The blog

I want to make things as easy for myself as I pos­si­bly can, all the time. Sim­pli­fy­ing is def­i­nite­ly some­thing that dri­ves me. It is tru­ly won­der­ful to for exam­ple see the com­put­er do some­thing I have pre­vi­ous­ly spent time and ener­gy doing.

The struc­tur­al tools I have been most thrilled about using in the last few weeks are text expan­sion tools. These are lit­tle pro­grams that write out text instead of me doing it.

They are use­ful for instance when I com­pose cer­tain kinds of e‑mails pri­or to and after my assign­ments. I can also use them when I write an e‑mail to some­one ask­ing her to do some­thing which she does from time to time, but which has some unique ele­ment to it every time. Or, they come in handy when for instance the name of a com­pa­ny or client is par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to remem­ber but which I need to type often and tend to misspell.

Writ­ten in no time

When I am writ­ing some­thing I write often and which I would rather not have to retype every time, I now only have to write an abbre­vi­a­tion of three or four char­ac­ters and the pro­gram replaces these with the entire text.

Just great! It is like see­ing work being done with­out hav­ing to exert any effort whatsoever.

If you have not yet expe­ri­enced the ben­e­fit of using a text expan­sion tool, I high­ly rec­om­mend you try it.

Do this

You could do this in sev­er­al ways.

• Either down­load a text expan­sion tool, for exam­ple Tex­tEx­pander or Phrase Express, and eval­u­ate them for yourself.
  
  Down­load­ing it will make the text expan­sion tool avail­able in all oth­er pro­grams you use, regard­less if you are com­pos­ing an e‑mail or writ­ing a document.


• Or, if you have an IT-depart­ment which is not thrilled about you find­ing things on the inter­net and then installing them by your­self on your com­put­er, you can at least fill out the auto­cor­rec­tion-fea­ture in Word or Pages with the phras­es you no longer want to re-type and cre­ate short­cuts or abbre­vi­a­tions for these.
  
  Sure, you will not have access to the func­tion in all your pro­grams, but it will at least be a step clos­er to hav­ing a smoother workday.

Less rep­e­ti­tion gives you more space to be creative

If you use a text expan­sion tool or ‑pro­gram even the small­est things you write on a reg­u­lar basis will be writ­ten faster and eas­i­er. The small things we need to get done on any giv­en day will get done eas­i­er, and you will hence have more ener­gy for the tasks which are tru­ly unique and require your full atten­tion and concentration.

More work gets done but you are also left with more time for what tru­ly mat­ters. It’s a win-win.

What is your trick?

Have you used a text expan­sion tool or ‑pro­gram? Tell me!