Productivity, GTD and Getting to a Better Life

If Lifehacker's filling up your feedreader faster than you can empty it, switch to our trimmed-down, no-nonsense top stories feed. Sick of hearing about Google Chrome or the iPhone? Customize our... - 4 hours ago

Firefox with Greasemonkey: The LabelLinks4Gmail Greasemonkey scripts creates nested labels in your Gmail sidebar. If the idea sounds familiar, that's probably because the previously mentioned... - 5 hours ago

Windows only: Free application Mazzick is a simple mouse gesture utility that you can carry on your USB thumb drive. Using Mazzick is simple: just invoke it using one of the default shortcuts (like... - 6 hours ago

A very simple guide to leaving here quickly so you can get back to making something awesome. Ask yourself… Why am I here right now instead of making something cool on my own? What’s the barrier to me starting that right now? This is not an insult or put-down. It’s a useful question. Please, think about it, then search the site to see if we have anything that might inspire you to make something awesome today. What Sucks? Looking for specific answers to what sucks for you today? “My email sucks.” “My attention management sucks.” “My compulsive web browsing sucks.” “My resolve to put my art first sucks.” “My procrastination sucks.” “No, seriously. My procrastination really sucks.” “My fiddling with ‘productivity systems’ sucks.” “My to-do list sucks.” “My blog sucks.” “My band’s stupid site sucks.” “My meetings suck.” “My PowerPoint presentation sucks.” “I suck.” More ideas Still sucking? No problem. Here’s more places to scratch around. Popular now — Here are the hottest articles on our site (right this minute). TitleRecent "Right Now, What Are You Doing?"2145 Getting started with "Getting Things Done"932 Introducing the Hipster PDA695 What Makes for a Good Blog?553 Ubiquity: Firefox Gets its Quicksilver On552 Our Most Popular Posts — Okay, technically, it’s the most popular from Januay 2007 til now. But, you know. You get the gist. TitleAll-time Getting started with "Getting Things Done"666518 Introducing the Hipster PDA523737 Writing sensible email messages181336 How I Made my Presentations a Little Better173239 Video for Merlin's "Inbox Zero" talk164250 Still Lost? Try a mental sweep, do a shitty first draft, or consider a modest change. Maybe just get away from the computer for a while by taking a nice walk. Without your phone. We’ll still be here when you come back. Promise. How to Know When You’re Done Here You’re done here whenever you’ve found just enough information to get you back on track for today. If we don’t have the right fit for you, we sincerely hope it won’t take you half a day of surfing to find out. We love having you here and hope you’ll return many times — whenever you think we might have something that might help you get over the hump. The Only “Productivity” That Matters The best advice we can offer is to put your head down, push yourself harder, and try to figure out what you need to change today to get a little better. “Productivity” isn’t about about making more widgets per hour or being efficient and organized for its own anal-retentive sake. Real productivity means getting faster at moving the crap off your desk so you can have room to focus on the creative work that only you can do. Figure out how to do that every morning, and you’re ready to go pro. ”How to Use 43 Folders” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 05, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" - 5 hours ago

Welcome back, friend. Per what I wrote in your yearbook back in June, I hope you had a nice summer and stayed sweet and cool. You look great. Did you lose weight or something? Somewhere along the way over the past few weeks, I seem to have got my game on again here at 43 Folders. I wrote a few items that I’m proud of and that lots of people seemed to enjoy. I’m once again posting about stuff that means a lot to me, and I’m feeling good about the site and where it (and I) will be heading over the next year. (More on that soon) But, if you were tanning on Ibiza or building houses with Jimmy Carter and missed out on my wordy comeback season, here’s a few articles I hope you will enjoy. It’s nice to have you back; I found the Vette, and I’m pumped for Fall. Making Time to Make Series Link: Making Time to Make One of the reasons I’ve started really enjoying writing for the site again is best summed up in my favorite thing I’ve written recently — a three-part series on public attention management for creative types that I called, “Making Time to Make.” It’s been a while since I’ve had such clarity about what I need to do with myself (and, perhaps, more importantly, what I need to be okay with not doing with myself). And these three posts captured what I wanted to say. If you’re in a big rush and only have time to read one thing out of all these links, jump to the third and final article in this series, Making Time to Make: One Clear Line; that’s got lots of tips and what have you. Here’s links to all three: Making Time to Make: Bad Correspondence - Aug 4 2008 - “As I read all this, I hear a man saying (at least in my words), ‘I can either be a guy who writes novels, or I can be a guy who answers email. Realizing I cannot be both, I’ve made the decision, and now I live with it.’” Making Time to Make: The Job You Think You Have - Aug 5 2008 - “Thing is: if the amount of time you devote to lite correspondence with individual people exceeds the amount of time you spend on making things, then you may be in a different line of work than you’d originally thought you were.” Making Time to Make: One Clear Line - Aug 6 2008 - “For myself, I think it’s critical to set reasonable expectations about how, when, and where people can expect to have authentic, honest-to-God contact with us…” Rest of the Best of the Summer And here’s a few more of the posts that people seemed to like over the past few weeks. Free Books for your Amazon Kindle - Jun 6 2008 - My favorite places to find free material for Summer’s favorite new toy NYT: Businesses Fight the Email Monster They Helped Create - Jun 14 2008 - Big Companies are starting to get the email problem. Now they’re just trying to figure out what to do about it. Guide to Better Napping - Jun 17 2008 - Link post to a fantastic infographic on ad hoc snooze-taking. Kurt Vonnegut on Writing Better - Jul 14 2008 - Writing advice that’s as practical and down-to-earth as the guy who offers it - a humble man who obsessed over every page he ever wrote. On Peanut Shells and Email Archiving - Jul 24 2008 - A controlling metaphor that helps explain why I advise people not to save their peanut shells. Foo for Bar: Kicking Ass with Outcome-Based Thinking - Aug 08 2008 - Simple formula for distilling any mystery meat need into a Project + a Next Action. Ideas, Execution, and the Rare Auteur - Aug 11 2008 - More thoughts on why ideas are just a multiplier of execution. What Makes for a Good Blog? - Aug 19 2008 - I still owe Six Apart a list of favorite blogs, but, weirdly enough, this list of things I look for in a good blog was the most popular thing I wrote this summer. Go figure. Social Networks: The Case for a “Pause” Button - Aug 26 2008 - I love you, but sometimes I need “me time.” And I need you not to know it. Deciding Whether to Read a Book: Some Wildly Reductive Heuristics - Aug 27 2008 - My snarky (but honest) shortcuts on quickly sussing out whether a book is worth your attention. (Hint: most don’t make the cut.) Like I say, welcome back. In case it fell out of your pocket on the train to Paris, here’s our site’s free RSS feed. See you in study hall. ”Recap: 43 Folders' Corvette Summer” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 02, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" - 4 days ago

Right Now: What Are You Doing? I’ve started to become a lot pickier about where my attention goes as I observe what it means to my work when it drifts. But, I still have a long way to go. Long way. Like a lot of people I have a bad habit of CMD-Clicking tab sets in my browser, which then spawns a dozen or more new panes of potential distraction, pointless horseshit, and 10,000 excuses not to focus on what I really want to be making right now. I whipped up this (rather plain and inefficiently coded) page this morning, and stuck it into every tab set that I tend to abuse: as the first tab I see. It’s not a new idea, it’s not particularly interesting or sophisticated, and it’s certainly not anything you couldn’t whip up for yourself (and better) in about 30 seconds. So, why share it? Because, your brain needs a Dad. If this can help you, awesome. If your immediate reaction is to think, “Oooo…I know how I can add way more features like a social network and procrastination stats!” hang it up; you’re already screwed. Catch the drifting as it happens, refocus, then repeat as necessary. That’s it. Happy Labor Day, friends, and may you find yourself seeing that little page as seldom as possible. ”"Right Now, What Are You Doing?"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 01, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" - 4 days ago

Today, Google quietly rolled out a new feature for their Google Docs Applications: Templates! It's so new that it isn't even listed on the new features page at this time. When one opens their Google Docs account and chooses to... - 2 months ago

Fogging is a simple, yet effective communication tool that helps one deflect hostile remarks and irrelevant emotional attacks and allows one to focus on the issues behind them. - 6 months ago

For the last week, I've been reviewing a new browser, Flock. I'm a big photography fan and store numerous photographs online in various sites, such as Flickr and Picasa In my exploration of other photographic web sites, I stumbled upon... - 7 months ago