Category: Technology

A Phone Setup That Will Make You More Mindful Cover

A Phone Setup That Will Make You More Mindful

Nik
Note: This guide is for iPhone users, but all optimizations are transferable to other brands and operating systems.

If your phone was more like your toothbrush, your life would be a lot better.

Your toothbrush is the greatest tool of all time. Why? You only use it when you’re supposed to, for as long as you need to and never forget what it’s for.

A great tool serves only one purpose: to put control in your hands at all times, whether you’re wielding it or not.

That makes your phone a lousy tool at best. It constantly clamors for your attention and, once it has what it wants, never lets go. According to the latest Nielsen report, we spend 2.5 hours on our phones, every single day. I can’t see why anyone would need to use their phone 17.5 hours a week, unless they work part-time at a call center. Can you?

Your phone is your toothbrush’s arch enemy, trying to suck as much energy out of you as it can. Today, we’re going to change that. In a few easy steps, we’ll turn your phone into a mindfulness enhancer, making it the useful tool it was always meant to be.

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4 Quick Tweaks That Will Make You More Productive Cover

4 Quick Tweaks That Will Make You More Productive

Nik

In 2008, Simon & Schuster wrote a $200,000 check for Emily Gould to finish a book she’d already started. For the next two years, not much happened. Her husband knew why:

“You’ll sell your book for a million dollars,” he said, over and over again. But there was one thing he wouldn’t tolerate, and that was all the time I spent clicking and scrolling. He didn’t buy the line about it being a form of creativity. He called it an addiction.

Procrastination is the creative’s curse and today, all jobs require creativity. One of the most common ways we procrastinate is by looking for ways to procrastinate less. Over the past three years, I have too.

I even tried lots of stuff. Only to arrive at the disillusioning, yet oddly satisfying realization that just four productivity hacks have stuck — because they’re all I need.

Here’s the 80/20 of productivity hacks that will make you focused. Not all of the time, but enough of the time. So you may do your work and do it well.

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How To Set Up Your Mac For Focused Work Cover

How To Set Up Your Mac For Focused Work

Nik
Note: This guide is for Mac users, but most optimizations work on Windows too.

We’re 4 days into the week and my RescueTime dashboard shows 39 hours and 46 minutes of logged time. Without knowing anything about what I did, one thing is clear:

I spend A LOT of time staring at my laptop.

More than most people sleep. Chances are, you do too. What if you saved 10% of that time?

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The Future of Work: Hard Work, Working Hard & Being Creative

Nik

On June 1st, Jason Fried shook up the entire Medium community:

“Hard work is picking lettuce 8 hours a day in 90 degree heat. […] Rule of thumb: If it’s hard you’ll have trouble finding people who want to do it. There’s no shortage of people who want to be programmers, designers, strategists, social media consultants, entrepreneurs, investors, etc… But try finding people to work the farm. Hard work is doing the work other people don’t want to do.”

My first thought: “Do I claim to be doing hard work?” Read More

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How To Learn Faster In 4 Simple, But Not Easy Steps

Nik

I’m 100% done with my economics class for this semester, even though only 1o out of 24 lecture recordings have been uploaded so far. Each month, over a million people view my answers on Quora, though I started writing daily on there only on January 1st, 2017. I’m building an app with two friends on the side, yet I don’t know how to write code in Swift.

The list goes on. I’m always dabbling in at least 3–5 projects, all with varying degrees of experience and success. The one thing I refuse to let myself be guilty of is not learning fast enough so each of them won’t at least have a shot at working out.

This week, I thought about my learning process and asked myself what I could share with you about how to learn faster. I found four steps. Read More

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You Still Have Time To Make 2017 The Best Year Of Your Life

Nik

13 Ways to Get Your Grip On Life Back

With each passing year, I find more and more truth in this:

“The days are long, but the years are short.” — Gretchen Rubin

It’s that time of the year again. Tax day’s got you throwing your hands up in frustration, your New Year’s resolutions have long vaporized into thin air and you feel like your hold on 2017 is getting weaker and weaker.

I’m here to tell you: You still have time. Read More

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Return On Time: Why No Income Is Passive

Nik

You know how sometimes, within a few seconds, an idea you had taken as true for decades is shattered to pieces? For example, when I was little, my dad told me the glass windows in churches were thicker at the bottom, because glass was actually a liquid. Just last week I told this to a friend. Well, two minutes ago, this false belief burst.

Some of these urban myths are more pervasive than others. Occasionally, even more people will fall for the lie than stumble into the truth. I think passive income might be one of those extreme cases.

Today, we’ll debunk this concept, and replace it with a better one.

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The One Life Hack I Think Everyone Should Know

Nik

Keep your phone out of sight. I’ll say that again, very slowly, because it might not make sense at first.

Keep. Your phone. Out. Of. Sight.

The difference between this…

…and this…

…is an increase in your productivity with a magnitude of at least 5x-10x.

A study at the University of California, Irvine, found that “the typical office worker is interrupted or switches tasks, on average, every three minutes and five seconds.”

3 minutes and 5 seconds. That’s 185 seconds in total between one interruption and the next.

What’s more, “it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task.”

23 minutes! That’s over 7 times as long as it takes for you to be interrupted again.

Hm. How does that work? Oh, right, it doesn’t.

What does that tell us? The average worker never even gets close to the zone of deep work, where complex tasks are accomplished with good results.

As if that wasn’t enough — your phone is only one of many sources of distractions, after all — we keep our biggest nemesis right in front of us.

Not only will we look at it every time it vibrates or makes a noise, when our phone is within arm’s reach, we’ll naturally pick it up every couple minutes, just because we can.

You know “just in case.” Don’t give me that look. I know you do it too. We’re all weak.

Well, Justin, you can stay in your case from now on (pun alert), because we won’t be playing your game any more.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Put your phone…

  • into your desk drawer,
  • behind your laptop,
  • slip it under a couch cushion,
  • leave it in your bag,
  • store it in your locker

…or keep it in another room altogether.

The level of peace, relaxation and productivity you’ll face will be unprecedented.

Stop being “the typical office worker.” Start being an awesome office worker.

Sometimes, all it takes is something as small as moving your phone a few centimeters. That’s the life hack I’d like everyone to know.