Productivity: Completing Large Projects with “Next Actions” (Part 2)

In the previous post, we introduced the time management principle of using Next Actions to tackle large, overwhelming projects. The idea is to complete one small action at a time and to always decide the Next Action before moving on to other tasks. Let's look at another example of this idea.

Productivity: Completing Large Projects with “Next Actions” (Part 1)

Do you have a large project that you're having trouble getting started or moving forward with?

A common time management situation is to be faced with an overwhelming project that's not time-constrained or high-priority, but that's important to do eventually to prevent a crisis. Perhaps it's something that is slowly taking up more and more physical space, or something that is becoming obsolete, or something that requires increasing time and/or money unless you automate or eliminate it. The project is important, but not urgent.

PK Tip: Exporting for Use in Word Processors

A good way to move information from Personal Knowbase to MS Word (and other word processors) is to export from PK to RTF format, then open the RTF format file(s) in Word. RTF is a Rich Text Format file format that most word processors can read directly.

5 More Ways PK Helps for the Holidays

Preparing for the holidays involves dozens of details. Recovering from the holidays involves dozens more. Personal Knowbase can help you manage your information to keep your plans running smoothly from year to year to year.

Previously, we offered five ways that Personal Knowbase can help you during the holidays. Here are five more ideas:

Productivity Tips: 5 Tips for Avoiding a Reading Backlog

Many people let their reading material build up into a backlog. You may collect piles of mail and other papers or folders full of website bookmarks. Over time, it feels like your reading backlog is a black hole that things never come out of.

Here are 5 tips to help you avoid a reading backlog or take control of one you already have, whether online or offline:

PK Tip: Locating Related Keywords with Related Mode

When you select a keyword in Personal Knowbase's Index Window, you may get a long list of articles associated with that keyword. To shrink your Titles list, it's useful to know which keywords to select to make the list more manageable.

You can reduce the Index column from listing all keywords in your data file to only listing the keywords that are related to your current articles list. This shows you the keywords related to the keyword(s) that you've already selected by being shared by at least one article. This makes it easy to see which keywords will help further pare down your Titles list.

Computer Basics: Tips for Preparing to Upgrade Your Computer

When it's time to upgrade your PC, don't get caught unprepared. Whether your old computer died and you need to start over, or if you just want to update your hardware or OS (operating system) version, setting up a new computer can be painful.

These tips will help you set up your new machine while saving as much information as possible from your old setup. If possible, do these tasks before losing access to your old computer.

PK Tip: Dragging Keywords to Locate Related Articles

In Personal Knowbase, the usual way to locate an article related to a topic of interest is to "select" a keyword for that topic. For example, to see all your articles related to fish, you move the keyword fish from the Index column to the Selected column in the Index Window.

But if you already located an article on your topic, you can quickly locate related articles by dragging keywords from the article instead of from the full keyword Index. This is especially useful as your keyword Index list grows larger and more difficult to browse.

Productivity Tips: 5 Office Organizing Tips

We may spend most of our time in a virtual workspace online, but we still need a physical workspace to use to access the virtual. We have mail and papers and other office supplies to organize.

Here are 5 tips for making your work area more functional, especially if you don't have much extra room:

PK Tip: Removing Hypertext Links

In Personal Knowbase, you may end up with unwanted hypertext links in your article text. For example, if you copy text from a web page in a browser, PK will preserve any hypertext links on the web page when you paste it into an article. Similarly, if you import to an article from an html file with links, PK will preserve the links from the file. Or perhaps you have some old links that you simply don't want anymore.