Posts Tagged ‘gtd’

How to Improve Your Memory

Our memory is one of the integral parts of day-to-day human life. We’re using it every moment, consciously or not, as we perceive the world and interpret it based on our memories and experiences, or as we look for the car keys, trying to recall where, exactly, was the last place they were seen?

It’s no small wonder that this part of our brain would fall prey to such… » Continue

April 21 2008 | By Joel | Tagged: diet, exercise, gtd, meditation, memory, minimalism, mnemonics | 5 comments»

Are You Lifehacking Too Much?

Nick Cernis of Put Things Off recently declared that productivity is dead. He said that “our obsession with ‘productivity’ is getting in the way of our lives.” Nick started out by saying that the productivity industry is out of control, and that it’s making us less efficient, not more. I agree with Nick, and I can tell you why the productivity industry is like that: it’s about… » Continue

April 14 2008 | By Joel | Tagged: action, gtd, implementation, information, motivation, systems | 8 comments»

Working in Project Space

One of the givens in David Allen’s Getting Things Done is that you can’t “do” a project. Instead, Allen recommends you break projects down into immediate “next actions”, discrete doable chunks that can be “cranked through” with a minimum of effort.

While this approach works pretty well for a lot of tasks, it falls short for a lot of creative people for whom the “meat” of their work cannot… » Continue

April 14 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, distraction, gtd, procrastination, Productivity | 17 comments»

Getting Green Done

With Earth Hour behind us and Earth Day on the way, we thought April would be a good month for Lifehack.org to think Green. In the weeks ahead, you can expect to see posts reflecting all manner of perspectives on how to "Green up" your work and life.

Nowadays, you can hardly swing a free-range cat without hitting someone making Green claims. Products tout their 35% post-consumer-waste packaging… » Continue

April 2 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: environment, green, gtd, planning, Productivity, sustainability | 14 comments»

5 Ways to get out of faffing mode

Faffing - The art of doing something without achieving anything”
Faffing affects all of us, in all areas of life and it means doing something without achieving an outcome. It affects business, personal life, writing, internet surfing, and domestic life.

To give you an example: As I am writing an article I am aware that I have to do a bit of stumbling in order to… » Continue

April 2 2008 | By Steven | Tagged: faffing, gtd, procrastination, Productivity | 19 comments»

What’s Missing in Productivity Today?

This month, we asked Lifehack.org contributors — and you, our readers — to think about the things that are missing in today’s productivity systems. Not only the areas where the "Big Name" systems fall short, but the gaps in our own systems, the places where we as individuals fall down.

The Lifehack.org community rose to the challenge, offering a variety of thought-provoking posts and comments that… » Continue

March 28 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: advice, contact-management, failure, gtd, information management, perfectionism, Productivity, software, time-management, tips | 7 comments»

Audiobook Review: David Allen’s “GTD > Weekly Review”

One of the most difficult demands that David Allen’s Getting Things Done makes on followers of his system is to set aside a couple of hours a week for a weekly review. It’s hard enough to find the single block of uninterrupted time, but harder still to know what to do with it. Allen only devotes five pages to the weekly review in Getting Things Done, and maybe a… » Continue

March 7 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: audiobook, david_allen, gtd, review, weekly_review | 11 comments»

Personal Productivity in the 21st Century

What does it mean to be productive? The “gurus” have given us a few ideas — it means to “get things done”, to be “highly effective”, to know who it was, exactly, who moved your cheese. What things, effective at what, and who is bringing cheese to work anyway are questions that these books don’t — and can’t — answer.

There’s something profoundly old-fashioned about much of our productivity literature… » Continue

March 5 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: gtd, habits, knowledgework, Productivity, working | 41 comments»

Why doing nothing may sometimes be the best action of all

Fresh research suggests our bias for action is emotional, not rational.

An article by Patricia Cohen in the New York Times “Business Day” section on March 1st, reporting on a study made by economist Ofer H. Azar at Ben-Gurion University of Negev in Israel, adds another dimension to the topic of the last article I wrote for Lifehack.org.

In what I wrote then, I wondered whether… » Continue

March 5 2008 | By Adrian | Tagged: gtd, inaction, psychology, research, stillness | 14 comments»

Do you REALLY need to get yet more things done?

Maybe today’s fashion for increasing personal productivity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Increasing your personal productivity is the subject matter of a slew of books, magazine articles, and more than a few successful blogs. It’s fashionable, popular, and, most of all, highly profitable for the authors and writers of software. But does that make it right?

I believe that more cookery books are published each year that any other… » Continue

February 21 2008 | By Adrian | Tagged: gtd, organization, Productivity, time-management, work-ethic | 27 comments»

How to Improve Your Relationship with a Weekly Review

One of the big complaints that people trying to get themselves more organized and productive have is that no matter how on-the-ball they get, their family still throws them curve balls. While it’s clearly insane to expect a 6-year-old to start worrying about todo lists and ubiquitous capture, I think at least part of the problem lies with our attitudes and expectations about our home life. Home is supposed… » Continue

February 18 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: family, gtd, marriage, partner, relationship, spouse, weekly_review | 11 comments»

50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily

We all want to get stuff done, whether it’s the work we have to do so we can get on with what we want to do, or indeed, the projects we feel are our purpose in life. To that end, here’s a collection of 50 hacks, tips, tricks, and mnemonic devices I’ve collected that can help you work better.

Most Important Tasks (MITs): At the start of

» Continue

February 13 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: advice, gtd, hack, Productivity, system, tip, trick | 76 comments»

12 Ways to Upgrade Your Weekly Review

Fans of GTD will already be familiar with the weekly review. Weekly reviews are designed to give you uninterrupted thinking time each week. Instead of tackling the big questions of your life between coffee breaks and morning commutes, you can set aside time to do a review.

Weekly reviews are a great concept and I’ve used them faithfully for the past few years. But I’ve found… » Continue

January 29 2008 | By Scott H | Tagged: brainstorm, gtd, journal, Productivity, review, think, to-do, weekly review | 28 comments»

11 Tips to Carve Out More Time to Think

“The person who reads to much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking” - Albert Einstein

How much time do you get a week to just think? Not while listening to music, driving your car or during group brainstorms. Not while playing video games, doing chores or taking a shower. Just you and your brain.

I’d wager that few people ever average… » Continue

January 10 2008 | By Scott H | Tagged: creativity, gtd, ideas, learning, Productivity, smart, think, time, weekly review | 18 comments»

How to Use a Notebook to Make 2008 the Best Year Ever

The notebook has been around forever. Do you remember your first one? It probably had very wide lines and perhaps a spiral binding. You used a fat pencil and traced letters until they became second nature. Before long you learned script. Then you migrated to pens. Some of you, dear readers, are now Moleskine aficionados and are selective and perhaps downright snooty about your pen choice. The lefties here… » Continue

January 7 2008 | By Susan | Tagged: goal setting, gtd, meditation, new_year, notebook, planning, Productivity, success, tool | 30 comments»