Getting Things Done Personal productivity system and 2001 book The GTD method rests on the idea of moving all items of interest, relevant information, issues, tasks and projects out of one's mind by recording them externally and then breaking them into actionable work items with known time limits.[b][c] This allows one's attention to focus on taking action on each task listed in an external record, instead of recalling them intuitively.[5] First published in 2001,[4] a revised edition of the book was released in 2015 to reflect the changes in information technology during the preceding decade.[1] Themes[edit] Allen first demonstrates stress reduction from the method with the following exercise, centered on a task that has an unclear outcome or whose next action is not defined. The most annoying, distracting, or interesting task is chosen, and defined as an "incomplete". An inboxA trash canA filing system for reference materialSeveral lists (detailed below)A calendar (either a paper-based or digital calendar)
Mastering the Art of Prioritization There are two approaches to “prioritizing” the tasks in your to-do list that I see fairly often. By prioritization, I’m not talking so much about assigning importance to tasks, but deciding which will take chronological priority in your day—figuring out which tasks you’ll do first, and which you’ll leave to last Approach number one involves tackling the biggest tasks first and getting them out of the way. The idea is that by tackling them first you deal with the pressure and anxiety that builds up and prevents you from getting anything done—whether we’re talking about big or small tasks. Leo Babauta is a proponent of this method. Approach number two involves tackling the tasks you can get done quickly and easily, with minimal effort. If you believe in getting your email read and responded to, making phone calls and getting Google Reader zeroed before you dive into the high-yield work, you’re a proponent of this method. My own approach is perhaps a mixture of the two.
meeting great people I’ve had the neat opportunity so far this summer to meet a few of my “online friends” in real life. If I had to use one word to describe it: Energizing. Living in an area where lots of people still do not even have internet access, and if they do it’s prehistoric dial-up, many of my friends and family don’t really understand it. For instance, many people told me that Alan Perlman was going to be an axe murderer and end my life somewhere in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Pretty ridiculous, right? Anyhow, the reason I’m writing this post is to tell you about what I have found to be the best way to get extremely excited about life and your goals. This shockingly effective method to get yourself pumped up and rearing to go is to simply spend some time, in person, with people who are living your dream lifestyle. Getting together with the Way Below Status Quo crew, Colin , Andi and Ash (and meeting the awesome Elisa ) was incredible. It’s because I saw that they were actually DOING IT.
Program | FutureMidwest Conference 20 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Every Sunday post written by: Marc Chernoff Email At the cusp of new beginnings many of us take time to reflect on our lives by looking back over the past and ahead into the future. We ponder the successes, failures and standout events that are slowly scripting our life’s story. This process of self reflection helps maintain a conscious awareness of where we’ve been and where we intend to go. If you would like to maximize the benefits of self reflection , I have 20 questions for you. What did I learn last week? Take 30 minutes every Sunday and give yourself the gift of self reflection. And check out these books for more thought-provoking questions: Photo by: Cesar R. If you enjoyed this article, check out our new best-selling book. And get inspiring life tips and quotes in your inbox (it's free)...
15 Great Decluttering Tips | zen habits Post written by Leo Babauta. As with anything, getting rid of clutter can be made incredibly simple: just go through your stuff, one section, closet, drawer, or shelf at a time, and get rid of everything that isn’t absolutely essential, that you don’t love and use often. Of course, simplifying a process like that isn’t terribly useful to many people who struggle with clutter. Recently I asked you guys for your best decluttering tips … and I pulled some of the best of those (there are many more good ones I wasn’t able to use). But they’re great tips nonetheless. Declutter for 15 minutes every day. Exploring the 'Net and Star Trek with Pearltrees Over the past few days, you may have noticed that we've embedded a new tool known as Pearltrees in certain articles on TG Daily. As you can see, Pearltrees embeds a significant amount of supplemental information related to a post in a way that is easy to navigate, while giving you a chance to preview content before you even click a link. There's a lot more to Pearltrees, though. During a recent interview, the company told us they are engaged in building an expanding a comprehensive "social curation" community. What does this mean for you? Well, you can "team-up" with people who share your interests to curate a topic, thereby providing improved context, more depth and high-quality information. "Obviously, it would be pretty difficult to find all of this content in any reasonable amount of time using Google or another search tool," Pearltrees rep Oliver Starr told TG Daily. To collaborate on a topic, simply click the "team-up" button in an embedded pearltree, like the Star Trek one above.
Create Your Life Handbook by Celes on Mar 15, 2009 | ShareThis Email This Post One of the key tools I found critical in my pursuit of personal growth and living a purposeful life is creating my own life handbook. A life handbook, to put it simply, is your manual that contains anything and everything important in living your life, from your life purpose, adages, life lessons, long-term goals, short-term goals, strategies, plans, right down to your daily tasks. The idea of having a life handbook came to me over a year ago. Fast forward to a year later in 2007, and what did I have? Besides that, I also noticed there were a lot of important things I was learning in life and they were either lost over time or stashed away in my latent memory. When I troubleshooted the situation, I realized it was because I lacked a central system to support my life. Benefits Of Having Your Life Handbook A life handbook is incredibly powerful in many ways. Secondly, it grants you increased mental resources. Key Sections of Your Book
Post it Notes from my Idiot Boss The NY Times Online Paywall Finally Goes Live After 14 months in development, long-awaited “metered” model launches The New York Times' much-hyped, feverishly-anticipated online paywall went live on Monday at 2:00 p.m. (ET), as scheduled. The Times' long-term plan is to charge "heavy" users of the site between $15 and $35 per month for digital subscriptions to access the site, but the paper is offering all subscriptions plans for 99-cents each for four-week trials as part of the launch. To mark this historic occasion, here are links to most of The Wrap's articles on the Times' paywall — as well as other approaches to paid content online. >> New York Times to Unveil Online Paywall in the Afternoon >> Times: Paywall Freeloaders Will Be 'Mostly High School Kids,' Unemployed >> How Much Money Can the Times Make From its Paywall? >> New York Times to Launch Online Paywall on March 28 >> Times Paywall Enters 'Final Testing Phase,' Will 'Launch Shortly' >> NYT Co. >> New York Times Chief Offers New Details on Paywall