Portability

The attitude thing is about flexibility, portability, creativity, sociability and jamming (ran out of suitable “ity” words!). It’s about improvising – in the practical and musical senses of the word; not getting tangled in boundaries and the “right” way to do things. Definitely the only way to travel.- Martin Delaney – “Laptop Music”.

This quote depicts the current “Einstein-generation”- attitude. Add productivity to it, and it’s my preferred stance in life.

Unfortunately reading blogs about productivity is a huge obstacle in my efforts to Get Things Done. Dave Cheong in “18 ways to stay focused at work” lists blogreading at #17, and at the third volume of “33 rules to boost your productivity” “Steve Pavlina has at # 32 the remarkable quote:

Instead of doing your actual work, spend most of your time reading productivity blogs. Within a few months, you’ll have acquired enough knowledge to start your own. Eventually you’ll realize that 50% of the web consists of productivity tips written by chronic procrastinators…

So, I try to limit my time with my favorite feedreader, Bloglines, and read as a daily diet only Boing-Boing, Mashable and – don’t live to geek; geek to live! – Lifehacker. Last week’s best tip: Portable Open Office. Even better tip: complete Portable Apps-suite, a complete suite of applications that work from any portable drive.
Some programs are less useful – at least to me. I like Firefox, but I don’t use Thunderbird; my e-mail client of choice is Pegasus. And since increased productivity is my main purpose, I got rid of the Sudoku-game without trying it out. Deleting these apps was “just a snap” – I simply deleted the directories on my USB-flash memory.

The PortApps-menu is beautiful and – some other portable programs I work with like Lifehacker’s Texter and Bram Bos’ “Lunchbox” integrate seamlessly with the menu.