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It's hard for me to listen to any productivity advice that includes the suggestion that I turn off my email notification system. I know that it's a waste of time to keep returning to my inbox every time my message detector pops up--I've read Clive Thompson's article on interruption science that rev...
Fortune writer Anne Fisher serves up 10 ways to get a grip on your overloaded inbox--and save yourself time and money in the process. One of the highlights: Send less. Think hard before you use the "reply to all" and "cc" features, and use group distribution lists sparingly. By targeting your e-ma...
Had it with Outlook? Big Contacts lets you manage your contacts, appointments, and more, all from within your Web browser. Just import one or more address books (the service supports everything from Outlook to Gmail to Palm Desktop) and you can log calls, schedule meetings, send e-mail, and even man...
If your trusty notebook's more than a year or two old, the hard drive is probably bursting at the seams. Hitachi's Notebook PC Upgrade Kit lets you swap in a new drive with up to 160GB of storage. But wait, there's more: The kit includes an external enclosure designed to simplify migration to ...
More screen space makes you more productive. It's a fact [PDF]. That's why I just upgraded my monitor to a 19-inch widescreen LCD display from Samsung (NewEgg). Well, the productivity thing, plus the fact that it was relatively cheap (under $200) and very snazzy looking. Bigger is better, accordi...
While many of us use Skype recreationally to chat with fellow Skypers around the globe, you can also pay a little bit of money to turn your Skype account into a cheap phone line while you're travelling on business or on a working vacation. For about $4 a month, you can get a SkypeIn account with f...
Navigating your own huge Excel file can be difficult; turning someone else's data into something usable and useful can be downright maddening. If you're going to be spending a lot of time immersed in spreadsheets, it helps to know a few tricks to maximize your efficiency. There are plenty of Exce...
For slow typists like me, speech recognition software has always been an alluring beacon to what I thought would be workplace efficiency. Instead of casting off my qwerty shackles and doubling my words per minute rate, though, I've instead wasted a lot of time playing around with junky software that...
Finding an office chair that works well for you can be an expensive and tiring process. A review in Slate a couple of years ago found that many pricey ergonomic chairs--including the famous Aeron--could be pretty uncomfortable. (The overall winner: The Liberty from Humanscale. Too bad it will set...
Hopstop—a site that helps you map your travel plans in major cities in the US—isn't perfect. As many readers of TechCrunch point out, it doesn't always point you to the most efficient routes, and it sometimes overestimates the time it will take you to get places. But it's still the next ...
Traveling internationally often means looking like a giant dork. If you want to keep your passport safe, you usually end up wearing some sort of "hidden" pouch that both causes bulges in your waistline and means you have to root around in your crotch to find important documents. If y...
Repetitive stress injuries can be bad news for business. And the misuse of the computer is a factor. Even when companies go the extra step of providing ergonomic workstations, that doesn’t enforce good work habits among employees. Poor posture and overlong sessions in front of the computer can...
As my colleague Leslie Leite has previously noted, the easiest way to for a bunch of people to work on the same documents is through the pseudo-wiki functionality of Google Docs. But if you're still sticking to the old fashioned system of emailing MS Word documents back and forth with colleagu...
Even if your parking bill is on the company's dime, you still don't want to spend precious pre-flight time trolling long-term lots looking for a space. So head over to airportparkingreservations.com to reserve an off-airport space (with anywhere from $10 to $15 down) at almost every major US...
When you travel abroad, your cellphone rarely works. When it does, you get socked with roaming rates up to several dollars a minute. A simple fix would be to simply switch out your SIM card for a local one. Of course, with US carriers involved, it's rarely that simple. First off, many US c...
