Posts Tagged ‘back-to-basics’

The 80 Best Lifehacks of 2008

And so we arrive yet again at the end of another year. 2008 was at best a mixed bag – while the world was electrified by the US election and it’s promise of change, the global economy was shaken to its core as a decade of financial mismanagement and willful blindness finally caught up with us. Gas prices spiked, leading us all to ask some difficult questions about sustainability, efficiency… Continue reading

December 31 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: 2008, achievement, app, back-to-basics, Communication, creativity, goals, gtd, habit, iphone, networking, new year, Productivity, review, success, web | 39 comments»

Back to Basics: Procrastination – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Procrastination is very literally the opposite of productivity. To produce something is to pull it forward, while to procrastinate is to push it forward -- to tomorrow, to next week, or ultimately to never.Procrastination fills us with shame -- we curse ourselves for our laziness, our inability to focus on the task at hand, our tendency to be easily led into easier and more immediate gratifications. And with good reason… Continue reading

September 19 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, concepting, idea, planning, procrastination, task | 24 comments»

Back to Basics: The Big Picture

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the details of any productivity system, all the fiddly little bits that fit together just so. But how does everything you do add up to a life? Or does it?Thinking about the big picture too much can get in the way of our day-to-day lives – you don’t want to be dreaming about your life 20 years from now while you’re trying to… Continue reading

September 12 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: 50000-feet-view, back-to-basics, gtd, life, meaning, mission | 12 comments»

Back to Basics: The Tickler File

A long-time standby in the productivity realm, a tickler file is a reminder system intended to act as an adjunct to your regular calendaring and scheduling system. Although there are several different kinds of tickler file, the most well-known (thanks largely to David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders) is the 43-folders system, with 31 numbered “day” folders and 12 labeled with… Continue reading

September 5 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, file, folders, office, organization, reminder, tickler-file | 9 comments»

Back to Basics: Reminders

No matter how well you set up your todo list and calendar, you aren't going to get things done unless you have a reliable way of reminding yourself to actually do them. Anyone who's spent an hour writing up the perfect grocery list, only to realize at the store that they forgot to bring the list, understands the importance of reminders.Reminders of some sort or another are what… Continue reading

August 22 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, calendar, gtd, memory, reminder, todo-list, trigger | 18 comments»

Back to Basics: Projects

One of the things that is so hard to grasp about “next actions” or “tasks” is that they are single actions – buy something, call someone, go somewhere, look something up. In and of themselves, they have no end goal other than their own immediate completion.People don’t think like that way, for the most part, and it is the challenge of productivity experts like David Allen or Stephen Covey… Continue reading

August 15 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, goal, gtd, motivation, organization, project, task | 16 comments»

Back to Basics: Your Weekly Review

No matter how organized you are, how together your system is, how careful you are about processing your inbox, making a task list, and working your calendar, if you don’t stop every now and again to look at the “big picture”, you’re going to get overwhelmed. You end up simply responding to what’s thrown at you, instead of proactively creating the conditions of your life.Almost every… Continue reading

August 1 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, self, weekly review | 30 comments»

Back to Basics: Your Calendar

One of the first things people do when they make the decision to “get organized” is buy some kind of calendar. It might be a dayplanner, a desktop “blotter-pad” calendar, a Palm or Blackberry, or some other kind of device or system they can schedule all their appointments and obligations in.Most of us instinctively understand that the key to good time management is knowing where to be and what to… Continue reading

July 25 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, calendar, gtd, outlook, schedule | 23 comments»

Back to Basics: Your Task List

Everyone makes a task list (or “todo list”) at least now and again. Usually, we wait until we’re overwhelmed with stuff to do, and then we’ll sit down and list everything we need to get done in the next day or two. Then, one by one, we go through the items on our list, do them, and cross them off.We do this because it feels better when we do. One… Continue reading

July 18 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, gtd, list, task, todo | 49 comments»

Back to Basics: Setting Priorities

It is easy, in the onrush of life, to become a reactor – to respond to everything that comes up, the moment it comes up, and give it your undivided attention until the next thing comes up.This is, of course, a recipe for madness. The feeling of loss of control over what you do and when is enough to drive you over the edge, and if that doesn’t get you… Continue reading

July 11 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, covey, goals, priorities, procrastination, quadrant | 15 comments»

Back to Basics: Processing

In my first installment of “Back to Basics”, I discussed the importance of your inbox – a single place for collecting all of your inputs for processing. In this installment, we’ll discuss the processing itself – how to turn inputs into action.

In principle, processing is simple. All it means is making a decision about what to do with every piece of information that enters your… Continue reading

June 27 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, decision-making, gtd, processing | 5 comments»

Back to Basics: Your Inbox

This is the first post in an ongoing series I’m calling “back to Basics”, a “refresher course” in personal productivity. For people just starting to grapple with issues of productivity, it will serve as an introduction to the basic concepts that underlie much of what we write here at Lifehack. For more advanced readers, it will serve as a reminder of what you thought you were setting out to do… Continue reading

June 20 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: back-to-basics, capture, collection, gtd, inbox | 23 comments»