Do you ever feel like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, shouting, “I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!” as you struggle to meet deadlines? Sometimes it can be hard to focus when you’re working on multiple projects—or when you’re actually a rabbit in a tuxedo jacket. Our developers and designers here at Trivantis are pros at getting stuff done (just take a look at our service pack and updates page), so I asked them to share their secrets.
Turns out, our Trivantis pros have too many productivity secrets to fit into one blog post, so today is just Part 1: General Work Productivity. Later, I’ll be revealing all their best Lectora® shortcuts and productivity secrets!
The Trusted Trio
“Use the ‘Trusted Trio’ three-folder system to manage the constant influx of email. All of my email is either Archived or moved to a Follow Up or Hold folder (or inbox using labels if you're using Gmail).”
-Laura Silver, Director of Product Management
Check out the details of this life-saving system on Lifehacker. And please excuse me while I go reorganize my inbox. I’d never heard of this until Laura told me about it, and I’m excited to try it out. Tweet at us @Lectora or comment on this blog if you try out the Trusted Trio system.
Ignore Everyone
“As ironic as this may be, my best productivity secret is to take a day off from emails and phone calls. When I have serious work, it requires serious concentration. I turn off the phone and don't open my email. You would be amazed what can get done with singular focus.”
-John Blackmon, Chief Technology Officer
Okay, John didn’t actually say to ignore everyone, but he did ignore my email all day. I’m going to interpret that to mean the next update to Lectora will be extra amazing.
“Title to Title Copy”“Not everyone knows you can bring up two different titles in Lectora Online! This is a great way to be able to get existing course content and bring it into a course you are developing. From the dashboard open the second title, copy something, and you will be able to paste it into the other title you are working on.”
-Joe Wieloch, Director of Development – Lectora Online
Tricky, tricky, right? If you have a main intro section that needs to be in every course, this is a great way to avoid re-creating it every time!
One and Done
“If you use Photoshop to create graphics for your Lectora titles, my tip is to cram as much of the title graphics as you can stand into a single Photoshop file with the layers organized into clearly-named groups and subgroups, much like the Title Explorer in Lectora. I used to create one Photoshop file per page of my title, but found that the ‘cram’ method saves me a lot of time in the end, even though opening and saving the files is slower. Sub-tip: If it's an option for you, get the fastest machine you can and max out the RAM!”
-Wendy Miller, Lead Content Developer
I foresee a lot of purchasing departments getting computer upgrade requests in the near future...
Work from Home
Daryl tried to get away with just sending the copy and paste shortcuts (Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V) as his productivity tip. I made him give me another, and he very succinctly replied “work from home!”
-Daryl Fleary, Product Manager
This might be my favorite tip, because when I work from home, I have a great free copy editor:
What’s your best productivity secret for focusing in the office? Share yours in the comments and stay tuned for Part 2: Lectora Productivity Tips!
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