83 Shares (Photo by brungrrl) The end of the year is always a good time for me to review my resolutions and take stock of what I have done over the past year. However, for some people, reviewing New Year resolutions can be a painful affair. Some of you may have goals unaccomplished. A resolution review is just a stark reminder of how little you have achieved. You may feel guilty and disappointed about your lack of discipline to follow through on your goals. As much as possible, you will want to avoid being... More »
488 Shares Statistics show that only about 15% of New Years Resolutions are kept. With an 85% failure rate, it’s no wonder that the amount of resolutions made is dropping. You wouldn’t buy a product that is defective 85% of the time, so why buy into the annual hype about resolutions? A strategy that fails over four fifths of the time is broken. The question is, how do you fix it? Most resolutions come in the form of habit changes. Quitting smoking, hitting the gym and staying organized are all based on routine habits.... More »
41 Shares I don’t believe in resolutions. The idea that a trick of the calendar should be the driving force for real change in my life seems silly. And yet, there’s no denying that a year is a good block of time to think with — long enough to carry out big projects and short enough to keep the end-goal in sight. Plus, a year is a good block of time to look at to get a “big picture” view of your life — what you’re doing wrong, what you’re doing right, what you’d... More »
76 Shares It’s coming up on that time of year again. You know, the time where you seriously commit to the same resolution that you seriously committed to last year… before life got in the way and it evaporated into thin air. Depending on who you ask, up to 85% percent of all New Year’s resolutions involved some element of lifestyle change, be it weight loss, exercise, better nutrition, improved life-balance or more sleep. And, of those, nearly 50% have been broken by the end of January, while 90% bite the dust by June.... More »
Last week I asked for your best last-miute Christmas gift suggestion and once again you came through. Usually I give my response to the question first, but I’ve already done that with my Lifehack Last-Minute Gift List for Productive (and Potentially Productive) People last Wednesday. There’s not a lot of time left for Christmas shopping, but there’s plenty here for someone still shopping, even today! Here’s some of the responses from last week thata might still be doable:
3.7K Shares 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 the job, even though they said they would rather be at home.
33 Shares With less than a week left before Christmas, I thought it would be a good idea to list some of lifehack.org’s favorite gift ideas. Everything on this list would get a hearty smile from the productive person on your gift list. Most of the items shown here are available through Amazon, for fast delivery by Christmas if you hurry. Links here lead to Amazon.com and prices are given in US Dollars (insert deflating US dollar joke here, e.g. “divide by 48,000 to get price in your local currency”).
112 Shares Last week, I asked lifehack.org readers, “What advice would you offer to a recent college graduate entering your field?” The response was great, with a dozen readers offering excellent advice not just for their fields, but for college graduates faced with the prospect of building a life as well. My own advice follows the same pattern; although directed at future academics, it is applicable to anyone looking to enter almost any career: NETWORK!
119 Shares David Allen’s book Getting Things Done has become a classic of personal productivity, but not everyone finds his simple “what’s the next action” philosophy fully compatible with their lives. Allen himself admits that the book is directed specifically at business executives and may not fit everyone’s needs perfectly, and sites like lifehack.org, 43 Folders, and others in the personal productivity blogosphere, have dedicated a lot of time and pixels to working out some of the tweaks and workarounds needed to make Allen’s GTD system apply to their readers’ lives. Leo Babauta has... More »
252 Shares “If you wanna run with the big dogs, you’ve gotta get off the porch.” This was the sage advice given to me some years ago as I considered my first entrepreneurial venture. You’ve got to take risks. Be gutsy. All of which led me to wonder what guts really is. And, more importantly, if you don’t have it, can you get it?
154 Shares You drink to much coffee and you know it. You have to cut back but you have tried and it is just too hard. You succeed for a day or two, but something always happens and you are back to where you started. The problem may be that you are trying to give up all of your habit, not just the negative parts. There are good parts to bad habits. You don’t have to give all of a habit away.
86 Shares Sometimes it seems like your life just isn’t your own anymore – work, family, and other obligations swallow it up to such an extent that we often look back and wonder where all the time went! No wonder, then, that many of us feel as if life is just passing us by, and we can do no more than helplessly watch. However, with these tips and a little willpower, you can create time to center yourself and face the world with renewed enthusiasm. Use your commute time The most obvious opportunity to... More »
19 Shares Natives to pastoral areas know what it looks like. What was once a pasture with cows now looks like a small village — only the homes are anything but small. These McMansions are often well over 4,000 square feet large with plenty of luxury amenities for the average sized family. Interestingly, these mega-homes may not be all the rage in our future suburban landscapes.
25 Shares Today is “Black Friday”, the busiest shopping day of the year in the US and the official start of the Christmas buying season. If you have kids, that most likely means a new crop of the latest toys and video games. The wholesale (maybe I should say “retail”) celebration of consumerism makes a lot of people anxious, with good reason. What kind of values are we modeling for our children when we embrace consumption so greedily during the Christmas season? And yet, children outgrow toys. Their tastes change, their abilities change, and... More »
5.4K Shares Your mind is racing, your heart is like a time bomb. You can’t think straight and you feel like you will explode if you don’t relax. Then you remember the standard advice: “Take all of your senses to a grassy meadow. Smell the flowers, listen to the insects, feel the grass, watch the birds flying above you.” What a load of rubbish.
