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So this is a rather large deviation from my usual Dakka posts involving tactics, but I'm curious to what fellow users' opinions are for my topic.

I'm a grad-student, and time management is a massive weakness of mine. My research and writing skills are great, but I need help with productivity.

Are tablets good for productivity? Whether it's reading papers on the way to the lab, or writing while sitting on the toilet, how does the potential for productivity counteract the potential for distractions? Are they cost efficient for such things? Price is obviously a factor, but I get a rather substantial grant and so I would be willing to pay for something high class, if it would indeed aid in productivity.

Can anyone recommend any software to aid with time management? Obviously excell and gantt graphs is a good idea, but that's not easy to take around, nor does it have alerts to remind me to do things. Also productivity software in general, that you find helpful in your life.

Thanks Dakka.

I have found that having a tablet with internet capabilities is HORRIBLE for productivity... I own a kindle fire, got a notebook program and a stylus. For the first week of classes, this was great and it eventually tapered off and I would play games or browse dakka, twitter, facebook, what have you.

The same thing was with a laptop, if you can set up a tablet without internet capabilities, i can see it being useful if you load things on it before hand, but I always find the temptation to browse the interwebs too much when trying to use my kindle fire as anything productive.

My company uses outlook for our calendars and email.

I have found that putting recurring reminders on my calendar like "Complete Expense Report" on the 3rd Tuesday of the month to be helpful.

 Alfndrate wrote:
I always find the temptation to browse the interwebs too much when trying to use my kindle fire as anything productive.

This is what I'm afraid of. However, I do need to write more, and doing it on the fly sounds fantastic. Using a note pad (as in pen and paper) might be a good idea, but I have awful hand writing, and the ability to lose just about every piece of paper I own.

Outlook. Why didn't I think of outlook?!

Outlook comes with Pro versions only, or so I found when I looked into it for myself.
You'll be hard pressed to find it on Home or Student versions of Office.
I've not looked at the 365 version though.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
I always find the temptation to browse the interwebs too much when trying to use my kindle fire as anything productive.

This is what I'm afraid of. However, I do need to write more, and doing it on the fly sounds fantastic. Using a note pad (as in pen and paper) might be a good idea, but I have awful hand writing, and the ability to lose just about every piece of paper I own.

Outlook. Why didn't I think of outlook?!

Part of my reasoning to my parents when I asked for the kindle was that I felt I would be hard pressed to lose a 200 dollar "notebook". There are office type programs for the kindle and tablets, that can convert your hand writing into typed words, but I found myself editing it far more than I liked. If you can get your hands on some Windows 8 gak, you might be able to get Office OneNote, which is a decent note taking software, that integrates with Outlook and other Office programs.

Hmm, tablets are more expensive than I thought. I really dislike spending money, especially if it's on something I'm uncertain I'm going to use.
The google nexus looks nice, but I wonder how easily I could transfer what I've written on there to the main word document for my thesis. I really dislike hand writing, mine is childish and horrible. Plus I'm a considerably faster typist than I am hand writer.

Most of the productivity programs are so... gimmicky. I really want something that will alert me at the start and end of each day to what I need/needed to do.

 Griddlelol wrote:
Hmm, tablets are more expensive than I thought. I really dislike spending money, especially if it's on something I'm uncertain I'm going to use.
The google nexus looks nice, but I wonder how easily I could transfer what I've written on there to the main word document for my thesis. I really dislike hand writing, mine is childish and horrible. Plus I'm a considerably faster typist than I am hand writer.

Most of the productivity programs are so... gimmicky. I really want something that will alert me at the start and end of each day to what I need/needed to do.

Look for something with Google Now. My buddy just got a cell phone with Jellybean, and it comes with Google Now... he wakes up to traffic reports, weather, it converts shipping emails into notifications, etc... It's pretty sweet.

 Alfndrate wrote:
he wakes up to traffic reports, weather

See that's fairly useless for me. I walk to the lab and I live in the North West of England. The weather is rainy 90% of the time lol.

 Griddlelol wrote:
. I really want something that will alert me at the start and end of each day to what I need/needed to do.

It's called a Day Planner. Each morning, you review that day's schedule. As new things come up, you decide what day to put them on and where. If you have to bump something from today for a higher priority, mark the new date/time in your day planner.

Review it in the afternoon, every afternoon. If you find you aren't getting everything done, then you're either too aggressive in your planning or allow too many things to interrupt your plans.

I like Franklin Covey's design. I use outlook now, so I got away from this. I'm not sure if there is an electronic version of this for an iPhone or tablet, but that would be cool.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
he wakes up to traffic reports, weather

See that's fairly useless for me. I walk to the lab and I live in the North West of England. The weather is rainy 90% of the time lol.

Sorry, I didn't explain it well enough... It learns your routines, precipitation might not be of importance, but temp might... It'll import from your calendar, etc... give it a try...

Don't listen to Kronk, he's old (fyi, listen to Kronk, he's far more organized than I am).

Productivity or time management is not a function of hardware or software. It is a way of working and organising your work.

You need some ideas about how to keep a To Do list, and prioritise tasks, and identify milestones and dependencies in your tasks.

I keep an A4 notebook and write everything in it on a daily basis. If I fail to complete a task I bring it forward to the next day. I also put notes and rough workings, etc in the book. When filled up, the notebooks are filed so I can refer back to them if necessary.

My daughter's school makes the children use a daily planner which is basically a more sophisticated, dedicated version of the notebook.

Although old fashioned, the notebook has the great advantages of being cheap, not needing batteries, and not losing files, etc, and can be used for swatting flies.

What it can't do, of course, is to track appointments and give you advanced warning. Lotus Notes has a function to do that in my office.

Some smartphones and tablets can talk to computers and help organise a diary that way, and may be useful if that is an important concern for you.

KK speaks a lot of truth here. It's not the gadgets, it's your habits is the most important take away.

Meh, just wing it. Alternatively, marry a gal who is a little OCD.

What could go wrong?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Productivity or time management is not a function of hardware or software. It is a way of working and organising your work.

You need some ideas about how to keep a To Do list, and prioritise tasks, and identify milestones and dependencies in your tasks.

You are quite correct. The reason I'm asking this question is because I'm awful at time management and it's really starting to affect my productivity. However, I've tried the pen/paper route, and it's not for me. It gets lost within the piles of journals I read, discarded as scrap or simply too untidy to decipher what I originally needed to do.

My logic is that, if I'm using something to type on while on the way to work, I can also use that to help organise, especially as you said, I can link my work PC to it.

Maybe I should look at the wider issue and ask for help with effective ways to manage my time.


Edit: My problem isn't so much prioritising. I'm decent at that. It's more...using all the time I have, and making sure that time is spend doing something that will help me achieve my milestones.