Everyone these days is chasing after the billion-dollar idea. We look at the giants in the technology industry – Google, Yahoo, eBay, even Microsoft – and see companies that only a few years ago (or a couple decades ago in Microsoft’s case) were tiny startups struggling to get by. When they hi...

In my first post in this series , I discussed the steps I had begun to take in putting my GTD system back in order. I started by outlining my life at the moment (especially my Areas of Focus”) and sketching out a vision of myself in 3-5 years. The next step in my return to an orthodox GTD syst...

Mind-mapping is a popular tool for brainstorming ideas, outlining projects, and organizing information. While some people feel most comfortable mind-mapping with pencils or pens and paper, others enjoy the ease and accessibility of software-based mind-mapping, and there are a variety of tools design...

  The last year was a hard one for me, in virtually every area of my life. Even my successes — and there have been several — have come at the cost of greater stress and a more and more difficult to balance schedule.  While I have managed to adapt and develop ways of keeping everything ...

The second major theme in David Allen’s Making It All Work is “perspective�. (The first major theme, “control�, is discussed in part two of this review.) This part of the book expands greatly on the “Horizons of Focus� to which Allen commits only nine pages in the original Getting Thin...

  This is the ninth part of a 12-part series I am posting from the end  of December and into 2009, examining the current understanding of productivity and where the concept might be heading in the future. I invite Lifehack’s readers to be an active part of this conversation, both in comments her...

It’s a basic fact of life that, unless you’re Will Rogers, you can’t get along with everyone. Unfortunately, it’s also a fact that throughout your life, you’ll be in situations where you simply have to communicate with some of those people you just can’t stand. This may be an annoying bo...

Once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft, people begin to disobey you, and then it’s nothing but work, work, work, all the time.  Ah, who can resist the call of the pirate’s life. Yo ho, ho yo, right? I was surprised to find recently that, while The Princess Bride’’s Dread Pi...

Mark Twain said, “Those of you inclined to worry have the widest selection in history.� We live in troubling  times, and it is a sign of Twain’s genius that his statement is as true today as it was a century ago – if not more so. There’s a lot of stuff for the chronic worrier to obsess ab...

Are you taking it all in? That is, are you sure that you’re noticing everything that matters to you, or could matter to you if only you’d noticed it? Could you do more with your life – or just enjoy it more – if you were more actively engaged in the world around you, in your day-to-day activ...