December 2009
6 posts
100 Ways to Screw Up Your Life →
From the always insightful Dragos Roua: Try to bargain everything in your life. Negotiate while shopping up to the point every salesman will be pissed off and give you stuff for free. Do this for…
How to Be More Productive →
From trizle.com: You rid 10 same spam emails daily. It takes two minutes. “it’s no big deal!” you tell yourself. That means you lose ~12 hours per year (1.5 days of work your boot-tay…
How to Write an Effective to Do List →
From the most definitive To-Do list How-To I have seen comes this from Lee Cash: Don’t flood your list with superfluous micro-tasks. It’s tempting, but over-filling your list in order to feel like…
Nexty Is a GTD-Focused, Web-Based to-Do List →
Lisa Hoover: One thing fans of the GTD ethic like is a to-do list manager that doesn't get in the way of the good work habits you're trying to create. Nexty, an open-source webapp created…
Parkinson’s Law →
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” – Cyril Northcote Parkinson1 This is a huge challenge for most people when they are trying to become more productive. The…
SingleTasking →
via singletasking.gif . Could not be more true. Related posts:
Singletasking
November 2009
39 posts
Focus Booster →
From the website: focus booster is a simple and elegant application designed to help you eliminate the anxiety of time and enhance your focus and concentration. This is a basically a Pomodoro…
How to Finish Tasks →
Trizle: Get a friend. or Twitter, etc.”I will finish X by Wednesday.”Tell another friend.The more friends you tell, the likelier you beat X into submission by _______ day. Quick and dirty advice.
Going With the Flow →
It is always harder to start pushing a boulder than it is to keep pushing the boulder. Once you get momentum working things become a lot easier to move. The same is true with productivity, once you…
Ditching the Clutter: How Long to Keep Important... →
This is a great list of tips for how long to keep certain documents. It is important to remember that not only does this help reduce clutter, it also helps increase security by digitizing (and…
4 Quick Holiday Planning Tools →
The holiday season is a pain, and can toss your entire productivity system to the side if you are not careful. Here are some of the tools that I use to stay organized during the holidays. Backpack
What Are You Putting Off? How to Get on With It in... →
Ali Hale: The problem is, the more we put something off, the harder it is to get going on it. Our resistance to doing it gets greater and greater … and often, the task becomes more difficult or…
Multitasking Is Our Main Activity →
Techdirt: That’s a nicer way of saying what we said a few months ago. The “inefficiencies” from multitasking aren’;t a bug. They’re a feature. Cowen goes on to explain it using the analogy of a…
The 10 Really Obvious Ways to Be More Productive →
The 10 Really Obvious Ways to Be More Productive. Well they certainly are obvious ways, doesn’t mean they are easy though. Related posts:
33 Ways to Start Your Day
How to Be Productive…
How to Survive in an Unhappy Workplace →
Pat Olsen: That’s not to say unhappy workers don’t have valid complaints. One thing you don’t want to do, however, is let your feelings boil over at work. The job market is tough right now, and I…
Eight Ways to Kill an Idea →
Eight ways to kill an idea : Great stuff. Related posts:
17 Ways to Kill Common Distractions
How to Set Goals When You Have No Idea What You Want
Kill Your Stress: Eight…
Know Your WHAT First, Then Devise Your HOW →
Celes Chua: To get what you want in life, there are two things you need to be clear on: What you want – the WHAT. Your real goals, dreams, desires, likes. How to get what you want – the HOW. Your…
‘Someday’ Is a Disease. Do You Suffer From It? –... →
Organzieit.co.uk: From my experience I’ve found Someday disease manifests itself with a certain mindset. A sufferer of the disease will believe that conditions have to be just right – that they…
How to Be Productive Without Becoming a... →
Dragos Roua with some excellent advice: Too much GTD or too much effectiveness in your life can become annoying at some point. Being highly productive can really help you become some sort of a…
NowDoThis →
NowDoThis only shows you one to do item at a time, you can’t see the next until you have done the current task. This is very simplistic, and straightforward. It could be helpful to some, and…
The High Seas Showed Me How Pitifully Unproductive... →
Glen from LifeDev.net: The best part: I wasn’t even trying to do anything productive. I just wanted to jot down some ideas. This simple act coupled with a perfect work environment and no…
30 Minutes a Day →
Jack Cheng: When mastery is the goal, spending an exorbitant number of hours in one sitting will likely lead to burnout. We don’t go to the gym expecting to put on 20 pounds of muscle in a single,…
So Just What Is This Simplicity Kick of Yours All... →
Jesse: So the short answer to the question I started the post with is: Simplicity is about changing what society sees when it looks at consumer culture. It’s about changing what our felt needs are…
7 Tips to Achieve More →
Collis Ta’eed: Every project seems worth doing, every opportunity worth taking. Still I know that for many people, work is a way to make enough money to relax and enjoy life. If that sounds like…
10 Best Productivity Books of 2009 →
A good list of the 10 Best Productivity Books of 2009 by Stepcase Lifehack. I don’t agree with all the choices, but I also have not read all the books on this list. Related posts:
…
Avoid The ‘Right Now’ Society →
The biggest challenge to individuals productivity is pressures from the ‘right now’ society, and we are all a part of it. The ‘right now’ society is everyone in this digital age wanting answers now,…
Researched Comparison of GTD Programs →
This is a huge list of various GTD programs, that can be broke down by operating systems. Nice compilation. 113 GTD Software Apps. Related posts:
Zen Apps: Desktop Tools to Organize Your…
Great Gmail Tip: Mute →
I had no clue this existed so thanks to Evan Williams for this one. This is so neat that I might try out Gmail again (instead of using Apple Mail). Related posts:
Minimalist Gmail
Lives – Only Disconnect →
Wyatt Mason for the NYTimes.com: Over the next two years, living there and then moving to another house more isolated still, we remained without Internet. I even wrote an online column three days a…
Quick Steps Looks Like Office 2010’s Killer... →
Kevin Purdy on Outlook 2010: But what’s really exciting to our email-handling reptile brains is the ability to create Quick Step buttons for any kind of email. You can create your own Send &…
Create a Learning Log to Remember Stuff →
Oscar at Freestyle Mind: The idea is to create a new entry every time you learn something new (assuming you want to remember it). If you are doing this on paper, you can just write the date on the…
Working Productively From Home →
Elle Phillips: First off, you have to get rid of what most of us “creative” types feel most comfortable with: unorganized clutter. Er… at least, that was one of my biggest hurdles! This is a great…
Digital vs. Analog Thought Capture →
As I talked about yesterday I use a hybrid approach to productivity, mixing and matching various elements from different ideas to create my own unique system. The most important aspect of…
Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering. →
Gretchen Rubin: One of my great realizations about happiness (and a point oddly under-emphasized by positive psychologists) is that outer order contributes to inner calm. But as much as most of us…
Something to Nothing →
Dave Damron: At first, this article may have sounded like extreme minimalism. But I am not trying to sway anyone in the direction of extreme minimalism. I am trying to focus your life on the…
No System Will Save You →
I have read about, and tried to, implement a lot of different productivity systems and there is one thing that I always take away from each system that I try: No one system is the solution for me,…
Feeling Down? 39 Ways to Boost Your Mood →
Gail Brenner: Our moods are like weather, constantly changing. When a cloud appears, it’s time to mobilize all your resources to help you get through it. Whether you feel blue, blah, or just…
Productivity Down! An Emergency Response Guide →
From OrganizeIT.co.uk: Emergency! You’ve fallen off the productivity wagon. You’re tired, you’re feeling down, you’re procrastinating, you might even be a little hungover, and you feel like…
Get WriteRoom for Free →
The MacHeist nanoBundle is a set of 6 freen Mac apps, among them in WriteRoom. I have talked about WriteRoom before, I love this program. Be sure to grab it while you can for free. No related…
5 Ways to Implement Minimalism →
David Damron: Implementing minimalism will free up more time than most people think and hopefully, I can get you to implement a few minimalist ways right now. I am linking to this because these…
6 Tips for Keeping Your Focus on the Web →
The Internet has changed the way we do everything, it is nothing short of amazing. However, the Internet’s productivity gains have come at the price of some serious distractions, which can…
Driving With the Radio Off →
The other day I wrote a post called “Regain Your Focus By Taking A Break” and my friend Jesse from The simple art of living simply left a comment on it that really struck a chord with me. He said…
The Questionable Value of the Real-Time Web →
I have talked many times about how distracting the Internet at large is. When reading a post by Daniel Tenner about the value real-time web he made this statement: Real-time updates are very useful…
Do You Do Your Most Important Work First? →
Erin from Unclutterer.com: Late Friday morning, our Internet connection bit the dust. A tree in the forest behind our house decided it no longer had the will to live and fell over, uprooting and…
Worry Only About the Problems in Your Circle of... →
Scott Belsky: Easy to say, HARD TO DO! As creative people, our passion for our work makes it more difficult to worry selectively. Why? The more passionate you are, the more protective and…
October 2009
79 posts
Note to Kindle Users →
As some of you are aware you can subscribe to this blog on your Kindle. I however do not own a kindle, so if you use a Kindle and subscribe to this blog please let me know. I am looking for…
How to Be a Productive Home Worker →
James Kendrick:
Dress the part. This is another way I make sure that I have the proper mindset for getting the job done. Sure, I can work in my PJs and robe all day, but I don’t. Dressing as I…
5 Simple Ways to Find More Time →
Natalie Christie: Deep down, we know that “I don’t have enough time” is really an excuse. Because there’s always enough time. Time is elastic. It flies when we’re having fun. It crawls when we…
Hating E-Mail →
Jonathan Littman: E-mails lack context and form. You send a serious note and get what we call in our book: The Non-response — either no-reply or a meaningless “got it” or “thanks” or “that’s…
David Allen on Setting Priorities →
David Allen: Ever have the sense that you don’t have time to deal with the secondarily important things because there are so many fires, crises and other unplanned urgencies? Well, where do you…