Are you sick and tired of filling out registration forms? Typing your name, email, and website url in comment forms on blogs? Perhaps you find yourself writing the same sentence over and over to people on some kind of instant messaging platform?

You can make your life easier by downloading a fancy little program for Windows XP called MemoKeys. It allows you to save strings of text, and bind them to certain keys for later use.

I use MemoKeys on a daily basis for a comment posting aid. I have my name, email address, and website URL save to various keys on my keyboard. This allows me to write this information into forms quickly, cutting back the amount of time it takes me to quickly get an idea on to that post.

This application really saves a whole lot of time in the long run, and I recommend it to anybody who performs similar actions throughout their daily web or computer experience.

If you know of any more similar applications, I would love to give them a try. Let me know in the comments.

We all know that life can be pretty chaotic. It's important to make things as simple as possible.

Now, with that in mind, this post is to help you determine how long a given task is going to take. While this may not be simpler than guessing what the task requirements are and assuming you are correct, it is more accurate. This method is a weighted average technique that can be applied many different ways.

First, you take a look at your task and determine the likely amount of time it will take. For our purposes, let's assume the likely amount of time for this task is 120 minutes.

After we have determined the likely amount of time it will take, we have to consider the two other alternatives (you may wish to add more to the equation based on your personal needs, and update the formula appropriately). The two other alternatives are the shortest time we believe it will take to accomplish the task, and the longest time we believe it will take to accomplish the task.

We have already determined that our likely completion time is 120 minutes. Our shortest completion time will be estimated at 90 minutes, and our longest completion time will be estimated at 240 minutes.

We will use the following formula to determine the weighted value, or the overall time we expect to finish:

((likelyTime * 4) + shortTime + longTime)/6

Our example:

((120 * 4) + 90 + 240)/6

Step by Step calculation: (don't forget BEDMAS people - hah)

((120 * 4) + 90 + 240)/6

= (480 + 90 + 240) / 6

= 810 / 6

= 135

This means when we plan for our task, it should be scheduled at 135 minutes, or 2 hours and 15 minutes.

I hope this helps you with your schedule. Keep in mind you can change the weighting of each value, or add your own values. If for instance you find you tend to take longer than necessary for most of your tasks, you could change the formula to:

((120 * 4) + 90 + (240*2))/7

Note: The final number you divide by is the number of the factors in your equation. 4 likely times, 1 short time, and 2 long times for this updated example.

Note #2: I know I said keep things simple. This may not seem very simple to you, but I can assure you that after you have practiced this method for a while it becomes second nature, and you will start to memorize various task lengths. Another option would be to implement this into a spreadsheet using the functions included so you don't have to do the math each time, or can change the weight of each value quickly.

If you find this useful or have any comments let me know. Alternatively, send me an email at thetechjuice@gmail.com