One of the reasons that computers can help us get more done is they have the ability to do lots of work for us. All you need is the ability to identify a repetitive series of tasks that is consuming your time, and the right software to take over the job for you. Here are a number of different Of Zen and Computing articles that will teach you how to save time and automate common tasks:
- Automatically Notify Yourself About Keywords in the News
Why spend time scouring the headlines when Google’s robot army can do it for you? - Efficient WordPress Spam Filtering with The Geek’s Spam Filter
Save Akismet some processing time by deleting all the painfully obvious spam immediately. - Protect Your WordPress Blog From Spam
If you have a blog, it is going to receive comment spam. Manually deleting all the junk is a full time job, so let the Akismet service filter your comments instead. - Quickly Resize Batches of Photos with OS X and Automator
Need to e-mail some photos? Don’t you dare try and resize those jpegs one-by-one! If you have a Mac, Automator can do it in no time flat. - Resize Image Files in Bulk
By using software called ImageMagick, you can resize any number of image files with just a few keystrokes. - Spanning Sync
Spanning Sync is a great program that will automatically synchronize your Google calendars with your Apple iCalendars. Manage the same calendar from home, office or the road without doing any extra work. - Use Keyboard Shortcuts, Become A Ninja
Keyboard shortcuts are up at the top of the pile when it comes to time savers. Learn them. Live by them.
6 responses
September 6th, 2007
David Wilkerson says:
I use my automation to automatically play heavy metal music files in the morning to wake me up.
September 6th, 2007
Of Zen and Computing says:
Haha, nice! I do the same thing, except I wake up to a much more mellow track: “Morning Has Broken” by Cat Stevens.
September 6th, 2007
Andrew says:
My classic wake up song is Orbital - Halcyon & On & On… Its an electronic song that was most likely in Hackers or something… Starts very mellow and then progressively gets harder
September 6th, 2007
Alex says:
I’m also a huge fan of the wake-up mp3 alarm- I used “WinAlarm”, the winamp plugin, and just left winamp running 24/7.
I found, though, that it was best to match the song with the period. For instance, during a particularly grueling summer internship, I had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, and had it set to play “Mighty Fine Blues” by The Eels. The wake-up song is important, it can establish your personal groove for the rest of the day.
September 6th, 2007
Michael Stewart says:
I use an RSS alarm clock from Hak5.org which plays a track to wake me up then reads out the days news.
September 6th, 2007
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