Posts Tagged ‘capture’

10 Great Notebooks Productive People Love

Although I'm going on 10 years as a PDA/Smartphone user (Palm IIIe - Handspring Visor Neo - Treo 180g - Zire 72 - Treo 680 - Blackberry 8310), I love notebooks. A good pen on nice paper makes me much happier than the feel of a stylus on a plastic screen or the clickety-clack of a thumb-board. My personal notebook inventory consists mainly of three kinds of notebooks:

A pocket-sized

May 5 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: capture, notebook, notepad, paper | 41 comments»

5 Reasons to Pay Good Money for a Moleskine

After posting twice last week about Moleskine notebooks, I got several comments complaining about the high price of the notebooks and their perceived pretentiousness, with one person even asking somewhat accusingly if we'd made some sort of business partnership with the notebook company (we did -- we're promoting their contest and exhibition, which is why I thought it would be neat to write some posts about Moleskines). They're fair questions: a… Continue reading

April 30 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: capture, moleskine, note-taking, notebook, value | 69 comments»

9 Places to Always Keep Pen and Paper Handy

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… Continue reading

April 21 2009 | By David | Tagged: capture, inbox, notebook, organization, paper, pen, ubiquitous capture | 24 comments»

13 Ways of Looking at an Index Card

Ah, the lowly index card. So basic, so common, so cheap -- so useful. Index cards are one of the most versatile parts of the productive person's toolkit -- small enough to travel anywhere, cheap enough to keep hundreds or even thousands on hand at all times, and basic enough that one never hesitates to mark up, scribble on, cut up, or otherwise torture them. The number of uses for index… Continue reading

April 10 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: capture, habit, index-card, photography, task management, tickler-file, wiki | 16 comments»

Sync Your Brain And Your System Using a Mind Dump

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… Continue reading

February 24 2009 | By David | Tagged: brain, capture, creativity, idea, mind-dump, trigger, weekly review | 11 comments»

The Power of Intentional Attention

Are you taking it all in? That is, are you sure that you’re noticing everything that matters to you, or could matter to you if only you’d noticed it? Could you do more with your life – or just enjoy it more – if you were more actively engaged in the world around you, in your day-to-day activities, your conversations, and the beauty of your everyday surroundings? Most importantly, do you… Continue reading

January 19 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: attention, capture, creativity, intention, value | 13 comments»

Hunt, Gather, and Build: A Review of “Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method”

Gerald M. Weinberg has written dozens of books and hundreds of articles on computers, technology, consulting, and the craft of composition. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method is an excellent survey of the methods he has used in order to produce this voluminous output. The comprehensive table of contents provides the reader with a clear, useful map of what lies ahead, and the exercises sprinkled throughout this short, readable book… Continue reading

January 19 2009 | By Art | Tagged: capture, creativity, gerald-weinberg, writer, writing | 2 comments»

When Are You Most Creative?

When are you at your creative peak? That is, what time of day do ideas flow most easily for you? What activities bring your best ideas to the surface where you can most easily gather them up? A recent survey by the Crown Plaza hotel group suggests that certain times and activities are more conducive to creative thinking than others [PDF download]. The most creative time, they found, was… Continue reading

November 10 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: capture, creativity, idea, rhythm, schedule | 17 comments»

Back to Basics: Capture Your Ideas

Does this sound familiar? You’re slowly drifting off to sleep when you come up with a great line for the song or paper you’ve been working on all day. It’s such a great idea, in fact, that you just know you’ll remember it in the morning. Happy to have finally come up with the perfect line, you nod off, smiling and peaceful. In the morning, of course, it’s gone. All that… Continue reading

July 4 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: capture, idea, inbox, memory, moelskine, notebook, processing, todo | 24 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»

4 Random Tips to Get More Done with Your PC

I’ve had several challenges in the last couple weeks, some of which required some creative solutions. Since some of you might find yourself facing the same challenges at some point, I thought I’d share this motley collection of tips with you.

Jott to Evernote

If you read Joel’s post, 7 Ways to Use Evernote last month, you already know… Continue reading

June 18 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: audio, capture, evernote, google-docs, jott, note, powerpoint, spellcheck, tip, voice-recognition, word-count | 15 comments»