Feeling more productive

In recent months, I've been reflecting about those things that can make an IT worker feel more comfortable at work, or, at least, make the job easier. I mainly refer to the tools and infrastucture that support our daily tasks and make our work environment more productive.
I think it's a good idea to list these things I consider interesting to have within arm's reach, for all those who can be interested in them:

Tools

• Knowledge Base. In my opinion, it's really interesting to have some tool that let you compile information related with specific topics. For example, it can be useful to have a wiki, to share that information that you wouldn't find in other place. Some of the topics could be, comments about books you read, common technical problems and solutions, opinion about new technologies, methodologies and procedures, and especially topics related with information that you usually get from another people you work with (and that can, from any moment to another. not be working with you anymore).
• Mailgroups. I think that they are important for those moments when you have a question or problem that you can't resolve by yourself, and you need help from some especialized people. Sending a mail to a mailgroup can make you get some solutions or, at least, new ideas or ways to restart your search for the solution you need. I think that forums can really be useful in the same way, but I think they only can be as powerful and comfortable as mailgroups if some technology like RSS, or something like that, is applied to them.
• Instant messaging. Hey! not just to chat with your friends! It can be surprising the amount of help you can get from your colleagues using this kind of technology. Especially to get answers about things you shared in the past with them and perhaps now you can't remember (i.e. 'do you remember the name of the library you used for your project in 2004 blablabla? '). It can make you save a lot of time, get important information and be in touch with colleagues. But, be careful! Don't overuse this resource!
• Documentation templates. It can really organize your documents by itself. Knowing which templates you have available is, in my opinion, as important as having them. Having lots of documentation templates is not necessarily important; having the right and useful ones is the goal. This approach saves time when documenting and standardizes your documents.
• File server. A common place for storing your files will let you share them with your workmates. You can store documents there, applications you download from the web and you want to have available, libraries versions, e-books, and so on.
• Outlook, post-it or similar. It's mandatory for me to have some tool with an alarm or reminder where I can write down things I shouldn't forget to do. I've became a kind of reminder-dependent person lately.
  

Working place

• Library. In my opinion, e-books are a really good for having as reference and for searching topics or key-words. But, they're not comparable to real books that you can read anywhere (i.e. bus, train, subway), even in your box at work. It's important for me to have a library near, and to have it orgaized and accesible.
• Meeting room. It can be the place where you share your thoughts with your boss or workmates without bothering another people that have nothing to do with the topic you're going to talk about. It's good for communication to share your thougths and to know the status of the environment you're workin in.
• Comfortable boxes. Every person needs a comfortable place to be/feel more productive at work. Some special considerations I find interesting to have are: having a blackboard near to discuss solutions with visual aids; having comfortable boxes to be able to discuss problems easily with your workmates and not to be isolated from the others.
  

Activities

• Technical meetings. I think that having this kind of meetings where you can share your experiences with your mates can help you balance the knowledge in your workgroup and the interest in different topics. Besides this you'll probably get different points of views that enrich the meetings.
• Status meetings. Knowing the status of your project or your workmates projects' can help you to know where you are, and where you are going, what tasks to focus in, and so on.