May 2012
19 posts
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Photo: Katie Weilbacher
Over at The 99%, Tony Schwartz offers some excellent advice on how to accomplish more by doing less.
It’s not just the number of hours we sit at a desk that determines the value we generate. It’s the energy we bring to the hours we work … . Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy – physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually – requires...
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The Minor Miracle of Third-Party App Development...
I’ve never had a kid, but I imagine that it can’t be too different from giving birth to a web app. It’s amazing that the thing exists at all, much less that it walks and talks, and it’s a minor miracle when it thinks on its own and creates something new of its own volition.
A few weeks ago, I received a bunch of errors in my inbox, and a week after that, a Dutch company...
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“I’ve learned that if I’m thinking about my productivity tools, I don’t have...”
– — C.J. Chilvers, Rethinking Productivity for Creatives.
Fabian Kruse writes about “the loop“ inherent to getting anything done, and the idea that periods of procrastination, having doubts, and losing momentum are just part of that natural productivity cycle. So, while productivity...
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Picasso’s take on that easily forgotten motto that genius is 99% perspiration!
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How Agiliq Creates Bespoke Webapps by Focusing...
Agiliq is a 12-person web design and development studio based in Hyderabad, India that builds web applications which provide that “just-right” fit for its clients. The key to crafting bespoke webapps relies not only on the ingredients of technology and design but on understanding your client and your client’s issues.
But in order to do that, it’s important to understand the inner workings...
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A perfectly sensible lifelong routine for starting your Wednesdays out right!
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“Productivity is not about how efficient you are at work. Instead, your...”
– Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, talking about creative productivity.
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Here’s a quick rundown of these tips to beat a case of the Mondays:
Studies say happiness is contagious. Go catch some happy from cheerful, morning people.
Or if you’re the “Hell is other people at breakfast” type, go catch some happy from some of your favorite music uppers or Hulu/Youtube vids.
Exercise! Have sexy time! Unleash the endorphins!
Treat yo self: have a...
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Click here for larger image, and check out other Secret Tips from the Yumiverse!
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We don’t know about the origin of this story but it’s a nice reminder about setting priorities:
When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day isn’t enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very...
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“Forget about productivity and numbers. They matter not at all. If you are driven...”
– How to Live Well, zenhabits.
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Hope your dones are part of the good in every day!
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The book trailer for Andrew Zuckerman’s Wisdom: The Greatest Gift One Generation Can Give to Another is a treasure trove of wise words from leaders of all fields who are all over 65 years old.
Here are some of our favorites from the wise words spoketh:
“Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you’re the only...
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“Wise use of space means creating the right context for concentration, learning,...”
– Productivity is not just about you. It’s also about your environment.
The National Institute of Building Sciences takes a look at “productive building design.” Organizational effectiveness, or organizational productivity, is a fancy way of saying using space wisely. It makes sense...
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“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing –...”
– Zig Ziglar
(Photo by Krikit)
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Some great tips for working smarter, not harder.
Less than half of workers report being satisfied with the recognition they receive on the job. Is it just a coincidence that less than half of employed adults report being completely satisfied with their jobs?
Do you have any tips for working smarter, not harder? Share them with us in the comments!
(Infographic from: Best Masters Degrees)
April 2012
22 posts
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Confronting the Brutal Facts of Your Startup's...
“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
- Admiral James Stockdale [1]
Fundraising is distracting because much of it is about framing facts about your reality rather than...
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It’s funny how little things can make a difference, like finding forgotten candy in a drawer or $5 in the street. Hope this little heart-y pic provides a mid-week boost! We love you. Keep going.
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The always on-point Wendy Macnaughton’s grand flowchart of To Check or Not to Check e-mail. The “are you at work” branches are especially funny.
Click here for a larger version.
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“I have a theory that burnout is about resentment. And you beat it by knowing...”
– Marissa Mayer explains that the key to avoiding burnout.
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The Tweet Elite: Weekly Wrap-up
In case you missed any of them, this week’s best tweets from @iDoneThis. This week, happiness and success are head to head in the popularity vote.
These 10 habits may be keeping you from happiness. Do you know what they are and how to quit them?
Here are the 10 rules that successful people live by. Do you know them? Do you live by them?
Want to get ahead of the competition? You’ll...
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Non-Technical Founder Feature Launch in Three...
I’ve recently spoken with technical founders who’ve complained about their non-technical co-founders who refuse to do or learn anything technical, and it’s struck a nerve. One technical founder told me, “My co-founder refuses to learn the most basic SQL so that they can pull analytics on their own.”
As the worst engineer at iDoneThis, I’m the CEO. I...
Beat those mid-week blahs & blues and be awesome today!
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The Slow Web Movement
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980).
It started as a vague idea framed as a joke.
When we put our site out into the world on January 2, 2011, we only processed incoming emails once per day. At the bottom of every email, we wrote:
iDoneThis is a part of the slow web movement. After you email us, your calendar is...
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Welcome Mike Sun to the iDoneThis team!
We’re thrilled to introduce that Michael Sun, engineer and hacker extraordinaire, has joined the iDoneThis team.
In January and February, Michael worked with us on a contract basis to help us scale our infrastructure to support the influx of new users we were getting, and he did a fantastic job. When we had the opportunity to snatch him up, we counted ourselves blessed.
Michael is also...
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Get More Done with Dundee Living in Your Chrome
We’re now in the Google Chrome Store! Add iDoneThis to Chrome, and Dundee will live on your Chrome home screen. His mere presence will encourage you in everything you’re getting done.
From there, you can launch iDoneThis with one click. If you haven’t made iDoneThis your home page yet (tsk tsk!), this is the next best thing.
Why did you create a Chrome Store app?
We bet...
“Everyone finds their own path. The best advice is to continually work...”
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Comedian and actor Aziz Ansari gives some pretty good advice on how to achieve success, no matter what you’re up to.
(Photo by Amelia Beamish)
“Another employee, a programmer, thought his online chats were eating into his...”
– — WSJ, Employees, Measure Yourselves
Grow your awareness of how and what helps you work. Sometimes you’ll find that a lot of what the so-called productivity rules proclaim is wrong because they don’t take you into consideration.
Dr. Seuss’s remedy for a case of the Mondays!
Some words of strength to see you out to the weekend. Thankfully, you won’t be battling to the death for the entertainment of a dystopian television audience!
May the odds be ever in your favor … of getting some stuff done!
“I feel really lucky … although I hate that word — ‘lucky.’ … Living...”
– The actor, Peter Dinklage, commenting on finding his path to success while staying true to himself.
How Roeder Studios's Virtual Team Built a Social...
Building a business from scratch is a huge challenge and doing it with a virtual team is even tougher. The interaction and information exchange that happens when people work in the same room often get taken for granted. It’s something that’s tricky to replicate when the team is straddled across different locations and timezones.
So why bother with a remote team? For founder...
May your Monday be both more manageable and full of possibility!
March 2012
22 posts
Thank you, Malcolm Gladwell’s floating head.
We send you off to the weekend with the hope that you’re all sorts of happy, working, and fulfilled — 9 to 5, and 5 to 9!
“[E]very hour you work over 40 hours a week is making you less effective and...”
– Sara Robinson in her popular Salon piece makes the case for the 40 hour work week, and it’s hard not to nod in agreement to the guideline of “eight for work, eight for sleep and eight for what we will.”
Are you nodding too? What about you, hard-working entrepreneurs?
“Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see...”
– Laura Vanderkam puts your perception of how busy you are in poignant, new light - WSJ, Are You As Busy As You Think?
“I was once asked: if an organization could teach only one thing to its...”
– A strategic advisor to CEOs and leadership teams, Peter Bregman writes that the most impactful thing that an organization can do for employees is to teach people how to learn by spending a few minutes reflecting at the end of the day.
As our iDoneThis users already know, there is indeed efficiency...
Wise words to get us started this Monday!
Happy Friday!
“We have a fucked-up perception of time. We count hours but discount how...”
– Check out writer and designer Jack Cheng’s great piece from a couple years back, Thirty Minutes a Day on the best way to learn something new.
Cheng mentions the same Seinfeld calendar productivity trick that helped spark the creation of iDoneThis, pointing out that “When trying to...
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Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals and co-author of Rework, found that when people wanted to get stuff done, their answer was rarely the office but instead someplace where they wouldn’t encounter externally imposed distractions.
What’s perhaps most insightful about Fried’s 2010 TEDxMidwest talk is his comparison of work to sleep when thinking about why stretches of...
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How Sourceninja Gets an Extra 7 Hours of...
We went through AngelPad with the guys at Sourceninja, so we’re proud that they’re one of our oldest and most loyal customers. Sourceninja is worry-free open source management made simple.
One of the first lessons of AngelPad that the founder Thomas Korte impressed upon us was to maximize every minute of every meeting, because time spent in meetings has a multiplier effect. Every...