Introduction/overview
- Hard Work – Not Relevant – Reed Hastings, CEO Netflix
- Mise en Place
- xkcd: Is It Worth the Time?
- NY Times: How Different Groups Spend Their Day
Principles
- Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for it’s completion.”
- Decision Fatigue in Physicians and Medicine: The Importance of Routines and Habits: Humans have a finite store of mental energy for making decisions.
- Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule): For many phenomena, 20% of invested input is responsible for 80% of the results obtained.
- Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle: Categorize tasks by urgent vs not-urgent and important vs not-important.
- Batching tasks: Multitasking: Switching costs: Avoid the mental cost and time cost of switching tasks by grouping.
- Pomodoro Technique: Break down work into intervals (25 min), separated by short breaks (5 min)
- Online TomatoTimer
- Please Don’t Interrupt: “It takes a while for our brains to get into a focused state where we’re able to concentrate fully on a task without feeling distracted.”
- Video by The Atlantic’s Dr. James Hamblin: Single-tasking Is the New Multitasking
Getting Things Done (GTD)
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.
- David Allen at TEDxClaremontColleges
- Video: The Essentials of GTD in 2 Minutes, 22 Seconds
- GTD Introduction by Joe Buhlig
- GTD Workflow: Five Steps: Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect, Engage
- Shuhari (守破離)
- Most Important Tasks (MITs): Zen Habits: The Art of Choosing Important Tasks
- Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy
- Book summary on SlideShare
[Bolded apps below are ones that I personally use. I have no financial relationship with any of these products.]
Task management systems:
- Note card system by @jazer
- Omnifocus (Mac & iOS)
- Clear (Mac & iOS)
- Due (Mac & iOS)
- Workflowy (Mac, iOS, Windows, Android, Web)
- Trello (Mac, iOS, Android, Web)
- Zapier Blog: 40 of the Best To-Do Apps for Personal Task Management
Note Taking Apps
- Evernote (Mac, iOS, Windows, Android, Web)
- Other highly recommended note taking apps:
- Simplenote (iOS, Mac, Android, Web)
- Microsoft Onenote (All Platforms)
- Notability (iOS, Mac)
Time Trackers
- RescueTime (Mac, Windows)
- Timing (Mac)
Text Expansion
- Typing Speed: How Fast is Average [pdf]
- What is the Average Speaking Rate?
- Apple Insider: iOS 9 tips: Use Text Replacement to type faster
- TextExpander (Mac, iOS)
- ActiveWords (Windows)
- Phase Express (Windows)
- Lifehacker: How to Use Text Expansion to Save Yourself Hours of Typing Every Week
Dictation
Keyboard/Trackpad Automation
- CheatSheet (Mac) – hold ⌘ to display short cuts for current app.
- Keyboard Maestro (Mac)
- Recording macros with Keyboard Maestro
- AutoHotKey (Windows)
- BetterTouchTool (Mac)
Password Management/Automation
- Dilbert: November 27, 1995
- 1Password (Mac, iOS, Windows, Android)
- Gmail: Using filters
- Outlook: Manage email messages by using rules.
- Unroll.Me (Supports: Outlook.com (including Hotmail, MSN, & Windows Live), Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, and iCloud)
- Boomerang for Gmail
Automating Meeting Scheduling
Automating and Connecting Your Apps and the Internet
- IFTTT (Multiple platforms)
- Zapier (Multiple platforms)
- Quora: What’s the difference between Zapier and ifttt?
- Workflow (iOS)