Earlier this week we touched on NaNoWriMo, and one of the things that plagues those taking part in the “novel-writing in 30 days” process is getting through the blocks so that you can get the book written in such a short time frame…

Ebb and flow. Contraction and expansion. Highs and lows. It’s all about the cycles of life. The entire course of our life follows this up and down pattern of more and then less. Our days flow this way, each following a pattern of more energy, then less energy, more creativity and periods of greater focus…

Photo by Marloes Most people are unexceptional at following up: it sounds obvious, but it shouldn’t be this way, because followup (I spell it as a single word) is key to combining smaller achievements into bigger ones. Actively following up on conversation is also a trait of people who’re successful, focused, and relentless about living…

Are you happier at your job, or during your free time? Unless you’ve followed the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi you would probably be surprised at the actual answer. He conducted studies which recorded peoples current levels of happiness at random points both during work and off-hours. The surprising conclusion? People felt happier on…

Writing to-do lists and keeping a schedule may keep you organized, but does it really help you get more done? I believe that organization is important, but what you really need is focus. Being able to sit down and concentrate intensely on your work for a few hours. Even a half hour…

You know what it feels like to be completely engaged in a task. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term flow to describe this state. Flow is crucial to performing any intellectual task. But how do you achieve it? Hack Your Tasks You won’t get flow with the carrot or the stick. External pressures are…

The day has come. If you think email, IM, blogs, RSS, MySpace are the king of interruptions – try again. Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users introduces a service called Twitter which is basically a community answering one simple question: “What are you doing?” Not that I am impressed by the service, but the article…

Nick at blog Life 2.0 releases a small eBook (or huge essay) called ‘Little book of Flow’, which shows how to get into the state of flow and be extremely productive and getting things done. ‘Flow’ as introduced multiple times before, it is a state when we are doing something really enjoy -…

One of the things I’ve found when listing out tasks and actions, is the difficulty of organizing a list into a logical flow. Most of my day is filled with tasks that I need or want to complete in a specific order, and I wanted a simple way to map out the flow of my…

When is your productivity peak? For me it must be when I am fully focused into the task at hand – i.e. when I am in flow. Michael Buffington shares his ways of getting into the state of flow. He mentions couple of ways, mainly on isolation, environment and time: – Pepsi. Sad but true, the…

From Ask MetaFilter, there is an interesting question on how to find ‘flow’ in the more routine things and tasks. Why is it interesting? I never thought of one can optimize the experience of a routine task, such as commuting or household work: … My question is to those who might be familiar with his work…