The secret to any organizational system is that like items should be stored together, be it by type or by purpose. But in order to see what needs to be organized, you have to know what you have. Gathering is simply a fancy way of getting information into one place so it can be stored together.
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One of the concepts that has shown up in quite a few productivity methods is to "batch" activities. This means that you do all like activities on your list at once. There are pros and cons to this batching technique. In this article, I will present the pros.
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It's hard to keep using a tool that you no longer trust. Today we talk about what makes a tool untrustworthy, disaster recovery and knowing when to move on.
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Throughout all the years that I have been writing about productivity and researching productivity, I see a lot of articles on the "how". But knowing how to do something isn't enough if you want to expand on it. As a math teacher, I know it isn't enough to have students memorize formulas. They have to be able to understand why…
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It's time to get back in the saddle again. This episode talks about why I took a break, and how I addressed those issues, along with upcoming changes.
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I love traditional holiday meals. Not necessarily because of the traditions themselves, although they are meaningful, but because no one expects innovation. And no innovation means simple, because I've done it all before. As part of my move to deliberate living I have moved away from complex meals that stress me out to the point where I can't enjoy the…
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People can learn by rote, or being instructed. But those that retain the information the longest are the ones who can apply it to their own perspective. As a teacher the things I found students retained were the things that they could relate to or customize to their own. The same thing applies out of school. A reader recently contacted…
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I work in IT. As a function of my job, I know a lot of little tips and tricks for many programs. Excel is one of my go-to programs, but I rarely use it for numbers - I generate code and do a lot of data work with it instead. I recently had a long list of information to print…
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In writing, there are two types of people: planners and pantsers. Planners outline everything and have a plan, and pantsers fly by the seat of their pants. Both produce novels; however the pantsers end up having to go back and straighten out all of the little plot issues and character problems after the fact. It's like planning after you've already…
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One of the aspects of deliberate living I have struggled with is getting healthier. For a long time I gave in to the negative habits I fall back on when stressed, namely stress eating and reading as a means of escape. The end result of this, after years of this behavior, is that I am packing extra poundage and I'm…
