Tools for Thought

A common problem with task management systems is the length of time that entries remain unexamined. Action lists contain items that no longer reflect current reality. Things that seemed like good ideas at the time they were written down are no longer priorities, no longer practical, or simply no longer interesting.

Hard landscape items on calendars are as valuable for seeing the discretionary time between them for working off action lists as they are for tracking the appointments themselves. For calendars, action lists, and other support material to work effectively, they need to be examined and updated regularly; otherwise they fall into disuse, and the mind takes up the slack for tracking actions and projects, which is unscalable. The short-term memory space, the “mental RAM,” that defines our attention span is too limited to track dozens of projects simultaneously.

Many people are surprised to find that when they collect and process everything in their lives for the first time (paperwork, email, verbal commitments, inchoate plans), they typically wind up with 40 to 60 projects and 100 to 200 next actions. This load is overwhelming directly to the degree it’s kept in the mind instead of an external system. The system needs to be complete and current for the mind to trust it. The goal is to keep your mind clear.

To maintain a trusted system, schedule a meeting with yourself at least once per week — a Weekly Review — to add missing actions and projects, to eliminate completed ones, to eliminate or reevaluate ones that are stuck, to update support materials, and to reconsider active projects and someday/maybe options.

Schedule the weekly review in advance. As with physical exercise, weekly review sessions should be done to a protocol, not on a whim. Doing a weekly review when the mood strikes is a formula for failure.

How long should a weekly review take?

The honest answer is: as long as it takes to no longer have anything on your mind. As you complete your review, you reach a tipping point where you can start to feel your stress and preoccupation with “all the things” you need to do melt away — it becomes like a 21st Century form of meditation. You catch up with yourself, bringing your relationship with the small and large changes in circumstance that have accrued over the last seven days into harmony.

The practical answer is: one hour. Many erstwhile adherents of GTD undermine their once-per-week discipline by either scheduling two or more hours for the weekly review, or not scheduling the review at all. If your review is excessively long (scheduled) or open-ended (unscheduled), you’ll end up looking for or creating gratuitous actions and projects to fill time.

A more refined answer is: start with one hour, then adjust the time incrementally as needed. You may actually need two hours, or possibly 30 minutes — when everything is off of your mind, you’ll know. But to get the ball rolling, commit to a one-hour dash, then reflect on whether or not you have any open loops that still need to be closed.

When should the weekly review be done?

The best way to know is to experiment. As a freelance writer I have the luxury of doing a weekly review any time, but I schedule a 90-minute block on Saturday mornings between 8:00 and 9:30 at the café around the corner from me. When I had a real Monday-to-Saturday job, I scheduled the review on Sunday morning. I personally prefer doing weekly reviews on off days, since nothing gets work off of my mind like a weekly review.

Others prefer to do their review during the workweek, in the office. A frequent opportune time is Friday afternoon, when work is winding down but coworkers, clients and vendors are still accessible. Some people schedule theirs on Wednesday to get a “second wind” in the middle of the week. I found that I was too conscious of the surrounding bustle to do a focused weekly review at work. I should have had the discipline to disengage from the commotion, but couldn’t muster it. Others find that having all their workstation’s resources at hand — from general reference files to personnel — makes a comprehensive review easier.

What should the weekly review consist of?

It’s always a good idea to work from a Weekly Review checklist to work from rather than memory. The sequence can very according to your preferences, but a checklist for a thorough review should include at least the following:

• Collect all loose papers, from receipts to contracts, and put them in your intray or “In” folder
• Process all email in your inbox until it’s empty (see Inbox Zero for the true meaning of an empty inbox)
• Review your calendar for the previous week, deleting or rescheduling items as needed
• Review your calendar for the following week and beyond, ensuring that it’s up to date, adding new items as needed
• Review any relevant project support materials, like plans and checklists
• Do a mind sweep: write down any thoughts or intentions that are potential actions or projects
• Process your papers and your mind sweep, discarding, filing or crossing off each processed item
• Review your Next Actions, eliminating now-irrelevant ones, reevaluating undone/unclear ones (they may simply need to be reworded), replacing completed ones with new ones for their respective projects
• Review your Project List, adding new projects, deleting completed and abandoned projects, ensuring that each active project has at least one next action you can take to move it forward, and moving uncommitted projects to Someday/Maybe
• Review your Someday/Maybe list, adding newly postponed items from your Project list, adding new potential projects, eliminating items no longer worth considering
• Brainstorm and capture any new ideas that may have occurred as a result of your mental housecleaning

The exercise analogy holds. The longer you wait between reviews, and harder it is to resume the habit. Your mental inventory keeps piling up, making the process of dealing with it that much more daunting. So do your best to make weekly reviews weekly.

Sometimes procrastination stems from anxiety over the unknown. I lost hours yesterday in trying to adopt Google Documents for my article writing. A simple product review turned into an all-day affair. It took me most of the day to pinpoint the source of my procrastination; then it became obvious that I was splitting my attention between the content of the article and the learning curve of writing in Web 2.0. So I dumped Google Docs, switched back to writing in Q10, and scheduled a study session for Google Docs at a later date.

A more common source of procrastination is serial digression. To understand how this form of procrastination works, consider the difference between an item on a To Do list and a well formatted Next Action.

Many To Do items that people write down are multiaction tasks, like “Set up Dell,” as opposed to a genuine next action like “Read Dell Quick Start Guide.” The aim of a next action is to keep your attention on the most immediate physical task instead of the outcome. A To Do like the one in the example is overloaded, conflating what needs to be accomplished with what needs to be done.

Any project, no matter how large or complex, can be parsed into at least one next action that’s simple to do. Not everyone can get into Harvard, but anyone can download the admission form.

Next Distractions

Procrastination is more than not doing priority tasks; it’s doing non-priority tasks. It just so happens that non-priority tasks usually have the same granularity as next actions.

People in the midst of a high-leverage project don’t consciously tell themselves, “I’m going to spend the next three hours surfing the web.” They encounter something that prompts them to think, “I need to check this on Wikipedia.” Naturally the Wikipedia article contains some less relevant but more interesting link: “Let me take a look at this.”

Three hours later, they’ve accomplished quite a bit; it’s just not tied to a meaningful outcome. To push an analogy, surfing the web for three hours is like getting into Harvard. Clicking an interesting link is like downloading an admission form. Consciously surfing the web for three hours is actually hard, but going to “just one” website is easy. Checking email for “a few minutes” is easy.

Crutch Activities

We all have crutch activities — behaviors we default to that relieve tension but leech our attention. Reading RSS feeds, deliberating over playlists in iTunes, watching TV, burning airtime on our cell phones are all potential substitutions for high-impact activities.

No task exists in isolation. A key consideration of any activity is not what the activity is, but what it leads to. Going to the library to study leads to different outcomes than going to a café. Toggling from a text editor to a browser leads to other pathways of attention.

But the reality is that sometimes we do have to switch to a browser. Sometimes we do have to go to the café. There’s a practical limit to how far we can firewall our attention. But there are a few ways to mitigate the risk of distraction.

Write down any tasks that takes longer than two minutes. As per the Two Minute Rule, if something occurs to you that you feel compelled to act on immediately, consciously ask yourself, “Can I do this in less than two minutes?” If it’s reasonably likely that the answer is yes, do it right then to prevent it from consuming further attention; if not write it down to prevent it from consuming further attention. You can review it for later action when you’ve completed your capital task. What if doing the two-minute task leads to another task? Do exactly the same thing — apply the Two Minute Rule.

Create a Crutch Activities checklist. Checklists are terrific tools to reinforce our awareness of habits, both those we want to develop and those we want to reduce or eliminate. Instead of cursing yourself each time you find that you’ve spent 90 minutes in your inbox when you meant to check email for 10 minutes, add “Checking email” to your Crutch Activities checklist. Review and update the checklist regularly, and develop protocols, like batching, for controlling these impulses.

Use delimiting phrases. If you need to break the flow of one task for another, ensure that the task is well defined before switching: “I need to look up the capital of Zambia in order to finish this sentence. The delimiter, “to finish this sentence,” reminds you of the objective behind the task switch, making it easier to return to the document you’re drafting. Without the delimiter, you wind up switching tasks with the sole objective of looking up the capital of Zambia, leaving you open to reading about the country’s history and culture.

If you’re working off of written next actions, this isn’t necessary, since you’ve already worked out the outcome that lead to the next action. But for impromptu task switching, it’s a good idea to establish boundaries in advance to prevent runs down rabbit trails.

When we’re undecided on whether or not to commit to a project, one option is to shelve the project on a Someday/Maybe list. But sometimes indecision stems from insufficient information. We need to get enough data to make sure that deciding not to do something is a proactive choice, made from reason or informed intuition, not intellectual laziness.

If you don’t have enough information to commit to a project, make getting the information the project.

You want to start a speech consulting business, but keep putting it off due to a tacit uncertainty that there’s enough of a market for it. Before embarking on a project called “Start a speech consulting business,” the first project that needs to be completed is resolving the uncertainty: “Assess market for speech consulting services.”

Then determine the next action or subproject. An example would be “Set up Google Adwords campaign for multivariate test.” Since this is not something most people have the knowledge to do in one step, it would probably best go on the Project list. Then we need a solid next action to move the project forward — maybe “Read introductory pages on adwords.google.com”.

We’re basically processing an potential project to see if it’s worth doing. It’s a feasibility study. Processing a project is a project in itself — a “look into” or process project.

“R&D” is a common shorthand for process projects on a Project list, as in “R&D: Getting a financial advisor.” You might prefer others:

• Assess
• Look into
• Research
• Determine
• Evaluate
• Compare
• Test
• Draft
• Brainstorm

Notice that the latter two phrases involve getting information from yourself rather than outside resources. Sometimes you just need to know if you know enough to move a project forward. Think twice about reflexively consuming more information instead of thinking proactively. If you draw a blank, the information resources will still be there.

Process projects are not open-ended information buffets. The object is to determine either whether to proceed with the target project, or how to proceed with it. For action we need sufficient information, not complete information.

If the target project is affirmative, put it on the Project list along with any subprojects that might be involved (any multiaction task is referred to technically as a “project,” so subprojects also go on the Project list). If it’s determined that the project is not worth pursuing at this time, but possibly later, put in on the Someday/Maybe list. If it’s determined that it’s not worth doing now or later, dump it out of the system.

Freeware Windows app Free Music Zilla was designed to catch music streaming through sites like Last.fm and Pandora in your Downloads folder. Though unpublicized, the function works equally well for Flash videos like those found on YouTube.

Launch Free Music Zilla prior to playing the video you want to save. By default, FMZ will show the file in your C:\Downloads directory with a checkbox. Once the video starts playing, the State column to the far right will show the status as Wait for Downloading. Click the Download button while the number in the Leech Timeout column is still counting down. Once the download reaches 100%, rename and move the file to your preferred directory.

If you don’t already have a media player capable of playing the FLV files from YouTube, download Videolan’s excellent VLC Media Player.

The flip side of managing commitments is managing options. There’s a subtle but fundamental difference between choosing not to act on an option and not choosing to act on it. The former is proactive triage, the latter is indecision. Some things are not worth doing now, but possibly later. Some things, though interesting, are not realistically worth committing time or energy on, now or later.

For any project that you’re not able or willing to commit to now, but possibly later, put it on a list called Someday/Maybe.

A few items on the list would be things like:

• Train for and complete a marathon
• Install hardwood floors
• Start a speech consulting business
• Vacation in Luang Prabang

Someday/Maybe completes an organizational framework of five major placeholders. Intray paperwork and inbox email will either get discarded or processed into one or more of the following categories:

• Next Actions (optionally organized by context)
• Projects
• Calendar
• Waiting For
• Someday/Maybe

Putting items on a Someday/Maybe list allows you to consciously decide whether or not to keep them as future options. Going to graduate school might be a worthwhile project, but not actionable until you’ve fulfilled certain short-term career goals. Putting a down payment on a car might not be a priority until you’ve established an adequate emergency fund. Changing cell phone carriers might be an option to take after the contract with your current provider has expired.

Some projects seem like remote possibilities, like starting a newspaper, but no matter how much you try to dismiss them, they keep haunting you. Keep them on your Someday/Maybe list, and out of your head. Each week you get a chance to review each item on the list and decide that it’s still a Someday/Maybe, that it’s time to make it an active project with a next action, or that it’s time to cross it off the list once and for all.

In a world of infinite options, there’s always the danger of the Someday/Maybe list getting out of hand. Most people who keep the list find that it becomes larger than their Project list. So how to we decide whether to put it on Someday/Maybe, or leave it off entirely? If there’s a strong possibility that you’ll think of the item again over time, it should probably go on Someday/Maybe.

There are other ways to manage options. If you have a tickler file, you might want to write a note to yourself, and file it for review at a date that’s arbitrary (e.g. in two weeks) or relevant (three days before an event); then it’s out of the regular review process. You can defer a decision by putting the item on your calendar, and review it on that date.

If you have many options that fall in a single category, like DVDs to buy or books to read, it’s more manageable to keep them in their own checklists. Someday/Maybe is ideal for items that you would potentially migrate to your Project list. For instance, I keep a backlog of article ideas on a checklist, articles currently being written on my Project list, and imminent writing projects on Someday/Maybe.

But how you manage future options is more of an art than a science. Experiment until you come up with a set of placeholders that makes intuitive and logical sense.

I’ve added a new section for updates from microborg Twitter in the sidebar. Yes, resistance is futile. If you’re interested, click on its heading to follow me, or just click here.

And now for a few favorite dispatches from elsewhere in the blogosphere this week.

Simple Manifesto: Break Free from the Tyranny of the Clock. A different perspective from mine on our society’s organization around “clockhood.” Bergson used to call this post-clockhood experience “duration.” As I’ve written earlier, I think timers used strategically can release our attention from the passage of time to focus on the priority of our choosing. But Leo is great at getting us to question our assumptions. (Zen Habits)

Easy Ways to Go Green with Your Computer. An Earth Day installment for reducing your PCs energy footprint. There are great tips here for formatting pages before printing to minimize ink and paper waste. I especially love the suggestion for setting µTorrent to auto-shutdown the computer when downloads are complete. (Lifehacker)

Fireside Chat: Google and Tim Ferriss: In this video, Tim spends nearly a quarter of his infamous workweek shooting the breeze with the elves at Google UK. He stresses the intelligent use of data — relevant data — in making decisions, the difference between busyness and productivity, and the need to plan leisure activities in advance to avoid choosing work over boredom. (Tim Ferriss)

Email Insanity & the 0.001 Challenge. Another disquisition from the Over-300-Email-a-Day set. How would you write your email differently (or would you?) if you were one of a thousand correspondents in your recipient’s inbox? I’d probably add a footer linking to Merlin’s terrific Inbox Zero series. (43 Folders)

Could You Go Without Your Computer for a Day? I’m looking forward to May 3, when participants in Shutdown Day unplug for 24 hours. PDAs and cell phones are frowned upon, but note strictly prohibited. (Web Worker Daily)

To bring a project to closure, we need not only to keep track of our own actions, but those of others. Legacy To Do lists are not designed to track external dependencies. We need a language to identify all components of a project, not just the proactive.

Whenever a project requires information or a delegated action from others, put it on a list called Waiting For.

An example of a short Waiting For list would be:

• Michael 7/21: Gantt for store remodel
• Laura 7/20: artwork for client presentation
• Amazon.com 7/20: Andrei Roublev Criterion DVD
• Frank’s Auto 7/19: status on transmission replacement

Each item contains the person or organization from which you need a deliverable, the date when the action was delegated or when the information was requested, and the action or information itself. Other information potentially helpful to include are due dates, phone numbers or email addresses of the parties involved. If you have an electronic organizer, you can paste sections of pertinent emails or information from relevant websites into the note field of the corresponding line item on your list.

The Waiting For list needs to be reviewed as regularly as other context lists — at least once a day in your daily review, but as often as you need to ensure that your projects aren’t being orphaned by the inaction of others. If you’re responsible for the project, you’re as responsible for the component actions of the project you delegate to others as your own actions.

Avoid keeping a mental account of what others need to bring to the project. A busy office culture frequently makes every attempt to stop and think seem frivolous, and it’s tempting to take the shortcut of assuming that others will do (or remember accurately, if at all) what you ask of them. If it’s important enough to be done, it’s important enough to write down and track.

Having a Waiting For list is essential for identifying dependencies that need to be resolved before you can take further action on a project. Finalizing the budget for a remodel requires Michael to present a plan that includes a timeline with estimates on labor and materials. The client presentation can’t be rehearsed until the PowerPoint file is finished, requiring artwork from Laura.

Once you get in the habit of having a current list for every incompletion, it becomes much easier to identify potential problems before they become actual.

Gina Trapani (along with co-editor Adam Pash) of Lifehacker has been profound influence on my workflow since the blog’s inception in 2005. Launched about a year after Danny O’Brien codified the “life hack” concept based on geeks’ propensity for process optimization, Lifehacker has been an unending stream of tips for small tweaks in tools and behaviors to get things done “smarter, faster, better.”

The stream of great hacks can lead to flash flooding. Retaining the cream content in a blog as prolific as Lifehacker (typically two dozen posts a day) and triaging the less relevant requires black belt productivity in itself. More than just catching up with the latest moves in knowledge work athletics, readers need to step back and look at the few principles behind the many hacks.

Which is why it’s such a pleasure to have a distilled version of Lifehacker in book form. The first edition, Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day, has been retitled in its brand new second edition to Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better.

Lifehacker Reloaded

Upgrade Your Life is a guided toolbox of downloads, configurations and occasional pearls of wisdom. Reading a book version of the blog is almost a reintroduction to its ethos. Each chapter is an overarching principle for one aspect of streamlining workflow, and the best practices within the chapter are enumerated “hacks” — 116 of them between 11 chapters.

With any productivity blog or book, it’s best to approach it as a buffet, which is precisely what Gina encourages readers to do here: take what’s useful, and ignore the rest. Some of the tips are targeted towards Windows users, some are for Mac users; others are for fans of paper-based task management. The frequent Linux content on Lifehacker is conspicuously absent from Upgrade Your Life, which isn’t surprising, since this is clearly a mass market work.

Let’s take a look at some of the highlights from each chapter.

Chapter 1 — Control Your Email

The first edition began with the chapter, “Free up Mental RAM,” which appears retitled as a later chapter. The new Chapter 1 is Lifehacker’s most recurring theme: efficient email management. Regular Lifehacker readers will recognize much of the advice here, especially Hack #1: get your inbox to empty, and keep it that way. Once an email in your inbox is opened, it should either answered, deleted, archived, or transferred to short-term action folders.

Gina recommends a three-folder system: Archive for permanent storage, Follow-Up for messages with actions that go on your To Do list, and Hold for items requiring further input from the sender or others before it can be cleared. Instead of a Two Minute Rule, Gina recommends one minute: if the email can be answered in one minute or less, answer it; otherwise move it to Follow-Up and extract the action required for your To Do list.

Other hacks include tips for formatting readable subject lines, message bodies and reply quotes; deprioritizing CCed messages and “bacn,” consolidating multiple email accounts through Gmail — and my favorite, scripting boilerplate responses with the Quicktext extension for Thunderbird.

Chapter 2 — Organize Your Data

Gina makes the case for a six-subfolder Documents folder structure that she uses on her Mac, Linux and Windows machines: bak for backup, docs for active project documents, docs-archive, junkdrawer for temporary files (like podcasts and setup files), multimedia, and scripts for those who run executable scripts or shortcuts.

In addition to (or in spite of) the folder system, there’s a strong argument made for shifting from the file cabinet paradigm to embracing robust search tools like the Google Desktop, which integrates results from the web and your hard drive in a single thread. Other hacks in the chapter are for file encryption, consolidated password storage, and photo management. There are even a couple of old school hacks, like do-it-yourself paper planners and tips for effective filing.

Chapter 3 — Trick Yourself into Getting Done

This chapter is state-of-the-art task management, showing readers how to atomize unwieldy To Do lists into a smaller, more concrete set of instructions to self. “At any point during the workday,” Gina writes, “you are in one of two modes: thinking mode (that’s you with the Boss hat on) and action mode (that’s you with the Personal Assistant hat on).” The key is to think like an effective Boss who has to delegate to her assistant with clear instructions — using specific verbs in To Dos like “Phone” or “Email” rather than “Contact” or “Ask.”

Gina points out the danger in writing down To Dos that bundle more than one action — what she calls “multiaction tasks,” or what David Allen calls “projects” or “subprojects.” A multiaction task would be an instruction like “Clean office,” which can’t be done in one step. By focusing on the next action, “File papers on desk,” it becomes easier to move forward.

Like Julie Morgenstern and Tim Ferris, Gina recommends avoiding checking email in the morning, and instead setting up a “morning dash”: spending at least the first hour of each day dedicated to finishing the one most important task on your list. Another good hack, borrowed from Morgenstern, is the time map: a table or spreadsheet of a model day in which you shade in sections according to your ideal distribution of activity categories, which is then compared to a log of your actual distribution. Also included are timer hacks, automated activity logs, and advice for avoiding time sinks and overwork.

Chapter 4 — Clear Your Mind

Originally titled “Free up Mental RAM,” this chapter stresses the importance of getting thoughts out of your head and into some outboard memory system, whether paper or electronic. The brain’s short-term memory makes a poor storage space for holding dozens of implicit commitments like “I need to get my tires rotated” or “We’re having dinner with Angela on Friday(?)”. The mind has to constantly issue itself reminders of these internal agreements, leading to persistent stress and distraction.

Most of hacks consist of electronic tools and techniques, like keeping action lists in text files, updating your Google Calendar via email, setting up a personal wiki, emailing reference photos from your cell phone to Flickr, and a detailed look at Remember the Milk.

The RTM entry was the first of many times I read and learned something in the book that I glossed over whenever it was mentioned on the blog. I’ve ignored the online list manager Remember the Milk because I was convinced that I had to keep my lists in the cloud. In fact, RTM is Google Gears enabled, meaning that lists can be stored offline if desired.

Since notetaking is still faster and more fluid on paper for most people, there are a couple of hacks on better notetaking and creating customized note paper.

Chapter 5 — Firewall Your Attention

As the author’s most famous catchphrase, “Firewall Your Attention” shrewdly frames concentration as the art of removing distractions, or making them inconvenient to access, instead of relying on discipline. Leechblock is one such distraction filter: a Firefox extension that blocks designated websites at set times, adding a layer of security settings that make unblocking difficult. If that’s not enough, Gina gives instructions on how to edit your hosts directory to give a “Server Not Found” error message when you point your browser to whatever sites you’ve added to hosts.

Other hacks include clearing icons from the desktop, setting up multiple desktops, shutting down your email client when not in use, and even tips on how to organize your house into a distraction-free environment.

Chapter 6 — Streamline Common Tasks

Lifehacker readers will be familiar with most of these hacks, but they bear repeating. The keyboard hacks covered here are Windows and Firefox shortcut keys, utilities for customized keyboard launching (Launchy on Windows, Quicksilver on Mac), and utitilies for creating hotstrings (Texter on Windows, TextExpander on the Mac). Hotstrings allow you to create custom abbreviations that replace themselves with larger strings of text, like “TFI” for “Thank you for your interest.” This is a must-apply hack.

Non-keyboard hacks include information resources available via text messaging, batch photo resizing, more GCal tips, and a look at the clever Qipit web service that allow you to email snapshots of whiteboards and printed pages for automatic scanning to PDF.

Chapter 7 — Automate Repetitive Tasks

Most of these hacks are for routine computer management — things we all know we should do, like backing up our hard drive, but are too boring to get around to. These types of tasks are terrific candidates for automation. Freeware strategies for backing up to an external drive are detailed for Windows (SyncBack) and Mac (using Leopard’s native Time Machine utility), as well as web-based service solutions like Mozy. If you’ve organized your document folders as recommended in Chapter 2, Gina’s “Janitor” VB script cleans out the junkdrawer folder at scheduled intervals. And there are a couple of tips for putting Windows’ “Scheduled Tasks” function to good use.

Also included are ways to automate the downloading of multiple files and the emailing of backup files. There’s also a cool VB script for logging individual entries of some metric, like your weight for the day, which automatically updates a spreadsheet.

Chapter 8 — Get Your Data to Go

It’s amazing how many options we have to work at different sites. We can store huge files on a flash drive, run applications on a flash drive, create and share documents with online office suites, access web apps via text message, install virtual private networks or control PCs remotely through VNC. All of these options are addressed in detail.

One of the coolest additions to the book’s second edition is Mojopac, a free “PC on a stick” utility that lets your run a copy of your PC’s Windows or Linux image directly off of an external drive, such as an iPod or a USB flash drive. The various Twitter SMS “bots” were news to me. Through Twitter you can send text message updates to your Remember the Milk task manager, or retrieve a particular list. There’s a timer bot to send reminders to yourself, one for logging expenses, and another for logging gas mileage. Apparently you can do more with Twitter than let the world know you’re getting a burrito.

Chapter 9 — Master the Web

A potpourri of skills, extensions, bookmarklets and other resources for getting the most from your browser and the internet. The chapter has a great guide to Google search operators — terms that modify and filter searches. Most of it’s old news to power users, but I found a couple of operators that I didn’t already know, like adding a tilde before a keyword to include its synonyms in the search (~PDA).

RSS is another technology that’s old news except to novices — majority of computer users. It’s good to see a clear explanation of what it is for those who might be afraid to ask. Even many people who familiar with RSS still unaware how the ability to access or create dynamic feeds.

Other hacks in this largish chapter include instructions on installing Firefox extensions, recommended extensions, favorite bookmarklets, finding reusable media in the digital commons, clearing your browser history, and porting your Firefox configuration to copies on other computers.

Chapter 10 — Hone Your Computer Survival Skills

If you can spell Lifehacker, you’ve probably been conscripted by friends and family as tech support. What sounds like a dull read is actually an interesting and informative chapter on the basic maintenance skills and software utilities we should all have. Most of the content is targeted to Windows users, since Windows is usually the target of attacks.

It discusses all of the basic enemies of good computer health, like malware, spyware, viruses, browser hijacking, startup folder bloatware — and gives solutions for them. I threw most of the mentioned utilities on a flash drive, and now feel ready to diagnose and repair anyone’s computer the next time it throws a fit. File merging, system restoration, data recovery, thorough file deletion and proper filewalling round things out.

Chapter 11 — Manage Multiple Computers

Most of the discussion here is for sharing resources over a network. Non-admins will be surprised at how easy some of the hacks are, like setting up shared folders in Windows and Macs computers and exchanging files between the two platforms. Microsoft’s SyncToy and FolderShare get mention for synchronizing folders between computers, so that the two folders have the latest file image. Other shared resources discussed include browser bookmarks, printers, a single operating in a dual-monitor setup, and a single keyboard and mouse between two computers.

Finally, Gina gives instructions for sharing an Intel Mac’s hard drive with OS X and Windows using Boot Camp. This was the only weak spot in the book for me, since anyone marginally interested in a dual-boot Mac would have probably made installing Windows and Boot Camp a priority long before picking up this book. But I suppose it does technically qualify as a hack, and not a trivial one.

Should you Upgrade?

I don’t have to deliberate on this one — yes, even if you have a copy of the first edition. Not only has the technology changed between editions, but the thematic organization of the book is noticeably more streamlined. If you’ve never read Lifehacker in book form, you might be surprised at how much easier it is to digest without being on the lookout for the next post, or clicking on every interesting link.

Repetitive tasks are usually not high-priority ones, but they still need to be done. The fact that they need to be done doesn’t mean they need to be done the moment they have your attention. Let them accumulate, handling them at optimally infrequent intervals, between which you spend the bulk of your time focusing on higher-impact tasks.

Instead of making a commute for each new errand, write all errands on your @Errands context list (after deciding that it really require a physical trip instead of, say, a phone call), and aim to batch the completion of all errands in a single loop between home and work. Instead of making numerous non-emergency calls throughout the day, set specific times to place and return phone calls.

For knowledge workers, email will be the single most repetitive task that can benefit from batching. A common recommendation is for two email sessions per day: 11:00 am and 4:00 pm, for example. Another is for once every hour. Response requirements will naturally depend on your job — batching is a non-starter for financial traders — but few jobs actually require the persistent availability that’s usually assumed.

Fine tune your email batching by starting with once an hour, then gradually increase the length between sessions. Some people will find that even once a day is enough.

Escape the inbox. Focus primarily on output. Turn off email notifications and decide to let email collect in sufficient quantity to justify processing the entire inbox in one sitting. Checking email at arbitrary times leads to a habit of looking for emergencies, which you’ll inevitably find as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Most of us our have at least some inefficient people in our lives who impose manufactured emergencies on us in order to make themselves feel important. A protocol of answering email at regular intervals helps put you in control of the information flow, thinking instead of reacting.

Action is experiential. The more we experience doing, the less effort we realize it takes. The more we imagine doing, the more effort it appears to take. We need a way to externalize our thinking, a tool to bypass our mental process. Fortunately, there’s a time-tested way to jump start any daunting task:

Set a timer for 10 minutes. Attend to the task without interruption until the timer goes off.

Only your presence is required. If you can fill the 10 minutes with constant output, so much the better. If most of the time is spent doing nothing but thinking about how to start, that’s fine — you were doing that anyway. The objective is not production, per se, but disrupting inertia. The only rule is that you have to be where the action is for 10 minutes, and do either absolutely nothing else, or do nothing at all.

Once the timer has goes off, you have two options: take a break, or set the timer for another uninterrupted session with a length of your choosing. You’ll find, more often than not, that you’ll want to continue. Whether you choose another 10 minutes, 30 minutes or 3 hours, you’re committed to doing nothing else, so choose the session length wisely. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. When the new session is over, take a break or do another session, repeating the process as often as necessary or desired.

The initial 10 minute length is arbitrary, and can be adjusted. If even 10 minutes makes you anxious, set the timer for five. But be sure to use a timer. Don’t keep time in your head, which is as inefficient as a professional musician practicing scales without a metronome. Tracking time in your head while trying to focus on a task is like running a resource-intensive background application. Your attention inevitably has to break away from your primary task to refocus on time orientation.

One important exception to single tasking, here or in any context: Keep a collection tool like a notepad close by at all times. If a thought unrelated to your committed task enters your head, write it down, then return to the task. Writing it down is not an interruption. You’re writing down and diverting the interruption.