“Motivation, productivity, efficiency—these things are not constants. In my experience, they come in waves. They ebb and flow, and there’s no sense in fighting it. The key is to recognize a productivity surge when it appears, so you can roll with it.”–Jason Fried from a recent Inc. Magazine post. I produced two days of high… Read more
Twitter lists may underused by the majority but they present an opportunity to increase your focus and expand the value you receive from using the service. Here are three reasons to use Twitter Lists: 1. Spend Less Time on Twitter: Even if you follow less than 50 people, your stream can become filled with unwanted… Read more
five.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less. It’s that simple.–source If you are a part of a large ministry organization this may be impossible. You can however commit to five sentences as a personal challenge, blog about it, tweet it out, etc…. Read more
I purchased a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre Solo headphones two years ago that have significantly increased my productivity. Noise Cancellation Eliminating distracting noises and ambient conversations allows me to complete tasks quicker and efficiently, especially when I’m working at coffee shops and restaurants. Visually Show Your Busy-ness Sometimes my slim pair of iPhone… Read more
Finding a blog post that is exactly what I’m looking for is awesome. Having my reading interrupted by pop-up banners/headers/footers is not. Introducing Readable: Editor’s Note: The service Readable is based on, Readability, was a “bookmarklet,” or a tiny script packaged into a browser bookmark. When you click the bookmarklet in your browser, instead of… Read more
These results are from a recent survey Google performed of how people used their tablet computers, the vast majority being iPads–source. I’ve owned an iPad (version 1) for four months and can say that I’m a more efficient consumer of information, but not any more efficient at production or task completion. There are two apps… Read more
(Editor’s note: This post is about tweaking Gmail’s new “Priority Inbox” feature. If you haven’t used it yet, or if it’s confusing or new for you, Google has a great intro video to Priority Inbox that’s short and sweet.) Many times of the day I’m living out of Gmail. I’m always looking for ways to… Read more
One of my greatest weekly productivity challenges is minimizing time spent on short-term, low return activities. The Strong Week Plan, developed by Marcus Buckingham (author of Now Discover Your Strengths and many others), significantly helped me in this area. It’s founded on four questions: What percentage of last week did you spend doing things you… Read more
I’m using my iPhone more and more to capture video and take pictures. I stumbled across the Glif and was impressed by its simplicity and design. Even though I can shoot HD quality videos on my phone the constant shaking can be a serious quality hindrance. Also I’m starting to see how strategic it can… Read more
A “Mind Dump”: setting aside time to type out everything you are thinking about doing, so that you can more freely organize and focus on one task at a time. The perfect time and environment for you to focus and work intentionally rarely presents itself; however, I would suggest that you can create it through… Read more
Matt Stauffer - Editor
Brian Barela, Brian Chang, Gordon Govier, Micheal Hickerson, Adam Jeske, Barney Lin, Berry Long, Dave Paladino, Brian Sun, Steve Tamayo