2.
Surround
Yourself With Progress. When you complete a list of action steps,
your instinct might be to throw the list away. After all, the work is
completed! However, some creative professional teams take a different approach;
they relish their progress. Some go so far as surrounding themselves with it.
3.
Empty Your Inbox in 30 Seconds. Is your inbox filled with
thousands and thousands of unread messages? Before you give up hope, there’s an
instant way to clear your inbox of old emails in less than 30 seconds.
4.
Instantly Build Self Confidence. These tips will get you
riding high in no time.
5.
Reduce Your Trash To Almost Zero. Follow the No Impact Man
experiment to reduce our trash as close as we can to zero.
6.
Feel like a million bucks for cheap. Feel healthier and more
energized right away without spending a fortune.
7.
End Laundry Chaos. More than 20 tips to help you keep your
laundry chaos to a minimum.
8.
Learn the Secrets of the Super-Organized. A few simple habits
keep clutter and chaos at bay.
9.
Check Email Once
a Day … or Once a Week. Simple tips that will reduce interruption
and increase your productivity.
10. Become an Early Riser. 10 benefits of rising early, and some
practical tips on how to do it.
11. Learn Lessons from Google About Self-Image. How you think of
yourself greatly affects how successful you can be. Google has got self-image
down to a science.
12. Make a Good First Impression. Research shows that people
decide what kind of relationship they want with you in the first ten minutes of
a meeting, so making a good first impression really matters.
13. Know the Hype Behind Bottled Water. Have you ever stopped to
think about just how incredibly odd it is to buy bottled water?
14. Leave Work at Work. Want more time for your family or personal
life? Here’s how not to think about your job 24/7.
15. Create a Landing
Strip to Become Organized. We come from work exhausted, often
carrying our work bags, groceries, and the mail. A landing strip will help you
avoid disorganization from the time you get home.
16. Understand Time to Increase Return on Investment. Time is your
most valuable resource. Understanding these ideas will help you make optimal
decisions.
17. Give Your RÈsumÈ
a Face Lift. Even if you can’t hire a fancy designer and are stuck
with Microsoft Word, a few tweaks can turn your blasÈ rÈsumÈ into an elegant
and functional showpiece.
18. Boost Your Energy Level. Feeling energetic is a key to
happiness and to self-esteem, so take steps to keep your energy high.
19. Actually Execute
Your To-Do List. Many productivity systems will tell you how to
organize your tasks, but what happens if you don’t feel like doing them?
20.Keep Your Desk Clean and Tidy. Do you spend waste more and
more time looking for lost items instead of being the brilliant creative person
that you are? Here’s how to get your desk clean, clutter-free, and keep it that
way for good.
21. Learn the Truth About Baby Carrots. Baby carrots not really
young carrots! They are also less nutritious and less flavorful than regular
carrots.
22.Try Quick and (Almost) Painless Ways to Kill Distractions. Are
you spending more time dealing with emails, IMs, phone calls, and random stray
files than actually working? Here are ten actions you can do right now to kill
distractions and get back to work.
23.Reduce Your Carbon Emissions. The most important lifestyle
changes you can make to reduce your carbon emissions are listed here.
24.Put the Action Method Into Practice. After a couple years of
studying how creative people stay organized, we developed a simple and easily
customized method for managing projects. A good portion of 2006 was spent
putting the Action Method into practice.
25.Gently End Procrastination. Need an easy way to remind you
when you should be working and when you should be playing? Try using teaming up
Flextime with Growl. Here’s how.
26.Get the Most Out of Your RSS Reader. Seven simple tips for
getting your feeds under control.
27.Use Catchphrases to Change the Way You Think. By keeping
certain ideas active and accessible through review and repetition ñ whether
itís ìSay yes,î ìFake it ëtill you feel it,î or ìPeople succeed in groupsî ñ
you can shape the way you think.
28.Photograph Your Mementos to Free Up Clutter. Taking digital
photos of your mementos can get rid of clutter, free-up storage space, and
provide you with a simple way to walk down memory lane.
29.Save Trees With Ease. Want to avoid all the paper towels,
paper napkins and other tree-killing stuff there’s no need to use? Read here.
30.Organize Your Cluttered Desktop and Regain Your Sanity. Is
your desktop littered with zillions of random files and folders often litter my
desktop. Learn how 5 ordinary folders can keep your desktop immaculate.
31. Eat Slower. Why eating slower is better for your health, your
sanity, your digestion, and more.
32.Maximize Your Lunch Hour. Your lunch hour should be the least
“productive” moment in your day. If it lasts a mere 20 minutes-or just doesn’t
exist anymore-here’s how to turn it around and make it joyful.
33.Increase Workplace Productivity by Not Being a Jerk. You get
more flies with honey, as the saying goes. This is a brief outline for how to
work and play well with your coworkers (and get more done).
34.Find Cheap Gas Instantly. If soaring gas prices are draining
your wallet dry, here’s five ways to find cheap(er) gas anywhere.
35.Find Your Purpose. We’re all searching for our purpose. It
seems tempting that having it appear by divine intervention would be great.
Maybe not.
36.Make a GTD System for about $20. Putting together a functional
GTD system for the price of a week’s worth of Starbucks.
37.Avoid costly DIY mistakes. You can end up costing yourself
more in the long run if you don’t watch out for these mistakes.
38.Think About Whether You Can Afford NOT to Pursue Your Dreams.
Pursuing dreams is crucial, even when it means taking a hit or entering
financial uncertainty.
39.Plan for Success. Waiting for your ship to come in is a waste
of time.
40.Improve Your Mind by Reading the Classics. How to use the
wisdom of the classics to become a better writer, thinker, and speaker.
41. Break Habits of Highly Ineffective Emailing. A list of what
not to do when emailing, avoiding these habits will take you a long way toward
better, more productive email.
42.Make Your PDA Green. If you’re worried about e-waste and the
toxins produced by burying and burning old cell phones and PDAs, you may want
to try my green hipster’s pda.
43.Learn to Go From Solo to Successful Collaboration.
Self-starters are often successful doing everything themselves. However, when
forced to grow beyond the one gal/guy-show, many creative professionals are
unable to take the leap from a solo success to a successful collaboration.
44.Create a Morning
Routine. Developing a routine in the morning could lead to greater
sanity and happiness, and achieving your goals.
45.Learn How to Survive a Road Trip. Road trips always begin on a
high note, but by the end even Mother Teresa would be willing to shove her
grandmother out of the car. Here are 9 tips to help keep you sane and happy on
any road trip.
46.Share To Make Ideas Happen. The philosophy to “share ideas
liberally” defies the age-old instinct to keep ideas secret. However, the
creative person’s tendency to jump from idea-to-idea-to-idea causes most ideas
to die in isolation. Creative professionals should take every opportunity to
communicate new ideas broadly, seek feedback, and develop a sense of
accountability.
47.Use Space Under Stairs for More Storage. Very cool under-stair
storage where each step is a drawer.
48.Know What’s In Store If You Have a Toddler. New parents often
wonder what’s in store for them once their kid is able to move around on their
own. Here’s what you can expect.
49.Work in Multiple Positives. These hyper-productive activities
will benefit you in multiple ways at once.
50.Use a Super Slim Wallet. It’s time to shrink down that
backbreaking Constanza wallet. Here are 8 ways to radically slim down your
wallet.
51. Advertise Action
to Yourself. We live in a world of choices. When we buy, we have to
make a choice between varieties, brands, and sizes. Similarly, when we work we
have to decide what to focus on and how to use our time. While prioritization
helps us focus, our minds still have the tendency to wander. We are most likely
to focus on whatever catches our eye. Along the lines of “out of sight, out of
mind” we learn that “right before our eyes, actions thrive.”
52.Gain Muscle in Minimal Time. How Tim Ferriss gained 34 pounds
of muscle in 4 weeks.
53.Choose Living Over Sleeping Sometimes. Despite the importance
of healthy sleep habits, there are times when it’s good to throw caution to the
wind and invest in your life in other ways.
54.Make Reference Items Helpful. We spend too much time
discussing, storing, and organizing notes. References are only valuable if you
refer to them. Even with a well-organized system for managing references
(either digital or paper), how often do we actually use them? How do we make
reference items helpful?
55.Eat Sustainably. If you are interested in how to eat
sustainably, read about it here.
56.Lose Weight Without Exercise. How to lose 20 lbs. of fat in 30
days with a sensible diet.
57.Find Calm & Sanity Through the Environment. If you’ve ever
thought a more environmental life might also be a calmer, saner life, you’re
right.
58.Learn About the Successfully Self-Employed. Is freelancing for
suckers? Are you already an expert? This series explores the levels of the
free-agent — and how to understand what each one means.
59.Learn GTD the Easy Way. An online primer of all the chapters
of Getting Things Done.
60.Set Goals So You Actually Accomplish Them. Setting goals is
hard. Following through is even harder. Using a framework that builds on your
personal view of the world can make the process easier. This series helps
outline how.
61. Reduce Gamer
Clutter. If you are a gamer, these are a number of suggestions to
help you keep your entertainment system under control and the gaming clutter to
a minimum.
62.Stick to a Schedule of Regular Exercise. Exercising regularly
boosts moodóright awayóand also makes it easier to sleep, keeps your weight down,
and gives you energy.
63.Cut Back on Computer Cables. Follow these 8 simple steps to
get rid of the birds’ nest of cables behind your computer.
64.Pay the Price to Be an Entrepreneur. The price of access can
be steep, but once you’re flying down the road — it’s well worth it.
65.Single-task. Increase your productivity by learning not to
multi-task.
66.Get Outside Your Comfort Zone. Comfort isn’t all it’s cracked
up to be.
67.Drop Ideas That Fail. Ideas are a commodity. Being able to
execute them well is what creates success. Hanging on to an idea, even after it
his proven to be ineffective is the downfall of many aspiring entrepreneurs.
68.Learn to Calculate Risk. Risk and reward go hand-in-hand.
Knowing what to expect can help reduce risk and shape your reality.
69.Don’t Settle for Just One Path. Variety is the spice of life.
So why do you have to be just one thing when you grow up?
70.Get Rid of Paper Clutter. A four-part series dedicated to
reducing the paper clutter in your home.
71. Set Up Action
Areas. Boxes need to be mailed, errands need to be run, cookies need
to be eaten, orders need to be fulfilled, but by whom? Whoever has a chance!
The Behance team got tired of limiting our action steps to just an area on
paper – why not make “action areas” out of physical space?
72.Find Hidden Clutter. Ten places to start looking for hidden
clutter in your home.
73.Get a Promotion. 20 tips that landed the writer an IT
promotion — most could be used in any field.
74.Dispose of Old Electronics. The best ways to dispose of old
electronics.
75.Increase Your Intelligence. A list of 5 simple activities that
will boost your brain power.
76.Present Yourself. Creative achievements seldom happen in
isolation. A big part of making ideas happen is controlling how you come across
to others. Of course, the Creative’s tendency is to say, “who gives a crap what
other people think.” While there is merit in never compromising oneself for the
sake of another’s opinion, creative professionals need to make an effort to be
understood. You need to present yourself effectively to engage others and get
the support (and the business) you need to push ideas forward.
77.Follow George Orwell’s Rules for Effective Writing. Becoming a
better writer will create better career opportunities and increase
productivity.
78.Lay Your Energy Line. Creative teams juggle multiple projects
at once. The constant streams of ideas lead to more ideas. As energy is spread
across projects like peanut butter, prioritization is all but lost. Energy
Lines are a simple way to prioritize and use design to guide creative energy.
79.Focus on Continuous Improvement. By mastering the optimization
mentality you can become an expert in your chosen field.
80.Motivate Yourself. This post will teach you to recognize the
primary motivation killers and how to beat them.
81. Become a More Light-hearted Parent. We all want a peaceful,
happy atmosphere at home ñ and you canít nag and yell your way there.
82.Give Up Nagging. Itís no fun to nag, and itís no fun to be
nagged. Give your relationship a lift by putting an end to the irritating nag
cycle.
83.Learn to Sacrifice Temporary Pressure for Long-term Goals. All
success requires sacrifice. Do you have the determination to endure temporary
punishment to reach your dreams?
84.Learn the GTD Workflow. An excellent into to GTD for the
novice, a great refresher for the experienced.
85.Use the Power of 10 Minutes. 10 Minutes can be even more
productive amount of time than 50 minutes, if used properly.
86.Triple Your Workout Effectiveness. Do you exercise regularly
but don’t get the results you want? Here are some simple but powerful ways to
boost that workout.
87.Work 8 Hours Straight Without Hating Yourself. There is an art
to taking breaks that can help you work longer, and more productively.
88.Learn Whether You’re Waking Up at the Wrong Time. Everyone’s
internal clock can tell us when we should be working. Are you listening to it?
89.Reduce Wasted Plastic Cups and Bottles. If you want to toss
fewer plastic cups and bottles in the trash, you may be interested this
ultra-cool reusable cup and water bottle.
90.Avoid Entrepreneurial Burnout: Fill Your Tank. Many times
entrepreneurs suffer from going too hard with their vision, without thinking
about keeping the work pace sustainable.
91. Take Steps to Boost Your Happiness in the Next Hour. You can
make yourself happier ñ and this doesnít have to be a long-term ambition. You
can start right now.
92.Learn to Capture Ideas and How to Manage Diarrhea of the Brain.
Sometimes our best ideas come at the worst possible times. These tips will help
to make sure none of those precious ideas fall through the cracks.
93.Know the Signs That a Pink Slip is Coming. If you can answer
yes to THREE or more of these questions, you may want to think about sprucing
up your resume and dry-cleaning your best interview attire.
94.Try No TV. In an extreme experiment to reduce waste to near
zero, No Impact Man turned turned off electricity, which means no TV. Read
about how to entertain a little girl with no TV.
95.Accelerate Your Mortgage Payments to Save a Bundle. See how
much money you can save by adding just a few extra dollars a month to the
principal.
96.Put Your Daily To-Do List On a Post-It. If it won’t fit on a
post-it, it won’t fit in your day.
97.Use Money to Buy Happiness. Some of the best things in life
arenít free, so spend money in ways to bring you more happiness bang for your
buck.
98.Save the Lives of Animals With One Change. If you want to help
save the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals just by not using plastic
bags, perhaps the easiest environmental step, read here.
99.Get the Most Out of Your Rebates. Follow these tips and we can
all fight the Man and wrench our hard-earned money back from those big,
faceless corporations.
100. Eliminate All But the Absolute Essential Tasks. Is your to-do
list overwhelming you? Here’s how to simplify it to the core ta