Author: Stan Shinn

I've long been a fan of gel pens and felt tip pens. A lot of my writing is annotation and markup, so I need a smooth writing but bold ink that stands out on a page. Since writing is such a big part of my life, I finally decided to search for the perfect pen. I bought a dozen or so of the best pens I could find and tried each out over several weeks. I finally settled on the Uniball Jetstream as my choice for the 'perfect pen.'

It writes smooth like a gel pen. Unlike most gel pens, it has a hybrid ink so it dries fast and doesn't smear. Unlike most rollerballs, it doesn't have a dried speck of ink that must slough off to start the ink flow. Even the much touted space pens have that disadvantage. But not the Jetstream.

Another bonus is that it's cap takes a bit of a tug to get off. Unlike the click-top gel pens, with this pen you can be assured that the cap if firmly on or off. No more sticking a pen in your pocket only to find you've gotten ink on your pants or in your hand. 

You can buy it at almost any office supply store, or purchase online here. 

Anyone who manages web projects -- freelance or otherwise -- can find a nice list of resources in this article by Garrett Dimon. A basic list of references from how to execute low budget projects to the best web resources for web designers.

A nice article on GTD. I like the emphasis on breaking things into small achievable tasks, and focusing on the task at had while putting aside your master list: 

So you make your to-do list, and then you start on the first task. And here's a very important part--put the to-do list aside. When you work on one thing, just do that one thing. The other things are safely on your list.

For example, right now, I've got a million things to do today, and I'm pretty late with some of them. Doesn't matter. I'm not thinking about them. Right now, I'm writing this blog entry. I'll do the next thing I need to do when I'm done with this one. And I'm totally not thinking about that bug in the publishing system, because I'm swamped with work for the rest of the week, and then I'm on vacation. But that's OK. The bug'll still be on my to-do list when I'm back from vacation.

Read more: InformationWeek Weblog: Getting Things Done

Take a look at Apple's latest invention. 360-degree scrolling. A great boon for graphic artists. Here's the description:

Meet the mouse that reinvented the wheel. The scroll wheel, that is. At $49, Mighty Mouse features the revolutionary Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And with touch-sensitive technology concealed under the seamless top shell, you get the programability of a four-button mouse in a single-button design. Click, roll, squeeze and scroll. This mouse just aced the maze.

Read more: Apple - Mighty Mouse

Email is my main productivity tool. When you receive several hundred emails a day, processing these incoming messages quickly becomes a mission critical task! Being an advocate of Getting Thing Done, I’ve come to use the following techniques to process email.

1) Use Today, Later, Home, and Waiting For Categories

I make extensive use of Categories to classify and sort email. My Inbox Categories:

Incoming Email (no category)

When an email comes in by default it either has no category and the text is ‘Black’. When I see these emails I know that I have not processed these emails yet, and they need attention.

Today

When I scan the email and decide that the email must be responded to or acted on Today, I set its category to Today. It has its own special color. In Entourage (Microsoft’s Mac Outlook-like Email Client) I set up a script so that simply hitting Ctrl-T sets the selected emails to this category.

Later

If the email requires action on my part, but the email can wait till tomorrow or later, I set its category to Later. Later emails can wait till a future date, but as time permits I might address them today. It has its own special color and Ctrl-L sets the selected emails to this category.

Home

If the email is something I want to respond to when I get home that evening, or if it’s an email I need to show or review with someone in my family, I set its category toHome. It has its own special color and Ctrl-H sets the selected emails to this category.

Waiting For

If I respond to an email but I need to get a response, or if it’s simply an email in a thread I need to ‘watch’ and see through the topic till resolution, I set its category toWaiting For. It has its own special color and Ctrl-W sets the selected emails to this category.

2) Managing Your Inbox — The Daily Review

Every morning I sort my email into the above categories. I read the Later emails and may flag some of them as Today. I read the Waiting For emails and if necessary send out a reminder to those from whom I need a reply. Then over the course of the day as emails come in I process emails into the appropriate categories.

3) Project Folders

Sometimes multiple emails on the same topic start to fill up my inbox. Rather than store dozens or hundreds of emails clutter my inbox, I create a project folder. I have a main Project folder, and underneath it create a subfolder for any multi-email project or topic. I put emails in this project folder, and ones that are archived I flag asDone (Ctrl-D). I have a note on my separately maintained ‘Goals’ document (a daily tasks master list) and have a note to work on that project, then go to the project folder at some point in the day to deal with the multiple emails that I have collected on the topic. The Done category helps me separate archived emails from active emails that need attention.

4) Remember the Two Minute Rule

An important Getting Things Done principle is any task that you run across that takes two minutes or less is done immediately. So when you read emails that fill this description, deal with them at once. Otherwise you’ll scan the email multiple times a day, and a 1.5 minute email response ends up take 4 minutes of your day. With dozens of emails being processed inefficiently, those lost seconds add up!