SMART goals: A rubric for creating and pursuing your goals, helping to avoid setting goals that are simply unattainable.Spend those 2 minutes getting a drink, going to the bathroom, or staring out a window. Do this 5 times an hour to stay on target without over-taxing your physical and mental resources. 10+2*5: Work in short spurts of 10 minutes, interrupted by 2 minute breaks.Learn to see sleep as a pleasure, not a necessary evil or a luxury. Research shows the body goes through a complete sleep cycle in about 90 minutes, so napping for less than that doesn’t have the same effect that real sleep does (although it does make you feel better). Get more sleep: Sleep is essential to health, learning, and awareness.Review it regularly and transfer everything to where it belongs: a todo list, a filing system, a journal, etc. Capture every thought that comes into your mind, whether it’s an idea for a project you’d like to do, an appointment you need to make, something you need to pick up next time you’re at the store, whatever. Ubiquitous Capture: Always carry something to take notes with - a pen and paper, a PDA, a stack of index cards.After a while, you’ll start surprising yourself with some really creative concepts. Don’t worry about whether the ideas are any good or not - you don’t have to follow through on them, just get them out of your head. Build off of each of the sub-topics, and each of their sub-topics. Lots of people use mindmaps for this: stick the thing you want to think about in the middle (a problem you need to solve, a theme you want to write about, etc.) and start writing whatever you think of. Brainstorming: The act of generating dozens of ideas without editing or censoring yourself.(Variation: One in, Two Out - useful when you begin to feel overwhelmed by your possessions.) For example, you buy a new shirt, you get rid of an old one. Every time you but something new, you throw out or donate something old. One In, One Out: Avoid clutter by adopting a replacement-only standard.Wake up earlier: Add a productive hour to your day by getting up an hour earlier - before everyone else starts imposing on your time.If it’s something you need for reference, file it. If there’s something you need to do, either do it or add it to your todo list and delete or file the email. Inbox Zero: Decide what to do with every email you get, the moment you read it.Set aside time every day or week to move your big rocks forward. Big Rocks: The big projects you’re working on at any given moment.If you get nothing else accomplished aside from your MITs, you’ve still had a pretty productive day. Most Important Tasks (MITs): At the start of each day (or the night before) highlight the three or four most important things you have to do in the coming day.To that end, here’s a collection of 50 hacks, tips, tricks, and mnemonic devices I’ve collected that can help you work better. We all want to get stuff done, whether it’s the work we have to do so we can get on with what we want to do, or indeed, the projects we feel are our purpose in life.
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