Digital Productivity Strategies for Developers

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Our Guest: Jean-Paul Boodhoo

Our special guest this week is Jean Paul Boodhoo Follow JP on Twitter who is a developer, trainer, and author specializing in .NET and Agile development. When I first heard about JP’s summer where he worked while traveling around the world after giving away the contents of his home – I knew I had to have him share how he did it.

Truly Going Paperless

While very few of us will have an opportunity to have such a grand adventure as JP and his family did his techniques are something we can all benefit from. In this show JP shares how he uses the following services to be 100% mobile keep a paperless office:

  • Earth Class Mail: global PO box with options to send parcels to wherever you are in the world
  • Neat Co: scanning, storing and working with receipts
  • eFax: for faxing documents via email
  • Skype: Unlimited
  • LiveMeeting: with active speaker switching for video conferences
  • UltraVNC: for remote pair programming

Getting Things Done

I got a copy of  Getting Things Done  for Christmas and quickly became energized by David Allen’s concepts. I discuss in the show how I use custom Gmail accounts and a defined workflow to implement the tenants of GTD. Gmail’s labeling, search, archive and starring features make a great way to keep track of projects and next actions.

Further I use the service, 3mindme to implement a digital  ticker file  (see the book for an explanation!). Finally, to keep the accounts accessible I use SlickRun to map each mail account to a different browser so I can keep each account authenticated… works like a champ!

If all of this is foreign to you I  suggest you get a copy of the book for yourself and find out why the GTD concept is so practical.

Update: Some listeners pointed out how easy it is to search multiple labels in Gmail. I posted about it here: Search Multiple Labels in Gmail.

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