I've been using Techsmith's SnagIt for years for taking screenshots. It started as a Windows-only product but then a Mac version came out. It's extremely simple to use and has most everything I want for a quick image including cropping, border effects, transparency, and annotations like arrows and text. What's your favorite screenshot and annotation tool?
If you've been around long enough to have used Microsoft DOS as your primary operating system, you might remember Norton Commander. Norton Commander 5.51 running on MS-DOS 5Managing files in DOS was a pain in the butt without something even remotely graphical. I loved the two panes and simplistic navigation in folders. In fact I think Norton Commander made me better at command line stuff after I got a visualization of the file structure. ...
My system for helping keep my brain focused during the workday is a system of lists in a note-taking program like Evernote or Simplenote. Every time I encounter an e-mail, talk to a coworker about something, or get assigned a pull request to review I turn that into a checkbox item. If I don't get to an item in a day, those empty checkbox items get moved to the next day (or week). The system isn't without faults but it seems to work. The only issue with the checkboxes is they don't portray status of longer-running tasks. ...