Bringing in the Harvest

To all our American readers, I and the rest of the Lifehack team wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings today.I wanted to avoid the typical, clichéd, count-your-blessings-what-are-you-thankful-for posts. You all know that. Grade school kids know that. Heck, the unborn already know that. So let’s take it as a given that you’re deeply considering your blessings and what you have to be thankful for today. At least during the commercials… Continue reading

November 26 | By Dustin | Tagged: | 4 comments»

Could You Raise Your Rates?

November 25 By Susan | 7 comments»

Let's get real: when you work on an hourly basis, there are two ways to increase income: raise your rates or increase the number of working hours. I'm assuming you don't really want to spend more time working, so let's talk about something that a lot of people don't like talking about: raising your rates. Raising your rates is a way to increase your business income that is often difficult… Continue reading

Bringing in the Harvest

November 26 | By Dustin | Tagged: achievement, holiday, project, success, thanksgiving | 4 comments»

Could You Raise Your Rates?

November 25 | By Susan | Tagged: business, entrepreneur, freelancing, income, rates, work-from-home | 7 comments»

Games for Thinkers

Pastimes to Challenge and Entertain Thinkers relish the challenge and stimulation of brilliant games. They enjoy games for the pure thrill of exercising their minds and judgments in pursuit of victory. You can take pleasure in any number of great games. Here is a selection of recommended pastimes. Add them to your Christmas list: 1. Chess Chess is the king of games. It represents a pure cerebral struggle between two minds. It teaches… Continue reading

November 24 | By Paul | Tagged: challenge, charade, chess, game, hhobby, pastime, poker, thinker | 19 comments»

Butterflies in the Mind: Taking the Long View

This is not a post about teaching, but teaching is what I do and what I know best, and this post is about thinking about what we do.People often wonder if I find it frustrating to be a university instructor. I teach topics that students resist a lot – in Women’s Studies, I teach with an explicitly political edge, challenging students to face up to the realities of social and… Continue reading

November 23 | By Dustin | Tagged: future, long-view, meaning, purpose, teaching, work | 18 comments»

Rethink the Season of Giving

Next Thursday, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and other charities across the US will be fully staffed with smiling-faced, happy volunteers eagerly doling out food and other assistance to those whose need is greatest. Families across the country will come together in the spirit of giving, and will return home beaming with pride and contentment, knowing deep in their hearts that they have made a difference. It’s the finest side of… Continue reading

November 20 | By Dustin | Tagged: charity, christmas, giving, holiday, season, thanksgiving, volunteering | 14 comments»

10 Best Productivity Books of 2009

Granted, the year’s not done yet, but publishers start to slow down new releases right about now, so it’s not likely we’ll see another contender for “best of 2009” until January. Plus, Christmas is coming up, and I wanted to give you plenty of time to read some of these books before you give copies to your friends and relatives.But really? It’s never the wrong time to recommend a list… Continue reading

November 18 | By Dustin | Tagged: book, book review, chance, gift, gtd, luck, motivation | 21 comments»

Take a Vacation from Your Email!

Considering how useful – revolutionary, even – email is as a communication tool, it can also be an incredible drain on productivity. If you’re anything like me, you have discussion listservs, newsletters, Google alerts, Facebook updates, blog comments, advertisements, automated backups, reminders, and all manner of other stuff pouring into your inbox all the time – all in addition to emails from actual people actually trying to communicate with you.Of… Continue reading

November 16 | By Dustin | Tagged: email, inbox, procrastination, time-management | 9 comments»

Stationery Pr0n: Japanese Pens and More from JetPens.com

Geeks tend to love pens, notebooks, and office gadgets. Some of the most popular posts here at Lifehack have been about pens and other stationery. Let us loose in a Staples or Office Max and we're like kids in a candy shop. We can't pass a stationery shop without feeling at least a twinge of desire – and usually without dropping some of our hard-earned money inside. And of course… Continue reading

November 13 | By Dustin | Tagged: office-supply, pen, pen-and-paper, pencil, stationery | 16 comments»

Searching for a Shared Virtual Workspace?

In my coaching practice, I am increasingly looking for ways to work with my clients on shared documents and projects online. Pretty simple right? You’d think so. I went to the first two places that I knew offered some or all of these services: Google & Microsoft. Big disappointment. Continue reading

November 12 | By Clemens | Tagged: collaboration, google, microsoft, online, online-app, software, virtual workspace, web-2.0 | 26 comments»

Ask Reader: What’s your dream iPhone app?

Stepcase Lifehack readers and other lifehackers, we are reaching out to hear what types of applications you guys would like to see on your iPhone. Think of it as your dream iPhone app. In the past, Stepcase Apps were developed based solely on our team needs. However, as we continue our development of mobile apps for the iPhone, we’d like to get our readers involved and see what kind… Continue reading

November 11 | By Angus | Tagged: iphone, Productivity, stepcase | 19 comments»

Review: Xobni Extends Outlook’s View, But at a Cost

Outlook is a well-established presence on the business desktop, providing millions with their email, calendar, contacts, and tasks. It’s such an institution, in fact, that when Microsoft radically revamped the Office suite’s interface in 2007, it left Outlook largely unchanged.Although it’s big and sluggish, there’s no denying that Outlook does what it’s supposed to do. Not quickly or with style, but consistently and effectively nonetheless. The thing is, though, that… Continue reading

November 11 | By Dustin | Tagged: email, outlook, review, software, tool, xobni | 11 comments»

Information Pollution Alert! Living with Data Smog

We are a nation awash in data smog. This is more than just information overload -- it's not just that there's too much information out there for one person to adequately encompass, it's that there's too much data out there to even make out the information clearly, let alone to evaluate and act on that information.What's worse is that unlike normal smog, which is the unintentional byproduct of our need… Continue reading

November 10 | By Dustin | Tagged: bias, data-smog, filter, information, information-overload, news, science, truth | 14 comments»

Put Up Your Hand If You Ever Lie

Put up Your Hand if You Ever Lie.If your hand went up, then we now know you’re a liar. If it didn’t go up then we know you’re an even bigger liar.When asked the question “are you a liar?” nearly 97% of people answer “no”. When the remaining 3% (self-confessed liars) are subjected to questions calibrating their real, rather than perceived, honesty, they turn out to be, on average, 28… Continue reading

November 9 | By Craig | Tagged: honesty, lying, truthfulness | 16 comments»

11 Ways to Think Outside the Box

Thinking outside the box is more than just a business cliché. It means approaching problems in new, innovative ways; conceptualizing problems differently; and understanding your position in relation to any particular situation in a way you’d never thought of before. Ironically, its a cliché that means to think of clichéd situations in ways that aren’t clichéd.We’re told to “think outside the box” all the time, but how exactly do we… Continue reading

November 6 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, innovation, problem-solving, solution | 21 comments»

12 Lists That Help You Get Things Done

At the center of just about every personal productivity system are lists – GTD has it’s context lists, Pomodoro has it’s action inventory and daily to-do lists, todoodlist has, well, the todoodlist, and so on.But there are a lot of different kinds of lists besides your task or to-do list that can help you be more productive. Lists in general are powerful tools – open-ended, constantly growing… Continue reading

November 5 | By Dustin | Tagged: checklist, list, online-tool, pen-and-paper, reference, software, task list, todo | 29 comments»