Must Have Tools and Tips

Today I want to share some of the best decisions I have made, and the best software I have found to boost my productivity in everyday tasks. I use Windows.

1. Windows taskbar should be placed on the left. You will instantly get more working space for any software. Just try it, you will definitely like it.

The same should be done for layers panel in Photoshop, if you use it.

2. Everything. I can’t imagine my life without this amazing tool. Find any file and folder on your system within milliseconds. I needed this tool more than I knew when I had to use Ubuntu.

3. TouchCursor. Another gem in my collection. It allows you to add many frequent actions, such as keyboard shortcuts, without the need to use function keys — which I found less convenient. I no longer need to use the arrows function on the numeric keypad, as I have the same arrows with “Space + J”, “Space + K” etc. It is so much more productive to go to the start of the line, end of the line, select a word, select everything from current position to the end of paragraph etc., without using the numeric keypad. Surprisingly, it works perfectly with virtualizing software, for example, with VMWare Player, so you can use the same shortcuts for any guest operating system. Highly recommended.

4. EmEditor. This is a fast text editor. When I say fast, I mean very fast. Do you think SublimeText is fast? If you do, I’m sure you haven’t tried EmEditor. Try to open and scroll any large text file in EmEditor and compare performance with any other editor. (Okay, perhaps I should also mention Delimit, which is great too). Have you ever wanted to open a 10 Gb .csv file fast? Try EmEditor. All files are opened instantly.