The Complete Guide to Time Blocking "A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure." – Cal Newport, Author of Deep Work If there's one thing that can be said about the modern workplace, it's this: If you don't control your schedule, it will control you. How do you balance the necessary evils of meetings, email, team chat, and "busy work" with focused time for the things you truly care about? Since becoming a digital hermit isn’t an option for most of us, we need concrete strategies to help us focus in a world designed to distract us. That’s where time blocking comes in. Time blocking (and its close cousins time boxing, task batching, and day theming) is a simple, yet effective way to take back control of your workday. Try time blocking if you... What is time blocking? Time blocking is a time management method that asks you to divide your day into blocks of time. Dig deeper Time blocking variations Task batching Day theming Time boxing Todoist Tip
A Nice List of Great Photoshop Lists Lists have been around for a long while and are a hot topic today. I’ve even compiled some myself for my Photoshop Roadmap blog. They are perfect candidates for massive and steady traffic, and they are an interesting, if not fun, reading. If the compilation has been made with care and lots of research, the result may become a mini or micro web site itself. TIP: When writing a great tutorial, create big previews and images of the final result, to increase your chances to be included in blog posts and lists. Ok, enough blathering, here is my Nice List of Great Photoshop Lists. 70 horror, blood and gore Photoshop tutorials and brushes 100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web A Complete Guide to Digital Makeover in Photoshop Best of Adobe Photoshop Tutorials Hand Picked Adobe Photoshop Tutorials Photoshop Masters Photoshop Buttons Tutorials 100 Artistic Photoshop Tutorials Photoshop Support brushes guide Leave your vote 1 point UpvoteDownvote Upvotes: 1
Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think We made a fancy PDF of this post for printing and offline viewing. Buy it here. Part 1: Meet Your Mammoth The first day I was in second grade, I came to school and noticed that there was a new, very pretty girl in the class—someone who hadn’t been there the previous two years. Her name was Alana and within an hour, she was everything to me. When you’re seven, there aren’t really any actionable steps you can take when you’re in love with someone. But for me, it became suddenly relevant a few months later, when during recess one day, one of the girls in the class started asking each of the boys, “Who do youuu want to marry?” Disaster. I was still new to being a human and didn’t realize that the only socially acceptable answer was, “No one.” The second I answered, the heinous girl ran toward other students, telling each one, “Tim said he wants to marry Alana!” The news quickly got back to Alana herself, who stayed as far away from me as possible for days after. Part 2: Taming the Mammoth No.
Remember The Milk - Blog I’m happy to introduce a guest post from Doug Ireton, who’s written a fantastic guide to Getting Things Done with RTM. Doug is a Sr. Platform Engineer on the Windows Server team at Nordstrom, a luxury clothing retailer based in Seattle, Washington. Remember The Milk has all the features required to be a great web-based task manager for Getting Things Done (GTD) but its sheer flexibility means it can be daunting to build a well-oiled GTD machine. A good GTD system should: Allow you to keep track of daily tasks (e.g. The GTD system has five workflow phases: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do. The setup below should take about 30-40 minutes. Create Lists for Personal and Work Daily Tasks Start by creating two lists, “ps-Daily” and “wk-Daily” to keep track of day-to-day personal and work tasks, respectively. Create a List for Each Project Next, create a list for each personal and work project you have (for example, “Buy House” or “Create Budget”). Waiting-For and Someday/Maybe Lists
Passive Readers' Advisory One of my favorite parts of being a school librarian is connecting students with books they love. Providing readers’ advisory is an art that librarians are skilled at. However, sometimes you just can’t reach every student for one-on-one help finding the perfect book. Spine Labels I started by adding genre labels to all of my fiction titles. Alphabet Dividers I added these simple dividers to Fiction, Biography, and Graphic Format to make it easier to identify where the call numbers will fall on the shelves. Dewey Signage I asked our advanced art students to create new Dewey signs that reflect the content of each area so it is more obvious to students where to find books about science, literature, etc. Book Displays I create multiple book displays each month around a variety of themes. Star Stickers Inspired by a colleague, I decided to try this simple way of allowing students to recommend books. Book Lists Finally, I have created a notebook full of book lists. Author: Brandi Hartsell Like this:
100 Blogs that Will Save You Time & Make You More Productive Today’s busy lifestyles require that everyone put in extra hours when it comes to careers, family, and even free time. Learn how to better manage your time to get more done in less time. The following blogs will help you find ways to become more productive whether it’s at home or work–and no matter what profession you have. Entrepreneurs, professors, students, creatives, technology buffs, and even those just looking for inspiration for productive lives will all find blogs with plenty of information and suggestions to get things done more efficiently. Productivity for Life Many of the blogs listed in this section are super popular–and for good reason. Stepcase Lifehack. Productivity Specifically for Work While many productivity blogs focus on both personal productivity and productivity at work, these blogs specialize in the work variety. Productivity Cafe. Productivity for Creatives 43 Folders. Productivity with Technology Lifehacker. Entrepreneurship Dave Cheong. Productivity in Academia
9-powerful-habits-for-getting-important-things-done-and-building-your-willpower- We all know that sinking feeling. A deadline is drawing closer and you haven't even started yet. You begin to panic and a dull nausea sets in. There is nothing worse than having two hours remaining to complete a project that you know will take more like five. You sit there saying to yourself, "Why didn't I get this started yesterday?" Wouldn't it be great to build the habits that will get you working on that project well before it is due so this never happens again? 1. Do you have a long laundry list of things you have to accomplish? 2. Sometimes, taking the opposite approach works best: Take on all the easy and smaller things on your list and save that huge project for last. 3. When we constantly bash ourselves for not living up to our own high expectations, we make ourselves feel even more defeated and less likely to produce anything at all. 4. Did you know that if you practice pushing yourself every day--even a little--your willpower strengthens? 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
40 Reasons Why Software Projects Die What Is an AntiPattern? AntiPatterns, like their design pattern counterparts, define an industry vocabulary for the common defective processes and implementations within organizations. A higher-level vocabulary simplifies communication between software practitioners and enables concise description of higher-level concepts. An AntiPattern is a literary form that describes a commonly occurring solution to a problem that generates decidedly negative consequences. AntiPatterns provide real-world experience in recognizing recurring problems in the software industry and provide a detailed remedy for the most common predicaments. Furthermore, AntiPatterns present a detailed plan for reversing these underlying causes and implementing productive solutions. Software Development AntiPatterns A key goal of development AntiPatterns is to describe useful forms of software refactoring. Software Architecture AntiPatterns Software Project Management AntiPatterns Find us on Google+
Stop Thinking In Tasks And To-Dos. Start Thinking In Outcomes We all toil under a tyranny of to-dos. Life can feel like an endless succession of tedious tasks we struggle to complete, and we may cross everything off our to-do lists, but it can still feel like we aren't achieving what we really want. It’s why we click on every productivity hack that pops up in our feed while half-read self-help books pile up on our nightstands. I run a company dedicated to helping people get their tasks and to-dos done. Tasks and to-dos may be the building blocks of work and productivity, but an outcome is more than a blueprint — it’s the most nutrient-rich version of a goal. At my company, Hello Alfred, we combine technology and personal in-home assistance to help people manage grocery shopping, laundry and dry cleaning service, and other weekly tasks and to-dos. It may sound simple enough, but it’s a fundamentally different way of working and thinking about how to get things done. Write outcomes, not to-dos That’s not to say you should trash your to-do list.
25+ Tutorials For The Web Minded There is a huge selection of free tutorials on the web for just about everything you can think of. We've put together 25+ sites that should help give you a good start on learning about the web itself and web-related tools you wish you knew more about. General 999Tutorials.com - Features free tutorials on PHP, general web stuff, Google AdSense and more. CommunityMX.com - Over 2,000 tutorials for Flash, Fireworks, ColdFusion, Dreamweaver and more. Good-Tutorials.com - An aggregator for tutorials from around the web for things like CSS, Flash, Photoshop and more. Lynda.com - Though this site charges money for its services, it has an "all you can eat" mentality - you can have it all for one single price. TechTut.com - Has detailed, step-by-step, tutorials for programs such as Photoshop, Maya, 3D Studio Max and more. Tutorialized.com - A tutorial aggregator that allows people to submit tutorials they've found around the web. Languages Jessey.net - A detailed guide to building a website using XHTML.
» Time Management Posted by: Mark McGuinness Category: Creative Coaching Bookmark on: del.icio.us In this series I’ve given you my take on time management and how it can help or hinder creative work. In doing so, I’ve taken elements from different systems, having assimilated them over time and adapted them to my own needs. If you are keen to investigate these systems, please make sure you try them one at a time! The following are all resources I’ve used myself - if you have any recommendations of your own to share, please leave a comment. The e-book of this series - Time Management for Creative People If you enjoyed this series you can download it as a free e-book. My ‘GTD’ delicious bookmark My GTD del.icio.us bookmark is where I bookmark any web pages I find with useful material about time and workflow management. The creative process The Creative Habit – Learn it and Use it for Life, by Twyla Tharp Very down-to-earth, very practical, very inspiring. ‘Do It tomorrow’ – Mark Forster’s approach Software Blogs