanks! I'm trying every which way to get stuff out of this house!
Love the google docs bc they can be attached to things on the google calendar - really handy for permission slips for kid stuff. Great play here
ReplyDeletethanks, everyone, and crackers, I like taking stuff to the local Baras thrift store because they distribute and redistribute everything locally, often in the same store you delivered it too. esp from reading a recent article, I found out your wonderful, valuable, hard to part with things sometimes don't get used again in you take them to salvation army or goodwill.
ReplyDeleteI once saw the unbelievable stack of things in Goodwill that made me adjust to trying to exchange things more locally. Loved your play, THANKS!
ReplyDelete