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Non-Tech Ways of Organizing My Work

Non-Tech Ways of Organizing My Work

I don’t like electronic forms of organization for a vast majority of what I need to organize. I still use email as a form of task management or communication reminders but I tend to see my inbox as a source of busy work that needs to be done and removed. I don’t often go through my archives looking up stuff and since email is a horrible medium for meaningful communication, I tend to simply see it as a necessary evil that most people use and thus I have to be on board.

After finding this post at Stepcase Lifehack I felt inspired to write about how I am currently organizing things in my work life since the author, Carl Holscher, has a very similar setup.

Including email (which I won’t go into here since I already discussed it in this post), there are now three sources of information tracking that I use.

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Best Apps Round Up – 2012 Edition

Best Apps Round Up – 2012 Edition

I sent an email out to the team asking for the 5 most essential applications each person uses. Here’s each team members top 5 applications:

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The Right Tool

Having the right tool for the job just makes life easier; this is very true in the IT world. My role as Systems Administrator requires me to have multiple PCs running at various times; this includes a mixture of Windows XP and Windows 7 instances. Using Oracle’s VirtualBox, a mixture of diverse installs are available to me on my base Windows 7 image. Having a machine that will support a number of these installs running concurrently is a big plus.
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Newest addition to my home office

Newest addition to my home office

I recently redid the setup on my home office and just finished the last piece that I wanted to share. I recently picked up 2 new 23 inch Acer LED monitors from Fry’s in Downers Grove for $129 each. This was a great deal and man are these things light. What was really nice was that it actually came with a VGA, DVI and HDMI cable in the box. This was great to see as most of my recent monitor purchases were lucky to have 1. I wish I had bought 5 so I could have replaced my 3 21 inch ones as well (and probably brought them to work) but they will do for now.

My previous setup had 4 monitors in a row with 3 connected to my main machine and a 4th that I flipped between an old linux laptop and a Mac mini. This wasn’t ideal as the 4th monitor was a good deal off to the side and a pain to look at while using the main keyboard and mouse. So I decided to pick up a 2 monitor mount from Monoprice for $40 and make it a more ideal situation.
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