Derek Flanzraich, CEO and founder of Greatist, is obsessed with his master planner. It's basically the love child of a to-do list and a daily journal. Here, he explains how to make your own.

iOS: EasilyDo is a new app that aims to be a central hub for all of those personal things you need to do but would rather have technology do for you. It can clean up your contacts, let you know when to leave for your next appointment, give you directions and dial into conference calls.

Many of us consider ourselves either a morning person or a night owl -- times when we feel more productive, awake and think better. However, not all types of thinking tasks fit in with what we consider the optimal time of day for us. The Creativity Post points out that creativity happens when you least expect it.

We talk about productivity all day long, but it's easy to lose track of the basic scientific facts and tricks behind what we know works. ASAP Science breaks it all down in a simple way in the video above.

Rarely do we like doing anything we have to, but we tell ourselves it's a necessary part of daily life. That's the difference between adults and children when it comes to unwanted tasks. But as Tim Ferris points out, the kids may make the smarter choices.

Like so many heroes of the startup world, Anthony Casalena launched Squarespace from his university dorm room. Now, a decade later, the online publishing company employs a team of 100 and serves 1.4 million websites.

The to-do list is an inescapable, age-old productivity tool. It is our very human attempt to create order in our disorderly lives and an expression of our ability to impose self-control. Most of us, including to-do list haters, keep one, and so do 63 per cent of professionals, according to a LinkedIn survey released earlier this year. And yet to-do lists seem particularly difficult to tame. iDoneThis' Janet Choi explains why to-do lists fail, and how to use it to your advantage.

We've often noted that willpower is a finite resource, but it seems that's only the case if you believe it. Christian Jarret at productivity and ideas blog the 99u explains.

Android: There are so many personal assistants available for Android that it's difficult for one to really shine through. Utter is a new app, currently in beta, that brings the features in a useful way. With root access, it can control your phone's settings, other applications and automate actions, all with your voice.

"Inspiration isn't something you can schedule, harness or control. Inspiration is more like food poisoning: it sprays out uncontrollablly when you need it the least." -- The Oatmeal

A simple rule may put you in the right mindset to come up with an incredible idea, but rules also stifle creativity when they're too restricting. What helps you be the most creative? Lots of rules, just a few, or none at all?

Is luck a supernatural thing that we have no control over, represented by four leaf clovers and gold pots at the end of the rainbow? For The Simple Dollar's Trent Hamm, luck is defined as the result of some of the many random events in life bouncing more in your favour than before. Here, he explains how to make "life design" choices that will cause luck to pop up more and more.

Since launching in June 2011, Fab.com has become the internet's fastest growing e-commerce site. It has captured more than six million users with its yes-you-can-afford-it prices and constantly changing lineup of design products.

A reader recently asked me a pointed question: "I've read your work on creating user habits. It's all well and good for getting people to do things, like using an app on their iPhone, but I've got a bigger problem. How do I get people to do things they don't want to do?" Taken aback by the directness and potentially immoral implications of his question, my gut reaction was to say "You can't and shouldn't!" To which his response was "I have to; it's my job."

If you're stressed about your to-do list, it might just be because you have too many old, lingering tasks sitting around. To fix this, productivity blog Day-Timer suggests you simply park those tasks elsewhere and get them off your list altogether.

You may have heard the joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Group efforts often suffer from "groupthink", where individuals lose the benefit of independent thought and just agree with each other. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos solves that problem with a two-pizza rule.

The team at 99Ufollows productivity trends on a daily basis and noticed that every few years, a research study comes along that fundamentally changes the way we think about work. These studies are often conducted over decades and follow people across their careers to offer the rest of us a template to follow for our day-to-day lives. Below are three studies that are behind much of the productivity and creativity advice you read every day.

You can focus your time locally or globally. But if you over-commit yourself locally, you under-commit yourself globally and vice-versa. If you're local, then you're probably social, doing a lot of things in-person and being a part of your community. But this means you'll have less time to focus on creating things for the world. If you're global, then you want to focus on creating things that can reach out through distribution to the whole world. But this means you'll have less time to be part of your local community. Neither is right or wrong, but you need to be aware of the choices you're making.

I recently received an email making a simple request. However, the email was three pages long. The whole message could have been three lines, but instead the author decided to write a short novella. Needless to say, I didn't read the whole thing. Nor did I respond. Are your emails going unread because they are too long?