Looking to download the most recent version of Quicksilver? While the Blacktree site is down, grab it over at the MajorGeeks mirror. More »
If you’re running Leopard and you’ve got an external hard drive, you will back up your data, even if that wasn’t your intention when you bought the drive or plugged it into your Mac. That’s because Leopard’s system snapshot mechanism, Time Machine, is dead simple to enable—and Leopard prompts you to turn it on the moment you plug in your FireWire drive. You’ll think, “why not?” and why not indeed. More »
Those of us who ran out to buy the newest version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard this weekend had a choice: piggyback the upgrade on top of your current installation of Tiger and keep all your data and applications, or wipe the hard drive and start sparkly clean and fresh (but without any apps or data). As a Windows user, I tend towards a clean install, but Mac commentator John Gruber says: Arguments that there is something mysteriously dangerous or deficient about the default upgrade procedure—and that you should do a clean install instead, followed by tedious hours manually migrating software and data and preferences from your old installation—are voodoo.
Adam just jumped right in and did the default upgrade, but I hit that Options button to head down the erase and install route. What about you? More »
Writer’s block happens to the best of us. Freelance Folder, a site for budding writers, suggests that by simply showing up for a scheduled writing time, you can eventually beat it: Sometimes your brain will freeze, your motivation will leave you, and your car won’t start. Showing up at your keyboard will solve two of those problems. If you’ve scheduled 8am to 9am to write, and you sit there for an hour and nothing comes out, you’ve still followed through on your appointment. When you sit down tomorrow your chances of breaking writer’s block skyrocket.
A scheduled time for writing does seem to do the trick; it makes you accountable and gives you structure. What’s your best trick for beating writer’s block? Let’s hear your tips in the comments.
7 Can’t-Miss Ways To Kick-Start The Writing Habit [Freelance Folder]US-centric: Tired of all those unwanted catalogs jamming your mailbox? Try Catalog Choice, a free service that you can use to opt out of junk mail. Signup is free; once you’ve created a simple profile you can go in and find the company that’s sending you stuff you don’t want and request to be taken off the list (this can take up to ten weeks, so be patient). Worth a try for anyone who’s looking to wean off the junk mail.
Catalog ChoiceDustin of Lifehack.org has written how he’s currently facing a pretty overwhelming real life situation, and how he’s dealing with must-do tasks—prioritising: Taking a few minutes to figure out what you have to do tomorrow or today is essential to weathering a disaster, or rather, taking a moment to decide what you can manage without doing. I can’t miss class; the consequences for my students are too extreme and take too much work to deal with; but I can miss watching a video I’m evaluating to show my students, or a trip to the library to do research for a paper due in 6 months.
No matter how productive we aim to be, life just sometimes throws us a curveball. How have you handled these kinds of situations and still managed to keep at least some productivity going? Let’s hear in the comments.
What to Do When It’s All Too Much [Lifehack.org]Living frugally can be its own reward, but it’s also fun to promise yourself incentives for implementing money saving practices into your life. Life improvement site Dumb Little Man reminds us that frugal does not have to equal miserable, and suggests that rewarding ourselves with little treats within the budget (of course) can have a direct effect on our continued efforts to live below our means.
10 Smartest Ways to Live Beneath Your Means [Dumb Little Man]The Ririan Project has an intriguing writeup on how to improve your concentration—watch television. Here’s how it works: put two television or media screens right next to each other, each one showing something different. Try to listen to them both at once, attentively as possible. Once you’ve got this mastered, work on focusing on only one screen and ignoring the other one; this part of the process will take a while to really do well. The idea behind this is to improve your concentration and focus ability—sounds a bit unorthodox, but it really does work. How have you improved your concentration? Please share in the comments.
8 Little-Known Ways to Think More Effectively [Ririan Project]Organisational blog Zen Habits has a good suggestion for making your decluttering efforts even more productive, and it’s called the “one in, two out” rule: The rule: whenever you bring in an item, you have to throw away two other items. First you cheat, by throwing out two pieces of paper, but soon you will have to move to big stuff.
I plan on implementing this with the kids’ toys ASAP, especially since we’re moving into the time of year known as Let’s Spoil The Grandkids.
AU – Aussie readers will have read about this tip in my post earlier this week, where I also offered a couple of other decluttering tips.
15 Great Decluttering Tips [Zen Habits]Google News has developed a widget for Facebook integration. You’re allowed some customisation; you can pick standard news topics (sports, entertainment, world, etc.) or you can add customised news categories of your own. In addition, you can see stories that your friends have decided are important, or share stories that you find interesting. This is another way to make Facebook more productive.
Facebook | Google News
