Archive for the ‘Productivity’ Category

10 Best Productivity Books of 2009

Granted, the year’s not done yet, but publishers start to slow down new releases right about now, so it’s not likely we’ll see another contender for “best of 2009” until January. Plus, Christmas is coming up, and I wanted to give you plenty of time to read some of these books before you give copies to your friends and relatives.But really? It’s never the wrong time to recommend a list… Continue reading

November 18 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: book, book review, chance, gift, gtd, luck, motivation | 15 comments»

Take a Vacation from Your Email!

Considering how useful – revolutionary, even – email is as a communication tool, it can also be an incredible drain on productivity. If you’re anything like me, you have discussion listservs, newsletters, Google alerts, Facebook updates, blog comments, advertisements, automated backups, reminders, and all manner of other stuff pouring into your inbox all the time – all in addition to emails from actual people actually trying to communicate with you.Of… Continue reading

November 16 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: email, inbox, procrastination, time-management | 7 comments»

Stationery Pr0n: Japanese Pens and More from JetPens.com

Geeks tend to love pens, notebooks, and office gadgets. Some of the most popular posts here at Lifehack have been about pens and other stationery. Let us loose in a Staples or Office Max and we're like kids in a candy shop. We can't pass a stationery shop without feeling at least a twinge of desire – and usually without dropping some of our hard-earned money inside. And of course… Continue reading

November 13 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: office-supply, pen, pen-and-paper, pencil, stationery | 15 comments»

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 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, innovation, problem-solving, solution | 19 comments»

12 Lists That Help You Get Things Done

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

November 5 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: checklist, list, online-tool, pen-and-paper, reference, software, task list, todo | 26 comments»

Four Kinds of Vampires that Haunt Your Life (and What to Do About Them)

You are surrounded by vampires.They circle you, slowly, eyeing your throat, their teeth glistening in the moonlight. Your heart pounds in your chest as they move in, intent on draining your life's blood for their own unholy nourishment. A scream rises up in your chest as they close in on you, their fangs bared, and then you feel the first pair of teeth sinking into your throat."Hey, Dustin, got a… Continue reading

October 31 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: attention, halloween, no, time-wasters, vampire | 11 comments»

The Science of Motivation

What motivates you? While there are thousands, millions, maybe billions of answers to that question, a growing body of research, some of it dating back 50 years, shows two things that don’t motivate us very well – the promise of rewards and the threat of punishment.It seems counter-intuitive, since after all we take it for granted that we need incentives to do work. It’s the basis of our whole economic system… Continue reading

October 22 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: goal, growth, learning, mission, motivation, personal growth, reward | 22 comments»

Getting Things (Re-)Started: Dealing with Mental Blocks

In any significantly big project, there are bound to be times when you lose the track of what you’re doing, when for whatever reason you stop moving forward and, what’s worse, can’t seem to find the motivation to get going again. When we “fall off the wagon” like that, a kind of psychological wall starts building up, making getting back in the swing of things seem more and more daunting… Continue reading

October 20 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, mental-block, motivation, procrastination, work | 12 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 2009 | By Francis | Tagged: gtd, habit, time, time-management | 18 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 2009 | 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 2009 | 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 2009 | 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 2009 | 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 2009 | By Dustin | Tagged: creativity, idea, thinking, writing | 17 comments»

Back to School: How to Graduate from College with a High GPA

I graduated from UC-Berkeley in December, 2000 with a far less than stellar GPA. But, I took everything I learned from my mistakes and guided my younger sister to graduating with honors in a much more challenging major. Looking back I really wasn't prepared for the challenges of college life and if I had been aware of the advice below, which I gave my sister before she entered college, I… Continue reading

September 14 2009 | By | Tagged: advice-for-students, back-to-school, college, school, student, studying, university | 20 comments»

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