New tool for weekly planning: Teux Deux

I’m not sure about you, but I struggle with planning and prioritizing things. My problem is that I’m too efficient at capturing thoughts and ideas, and I’m always overwhelmed by what things I should be doing because my ‘to do’ list is way too long!

One of the productivity steps I’ve read about but had problems implementing was planning out the major things I’d like to get accomplished in the week ahead. All the techniques I tried to visualize and track this data never seemed to work for me until I remembered a piece of software I had demo’ed long ago – Teux Deux:

Teux Deux screencapture

I love the layout – perfect for visualizing the tasks allocated each day for the whole week. If you don’t finish the tasks for a day, they’re automatically moved to the next day which is helpful. Once you enter a string/task, you can re-arrange the order (or move to another day) by dragging and dropping. You can also check off the task once it’s done (shows a line drawn through the task) or click an ‘x’ at the end of the line to delete it. Unfortunately, to edit a string, you need to delete it and re-add it which is kind of stupid. Helps to read the FAQ: you can edit a string by dragging to the inpput box! But it does have an iPhone app now so you can take your list with you.

Give it a try and see if it can’t help you focus on getting more major accomplishments done each week!

Cooling Stand for Mac Book Pro from Mad Minds

I just wanted to pass along a tip to those of you with Mac Book Pros. As you well know, the bottom can get pretty hot, especially when it’s sitting in your lap! I had another cheap wedge-shaped plastic pad that I had doctored up with non-slip drawer lattice to keep it from sliding around. It actually worked great, but I ran across The Tilt from Mad Minds a while back:

The Tilt from Mad Minds

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/themadminds/the-tilt-multimedia-stand-for-the-macbook-pro

I had ordered it in mid-December and it was on backorder, but it finally arrived this week and it’s slick!  It clips on firmly to the bottom of the MBP, and it has a USB plug-in to power the fan which is remarkably capable of keeping things cool without adding too much thickness or weight to things.

I highly recommend it to anyone with a Mac Book Pro!

Rain City Burgers

I have to give a quick shout out to Rain City Burgers on the corner of 65th and Roosevelt. I stopped in there recently and had an unbelievable bacon double cheeseburger (my Yelp review). Highly recommended!