From Cluttered to Clear

Every once in a while my desk begins to devolve into a confusing mass of papers, manuals, notebooks and water bottles. It doesn't happen often, mind you. I honestly prefer an organized and clear desk. I concentrate so much better in that environment. Occasionally, though, my organizational system slips a little, and that's all it takes. The messy state lasts no more than a few days before I get twitchy and have to straighten everything out again. The funny thing is, that small act (which rarely takes more than an hour) so completely uplifts me, that I feel like I could take on three more projects right then and there.

In a way, I suppose, that's what I do for my clients, and probably why I enjoy doing what I do so much. That process of clearing away the clutter and bringing clarity to what otherwise might be a confusing situation invigorates and excites all involved.

One of my clients, John "Jake" Jaksetic asked me to help him set up his online high school wrestling stats site, jakeswrestling.com. Before we started working together, he maintained the site himself using PDF files of the stats. It worked, but the download times were pretty horrendous, and there was no way to find the specific information you wanted, short of a manual search. We worked together to design a simple search interface which allowed the user to look at specific parts of the database. Even better, Jake could now maintain the stats more easily and keep everything up to date. Apparently, this made a number of wrestling fans in northwest Ohio pretty happy, too. Confusion, bad. Clarity, good.

My wife is a wonder at organization. She has helped to institute a whole system of standard operating procedures for the company at which she works, Gene Express, Inc. When she was working in the manufacturing branch of the operation, she knew down to the milliliter exactly how much of any given substance she had in the freezer. Her ability to call up this information at a moments notice continually amazed those around her.

Following her example, I've begun to incorporate more organizational tools into my company, Cyber Data Solutions, too. Spreadsheets programs, like OpenOffice.org or Excel, are an amazingly useful resource for this. Using OpenOffice Calc, I've been able to set up networking tickler systems (so I always know whom and when I am supposed to call), business activity tracking (how many proposals did I send out this week?), and even a proposal tracking system, so I can find out my metrics on how long it takes, from the date of a submitted proposal until the date that I receive the go-ahead on a project. As my business coach, Keith Hafner, always says, in order to be a success, you have to know your numbers.

So, what sort of tools have you found that help you stay organized?

Free Stuff, Revisited

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the various pieces of free software that you can get out on the Web. I included a variety of titles with which I have personal experience.

Since that time, in the course of my usual Web surfing, I've come upon a great site who's owner keeps track of and reviews a ton of free and for-pay software, websites, support options, you name it. He maintains a variety of "Best" lists which he updates periodically. He also sends out a monthly newsletter with his most recent discoveries. The site is called Gizmo Richards' Tech Support Alert and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to make their computer work just a little (or a lot!) more like they want it to.

Through the resources on Gizmo's site I was able to locate the software package called "Hamachi", a third-party-mediated virtual private network (VPN) system for Windows and Linux. I had been wanting to set up a VPN for quite some time, but the difficulty of doing so always put me off. Every time I started looking at it, I would quickly become lost in the esoterica of the networking world. For those who've never considered doing something like this (or who said VPN? Huh?), the benefits of having this available to me would be that when I'm away from the home office, I could still connect with my desktop machine and retrieve information from there.

Hamachi cleared up the confusion. This software is as easy to install as any other piece of software -- just click and go! The help doesn't stop with the installation. The first time you start up the package, it takes you through a tutorial which should be sufficient to get this working for anyone. Now that I have this installed and working on my various computers, I can easily connect to my home computer even though it is sitting on my desk practically on the other side of the country. Now I am a truly mobile worker. I no longer have to make sure that I copy all of the necessary files to my laptop before I walk out of the house. Check it out if you ever have a need to connect back home when you are out on the road.

That's about all for tonight. Once again, I'd love to hear about any great free software you might find out on the Internet. Drop me a line to let me know.