As we head into the final days of our 12 Days of Giveaways promo, we’ve got some cool analog tools to offer. Today we bring you the excellent design and craftsmanship of Helvetindex Cards, which will not only help 5 lucky Lifehack readers get things done — but will give them some…

Today is another day of Lifehack’s 12 Days of Giveaways where we feature some of the best productivity services, apps, and products that you can get your hands on. We really appreciate all of the entries so far this week and last, and after today’s awesome prizes from the David Allen Company we only…

Hi. My name is Dustin, and I’m addicted to notepads. I first realized I was addicted when I found myself prowling office supply stores in the wee hours of the afternoon, trying to score a college-ruled composition book. Pretty soon, I couldn’t go anywhere without my works – a battered red Moleskine and a black…

I’m a few days late, but with the new year upon us, I’ve decided to inaugurate a new Moleskine. The old one is… well, it’s not good. The binding is broken, pages are out, and it’s just about full anyway. Plus, I’ve got a saucy new Moleskine in fire engine red that’s eager to…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

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…