New York Times covers Life Hacking

Ahh, the New York Times is covering Life Hacking. You know, how to wring every bit of productivity out of your life. This is a topic that interests me greatly. I was one of the attendees in that Danny O’Brien talk that’s covered here. I don’t always follow David Allen’s program, but I’m very close to being back on it.

I have only five emails unanswered in my inbox now. A week ago it was more than 500. How did I dig out? ClearContext. How did that help? By putting things in a priority system. That helped me get a handle on the job ahead and gave me almost a game to play. “Can I get to the next level?”

Another thing that helped me get going? Having a wifeless week. I just stayed up until 4 a.m. a few nights this week until I powered through my email stack. Another way? Have a reward waiting for you. Today’s Toyota 400 race was my reward for getting caught up. And I wanted to be caught up so I could enjoy this weekend without the nagging thought that I had so many emails I hadn’t caught up with yet.

How do you get more productive?

Published by

Robert Scoble

As Startup Liaison for Rackspace, the Open Cloud Computing Company, Scoble travels the world looking for what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology for Rackspace's startup program. He's interviewed thousands of executives and technology innovators and reports what he learns in books ("The Age of Context," a book coauthored with Forbes author Shel Israel, has been released at http://amzn.to/AgeOfContext ), YouTube, and many social media sites where he's followed by millions of people. Best place to watch me is on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble

Comments

  1. My personal list of can’t live without it software for personal productivity is:

    (1) Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In - implements GTD within Outlook
    (2) MindManager from Mindjet - mind mapping
    (3) SnagIT - a really great screen capture tool
    (4) Konfabulator - which I use to run a bunch of desktop widgets providing quick access to news, dictionary, thesaurus, weather
    (4) Newsgator - Outlook edition - news aggregator with the advantage that I can read news & blogs offline

    Steve

  2. My personal list of can’t live without it software for personal productivity is:

    (1) Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In - implements GTD within Outlook
    (2) MindManager from Mindjet - mind mapping
    (3) SnagIT - a really great screen capture tool
    (4) Konfabulator - which I use to run a bunch of desktop widgets providing quick access to news, dictionary, thesaurus, weather
    (4) Newsgator - Outlook edition - news aggregator with the advantage that I can read news & blogs offline

    Steve

  3. I think this is a sign of 2 things.
    1) Most of our businesses/lives/jobs involve way to much process (aka the TPS report).
    2) We are in a sad state as a society in that not only is the average individual being asked to be a drone, mindlessly executing on pointless task all day, but we, the individuals, go to seminars and read books to try and be better drones.

    Well I don’t want to be a better drone!

  4. I think this is a sign of 2 things.
    1) Most of our businesses/lives/jobs involve way to much process (aka the TPS report).
    2) We are in a sad state as a society in that not only is the average individual being asked to be a drone, mindlessly executing on pointless task all day, but we, the individuals, go to seminars and read books to try and be better drones.

    Well I don’t want to be a better drone!

  5. I used to get more productive by organizing, using tools, applying new techniques and keeping the ones that workd for me. After that, I ran out of time during each day. I found that being more productive often means doing less. Since I figured that out life has been simpler. And more productive.

  6. I used to get more productive by organizing, using tools, applying new techniques and keeping the ones that workd for me. After that, I ran out of time during each day. I found that being more productive often means doing less. Since I figured that out life has been simpler. And more productive.

  7. I don’t want to be a drone either. I do what I can, leave my work at the office and enjoy my life. Took a lot of time to get to that place, but you work to live, you shouldn’t live to work.

  8. I don’t want to be a drone either. I do what I can, leave my work at the office and enjoy my life. Took a lot of time to get to that place, but you work to live, you shouldn’t live to work.

  9. It’s interesting, as I was reading the NY Times article, I realized I wish it was in a outline format so I could get the points or expand them. I found a lot of the detail not necessary for me right now and something I may want to go back to later. But when I’m in a hurry, I want to skim the points and conclusions to get the information. I know Dave Winer has worked on outlining systems since at least he ’80’s. It’s too bad there isn’t one I know of implemented for blogging and websites like NYT.

  10. It’s interesting, as I was reading the NY Times article, I realized I wish it was in a outline format so I could get the points or expand them. I found a lot of the detail not necessary for me right now and something I may want to go back to later. But when I’m in a hurry, I want to skim the points and conclusions to get the information. I know Dave Winer has worked on outlining systems since at least he ’80’s. It’s too bad there isn’t one I know of implemented for blogging and websites like NYT.

  11. Thanks for the link to the article, that really is an interesting one. One thing I will be doing soon: Shut off automatic receiving of emails.

    Because the tip to only read your emails so many times a day has the big downside that most of my information resides in emails and their attachements. Unless I turn off the automatic retrieval, I will stay on being interupted.

  12. Thanks for the link to the article, that really is an interesting one. One thing I will be doing soon: Shut off automatic receiving of emails.

    Because the tip to only read your emails so many times a day has the big downside that most of my information resides in emails and their attachements. Unless I turn off the automatic retrieval, I will stay on being interupted.

  13. Interesting article in the NYT about Life hacking

    Robert links to an interesting article in the NYT called “Meet the Life Hackers”. I assume this goes behind a paywall soon, grab it and save the print version.

    The fun things about people sharing their life hacks is, that one day you might find s…

  14. “Life Hacking?” Geesus H. Rice Krispies, they have to buzzword everything all up before geeks, bloggers and web creatures of the night will pay attetion, eh? This rot is as old as Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie, just now it has a blurry technology lens filter. Gawd…

  15. “Life Hacking?” Geesus H. Rice Krispies, they have to buzzword everything all up before geeks, bloggers and web creatures of the night will pay attetion, eh? This rot is as old as Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie, just now it has a blurry technology lens filter. Gawd…

  16. Another thing that helped me get going? Having a wifeless week.

    Geeesus. How cold. Well I guess I see where your priorities are. If you are that VIP and that busy, make your damn info-overloaded company hire you an assitant.

  17. Another thing that helped me get going? Having a wifeless week.

    Geeesus. How cold. Well I guess I see where your priorities are. If you are that VIP and that busy, make your damn info-overloaded company hire you an assitant.

  20. NY Times: Meet the Life Hackers

    The irony is that I have been trying to get through this article for a couple of days, but I keep getting interrupted… The New York Times published Meet the Life Hackers this weekend; detailing the plethora of distractions in

  21. Expand the range. Much better to read good classic English novels, great poetry - I mean the best, Donne, Shelley, and things like Quixote, Greek tragedies, Shakespeare. And very good history. Even ten minutes a day will change your ear and expand the conceptual range. As someone said, too much process, not enough content.I’ve known management consultants who thought they were being intellectual reading management books. Way too narrow.

  22. Expand the range. Much better to read good classic English novels, great poetry - I mean the best, Donne, Shelley, and things like Quixote, Greek tragedies, Shakespeare. And very good history. Even ten minutes a day will change your ear and expand the conceptual range. As someone said, too much process, not enough content.I’ve known management consultants who thought they were being intellectual reading management books. Way too narrow.

  23. I’m a GTD enthusiast too. I tried a few products to help move the email mountain until I realized that my biggest problem was moving them out of the inbox into one of my 600+ folders. Outlook’s Move to Folder user interface was just too cumbersome for deeply nested folders, and drag-and-drop through screenfuls of folders took far too long, so I rolled my own tool: SpeedFiler for Outlook. It started off as MeWare, fast became FriendWare and is now commercially available. http://www.speedfiler.com

  24. I’m a GTD enthusiast too. I tried a few products to help move the email mountain until I realized that my biggest problem was moving them out of the inbox into one of my 600+ folders. Outlook’s Move to Folder user interface was just too cumbersome for deeply nested folders, and drag-and-drop through screenfuls of folders took far too long, so I rolled my own tool: SpeedFiler for Outlook. It started off as MeWare, fast became FriendWare and is now commercially available. http://www.speedfiler.com