[lifehacks] The Secret to Success Is ‘Monotasking’ … A look at why multitasking does not lead to good productivity. ‘Multitasking is the act of distracting yourself. It comes with a cost even when tasks feel related, because it requires you to switch the “mental rules of the game,” as the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham puts it. Even when people are allowed to switch between tasks at their own discretion, the more they switch, the longer everything takes. As Mark has written: “We find that in real world work, the more switches in attention a person makes, the lower is their end of day assessed productivity.”’ (archive)
[life] The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done … Oliver Burkeman on how Darwin, Dickens, Virginia Woolf and others all topped out at about four hours of real mental work a day. ‘The real lesson – or one of them – is that it pays to use whatever freedom you do have over your schedule not to “maximise your time” or “optimise your day”, in some vague way, but specifically to ringfence three or four hours of undisturbed focus (ideally when your energy levels are highest). Stop assuming that the way to make progress on your most important projects is to work for longer. And drop the perfectionistic notion that emails, meetings, digital distractions and other interruptions ought ideally to be whittled away to practically nothing. Just focus on protecting four hours – and don’t worry if the rest of the day is characterised by the usual scattered chaos.’
[useful] One-Page Printable Yearly Calendar … ‘Take in the year all at once. Fold it up and carry it with you. Jot down your notes on it. Plan things out and observe the passage of time. Above all else, be kind to others.’
[life] Merlin Mann’s Wisdom Project … I always find something useful in these lists of advice and lifehacks. YMMV. ‘Open your mail over the recycling bin.’
[microsoft] You Suck at Excel … If you use Excel take a look at this video from Joel Splosky. It has some great tips and demos of powerful, under-used features.
[lifehacks] The Most Powerful Life Hacks I’ve Found … I always seem to find something useful in these posts with lists of life hacks. Maybe you will too. ‘Be reliable. You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work. Reliability is one of the most underrated traits. In the short run, it is much harder to be exceptional than it is to be reliable, and in the long run, being consistently reliable makes you exceptional.’
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[lifehacks] 100 Tips for a Better Life … I usually find something helpful in these posts with lists of life hacks. ’23. (~This is not medical advice~). Don’t waste money on multivitamins, they don’t work. Vitamin D supplementation does seem to work, which is important because deficiency is common.’
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20 July 2021
[lifehacks] The Simple Genius of Checklists, from B-17 to the Apollo Missions … ‘Checklists proliferated to every corner of habitable environment of Apollo 11 and became what astronaut Michael Collins called the spacecraft’s “fourth crew member” – and, for all intents and purposes, its real commander. Checklists even covered their spacesuits, for example, the left gloves of Armstrong and Aldrin.’
[lifehacks] What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life? | Ask MetaFilter … ‘Good rechargeable batteries and a good charger for them are a fantastic investment in removing obnoxiousness from one’s life, especially now that nobody wants to run to the store for just one thing. Eneloop is the battery brand I settled on, with a Panasonic BQ-CC55 charger because someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about said it was their favorite.’
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4 May 2018
[lifehacks] The Littlest Lifehack … small life improving hacks from Ask Metafilter. ‘You don’t actually need to peel your kiwis at all.’
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[email] Inbox Zero for Life … a straightforward approach to the Inbox Zero lifehack using Gmail … ‘Triage. Your one and only goal for processing your inbox is to make it empty. Not to actually do anything productive, because processing email is inherently anti-productive. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re doing work here. Just get it over with as quickly as possible.’
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28 December 2010
[tech] How I Filled Two Dumpsters And Went Paperless With The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 … ‘Organizing, scanning, and shredding all this paper took me the better part of three weekends over the course of this year, but I think it was worth it. In this post, I’ll cover some of my reasoning, methods, and tools that I used through this process. I should also note that my paperless efforts don’t just stop at recordkeeping; I’ve gotten rid of more than 95% of my books over the last year, replacing the ones I really like with digital versions on my Kindle. My paper books now all fit on one small shelf in my office.’
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17 December 2010
[tip] How to Narrow Down Exact Duplicated Music Files in iTunes … ‘To see all Exact Duplicates in iTunes, Click File from the iTunes menu and then hold down the Option key. Display Duplicates should now change to Display Exact Duplicates, which should result in a shorter list of duplicates.’
[google] Useful Lifehack: Use Multiple Google Accounts Simultaneously in Google Chrome … This tip is also useful if you have multiple accounts on other services such as Delicious or eBay… ‘When you open a window in incognito mode (Ctrl+Shift+N), your cookies from the standard session are no longer available and you can easily log in to a new Google account.’
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28 February 2008
[windows] Find As You Type for Internet Explorer — great little utility that adds Firefox’s powerful and simple way of finding text in a web document to Microsoft’s web browser.
[lifehacks] Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret — Lifehacker on Seinfeldian Chains … ‘He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.” “Don’t break the chain.” He said again for emphasis.’
[lifehacks] Top 10 Clipboard Tricks — some useful tips from Lifehacker … ‘One of the greatest features the point and click interface brought to personal computers is the clipboard – that invisible, temporary shelf you use more times per day than Google. If you think the clipboard is only about Ctrl+C, you’re missing out…’
[lifehacks] Make Microsoft Word less annoying — useful tips from Lifehacker … ‘Microsoft Word can drive you nuts. It piles on features few people need, plagues you with annoying auto-corrections and just generally acts like a pain in the ass. No more. It’s time to take back the word processor…’
[email] Email Addicts Offered 12-step Detox … ‘Marsha Egan, who claims email “abuse” can cost US business millions in lost productivity, cites the chilling cases of “a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot” and a client who “cannot walk by a computer – her own or anyone else’s – without checking for messages”.’
[web] Geek to Live: Create your master feed with Yahoo! Pipes — interesting idea for Yahoo! Pipes from Lifehacker … ‘As a prolific netizen, you generate lots of web-based feeds: your Flickr photos, your del.icio.us bookmarks, your weblog posts and your Lifehacker comments, to name a few. Instead of going here there and everywhere to see all the content you create on the web, combine it all into one master feed using with the newly-launched Yahoo! Pipes…’
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12 February 2007
[funny] Ze Frank on Procrastination … ‘You might experience a whole career to put off building meaningful relationships and finding an inner sense of self worth.’
[lifehacks] 5 Ideas for Stressful Living … ‘I’ve compiled a short list of ideas for those who wish to add a dash of stress into their lives – all fairly easy to implement, not to mention widely encouraged by society at large and often easily observed in the behavior of those around you…’ [via Lifehacker]
[firefox] Paste and Go — useful time saving Firefox extension which allows you to paste a URL into the address bar of Firefox and then immediately to that website without clicking the Go Button or pressing return.
[email] Why email is addictive (and what to do about it) — interesting article about dealing with compulsive email checking … ‘Checking email is a behaviour that has variable interval reinforcement. Sometimes, but not everytime, the behaviour produces a reward. Everyone loves to get an email from a friend, or some good news, or even an amusing web link. Sometimes checking your email will get you one of these rewards. And because you can never tell which time you check will produce the reward, checking all the time is reinforced, even if most of the time checking your email turns out to have been pointless. You still check because you never know when the reward will come.’ [via Yoz]
[gtd] The Perfect Apostrophe — amusing podcast where Merlin Mann discusses his procrastination whilst abortively attempting to write an O’Reilly Life Hacks book.
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30 April 2006
[web] cl1p.net — a useful internet clipboard. I’ve found it great for quickly moving bits of text and small files between two computers especially if they are on different networks or there is a firewall in the way.
