I had something of a revelation over the course of the past few days: I am NOT taking full advantage of the tools I am using to make my life easier. Somehow, I have gotten stuck at a somewhat superficial level of use: I use the tools but they don’t work for me.

My main teacher was Tim Owens. I approached him with a question about the CSS for this blog. By the end of solving that problem I had learned that I no longer had to ctrl-click to get the menu, that I could use Chrome’s Developer view to not only view but link to the problematic code, and that it was worth using the CSS file to customize my blog rather than editing the existing file. Oh, he also turned me on to 1Password.  I walked wondering what else I was missing.

Then, I checked out the posts from today’s Reddit AMA with three MIT computer scientists. There’s a lot there–for instance, they recommend Scratch as a great starting programming language–but so far, I’ve only gotten through the answers to the question about the tools they use to organize their lives. I have a little bit of a fascination with how people work.

Evernote was by far the most popular tool and I feel like I know a fair amount about using it. But I realized that knowing and doing are two different things. I am not afraid to say that I still use a pencil/paper to do list but I think it’s time to leverage Evernote to become more effective in the planning area.

Then, I saw the post on the AMA about getting a text message with reminders from Google. I don’t use Google tasks but I think this feature might convince me to start. I have been learning more about the joys of texting. I have tried to be less obsessive about checking my email, particularly on the weekend, so getting a text message to remind me to water the plants that I’ve brought in for the winter would be very helpful.

As for email, I am definitely a bit obsessive, and I sense the need to get it under control in terms of the role it plays in my daily life.  And while I don’t think it causes me stress, it does interrupt my flow and, maybe more importantly, it enables others to use email as an “emergency” communication tool. Because folks know I am almost always in email, they send emails when they really should call or text. My worry that I’m going to miss one of those emergency emails makes me even more obsessive.

I tweeted today that my first 2015 resolution was to check email three times a day. But I may start right now and then have a head start on the new year.

My other resolution is to schedule time each week to explore the tools I’m using and learn more about how to use them to support my productivity.