Today we are opening a new section in which we will talk about the most popular and accessible services, libraries and utilities for students, scientists and professionals.
In the first issue, we will talk about the basic approaches that will help you work more efficiently, and the corresponding SaaS services. Also, we will share tools for data visualization.
Chris Liverani /
The Pomodoro Method. This is a time management technique. It is designed to make your activity more productive and more enjoyable in terms of labor costs. In the late eighties it was formulated by Francesco Cirillo. And for several decades now, he has been advising companies and helping people work more efficiently. The essence of the technique is as follows. To solve a particular task from your to-do list, fixed time periods are given, followed by short breaks. For example, 25 minutes for work and 5 minutes for rest. And so several times or “pomodoros” until the task is completed (it is important not to forget to take a longer break of 15-30 minutes after four such cycles in a row.
This approach allows you to achieve maximum concentration and not forget about the much-needed breaks for our body. Of course, a huge number of applications have been developed for such a simple way of organizing time. We have selected some interesting options:
- Pomodoro Timer () is a timer without unnecessary features and ads.
- Clockwork Tomato () is a more "heavyweight" option with a customizable interface, the ability to analyze the progress of work and synchronize task lists with services like Dropbox (partially paid).
- Productivity Challenge Timer () is a harsh application that will help you compete in productivity with yourself (partially paid).
- Pomotodo () - there is a to-do list and a tomato timer implemented here. Another thing is data synchronization from different devices (Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, there is an extension in Chrome). Partially paid.
GTD. This is the approach suggested by David Allen. His 2001 book of the same name was named "Best Business Book of the Decade" by Time, as well as positive reviews from multiple publications and tens of thousands of readers. The main idea is to transfer all planned tasks to “external media” in order to free yourself from the need to remember everything. Task lists should be divided into groups: by place of implementation - home / office; by urgency - now / in a week; and by projects. For a quick study of GTD, there is .
Like the Pomodoro method, the default GTD technique does not require any specific tools. Moreover, not all application developers are willing to pay for the right to associate their product with this technique. Therefore, it makes sense here to focus on those to-do-managers that seem to you personally the most convenient and suitable for solving problems. Here are some of the more popular apps: , и (each of them offers a free version and paid use of additional features).
Mind mapping. In one form or another, there is evidence of the use of the graphical method of categorizing information back in . Modern approaches to the construction of "mental maps" were outlined in the late 50s and early 60s of the last century. Mining mapping programs are good for quickly describing ideas and simple concepts. Here are a couple of examples:
- — a service for creating mental maps in the cloud (different templates are available to the user, for example, graphs or trees, as well as different shapes and colors of elements, maps save as images).
- — SaaS for teamwork with mind maps. Allows you to add images, videos and text documents to maps. In the free version, you can save maps up to 100 KB (for more “heavy” ones there is integration with Google Drive) and only for six months.
- - an example of a solution on GoJS, a JavaScript library for creating graphs and charts. Implementation example .
Frankie Chamaki /
Data visualization. We continue the topic and move from services for visualizing ideas and concepts towards more complex tasks: building diagrams, function graphs, and others. Here are some examples of tools that might be useful:
- - tools for building visualizations in an interactive format. Allows you to build graphs, trees, charts and graphs with animation elements. Samples available . The author of the project, a former Uber engineer and employee of Mapbox (a project with 500 million users), maintains a detailed for this tool.
- - an open tool for working with mathematical functions and performing symbolic calculations in the browser (still available ).
- — JavaScript library for visualizing data using object in the format of HTML tables, interactive SVG charts and others. On GitHub you will find the basic и to master the basic and advanced features of the library.
- - supports computer layout system . Cross platform application allows you to build and edit TeX diagrams using PGF and TikZ macro packages. ready-made charts and graphs and the project.
- - helps to build . BoxPlotR runs from the virtual machine, in the browser and from the R console. the project.
PS For the first release of our toolbox, we decided to start with just enough basic tools to allow anyone who wants to dive into the theme without too much difficulty. In the next issues we will consider other topics: we will talk about working with data banks, text editors and tools for working with sources.
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Source: habr.com