In the book, Drive, author Daniel Pink talks about “taking Sagmeister”, inspired by designer Stefan Sagmeister. He goes on to explain Sagmeister taking an entire year off every seven years, essentially sprinkling retirement years within the working years.
Well! I could not take a Sagmeister and go off on vacation for 365-days. Instead, I decided to take two weeks off to recharge and reinvigorate. I am off to Europe with my Family & Friends.
See you all soon!
I introduced you to my top three apps in my earlier post. Let’s continue where we left off, and let me introduced you to remaining apps on my list.
Being Agilist who loves art and doodling, I take a lot of pictures. And, the limited storage space on my mobile devices could be a problem! This is where Google Photos comes to my rescue!
You can configure Google Photos to sync pictures from your mobile device automatically to your Google Drive. With auto sync configured, I can take a picture and my mobile device automatically uploads that to my Google account. Oh! by the way, Google gives you unlimited storage space for this auto sync!
The advantage is that you don’t need to keep on all those pictures on your mobile device. You can take as many pictures as you want, and they are always available to you from any device, anywhere, anytime!
I use this app to record audio on my mobile when I have the sudden burst of creativity when you don’t have paper and pencil handy. You don’t want to slow down in those moments, you want to take notes at the Speed of thoughts! iTalk is my go-to app when I am having these bursts of creativity! All you have to do is talk into your mobile and capture those thoughts.
This app also connects to your Dropbox account allowing you to ‘extend’ storage on your mobile device. You record and it pushes it to your Dropbox! Once recorded, you can hire someone else to transcribe it. This way you could be ‘writing’ your article on the go while waiting at the airport lounge or while stuck in the traffic. Record your thoughts using iTalk, push it to Dropbox, and get more Done!
I use this workflow a lot! I record my thoughts, push the audio recording to my Virtual Assistant (VA) and he transcribes those notes yielding initial draft for my article.
With Trello, you can create your own Kanban board and use them to collaborate with your teams. Create different cards and move them around based on the priorities. There are no emails to send back and forth. You can add notes, checklists, as well as documents. You can even filter your cards based on specific tags or labels.
Essentially, Trello can become your work hub, where you organize your backlog, communicate with your team members, and orchestrate the development of your Minimum Marketable Product (MMP). And, you can be doing all these on the Go as well!
I use the mobile app all the time on my iPhone. This allows me to stay in touch with my team members constantly. As I mention earlier, I push my audio notes to my virtual assistant (VA) all the way to the other side of the world; using a Trello card on a board that I have shared with my team members.
This app has been my savior many times. Benefits of Using this app are manyfold:
We all have ‘fat’ wallets! Unfortunately, instead of money, they are filled with all the plastic cards :-Did you know, average American carries 17 plastic cards in his/her wallet. You can move all those cards to an electronic world as well, using Key Ring app. Just add your cards into Key Ring and trash all those physical plastic cards, unflatten your wallet, and get rid of that back pain!
I use Google Docs extensively for all my notes, documents, and spreadsheets. As we all know Google Docs is all cloud based solution and allows you to collaborate with your team members. Google gives you considerable amount of space for free that is more than enough for most of us
IFTTT allows me to get rid of some of the repetitive tasks from my day. It allows me to delegate and automate some of that mundane task. Using simple recipes, you can automate most of the routine tasks. Use it and you will fall in love with it!
[bctt tweet=”Get yourself on hyper Productivity lane with these apps http://www.nimeshsoni.com/10-apps-10x-productivity/” username=”beyondCSM”]
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As an Agilist, as a change agent, you are almost always playing the role of a “Facilitator” as you interact with your business stakeholders as well as members of your teams. I like these sessions to be interactive and collaborative. I encourage you all to use Post Its and White boarding as you go through these sessions.
Office Lens for Just Enough Documentation
And, some of you have already heard me say this multiple times: Just Enough and Good Enough! As we do the white boarding sessions, taking a picture of it and attaching it to your Feature/Story might be good enough documentation, at that point in time.
To take the picture of white boarding session, I highly recommend an app called Office Lens by Microsoft. All you have to do is to point your mobile to the wall where the whiteboard is. The app automatically identifies the whiteboard and takes pretty good, clear picture of the content. You don’t have to worry about getting it in frame properly, nor do you have to worry about the lighting and reflections. Check out the details of the app here.
As mentioned in his CIO article, The app is good at detecting edges and cropping automatically, and both features save you a few steps.I have used Scannable from Evernote as well, and I am a big fan of that app too! However, Office Lens beats it when it comes to taking pictures of the White board. Here is a picture from one of my white boarding session, taken with Office Lens.
White boarding session – picture taken using Office Lens
[tweetthis]Whiteboard and Just Enough Documentation in #Agile http://bit.ly/whiteboarding4Doc[/tweetthis]
Question: What other apps you have used? Share your findings in comments below. You can leave a comment by clicking here.
If you want to emulate anybody’s success, especially if you in the business of creating things, Pixar has to be on the top list. I admired all the movies made by Pixar; I admired the creativity and the storytelling chops they showcase through these movies. But, after reading this book my admiration for this company have grown many folds.
Being an Agilist, I saw many parallels between the creative world of Pixar and my world of Agile. I was surprised and inspired to see that they have been practicing a lot of the Agile principle that we talk about. For example, they use ‘real day’ which is essentially what we call (Sprint) Review or the Demo.
This is one company worth emulating! This could be the ‘bible’ that you are looking for to build and sustain a creative company! This book definitely would be in the front of all the books on my bookshelf.
Three Quotes from the book:
Three tips from the book:
[bctt tweet=”Find, develop, and support good people and they will find, develop, and support good ideas!” username=”beyondCSM”]
10 Apps for 10x Productivity
Like it or not, Accept it, we are a mobile society driven by mobiles in our hands and our pockets. Is your mobile device a ‘sink hole’ for your time and productivity? Can we actually use them to increase 10x productivity, on the go!?
Are you ‘wasting’ lot of time on your mobile with Facebook likes and updates, with What’s app and Instagram? Turn the tables! Convert your mobile devices into a productivity magnet, using some of the best productivity apps that I regularly use and highly recommend.
Mobile devices are major part of the strategy for industry leaders like Google, Microsoft and Facebook. We do more and more work on the go using our mobile devices. As you walk to your car, as you walk in the mall, and so on. How many of you have bumped into a person who is so engrossed in his/her phone that doesn’t even care to look at where s/he is headed.
Use of phone while driving is already illegal in most of the states, if not all of the states. But, now, there are some states which are considering banning the phone use while walking. In New Jersey for example, in a town called Fort Lee police have written hundreds of citations for texting while walking. So make no mistake we are a mobile society. Driven by the mobile, getting more and more work done on the go using mobile devices.
I’m guilty of this as well 🙂 I use mobile to get more and more work done from my daily routine. I have used several apps and constantly experiment with new ones.
Let’s talk about the 10 apps that can get you to 10x productivity: apps that help you get more done with minimal effort involved, and of course on the go!
Start with moving your world to Electronic world, and what better way to do that is getting this electronic note taking apps.
I use Evernote for managing my professional life while the OneNote keeps my personal life organized. And in the digital world once in there my notes are available from any device, anywhere. It also helps you reduce the use of paper, in return you are helping to save some trees!
Your back will also thank you as these two note taking apps will help you reduce the size of your backpack! I introduced OneNote to my son also to help him reduce the weight he carries in his backpack. In fact, he extended the functionality and use of it even further. He uses OneNote on his Microsoft Surface, and he can capture hand written notes with the electronic pen!
Very easy to search, and highly collaborative, these note taking apps will take your productivity to next level, almost immediately!
As you can see, I do a lot of doodling on post-it. I like to draw and doodling allows me to bring two of my passions together: the art and the agile.
I use Post It extensively while explaining concepts or brainstorming on new product offering. I use doodling and sketch when I’m having one on one conversations or explaining new concepts on paper. I can take a picture of these Post It notes, with doodles or my handwritten notes. To do this, put your drawing on a contrasting background, load up your Scannable app, aim and snap!
This app gives you crisp and clear image by automatically eliminating glare and flattening the image. Check some of my doodles here which have been brought to the electronic world using Scannable app.
From Microsoft, this app does similar job as Scannable but I use it for specific purpose other than those scanning of documents.
Being an Agilist I’m highly collaborative and often I am at whiteboard explaining various concepts to a team or group of people. I’m using drawings while using different color sharpie pens! Office Lens does a great job of taking white board pictures.
Again, all you do is aim and snap. This app is smart to figure out what is the actual whiteboard area, and automatically pans to get the area appropriately while eliminating glare. The end result is crisp and clear image!
[bctt tweet=”Collaboration + White boarding + Office Lens = Just in Time, Just Enough documentation” username=”beyondCSM”]
I explained the Top 3 of my 10x productivity apps. I will explain the remaining apps in the next installment of this blog post. Until then, experiments with these apps and #getHyper!
[bctt tweet=”Increase Productivity on the Go with these Apps http://www.nimeshsoni.com/10-apps-10x-productivity/” username=”beyondCSM”]
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