Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Why did you click? Was is for the promise of being awesome? Was it the ten ways to get smarter? Was it for the image that has nothing to do with the post? Why do you want things to be so simple and easy? The best way to be more productive, …
One of the big differences between the most successful people we’ve met and others is how they use their morning. Used well, the time before breakfast dramatically increases your productivity. *** Mornings are an under-utilized tool …
When it comes to making decisions, your environment matters. Just as it’s hard to eat healthily if your kitchen is full of junk food, it’s hard to make good decisions when you’re too busy to think. Just as the kitchen …
If you’re a modern knowledge worker, odds are you’re going to go to work, read some emails, reply to some emails, attend some meetings, grab a coffee, have lunch, attend another meeting or two, catch up on emails, and finally head …
Research shows that knowing what you want to accomplish is more important than performance … at least at the start. But once you know where you’re going, you can accelerate progress by religiously implementing these steps. 1. …
In an increasingly interconnected world, finding focus and enabling time to do work is becoming harder and harder. Demands are outstripping our capacity at an alarming rate. It’s time to start thinking about how we work. Rather than …
The Eisenhower Matrix is a powerful mental model that helps you work on the most important thing and get more done. Let’s explore how it works so you can put it to use today. Dwight Eisenhower wasn’t only the 34th President of …
Ten years after David Allen’s bestselling productivity book Getting Things Done, scientific research caught up. We now know why the popular system is so effective. The key behind GTD is writing everything down and sorting it effectively. …
Tony Schwartz, author of Be Excellent at Anything, remarks that the biggest cost to splitting our attention among various activities is to productivity. He offers some advice on getting back on track: do the most important thing first in …
If you want to make your computer programmers and engineers more effective give them “privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption.” Via Susain Cain’s Quiet: The Power of …
Many of us have constant access to information. We are so used to looking up the answer to any question immediately that it can feel like withdrawal when we have to wait. Of course, storing information outside of our brains is nothing new. …
The difference between average results and exceptional ones is what you avoid. Saying no to mediocre opportunities is easy. Saying no to good opportunities is hard. We all have the same number of hours in a week. What separates people is …
You may think that as you juggle emails, my-book, twitter, google, work, life, the phone and casual web surfing that you’re really doing all of that stuff at once, but what you’re really doing is quickly switching constantly …
We tend to think that other people get distracted but not us. We’re different. We’re better than average. We can do more than one thing at a time and still be amazing. Not so. The always-on world of 24/7 bits and bytes is …