Thing 14: Online Productivity Tools

Online Productivity - isn't that on oxymoron? Most of the time, when I'm online, I am anything but productive. In fact, there are tons of sites out there that I'd wager that's their sole purpose in life - to waste time. But that's not what this thing is about. This is about the productive ones.

I did the iGoogle thing. It was ok. I mean, I suppose it's handy to have a lot of the Google features there to click, but is it really that hard to click on a tab and choose it from a menu? The nice thing about it is that it gives you a preview of your inbox and RSS feed, so you don't have to open them if you don't see anything new. However I am easily distracted, and me clicking on one of the news articles may lead to a 30 minute venture in webland.

I browsed through some of the other things, like the post-it notes and list maker, but didn't find them useful. I just don't make lists - it's just another piece of paper for me to lose. That, and I procrastinate, so looking at a list of all the things I haven't done yet just makes me feel bad. And no, laziness usually wins over feelings of self-defeat.

Online calendars are definitely useful, though when I usually need to consult a calendar I am nowhere near a computer. However, it would be great thing to have on a webpage to let patrons know of upcoming events. Backpack seemed pretty useful too, but Google had something somewhat comparable. If you just start a Google group you can upload documents, have a forum, etc. Backpack may streamline it a bit and give it pretty color coding and other fancy bits.

I can see how all these could be useful, but not readily applicable to my life at the moment. Productive? Maybe - however with a simple click on new tab, my mind can be off and wandering even with these sites up.