productivity - eyal matsliah on Diigo

5 Powerful Reasons to Make Reflection a Daily Habit, and How to Do It | Zen Habits

via james c. from agama

Tags: growth, personal-development, productivity, reflection, to-read on 2008-01-07 and saved by5 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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» How to Do The Impossible: Create a Paperless Life, Never Check Voicemail Again, Never Return Another Phone Call…

Tags: home-office, life-hack, productivity, voice-mail on 2007-08-09 and saved by6 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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The Power of the Marginal

Tags: career, paul-graham, productivity on 2007-08-08 and saved by15 people -All Annotations (1) -About

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Some of Silicon Valley's most famous companies began in garages:
Hewlett-Packard in 1938, Apple in 1976, Google in 1998. In Apple's
case the garage story is a bit of an urban legend. Woz says all
they did there was assemble some computers, and that he did all the
actual design of the Apple I and Apple II in his apartment or his
cube at HP.
[1]
This was apparently too marginal even for Apple's PR
people.
Plus making them is more fun. You can do what you want; you don't
have to satisfy committees. And perhaps most important, small
things can be done fast. The prospect of seeing the finished project
hangs in the air like the smell of dinner cooking. If you work
fast, maybe you could have it done tonight.
Working on small things is also a good way to learn. The most
important kinds of learning happen one project at a time. ("Next
time, I won't...") The faster you cycle through projects, the
faster you'll evolve.
If I'm right that the defining advantage of insiders is an audience,
then we live in exciting times, because just in the last ten years
the Internet has made audiences a lot more liquid.
The big media companies shouldn't worry that people will post their
copyrighted material on YouTube. They should worry that people
will post their own stuff on YouTube, and audiences will watch that
instead.
Hacking

If I had to condense the power of the marginal into one sentence
it would be: just try hacking something together. That phrase draws
in most threads I've mentioned here. Hacking something together
means deciding what to do as you're doing it, not a subordinate
executing the vision of his boss. It implies the result won't
be pretty, because it will be made quickly out of inadequate
materials. It may work, but it won't be the sort of thing the
eminent would want to put their name on. Something hacked together
means something that barely solves the problem, or maybe doesn't
solve the problem at all, but another you discovered en route. But
that's ok, because the main value of that initial version is not the
thing itself, but what it leads to.
Insiders who daren't walk
through the mud in their nice clothes will never make it to the
solid ground on the other side.
There is try. It implies
there's no punishment if you fail. You're driven by curiosity
instead of duty. That means the wind of procrastination will be
in your favor: instead of avoiding this work, this will be what you
do as a way of avoiding other work. And when you do it, you'll be
in a better mood. The more the work depends on imagination, the
more that matters, because most people have more ideas when they're
happy.
If you're not sure what
to do, make something.
In
life, as in books, action is underrated.
Inappropriate

If you really want to score big, the place to focus is the margin
of the margin: the territories only recently captured from the
insiders. That's where you'll find the juiciest projects still
undone, either because they seemed too risky, or simply because
there were too few insiders to explore everything.
And in the process pay close attention
to accidents and to new ideas you have on the fly.
The eminent, on the other hand, are weighed down by their eminence.
Eminence is like a suit: it impresses the wrong people, and it
constrains the wearer.
Outsiders should realize the advantage they have here. Being able
to take risks is hugely valuable. Everyone values safety too much,
both the obscure and the eminent. No one wants to look like a fool.
But it's very useful to be able to.
If you want to
beat delegation, focus on a vertical slice: for example, be both
writer and editor, or both design buildings and construct them.
The really juicy new approaches are not the ones insiders reject
as impossible, but those they ignore as undignified.
Lord Acton said we should judge talent at its best and character
at its worst.
Focus

The very skill of insiders can be a weakness. Once someone is good
at something, they tend to spend all their time doing that. This
kind of focus is very valuable, actually. Much of the skill of
experts is the ability to ignore false trails. But focus has
drawbacks: you don't learn from other fields, and when a new approach
arrives, you may be the last to notice.
Almost everyone makes the mistake of treating ideas as if they were
indications of character rather than talent—as if having a stupid
idea made you stupid.
Even in a field with honest tests, there are still advantages to
being an outsider. The most obvious is that outsiders have nothing
to lose. They can do risky things, and if they fail, so what? Few
will even notice.
The more complicated the world gets, the more valuable
it is to be willing to look like a fool.
This leads to my final suggestion: a technique for determining when
you're on the right track. You're on the right track when people
complain that you're unqualified, or that you've done something
inappropriate. If people are complaining, that means you're doing
something rather than sitting around, which is the first step.
If you make something and people complain that it doesn't work,
that's a problem. But if the worst thing they can hit you with is
your own status as an outsider, that implies that in every other
respect you've succeeded.

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blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity

Tags: career, productivity on 2007-08-08 and saved by44 people -All Annotations (1) -About

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Each time you do something, you get to write it down
While you're procrastinating, just do lots of other stuff instead.
Then, throughout the rest of the day, use the back of the 3x5 card as your Anti-Todo List.
And then at the end of the day, before you prepare tomorrow's 3x5 card, take a look at today's card and its Anti-Todo list and marvel at all the things you actually got done that day.
Each night before you go to bed, prepare a 3x5 index card with a short list of 3 to 5 things that you will do the next day.

And then, the next day, do those things.
The gist of Structured Procrastination is that you should never fight the tendency to procrastinate -- instead, you should use it to your advantage in order to get other things done.
Structured Procrastination.
Keep three and only three lists: a Todo List, a Watch List, and a Later List.

The more into lists you are, the more important this is.

Into the Todo List goes all the stuff you "must" do -- commitments, obligations, things that have to be done. A single list, possibly subcategorized by timeframe (today, this week, next week, next month).

Into the Watch List goes all the stuff going on in your life that you have to follow up on, wait for someone else to get back to you on, remind yourself of in the future, or otherwise remember.

Into the Later List goes everything else -- everything you might want to do or will do when you have time or wish you could do.

If it doesn't go on one of those three lists, it goes away.
Do email exactly twice a day -- say, once first thing in the morning, and once at the end of the workday.
When you do process email, do it like this:

First, always finish each of your two daily email sessions with a completely empty inbox.
Second, when doing email, either answer or file every single message until you get to that empty inbox state of grace.
Third, emails relating to topics that are current working projects or pressing issues go into temporary subfolders of a folder called Action.
Fourth, aside from those temporary Action subfolders, only keep three standing email folders: Pending, Review, and Vault.
Don't answer the phone.

Let it go to voicemail, and then every few hours, screen your voicemails and batch the return calls.
no matter what time you get up, start the day with a real, sit-down breakfast.
Only agree to new commitments when both your head and your heart say yes.
Do something you love.

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Solve Tough Problems with a Brain Reboot | zen habits

Tags: growth, meditation, problem-solving, productivity, spirituality on 2007-05-20 and saved by8 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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How to Meditate
Get into a position where you don’t feel discomfort but aren’t completely relaxed.
Close your eyes and monitor your breathing. It takes a few minutes to enter a meditative state. Focus on breathing in and out and slowly lowering your rate of breathing.
Once you’ve sufficiently slowed your breathing, start with some quick mental exercises. Run your focus around your body. Notice where you hands, feet, elbows and back are. Notice how they feel.
Finally try a few visualization exercises seeing how long and how clearly you can hold a picture, sound or sensation in your imagination.
Solving Tough Problems

One of my favorite ways to use meditation is to tackle tough problems. With daily distractions present, it can often be difficult to really think through an issue. Meditation can help eliminate those distractions and allow you to get some insight into what you already know intuitively.
Once you get into a meditative state, try to form a visual scene inside your head
Now have a conversation with this person asking for advice on the problem you are having. Dont think about what the other character should say, just imagine the conversation. You may be surprised at what this imaginary character comes up with.
The technique I use for this is that once I get into a meditative state, I focus on my breathing and watch my thoughts. Whenever I feel anything I make a mental note of that feeling. The process of observing your own emotions and acknowledging them gives you a bit of distance you wouldn’t otherwise have.
Even though I am fully aware the entire time, I often get out of a meditative state feeling completely refreshed and awake.

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Scott H Young » Double Your Reading Rate

Tags: learning, personal-development, productivity, reading, speed-reading on 2007-05-20 and saved by31 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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Most people read a book as if it were given to them as a speech. They listen to the author and follow along with what he is saying in a purely sequential manner. In order to reach faster rates of comprehension you have to learn to abandon this tactic. You can start this by not subvocalizing.
Over a year ago I picked up the book, Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump,
1) Remember, Reading is Not Linear
The beauty of text is that it is non-linear.
2) Stop Subvocalizing
To move to a new level you need to stop sounding the words inside your head or subvocalizing. Subvocalizing takes time, more time than is necessary to comprehend the words you are reading.
4) Use a Pointer
Use your index finger to mark where you are on the page at all times. It should follow along with the word you are currently reading, slowly scrolling across each line and then back down one. It may feel awkward at first and it may even temporarily slow your reading rate as you adjust, but using a pointer is critical if you want to improve your reading skill.
6) Find Your Motivation

If there was one piece of advice I would offer to improve your reading rate it would be simply to engross yourself in the material you are studying. If you can connect what you are reading to a deeply held motivation, and determine your specific purpose for reading you can maintain a very alert and focused state.
The way to remove internal distractions comes from clearly identifying a purpose and a motivation.
You can find a general motivation for reading any book if you are creative enough, so don’t tell me you can’t figure out one.

Cites & Insights 6:14 - The Lazy Man's Guide to Productivity

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Top 5 Personal Productivity Applications – SyncNotes is user’s personal favorite > Web 2.0 application listings, web 2.0 news, articles, community & lot more about web 2.0 from Neo Binaries > NEO Binaries: Hottest and Latest news on web 2.0, web based app

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How to Mind Map

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zen habits | Achieving Goals through Daily Habits

Tags: blog, growth, gtd, habits, lifehack, productivity on 2007-04-10 and saved by102 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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Firefox OS: Why My Hard Drive & Software are Obsolete - lifehack.org

Tags: firefox, productivity, trends, web-os on 2007-04-10 and saved by16 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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How to Do What You Love

Tags: career, growth, paul-graham, productivity, work on 2007-04-09 and saved by15 people -All Annotations (1) -About

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Bounds

How much are you supposed to like what you do? Unless you
know that, you don't know when to stop searching. And if, like most
people, you underestimate it, you'll tend to stop searching too
early. You'll end up doing something chosen for you by your parents,
or the desire to make money, or prestige—or sheer inertia.
Here's an upper bound: Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you
would like to do most this second.
Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired
of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do
something.
As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive
pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of
"spare time" seems mistaken.
But you don't regard this time as the
prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn
it.
To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only
enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow,
that's pretty cool. This doesn't mean you have to make something.
If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language
fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least,
wow, that's pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.
Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps
even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not
on what you like, but what you'd like to like.
The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do
it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at
another job to make a living.
The advice of parents will tend to err on the side of money.
The kids think their
parents are "materialistic." Not necessarily. All parents tend to
be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves,
simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards.
It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don't
underestimate this task. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded
yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you're discontented,
you're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If
you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you
find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves.
Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—because the way to do great work is to find something you like so
much that you don't have to force yourself to do it—finding
work you love does usually require discipline.
Is there some test you can use to keep yourself honest? One is to
try to do a good job at whatever you're doing, even if you don't
like it. Then at least you'll know you're not using dissatisfaction
as an excuse for being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, you'll get
into the habit of doing things well.
Another test you can use is: always produce.
"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love.
If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically
push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on,
toward things you actually like.
you have to make a conscious
effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated
by what seems possible.
Another related line you often hear is that not everyone can do
work they love—that someone has to do the unpleasant jobs.
Worse still, anything you work on changes you. If you work too
long on tedious stuff, it will rot your brain. And the best paying
jobs are most dangerous, because they require your full attention.
Which route should you take? That depends on how sure you are of
what you want to do, how good you are at taking orders, how much
risk you can stand, and the odds that anyone will pay (in your
lifetime) for what you want to do.
In the design of lives, as in the design of most other things, you
get better results if you use flexible media. So unless you're
fairly sure what you want to do, your best bet may be to choose a
type of work that could turn into either an organic or two-job
career.
It's also wise, early on, to seek jobs that let you do many different
things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work are like.
Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most
people have no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who
win lotteries or inherit money.
Much as everyone thinks they want
financial security, the happiest people are not those who have it,
but those who like what they do.
If you know you can love work, you're in
the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you're
practically there.

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Good and Bad Procrastination

Tags: paul-graham, productivity on 2007-04-09 and saved by19 people -All Annotations (1) -About

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December 2005

The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators.
So could it be that procrastination isn't always bad?
So the question
is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.
anything that might be called an errand.
Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.
The reason it pays to put off even those errands is that real work
needs two things errands don't: big chunks of time, and the
right mood. If you get inspired by some project, it can be a net
win to blow off everything you were supposed to do for the next few
days to work on it. Yes, those errands may cost you more time when
you finally get around to them. But if you get a lot done during
those few days, you will be net more productive.
When
I think of the people I know who've done great things, I don't
imagine them dutifully crossing items off to-do lists. I imagine
them sneaking off to work on some new idea.
The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B
procrastination, because it doesn't feel like procrastination.
You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things.
Unless you're working
on the biggest things you could be working on, you're type-B
procrastinating, no matter how much you're getting done.
In his famous essay You and Your Research
(which I recommend to
anyone ambitious, no matter what they're working on), Richard Hamming
suggests that you ask yourself three questions:
1. What are the most important problems in your field?
2. Are you working on one of them?
3. Why not?
Hamming's
exercise can be generalized to:

What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't
you?
Hamming used to go around actually asking people this,
and it didn't make him popular. But it's a question anyone ambitious
should face.
Why is it
so hard to work on big problems? One reason is that you may not
get any reward in the forseeable future.
you have to be facing the big problem directly enough
that you catch some of the excitement radiating from it, but not
so much that it paralyzes you.
If you want to work on big things, you seem to have to trick yourself
into doing it. You have to work on small things that could grow
into big things, or work on successively larger things, or split
the moral load with collaborators.
I think the way to "solve" the problem of procrastination is to let
delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on
an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the
wind as you can, and you'll leave the right things undone.
There's more to do
than anyone could. So someone doing the best work they can is
inevitably going to leave a lot of errands undone. It seems a
mistake to feel bad about that.

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