How to Work Like the Masters | LifeRemix Written by Jay of Dumb Little Man. When I need work done on my car, I consult with a mechanic. When it's time to build a deck in the backyard, I will search for an expert and listen to what he says. So when it comes to life itself, why wouldn't you at least consider what experts think? With that, LifeRemix has done some homework and we're bringing you a list of things that you'll need to consider. Here are a handful of tips on working from the most popular productivity bloggers on the internet, along with bloggers on organization, the environment and more. From Wisebread: Achieve greatness fifteen minutes at a time. From Dumb Little Man: Gain 10 days per year by adjusting your sleep. From Zen Habits: Eliminate all but the essential tasks. From LifeDev: Take creative breaks. From The Happiness Project: Walk around the block. From No Impact Man: Let your TV rob someone else's time. From Success From the Nest: Don't let someone else define your creative process. From Pick the Brain: From Behance:
Start a 1-Acre, Self-Sufficient Homestead - Modern Homesteading Everyone will have a different approach to keeping a self-sufficient homestead, and it’s unlikely that any two 1-acre farms will follow the same plan or methods or agree completely on how to homestead. Some people like cows; other people are afraid of them. Some people like goats; other people cannot keep them out of the garden. For myself, on a 1-acre farm of good, well-drained land, I would keep a cow and a goat, a few pigs and maybe a dozen hens. Raising a Dairy Cow Cow or no cow? On the other hand, the food that you buy in for this family cow will cost you hundreds of dollars each year. 1-Acre Farm With a Family Cow Half of your land would be put down to grass, leaving half an acre arable (not allowing for the land on which the house and other buildings stand). Grazing Management At the first sign the grass patch is suffering from overgrazing, take the cow away. Tether-grazing on such a small area may work better than using electric fencing. Intensive Gardening Half-Acre Crop Rotation
10 Ways History’s Finest Kept Their Focus at Work Post written by Albert van Zyl from the blog HeadSpace. The lives of great people give us interesting clues about how to organise our days. All of them attached great value to their daily routines. For the same reason they were also highly individual in their routines. This is perhaps the first lesson that we can learn – that it takes courage and resolve to design and stick to a routine that suits you. There are at least 10 other lessons that the daily routines of the great can teach us: 1. Despite the modern obsession with physical presence at offices (also known as ‘presenteeism’), very few of the great worked long hours. Philosopher Michel Foucault would only work from 9am to 3pm. 2. Even during these short days, the great took plenty of breaks. Socrates would sometimes simply stop and hold completely still for several minutes. 3. The great all spent a single long period away from their desks every day to give their minds time to recover and regain its creative poise. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Increase your productivity at work by letting go of negative men My alma mater is currently ranked number one in all of the college men’s basketball rankings. They’ve been in the top spot for 11 of the 14 weeks of the polls, and were number one in the preseason. There are five games left in the regular season, and all of the teams Kansas has left to play would love to see the Jayhawks lose. Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, and Missouri fans aren’t the only ones who want to see Kansas mess up their record in the last five games. In competitive sports like basketball, a game has to end with a winner and a loser. In our work lives, however, very few things are like competitive sports. If you want to be productive and manage your time well at work, you need to let go of the belief that your workplace is a zero-sum game.
7 Secrets of the Super Organized A few years ago, my life was a mess. So was my house, my desk, my mind. Then I learned, one by one, a few habits that got me completely organized. Am I perfect? Of course not, and I don’t aim to be. But I know where everything is, I know what I need to do today, I don’t forget things most of the time, and my house is uncluttered and relatively clean (well, as clean as you can get when you have toddlers and big kids running around). So what’s the secret? Are these obvious principles? If your life is a mess, like mine was, I don’t recommend trying to get organized all in one shot. So here are the 7 habits: Reduce before organizing. If you take your closet full of 100 things and throw out all but the 10 things you love and use, now you don’t need a fancy closet organizer. How to reduce: take everything out of a closet or drawer or other container (including your schedule), clean it out, and only put back those items you truly love and really use on a regular basis.
13 Things to Avoid When Changing Habits | Zen Habits “Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.” - Mark Twain Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter. I’ve learned a lot about changing habits in the last 2 1/2 years, from quitting smoking to taking up running and GTD and vegetarianism and waking early and all that. I could go on, of course, but you get the picture. I’ve not only learned a lot about what you should do when changing habits, but through my failures, I’ve learned about what not to do. And trust me, I’ve had lots of failures. I’ve found failures to be just as important as successes when trying to learn how to improve, especially when it comes to changing habits. I’ve done that, with one failure after another, and would like to share a few things I’ve learned to avoid when trying to change a habit. “Motivation is what gets you started. Taking on two or more habits at once. “We are what we repeatedly do.
Simple Productivity | Zen Habits 5 Ways To Combat Reactionary Workflow | Zen Habits Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Scott Belsky of Behance and The 99%. Every few minutes, more communications are being sent your way. Emails, text messages, voice mails, instant messages, twitter messages, facebook posts…and the list goes on. Your human response? For those of us with great ideas and bold goals for the future, reactionary workflow is a big problem. For the past five years, i’ve been interviewing uber-productive leaders and teams – people at companies like Google, IDEO, and Disney, and individuals like author Chris Anderson and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Many of the people I met have developed ways to combat reactionary workflow. Create windows of non-stimulation. Keep Two Lists When it comes to organizing the day’s tasks – and how your energy will be allocated – create two lists: one for urgent items and another for important ones. Schedule intense periods of processing at a consistent time every day. Don’t hoard urgent items. Don’t dwell.