I’m on vacation during the first part of this week (posts will resume on Thursday) and have used my free time to talk to some of you.  Read the rest of this entry »

First off, you must start with a quotation. Preferably by an Asian spiritual leader (quoting Lao Tzu, Confucius, or the Buddha works, but don’t quote Jesus). The quotation really doesn’t have to relate to the article or the picture at all. It just has to make you feel good. And quotes by people with obscure names are a good thing.
-Sun Zhongmou Liu Yuanzhi Xu Shu

The perfect productivity article should start with a picture of a person jumping. Pictures of beaches, sunsets, or children also do the job, but a picture of someone jumping really is best. It really doesn’t matter whether the picture relates to the topic, so long as it’s a really cool picture of someone jumping. Then you can proceed with the introduction.

The introduction shouldn’t be very long. Its real purpose is to make you look like a writer instead of a glorified list maker. Because if you don’t have an introduction, then you’d just have a list of tips and that wouldn’t look very good.  Or literary.

Bear in mind that a lot of people aren’t going to read past the second paragraph of your introduction. They’re just going to skip to the list, which is the most important part of the article. So without further ado, here are 70 simple power tao secret hacks to writing the perfect productivity article, plus a guide & system for doing it:

1. Call Your Article a Guide or System

No matter what the content or article length, make sure that you call your article a guide. Or a system. Your piece might only be 500 words, but that’s OK. Remember, people want to read guides and systems.

2. Make a Numbered List

Making a list is the most essential element of a productivity or self-help article because there are few things as compelling, sexy, motivating, and exciting as a list. So make sure you have one. The reason you want to have a list is because it allows you to number things. Also, it’s easier to make 70 points poorly that to make one point very well. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes too much productivity can turn you into a real tool.  We’ve scooped these 5 winners from the productivity loony bin to provide our own self-development lesson about d-baggery and what-not-to-do. . .

Nutjob Type #1: Mr. Space Man

People always ask the same questions about these types: “is all that technology really making them more productive?”  The answer, of course, is obvious:

Of course they’re more productive than you. They’re freaking cyborgs!!

Anyway, we know Mr. Space Man all too well.  He’s got $10,000 worth of gadgets in his fanny pack (not to mention, space ice cream), and can’t stop futzing around with his stylus.  He speaks flawless Klingon and has most definitely been assimilated.

If you approach him with a productivity problem, the solution will likely come from a recent issue of Pen Computing Magazine and it will probably require you to install another program on your PDA.

How to Identify Him

You’ll know this guy because his cordless headset NEVER comes off. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Pete Woodhead

The Growing Life’s biggest milestone didn’t come when I started receiving 50+ new subscribers daily.  It didn’t come when yesterday’s article hit Digg’s front page (thanks to John for the sub), or when Leo Babuta accepted my guest post.  The biggest milestone wasn’t crossed when Copyblogger hit publish on my stuff, or when I made the Zen Habits TumbleLog (although I was, and still am, very grateful for the link).  It didn’t even come when when Alltop added me to their top 15 lifehack websites (that was the second biggest milestone).

No.  The biggest milestone occurred after I wrote Quitting Things and Flakiness.  It’s a long, rambling article, and I was sure it’d piss people off and die on Stumble Upon.  The article did piss a few people off, but it also received more comments than any other post on TGL (StumbleUpon ate it up, by the way).  After publishing Quitting Things, my subscriber count increased more than it ever had (at that point) in a single day.

Quitting Things and Flakiness was a milestone because it was the first article written for myself and to myself.  It helped me find the beginnings of my voice, and the response to it confirmed that I could write to the beat of my own drummer without losing readership.

Read the rest of this entry »

James Dean is an iconic figure of legendary proportions.  He was a paragon of coolness who occupied the middle ground between normalcy and anti-social rebellion.  He took up lots of space (both physical and psychological) and his body language simultaneously conveyed extreme confidence and boyish vulnerability.

For those who’ve forgotten Jimmy’s coolness, see below for a reminder:

Anyway, you might not be a real bad*ss, but with Jimmy as our guide we’ll be showing you . . .

7 Rules for Being a Body Language Bad*ss

Rule #1: Lean on Stuff While Standing

Gravity is a fact of life, but a fact of life that Jimmy had little little time for.  As a result, he expended little energy holding himself up and supporting his own weight.  If Jimmy was near an object, you can put your money on him leaning on it sooner or later.  (It seems nearly impossible to find a picture of James not propping himself up on one object or another).  This doesn’t just apply to the “trunk” of his body, it also applies to his limbs: James often took all of this a step further by propping up one leg (see the middle picture, above) or using an object to support one or both arms (see gun picture, above). Read the rest of this entry »

My mom is awesome (see Disneyland picture to the right).  But awesomeness just isn’t correlated with knowledge of RSS, and my feed hasn’t seen hide nor hair of mom since day 1.

So how does my mom read The Growing Life and other productivity blogs?  Not via email, because she never checks it.  She checks my feed with Alltop (hopefully before rushing over to Zenhabits :-), which is an interesting project started by Guy Kawasaki.  (If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Guy wrote the book on business evangelism and was one of the original Apple employees responsible for marketing the Macintosh; he’s also a well-respected blogger).

Mom’s only recently been able to pick me on Alltop, after Guy graciously added me to the lifehacks section. Here’s a little more information . . . Read the rest of this entry »

[Editor's Note: In an effort to avoid reinventing the wheel, I've taken this post's introduction partly from an earlier post.  Apologies if you've read the earlier material.]

In 2005, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman injected a bestselling hit, The World is Flat, into the national psyche. The book’s 5th “flatting”? factor is outsourcing. Friedman argues that the practice enables companies to componentize manufacturing and service efforts, thus making each component more efficient and cost effective.

In August of 2005, author A.J. Jacobs (author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically) read Friedman’s book and thought to himself, “why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun?”? “Why can’t I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century?”? “Why can’t I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can’t I outsource my life?”? He then goes on to write a notable piece of cultural history for Esquire called My Outsourced Life (notable because it later catches on in a big way). In My Outsourced Life, Jacobs outsources everything from worrying and spousal relations, to email and work related research. It’s an entertaining read and one that I recommend.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Sunfox

The Growing Life emerged 7 weeks ago sporting a tag line that read: "Durable Evolution, Meaningful Productivity."  The ever-so-wise academic in me thought "durable evolution" was both catchy and sophisticated.  A real show-stopper.  Turns out only one person liked it, and I’m pretty sure that they expressed this opinion while drunk.

At the same time that my hopes of "durable evolution" entering the common parlance were being shattered, I also discovered the beginnings of the voice for this blog.  Articles like this and this were beginning to define The Growing Life.  Additionally, I found myself questioning GTD and the role of wildly-successful sites like Lifehacker, and thinking more and more about counterintuitives as well as ideas at the so-called "bleeding edge."  In light of this, I’ve decided to change my tag line to "Alternative Productivity, Anti-Hacks for Living."  Here’s a little on what these two phrases mean to me…

Read the rest of this entry »