TSQL Tuesday #135: Tools of the Trade

It's #TSQL2sday!!

T-SQL Tuesday is the brainchild of Adam Machanic (Blog | Twitter). December 2009 was the first T-SQL Tuesday invitation that went out by Adam. It is a monthly blog party on the second Tuesday of each month. Currently, Steve Jones (Blog | Twitter) organises the event and maintains a website with all previous posts which you can find here. Everyone is welcome to participate in this monthly blog post.

The Ask

This month's T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Mikey Bronowski (Blog | Twitter). Mikey invites us to write about the outstanding tools of the trade that make your job awesome.. Thanks to Mikey for hosting this month's blog party!

My current favourite tool

There is a few productivity apps or hardware things I could have mentioned, but there is just one tool that I can’t seem to get rid of…

As you can see it’s well designed and easy to access. There is various themes available, I have gone for a dark theme. It’s compact and portable meaning I can take notes virtually anywhere. Once you open the tool you are met with a neat interface that is flexible and accomodates most languages. You can use it in single screen mode, or extend to dual screen…

Peripheral compatibility

Unlike other devices, this is compatible with both Pencil…

And Pencil 2.0 (aka, a Pen)…

Indexing

It has two index functions available. The first is a built in indexing function, it is sequential in nature and uniquely identifies a page…

The second is custom built allowing you to implement your own indexing function. This should be used with care since the locale is set to your region and may confuse other users who use wrong alternate date formats as you can see below…

Task Manager

It is possible to manage tasks with this tool by…well…writing down…tasks…

Bookmarking

You can tag your important notes by utilising the bookmarking function…

And you can also use the post-it extension to annotate your important notes…

Breaking off from the post because WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT!!! It’s the second week of Feb and I am STILL writing 2020! #meh

Graphical note interface

It is possible to create high quality (?) visual notes using this tool…

Games

Finally, due to the flexible nature of the input area, it is very possible to play games with your daughter whilst on calls in between calls…

Summary

I have been trying to decide what I was going to write about and talking to my builder yesterday, he was telling me how reluctant he was to go digital because everything just works, all his stuff is tracked neatly in a book and he knows where he is. I can relate to this because despite trying various apps over the years I still tend to gravitate towards a notebook the majority of the time.

Despite using a task manager app quite extensively, I still tend to start my day by writing down the things I am going to achieve during that day just to ensure I am focussed and not having to pick up my phone. I have always used drawings to help me explain ideas to people and whilst I have attempted to replace the notebook with an iPad on several occasions, I just can’t seem to give up my trusty notebook. So despite all the things I could have written about, my notebook is still the one tool that helps me be most productive.