Posted by
Brandon

Productivity, Organization, and Getting Things Done

Lately an overwhelming feeling of ‘things I gotta do’ has taken over my mind and my free time. I think as technology and stress continues to grow exponentially, this won’t subside anytime soon. The best solution will come from learning to cope and manage these areas. As any proud procrastinator would proclaim, it’s all too easy to shut down and ignore all of your responsibilities rather than face them head-on. (A mantra I’ve tried to leave in my past).

What is cluttering my mind? Decisions, organization, responsibilities, projects, deadlines, perpetual self-education (photography, web design, Photoshop, Illustrator, Mac stuff,), family, friends, financial planning (or lack thereof), health, fitness, reading – you know, the same as everyone else.

In an effort to help handle the many directions I’m being pulled, I’ve started making a few web resources daily stops and thought I’d share what I’ve come across.

  • Lifehacker: I think they’ve said it best: “Lifehacker makes getting things done easy and fun. Delving deep into the technoweb, Lifehacker brings back simple and totally life-altering tips and tricks for managing your information and time.” It’s continually fascinating and always contains fresh tips for ‘hacking’ all areas of your life. Every time I drop by I find at least a few new ideas for life-management. Highly recommended.
  • Ask Metafilter is an utterly absorbing project which questions ‘the hive mind’. Questions are submitted and answered by anyone, anywhere, from all walks of life – but be warned – it’ll consume hours from your schedule if you’re not careful, especially once you find the archives. Highly recommended.
  • Del.icio.us is a list of some of the most active, fresh links on the web. Once again referring to the wisdom of crowds, it often produces some great links to a variety of subject areas. On a similar note, if you haven’t gotten into social bookmarking, one that I use on a daily basis is, once again, Del.icio.us. From their site:

“Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, and more on del.icio.us and access them from any computer on the web.
Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues.
Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite – they’ve already done the work of finding it. Explore and enjoy.”

None of these resources is new. In fact, you may wonder why I’m bothering to bring them up now. Well, it seems to me that these are the type of sites that many people would never know they always needed. If I can help to spread the word, then I’ve passed on the goodness to help combat the vicious mindjunk that hounds our modern times. In another post I’ll show more tactics I’ve learned, and how I’ve started to put them to work for me.