This is the time of the year for everybody to make lame, half-hearted resolutions about how they’re going to lead a better life in the new year: lose weight, stop smoking, eat less fried cheese, take a ceramics class, etc. My gym is already full of flabby, confused-looking people who spend more time adjusting their iPod cases and checking out their new track suits in the mirror than actually doing reps. I usually treat January as my month to be lazy; I stay away from the gym for a few weeks until the interlopers poop out.

But it is a new year, and it’s not a bad idea to at least try to alter some of your bad habits, pick up a new skill, or do something to make yourself happier. My suggestion for this year addresses a problem I suspect many of the people who read this site have: the sheer number of online commitments—that is, blogs, social networks, message groups, IM accounts, Flickr, Twitter, and any other online time sink that ends with an R—that we try to maintain.  read more »

UPDATED.

The purpose of those post is to start a discussion on viewing self-betterment/productivity hacking/etc as a role-playing-game-like character advancement process. I have read some places of this idea as a compelling metaphor, but I am considering the value of moving it beyond metaphor, to the point that I am literally creating a "character class" for myself and designing a character sheet, etc.

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Scott Underwood from IDEO was kind enough to invite me down to their Palo Alto HQ for a tour of the renowned design group (they designed Apple’s first mouse!) and to participate with him in one of the company’s internal “Know How” talks. It was very informal (and — because this was during my recent “100-year sinus infection” — I was completely high on cold medicine).  read more »

I’ve started collecting stories — some of which may be entirely apocryphal tall tales — of the purported lengths to which people are going to filter noise and to ensure that their time and attention aren’t ceded to bad ideas, thoughtless people, or garden-variety time burglars.

Here’s a few of the more novel ones I’ve picked up. I’d also love to hear your favorites from amongst the cheats, tricks, and squirrely rules you’ve heard about:  read more »

Hi

This is something I found to be both sacrilegious to GTD and very much a core part of its “capture everything” philosophy.

Over time, I’ve found that more and more, I need to capture something at any possibly circumstance. Now I usually carry a small pad and pen right in my pocket, but there are times when you don’t have access to that, in fact a lot of the time.  read more »

These are posts from a special 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. You can visit each of the posts by clicking the title.

And don’t miss the “Related Articles” for our all-time popular posts on productively dealing with email.  read more »

My Make column on napping is overdue, and yet right before dashing off to steal a rejuvenating 20-minute nap, I take a spin past del.icio.us/popular to find this little gem:  read more »

Groby Unplugged » Blog Archive » Making a better iCal

Robert Blum has come to my rescue with this handy little iCal hack — it automatically adds an alarm to new events. It’s currently hard-wired with a “one day before” alarm (happily, also my preferred default from Entourage), but Robert plans to add some flexibility in the 0.2 release next month.

(It still kind of amazes me that this feature isn’t baked right in to iCal, but I’m wildly grateful to Groby for picking up the slack.)

How much time are you spending on email at work? Is it bringing the company and you lots of value?  read more »