Tools for Thought

Sometimes “almost” isn’t good enough. A restaurant that’s almost clean isn’t much different than one that’s totally filthy, since both discourage dining. Unfinished thinking has similar consequences for taking action. A To Do list with very broadly defined tasks, like “Write article,” will create unconscious resistance to following through on them if they contain implicit [...]

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A friend of mine from out of town met me yesterday in a cafe, catching me at the tail end of my weekly review. When she asked what I was doing, I explained the process, and she responded, “I used to do lists, but they just turned out to be too much work. I found [...]

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For anyone who works at a computer daily, few skills have higher leverage over the course of a career than fast, accurate touch typing. The benefits are by no means limited to professional typists, writers and personal assistants, any more than learning to drive is only of use to chauffeurs. Typing is as much a [...]

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Idleness often stems more from a lack of clarity than a lack of willpower. Taking action on a vague intention always seems to take more effort than a clearly stated task. It’s best to have the task clearly stated, either to another person, on paper or on a computer, than to have it “understood” strictly [...]

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Yesterday, looking at a bank building, I saw a sign whose top surface was covered four-inch wires jutting upwards, acting as a bed of nails for any birds that would have otherwise landed. I’ve always disliked this “solution” to the bird problem, since it aesthetically detracts from the sign and has probably injured more than [...]

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Jeff Atwood recently had an interesting post questioning the value of email as a medium, echoing similar sentiments by Merlin Mann and Tantek Çelik. All of them, not to mention other A-list bloggers, seem to share the belief that an email client’s ability to collect messages indefinitely outstrips the user’s ability to attend to them. [...]

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Thinking about something more than once usually represents an improvement opportunity. It means that something isn’t getting captured, evaluated, acted on or consciously dismissed. Wouldn’t it be nice not have to think about the same things over and over — things that usually start with “I should . . .”? Having the same thought twice [...]

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I like to rave about the David Allen Notetaker Wallet the same way David Allen himself likes to rave about Brother labelers. I can’t think of any “gadget” for GTD that’s been anywhere near as useful. Once you’re used to capturing anything that has your attention immediately, not having anything to capture with is panic-inducing. [...]

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Work, time and effort are often considered synonymous, so writing about productivity can be a thorny proposition. Discussing productivity as a measure of results rather than personal sacrifice requires a different frame of mind than appealing to subjective work ethics. A comment in a recent post criticized my observation that “Firewalled focus can be antisocial”, [...]

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Online notebook applications are fast becoming a dime a dozen. With solutions like Zoho Notebook and Evernote, does the world need another notebook? Perhaps not, in terms of functionality, but for polish and accessibility, Springpad is unique. As with other notebook apps, Springpad lets you collect notes and information related to a topic into “notebooks” [...]

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