Tools for Thought

For the last two weeks I’ve been using Mnemosyne as my primary spaced repetition flashcard system. As such, I don’t want to present myself as an expert on the app, but I’ve become familiar enough with it at this point that it’s become integral to my learning.
Spaced repetition is an optimized approach to rote memorization. […]

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Failure is usually approached with one of two ways. It’s either not an option, or it’s permitted from time to time as the price of learning.
In the first approach, no one really believes that a person can avoid making mistakes, but the idea is that adopting infallibility as a working mental set raises the bar, […]

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A few weeks ago I wrote about my raw experiences with a used Alphasmart 3000 (AS3K) I picked up for a song on eBay. In theory, the AS3K is an ideal writing instrument: essentially a paperless typewriter with no network access or media player of any kind. It’s just under two pounds, has an LCD […]

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GTD is often discussed as time management, but the two approaches have fundamental differences. Time management consists of making summary judgements on goals considered to be high priorities, and commits to them over lower priorities in the name of good triage. Calendars are used to block out time for tasks that may or may not […]

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In response to my last post, one reader, Tommy, took issue with a couple of points I raised. I’ll let my response to his stand for the most part, but in re-reading one of his objections I realized that some of the wording of my original post was misleading. I wrote “Why put an action […]

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In a connected world where information and opportunities grow exponentially, everyone senses to need to filter out more than ever. Elimination has become a popular coping mechanism. Focus on the big stuff, and don’t sweat the small stuff.
I’ll argue that one way of not sweating the big stuff is actually handling the small stuff.
Virtually all […]

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The APC thinking operation was coined in the 1980s by Edward de Bono as a compressed way to proactively search for and generate alternatives. The acronym, which stands for Alternatives, Possibilities, Choices, was designed as a handle for common usage — as in “Do an APC on reducing utility costs.” Each word in the acronym […]

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If you’re the kind of Google user who’s constantly looking for new search techniques and features, YubNub might already be familiar to you. If not, you owe it to yourself to get acquainted with it.
YubNub is usually described as a command line interface for the web, making it appealing for geeks and daunting for novices. […]

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Projects are focus tools. Actively designating something as a project is the first step in containing it, in reducing its scope to something that’s nearly actionable.
It’s nearly actionable because a project can be completed, but not “done” strictly speaking. Putting “Purchase Prius” on a to-do list is only doable if the intention is to go […]

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One of the more recent practices to become popular in the art of task management is the mind sweep. Instead of simply writing down our most obvious goals our top priorities, the aim of the mind sweep is write down a complete inventory of everything that has our attention. When we capture all of our […]

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