Category: Life Tips

Add separators to your taskbar to keep them organized in groups, help you focus, and keep your mind clearer, possibly in groups of 6 apps together.

Three useful tricks for organizing your messy Windows taskbar - Lifehacker

If you've ever wanted to group your apps into separate spaces on your taskbar, you actually can - with a little help from this workaround we've talked about before. All you need to do is create a shortcut to a fake EXE file, give it a transparent icon, and add it to your taskbar. You can separate your office apps from your games, or even your slow-loading apps from your fast-loading apps - that way, if you accidentally click on the wrong button, you don't have to wait 60 seconds for the wrong app to load before you close it. Check out our original post for the full rundown on how this works.

Take a quick break every hour to evaluate what you have done and refocus on what task to do next.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don’t let the hours manage you.

An 18 minute plan for managing your day - Harvard Business Review

Keep a dated list of tasks and projects you have completed, because looking back on your achievements provides a sense of accomplishment and motivation.

Clever uses for plain text files that can increase your productivity - Lifehacker

There's something to be said for seeing how much you've gotten done at the end of the day. You know how satisfying it is to cross out items on your to do list, and then look back at the list to see everything you completed? A "done" list, or "anti-to-do list" as Marc Andreessen calls it, works in a similar fashion: you simply take note of each thing you get done during the day. Start out with the date and just list your "done" items underneath. Not only will this help you review your productivity at the end of each day and make you feel better about what you got done, but it can be really useful to keep around as a work log. You might want to look back in weeks or months to come to see what you were working on or how long a project took to complete.

Give honest and sincere appreciation. - Dale Carnegie

How To Win Friends And Influence People - Goodreads

Lincoln once began a letter saying: "Everybody likes a compliment." William James said: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." He didn't speak, mind you, of the "wish" or the "desire" or the "longing" to be appreciated. He said the "craving" to be appreciated...Let's try to figure out the other person's good points. Then forget flattery. Give honest, sincere appreciation. Be "hearty in your [compliments] and lavish in your praise." and people will cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them over a lifetime - repeat them years after you have forgotten them.

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential." - Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee’s top 7 fundamentals for getting your life in shape - Positivity Blog

If you want to improve your life then it’s tempting to want to add more. One problem with this may be that you don’t really have the time or energy to do more though. And so your efforts to improve become short-lived. Adding more and more just creates more stress and anxiety. Removing clutter and activities, tasks and thoughts that are not so important frees up time and energy for you to do more of what you really want to do. And as the clutter in your outer world decreases the clutter in your inner world also has a tendency to decrease. This has the added benefit of making it easier to actually enjoy whatever you are doing even more while you are doing it.

I'm always left of center and that's right where I belong. I'm the random minor note you hear in major songs.

I Like That - Janelle Monae

Sometimes a mystery, sometimes I'm free
Depending on my mood or my attitude
Sometimes I wanna roll or stay at home
Walking contradiction, guess I’m factual and fiction

A little crazy, little sexy, little cool
Little rough around the edges but I keep it smooth
I'm always left of center and that's right where I belong
I'm the random minor note you hear in major songs

And I like that
I don't really give a fuck if I was just the only one
Who likes that
I never like to follow, follow all around and chase the sun

The solution or explanation with the fewest amount of steps or assumptions should often be preferred in order to simplify the solution down to its essential factor or factors.

Occam's Razor - Wikipedia

In philosophy, Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor or Ocham's razor; Latin: novacula Occami) is the problem-solving principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae). Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, it is frequently cited as "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem", which translates as "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity", although Occam never used these exact words. Popularly, the principle is sometimes inaccurately paraphrased as "The simplest explanation is usually the best one." This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should prefer the one that requires the fewest assumptions and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions.

Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.

Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell

They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot

Late last night I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot

80% of the result comes from 20% of your time, work, or activities, and that 80% could be good enough for many tasks by focusing on the essential 20% of your efforts and activities.

16 Things I wish they had taught me in school - Positivity Blog

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule - also known as The Pareto Principle - basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities. So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think. You can just drop - or vastly decrease the time you spend on - a whole bunch of things.

Are you looking for peace of mind? You won't find it in your status line.

Contact High - Allen Stone

Are you looking for peace of mind?
You won't find it in your status line
What are you trying to prove?
Whose mountain are you trying to move?

I fell for it, too, yeah
Whatever keeps you occupied
Whatever gives you contact high
Whatever keeps you busy, baby
Will never make you satisfied

Are you looking for security
Validation or identity?
You won't find it in things
The more you got, oh, the less you see, yeah

I've been all over the world, yeah
I've dug for diamonds and I've dove for pearls
And the real treasure that we all seek
Is hiding in plain sight of me, oh

Cultivate a positive environment by reading and listening to more positive information and entertainment sources, and choosing to spend time around positive people.

How to stay positive: 11 Smart habits - Positivity Blog

Who you choose to spend your time with and the input you get from further away like the TV, the internet and magazines will have a huge effect on your outlook. To be able to stay positive it is essential to have influences in your life that support you and lift you up instead of dragging you down. So carefully consider what you let into your mind.

Create daily habits and practices to achieve goals and make your dreams come true.

Feeling determined to change - Zen Habits

The only way you can make something stick is to create a habit through daily practice. So if you want to exercise, set up 10 minutes every day, at the same time of day, when you’re going to do your yoga or pushups or jogging/walking. Put it on the calendar, and make it an unmissable appointment. Quitting a habit is tougher, but perhaps try a “smoking-free zone” when you don’t smoke. (Or a “procrastination-free zone”.) Just an hour a day, then two hours after a few days, then three after a few more, etc. Eventually you’ll learn coping tactics and awareness during your zone that will help you quit completely.

Simplify the amount of folders you use by organizing your documents into folders by type, and only creating albums, groupings, or project folders when necessary.

Geek To Live: Organizing my documents - Lifehacker

There are a million and one ways to arrange files and folders on disk. Some might argue that spending a moment even thinking about it in the age of desktop search is unnecessary. That may be true, but some semblance of order will clear your desktop and your mind and make you "ready for anything." Over the years I've come up with a six folder structure for "My Documents" which I create on every computer I use without fail. This scheme accommodates every file I might come across, keeps my desktop clear, smoothly fits in with an automated backup system and also makes command line file wrangling a breeze.

You can positively influence other people's lives by telling them you believe in them, you think they are a good person, they possess good qualities, and you expect they will perform well because they have the ability to do so.

Pygmalion effect - Wikipedia

The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse. It is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell so much in love with the perfectly beautiful statue he created that the statue came to life. According to the Pygmalion effect, the targets of the expectations internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly; a similar process works in the opposite direction in the case of low expectations. The idea behind the Pygmalion effect is that increasing the leader's expectation of the follower's performance will result in better follower performance. Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regard to education and social class.

Write down a list of your goals and dreams, because writing thoughts and ideas down is the first step to making them come to life.

12 Lists that help you get things done - Lifehack.org

A list of your short- and long-term goals can be a great motivator, as well as a trigger list to help generate new projects. I also like to have a list of areas of focus, the different roles that I play, each of which comes with a different set of tasks and goals.

Spend some time in solitude to think about and create ideas, make plans or goals, and solve your problems.

Nikola Tesla's Best Productivity Tricks - Lifehacker

Like many inventors and creative types, Nikola Tesla was an advocate for solitude when creating and working. Most famously, he's quoted as saying "The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born." The idea that you need to work in solitude to get things done is by no means new. We've talked before about how it can boost creativity, and how setting aside some alone time is a great way to recharge to boost productivity. In the end, it's all about productive introspection and using your alone time well.

Are we friends? Do you care? Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Enlightened - Rotten Tomatoes

Are we connected?
What do you say about me?
Was I mean to you?
Were you to me?

What do you think of me? Deep down?
Am I ridiculous? Or sweet? Or decent?
Are we friends? Do you care?
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Find and meet up with people who are doing things that you are interested in doing.

Advice for people in their early 20s - Zen Habits

Find people online doing interesting things, meet up with them in real life. Find people who are passionate, who are building things, who are pushing themselves, who dream big, who are mindful and joyful and healthy and friendly and shy and gregarious and adventurous and curious. Befriend them. Be there for them. Be helpful. Make them laugh. These are your people.

Think positively and change your thoughts or mindset to a new way of thinking about something in order to improve your wellbeing and get things done.

8 Ways to radically increase your productivity - The Globe And Mail

You are what you think. You cannot think negatively and have unlimited success. If you think negatively about business and finances [or leisure and relationships, or whatever else you want to change or improve in your life], your subjective experience will be a lack of both, whether or not that is true in reality. Discipline your mind towards the goals of what you want your productivity to look like and start putting the effort in right now to get there. Keep in mind that suffering over your own suffering doesn't work. Know the negative thought patterns you hold which require change and be deliberate in changing them.

Get started by doing something for just a minute or two, and then get up to applaud yourself for getting started.

Ways to do what you don’t want to do - Zen Habits

If you have to write something, just write a sentence. Then get up, get some water, stretch. Pat yourself on the back for getting started! Now do a little more: write a few more sentences. Get up, take a mental break (don’t go to another website), do a few pushups. Go back, do a bit more. Pretty soon, you’re in the flow of it.