Managing Your Professional Life with a Personal Digital Assistant: A Look at Some Productivity Applications. Part I.

By Laura Larsson, NLM Informatics Fellow-OHSU and Clinical Faculty Health Services-University of Washington (larsson@u.washington.edu)

An increasing number of librarians are purchasing handheld computers. Many of them are finding that they are useful for finding, organizing and coping with too much information  - and for figuring out how to prioritize the vast amounts of work they have to do. In this first article, we will begin to discuss how your Palm device can be used to help you function more effectively, be more productive, and move beyond the applications that come with your PDA. We will discuss only Palm OS (Operating System) applications since this OS, to date, has grabbed the lion's share of the market and because that's the OS that I'm most familiar with. Various estimates of the Palm OS range from 80 to 85 percent of the handheld market so, despite Palm's current economic problems, I think we can count on these devices being around for some time.  But, can a Palm device really make that much of a difference in your life? You bet it can! I've been convinced for about three years. This document will show you how and may even help convince you to buy one if you haven't already done so. We'll move through a typical day in the life of a practicing professional outlining where your Palm device can make a difference in your personal and professional life. You might want to download and test out the programs. Just in case you do the hypertext link for the demo (or full, unrestricted, version) is included.   First Thing in the Morning: Waking Up After a Good Night's Sleep Many Palm devices have a wonderfully loud alarm that you can set to wake you up in the morning. The alarm is guaranteed to wake you up unless you're one of those people who has to set three alarms, one of which operates from across the room.  Set your morning alarm using either the alarm feature built into your Date Book or by downloading and installing BigClock. With four different alarms, one is sure to get you going. Another useful reminder/alarm tool is BugMe. Both will allow you to use their alarms or write your own. BugMe is also worth looking at for the unlimited trial period and for the fact that you can handwrite reminders to yourself. While these programs don't directly help with your over work and over-informed part of your life, they at least get you out of bed and going so that you can get started on your piles.   Check Your Schedule for the Day The built-in application called the Date Book enables you to see what's ahead of you today. You can use Date Book to manage your daily schedule, view appointments on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and even decide whether or not to grab an extra hour of sleep if your first appointment isn't until 11:30. For those who need a more powerful application, I recommend that you purchase either DateBk4 or Action Names. There are folks who swear by each one of these tools and will defend their purchase with vigor. Both Action Names and DateBK4 build on the existing applications so that you do not have to enter information twice. Both essentially add on extra features to the existing Palm databases. Both also let you select icons to indicate activities. I prefer DateBk4 because of all the features, and because it's a very straightforward kind of datebook. With it you get a quarterly view and a yearly view which can be customized to view vacations, conferences, birthdays, holidays and more. Assign categories to each of your appointments - very useful for pulling together elements for your annual review. I like the split screen which allows me to view my todos and my calendar (and memos if I want) at once. If you own a color PDA, you can change the settings so that each of your categories are a different color. Then when you open up weekly view you can see at a glance what types of meetings you have to attend and for how long. Warning: it is a pretty large program and will eat up nearly .5MB of RAM. Action Names is more in tune with those who are particularly interested in time management. Action Names has quite nicely integrated the calendar, the task list and the address book. The address book is quite powerful and being able to schedule phone calls, meetings, events and tasks from one application is very appealing.   What Do I HAVE to Get Done Today? The Palm comes with a task manager called the ToDo List. With the ToDo List you can set priorities (1-5), categorize each priority into a subject so that you can view All or just the specified category, set a due date and indicate whether or not anyone peeking at your ToDo list can see it (i.e., privacy is ensured if you need it). You can also add long notes to each task. In this application this is one of my favorite features. By tapping on a check box, you can select options such as to show or not show completed items show only due items record completion date show priorities and categories I like the ToDo List's ability to sort tasks in a variety of ways such as by Priority, due date/Due date, priority/Category, Priority/Category, Due Date.  Organizing tasks by category is really important for keeping my life on track. Since I learned about David Allen's method of organizing tasks and paper and read his book, Getting Things Done, I have set the following as my categories for the tasks I need to complete: @anywhere - tasks that I can do at the airport, in my bed late at night, and so on @call/email - tasks that require that I make a phone call or send an email @computer - tasks I can only do while I'm in front of a computer @errands - grocery shopping, clothes and book purchases, in short, any task I need to do somewhere specific such as at Safeway, Trader Joe's or at Borders book store @travel - I do a lot of traveling and always wait till the last moment to get tickets. I'm hoping that getting the information into a travel category will help motivate me to contact my travel agent sooner and sign up for conferences before the early bird special is over @waiting for - this category is really for other people. When someone promises me that they will do something, I note it down in the @waiting for category with the expected date of completion. Diabolical, eh? Business - I collect non-OHSU tasks here. I don't have a business, yet. Next Actions - This section is for the projects I'm working on. What do I need to do next. Allen says that a task list should consist of "next actions". OHSU - tasks I have to do as a result of my NLM Fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University Palm - Well, as many of you know, I'm doing my research project at OHSU on how to convert desktop and Internet content for use on PDAs. This is where I collect next actions dealing with my research project. Personal - This is where I collect all the non-work, non-research, non-teaching tasks Someday/maybe - Someday tasks are dateless. They're for the things I might want to do someday. One of the entries is to develop a quarter long course in public health informatics. It may never get done but that's ok. It's just something to think about doing. Teaching/Presentations - With all the presentations and workshops that I develop and give, this section keeps me more or less on track with this aspect of my life. DateBK4 and ActionNames each work with your list of tasks to enhance this aspect of your life. Another highly recommended tool is ShadowPlan. It is really an outliner, but what an outliner! Create a hierarchical plan for tasks, projects and outlines. In many ways this is a better task organizer than the DateBk4 and ActionNames because of its ability to create hierarchies. To each task you assign completion dates just as you can with the others. Create a database for each project. I liked being able to create checklists and task lists and being able to see how far along I am in a project by viewing the progress bar for each task. A nice application. Get a Grip: Maintain Some Balance in Your Life Scheduling yourself too tightly and taking on too much can result in a lack of balance, a life out of whack, and can eventually lead to professional and personal burnout. Although I personally do not use Life Balance many people do, and swear by it. It turns out to be a very nice personal productivity application that helps you to set priorities and increase personal productivity. It prioritizes complex to-do lists to encourage balance among work, home and leisure activities. It uses a pie chart to show you how close you are to meeting your goals for balance. It comes with four "views":  Outline; To Do List, Places, and Balance.  Places are where you get things done and include can include such places as: office, home, study, grocery store, and so on.   Where are My Sticky Notes? (Remindering Tools) It's handy to have a place where you can scratch handwritten notes, especially if you develop five thumbs as you try to graffiti in important phone numbers or directions. The application I like the best is DiddleBug. This is a yellow-sticky-note program that enables you to create entries in other applications directly from within DiddleBug. Use handwritten notes, include alarms to remind yourself of events.  The "Pick and Flick" feature enables you to enter information into other applications, such as the built-in ToDo, DateBook, and Address apps, or DateBk3 and ActionNames (free). I use it to draw maps, too. TealNotes is another application that you can use to jot down a quick note or number, plus add maps, illustrations, and diagrams right into existing  data. This article has given you some understanding of a few of the productivity tools available from various vendors. Some are freeware but most are $hareware. In subsequent articles, I will cover tracking passwords, how to find and use encyclopedic and factual information, read books, and download news and Websites from the Internet. We will also take a quick look at applications that might have been designed specifically for librarians, and those that have been created for medical and public health professionals.  (Just as an aside, most of the applications that you'd want to download can be acquired from PalmGear.com. You would not believe the amount of money I've spent on software at that online store. And no, I have no financial or other interest in this DotCom).

Palm Applications for Biostatisticians and Epidemiologists  Palm Stat (Luis Villarroel) $15.00 / 97KB RAM statistical software (among the first) use to  calculate chi-square tests in 2x2 contingency tables calculate relative risk run diagnostic tests calculate probabilities (normal, chi-square, Student, Fisher) estimate sample sizes compare means and proportions (t and normal tests) do ANOVA (p values included)  works like StatCalc in CDC's EpiInfo software high quality application MedMath  $free / RAM N/A Calculate medical formulae, [Ed note: Updated link 3/17/04] including Body Mass Index  MedMath is a freeware medical calculator STAT Cardiac Risk  $free / RAM N/A Calculates 10 year risk of angina or MI with comparison to average and ideal  uses the 1998 Framingham Heart Study Prediction Scores