My Tablet and Me: A Productivity Love Story

Coffee. Check.

Chromebook I geeked out about last weekend. Still awesome and ever-increasing in general awesomeness...exponentially.

New Google Nexus tablet? Composed the first part of today's blog post with it.

I appear to be making the gadget rounds lately. And I kinda sound like I'm being paid to advertise Google products--which I would absolutely accept money to do.

I have no words for the beauty of using my new tablet. They should have sent a poet.

Admittedly not ideal for blog writing--or writing of any kind. But it's an excellent alternative, should the need arise. And I found some fantastic productivity tools.

Especially helpfully are the write-to-text and speech-to-text applications:

This short paragraph is via the write-to-text feature. I actually wrote on the tablet with a stylus and the app converted my handwritten words to typed text...in real time. Amazing.

For this paragraph, I talked to my tablet. Not conversationally or anything, and the tablet didn't talk back or engage in a conversation or anything like that. Yet. What the Google Voice typing feature did do is convert my spoken words to typed text, again in real time. So science fiction-y.

From this point on, I reverted back to my Chromebook--because typing with a real keyboard is better. But those two features will save my tons of time at work. Instead of wasting paper and transcribing hand-written notes, which I do a lot of, I can just write on my tablet, and 90% of that part of my job will be done for me. I will just have to do some minimal revising and editing.

This weekend, I'm going to using the talk-to-text feature to catch up on prior notes I. Going forward, I'm anticipating I won't even fall behind. There may be a bit of a learning curve, but the extra time will be worth it. Note-taking and re-typing is a huge time suck. By virtually eliminating that time suck, I'll be less stressed and a million times more productive. 

Props to Google Drive and the syncing capabilities of Google products in general. Apple is so over-rated. Not to mention overpriced. 

Project productivity continues....

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I have tons of other stuff I need to do this weekend. Trying to convince myself I'm not overwhelmed. That's easy to do when I'm drinking coffee and writing. 

Several new jobs to apply to. Time sensitive! But  they are pretty similar to each other and prior jobs I've already applied to (and have gotten interviews for) in the past, so I won't have to spend too much time revising vitas and cover letters. 

As usual, I have to get the house in order and gear up for another week of toddler destruction. I'm also implementing some major overhauls. My boys are in a new place developmentally, so I need to make some changes to reflect this new reality. I'm actually excited about it. And especially excited for how excited they will be when they see it.