Now that you've got an RSS reader (right?), you need to make sure that it doesn't become another email-esque albatross that you check way too often and spend way too much time going through. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that you need to cut down on the number of feeds...
Working in an office with other folks around can be an annoying experience. If you've truly got work to do, the less distractions the better, right? So is there anything wrong with aiming to cut off ambient sounds and unwanted interruptions by hanging a "do not disturb" sign around your...
Parkinson's Law states that your workload will expand to whatever time you allocate for its completion. Thus, when you're willing to work late or to check on work stuff from your PDA at home, you're usually not really getting more done; instead, you're just being more wasteful with your time. That's...
A lot of the mail we get cluttering up our inboxes is stuff we don't need to reply to, like company-wide memos, daily recipes or jokes, etc. It's not that this stuff is unimportant or spammy though much of it is, it's just that it's hard to figure out what...
If you often upgrade your electronic devices but never get it together to do anything with your outdated gear, there's a new website called Second Rotation that will give you a little bit of cash for them. For eBay and Craigslist pros, it's not particularly useful, but for those of...
To become a huge star by creating a show about nothing, you have to know a thing or two about personal motivation. What works best for Seinfeld, it seems, is putting up a wall-sized, year-long calendar so that you can get the satisfaction of—and motivation from—crossing off days in which...
The August issue of Wired Magazine isn't out online just yet, but it is packed to the gills with cool tips in its annual How To guide. Like how to outsource your job (check out yourmaninindia.com) and use a Wiki compose your thoughts offline and run a fast meeting (keep...
Planning to meet up with friends and colleagues after work? Instead of relying on old standbys, branch out using MappyHour to find the best bars with the cheapest food and drink specials on a given day (via ). It's a crowdsourced site, which means that there's a lot of local knowledge...
How do you survive a poorly run meeting? How do you explain your ideas in thirty seconds? Guy Kawasaki—Apple evangelist—tells you in tiny snippets what you need to be able to do in the office environment and how to do it in a recent blog post on his site, How...
I was reading the great blog Internet Duct Tape the other day, and came across this statement: "One of the handiest 'life hacks' is to figure out how much money your time is worth after taxes and use that to as a basis for deciding if a time saving service...
When I come across websites that contain important information for whatever I'm working on at the time, I'll often bookmark the pages or sometimes just leave them open for later. Often, though, by the time I'm ready to return to them, I've lost my train of thought or can't find...
Sure, they're only supposed to be for mailing stuff, but the USPS will send you tons of boxes—and envelopes and labels—for free, with no shipping costs. The biggest ones you can order are only one cubic foot, but they're perfect for organizing smaller stuff. (They've even got shoe boxes so...
Why should you be curt with colleagues and customers over email? According to a study of executive recruiters via Web Worker Daily, people are more likely to reply to important things when there's no chitchat mixed in. Stuart Jeffries of The Guardian would like to extend that curtness to faux-cheerful...
There are few things quite as satisfying as removing the clutter from your desk. It's a great way to procrastinate from doing actual work; it results in immediate gratification; and, occasionally—among the leftover takeout containers—you'll find an important paper that you thought was already relegated to the waste bin of...
Or if you don't use one yet, get one now. Really Simple Syndication is a really simple way to manage the articles, blog posts, and web searches that you want to keep up with—without actually having to take the time to go to each site. Web-based Bloglines has treated me...
One of the quaintest relics of the analog age is the idea that a signature is worth more than the paper it's on. It's not—forgers have been taking advantage of dupes well before John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence. Nonetheless, a major tenet of business is that any agreement...
Spending hours a day sitting on your butt is not a great way to remain healthy or—more importantly—look good naked. But immobility is usually necessary in order to be productive at work. Here are a few ideas to get around this conundrum:Â Treadmill Desk: You'll need a cool boss and a...
So you need to set up a conference call with several busy folks and, over email at least, the group has come to an impasse about which half hour over the next week fits in best to everyone's schedules. Enter Doodle—a simple concept that allows you the organizer to bring...
It's hard for me to listen to any productivity advice that includes the suggestion that I turn off my email notification system. I know that it's a waste of time to keep returning to my inbox every time my message detector pops up—I've read Clive Thompson's article on interruption science...
More screen space makes you more productive. It's a fact [PDF]. That's why I just upgraded my monitor to a 19-inch widescreen LCD display from Samsung NewEgg. Well, the productivity thing, plus the fact that it was relatively cheap (under $200) and very snazzy looking.Bigger is better, according to the...
