First of 3 posts on managing tasks with Obsidian, which I need to invest in as I'm creating tasks as I write my notes and then never looking for them again. This post starts with installing Calendar and Obsidian Tasks plugins. As always, to follow this advice I then needed to set up another plugin. Journaling Using Daily Questions in Obsidian…

most people... [think] a Weekly Review ... a comprehensive “life review,” requiring hours ... In this guide, I’ll reframe ... to a short, quick, and easy habit that you’ll look forward to completing...productivity is just like your finances: it doesn’t work if it changes too often... should be a quick check-in to give you clarity...: Clear your …

You can create whatever lists you want, although for GTD, I recommend starting out with something along these lines: New (explained below), Work, Personal, Household, Reference, Someday... The New folder is what GTD would typically call the Inbox... Asana already gives you a different space called Inbox, which shows all activity on tasks assigned …

Behind the scenes, your Hub will help you extract the most value from the best content, rather than being drowned in a firehose of meh.

the same person who spends 127 hours per year on Instagram... has “no time” for reading... the ability to read is becoming a source of competitive advantage... the physical, emotional, attentional, and mental capability to sit quietly and direct focused attention for sustained periods of time...terms ADD and ADHD are falling out of use ... the ent…

The key to Inbox Zero... “touch each email only once.”... only a well-designed underlying system can make such elegant action possible.... your annotated checklist for One-Touch Inbox Zero, in 5 EASY STEPS!...The main problem with how people use email is that they use it for everything.... Every other function is much more effectively handled by o…

Whether you read, curate or create, you need to manage the content that matters to you if you want to extract maximum benefit from it.

four “stages of control”: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification... The unconscious mind “Incubates” the information collected, and finds connections that lead to “Illumination”... If you arrange your creative work according to these seven categories, you can ease creative insights through the four stages of control.

Let’s take a break from the Donald, Facebook and the end of democracy, and try to focus on what’s important.

This updates both my earlier Taming the Firehose and Where is social media taking you in 2016? posts, and better aligns my productivity process with my personal content strategy.

Over 40 new resources ... some great longreads to enjoy as the nights grow long, the productivity tips you’ll need to find the time to read them, and a free set of steak knives. The Christmas season, after all, is almost upon us.

In our busy modern world, I’ve found one very surprising key to bringing more quiet to the mind and in turn practicing more mindfulness, and that is using a good task management system, such as the productivity methodology GTD... knowing that I have everything captured in a trusted GTD system gives my mind space to rest and focus on whatever is…

I'm launching a enewsletter to ensure I absorb something from the social media firehose.

The inexhaustible flood of information flowing into your PC, phone and brain is not going away... and neither are your ToDos... A recent article in HBR presents two techniques to cope — either undertake behavioural change or use technology... But why not use technology to create space for behavioural change?

Control the digital overload rather than letting it control you. But how, exactly, does one do that? We asked two experts: Larry Rosen, a psychologist, and Alexandra Samuel, a technologist. We suspected that their disparate backgrounds would lead them to offer dramatically different advice, and we were right. - Conquering Digital Distraction - …

Last year I decided to get Information Overload under control, setting up a GTD system with a DoIt-driven morning routine and Pocket, Diigo and IFTTT to queue, store and share useful stuff. I was all set. For what, I wasn't sure. But I was sure as hell organised. And then, a couple of days ago, an article on Aeon - What good is information? -…

At first glance, Overtask uses Chrome’s new tab page into a project or task management tool, depending on how granular you want to go. But in reality its approach makes it an excellent productivity enhancement:each task is managed via a tab, which stores all sites and pages associated  with that taskopening a task opens all the related sites for t…

"The way we evolved ... is really not the way we have to operate today ... this attempt at hyperproductivity is making us much less productive.'" A podcast worth every minute. I have a few of these techniques down pat, most days, as long as I can work from home, but the whole mindfulness thing is still over my horizon. - 4 Ways to Make Your …

With BlogActiv feeling a bit creaky, I spent the summer taking a hard look at Google+ and Tumblr, and integrated my GTD (Getting Things Done) system with my online presence.

2019 update: a short Prezicast video from 2013 on my personal productivity system, since covered on Medium: https://medium.com/better-humans/manage-the-firehose-or-it-will-manage-you-791097bc53e2