I've noticed a habit of mine recently.  I have a tendancy to open up a web browser and/or and email client when I first log into my home or work computer.  I do this out of habit, just like a check the mailbox for new mail when I get home from work.  The email thing is not such a big deal because I usually just delete the junk mail and take care of the few items that actually need my attention.  The web browser on the other hand can be quite the menace.  The web browser coupled with and RSS aggregator such as www.netvibes.com can be a real productivity killer.  Before I'm really aware of it, I'm reading some blog on libertarian economic thought or browsing through www.techbargains.com drooling over a new piece of hardware.

So What can I/you do about this?

Open up the IDE first.  I'm assuming you're using an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) but you could also be using VI or Emacs or Excel.  The point is that you should open up the IDE first and just start working on something or anything really just to get started.  I find that once I get started on a task I've won half the battle.  Once I'm really working on a task I slip into concentration mode and can focus on a problem and I'm usally very stalwart in searching for the solution.

Have your essentials near at hand.  You want to have your cup of water|joe|soda full and within reach before you put on your headphones and slip into the zone.  Once I've got my glass of water and my headphones are on I'm safe.  I can usually code for at least a few hours like this before I need a bathroom break.

Make sure to read Part 2 about staying in the zone which is almost more difficult, especially if you have non-coders in your work environment.

Here's one that I've used several times in the past.  Microsoft has a virtual CD Control Panel that let's you mount an ISO image as a drive letter.  This is really handy if you have an MSDN subscription and are constantly downloading ISO's from the MSDN site.  Instead of burning each ISO to a CD you can keep it on a local or network drive and simply mount it as needed.  This will save the cost of a CD and the clutter of having a bunch of CD's laying around.

I've tested this only under Windows XP.

Here's the link:
Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel

This one is destined for the Pragmatic SDK.

Visual Studio 2005 is pretty useable on its own.  MS has really done a good job and the studio is one of the reasons I stay on the MS platform.  I've used Java, Ruby etc and I ended up using eclipse for my IDE and while it does a decent job it also seems to have heavy system requirements and theres the feeling that everything is kind of duct taped together  But I digress, the reason for this post is to highlight tools that make Visual Studio even more useable.  So Here they are:

1. Cool Commands

Everything except (including?) the kitchen sink

Adds context menu commands like open project folder etc.  It just keeps getting bigger and better.  You have to try it to get the full effect.

Most Recent version of Cool Commands

2.   CopySourceAsHTML

Ultimate Blogger Tool

If you have a blog and who doesn't these days, you should look into this one.  It lets you copy souce out of Visual Studio and keep the code formatted as HTML which is very helpful if you are trying to post code to a blog.

CopySourceAsHtml

3.  Smart Paster

The easy way to embedded SQL, JavaScript, etc

This one gives you multiple Paste As... options in the context menu.  Helpful for pasting inline SQL (oh my), JavaScript, XSLT, etc.

Smart Paster

 

 

Additional resource for Visual Studio 2005 Add-Ins