Every since I learned that the most important characteristic of people who become experts is that they continue to learn throughout their careers at the same pace they did when they were beginners, I have found it helpful to do regular mental inventories of new things I’ve recently learned as a way to keep myself honest.

Here are some of the productivity tips that I’ve picked up in the last 3-4 months that have worked out well and saved me quite a few wasted keystrokes and mouse movements:

1. Launcher Program Parameters – In my recent post Friends Don’t Let Friends Use the Start Menu, I described my newfound addiction to SlickRun as a way to launch programs. Since then a few people have suggested that I try Launchy instead because it automatically detects programs without any keyword setup. I still intend to give it a fair chance, but I have to admit that so far I’ve been too distracted by experimenting with using SlickRun parameters so that I am not just opening a program but also accomplishing the first task or two that I normally would perform. For example, instead of just opening Firefox I now have different “magic words” configured to open one or more web sites at the same time. I also have different keywords set up for opening up each of my Visual Studio solutions as well as connecting to each of my different database servers with SQL Management Studio.
2. UltraMon Window Switching Hotkey – I’ve been hooked on UltraMon as a way to quickly switch windows back and forth between monitors for a while, but I’ve only recently thought to set up a hotkey(there is a HotKey tab in the UltraMon properties window). Now I switch the active window to my other monitor by just hitting Ctl + Right Arrow Key.
3. Adding NotePad2 to Context Menu – Life is too short to open random source files with Visual Studio. That’s why I prefer using Notepad2, which offers syntax highlighting but opens instantly. I recently ran across this blog entry that shows how to hack the registry so that this handy utility shows up in the context menu. Now when I want to open source files outside of Visual Studio, I simply right click on the file and choose NotePad2.
4. Address Bar Hotkey (Alt-D) – I picked this tip from a recent Jeff Atwood post and have since used it about a thousand times a day since it works both with the browser and Windows Explorer.
5. Lighter Weight ToDo List – Adding to the “ridding my life of tools that take too long to load” theme, I’ve recently stopped using Microsoft Word to track my To Do list and instead started using a lightweight utility that comes with SlickRun (Jot). Now when I need to jot down a task or thought, I hit Ctl-J and a little green window pops up within in milliseconds rather than the 3-6 seconds it takes Microsoft Word to load. It doesn’t sound like much, but it really adds up over the course of a day. Also, given my ADD tendencies, I have trained myself to immediately jot down random tasks or thoughts immediately as they occur to me or else I tend to lose track of them. However, if I can’t do this in one swift, fluent motion, then I lose all the momentum I had built up on my prior task so this is a big boost me personally in that respect.
6. Unlocking Files with Unlocker – If I get impatient loading up Visual Studio and Microsoft Word, then you can imagine how reluctant I am to reboot my laptop or a development server. Rather than rebooting to solve a file locking related issue, I used to fumble around with Process Explorer in order to figure out which program or service needed to be shut down rather than rebooting like I’ve observed other people doing. Now that I have the Unlocker utility installed, all I do is right click on the locked file and select ‘Unlocker’. The utility displays a list of all the open file handles along with the option to simply unlock the file or else kill the locking process.
7. Configuring VSS to use BeyondCompare for File Comparisons – Every piece of code gets reviewed where I work now, which means that version comparison becomes a pretty critical feature. God help us that we still haven’t managed to find the time to migrate to a real source control tool yet, but one saving grace is that we all have BeyondCompare2 configured as default comparison tool. The VSS comparison functionality just highlights the line that has changed, but BeyondCompare2 highlights the exact characters that have changed. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the savings in time and eye-strain add up quickly if your shop is strict about code reviews.

I picked up many of these tips by simply observing my co-workers or following suggestions I read in a blog posts. Other improvements came about as a result of trying to pay attention to any actions I did frequently that seemed to take more steps than they should and then creatively thinking about how to reduce the number of steps.

No matter how you end up picking up these kinds of tips, the trick is that you have to be willing to invest energy in changing your workflow habits.

Which tricks have you picked up recently?

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