Americans are seriously deficient in sleep (40 percent of Americans get less than five hours of sleep per night), and an incredible 75 percent of us suffer from some form of sleep difficulty each night.
Archives For Lifehacking
Getting Things Done, 7 habits and Mind Mapping. I am a productivity buff, and love to tweak my workflows.
I used to do a lot of research on getting things done and what kind of To Do list program I needed to become a success and have a mind like water and total control. It didn't work. Continue Reading...
So many days of my life is spent walking around tired and weary from lack of sleep. I tend to stay up late after my daughter have been put to sleep, and then I just spend my time reading or working till midnight.
Well now I have made myself a project. It is a 30 day challenge. The idea is to measure my sleep pattern and my general sense of well-being for a month. Continue Reading...
Recently I have been stumbling across debates on OpenMeta's future. The notion seems to be, that when Lion becomes Mountain Lion, Apple's new Appstore policies will choke the tagging hack, that so many geeks have come to use. Continue Reading...
This is an annoying one. Google Spreadsheet doesn't allow you to make links with linktexts in the fields in the spreadsheet. Continue Reading...
Energy Ball by Jam343
One of the things that leaves me dumbfounded all the time, is the way I often let myself be slowed down by not knowing the process of the workplace in which I work.
In the beginning of a new job I am really inqusitive, and explore every aspect of the companys way to do stuff. But after a while I refrain from doing this.
This is bad. And I'm trying to fight this tendency.
1. Explore further
You ought to explore even further, because this will increase your leverage in the organization, increase your ability to get stuff done. Once in a while challenge yourself. Find out what ressource in the company you would like to be able to have access to, and then go about finding out how to influence this ressource to do work for you. Often the answer is really simple. It’s right there in front of you, but you just didn’t see it. Perhaps you we’re afraid to ask.
2. Don't get bogged down reorganizing other peoples processes
I, on the other hand, have a tendency to reengineer the way in which people around me work. While in some cases this is a good thing, it also drains a lot of energy, and takes a long time to deliver results.
It is of the outmost essence to know WHEN to reengineer, and it's a lot less often than you might think. Changing the way things work in your workspace is HARD work. Don't reach for this solution just because you don't understand what's happening.
Because... sometimes, this is exactly what's happening. You chose to reengineer a work process, not because it's wrong, but because you feel more in command when you're changing, than when you're admitting ignorance.
3. Nurse a happy, helpful and interested attitude
Most people loves to talk about what they do. If you're genuinely interested, they will be willing to share a cup of coffee and tell you about what they do. This is what we all do, when we start a new job. The key is to do this on a regular basis, even when you're firmly established in your job.
You could say this is a form of personal Kaizen. Continously furthering your ability to coorporate with people around you. Keep exploring your workspace for possibilities and gradually you will be able to perform better and better.
- Jens Poder
Autofocus gives you a simple list and easy fun rules to guide your proces
I recently read about this system by Mark Forster. Autofocus is a todolist system based on simple rules, and an in-built trust in your own innate ability to sense the right thing to do right now.
The autofocus system will appeal to people with a fondness for paperbased systems, and particularly the Moleskine Crowd.
Here's how Mark Forster describes it himself:
1. Read quickly through all the items on the page without taking action on any of them. 2. Go through the page more slowly looking at the items in order until one stands out for you. 3. Work on that item for as long as you feel like doing so 4. Cross the item off the list, and re-enter it at the end of the list if you haven’t finished it 5. Continue going round the same page in the same way. Don’t move onto the next page until you complete a pass of the page without any item standing out 6. Move onto the next page and repeat the process 7. If you go to a page and no item stands out for you on your first pass through it, then all the outstanding items on that page are dismissed without re-entering them. (N.B. This does not apply to the final page, on which you are still writing items). Use a highlighter to mark dismissed items. 8. Once you’ve finished with the final page, re-start at the first page that is still active.
I like several things about the autofocus system:
1. it's compact
I love to be able to walk around with my system all the time. Capturing ideas depends on this. I must admit that my Iphone with Omnifocus is used a lot less, than I had imagined. My test-run of autofocus had me capture more stuff, and remembering more as well.
2. it's simple
It's not complicated. I tend to lose my perspective when everything is sorted in projects and contexts. Especially the context part of GTD makes less sense to me than ever. I don't really need anything besides @work and @home. Autofocus urges to have two lists. One for work and one for private stuff.
3. it gets rid of old todo-list garbage
The idea of dismissing old items when you look at a page without anything standing appeals to me a lot. The thing I get rid of this way, is the non-doable things, that seems to creep into every todo-list I make. In autofocus you highlight it, and then someday later you can review these dismissed items and totally forget them, put them on a someday/maybe list og or re-enter them in another form.
4. it's fast!
You can do this really fast. With 22 lines per page, you can quickly skim a page. Adding new items is lightning fast. And since you never grow your list to more than 10-15 pages, findign something is actually quite simple.
5. it's in a moleskine
Well... you gotta love a moleskine. I love touching them. I love carrying them. I love looking at them. Well... maybe it's just me :)
Anyways... that's it. A simple analouge system that you can check out at the blog of Mark Forster. The decribtion of the system is a mere 6 pages in the printer. So go ahead read about it. I have been using it for my home stuff for a week now, and I'm pretty happy. I am considering moving my someday/maybe lists into Taskpaper, but that's another story.
Oh... by the way... drawing on the top was made with wonderful children focused drawing app: Doozla.
- Jens Poder
I have been trying to shift my focus away from lifehacking and productivity in the last couple of months. The reason for this was the obvious lifehacker trap: I simply wasn't relaxing enough. After a prolonged period of GTD'ing I found myself thinking about everything in a "get more done mode"
This, in my opinion, is a bad mode to be in. Because when everything serves the goal of efficiency a couple of other important parts of life is at risk. I often found myself anxious about thing I should be leisurely enjoying.
So, since new years eve I have been on a kind of productivity diet. No more fiddling with OmniFocus, at least for a while. Instead I have been trying to introduce a couple of new focal points in my life. These aren't projects that I am trying to achieve. There's no deadline to them. It's three ways of being that instills relaxation and enjoyment.
1. Thinking deeply
I love staring through the window. In my home in Copenhagen, I have an absolutely amazing view over the entire city. While looking at horizon I often float into a state af calm, pondering. It's one of the things in life I really treasure, being alone in deep thought. When doing this I often find that amazing things happen. Good ideas seems to hit in the back of my head out of nowhere.
I also find myself in this state when I'm writing in my journal, but ideas tend to be more related to the subjects I'm writing about.
BTW: I love this talk on deep thinking from google sessions on youtube.
2. Being Happy
This one became a goal of own after reading Tal Ben-Shahars book Happier. I hadn't been very good at just doing stuff that made happy. Benjamin inpsired me to mindmap all the things in life I knew would make happy doing more of.
I now carry this mindmap around with me in my notebook. And from time i'll look at it and get ideas for something that'll make me happy.
Reading novels instead of productivity literature or blogs has been one of the things I have introduced. I used to read several novels a month, but came out of the habit, reading business related stuff instead. Now I'm frequently relaxing with a novel and great coffee instead, enjoying the sound of a turned of telly.
3. Being Healthy
This one has been a troublemaker in my life since childhood. I don't like sports. Or... let me rephrase that... I like the idea, but I can't seem to get my butt from the couch after a long day at work. I just think sports are so amzingly time-consuming.
So I'm trying to do slowly take very very small measures towards a healthier way of living, and I'm doing it in a rather different mode than I used. No more putting ambitous goals into the calendar.
For me, it's all about removing hurdles and adding little incremental habit-changes, to become healthier. I have been bicycling to work for a month now, and I have been eating a lot healthier. I have found all kinds of gymnastics I can do without leaving the house.
Instead of focusing on my disability to turn myself into a marathon man, I focus on the small things I can do instantly, now and here.
So there you have it... This is the reason why I haven't been posting as frequently. All this computer time simply feels to much like work. Now I'm going to get myself a cuppa and a good long stare at the horizon before my loved ones return from work.
Please share you experiences below, if you have any, regarding lifehacking and relaxation.
- Jens Poder
Are you having trouble with online productivity? I have...
It happens every time I open a browser to add a calendar event to my online company calendar. I open the browser, ZAP!!!, my mind turns blank, and twenty minutes later I find myself on StumbleUpon thinking "what was I doing?"
My attention got hijacked. My normal browser is so full of possible distractions. It's just to tempting to check one of the Facebook updates on your startpage on Netvibes or Igoogle or whatever.
Well I think I have found a solution. It's called Mozilla Prism.
The idea is to make a number specific small chopped down browsers. Each of these browsers gets a specific starting URL. For instance, you could have one for your Gmail, one for your Online Calendar, and so on.
I installed Prism today, and it works wonderful. When you run Prism, it will ask you for a URL and where to put the little app. You can put it on the desktop or in the applications folder. You can even give each of these minibrowsers their own unique Icons.
So now I can enjoy the benifits of having focused apps that runs online software. I can launch them from spotlight or have them in my dock. And there's way to enter another URL. When I open my online mail to do work, I stay in my online mail.
- Jens Poder
This is a must-read article! It's from LifeDev.net. It shows the very unique working routines of powerful thoughleaders and creatives. Here's a clue. They don't sit all day staring a the computer, waiting for the next mail, to tell them what to do.
The lives of great people give us interesting clues about how to organise our days. All of them attached great value to their daily routines. This is because they saw it as being part of ‘becoming who they are’, as Nietzsche puts it. For the same reason they were also highly individual in their routines. They had the courage to go against popular opinion and work out often strange daily plans that suited them.
link: 10 Ways History’s Finest Kept Their Focus at Work | LifeDev
Key Findings:
- Get a lot of real mental rest
- Work less
- Do a variety of things
I love the way talking long walks figures extensively in this list. Recently I find that going out for a no-purpose walk is my best way to regain focus.
Link spotted on Zenhabits.
- Jens Poder
