3 Ways To Be More Productive That You Can’t Train at Work Cover

3 Ways To Be More Productive That You Can’t Train at Work

Nik

Getting Things Done is one of the most popular productivity books of all time. Published in 2001, it has sold over 2 million copies, been translated into more than 30 languages, and affected the work of hundreds of thousands of professionals.

Naturally, you’d expect the man behind the phenomenon, David Allen, to be a swift and efficient person. A ‘corporate suit,’ if you will. In a 2017 interview in his Amsterdam home, his appearance couldn’t be further from that.

As he casually sits in his chair, the top of his shirt unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, he admits he wrote the book in part because he is “lazy, frankly.” Diving deeper into the origins of his fascination with the topic, he continues:

“I got into this methodology primarily because I was into clear space. How do I get clear space? I love clear space. [Through] my training in the martial arts, meditational practices, spiritual practices, [I] discovered how productive it was to be able to actually have nothing on your mind other than whatever you wanted on your mind.”

That doesn’t sound very systematic, does it? When we learn about GTD, we read about the five stages, about collecting, processing, organizing, planning and doing. As the system is propagated around the web, emphasis lies on boosting efficiency, minimizing dead time and checking off more boxes.

Maybe we’re missing something. Getting lost in the manual, while the lessons lie elsewhere. Maybe, being productive is not really about what happens at the office.

Read More
The Fastest Way to Become Smarter Cover

The Fastest Way to Become Smarter

Nik

Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. They lit a candle as a symbol of their practice and began. By nightfall on the first day, the candle flickered and then went out.

The first monk said: “Oh, no! The candle is out.”

The second monk said: “We’re not supposed to talk!”

The third monk said: “Why must you two break the silence?”

The fourth monk laughed and said: “Ha! I’m the only one who didn’t speak.”

Read More
A Plug & Play Life: How To Access Your Data From Anywhere Cover

A Plug & Play Life: How To Access Your Data From Anywhere

Nik

In Germany, there’s this running joke. If someone comes up to you holding a phone with a smashed screen — which looks like a web — you can make a smug face and ask: “Did you download the Spider-Man app?”

While a lot of screen-broken phones still work after their near-fatal fracture, some don’t, and the survivors won’t last long. Yet, people hang on to them, partly because repair and replacement costs suck, but mostly, because moving their life to a new device is a painful process. That’s right. Life.

Most of your identity is digital. Photos, videos, music, wallet, voice messages, chat history, social activity, it’s all on your phone and laptop. Same goes for your work. Whether you’re on one device as a freelancer or spread across multiple PCs in the office and at home, chances are you could get little done offline. Even a huge chunk of your leisure time takes place in 1s and 0s.

That’s mostly a good thing. It saves time, space, and energy to access most of what you need through one or two devices. What’s not so great is that it makes those devices so-called single points of failure.

Read More
Minimalism Will Not Make You Happier Cover

Minimalism Will Not Make You Happier

Nik

I’ve been a minimalist since 2012. At first it wasn’t a choice. When I moved into my 60 sqft room on a US campus, there simply was no space, regardless of how much or how little I owned. So, for the first few weeks of the exchange program, I lived out of my suitcase.

Shortly after, I found The Minimalists and their 21-day journey. Josh helped his friend Ryan pack up all his stuff, as if he was moving, and then he only unpacked what he needed for three weeks. They learned that we don’t need all that much and that trashing, donating, and selling material possessions doesn’t hurt. To the contrary, it’s often liberating:

“Minimalism is a tool that can assist you in finding freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around. Real freedom.”

From that moment on, I was hooked. “I want freedom,” I thought. And so, to this day, the places I’ve lived in all look somewhat like this:

Some say it’s clean, some say it’s boring, but for me, it’s just normal. Without a doubt, minimalism has added tremendously to my happiness over the years. But not in the way you’d think. It wasn’t the money I made from selling all the excess stuff, nor the money I saved from not buying more.

It wasn’t even the freedom from all the clutter.

Even that only gets you so far.

Read More
How To Set Up Firefox for Simple Productivity Cover

How To Set Up Firefox for Simple Productivity

Nik

Mozilla created the new Firefox with one thing in mind: speed. While they’ve succeeded — the browser is lightning fast — it is now up to us to maintain that speed. You can’t do that if you clutter your browser with countless add-ons, customizations and pseudo-productive clickbait.

A simple browser needs a simple setup, in order to simply function. Hence, I’ve thought long and hard about these three aspects:

  1. The home page.
  2. The interface.
  3. The add-ons.

Here’s how you can adjust them for minimal friction and maximum productivity.

Read More
Firefox vs. Chrome: Which Browser Will Make You the Most Productive? Cover

Firefox vs. Chrome: Which Browser Will Make You the Most Productive?

Nik

If you open 500 web pages a day and lose two seconds every time one loads, that’s almost 17 minutes down the drain.

That may not sound so bad, but let’s factor in mental switching cost. Because what do you do in those two seconds? You think of something else. Or open another tab. And that can easily derail your work in that original tab for 20 minutes.

Clearly, browsing speed matters. It’s what has dominated comparisons between Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox so far. That said, it’s not the only aspect that matters when choosing a browser that’ll help you — or keep you from — doing your best work.

Hence, here’s a short, subjective comparison of the two in four aspects: speed, simplicity, usefulness and synchronicity. I’m a long-time Chrome user, but have spent the past three weeks using Firefox to see how it feels.

Let’s find out which one works best for work!

Read More

What Are the Most Important Things To Know About Personal Finance?

Nik

Let’s say you start investing when you’re 20. You manage to save $5,000 each year and put them into stocks and index funds, which net you 8% in returns per year on average. At 30, you stop putting in money for good, but keep the investments you’ve accumulated so far.

Now, a different scenario. You don’t want to save and invest $5,000 each year in your twenties, because hey, you’re young. You want to have fun, you can do the responsible stuff later. So, you start investing at 30, the same sum each year. However, because you started later, you don’t stop after 10 years. Instead, you put in $5,000 every year until you retire at 65.

Here’s the insane part:

The kid who invested from 20 to 30, then never again, ends up with more money.

Read More
How To Get The Most Out Of Your Calendar Cover

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Calendar

Nik

Millions of people search for productivity advice each month. They turn to blogs, gadgets and apps when, in fact, they’re not even leveraging the full potential of a tool they already carry with them, 24/7/365: The calendar in their smartphone.

1 of every 3 people on the planet owns a smartphone, all of which come with a built-in calendar and even most of the phones we consider ‘dumb’ today have this feature. Yet, only a fraction of people use it, let alone use it deliberately.

You’re spending your time either way, but unless you’re planning how to spend it, the world will determine it for you. That’s a recipe for disaster.

The calendar on your smartphone is a free tool that’s always with you. It helps you be intentional about your time before it’s gone. Hence, it’s the most underestimated device we have almost universal access to today.

Read More