155 Shares Ten minutes ago, here’s what was going on my life: I was watching TV – “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” to be exact. I was being yelled at by my friend, who wants to go play golf. I was surfing the Web, trying to find the perfect man-bag (because those are totally allowed now). And, in the midst of it all, I was “at work,” doing some of the things I had to do for my summer internship. Now, most productivity experts today would yell at me about this, and tell me... More »
2.5K Shares Most of my free time, except when I’m doing it on purpose, tends to come in short blocks. I rarely have 2 hours free, but might, over the course of a work day, have those same two hours in twelve ten-minute bursts. I realized recently that, for the most part, I waste all of this free time. Since it’s such a short period of time, it seems to not strike me as worth using productively. I spend those ten minute periods doing things like staring aimlessly at the computer screen, picking my... More »
I wrote a post here last week called “Can’t-Miss Marketing: Just Ask” that got a lot of interesting responses. Sure, people said, asking is all well and good, but what does “asking well” actually mean? It’s an interesting, and important, question to consider. If, as I’ve seen time and time again, good things really come to those who ask, what do they do right? What traits do they have in common that make those people more likely to be successful? And what differentiates the no’s from the yes’s? In my experience, it... More »
58 Shares In the year since I started blogging, I’ve gotten a bunch of freelance writing gigs and regular jobs writing all over the Web. But, initially, no one offered them to me. I had this blog I was proud of, a super-cool design, and yet the offers didn’t flood in. Crazy, right? Tell me about it. I finally decided that if I wanted something to happen, I had to go and get it. So I did the simplest thing I could think of: I just asked for it. I wrote to a bunch... More »
88 Shares David Allen’s Getting Things Done has been a huge help to me as I’ve created processes and systems for many of the things I do, be it writing, other work, or just budgeting my time so I can spend more of it doing the things I love. The problem with GTD, the snag I’ve hit time and time again trying to implement its practices, is that it’s just so darn complicated. I need 43 folders, multiple inboxes, a bunch of project lists, next action lists, and a whole lot more. That might... More »
232.6K Shares I bought a Moleskine notebook a long time ago, and for a while it got zero use. My productivity system is totally digital and Web-based, as is my personal journal. I bought the Moleskine because it looked awesome, and because so many other people found it useful. The Moleskine, though, made its way into my pocket or backpack all the time, because of one simple use I found for it: a list manager. Not a list of things to do, or people to call – different lists. The Moleskine is my perfect... More »
81 Shares Wouldn’t it be nice if ideas came to you when they were supposed to? You sit down, decide to be creative, and boom: you’re creative. The juices flow, the ideas are endless, and your brilliance just runneth over onto the page. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. For most of us, our creative and inspirational moments come at random, unpredictable, and often totally inconvenient times. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and that great idea could strike at any moment. That said, the best thing we can do is be prepared at... More »
113 Shares I’m one of those people who’s terrible at saying no. I take on too many projects at once, and spend too much of my time doing things I’d rather not be. I get stuff done, but it’s not always the best I can do, or the best way I can spend my time. That’s why my newest goal, both as a professional and a person, is to be a quitter. Being a quitter isn’t being someone who gives up, who doesn’t see important things through to the end. I aspire to be... More »
360 Shares I write for a number of different publications and websites, largely about the same thing – technology and the Web. Much of what I write follows a fairly similar pattern, and fits into a relatively narrow range of subjects. I love writing that kind of thing, and enjoy doing it every time I sit down to do so. Or at least, I did until about three weeks ago. Then, one morning, I sat down to write, and couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to do less in that moment than... More »
173 Shares When I first got into the whole “systematic productivity” thing, I did a ton of reading on the subject. One of the things I kept coming across was people discussing which notebook and which pen they used in their own systems. I would read these, all holier-than-thou, and think something to the effect of, “a pen is a pen. Is a pen. Is a pen. Who cares?” I was WRONG. Over the last few years, and particularly in the last few months, I’ve started to realize that the particular pen you use,... More »
214 Shares One of the keys to any productivity system is to actually put things into the system. Who knew? Obvious though it may seem, many of us have trouble taking the time to enter our thoughts into our task-manager, to-do list, or organizational system. This can happen for any number of reasons – no paper nearby, no easy way to record your ideas – but our productivity can be hurt by not inputting everything into our system so we can deal with it properly. What should live on paper lives in our brain,... More »
13 Shares Like it or not, much of our success comes due to the help of other people. The opportunities you get, jobs you hold, or fun and useful things you’re able to do often come because someone else was persuaded to bring you along. To take advantage of these opportunities, however, you’ve got to be able to ask, and ask well. Learning how to ask well, how to apply well, and how to persuade someone to give you a chance is a critical feature of being successful in any field. Thankfully, it’s not... More »
64 Shares There’s a popular quote floating around productivity circles that says, “eat a live toad in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Many people apply this to getting things done, saying that if you tackle your most difficult and overbearing task first, nothing else will seem so difficult. I disagree. The way I see it, the thought of having to eat a live toad is going to make me do anything and everything to put off eating the toad. The simple fact of having this... More »
30.2K Shares One of the biggest reasons for the pervasive clutter in my apartment is a lack of time to deal with it. It takes longer to put a shirt away than it does to just throw it on the floor, so onto the floor it goes. As long as there’s a path from the door to my bed, I tend not to ignore and perpetuate the clutter. I’m increasingly realizing, though, that all the out-of-place stuff in my life can become a huge time drain. I spend precious minutes and hours looking for... More »
