Before introducing Quickfox notes, let me spend a second on my daily workflow in broad terms. I usually have Firefox running 8+ hours a day. Either browsing the web, doing web development or just by habit. I work on several machines – A few Linux laptops and an iMac at home. As I use several machines, I’ve been a huge fan of bookmark synchronization. I tried Mozilla Weave for a while, but their lack of PowerPC support (on an other Mac), eventually made me switch to FoxMarks – which is now called Xmarks. Xmarks has worked flawless since day one, and it’s one of the very first plugins I always install along with firefox on any machine I use.

Quickfox Notes is a way to store notes in the Bookmark-engine in firefox. It sounds odd, but it works really well. There aren’t any fancy formatting options – think notepad – but to keep a basic todo-list, code samples and other short texts, it works quite well. The killer feature of Quickfox is the combination with roaming (or syncing) bookmarks – If Quickfox Notes is installed along with Xmarks (, Weave or any other bookmark syncing dervice), it provides you with note-syncing too.

As a developer – or “software product manager” – it must be an interesting challenge to keep up with the users and the market to capture the features and changes to a product, which will make it better from release to release.

There are probably many ways to try to keep up – by doing research and by listening to user feedback seems to be two obvious choices, but I’m sure, there are many others. Some, I’m sure is also just a gut feeling of what might be cool new features. If you’re good – and now the users, the market and the competitors, you’re making steady progress.

Yet sometimes you miss. The slow adoption rate of Microsoft Vista might be a sign of a very public miss.

It doesn’t have to be a big miss, to chase a user away.

This weekend it happened to one of my favorite iPod Touch games – Tap Defense was upgraded to version 2.0 – and while most of the updates probably are great, there’s one little detail, which probably ensured I’ll rarely play it again (unless I find a way to fix it).

I used to play Tap Defense a lot while listening to Audiobooks and Podcasts. The new version has been updated with sound effects and music – and now the podcast or audiobook goes away (pauses) when the game is launched.

I’m sure TapJoy, developers of the Tap Defense game, are proud of their new sounds, but if I need to choose between the game and my listening to podcasts, the game looses. Please bring the ability to keep listening to what every the iPod plays, back in version 2.1.

The goal

Like a few of my other habits this one is an adoption of the Getting Things Done. It’s probably not following the recipe from the official GTD methodology, but it works for me. It’s a way to try to gain some control of the daily life and have a little stress-less workday.

Processing the past week

First step: Open my calendar with the past week, and go over every item in it. Is there anything, which needs a follow up? Has the actions derived from the items occurred and so on.

While you should be able to keep track of next actions and other debris from a busy week, I often find it not to be so. Reprocessing the items from the past week allows me to catch several actions that needed more processing and planning.

Processing the todo list

Step Two: While my primary inbox rarely have more than a few messages in it, it doesn’t mean everything has been handled to perfect satisfaction. Actions needing work go to a todo folder, and all is processed no later than at the weekly review.

If I have spare time during the week, items in the todo folder, is processed when the free time occurs.

Planning the coming week

Next step in the review process is looking ahead, and the first step here is to sync my calendars. I work with two separate systems – the office calendar (in Outlook) and the other calendar (in iCal). “The other” is the main calendar, as it is the one who’s able to sync between machines, be web-accessible and syncs to my cell. So far I have not been able to get the two calendars to sync without major pains, but manual actually works fine, since I’m going through every item anyway.

While processing the items, I usually try to setup meetings or book time in the calendar to handle/process items, which are on the agenda for the coming week.

Setting it up

Getting the system up and running is fairly easy in theory. Find a spot in the calendar near the end of the week and book a reoccurring meeting with yourself. Attend the meeting and do the steps above.

In theory it’s somewhat harder (as others have discovered). While my primary “weekly review” meeting is late Friday afternoon, it’s more often Sunday afternoon that becomes the usual time to do a review. Mainly because it requires uninterrupted time to get through the items, and that can be a scarce resource in an open office environment.

Most people doesn’t need to check mail more than once an hour – and often far less.

If you’re using Instant Messaging (IM), use the status-settings to indicate the state you’re in. ”Available” means it’s okay to disturb you, ”Occupied” that there should be a good reason to disturb you and ”Do Not Disturb” actually means you’re offline.

If you co-works and friends respect the status settings in your IM-client great – if not try using it as a mail client – leave it on only when it’s okay to be disturbed.

With a constant flow of interruptions, even simple tasks takes much longer than they should. Instead of accepting these interruptions, think about how you want to use them, instead of being their slave.

Secondly it’s a damn easy way to notice if you do the right tasks. Are there any time robbing tasks eating away and if so can you get rid of them?

Finally every time you strike a done item from the list, you get a sense of accomplishment, and isn’t the felling of getting thinks done nice?

As a general rule expect at least two days notice before any meeting with more than 3 participants. Meetings arranged with a tighter deadline (unless some current event is the cause) are too often a joint coffee break than a meeting.

Always ask for an agenda no later than the day before the meeting. Without agendas meetings rarely have a point. As a participant you have a reasonable expectation to have an agenda before the meeting, so you know what decisions are supposed to be made.

Make sure that all materials expected to be discussed at the meeting is available in reasonable time before the meeting. Joint reading sessions aren’t efficient and when “reading” at a meeting, most people tend to skim rather than actually read the contents.

If in doubt ask why you where invited to a meeting. What are you stake in the decisions – do you even have one? While it may be reasonable to gather all participants in a project during kick-off and wrap-up, you probably don’t need every one at every meeting throughout the project.

Keep your attention in the meeting. Turn off your mobile phone and unplug the network connection(s) at the meeting. Network usage is only acceptable, if the meeting requires connection. If half your meeting participants have time to check email, text messages and communicate to others outside the meeting, you’re probably wasting each other’s time and should end the meeting.

This is really a simple trick, but it does do some magic to my day. I use the time to get into ”work mode”, to go over the agenda for the day, checkup on any events which may have happened since yesterday and prepare for any activities throughout the day.

Using a little time every morning works great of me, and by running through the entire agenda for the day, is doesn’t seem to be stressed or annoyed if a meeting is switched to another time or delays happens between meetings – I rarely need the “in between meetings” time to prepare for the next items on the daily agenda.

It seems with the new powers of scheduling available, meeting arranges have the odd impression that any time unallocated in your calendar is fair game. I suppose you could reject meetings at inconvenient times, but often it just starts a blame game and frankly too few people seem to forget that much of the actual work needing to be done, doesn’t happen at meetings but when you work with the tools of your trade.

One way of making room in a calendar, which much too often seems to be hit with a shotgun – bundles of meetings scattered all across the week with only limited time between them, the weapon needed to make time to work in the calendar is meetings.

Plan a meeting in your calendar. Make it a good long one – consider making it “private”, “confidential” or likewise if you must – but make sure that all others trying to schedule meetings with you see a solid block of busy time at the time you place the meeting.

Don’t invite anyone to the meeting, but use that solid timeslot to get some actual work done. If the technique works, repeat it every week. Meeting planners seem largely to respect “busy” marks in a calendar, and will only as for a meeting in the busy zone, if it really is important.

I suppose that a key to making the technique work is to keep the busy zones at a suitable level. You should – within reason – be available to attend the needed meetings, but you should also be able to have solid blocks of work-time unspoiled by meetings and other interruptions.

By using the number keys (zero to five) in Thunderbird (by preferred mailreader) I can easily assign different colors to the mails in the inbox. I’ve made a little system of my own where one color means urgent, another “less important todos” and so on.

Using the colors systematically makes it easier for me to find the mail I may be looking for, since I only need to focus on the mails in the correct color when browsing down the list.

My mailbox is IMAP-based and through the magic of IMAP, the color codes even carries themselves between the different machines I use (and works within Apple’s Mail.app too).

It may not revolutionize your life, but it sure helps me just a little bit – each and every day.