Productivity secrets

New York Times technology columnist David Pogue shared some of his productivity tips in the article Pogue’s Productivity Secrets Revealed.

The article contains many great tips, like
- "outsource" administrative work
- use dictation software
- use typing-expansion software
- find everything fast
- use macro software

This reminded me of my "killer-combination":
PpcSoft iKnow and AutoHotkey

PpcSoft iKnow is used for storing "everything" and lets you find anything almost instantly (David Pogue uses iData3 for Mac OS X).

AutoHotkey is a brilliant typing-expansion and macro software that works great with PpcSoft iKnow. AutoHotkey is a free, open-source utility for Windows, and it is very powerful.

Using AutoHotkey will save you a lot of typing in any text editor, and together with PpcSoft iKnow you have a great productivity combination.

To get started, you should download a script that uses hotstrings (text replacement) to correct about 4700 common English misspellings on-the-fly. The script will also give you a Win+H hotkey to quickly add more misspellings and text replacements.

1. Download AutoHotkey
2. Download the script (more information about the script)
3. Install AutoHotkey by double-clicking the exe file
4. Run the script (AutoCorrect.ahk) by double-clicking it

To verify that the script is active, try writing
"knwo" in a text-editor and it should automatically be converted to "know".

To create a new hotstring, try to write "information overload", select the two words, and press Win+H.

You should now get a dialog that shows: (format "::short::long")
::information overload::information overload

If you edit this to
::io::information overload

you only have to write "io" every time you want to write information overload. All changes are saved in the AutoCorrect.ahk file, and you may edit this file manually to change anything.

AutoHotkey is available from the Windows tray, where you can right-click it and edit/reload the script.

The hotstrings are converted when you press space or any other ending character (more information), and works in any text editor (Word, PpcSoft iKnow, e-mail etc).

AutoHotkey is extremely powerful, and you can do a lot of different things with it, but this should get you started. Start entering shortcuts for your most common words/phrases, and you'll soon save a lot of time when typing.