My two cents to help you finish faster and age slower

1. THE DESIGNER’S
TOOLCHEST
Leave Nothing on the Table

2. CONTENTS
 Summary
 Productivity
 Presentation
 Health

3. SUMMARY
 Suggestions for tools to use and habits to adopt to
1) Boost productivity
2) Boost marketability
3) Slow the ageing process by reducing eye-strain, etc..

4. PRODUCTIVITY : PERL
 Once you have a decent grasp of perl, you will pity other designers
when you see the way they deal with text
 Know your data, so you find the easiest way; sometimes, elegance
is evil
 Being good with modules and CPAN makes you a guru – which
I’m not 

5. PRODUCTIVITY : PERL/TK
 If you do something frequently and depend on the command line,
consider GUI’ing it. Nothing wrong with making your job easier and
more enjoyable

6. PRODUCTIVITY :
AUTOHOTKEY
 It is sad that the Linux world has no equivalent
 At the very least, you must install the KDE-style drag and resize
script to make window manipulation a breeze
 Setting up application-specific keyboard-shortcuts is also a breeze
 Highly recommend #s for the Sniping tool and #p for mspaint
(Windows 7)

7. PRODUCTIVITY : CADENCE
 The Microsoft Office of the industry 
 Embrace it
 Certainly, the tool can be improved considerably, but, there is a lot
you can do in with bindkeys and macros to make your job easier and
more fun – which almost no one does
 Be the bindkey-king of your office

8. PRODUCTIVITY : EXCEL
 An Excel file is really a dashboard – giving you access to your most
useful info
 At the very least, keep sheets for checklists, mistakes, simulations
you’re
running, accomplishments, ideas, opportunities, backlog, documents

9. PRODUCTIVITY :
DOCUMENTATION
 Searchable text makes it easy for you to build your own personal
search engine
 Maintain a diary and a list of files
 Simple perl-script lets you search all your files in an instant
 Record what you did to get around compile errors, non-
convergence issues, etc and you’ll be getting stuff done in half the
time it takes everyone else

10. PRODUCTIVITY : MINDSET
 Think innovation, victory, initiative – do worthwhile things
without being told to; be proactive; think user-experience
 Tenacity – be a dog with a bone – persevere till you solve your
problem, then share your solution
 Geniuses think on paper – if you write the problem or governing
equation down, you might spot an alternate approach; Questions are
king

11. PRODUCTIVITY : ALT-ESC
 The one empowering tool Bill gave us (till Authotkey came along)
 The third dimension in productivity
 It’s amazing how many people (including my IT guy) don’t know
about this trick in Windows (you can set your KDE shortcut to do
the same in Linux). How many times have you seen poor people click
on the title bar and move the window to see what’s beneath it? All you
have to do is hit ALT-ESC; Save your time, energy, money, hair, eyes..

12. PRODUCTIVITY : FILES
 Keep no important data on your laptop
 All important data resides only on the server – preferably on unix
 Use samba server to access files from your laptop
 VNC and Exceed are also your friends

13. PRODUCTIVITY :
DEBUGGING
 Frame the problem clearly and organize your data well early – this
will let you work smart instead of hard. One brainstorming session
can save you weeks..
 Have a best friend in the office – or many
 A white-board and a second head are usually all you need to come
up with the solution yourself. Sometimes, you just need one other
person standing there..

14. MARKETABILITY : PEOPLE
SKILLS
 Phew! 
 Politics is a fact of life. Embrace it in the right way, not the evil
way
 Be upbeat; a bad mood can get your fired
 Be an elevator person; collect good, clean jokes
 Be a helper, a go-to person

15. MARKETABIITY :
HTML/OFFICE
 Most of the things you’ll want to do to make yourself look better
only take a few minutes
 Most of the answers are online anyway

16. HEALTH : CTRL + SCROLL
 Another trick almost no one knows about
 Increase the font at the speed of thought by holding down the CTRL-
key and spinning the scroll-wheel of the mouse.
 If you haven’t done so already, go full-screen with the window your
viewing
 If you need to look at something else also, move it to the second
screen
 Yes, please use a dual-screen system  Save your eyes and your hair

17. LIVE LONG AND
PROSPER 