Generic Mini 1 x 30 Belt Sander Review

The Generic Mini 1 x 30 belt sander doesn’t exactly have the most inspiring of names but it is nevertheless a great little sander that definitely won’t break the bank but should still be up to most of the jobs you send its way. If you’re looking for something to smooth the odd piece of wood and you don’t need professional-grade performance, then you won’t go far wrong – although there are a few caveats to keep in mind. Read on for our full review.

Product Description: Definitely “Budget”

Generic is of course the name of the manufacturer, it’s just a shame that they chose a brand that literally means ‘in no way special’. And, without meaning to be too harsh here, that is a fair description of this sander. There’s nothing special here except the small size and the price but if that’s what you’re looking for, then it will certainly fulfil those criteria.

At 3,400 RPM and with 6.5 amps of power, this isn’t exactly the top performer but it’s also good enough for the vast majority of tasks you’re going to need to complete. The working surface isn’t huge and there are no fancy features here. There is automatic belt tracking however and a dust collection socket.

Pros and Cons: Cheap and Cheerful

When describing tools for woodwork and DIY, it is very often considered a good thing to be light. A light tool is an easy tool to use and to move around and that means that you’re not going to find yourself putting off using the machine. But in the case of a sander like this, it can also be a bad thing. That’s because a very light product is prone to shaking a little and can be somewhat more likely to fall over. This isn’t a huge problem here, because the sander is designed to be held as you use it. The Generic Mini 1 x 30 belt sander has a soft grip around the back and if you clamp your hands around that, then you won’t need to worry about it toppling over and sanding your arm instead of the wood you intended to sand…

But this also means that you’re not getting the same solid base or the kind of purchase that you would do with another benchtop sander. It means that this is very much inappropriate for heavy duty jobs. That is also true of the belt itself – if you apply too much pressure it is likely to tear. And at 120v, you’re not going to be sanding the toughest materials.

And when we said there were no fancy features… we really meant! There is a distinct lack of bells and whistles here – you don’t even get a carry case included, which is somewhat standard for a device this portable.

We had no problems during our review period but we would also be a little concerned about the plastic chassis itself breaking or snapping during intense use.
None of this is to say that this is a bad product. This is just a product that is very happy to be a cheap and cheerful options for hobbyists not looking for ultimate power in their worktools. If that’s you and if you’re happy with that, then you’ll save money by choosing something this small.

Conclusion: Not the Best but Good for the Money

The point to keep in mind is that there are better budget sanders out there, many of which we have reviewed on this very site. But then it all comes down to what you’re willing to spend. Experienced hobbyists will know by now that you very much always get what you pay for. If you spend a little more, you get a more resilient and sturdy machine that will chomp up wood like it was nothing. If you spend less, then you get something light and flimsy – but still capable of doing the job.

For hobbyists and those who just want a small and portable sander around the house for odd jobs, this is a very wallet-friendly option. If you think you’ll need something more powerful in the future, then spend wisely and invest in a more powerful machine.
BTW, if you are into building models…what a about getting a miniature table saw?

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/generic-mini-1-x-30-belt-sander-review/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/155213177140

5 Steps to Tweak Your Software for More Productive Work

Computers help us be more productive. But they're also perhaps the most distracting devices ever invented.

The first personal computers were little more than a blank screen with a terminal where you'd type in text commands. Each year, some new feature would be added that'd make them easier to use—and slightly more distracting as well.

Today, computers are hardly usable without an internet connection, complete with its infinite store of distractions. They're smart enough to know our next appointment times and the latest headlines we'd be interested in—and they keep us informed of all these details as well. So while you're working on your computer, it'll tap you on the shoulder every so often with some super important information.

Sure, it's nice to know when a new message comes in and handy to be able to ping a co-worker whenever you need. But that convenience comes at a cost. University of California, Irvine professor of informatics Gloria Mark found in a 2012 study that the average worker is interrupted once every 3 minutes—and that it can take up to 23 minutes to get back to your original task. It's a wonder we get anything accomplished!

We may need to be informed, but we need to stay focused far more. Here are the steps that help me keep distractions at bay, while still staying informed of the info I need. Hopefully they can help you strike a balance between being "plugged in" and maintaining your focus.

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1. Hide Your Dock or Taskbar
2. Simplify Your Apps
3. Hide Other Apps
4. Be Selective About Notifications
5. Track Your Productivity

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1. Hide Your Dock or Taskbar—or Go Full Screen

Those tiny red dots shouldn't be so distracting—but they are

The first-generation iPad was far from the most powerful computer of its day. Yet somehow, when I needed to write, I found myself far more productive on its 9.7" screen than on my laptop.

What made the difference was that every app took over the full screen. Aside from notifications, there was nothing to distract you—and at that time, switching apps was slow and cumbersome. It was easier to keep working on the current document than to switch to something else.

I noticed the same effect on my Mac when working in full-screen apps. Just without the dock's tiny unread notifications at the bottom of my screen, I wasn't nearly as tempted to check Slack a dozen times an hour. And when I got an external display and the Dock stayed over in my laptop's screen, just slightly out of sight, the effect carried over.

And that's why I got rid of the dock.

Your computer and browser are designed to run as many programs at once as you want. Those little unread notifications in your Dock and system tray may just be tiny red dots, but they grab your eye, pull your attention away from the task at hand, and tempt you to switch focus. There are two ways to keep things simplified without switching to working on a small tablet.

How to Hide Your Dock or Taskbar

Right-click on your Dock, and select Turn Hiding On

Hiding your Dock is simple. Just right-click on a blank spot of the dock—the separator bar in the middle is a good spot—and select Turn Hiding On.

Your Dock will then slide out of view. Whenever you need to open an app, just drag your mouse to the bottom of your screen—or edge, if you've put the Dock on the side—and the Dock will slide back into view long enough for you to open what you need.

Hide the menu bar from your Mac's General preferences

The menu bar on the Mac isn't nearly as distracting, and it's where many of your program features are tucked away. But you can hide it as well if you'd like. Just open your System Preferences, select General, then check the Automatically hide and show the menu bar

Right click the taskbar, select Properties, then turn on Auto-hide

On Windows, your taskbar includes your start menu, app icons, and the system tray with its distracting notifications. You can hide it all in one step. Just right-click on the taskbar, select Properties, then check Auto-hide the taskbar. It'll then slide out of view, just like on the Mac.

How to Work Full Screen

Starting with OS X Yosemite, released in late 2014, Macs have included a full-screen app view. Much like on the iPad, full-screen apps hide both the dock and menubar, showing only that app to keep you focused.

Tap the green icon to go full-screen, or tap and hold to use two apps together

To take an app full screen, just click the green icon in its titlebar and it'll expand to take over your full screen. To see the menubar or dock, hover over the top or bottom of your screen, respectively. To go back to your main screen, swipe right with 3 fingers on your trackpad or press CTRL + ← (left arrow key).

Select the app you want to use alongside another full-screen app

Want to view two apps side by side, and also hide your dock and menubar? Just press and hold the green icon to put that app on the left half of your screen. Then, select another app, and you'll get just those two programs in full-screen view. You can even resize them with the center divider to give you the space you need to work.

Enable tablet mode for full-screen Windows apps

Using Windows? Windows 8 added a new modern app style, where programs run more like apps on a tablet in full-screen mode. That feature was hidden a bit in Windows 10, and all programs run in standard windows by default. To go full screen, though, you can enable Tablet Mode to make modern apps run full screen, even if your device isn't a Windows tablet.

Simply click the notifications icon in your system tray, and click Tablet Mode. That'll shrink your taskbar and increase button sizes to make them easier to use on touchscreens. And it'll run any modern app from the Windows Store in full-screen mode.

Otherwise, for more traditional Windows software, just click the maximize button—or drag the window to the top of the screen—to make it as large as possible. If you've hidden your taskbar, that'll be quite similar to the Mac's full-screen mode.

Hide toolbar in Chrome for a full-screen view

Working online in Google Chrome? You can go full screen there, too. Just click the green + icon on a Mac or press F11 on a PC to go full screen, then uncheck Always Show Toolbar in Full Screen in the View menu. That'll hide everything except for the app or site you're currently viewing.

2. Simplify Your Apps

Writing app iA Writer includes a focus mode that hides everything except for your current sentence.

With your toolbar gone and your apps full-screen, there's far less to distract you. But your programs themselves, with all their menu options, can still be distracting. It's far easier to switch typefaces and colors instead of actually writing the document in front of you.

Hiding those tools won't keep you from tweaking things, but it will hide the distraction and keep the temptation away.

You could use distraction-free apps, something that's popular for writing tools. Apps like Byword, iA Writer, andOmmwriter—and even code editors like Sublime Text—hide all the tools, leaving you with just a blank space to write. You'll often find features like iA Writer's Focus Mode, which blurs everything except the sentence you're currently writing.

Double-click the ribbon toolbar to hide your tools in Office

Many other programs let you hide tools you don't currently need. In Office apps, just double-click on the toolbar tabs to hide the ribbon toolbars—and click the down-arrow in the top toolbar to hide quick access apps. In most other apps, just right-click on a toolbar to show a list of toolbars that you can show or hide.

Hide the menu—or all the tools—in Google Docs

Google Docs includes similar options. You can click the up arrow on the right-side of its toolbar to hide the menu and sharing options, leaving only the main toolbar. Or, to get rid of all distractions, click View -> Full Screen to hide everything other than your document (and press Esc to bring the toolbars back when you're done writing).

Customize which tools are shown in many Mac apps

Sometimes you can even customize the tools that are shown. Right-click on the toolbar in Safari, say, and you can customize the toolbar, dragging-and-dropping the tools you want to use—and removing those you don't. That trick works in many Mac apps.

Click the arrows to hide tool panes in Lightroom

Many creative apps—including Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop—include customizable full-screen views. Photoshop's full-screen mode hides everything, so you can switch tools with keyboard shortcuts or hover over the side to show the tool panes. In Lightroom, click the arrows on the toolbars to hide the panes you don't need right now. And in Word, the new Focus Mode shows just your document, with the toolbar visible when you hover over the top.

Poke around your apps—you'll likely find settings to help remove features you don't need and keep you focused on what matters most: your content.

Want a distraction-free writing app? Here are 12 great writing tools to choose from.

3. Hide Other Apps

HazeOver is Focus Mode for all of your apps

Don't want to work only in full screen? You could open just the apps you need for work and leave everything else closed.

That'll work at first, but you'll soon end up with something distracting you and tempting you to multi-task—perhaps a GIF in Slack in the corner of your screen or the browser lurking just below.

So hide everything else. Zapier lead writer Melanie Pinola suggests using the $4.99 Mac app HazeOver to do just that. It'll fade out everything else other than the app you're currently using, so you can have all your programs open without them being quite so distracting.

Using a PC? The $9.99 WindowFX can do the same thing—and can also add number of extra features to your windows.

Quit your apps when you're not using them

Or you could use a free app like Quitter to actually quit your apps when you haven't used them in a while. For example, if you do open Twitter, it'll help you not get distracted again by quitting the app a few minutes after you stop using it.

Want to keep yourself from opening distracting sites like Facebook? You can edit your HOSTS file or use one of the many apps to block distracting sites for you.

4. Be Selective About Notifications

Slack includes detailed notification settings for your conversactions

You know the drill: Download a new app, open it the first time, and it'll ask to send you notifications. It's all too easy to tap OK and forget about it—that is, until it dings right when you're in the middle of something.

But you do need notifications of important messages from your colleagues and reminders of upcoming appointments. The trick is getting only the important notifications—and nothing else.

These tips can help:

Don't enable notifications in new apps by default. Instead, when you try out something new, disable notifications until you're sure you want notifications from it.

Tweak each app's notification settings. Most apps let you pick what you want to get notified about, such as only when emails come in from a favorite contact or when you are mentioned in a specific Slack channel. Check your apps and tweak the settings to get just the notifications you want.

Unsubscribe from extraneous email notifications. Perhaps a daily notification of changes in your project is all you need, rather than minute-by-minute details. Or maybe you don't need that daily email either. Just click the Unsubscribe link in the bottom of the email notifications you don't want—that's a quick way to quit getting that one notification type. Or use a tool like Unroll.me to clean up all of your subscription emails at once.

Balance push and email notifications. Trello, Slack, Basecamp, Google Docs, and other apps are smart with their notifications. If the app's open, it'll send you push notifications; if closed, it'll bundle notifications up and email them to you. If your app offers that, emails can be a great way to make sure you don't miss the most important stuff, while keeping distracting apps closed when you don't need them.

Mute everything when you need to focus. Or, you can just turn off all notifications when you really don't need distractions—and you don't have to turn off your internet, either. Here's how on macOS and Windows:

Pull down on the notification's pane to reveal a Do Not Disturb mode

In macOS, just open the notifications pane by swiping with 2 fingers from the edge of your trackpad or clicking the notifications icon in the menubar. Then, scroll up, and a Do Not Disturb switch will show up to turn off notifications temporarily.

Quiet Hours does the same trick in Windows

In Windows 10, click the notifications icon in your taskbar, then tap the Quiet Hours button to mute all notifications.

Build Your Own Customized Notifications

Another option is to create your own customized notifications. Say you want a message in Slack when your appointments are coming up—but only if they aren't your routine team meetings. Or perhaps you'd like all of your notifications in an Evernote note to review at once. App automation tool Zapier can help.

With 500+ app integrations, Zapier connects to your favorite apps and can watch for notifications, new mentions, upcoming appointments, overdue tasks, and much more. It can then send you email, SMS, chat, or push notifications with exactly the info you want—or log the notifications so you can review them together.

Here are some pre-made integrations to get started—or find your favorite apps on the Zapbook and build your own customized notifications.

5. Track Your Productivity

RescueTime points out exactly how productive you are—or are not

It's easy to get to the end of the day and feel like you've been busy all day—yet have little to show for your time. That's why it can be smart to track your time with a tool like RescueTime.

RescueTime monitors your computer usage all day to see where you spend your time. Then it automatically categorizes your apps—Facebook as very distracting, email as distracting, and Microsoft Word as very productive—to prioritize the apps where you should spend the most time. It'll calculate your "productivity pulse", show where you've improved (or not) over time, and, with the paid version, can even block distracting apps and sites.

You can also get RescueTime notifications to show you how productive you are—or to warn you when you're not being productive. That's a notification worth being distracted for.

Learn how to get the most out of RescueTime with our guide to using RescueTime, or find an alternate time tracking app to keep track of time the way you want.

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Productivity is more about your own focus than anything your software has to offer. But distracting software can't help.

There's no need to turn off your internet connection or switch to using a typewriter—though that could help, too. Instead, just tame your software. You don't have to accept every default feature and notification, and you can push distractions out of sight.

And without noticing it, you'll stop switching focus and start getting more done.

Further Reading on Productivity

• Your workplace may also be distracting you. Learn how to work better with our guide to setting up your desk for productivity and ergonomics.
• Clutter, caffeine, chaos, and more can keep you distracted. Here's how to avoid those and other top productivity killers.
• Need a bit more motivation to be productive? Try a gamified productivity app, which rewards (or punishes) based on your productivity.
• Exercise, relationships, and rules matter too. Here's how America's presidents kept themselves productive.

Running photo by Andy Beales via Unsplash.

source https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-minimize-distractions/

The Science of Background Noise and the Best Sound Apps for Work, Sleep, and Relaxation

In our increasingly buzzing, dinging, horn-honking world, it can be really difficult to find a quiet space. Whether you’re working in an office with chatty coworkers or from home surrounded by noisy children, finding a place to think, concentrate, and get things done can be extraordinarily challenging.

When the entire world conspires to distract and overwhelm us with sound, there's a simple solution: Peaceful background noise.

In certain situations, ambient background noise has been scientifically proven to improve concentration and creativity. It can help even if you don't work in a particularly loud environment—and may even help you sleep more deeply.

Here's what researchers have discovered about background noise, and the most popular apps to generate all types of ambient noise to help you be more productive.

The Science of Background Noise

Most of us don’t work in silence at monasteries or on desert islands. We are almost always surrounded by distracting buzzes, beeps, and conversations—and we need background noise to drown it out.

A study in the Journal of Consumer Research concluded that, while high levels of noise impair thinking, a consistent, low level of ambient noise can increase creativity. In other words, working at the end of an airport runway won’t improve your creativity, but some light ambient noise will.

You've probably heard of "white noise"—ambient, low-level noise which can sound similar to the whooshing of a fan, the constant fall of rain, or cascading waves in the ocean. Technically speaking, white noise is the combination of all the frequencies of sound humans can hear and perceived, put together at a similar level.

White noise has been shown to improve both memory and concentration. In a study of children with ADHD, researchers found that white noise boosted the cognition of the subjects. Another study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience discovered that white noise slightly improved recall. And Harvard Business Review suggests white noise in the office environment can help mask that most distracting sound of all: conversations you're not supposed to be hearing. It even works while sleeping, as white noise blocks out sudden noises with its steady background of consistent noise.

White noise isn't the only color of noise–as signals along the noise spectrum are called. Pink noise, which is focused on lower frequencies and is less high-pitched than white noise, has been shown to prolong deep sleep. Brown noise, also known as Brownian noise or red noise, sounds deeper than both pink and white noise and is often compared to the low roar of a waterfall. With more of a deep buzz, brown noise may be perfect for relaxation and concentration.

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Both science and anecdotal evidence suggest that background noise can be beneficial to concentration and creativity, but in some cases it comes down to personality. Some people prefer working in total silence or to background music, while others work better in a slightly noisy coffee shop or with a fan running in the background.

If you haven't found the noise that works for you, it's worth giving ambient background noise a try. For that, there are a handful of well-designed apps you should try.

10 Great Apps For Background Noise

You likely already own a great device for generating background noise, such as a fan. Or, you could buy a dedicated white noise device like the Buddha Machine.

If you don’t want to lug a box fan around, an ambient noise app is your next best bet. These are some of the most popular background noise apps, including tools recommended by members of the Zapier team.

Binaural (Mac, iOS)

Best for: Experimenting with binaural beats

Before you can understand what the Binaural app does, you first need to understand binaural beats. Binaural beats are when two different tones less than a 40 Hz difference difference between them are played, one in each ear, at the same time. An auditory illusion is created and the individual hears a third tone in their mind, with that third tone being the "binaural beat".

Why does this matter? Because, according to some theories and research, listening to binaural beats can cause your brain waves to sync with the frequency of the binaural beats. This theory, known as "brainwave entrainment," posits that you can influence your mental performance by changing the length of your brainwaves.

When you’re falling asleep, your brain begins to produce Theta waves. Therefore, if you want to sleep, you listen to Theta waves and, your own brainwaves will eventually sync to match them, and you’ll fall asleep. Delta waves are for deep sleep, alpha waves for relaxation, and so on.

It's disputed whether brainwave entrainment really works. But, if you want to experiment with binaural beats to see if Gamma waves improve your problem solving skills, you can use the Binaural app. It’s a beautifully designed app that allows you to quickly switch between the different types of binaural beats depending on your activity.

Be forewarned though, listening to binaural beats is a very strange experience, like something out of an old Sci-Fi movie. Your brain could start to feel like it’s vibrating. You might like it—and it might work for you—but it's perhaps the most unusual audio experience in this list.

Price: Free

Brain.fm (web, iOS)

Best for: Background sounds that match your mental state

Brain.fm wants to help you get in the right state of mind

Brain.fm offers a unique take on background ambient noise. The developers worked with auditory neuroscientists to create soundscapes that, according to their research, improve mental performance within 15 minutes or less.

Choose whether you want to focus, relax, meditate, nap, or sleep at night, and Brain.fm automatically creates a soundtrack based on a short profile you create when signing up. Or, you can listen to soundtracks based around a particular sound, such as rain, nightsounds, and electronic noises. It's "the most advanced AI music composer on the planet," designed for the mental state you want to achieve.

My results with Brain.fm have been mixed. Sometimes it really does help me focus while other times it doesn’t make much difference. Your experiences may vary: Other users swear by the app. One fun extra is that Brain.fm charts scores for focus, calmness, relaxation, and more, to track what you get out of each session. Ed note: the Focus tracks can be pretty intense!

Price: Free for 7 sessions/month (sessions can last 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or for infinity); from $6.95/month for unlimited sessions, access to all categories, and offline sessions

Coffitivity (web, iOS, Android)

Best for: Working in a virtual coffeeshop

Get a creativity boost with Coffitivity. You'll have to provide your own caffeine, however

If you thrive in coffee shops but don’t want to drag yourself to one or can't leave the office, Coffitivity has you covered. It lets you enjoy the sounds you'd normally encounter in a coffee shop, library, or even a Brazilian Bistro–complete with the sounds of cups clinking and scholarly discussions at the cafe.

Research suggests that the moderate chatter of a bustling coffee shop–at around 70 decibels–can distract you just enough to think more creatively.

If you enjoy the muted activity in a coffee shop and the feeling that you're working amidst others while really you're in your pajamas in your home office, Coffitivity is perfect.

Price: Free for three audio tracks; $9/year for additional audio tracks

myNoise (web, iOS)

Best for: Finding or creating a variety of soundscapes

myNoise's sound generator lets you adjust the background noise to your taste

myNoise doesn’t have the prettiest interface, but what it lacks in aesthetic appeal it makes up in features. With natural sounds, atmospheres, voices, tonal drones, industrial sounds, soundscapes, and transports, there really is something for everyone. It even has a noise color mixer, allowing you to create soundscape of your favorite noise colors.

Created by Stéphane Pigeon, a "signal processing engineer with a strong passion for sounds," it’s hard to beat MyNoise in terms of variety and flexibility. Both the app and site are free to use, although a donation is recommended to continue supporting the sound generators.

Price: Free

Naturespace (iOS, Android)

Best for: Enjoying the great outdoors without leaving your desk

Put your headphones on and feel immersed in nature with Naturescape

Naturespace focuses on delivering pristine nature tracks, such as "Soft Forest Rain", “Campfire Hypnosis”, and “Liquid Sunshine.” They call their tracks “Holographic Audio”–high-res 3D sound that are "a multi-faceted solution for creating a calm and balanced mental state by transporting you to the world's most benevolent natural environments."

That might sound a bit over the top, but you get the point. If you want the sensation of working in a forest meadow, Naturespace can transport you there. It also offers sleep timers if you want to doze off to the sweet sound of ocean waves crashing on the shore.

Price: Free with 6 starter tracks; additional tracks from $0.99 each

Noisli (web, iOS, Android, Google Chrome)

Best for: Versatile background sound generation

Mix sounds to create your perfect environment with Noisli

Noisli allows you to become an ambient noise DJ, mixing and matching sounds to your heart’s delight. You can combine and blend any of 16 different sounds—including rain, thunder, wind, the sound of a train on train tracks, the crackling of a fireplace, a fan, summer night (think crickets), pink noise, and brown noise—to create a personalized soundscape that helps you focus or relax. If your peak concentration environment is on a train during a windstorm, you can simulate that with Noisli.

Register for an account to save and share your sound creations with others, use a timer for Pomodoro-like productivity, or write in Noisli's distraction-free text editor with Markdown support.

Price: Free

Noizio (Mac, iOS)

Best for: Simple ambient noise generation from the Mac menubar

Get quick access to your sound mixes with Noizio

Noizio starts immerssing you in a pleasant noise background as soon as your Mac starts up. Choose from 15 ambient sounds that you can mix and match–including Winter Wind, Deep Space, Sailing Yacht, Inside Train, and Blue Whales–to set the mood for any occasion, for work or relaxation.

It's similar to Noisli, but lives in your Mac menubar for quick access. Plus, you can control the app with keyboard shortcuts and sync your custom mixes between iOS and Mac.

Price: $4.99 for Mac; $1.99 for iOS

OmmWriter (Mac, PC, iPad)

Best for: Combining writing and soothing background music

Type and Zen out at the same time in OmmWriter

OmmWriter combines writing and background noise in one beautiful app. Open the app, and you're presented with a simple, distraction-free writing environment with a Zen-like soundtrack to accompany your writing. Both the sounds and background colors are chosen to help you relax and focus. It’s the closest you can come to writing in a monastery without actually being in one.

OmmWriter focuses almost exclusively on the process of writing. The developers describe the audio and visual experiences in the app:

The careful selection of the audio and visual backgrounds is critical to the overall OmmWriter experience. The new visual backgrounds include a carefully selected set of images and photographs. In addition, we have worked closely together with a Color therapy expert to help us include … backgrounds [that] employ dynamically changing color techniques to subconsciously promote tranquility as well as to stimulate creativity.

You can choose your writing background, soundtrack, and key sounds—or just go with OmmWriter's defaults to keep you focused on writing.

Price: Pay-what-you-want, with a suggested minimum price of $5.11

Rainy Mood (web, iOS, Android)

Best for: Thunderstorm-driven productivity

Make it rain: Bad weather can sometimes mean good productivity

Rainy Mood does one thing very well: Playing a high-quality recording of a thunderstorm on 30-minute loop. If you love thunderstorms (and who doesn’t), this is the ideal app. It's simple and free to use, and you can add accompanying music to the rain if you'd like. The mobile apps includes additional options, such as adjusting the volume of rain, or adding bird noises or coffeeshop chatter.

The only downside is that the thunder crashes can be startling, especially if you’re trying to fall asleep. The upside is that you'll really feel like it's raining outside, something that could put you more in the mood to study or work.

Price: Free

SimplyNoise (web, iOS, Android)

Best for: The most straightforward color noise generator

Pick white, pink, or brown noise

SimplyNoise offers only white noise, pink noise, and brown noise. No coffeeshop chatter, no bumbling brooks, no virtual torrential downpours.

Because the noise is a single sound without any additional background noises, it can be useful when you really need to focus or drown out other loud noises. SimplyNoise might be especially handy if you need to nap or sleep (or have an infant who needs to). And with all three color noises, you can find the one that might work best for you.

Trying to fall asleep? There's a sleep timer option, along with a setting to oscillate the sound if you'd rather not fall asleep.

Price: Free; $0.99 for mobile apps

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In 2014, the London newspaper The Times began piping the sounds of typewriters into their newsrooms in an effort to recreate the old school clatter of the newsrooms of old. Apparently, they thought it would motivate the employees and cause them to begin typing in concert with the rhythm of the typewriters.

A typewriter's click-clack sounds might work for you—or not. The best background noise for you depends on your surroundings, personality, and mental state. If you love being around people, you might prefer the the simulated coffee shop; nature lovers, on the other hand, may gravitate toward the sounds of a lonely meadow.

Experiment and try each of theses apps—or real-world background noises—and see which fits you the best.

Title photo by Breakingpic via Pexels.com. White noise photo by get directly down

Keep Reading:

• Productivity and Ergonomics: The Best Way to Organize Your Desk

• Do Your Best Work with the Perfect Screen Setup

• How to Manage Your Productivity on Someone Else's Schedule

source https://zapier.com/blog/best-background-noise-apps/

Festool 574447 XL DF 700 Domino Joiner Set Review

Using a biscuit joiner is a great way to enhance the quality of any furniture you make. This cuts two small holes, thereby allowing you to insert a biscuit that will strengthen the joint and improve the quality. This is one of those things that many DIY hobbyists will go without for a long time but once you’ve used one and seen the difference for yourself, you’ll not want to go back to working without them! But if you want to get the very top performance, then using a Domino joiner can take things up a level. Joining is conventionally a slow and awkward process but the Festool Domino Joining system uses pre-fabricated, beech and sipo Domino tendons and utilizes smart indexing features to ensure that the mortises are perfect every time. This uses a patented cutting action that you just won’t get anywhere else.

So how did the Festool 574447 XL DF 700 Domino Joiner Set hold up during our testing? And is it worth the significant premium that you’ll pay in order to use the device?

The Fastest Joiner in the West (And East!)

This is a very expensive joining tool and it is certainly only for people who are committed to their craft – most likely professionals.
The unique, patented cutting action really does make a big difference, oscillating to create perfect and precise mortises every single time. You can simply turn a dial in order adjust the mortises, thereby allowing for simple and easy alignment for joining panels. Indexing pins also aid with rapid alignment against the edge of your work surface, while tenons are up to 5-½ inch for larger scale projects.

This being a professional piece of equipment, it’s not exactly light or small. It’s a heavy, cumbersome machine but this does add to the solid feel in the hands and ensures that you can keep it nicely stable and in place. The larger size over the 500 model will allow you to make larger joints – though if you don’t need that, then you can save a little cash and go for a smaller machine.

Pros and Cons: Massive Power and Speed at a Price

When you move to this system, you’ll be able to create joins that are just as strong and powerful as any mortise and tenon joins. The difference is the speed and you can expect to complete the same work in a fraction of the time – a big plus for anyone who is working on a lot of joints over the course of a day. The additional features help you to ensure that measuring mistakes are a thing of the past too and everything just fits together perfectly. The power will allow for the deepest cuts in the hardest woods and in short, you get performance to match that price point. During the review period we made all kinds of cuts with this machine and nothing we could throw at it gave it pause. This really is the ‘Daddy’ and if you’re going to be making lots of joins, then it may well be worth it.
But that price point… this really is an expensive piece of machinery, make no mistake. And for those who don’t spend a lot of time in the gym, the weight and size may well be a little intimidating. It’s also not quiet – people will know when you’re working!

Conclusion

Ultimately, this is a high-end joiner that you’ll pay quite a bit of money for. Whether or not this is going to be worth it for you, is going to depend entirely on your intended use and whether or not you’re someone who needs that professional level of power.

For those who are going to be making furniture as a hobby, then getting a joiner can help to improve the end products but you don’t need to spend this much money. This is for those who do this as a day job and who are looking away to save a lot of time and to ensure they’re able to cut anything that comes their way.
At the end of the day, this product is results in the highest quality of furniture and for many, that will be worth the steep price of entry…

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/festool-574447-xl-df-700-domino-joiner-set-review/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/154972519910

Year in Review: Our 16 Most Popular Productivity and Apps Posts of 2016

Did you hear that? That's the sound of 2016 whooshing by. We can't believe it's almost the new year either. Before it ends, though, we wanted to take a look back and share the most popular blog posts we've published in 2016.

This year, we posted 161 articles on our favorite topics: productivity, apps, and workflows. Of those, the ones below got the most traffic. We hope this roundup will help you discover a new tip that you might have missed.

Beyond Google Calendar and Apple Calendar: The 18 Best Apps to Manage Your Schedule: The default calendar app on your phone or computer might not be the best for your needs. Here are alternatives to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook that are quicker to use, easier on the eyes, and can do more than just show you upcoming events. There's a PDF cheat sheet too.

Inspect Element: How to Temporarily Edit Any Webpage: Did you know there's a powerful tool hidden in your browser? With Inspect Element you can see the code behind any web page–and even change the page. It's handy not just for designers, but marketers, writers, and support agents as well.

The Beginner's Guide to Dictation Software: Write Without Typing: You probably think and speak faster than you type. With voice dictation, you can get your ideas onto the page faster, even when you're busy doing other things like cooking or walking to the store. In this guide, find the best dictation software, mobile apps, microphones, and tips on dictating text.

Find Files Faster: How to Organize Files and Folders: It's always a good time to get more organized–and that's especially true of the files on your computer. Learn what makes a good folder structure and see step-by-step examples of how to organize your folders efficiently.

Doesn't this look nice?

Remember Everything with Evernote: 30+ of the Best Tips and Tricks: Few note-taking apps are as powerful as Evernote, the app that can stand in for your second brain. With these tips and tricks, you might get more mileage out of Evernote, taking your notes to the next level. (Confession: I'm partial to this post, as it was the first one I wrote for the Zapier Blog.)

The Science of Memory: Top 10 Proven Techniques to Remember More and Learn Faster: Probably everyone could stand to improve their memory. Well, unless your a memory competition champion, like a couple of the people we spoke to for this article. Improving your memory is actually easier than you might think and can keep you mentally sharp. TL;DR: use mnemonics and imagery to memorize anything–helpful also when learning a new language.

Productivity and Ergonomics: The Best Way to Organize Your Desk: How you set up your workspace affects not just your productivity but also your health. If you've ever worked in an office with glaring fluorescent lights or uncomfortable chairs, you probably understand. Here are the best ways to organize and set up your desk, based on ergonomic and productivity research. TL;DR:

Search Smarter: 30+ Google Search Tricks You Might Not Already Know: Sure, everyone knows how to Google. But are you searching Google efficiently? Or ever click through to the second or third page of results without finding what you were looking for? Improve your Google-fu with these tips. Bonus: there's an infographic you can save for future reference.

50 Google Sheets Add-Ons to Supercharge Your Spreadsheets: Add-ons help you do more in your spreadsheets. We reviewed the best Google Sheets add-ons for forms, data gathering, spreadsheet formatting, text, number crunching, email and communication, and more. Plus, we point you to how to build your own add-on.

Introducing Push by Zapier: A Universal Chrome Extension for All Your Apps: Push by Zapier is our new Chrome extension that lets you quickly create a workflow with any of the 750+ apps supported on Zapier. It's my favorite tool for instantly adding a card to Trello, appending an Evernote note, or sending a text message–without needing to leave the page I'm on in the browser or switch to another app. Seriously, give it a try.

Master Your Time: 5 Daily Scheduling Methods to Bring More Focus to Your Day: Setting up a routine will help you boost your productivity and find more time in your day. In this post, we cover scheduling methods that could help you get more done, from the time blocking method to the polyphasic sleep method.

Tagging Tips: How to Organize Files and Other Information with Tags: Tags and labels are the easiest way to instantly find files no matter where you save them. Discover the best tagging practices for emails, photos, notes, folders, and more. Pro tip: If you use more than 10 tags, it's helpful to create a master list you can use to keep track of all of your tags.

How Trello Uses Trello to Collaborate, Plan, and Communicate as a Team: Are you a Trello user? So are we and, unsurprisingly, the 100-person team behind Trello. Get tips on using Trello straight from the source, such as using Trello background to find your boards at a glance.

14 Tools to Help You Avoid Distractions and Stay Focused at Work: Did you know it can take 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to where you left off after just one distraction or interruption? Distractions also make us less happy. Willpower alone isn't enough to stay focused, which is why we've gathered these 14 apps and tools to help you stay on track every day.

How to Build Your Own Chat Bot in Slack: Bots are handy little assistants that wait for your command and then do your bidding, such as automatically responding to trigger words in Slack or looking up information. In this guide, we show you how to make customized bots in Slack for replies, notifications, and commands without writing a single line of code.

How to Create Effective Document Templates: You don't have to start from scratch every time you need to create something new. Document templates guarantee consistency and help you create a new document in a fraction of the time it would take if you started with a blank page. Here are guidelines for the best templates and how to create different kinds of templates.

Did we miss any of your favorite posts from this year? Share them with us in the comments. Enjoy the rest of 2016 and see you in the new year!

Photo by Matthew Guay.

source https://zapier.com/blog/top-articles-2016/

Keystone Habits: Improve All Areas of Your Life with One Small Habit

Not all habits are created equal. Some will have a much bigger effect on your life. These "high return" habits are often called keystone habits, and if you're going to adopt only one new habit, it should be one of these.

Writer Mark Manson describes keystone habits as "compounding habits":

If you think about building habits as a process of investing in yourself […] you could say that different habits have higher or lower interest rates, therefore making some habits far better initial investments of your energy and discipline than others.

Keystone habits seem like any other habit, on the surface at least. The difference is that keystone habits tend to have ripple effects which change your behavior in unexpected ways.

Let's dive into what makes keystone habits so powerful and how you can get started building one.

What Are Keystone Habits?

In architecture, the keystone locks all the other stones into position. Similarly, keystone habits help hold other good habits in place

A habit of checking email first thing in the morning may or may not be beneficial to you, but it doesn't really affect other areas of your life, such as your well-being or personal relationships. Similarly, a habit of turning into Netflix every night at 8pm probably doesn't have far-reaching beneficial effects.

Just what makes a habit a keystone habit, then? Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, explains that keystone habits change more than just our behavior—they change how we see ourselves:

When researchers look at how people change their habitual behaviors, they find when some changes occur, it seems to set off a chain reaction that causes other patterns to change as well.

The power of a keystone habit draws from its ability to change your self image.

Exercising regularly is a habit many of us want to build to get stronger, look better, and stay healthy. For many, people this is a keystone habit, because when they exercise regularly, they also make healthier eating choices, procrastinate less, wash their dishes earlier, and even use their credit cards less! Exercising regularly seems to be an ordinary habit, just like flossing daily or hitting inbox zero before leaving work for the day. It's the cascading effect it has on other areas of your life that makes exercise a keystone habit.

When you build a habit of exercising every day, apart from improving your health and fitness, you're also creating a new self image—one of a person who exercises regularly or, perhaps even more broadly, of a healthy person.

By starting with action that encourages the self-image we want to have, we subconsciously encourage ourselves to reinforce that new self-image with other behaviors.

Examples of Keystone Habits

Exercise is just one example of a keystone habit

But when it comes to identifying your own keystone habits, that's where things get tricky. Exercise is the main example used by most people who talk about keystone habits, but according to Duhigg, "anything can become a keystone habit if it has this power to make you see yourself in a different way."

Duhigg mentions some other examples in his book. For instance, children from families who eat dinner together regularly tend to have higher grades, more confidence, and better emotional control. Another interesting example is making your bed every day. This simple, quick keystone habit has been shown to correlate with "better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget." Science writer Judy Dutton suggests this might be because "an organized environment can positively impact our mental state," and making our beds in the morning helps us start the day with a sense of accomplishment.

Manson came up with a list of his own six suggestions for keystone habits, including meditation, reading, writing, socialising, and exercising. Manson says his list of habits "provide a nice foundation for a healthy life in all domains: physically, emotionally, psychologically and socially."

He also includes cooking, which might not seem an obvious choice at first. But Manson points out that building a habit of cooking for yourself gives you control over what you eat and when. Without the time or knowledge for cooking, we settle for eating quick, easy food which tends to be unhealthy.

And while cooking itself doesn't necessarily affect your health, eating well definitely does. Building a habit of cooking makes it achievable to eat well.

How to Identify Your Keystone Habits

While I don't cook enough to see a huge difference in my eating habits, I do exercise regularly, something I can confirm is definitely a keystone habit for me. Pinpointing how exercise affects me has helped me figure out the clues that point to a keystone habit, so I can identify others.

At first I wasn't exercising every day, but I noticed patterns that correlated to the days I did exercise, and the days I didn't.

The biggest difference was my mood. I felt good after doing a workout, as if I'd accomplished something important. I felt like I'd started my day off well, and I felt good about facing everything else I needed to do that day.

I also noticed it was easier to eat a healthy breakfast after I'd exercised. Planning a healthy breakfast ahead of time didn’t stop me grabbing something more convenient and less healthy on days I didn’t workout. But the workout made me want the healthy breakfast I’d planned.

The great thing about these effects is that I didn't have to try hard to be in a good mood, or to improve my breakfast choices. They just happened. I'd found a cascading effect on my behavior that seemed to correlate with the days I started with a workout.

When I realised what made it obvious that exercise was a keystone habit, I was able to look for clues of other keystone habits in my life. The other major one I've found so far is getting up early. Getting up early sets me up for a great day. My mood tends to be better, and I usually get more done during the day, even if I don't start work any earlier than normal.

All of these effects combine to make a much better day for me. And they all seem to relate to simply getting up earlier, which makes it a keystone habit for me.

While exercising, cooking, or getting up early might not be your keystone habits, these examples point to the clues that can help you find your own:

Look for behaviors that have a ripple effect, changing your other behaviors without extra effort. And pay attention to how you see yourself when you do a particular habit. Does it change your self image? Do you feel better when you think of yourself as a person who flosses, a note-taker during meetings, a runner, or a person who meditates?

Changing our self image is the key to building habits that create major life changes for us.

How to Make Your Keystone Habit Stick

The trick to making any habit stick long-term—keystone or not—is ensuring you do it regularly. The more often you do the habit, the more you'll get used to it, and eventually you'll do it without thinking—the definition of a habit.

Keep track of your habit every day

If you’re working on building new habits, it helps to know how often you’re succeeding (or not). There’s a plethora of habit tracking apps available to keep stats on your efforts. A couple of my favorites are Momentum and HabitBull.

But you can do the same thing with just pen and paper, too. A simple way to keep track of your progress is to mark each day you complete your habit on a calendar. The "don't break the chain" method (often wrongly attributed to Jerry Seinfeld) uses a wall calendar and a marker to create a chain of completed days. The longer your chain of successful days, the less likely you are to break it.

An even simpler approach is theXeffect which uses index cards to track habits. On the back of the card, you write down why you want to build a particular habit. On the front, you simply draw six vertical and six horizontal lines to create a grid of 49 squares. Each squares represents a day, without needing to date them or use a calendar. Like the Seinfeld method, you cross off a square each time you complete the habit. When the card is full, you should have a fairly solid habit, at which point you can decide whether you need to repeat the process or not.

Start small

The idea of starting small is common among successful habit builders. Behavioral scientist BJ Fogg calls this "Minimum Viable Effort," and suggests starting here with all new habits. The key, he says, is to do the minimum you can and be consistent in your behavior.

Make it tiny. To create a new habit, you must first simplify the behavior. Make it tiny, even ridiculous. A good tiny behavior is easy to do — and fast.

For example, walking to work or doing squats for five minutes during your lunch break is a better start than trying to run 5 miles every weekday. Once you've built consistency in doing that tiny behavior every day, it's a lot easier to scale up how much you're doing.

Creating consistency is the hardest part, so start there. You could even use a repeating task in your to-do list app—or an automation from a tool like Zapier—to nudge you to work on your habit consistently.

Plan ahead

Another common suggestion is to make a plan for how and when you'll complete your habit. Coach.me co-founder Tony Stubblebine says planning ahead is the trick to not getting thrown off by unfamiliar situations. When building a habit of not eating sugar, Stubblebine suggested the concession stand at the cinema is one of the many environments where not having a plan could throw off your new habit:

When you go to the movies, what do you order? Popcorn or those ice cream dots? You might be on a three-month streak of no sugar and think you've nailed it, then walk up to concession stand and your old movie theater habit of ordering Red Vines takes over.

Because there are so many variable that can affect our ability to stick with new behaviors, Stubblebine says planning ahead is the best way to build up the consistency we need for the habit to stick:

Now is the time for me to decide if I'm going to have birthday cake, not on April 30 when someone passes me a slice of cake. Because I'm not going to be making a good decision then in that moment.

For me, planning when and where I'll complete a new behavior is the difference between building consistency early on and struggling to make progress at all. If I don't plan a time and place to complete my new habit each day, it tends to not get done. But finding time in my day to schedule that habit ensures I won't be struggling against deadlines or a busy schedule to do it—it already has a place and time set aside for it.

According to The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg, habits are comprised of three parts: the cue (what triggers the behavior), the reward (what you get out of doing the behavior), and the routine (the behavior itself). Planning ahead helps you keep the reward front-and-center, giving you the strength to overpower old cues with the new ones you're working to build for your habit.

Charles Duhigg's How to Change a Habit flowchart

Make It Easy

For my keystone habit of exercise, I've scheduled time to do it and I've started small—I usually do just a 15-minute workout in my living room at around 7am each day. But there are still some days when it seems easier to get on with my workday instead of rolling out my exercise mat and throwing on my workout gear.

I've found that the easier I make it to get started with a new behavior, the fewer reasons I have to not do it. When I make sure my workout clothes are washed, dry, and left out ready for me to put them on, it's harder to find an excuse not to do so. If I download my workout on my phone the night before, there's no waiting around for it the next morning—another excuse gone. And waking up half an hour earlier has helped me schedule my workout earlier so it doesn't interfere with my workday—yet another excuse I can't use anymore.

Sometimes I still struggle to get going in the morning. But if I have a longer, 30-minute workout scheduled and I find I'm thinking about skipping exercise altogether because 30 minutes seems too long, I'll just swap it out for a 15-minute workout.

Think about ways you can make your workout—or other keystone habit—easier to do, something Malcolm Gladwell calls the "tipping point." That's the point at which you overcome resistance and engage in the new behavior.

In a study of college students, fear-based education about tetanus failed to increase the number of students getting tetanus vaccinations. The tipping point came when the education included a map of the campus showing where the health center was. With that extra information, students no longer had the excuse that they didn't know where to get their shot, and couldn't be bothered looking up that information. Everything they needed was in front of them, so it suddenly became a lot easier to get a vaccination.

When you find yourself making excuses about why you're not sticking with your new keystone habit, try to find ways to overcome those excuses. Put out any equipment you need before you need it. Set up your environment so it's ready for whatever habit you're trying to build. Get your family or colleagues on board, so they don't block you.

Look for any small way you can overcome resistance in advance, so you don't have any excuses when it comes time to do your new behavior.

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Building habits is a long, slow process. It requires some determination in the beginning, as you work on building momentum and making a new behavior habitual, so you don't have to think about it.

But the rewards are overwhelming. Once you've built a strong habit you'll be performing a healthy behavior without even trying. And if you focus on finding and building keystone habits, you'll be getting a ripple effect of better behaviors throughout your life, just from putting effort into that one new habit.

Learn More About Building Productive Habits

• It's easy to start working on a new habit, but far harder keep at it for the long haul. Here's how to build habits that stick, with tips to make your new habit a success.
• Need instead to get rid of your worst habits? Here are tricks and apps to help you break your bad habits at work and in your personal life.
• Sometimes you have to trick yourself into working on better habits. Here's how to gamify your productivity—and apps that will reward you for working on your new habits.

Title photo by Kurt:S via Flickr. Walking photo by Emma Simpson

source https://zapier.com/blog/keystone-habits/

Black and Decker DS321 Dragster Review

The Black and Decker DS321 Dragster is a belt sander that is relatively portable at 3-by-21 inches and that has a smart design featuring a retractable hood. It’s not the most powerful sander in the world but for the money and convenience, it is a very compelling proposition indeed.

Product Description: Sleek Compact and Well Made

This machine is certainly sleek and has a compact profile that makes it very manoeuvrable and easy to use. Add in the smart retractable hood for hard-to-reach places and you have something that can sand pretty much any surface from nearly any angle! Need to sand the underside of a cabinet? Between two banisters? You’ll be able to do so. And because it’s so light, you won’t risk tearing your bicep while you’re working either.

And it is clear that this machine was built for comfort and convenience first as it also has a number of other features that fit this objective. There’s an adjustable handle for example which has three separate positions to help you find the one that suits you best in terms of control. Belt tracking is also very easy to adjust and this ensures that the belt is always exactly beneath the surface you’re sanding on. As you’d expect, it’s also very easy to change belts. In fact, you only need to flip a single switch in order for the action belt to release and then you can simply swap in a new one.

Also included is a dust bag. This is nice, seeing as many other more affordable options just give you a dust collector port and expect you to add this on yourself. For a small budget-friendly machine, this is a welcome addition that will save you a lot of time when it comes to clearing up sawdust and keeping your work area clean and ready to go.

Pros and Cons: Super Convenient, Could be More Powerful

We’ve seen this story a few times with our reviews. Once again, the Black and Decker DS321 Dragster is a sander that is highly convenient, nicely affordable but not the most powerful. With 7 amps, you should get decent results for most household tasks but this is not industrial grade by any means and isn’t going to be suitable for the majority of professionals either.

It is also very clearly plastic and while it looks nicely made (and felt good to hold when we were using it), it is still more likely to break than something with a bit more heft.

Those are the main drawbacks here and for something so light, they are very much fair and somewhat to be expected even. Whether or not this is a problem will ultimately come down to your intended use and what kind of work you’ll be doing.

But actually, before you write this off as a sander just for hobbyists, I would argue that there’s an alternative use case scenario here. If you’re a professional who sometimes finds themselves struggling to reach inaccessible areas with their sanders, then keeping something lighter and more versatile like this to hand could be a good move. That, and it can be useful to have something a bit smaller that you can chuck in your glove compartment and take with you on the road.
And the other big positive here is that you get so many extra features and smart decisions. Everything from the removable hood to the adjustable handle just makes good sense and makes a real difference when you’re using it.

Oh, one more con though? This is a corded sander. That means that it isn’t quite as versatile as it otherwise would be as you’re going to need to find a power outlet to use it. Don’t let that put you off though, as this does mean you don’t need to worry about your batteries running out at just the wrong time!

Conclusion: A Useful Little Tool

So whether you’re looking to augment your larger tools or you just need something small and convenient to get started with, the Black and Decker DS321 Dragster is a great entry-level sander that you can rely on to get the job done and that is particularly nice and easy to use.

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/black-and-decker-ds321-dragster-review/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/154799840250

Use OneNote Templates to Streamline Meetings, Projects, and Events

Microsoft OneNote is a fantastic, versatile note-taking tool. One of its best features–at least if you're using the Windows version–is page templates. With templates, you can have a consistent look for all the pages in your notebooks, and you can easily replicate notebooks for things like meeting notes and project overviews. Here's how.

Insert a Page Based on a Template

In the OneNote ribbon, go to the Insert tab and click the dropdown under Page Templates. A new Templates sidebar will open, and you can choose the design you would like for your new page. There are class notes templates, meeting notes templates, templates with different backgrounds, and templates to change the page size–you can index-card sized pages!

Granted, the decorative templates are pretty cheesy, with stock photos or clipart of books, day planners, and flowers and hearts among the options.

However, the business templates can come in handy, since they start you off with an outline already.

Pro tip: If you'd like to have the same template used for all new pages in the current notebook section, use the dropdown box under "Always use a specific template" to choose it.

Download a OneNote Template

Microsoft used to offer free OneNote templates at https://templates.office.com/, but now that section seems to only offer templates for Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. No worries, you can still find templates elsewhere on the web.

OneNote Gem has a collection of free templates, from a "Things To Do List" to a Cornell Notes template to seven complete notebook templates.

You can also download a meetings notebook template and an events notebook template shared on OneDrive.
The meetings notebook has sections for team meetings by quarter and pages with agenda, pre-reads, deck, and notes. Each page has placeholders for you to enter things like meeting details and follow-up action items.

The events notebook could help you wrangle all the information you need to organize an event, with sections for attendee materials, presentations, goals and theme, organizer materials, and more. Each section offers templates and instructions to help you record relevant information for the event.

If you're a fan of The Bullet Journal system of organizing your tasks and notes, you can grab a template to turn a OneNote notebook into your Bullet Journal. Here are the instructions I wrote on Lifewire (formerly Mobile Office at About.com) and the template.

Create Your Own Template

Finally, you can turn any page you want into a template to be applied to new pages. For example, if you can create a template for pages you always want to have your logo on or a template for your weekly review notes.

To create your own template, simply make a new page with the items you want on the template. You can add placeholders for the things that might change. Then in the Templates sidebar, click the "Save current page as a template" link at the bottom. Give your template a name, and you're done.

For more tips on using OneNote to stay organized and productive, see our complete OneNote tutorial. Or automate OneNote tasks with Zapier, so you can do things like copy Evernote notes to your OneNote notebook.

Photo by Matt Guay.

source https://zapier.com/blog/onenote-templates/

How We Retreat: Zapier's Favorite Team-Building Games

Because Zapier is a completely remote team, our semi-annual retreats are a pretty big deal for us. 351 days of the year, most of us on the 50+ person team never interacts with another teammate in person. Which is great, because it gives us flexibility to work in our optimal environments.

But some things are best done in person, like team bonding, and that's where retreats come in handy. When we get together at one location for a week twice a year, we share meals together, have off-the-cuff conversations, work on projects side-by-side, and–probably our favorite activity–try to defeat each other in board and card games.

Without further ado, here are our favorite games we play on retreats. Despite most of them being strategic, take-everyone-else-out games, they're a ton of fun. Zapier Support Training Lead Thomas Hils quips, "Nothing builds cohesion like games of division."

Codenames

In this word game created by Vlaada Chvatil, two spymasters lead their teams with one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. Their teammates have to guess the correct words for their team while avoiding words that are assigned to the other team or that belongs to the "assassin."

Guessing word clues sounds a lot easier than it is. As the spymaster, you have to give a clue specific enough to match up with as many words on the board as possible for your team that also wouldn't overlap with words belonging to the other team. As a team member, you have to guess what your spymaster is thinking. So, for example, if cards on the board include "dog," "cat," and "turkey," you might use "animal" as the clue. However, if "turkey" belongs to the other team, you couldn't use "animal," but might try "pet"–a risk if some people on your team think turkeys make good pets.

Although two people can play, the game is more fun and competitive with four or more players. As a word association game, it's often enlightening and funny to see how others make connections and associations.

Players: 2-8+
Time: 15 minutes
Price: About $15 on Amazon

Fun fact: At one of our retreats, the hotel kicked us out of our conference room after 11pm, so we weren't able to continue playing the game. So one of our product engineers whipped up a Slack version:

Zapier's version of Codenames in Slack. With text commands, each team guesses the words matching the clue

Mafia/Werewolf

Mafia has several variations, including Werewolf and Assassin. It's a group role-playing game in which you try to detect who is lying and also try to survive, perhaps by bluffing.

In this party game created by Dmitry Davidoff, players are divided into two groups–a minority, the Mafia, that knows who is in their group, and a majority, the townsfolk who don't know if the other players are Mafia or a townsperson. A moderator leads the game through the two phases: a night mode, when the Mafia decide as a group who to "murder" and the day mode, when the townsfolk vote on who they think is part of the mob and "hang" that person in the village. The game ends when either the townsfolk kill off all the Mafia members or the Mafia members outnumber the townsfolk.

There are other player roles that can be included, such as the Detective, a townsperson who can learn every night what team one other person is on.

The game is fun because of the discussions and players trying to convince the others they have a certain role. Everyone is suspicious, and you get to find out how well your teammates bluff. Accusations are serious, too. You don't want to hang the wrong person!

Players: 8-38
Time: 20-30 minutes
Price: About $12 on Amazon

Spyfall

Yes, another spy-based game. In Spyfall, players are secretly assigned a location–a restaurant, prison, pirate ship, swimming pool, etc. One person, however, is not assigned a location but is the spy. The other players try figure out which person is the spy through probing questions, such as "what kind of clothing do most people wear at your location?" and "what's the typical dinner at your place?"

The spy tries to bluff so as to appear to be in the same location as everyone else and also asks questions to figure out everyone else's location. The spy wins if he or she guesses the location correctly or if the other players all uncover the spy.

Warning: This is not a comfortable game for those who don't like bluffing and coming up with impromptu stories. But it is a good game if you're good at persuading and misdirecting others.

Another fun fact: Zapier CTO Bryan Helmig developed a Slackbot that assigns people locations and spy status randomly.

Players: 3-8
Time: 15 minutes
Price: About $14 on Amazon

Coup

Coup takes a bit more time to get used to and learn the rules, but it follows the major themes of the other games on this list: strategic deception, risk-taking, and deduction. Your goal of the game is to eliminate everyone else by forcing them to discard their cards.

Each player gets two cards with a character on it. There are five types of characters, three cards of each in the deck of 15 cards. Each character has a special action they can take. On your turn, you can take any action available to your characters, such as taking coins from the bank, stealing coins from another player (if you're the Captain), changing cards from the pile (if you're the Ambassador), and so on.

Here's the kicker: You can also take any other action available to other characters, since the other players don't know what cards you have. So you can pretend to be another character, at the risk of another player calling your lie out and forcing you to turn over one of your cards. If the challenger is wrong, they have to turn over one of their cards.

Unlike other games, however, you don't have to bluff. You can simply play along as your cards allow. The most successful players, however, will probably use duplicity to their advantage. This is an intense game, and fun to sit out and watch the players question each other's actions.

Players: 2-6
Time: 15 minutes
Price: About $8 on Amazon

Two Rooms and a Boom

Two Rooms and a Boom started out as a Kickstarter campaign by Alan Gerding and is now one of the highest-rated party games on Amazon.

Players are divided into two groups: the red team, which has a Bomber, and the blue team, which has a President. The teams are physically separated into two rooms or playing areas, and each team has a leader. Over 3 timed rounds, the leader chooses "hostages," players who will be sent to the other room at the end of the round. When you're sent to another room, that team can ask you questions to try to deduce if you're the bomber or the president.

You can probably guess where this is going, but the goal for the red team is to get the bomber in the same room as the president, while the goal for the blue team is to keep the bomber out.

Players can choose to show their character cards (or not) to other team members, which ends up being a funny dance of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours." Lots of social deduction, backstabbing, and intrigue with this one!

Fun fact: During one of the rounds of this game at our last retreat, I was taken hostage almost immediately by the red team and basically sat on the couch the entire time watching them conspire against the other team. You can really feel like a hostage in this role play.

Players: 2-30
Time: 7-20 minutes
Price: About $25 on Amazon

Snatch- It

If you thought choosing townsfolk to pretend murder was mean, wait `til you try Snatch-It. In this evil/awesome game, players turn over word tiles to try to create words out of, sort of like Scrabble. When all the tiles are used or turned over, points are tallied for each person's words, with longer words getting more points.

The evil is built into the game: Players are free to steal tiles from each other to build new words. Depending on the players, this can end up becoming a letter-snatching frenzy, as everyone seizes every opportunity available and watches the tiles like a hawk.

If your team or family loves words, as we do at Zapier, and has a competitive spirit, you'll probably love this game (as heartbreaking as it is to have "your" tiles stolen and words dismantled). Bonus: You might learn new words or the correct spelling of them from the game.

Players: 2-10
Time: 45 minutes
Price: About $16 on Amazon

Honorable Mention: APIctionary

We're not all about defeating each other in strategy games. Sometimes we just get really geeky and play a version of Pictionary in which we try to guess apps based on their logos or other visual clues. APictionary, anyone?

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Games are a great way to get to know team members, and they result in hilarity. Does your team use games for team-building? Share your favorites with us in the comments.

source https://zapier.com/blog/board-games/

Review: DEWALT DW682K – the best Amp Plate Joiner ?

Every professional contractor and DIY hobbyist should have a plate joiner in their collection, although it is one of those tools that is very often overlooked. The job of a plate joiner is of course to make two precise cuts into a piece of wood, which will then allow a wood biscuit to be glued in place. That then provides stability for joints and ensures joints will line up perfectly. Adding a biscuit joint can really make a big difference to your constructions and is a must for anyone who wants to make professional-grade furniture. Can you live without a joiner? Probably – but once you’ve seen the difference you’ll not want to go back.

The question is: can the DEWALT DW682K 6.5 Amp Plate Joiner be the tool to help you do that?

Everything You Could Want in a Joiner

A good plate joiner should be able to cut with consistent precision with the desired depth and location. You should also keep an eye out for safety features (and general features generally), the versatility, preset stops and the power.

The good news is that the DEWALT DW682K 6.5 Amp Plate Joiner really excels when it comes to most of these criteria. It is a nicely made product and has a great design. The name DEWALT also always inspires confidence. At 10.6 pounds, it’s not terribly light but it is very well balanced and is generally ergonomic.

The fence can be adjusted between 0 and 90 degrees and is made from one piece, which ensures the blade and fence stay parallel. It can also make flush cuts at zero degrees with no need to remove the fence – something that you won’t find with a lot of these tools.

In terms of features, the DeWalt DW682K 6.5 Amp Plate Joiner comes with heavy-duty non-marring aliminum shoe. This helps to protect the wood around the area that you are cutting, which of course is a very handy feature unless you want your furniture to look dented and battered!

Preset depth stops are also handy and include the most common biscuit sizes (0, 10 and 20). This makes it very easy to set everything up and means you can be certain that the depth is accurate and you aren’t going to cut too deep or too shallow. This comes in very handy if you use the tool frequently. Oh, and it’s powerful too with a 6.5 amp motor capable of driving the carbide blade at 10,000. This allows cutting depths up to 20mm in even the hardest woods and you should have zero probably cutting through oak or maple.

Pros and Cons: Power and Performance… If You Don’t Mind the Noise!

The DeWalt DW682K 6.5 Amp Plate Joiner is simply a very well made tool from a highly respected manufacturer. It has a lot of extra features, including the shoe and the preset stops and these help to make it easier and faster to accurately create your joins. It’s powerful enough to handle the toughest of tasks and in general will be ‘future proof’. If you’re a hobbyist now hoping to take on bigger projects in the future, then the tool will be likely to grow with you. In our tests, this has been a joy to use.

Another pro here is the smorgasbord of extras that come packed in. You get the carbide blade, the dust bag, vacuum adaptor, torx key, wrench and even a kitbox.

On the downside though, this is a noisy device. And at $354.18 (at full price) it’s also not expensive. And while the machine is actually fairly light considering its capability, it’s still definitely heavier than some tools you’ll have lying around.

Conclusion

As ever, the suitability of this joiner comes down to your requirements. If you’re a pro and you design furniture for a living, then you’re going to need a joiner and this model is as good as any. Likewise, if you’re a hobbyist and you want to really step-up your game and potentially sell your work in future, then this will help you do that.

But for those who just ‘dabble’ it may not be essential and you might not want to store something so big and loud.

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/review-dewalt-dw682k-the-best-amp-plate-joiner/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/154673825885