Always carry a pen with you

Our brain is a strange thing. It reminds us that we should buy fruits while we are waiting for the bus, but it can't tell us if there's any milk left in the fridge while we are shopping. You have the best ideas at the strangest places, and when you are home again you can't remember any of it. You know you had a good idea, but no matter how hard you try - you can't remember.

There's a simple way out of this dilemma. Capture any idea as soon as it hits you. But how to capture ideas in any situation?

I've tried all kinds of tools to solve this problem. I tried PDAs and smartphones. But in the end, the best tool of all is good old paper and a pen. Even better is the advanced version of pen and paper: The Hipster PDA. Most of you will already know it, but for those who don't: It's basically a pile of index cards used as an organizer. It's a simple but brilliant idea.

Even those modern web applications for making lists, drawings or other documents online can't beat paper. It has lots of advantages over the other so-called advanced tools:

It's instant
No need to boot it up and launch the right application. Just grab it and start writing.

It's flexible
You can do everything you want. Need to write text? Write. Need some drawing? Draw. Need to make a table? Make a table.
You don't have to search for the right application to make a drawing. You could make it everywhere, right there between the text and the table.

It's cheap
Paper and a pen don't cost you hundreds of dollars. Well, you could pay hundreds of dollars for the pen alone - but you don't need to spend that much. For the price of a PDA you can write a lot of ideas on a lot of paper...

It's durable
Drop it on the floor, bend it, throw it threw the room to let off steam. Try that with your smartphone...

It doesn't run out of batteries
Image you want to write down the greatest idea you ever had, and you forgot to recharge your PDA...

The only thing that doesn't work that well for me on paper is my calendar. I don't want to change my calendar everytime a meeting gets rescheduled. I want it to sync with my smartphone automatically. But for everything else nothing can beat my Hipster PDA. If you haven't already, you should give this a try...

Everything you need to know about deadlines

lifehack.org has a great article about deadlines, "22 Tips for effective deadlines". It's a very interesting read. I especially like the first one in the list:

1. Use Parkinson’s Law - Parkinson’s Law states that tasks expand to fill the time given to them. By setting a strict deadline in advance you can cut off this expansion and focus on what is most important.

I guess that's the most important law in life. Well the most important one after Murphy's Law...

Cleanup your home: Don't organize trash

Not long ago, my home was a big mess. Every room was full of stuff that hasn't found a new home since I moved in here. That was around 2 years ago, just to give you an idea of how lazy and unorganized I've been. Now, my home is clean and clutter-free. Well, not as clutter-free as I want it to be, but it's getting better and better. How did I get there?

The most important thing was that I realized that organizing alone is not enough. I spent a lot of time finding the right place for lots of things. Unfortunately my cabinets have a size limit, so there were often other things that lost their place. I spent a lot of time finding the right place for... and so on.

I picked up all kinds of boxes and folders, but no matter how hard I tried - the clutter got more and more. One day, when I was re-organizing one of my cabinets once again I took a closer look at the stuff I was constantly moving around my home. It turned out that I haven't needed most of the stuff in my cabinet for a couple of years!

So I went through all my cabinets and dumped everything that wasn't worth keeping. Within some hours I had enough space in my cabinet to find a new home for every single thing I found lying around.

The next time you are looking for the right place for something you should probably ask yourself one simple question: "Is it really worth keeping?"

Mastering email: Empty your inbox

Does your inbox contain zero unread messages and yet you feel like you need to check some of your mails because you're sure there's still some action required on some of them? Wasn't there a request for a reply and you thought "I'll reply later"? You don't know exactly who wanted a reply for what, and so you start to read all your mails of the last days again...

That was a problem for me for a long time. It was even more complicated because I filtered all mails and ordered them in around 20 different folders. Where to start looking? Spotlight really saved my life :)

And then, I saw Merlin Mann's video on how to empty your inbox, Inbox Zero (direct link to video). Immediately after the video, I started to reorganize my mail. Reorganizing isn't exactly the right word, it's more like "un-organizing". It turned out that all my fancy folders sorted my mails, but didn't really help me to handle email efficiently.

Now, I've got a very minimal setup, compared to my inbox before Inbox Zero. Every time I check my mail the inbox gets emptied, no matter how many mails I've got. Mails that need some processing later on or are otherwise worth keeping, are moved into one big "Archive" folder. All actions that need to be done with those mails get an entry on my todo list. Mails that don't need any action, and don't contain anything useful for the future are deleted right away.

Sent mails that I might need in the future, are sent bcc to myself, and automatically moved into the archive. I regularly empty my "Sent Items" folder. No need to keep every single mail you've ever sent...

Email is no longer one big mess, but got a great productive tool I enjoy using. If you find yourself searching your inbox all over again, you should definitely have a look at this video. If you don't have that much bandwidth, there's also an audio version.

Cleaning up - Burst mode

Have you ever started to clean up your home and got stuck right after picking up the first item? It's often hard to decide what to do with the stuff that's spread around. Every item seems to bring up the same questions:

• Is this worth keeping, or should I dump it right away?
• Where should I put it?
• Do I really need to do more cleaning?

You pick up the first item and get insecure. You think about what to do with it, what happens if you make the wrong decision. Your mind thinks about all possibilities and starts to drift away. After a while, you find yourself doing something else and feeling bad about all the mess around you.

You can speed up your cleaning if you set clear rules. There are exactly two modes of "Burst mode cleaning":

• Dump it.
• File it.

Pick one mode. Then, in the spirit of picking concrete numbers, pick a number. I suggest something around 10.

Dump mode

Carefully look around your home. Pick up every item that screams "Dump me!" and dump it. If you're not sure about an item on first look, leave it. Don't think twice. Try to find the next item to dump. If you've reached your number of items sit back and relax. If you can. After getting so much done in so little time, you'll be motivated to do more. That's a good time to start with "File mode" :)

File mode

Same as "Dump Mode", but this time you file everything. If you're not sure if you really want to keep this thing, or if you're not sure where to put it, leave it. Don't waste too much time on one item. Maybe you have a clearer picture of what to do the next time you come across this item.

Next time you think you should clean up your home, just pick a number and start...

Picking concrete numbers instead of vague goals

Have you ever said to yourself "I'll try to eat more healthy"? "I'll try to get organized?" Don't.

"I'll try to eat more healthy" doesn't really say anything. What does "more healthy" mean?

• "I'll only eat vegetables and fruits instead of the sugar packed junk I'm used to"?
• "Ok, I'll eat an apple if I forgot to buy the junk food I'm used to"?
• What does "I'll try" mean anyway?

If you really want to reach your goal, you have to define the very first thing you have to change or do to make your goal a reality. Your first step to eating more healthy could be "I'll eat at least 3 kinds of fruit every single day". There are no excuses like "but I drank a diet-coke" when you took the junk food instead of the healthy fruits. At the end of the day, you can review if you've reached your goal. The next day you'll think twice before you grab the junk food.


Not only is it easy to review this goal. It's also easy to plan ahead to make this goal a reality. If you're in the store with "I'll try to eat more healty" all kinds of excuses might come up. Like "Yeah, I'd really like to make this healthy dinner, but unfortunately I don't know the recipe right now, so I don't know what to buy. Maybe tomorrow."

On the other hand "3 kinds of fruit every single day" is a clear thing. You have to buy 3 kinds of fruit. Today.