Category: Productivity

  • Daniel Kahneman kicks my ass, or Reading Fast and Slow

    Like Moe, the schoolyard bully in Calvin & Hobbes, Daniel Kahneman has taken away my cognitive lunch money for the last four years.  To be clear, it isn’t the 81-year-old Nobel laureate himself: it’s his best-selling 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow. Let me back up. I read fiction quickly, sometimes gobbling up a novel…

  • “Change Your Life” Productivity Apps & How to Use Them— Updated!

    I first wrote about the suite of applications, services, products and gadgets I use to keep my head above water almost three years ago.  In the intervening time things have changed (Smartr/Xobni, for example, has gone away), hence this fresh list. Here are my 14 “Change Your Life” apps and how I use them. Please…

  • My 2014 in Books

    I read a lot — magazines, two newspapers, email newsletters, and countless social-media-shared links I chase down digital rabbit holes. I’d never know anything, for example, without Jason Hirshhorn’s magnificent daily Media Redefined. But I’m lost without books.  Actual books.  Whether paper or digital, if I’m not reading at least two books then I get…

  • In Praise of Atul Gawande’s “The Checklist Manifesto”

    I first smacked my forehead (ouch!) against a wall of decision fatigue when I was the Editor in Chief of iMedia Connection (a daily trade journal covering a different collision between marketing and technology). The best part of editing involves coaxing order from mess, making points pointier and helping writers to say what they want…

  • Ahhh– the right email filter at the right time

    Sometimes a tiny adjustment can make a huge difference. Example: I have a backup email address where copies of emails that I might otherwise miss are routed. Recently, I started using this backup email address for other things as well– a new use case. The problem, however, was that suddenly I couldn’t see the new…

  • Short Post: ToodleDo printing woes…

    Oh ToodleDo, Oh ToodleDo, you know I love you for your sensuous tagging and sorting, for your alluring ease of task capture, and for your promiscuous spreading of my tasks across the cloud to computer, laptop, tablet and smart phone alike– you saucy service, you.  I’ve trumpeted about my love for you here, and verily…

  • 11 “Change Your Life” Productivity Apps & How to Use Them

    Note: I’ve revised and updated this post here. Over the last year or two I’ve been tweaking the suite of applications and services I use to keep my head above water– here are my 11 “Change Your Life” apps and how I use them. Please tell me about new ones in the comments. In alphabetical…