Productivity
I like reading blogs and "productivity" websites that help people (theoretically...) improve the way they work. (Note: my wife and others who are naturally results-oriented people often scoff at these sites and, rather insightfully, point out that if I spent my time simply being productive I wouldn't have to just read about it...) Unfortunately, I'm not a naturally productive person. But through some reading about how others work (e.g. Zen Habits, Lifehacker, and Four Hour Work Week) and through some successful experimentation on my own, I've come up with a pretty killer way (in my humble opinion) of organizing my tasks and getting them done at the scheduled time.
My system is oriented around email. I like email--you can respond when you have the time and it keeps a permanent record--and I fortunately type pretty fast. Therefore, what I do is that whenever I have a thought about something I need to do, or could do, I simply send myself an email with all the info in the subject line: (e.g: "DO: Pick up flowers for Valentines day; DO: Have Zoli scan my W2 form and email to me). Then, I regularly "process" my in-box and drop my email tasks into three different categories, and basically clear out my inbox on a daily basis. The categories: 1. DO--Personal; 2. DO--Business; 3. DO--Ideas. Since I use gmail--which I recommend--I can put email into multiple folders and therefore also add certain email to a 4th category: 4. DO--Most Important. Then I regularly refer to these folders to see what I need to do and get a lot of satisfaction from deleting the ones I finish.
The second key part of "my" system is Google Calendar. It's very easy to use and--the best part--sends free text messages to my phone to alert me of any upcoming deadlines or events I want to be reminded about (birthdays, meetings, phone calls, etc). So whenever a particular email/task is time sensitive I add it to my calendar and get reminded to finish it--or be somewhere--by a certain time.
I need to post this before my wife sees I'm not actually working.