It’s only a small sample of a week, but one of the statistics that I’ve found very interesting on my application usage has been the huge difference in time spent in PowerPoint (14 hours) compared to Word (4 hours).

That means that I am using PowerPoint for nearly 20% of all of my active application time.

Once upon a time my primary communication method was a document, I’d spend ages getting the words right, correct, and accurate. Today, I’m nearly always creating diagrams, and crafting a set of them together to build a story.

Some of this change is because my role has changed – I’m not working directly on projects most of the time, I’m trying to influence thinking, helping people to understand things.

The other reason the I’m not writing documents is that no one reads document anymore. I’ve tried writing documents to more fully explain my thinking, but it’s no use, people only want a document these days when a process mandates that they have one.

On the whole I actually think that this is a good thing, I’d much prefer that people focussed their efforts on understanding rather than on grammar (especially as mine is so bad). But there is also a real danger here, and that is the effect of the passage of time. Documents shouldn’t need any explanation, a presentation nearly always should. That’s fine when a presentation has only just been created, the author is available for questioning and they can still remember what they meant, but over time that is less and less likely.

The value of the presentation degrades much faster than the value of the document.

Therein lies my question: are we scrimping on the cost now, only to see the costs come flooding back later on? Or perhaps that is what we are hoping the mandated policy will fix?

I have to quite liking the new Microsoft Office Ribbon interface. Sometime I might write a longer post on why I think it;s an improvement. In the short-term though, here’s something I just discovered.

If you move the mouse cursor up into the ribbon you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to move through the menus.

Enjoy.

This year I’ve had some fun writing about the tools that I use. At the beginning of the series someone asked me to include regular summaries which I have only been moderately good at. So here is the summary for the end of 2008 because I’m not sure I’m going to write anymore before its 2009.

• Introduction – why on earth am I doing this.
• Word Outlining – you really should learn how to write documents this way.
• Twitter and Twhirl – not sure how to summarise Twitter
• FeedDemon – my feed reader of choice.
• Blackberry 8800 – my world in my pocket
• Windows Live Writer – I blog so I writer
• iTunes and iPod – a sweet piece of apple even though I complain about the bloat.
• Synergy – share that keyboard and mouse to get better returns
• Jing – screen snapshot wonders
• Flickr – where I share my pictures, but also interact with others and their pictures too.
• Notebook and Pen – there’s still a bit of old-school in these veins.
• Google Analytics – I know so much more than  am willing to say
• Mindjet MindManager Pro – I am such a fan of mind mapping
• The off switch – the holiday season is a really good time to use this tool. Go on, I dare you.
• Logitech Cordless Presenter – this gets used all over the place, it’s liberating.
• Snipping Tool – simple screen capture
• Word Ctrl + Shift + N – using the keyboard for what it was intended.
• Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V – my keyboard goodness

(Good, I’ve now got a list of topics not to cover next year. It’s amazing how quickly you forget what you’ve written.)

I’ve been trying out a new tool recently – the Windows Vista Snipping Tool.For most of what I do it’s a direct replacement for Jing. Jing does a whole load more than the Snipping Tool – it’s just that I don’t use those other features very often.

Having said that, there are a few difference between them even for a basic user like me:

• The Snipping Tools starts a lot faster than Jing on my device.
• Jing provides more sophisticated annotation capabilities – these include text and arrows, whereas the snipping tool is just highlighting and freehand drawing. I don’t often annotate.
• Jing provides a mechanism for capturing menu’s – something I’ve been unable to find in the Snipping Tool. Something i often want to do.
• Jing runs all of the time – but you have to start the Snipping Tool each time you want to use it. This is both a positive and a negative thing. i don’t do that many captures so don;t really want something running all of the time.
• They are both free – if you have Windows Vista.

An introductory video from Microsoft:

Windows Vista Demo: Snipping Tool

I find mind maps to be a fabulous way of thinking about things.

I regularly find myself in the situation where I am doing what I call a personal brainstorm. There are a huge set of ideas that are floating around about a subject, placing them all down onto a mind map and then structuring them is a very powerful way of visualising them. It often sparks new ideas, highlights things that are not really related to the subject and highlights activities or ideas that are dependent upon each other.

The tool that I use for mind mapping is Mindjet MindManger Pro.

I’ve struggled for a while to know quite how to write about this subject. It’s one of those where you either stay shallow or you dive in deep, and I’m not sure I see the real value in one and I don’t have time for the other. I’ve decided just to start and see where I get to.

I nearly always use mind maps for structuring thought. I have tried to present mind maps for people to talk around, it normally results in lots of vacant looks. I’ve, therefore, moved away from presenting mind maps other than the simplest of diagrams (You can now do really simple diagrams in PowerPoint 2007).

As a thought structuring technique I nearly always start with a blank sheet and type.

Mind Manager allows you to do a lot of the working from the keyboard so it’s relatively easy to stream-type. In this mode the two most powerful keys that you have available are the “Enter” key and the “Insert” key.

• Pressing “Enter” adds a topic at the same level as the one you are currently in. This is great for creating a list of things all at the same level.
• Pressing the “Insert” key adds a topic as a child of your current topic. Great for adding a sub-thought.

I don’t classify, mark, annotate, or even worry too much about the structure it’s just how the thoughts come out. It’s amazing, though, how often that these thoughts are reasonably well structured. If you stop to think too much about the structure you loose the flow a bit.

Ideas tend to come faster than I can type so type as much as possible to make sure that I don’t miss something.

After I’ve brainstormed I’ll then structure and annotate. Mind Manager has a great set of Map Markers. I normally expand these out so they are all visible on the right of the screen. From here I’ll pick topics and mark them. My favourites are priorities, because that’s often what I am trying to get to understand.

The one thing I’ve always thought would be useful, but never been able to work out, is the ability to filter a set of topics based on the markers. Perhaps I just haven’t looked hard enough.

Once I’ve been through this activity I normally go and create something that communicates the thoughts that I have just worked out. I’d like people to be able to just look at my maps and understand them, but that doesn’t seem to communicate very well. Perhaps it’s a culture thing.

I’m actually quite a simple Mind Manager user, and lots of people do far more explicit things, this way of working helps me though.