August 2012
23 posts
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Visit Your Musers
It’s hard to build great technology products without a muser. The muser not only adds emotional motivation to the developer’s work ethic; she serves a cognitive function of focusing his mind on the one thing that truly matters: what using the thing is like. Without her, projects disintegrate into scattered bundles of individual features, appealing to the intellect but not the heart.
- Jakob...
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12 Startup Leaders on What They Love about Their...
Startup founders begin with building new products and end up building new companies. Ultimately, some of the most successful companies not only reinvent a product or market, they change the way people work in a way that’s reflective of what they value most.
To find out how startup leaders think about building companies that they themselves enjoy working in, we surveyed the founders of some...
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The Power of the Done List
The Problem: To-Do Lists Don’t Work for Me.
To-do lists just don’t work for some people.
We may be more right-brained. Perhaps our working styles don’t mesh with more intricate prioritizing or the task list format. Whatever it is, we know that one productivity system does not fit all.
Plus, a recent study by Amy Dalton and Stephen Spiller found that detailed planning works...
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July 2012
22 posts
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“We are constantly trading off what we are doing now against what we might do in...”
– Frank Partnoy reports on how experts in different fields view procrastination in Procrastination Rules. He describes how a journalist manages time by managing delay:
For projects that require different amounts of time, Guerrera makes separate lists. He describes a technique he and many other...
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A 2005 study by the International Labour Organization found that nutrition habits do indeed directly influence work productivity. Mindflash’s infographic offers some great brain food suggestions. We’re always up for eating more dark chocolate, avocados, and blueberries - yum!
Click here for a proper viewing size.
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The most effective way to do it, is to do it.
— Amelia Earhart
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“[T]ime management isn’t primarily about using minutes well, it’s...”
– Peter Bregman found that many people “agree or strongly agree that they don’t spend enough time at work in their sweet spot, doing work they’re really good at and enjoy the most.”
Focusing at work isn’t just about concentrating on the tasks at hand, but also about...
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“Don’t wait until you feel like doing something.”
– Boom. Oliver Burkeman’s one-sentence solution to procrastination.
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“[W]e have one reservoir of willpower. It’s a highly limited resource, and...”
– Tony Schwartz, proponent of maintaining your energy levels for sustainable productivity, offers a Master Plan for Taking Control of Your Life back from all those temptations that ultimately deplete your tank of willpower.
His two tips related to eating and sleeping are great reminders to attend to...
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Leo Babauta of zen habits is all for killing time. To Leo, “killing” is a misnomer.
Reframe killing time as enjoying time.
Is this what our lives are to be? A non-stop stream of productive tasks? A life-long work day? A computer program optimized for productivity and efficiency? A cog in a machine?
What about joy? What about the sensory pleasure of lying in the grass with the...
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The Ultimate Productivity Instrument is You
In this modern age of gizmos and gadgets, the best productivity app is you.
Benjamin Franklin, that historical grand master of productivity who did pretty well without an iPhone, knows why:
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”
Our capabilities for self-analysis, awareness, and perception are what separate us from...
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Audrey Tan, founder of Waggit, has a neat productivity trick she calls “dip the ink” that keeps the work flow going after breaks and interruptions:
If a friend asks me to take a coffee break or someone starts hovering at your desk as a sign they want to chat, I say - ‘gimme one sec’, get to a good stopping place, PLUS a little extra work on my next task. I simply dip the ink....
