11 Ways to Think Outside the Box

Thinking outside the box is more than just a business cliché. It means approaching problems in new, innovative ways; conceptualizing problems differently; and understanding your position in relation to any particular situation in a way you’d never thought of before. Ironically, its a cliché that means to think of clichéd situations in ways that aren’t clichéd. We’re told to “think outside the box” all the time, but how exactly do we… Continue reading

November 6 | By Dustin | Tagged: | 11 comments»

12 Lists That Help You Get Things Done

November 5 By Dustin | 16 comments»

At the center of just about every personal productivity system are lists – GTD has it’s context lists, Pomodoro has it’s action inventory and daily to-do lists, todoodlist has, well, the todoodlist, and so on. But there are a lot of different kinds of lists besides your task or to-do list that can help you be more productive. Lists in general are powerful tools – open-ended, constantly growing… Continue reading

The Perfect Breakup?

Someone on our Skribit page (that’s the little widget on the right-hand side of Lifehack’s pages where you can make requests, which I or other Lifehack writers look at for ideas) requested a post on how to act when you break up with someone. While it’s never easy to break up with someone (assuming it’s someone you actually do like), I feel like I’ve been through enough breakups to… Continue reading

October 12 | By Dustin | Tagged: breakup, dating, love, relationship, romance, spouse | 17 comments»

Scoring 100% in Time Management

"Most people who attempt to learn a new time management system fail." I can't prove the above statement with hard facts, but I have a sense that it's true, based on my personal experience and observations. If success is defined as 100% successful implementation, then that statistic is most certainly true. On the other hand, perhaps 99% of the people who take a time management program put down the book, or drive… Continue reading

October 9 | By Francis | Tagged: gtd, habit, time, time-management | 18 comments»

Roll Your Own TwitPic-like Media Hosting Using Posterous

One of the more useful aspects of Twitter is the ability to quickly broadcast images, videos, and other media to your followers, making it an effective “mo-blogging” (mobile blogging) platform. Twitter doesn’t have this ability built in, though; sending pictures or video clips to Twitter requires using third-party services like TwitPic. Most Twitter clients will automatically upload images to these third-party hosts and add a link to your tweets… Continue reading

October 8 | By Dustin | Tagged: image, lifestreaming, online, Technology, twitter, video, web-2.0 | 8 comments»

Face Adversity with a Smile

I told my friend Graham that I often cycle the two miles from my house to the town centre but unfortunately there is a big hill on the route. He replied, ‘You mean fortunately.’ He explained that I should be glad of the extra exercise that the hill provided. My attitude to the hill has now changed. I used to grumble as I approached it but now I… Continue reading

October 7 | By Paul | Tagged: adversity, attitude, bader, confront, hardship, keller, positive, problem, thinking | 13 comments»

Self Doubt: A Disease that Doesn’t Discriminate!

What if… What if I forget the words when I stand up there? What if I go completely blank? What if I totally suck? What if I look or sound stupid? What if they hate me? What if I’m not pretty enough? Cool enough? Smart enough? Qualified enough? Experienced enough? Talented enough? Thin enough? What if they see through my act? What if they discover what I’m really like? What if… Continue reading

October 6 | By Craig | Tagged: fear, procrastination, self, self-doubt, worry | 17 comments»

The Work of Worry

I admit, I'm a worrier. Always have been – when I was a teenager, I used to lay awake nights worrying about… well, whatever teenagers worry about. In college, I used to worry about classes, girls, money – and eventually about the fact that I was laying up nights worrying instead of sleeping. Today, I worry about… well, I worry about the same things, I guess, except now I'm on… Continue reading

October 5 | By Dustin | Tagged: anxiety, energy, organization, procrastination, work, worry | 24 comments»

Fear of Flying: Facing the Fear of Success

Believe it or not, one of the most paralyzing fears is the fear of success. That's right, the fear of achieving one's goals. It seems insane, because of course, we want to reach our goals, right? I mean, don't we? The short answer is that yes, we do want to accomplish our goals, but that it's complicated. There are several factors that complicate our relationship with achievement. For example, we may… Continue reading

October 2 | By Dustin | Tagged: achievement, failure, fear, goal, project, success | 9 comments»

Is Google Ready to Handle Your Business? (Part 2 of 2)

In part 1 of this post, I discussed the communications offerings that Google offers and the role they might play for small- and medium-sized businesses. In this follow-up, I will cover their productivity and promotional services, ranging from the productivity suite Google Docs to the free hosted blogging service Blogger. While Google's communications tools are generally quite excellent, their productivity and promotion tools are much more a mixed bag… Continue reading

October 1 | By Dustin | Tagged: business, business-tools, google, online, software, web-2.0, web-apps | 5 comments»

Is Google Ready to Handle Your Business? (Part 1 of 2)

As a big fan of online, Web 2.0 applications, I've long followed Google's ever-increasing stable of web-based services, from Google Docs to Google Voice to Google Reader. Their large and growing collection of online applications and services make it increasingly possible to consider running the bulk of your business using free (or low-cost) Google applications. Even big businesses have gotten in to the act, with mega-corporations like GE giving Google's… Continue reading

September 30 | By Dustin | Tagged: business, business-tools, google, online, software, web-2.0, web-apps | 7 comments»

Where Do Ideas Come From?

Since publishing a series of posts on dating and living in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been asked several times how I came up with the idea to see dating as a kind of metaphor for life. The immediate source of the story was pretty mundane – someone asked me a question about another article and I used going on a date as an example to illustrate… Continue reading

September 29 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, idea, thinking, writing | 15 comments»

Does Your Company Support Your Blog?

As much as you think blogging and social networking are mainstream, corporate America has not caught up quite yet. Many companies are fearful that they are losing control of their brand -- and they are. Companies are trying to put together social media guidelines as quickly as possible, so that employees know what they can and cannot say online, concerning their brand. You've probably seen a blog… Continue reading

September 28 | By Dan | Tagged: blogging, marketing, personal branding, social-media | 14 comments»

Writing Research Papers

No matter where you are in your intellectual journey, the ability to assemble and analyze large amounts of complex information is a skill that can pay large dividends both in monetary terms and in terms of your overall satisfaction with life. What follows is a very short guide and template for writing excellent research papers. Re-Evaluating Road-Crossing: The Chicken Was Pushed A Short Guide to Writing a Research Paper Abstract The Abstract is usually… Continue reading

September 25 | By Art | Tagged: college, education, paper, research, student, university, writing | 8 comments»

A 6-Step Guide to Networking for First Year MBA Students

If you are a first year MBA student, especially if you are at a lesser-known MBA program, networking is going to be an essential component to landing your summer internship. Start Early If there’s any piece of advice that I would give first year MBA students it’s that your job search stats the day you start school, and if you are really a go-getter even before you arrive at school. There are… Continue reading

September 24 | By | Tagged: business, career, education, networking, planning, student, success, work-life | 3 comments»

Dating, Living, and Being Your Best Self

In a comment on my post last week about living your life as if you were on a date, a reader named Jean posted this comment: Thanks for this article! But regarding the 'be yourself' advice... I've always wondered, which self? I have a best self who is on time, considerate, well dressed, brave, follows my dreams, etc. I also have a worst self who is late, selfish, lazy, a slob… Continue reading

September 23 | By Dustin | Tagged: dating, personality, relationship, self, self-improvement | 20 comments»

Break the Rules

Many of the rules that apply in businesses were set years ago and have endured by force of habit. A good example is the QWERTY keyboard, which is in use on all desktop computers. The original QWERTY layout of keys on the typewriter keyboard was designed in the 1870s to slow down the speed of typing because fast operators were causing typewriter keys to jam together. By… Continue reading

September 22 | By Paul | Tagged: assumption, branson, innovation, roddick, rules, swatch, virgin | 17 comments»