TextExpander<\/a>, and while I don’t know if it’s the best or the worse, I know that I love what it does and how it does it. It works well for me.<\/p>\nThe purpose of these tools is pretty simple: you type abbreviations or shorthand, like “fyi”, and the tool will insert a longer set of words, like “for your information”. I set up “b@s” to be my email address — using the first letter of each side of the @ sign. I have dozens of abbreviations now, and for me, it’s like typing in fast motion. Filling out forms is almost fun.<\/p>\n
Almost.<\/p>\n
Occasionally, it expands when I don’t want it to, which means I chose an abbreviation that occurs “naturally in the wild,” so to speak. Good abbreviations require creativity and practicality. I tend to use the same three letters in a row like three s’s for Steelray. (You can bet I didn’t type out the entire “Steelray” just then)<\/p>\n
You know you love a tool when you miss it the minute you start using a computer without it installed. The tool can be habit-forming, but in this case, it’s a good habit. A tiny little superpower.<\/p>\n
There are others in my “must-have” category, and most of them are like TextExpander, in that they do a very specific thing in a very useful way. If you’re not using one, I recommend you take a week and give it a try. It takes a little practice, but it’s worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m kind of obsessed with productivity tools, and they generally fall into one of two categories: the ones everyone should use and the rest. It’s our company mission to make must-have tools (viewers, analyzers, exporters) for people who are writing, updating or reviewing project schedules. We live in a niche; we design and deliver productivity software products for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,7,19,12,1,17],"tags":[43,30,44,35,32],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analyzers","category-business","category-exporters","category-project-management","category-uncategorized","category-viewers","tag-business","tag-microsoft-project-viewer","tag-productivity","tag-project-analyzer","tag-project-exporter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":782,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelray.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}