In this post I would like to share with my readers some free and open source software that can help you to improve your productivity by organizing your tasks and help you to efficiently utilize your time.

GTimeLog

In many occassions we may all have felt that 24hrs is not enough in a day. But if you keep an account of the time you spent on various activities in a day I am sure most of you will be surprised to see the actual amount of time you spent on your work. GTimeLog is just that tool that helps one to audit time. I cam across this software during my second year in college life and since then I use this software during exam time especially during the study leave, it helped me to keep track of time i spent on vaious activities during the day. So in the first few days of the study leave I can find out the time i spent on TV, Facebook, blogging and also on Studies and then I can make the required adjustments.

Using this software is easy and quite straight forward as son as we want to start recording our activities jst type in the text box start or any thing that makes sense, then go and do wat ever you want, wen you finish doing something type the name of that activity if the activity was not part of your work put an asterix by the end of the day you will know ow many hours you actualy spent on your work.

The Log file is actually a plain txt file that can be edited. It also has a feature to mail your monthly or daily report.

explore more on http://mg.pov.lt/gtimelog/

Free Mind

Mind mapping is an effective way to keep track of ideas, or take notes in a lecture or to organize your thoughts. Free mind is an open source mind mapping tool available and one of the best available. A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. If you are still not into the habit of making mind maps then try making mind maps and soon you can see that your ideas take an organized form( You can draw a mind map on a paper too) .FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java.

FreeMind’s most significant features are as follows:

• Folding branches
• Save files as XML — in mm file format
• Export hypertext to HTML and XHTML
• Export document to PDF and OpenDocument
• Exports image to PNG, JPEG and SVG
• Icons on nodes
• Clouds around branches
• Graphical links connecting nodes
• Search restricted to single branches
• Web and file hyperlinks from nodes
• FreeMind browser/player for web in Java or Flash
• Transform maps using XSLT

Download from http://freemind.sourceforge.net

 

Getting Things Gnome

This is a tool that will help you to remember all your tasks. GTG focuses on usability and ease of use. Its main objective is to provide a simple, powerful and flexible organization tool. The application is available for any variety of Linux with Gnome installed, but Ubuntu users can simply download a .deb file and install it easily. Once you’ve installed the application you can use the quick add box to start typing in tasks, and then drag and drop to rearrange them into a hierarchy. You’ll have to open the to-do item to edit the tags, but if you want to create a task under a tag, just select the tag on the left-hand pane before using the quick add box. It’s a simple application, but well worth a look for anybody keeping track of to-do items on their Linux desktop.

Check out http://gtg.fritalk.com/pages/about for more details