The 80 Best Lifehacks of 2008

And so we arrive yet again at the end of another year. 2008 was at best a mixed bag – while the world was electrified by the US election and it’s promise of change, the global economy was shaken to its core as a decade of financial mismanagement and willful blindness finally caught up with us. Gas prices spiked, leading us all to ask some difficult questions about sustainability, efficiency, and consumption – and then plummeted, leaving us feeling somewhat relieved, but baffled by the unpredictability of it all. As we roll into 2009, there is an atmosphere of suspenseful anticipation, of hope mixed with not a little uncertainty. Companies are streamlining to prepare for the worst, even as entrepreneurs look ahead to new opportunities. Overall, it seems that now is a time for shaking off the dust, clearing away the debris of the past, and looking towards the future. Here at Lifehack, we’ve always followed a path of cautious optimism. Communication Fitness/Health Lifestyle Productivity

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/the-80-best-lifehacks-of-2008.html

The 90 Best Lifehacks of 2009: The Year in Review Another year is winding down, and that means it’s time to take a look back at what we’ve done here at Lifehack over the last 12 months. 2009 was a scary year for a lot of people – corporate layoffs, a shaky global economy, stunningly vicious politics, old wars grinding on and new ones flaring up. In the midst of all this, though, many saw opportunities; with the myth of life-long corporate employment shattered as some of the world’s biggest companies teetered on the brink of collapse, entrepreneurship enjoyed a major resurgence. This rise in self-reliance extends beyond our work life, too – people are embracing a do-it-yourself, person-to-person lifestyle where status and the display of wealth matter much less than authenticity and social interaction. All of this is reflected in the posts that went up on this site over the last year.

20 Amazing and Essential Non-fiction Books to Enrich Your Library Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter. I’m an avid reader of fiction and just love a novel that transports me, that is so gripping that I can’t put it down. But I also enjoy a good non-fiction book, from self-help stuff to philosophy to biographies to just about anything that makes me think. After the warm reception of my post on novels (50 Amazing and Essential Novels to Enrich Your Library), a number of people asked for a list of non-fiction as well. Well, here it is! The 100 Best Lifehacks of 2010: The Year in Review Happy New Year everyone! It’s the first week of 2011 and many of us are getting ready to kick off the brand new year with a big bang. As we start off 2011 with our new resolutions and goals, let us now look back at the best posts at Lifehack in the past year. In this review post, I have gathered 100 of the best LifeHack articles in 2010. These articles have been selected based on your votes and how much YOU have talked about them in social media (Facebook and Twitter). I have categorized these 100 articles into 11 main categories of Overall Personal Growth, Maximizing Productivity & GTD, Lifestyle & Habits, Inspiration & Motivation, Goal Achievement & Success, Emotional Mastery, People Skills & Relationships, Communications & Writing, Business & Career, Creativity & Inspiration, Family and Miscellaneous.

10 More from the Webware 100 - Stepcase Lifehack Last week, I looked at the apps chosen by CNet for the productivity section of the Webware 100. There were, however, 10 other sections – 9 categories of apps voted for as top in their class and an extra categories of apps chosen by the editors at CNet. This week, I want to look at a selection of applications from the rest of the Webware 100, with an eye towards their use to increase or improve personal productivity. Some of the categories aren’t very productivity-oriented, like the music and audio section – I love Pandora and Amazon MP3, but I can’t say they help with my productivity in anything but the most indirect way (by giving me music to listen to while I’m working). The browsing category is particularly useless – picking the 10 best apps for web browsing is a bit like picking your ten best fingers.

Start Every Day as a Producer, Not a Consumer I have to agree that my most productive days are those where I don't allow myself to read the news, check e-mail, facebook, etc., right after I get up. However, that happens because I've got a ton of stuff to get done, and the outside world takes a back seat until my workload is under control. However, there are certain biological necessities that have to happen before I can be productive. The dog gets let out, I go to the bathroom, I eat/drink something, and *then* I sit down to be productive. I also *have* to check my e-mail, because if something blew up overnight or there's something that needs to be dealt with ASAP, I need to know as early as possible. I've found that reading my e-mail on my phone curbs the impulse to respond to everything immediately, because composing a lengthy e-mail on a tiny touchscreen sucks.

100 Time-Saving Search Engines for Serious Scholars While burying yourself in the stacks at the library is one way to get some serious research done, with today’s technology you can do quite a bit of useful searching before you ever set foot inside a library. Undergraduates and grad students alike will appreciate the usefulness of these search engines that allow them to find books, journal articles and even primary source material for whatever kind of research they’re working on and that return only serious, academic results so time isn’t wasted on unprofessional resources. Note: Visit our updated list for the latest in academic search engines.

Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths Contents The law of accelerating returns We live in the times of accelerating acceleration. Write Here, Write Now, Write Anywhere: 13 Free Web-Based Word Pr Imagine the situation: You’re visiting your parents’ home for the holidays, a thousand miles from your own PC, when inspiration strikes, a brilliant idea for the next plot twist in your novel! Or consider: you’re on a business trip and your laptop is stolen — and the proposal you’re working on is due tomorrow! Or you’re on campus when you remember you have an assignment due in two hours — and you live an hour away! Maybe you have a thumb drive you keep your work on; now all you have to do is find a PC that can read your files, and hope you remembered to backup the files you need right away. But advances in web technology over the last couple years have given us another way to work from anywhere, no matter what computer we have access to, as long as we have access to the Internet: online word processors.

Developing Character, Courage & College Readiness Leaders often cut their own path. That is certainly the case for Dan Scoggin, perhaps the most countercultural guy in K-12. The Phoenix school network leader has an unusual “reverence for western tradition.” Best Places to Get Free Books – The Ultimate Guide When we were reviewing 10 of the best online resources for free books, we had a LOT of readers chime in with their own favorites as well. Thank you for all your helpful contributions! In fact, we had so many suggestions, we have enough to compile a huge list from them, so here they are in no particular order: ManyBooks – Free eBooks for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader – Thanks Tony Bryan & abben BookCrossing – Where real books are released into the wild to be found by others – Thanks EngtechLibraryElf – The perfect companion to a public library system – Thanks EngtechScribd – Open library to publish and discover documents online – Thanks CincauHangus Word Public Library – 400,000 PDF ebooks for download – Thanks EllenFree Tech Books – Free computer science and engineering books (+ lecture notes) – Thanks EllenBookins – Swap real books with other readers – Thanks Jimbob WellToldTales – Free short story podcasts (like audiobooks, but shorter) – Thanks Kevin C.