productive

Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters

Have you ever wondered how Elon Musk is running two billion-dollar companies at once? Musk is an interesting example of someone who manages his time so well that he can work 100 hours a week and still manage to take time out for his hobbies, family, and even Twitter! So, how does he do it?

A free, downloadable calendar to help you practice.

After the response to this recent LifeHacker piece, I thought I would explain the system I use to take notes, research books and keep track of anecdotes, stories and info I come across in my work. This isn’t the perfect system. It might not work for you. All I can say is that since learning it about 7 years ago, it has totally transformed my process and drastically increased my creative output. It’s responsible for helping me publish three books in three years, (along with other books I’ve had the privilege of contributing to), write countless articles published in newspapers and websites, ...

How to efficiently get what you need out of reading, multiple books at a time

One day in your early school years, a teacher probably told you to “take notes” for the first time. Looking around at your fellow classmates, this seemed to involve writing down what the teacher said, word for word, on lined pieces of paper. For most of us, this is how our experience of note-taking started: ... Read more

The full story about why procrastinators routinely ruin their own lives.

How personal productivity transformed work—and failed to.

This interview was recorded earlier this year and originally appeared on The Observer Effect; it has only been lightly edited for formatting here. TABLE OF CONTENTS On productivity Let’s get into it. Over a decade ago, you wrote a …

Marc Andreessen on how he spends his time, learns, the 'build' essay and much more.

Read this article to discover the strategy Warren Buffett uses to simplify his priorities and focus on the right things.

What I've learned about how to be productive and make the most of my time.

I started fasting more frequently, using the Zero App (intermittent, typically the 16/18 hours). Our bodies don't need to constantly be fed. It can slow us down when it's overdone: Here's a good primer thread: This sluggishness I was unconscious about when I was younger. As a teen, and into college I would eat whatever, whenever, thinking that it was normal and not paying any attention to the feeling of being full, the energy drain, and the other side effects like brain fog.

Health, happiness, connection, community, the most important things in life do not happen behind a laptop.

We do all sorts of activities at our desks that affect our ability to produce our best work.

Good news: if you have $17.9 million available, John Steinbeck’s 1.8 acre waterfront retreat is now for sale. It’s tucked onto a grassy peninsula in Upper Sag Harbor Cove, and features a pool, a long pier, and two cozy guest cottages. Arguably most important is the hexagonal, 100-square-foot “writer’s house” overlooking the water. Encountering this […]

Writing in 1801, at the age of 30, Ludwig van Beethoven complained about his diminishing hearing: “from a distance I do not hear the high notes of the instruments and the singers’ voices.” As Arthur C. Brooks recounts in a 2019 op-ed, published in the Washington Post, Beethoven “raged” against his decline, insisting on performing, […]

Plus Minus Next is a simple journaling method. At the top of each column, write + for what worked, – for what didn’t, and → for what you plan to do next.

YouTuber Ali Abdaal shares how he makes the productivity videos that have netted him 1M subscribers

Some of Stephen Wolfram’s “productivity hacks” to make his days and projects more productive. Daily life, desk environment, outside the office, presentation setup, filesystem organization, Wolfram Notebook systems, databases, personal analytics.

If someone you're emailing with is making typos and you're not, skipping capitals and you're not, responding to your long, well-written emails with short responses... then you're their bitch.

There’s no single formula for making work meaningful — but poor management is a universal obstacle.

Creating a yearly them is like making a memorable marketing slogan for your most important value.

I travelled the world and trawled the archive to unearth the hidden lessons from history’s most brilliant people