Make Volume 05: Science

Another quarter, another sexy-ass issue of O'Reilly's Make Magazine. And that means another Life Hacks column from Danny and me. (Amazon.com link)

This time around, I laced-up for a knockdown, drag-out, one round intro to "Building a Smarter To-do List." The two posts from which it was inspired are still two of the most popular items on 43F.

While you can argue for the flavor and approach to task management that best suits your style, it's hard to disparage the benefits that come from getting task commitments out of your brain and captured in a consistent location. The Life Hacks research showed that most all of the alpha geeks had a "todo.txt" sitting in their home directory -- often comprising thousands of items covering every aspect of the geek's life, both past and future. In this case, we're focusing more on the to-do list as tactical game plan; until you get really good at this stuff, try thinking of your to-do list as the evolving strategy for focusing your effort and attention in the immediate future.

If you're saving your pennies, or liked the column and would like to learn more, you might want to cruise back through the original posts from last September. I still really like how they turned out --- and I actually do re-read them myself when I'm having trouble getting my stuff together. Yes, I'm actually that unproductive; I have to look to myself for advice. Pathetic, really.

Anyway, reintroduced here, "The Smarter To-do List":

Here are a few of my favorite (and the site's most popular) posts on that heated topic of email -- how to better deal with email as a recipient, and how to improve the lives of others as a better sender. Email is a subject that invigorates (and occasionally infuriates) me, so get ready for plenty more in the future. But if you're one of the seemingly innumerable people who's snowed under by email or unsure how to deal with it at a responsible level, flip through a few of these oldies, and see if any ideas jump out at you.

Monday's the perfect day to climb back on the horse; if you've been feeling behind and guilty about the crap you've been putting off, have a quick browse here. And when you're done, try a fast dash to get back your confidence and knock down a few "mosquito tasks."

Clive's excellent article from Sunday's New Your Times Magazine has brought us a lot of new folks looking for ways to adapt to the overloaded, always-on, interrupt-driven world in which most of us are living. I've bubbled up a few older entries on these topics that you might find useful:

A quick round-up of some recent 43 Folders posts people have enjoyed:

It’s been a busy last few weeks here, and, since I see so many new faces out there (waves to the new people), I wanted to recap a few of the posts that visitors seem to have enjoyed this month.

Crazy experiment. For the occasional benefit of the RSS-only visitors (and maybe even you): the last 10 links posted to the 43F siderail.

(Speaking of Feedburner...) As much as a stats nerd as I am, I’ve never paid too much attention to the data Feedburner provides on which items have been most “popular” among the (now ~10k) people who read 43F through the RSS feed. In fact, I only realized the other day that I can actually see which items have gotten the most “clicks” since day one.

If you’re curious about which posts were a hit in their time with the XML-enabled geekerati, read on.

Labor Day’s over, campers. Time to put away your espadrilles and start trying to look busy. With Summer symbolically behind us, here’s a fast overview of some favorite 43F posts from the past 3 months.