Get up and walk away for 2 minutes

Preferably outdoors.

With warm weather approaching, I thought I would post a little reminder about how helpful it is to get up from your computer (or work) and take a little walk.

• It clears your head
• Helps blood your circulation
• Opportunity to talk with people
• It inspires others to take a break too

Now, this is not to be confused with the procrastinations, I don’t want to work, I am easily distracted breaks.

Filed under: Office, Productivity

Run Weekly and Monthly Budget Reports in Less Than 2 Minutes

If you haven’t checked out mint.com yet, I would suggest it.  It is a free personal finance online application that runs beautiful reports on your finances for you.

You do have to give it some information about your bank, so folks weary about giving away finance information online may not be interested.  However, I have been using it for a while, and love it.

Think Google Analytics for your finances.  Plus, it will send you weekly reports showing if you are under or over budget.

Find out more at http://www.mint.com/.

Filed under: Personal, Tools, finance

Review of Things To Do App for the iPhone

A while back a gave a list of some different to do list applications that I use or have used.

Since then, I have primarily been using Things on my iPhone for my to do list.  I had downloaded the free demo version of Things for the Mac, but it did not sync automatically, and I found that just having my to do list on my iPhone works pretty well for me.

The nice thing about the Things To Do app for the iPhone is that I can easily move to do items between “Today”, “Inbox”,  “Someday”, or “Project”.

• Today: items that I need to do today or be constantly reminded of.  The number of items in your today section display similarly to the way Apple Mail displays your unread emails.  Items that are checked off are automatically logged at the end of the day
• Inbox: this is the place for ongoing to do items.  Often items start in my Today box and get moved to Inbox if I don’t see getting to them soon.  Every few days I will go back and move a few items to the today box to make sure they get done.
• Someday: we all have these great ideas that we want to do… someday. I like the idea of the idea of this box, but I don’t use it much
• Projects: This is where you can keep track of ongoing projects that you have.  You can then have a to do list for each project, that will show up in the respective Inbox or Today box of your choosing.
• Scheduled: I haven’t used this one yet, but it allows for you to have a to do appear in your Today box on a scheduled date.

Things may not work for you, but I have felt that the cost has been warranted because I feel much more on top of my to do items.  They have some great screenshots and a videoon their site if you want to look into the app further.

Filed under: Productivity, Tools, App, iPhone, Review