What’s the number one most effective way to make more time in your day? Get other people to do the things you’d normally be doing. Many people complain that there aren’t enough hours in the day when the problem is simply that there are too many tasks in their day that could easily be given…

Most articles about starting a business cover planning. Creating your business plan. Creating your marketing plan. Creating page upon page of plans, plans with great intentions and perhaps excellent potential for success. There’s nothing wrong with planning itself; if there was, I’m sure we wouldn’t see such an emphasis on it in business literature. But not…

There’s a lot of information out there on achieving work-life balance, and a common productivity suggestion is that you structure your workday. I’ve found that one invaluable tool for getting these two things dealt with effectively is knowing not just how much work you have to do of what kind each day, but how long…

I’ve recently had a very troublesome realization about my line of work. I’m the managing editor for a few websites and a contributing editor for a few others. Websites happen to be on the Internet; a job that revolves around websites tends to require that you use the Internet. The troublesome part is that the Internet…

Lifehack’s theme for April is productivity without power. I don’t know about you but those words instantly bring one word to mind: paper. Whether it’s a Moleskine, index cards, a regular notebook or just loose-leaf, paper can be one of the most flexible tools in your arsenal. Let’s take a look at ten ways you…

The concept of “social proof” (or informational social influence, if you’re a sadist for typing) tells us that, often subconsciously, individuals will look to the other people around them in ambiguous social situations to determine the appropriate way to behave. It’s a result of the subconscious mind assuming that those around us are better informed…

It’s strange that for a society that’s so focused on making money and owning assets, we have some pretty unusual and downright scary approaches to the stuff and how it comes into our possession. Money doesn’t grow on trees, but we give our children and ourselves the idea that it’s nearly unattainable to make enough…

It is unfortunate that people don’t know as much as they should about intellectual property rights. One day recently I briefly checked in to Twitter to see a discussion on the matter — a discussion that was propagating misinformed ideas. You might see copyright as a topic that’s only relevant to artists and engineers, but…

On Monday I wrote about developing the freedom to travel anywhere, anytime without getting fired. For many people, putting yourself in a position where you are free to go at any time and stay in the places you’ve always wanted to stay is a completely new experience and mindset. While it’s certainly not for…

It was the 28th of January this year, early in the morning. My wife had just pushed me out of bed so I’d get ready in time for our flight. It wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, but I was nervous: this was the first time I was going to be working full-time hours…

By trade and training I am a writer and editor. I never had any education in managing people until I received the best kind: being thrust into the middle of it and being forced to learn without any preformed conceptions from some old tradition of management that academics espouse. I’m not belittling education. It would…

The art of coffee making might not seem like the sort of topic you’d expect to see in a publication like this one. But there’s no reason that it shouldn’t be covered: we use caffeine as a productivity and lifestyle tool, using it to wake up in the mornings, keep ourselves going longer than usual…

When lay-offs and redundancies are on the rise, it generally follows that people trying to make a living from home, working for themselves, or over the Internet are on the increase as well. So it stands to reason that as we speak, thousands of people are sitting in their new home office (quite possibly the…

There was once a time when my favorite RSS reader cost a fair but not insignificant price and the open source alternative wasn’t up-to-snuff. I won’t name any names, though you can probably deduce their identities by ruffling through some articles I wrote before I switched to a decent web-based solution (not all of us…

In my role as editor at FreelanceSwitch, something I see a lot is freelancers interested in taking their business a step further – trading in their status as a freelancer and sole trader in order to start a company or firm in their profession. I also personally know of a lot of people who…