We here at Lifehack love to bring you fresh and helpful content on productivity, lifestyle, and technology everyday of the week. But there are sometimes that we want to bring our diehard readers content, ebooks, and offers that they can’t find anywhere else. This is where The Lifehack Letter comes in; Stepcase Lifehack’s new reader newsletter. We don’t know if you missed it on Monday morning, but we are partnering up with SaveUp.com, an awesome site that encourages you to save and pay down debt by hooking you up with prizes, to… More »

Valentine’s Day is normally a fun and romantic occasion for you if you’re in a loving relationship, yet it can be an off-putting and frustrating day if you’re single. A day that celebrates couples often challenges singles. The good news is that you can not only endure Valentine’s Day, but actually enjoy it as a single person. The trick is first to put your thinking straight about what being single or in a relationship truly means, and second to adopt a constructive behavior. This simple Valentine’s guide for singles will show you exactly… More »

2×4: One series that examines two topics, creativity and productivity, by asking those who make things on the web the same four questions on both subjects. Right after submitting his answers, former 2×4 participant, CJ Chilvers joked that he wished he had gone the Steve Jobs route and given one word answers. Ironically, this was followed by my receiving exactly that (well at least for the first question) from today’s participant, Ev Bogue. Answers to subsequent questions were also nearly as short, sweet and to the point. I won’t lie to you…for… More »

Do you have your email alerts on, Twitter apps pinging you every second, or IM up and running 24/7? Have you noticed that these constant distractions tend to, well, distract you? If so, rather than turning these things off you can design and create totally different user accounts on your Mac or PC to help you concentrate on the work at hand. Figure out what you need The first thing you must do is figure out what tools you need in what context and then create a separate user account that contains… More »

While technically we are still in the throes of winter here, the weather gods seem to be signalling the start of spring here, regardless! And with springtime, comes a desire to get out more into the outdoors – soak up the sunshine and get my hands dirty planning the year’s food garden. The more years I spend growing food, the more I am struck by the similarities between effective and efficient practices for growing food, and effective practices for work-flow. Make no mistake, the word “productivity” has its roots firmly in agricultural practice! (pun intended). In… More »

In previous posts, I discussed why the so-called “negative” emotions of anger, shame, sadness, and fear are actually good friends and guides. In this post, I am going to close the loop on this project by outlining why joy, a “positive” emotion, can be your enemy. How can this be? How can joy cause trouble? What’s wrong with feeling good? Well, nothing, of course. Except that the pursuit of joy (and the fear of losing joy) can distract us from creating long-term happiness and fulfillment. And it can even bring about circumstances… More »

As the amount of information that is potentially important to us continues to grow, it’s now more vital than ever to be able to process and consume it more efficiently. Here are some tactics to help you become more efficient with your time and information processing. RSS and keeping up with headlines If you aren’t an RSS user, you should be. It’s an excellent way to become efficient with your time and a good way to get through a bunch of information to find the important stuff quickly. Only subscribe to sites… More »

It’s that month again. Does your heart leap at the prospect of astonishing your partner with a date that will set their world on fire? I didn’t think so. All that pressure to be romantic focussed on one little day can feel like more of a burden than anything else. You can sulk all you want but declaring that you don’t believe in the whole consumerist conspiracy rarely gets you off the hook unless your beloved shares that same philosophy. It is possible that you are so romantic all year round that… More »

You’ve decided this is the year you’re going to get out of debt once and for all. You’re committed, you’re determined, now the only thing you need is a plan. There are many plans for debt reduction, but they all generally include the same elements. Debt accumulates over time for a variety of reasons. So, it is expected that time will be required to reduce that debt as well. Be patient and take it one step at a time…you’ll see results. Get a clear picture You have to understand the reality of… More »

“There is divine beauty in learning… To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps.” – Elie Wiesel “What did you learn in school today?” is one of most common questions asked by parents to their children every day after school. Yet many people go through life without ever asking what they learned each day. Being mindful of learning daily lessons allows us to be open to change and growth. We think of school… More »

My husband and I were walking down a busy street in downtown Chicago.  Suddenly, my husband gasped. “What?” I said. “You didn’t see that?” “No, what are you talking about?” “In front of us.  A bird just swooped down and tried to grab a sandwich out of that woman’s hand.” “No kidding, that’s crazy!” “You’re really not that observant, you know that?” He was right.  Even though I’m a writer and have been told countless times that keener observation makes for more interesting prose, this is not my strong suit.  When I’m… More »

Meetings can be one of the biggest time-wasters we can be involved with. They can be directionless, unfocused, long, and worst of all: pointless. There have been countless strategies put out there to combat the tedium of meetings, such as having “chairless” meetings, limiting meetings to 15 minutes, conducting meetings online and many others. But I haven’t found a single strategy or tool that improves the meeting concept better than MeetingBurner, and it just came out of beta today and is now available to the public. MeetingBurner has released their fast, elegant,… More »

Tune in for this list of great tools that are either GTD-friendly right from the get go, or can be easily adjusted to fit the GTD way of working. You only need 5 tools to make GTD work.

Often I come across highly productive people in their business environment whose home life can only be described as horrendous chaos. They are in control at work but the minute they step through the door in the evening, their control, order and discipline eludes them. The work habits and ethics don’t carry through. How can you change this chaotic home life into a more efficient flow? It can be done by creating positive productive habits which will create more time to enjoy the more important things in life. Plan, Plan, and Plan… More »

StackSocial has been offering some pretty amazing deals, and their latest is no exception: The StackSocial Mac Superbundle. The amount of apps that they’re serving up that will aid you in getting work done faster and better is pretty astounding — there’s 10 amazing Mac apps worth $471 that they are offering for just $49. And while not all of them may seemingly fit into your work arsenal at first glance, you might find by diving in a little deeper that every app offered here certainly can improve your productivity in some… More »

Talking about money and the economy can sure be depressing for most, especially since we haven’t seemed to shake the “Great Recession” and many areas of the world are under financial pressure. But, as some think we are starting to “come out of” the worst of it, we all can afford to look forward and try to reach our financial goals. And, since we are doing that, it may be cool to be rewarded for it. In a nutshell SaveUp is a new service that rewards you for saving money, paying down… More »

At the end of the first week of every month, we’re going present the best of what Lifehack had to offer in the previous month. We know our readers are busy — not just with other aspects of their lives, but also reading articles elsewhere — so if you’ve missed out on some of what we brought to you last month, now’s your chance to catch up. So, without further adieu, here is The Best of Lifehack from January 2012. Searching for the Perfect Productivity Tool One of the newest contributors to… More »

Sick of the massiveness and lack of intimacy on the larger social networks (ie Facebook, Google+, and Twitter)? Looking for a way to share with who you want and not have your entire life story in the lime-light? This is where the “newish” social network Path comes in. The premise Path is a “smart journal that helps you share life with the ones you love”. It’s based on the concept of Professor Robin Dunbar’s research regarding the number of trusted relationships that one can maintain which is believed to be 150. That… More »

As someone who tries to get the most out of their day but also likes to take some time and relax with a video or two every once in a while, I’ve been out of luck for a while. There’s a lot of noise out there on social networks, especially since I follow a lot of people on them. If I want to be able to keep up with the latest and greatest of what my friends are sharing, I’ll likely have a lot of digging to do. Because of that amount… More »

I’m sure you’ve felt it: the horror at the end of a presentation (which, let’s face it, can be a bit of a trauma in its own right) when you ask the following: “Any questions?” There seems to be one of two ways things can go at that moment — and neither fills you with delight. Firstly, there’s the Tumbleweed Option. Silence. Nothing — save perhaps for an embarrassed cough. Was your presentation really so bad that no one could understand it enough to think of a coherent question? Did you run over… More »