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I was a big fan of the first edition of Gina's LifeHacker. Otherwise, the ToC is excellent, organizing the Hacks by productivity type ("Clear your mind," "firewall your attention") and descriptive Hacks and subtopics of each hack. For example, "remember 100 different passwords with one rule set" was enough to change my approach to passwords, even before I'd read the full text.Many of the tips are simple common sense, which we can often miss because of habits we've already built up. To the uninitiated, "lifehacker" sounds like something Dr. A lot of these tips have been covered on the site before, but having them available in compact, physical form is particularly helpful when I'm stuck on a project or assignment and need to make a mental break. Frankenstein dabbled in, where "upgrade your life" could have come from Tony Robbins. "Upgrade Your Life" is the expanded, revised, resized and renamed Second Edition, which should make it more accessible to the self-described "non-hacker."The book's new dimensions and title make it look less like a computer book and more like the self-improvement book that it is. At times, just reading the ToC is enough to set off the "a ha." reaction and make a difference.
These are small changes, but "small changes" for improving your productivity is what this book is all about.The book is not designed to read front to back. Each "hack" has a a "level/platform/cost" header, which I find helpful, but I would have liked to have some or all of this info in the table of contents. Other tips introduce useful applications like Remember the Milk, or remind you of features your phone already has (Hack 72, "Access web apps and search via text message").Gina is an excellent writer; her LifeHacker.com site remains a daily read. Just learning something new and practicing it for a few minutes often helps me get back into the productive zone.Highly recommended.
I read through this book over the course of a few days and highlighted everything that pertains to my workflow. I have turned these into a task list and I am trying to implement one of them every other day or so.The chapter on simply buying a good quality filing cabinet has made life immeasurably better already :-)I'm using Text Expander to save time on timing out often used phrases.I'm integrating google apps to take my work into 'the cloud'.The tips on how to handle your email inbox are great.This book is well written and easy to understand with lots of great tips that you can quickly implement to make you workday a little easier to get through and a lot more organized.The split between PC and Mac tips is pretty balanced so no need to worry that your platform is being left out here.
better off as an article. the point is well made but the book is often redundant.
After reading this book I've become more aware of ways to improve my work style, not only on my computer, but also in everyday life. Excellent book. I've used too many of the tips to list them all here. Upgrade Your Life contains an abundance of sensible tips and tricks for anyone who uses a computer on a regular basis and would like to be more efficient. The information in this book is designed to streamline the way you currently do things and help you develop new, more productive habits. I like Gina's writing style which is friendly, but not "cute" (gag). It's an enjoyable book to read.
One brick and morter and two online. But it is you who must Work the system or you will be overwhelmed again.A much more detailed program is used in Getting Things Done David Allen book, but the above is kind of the simplified version that I currently prefer.And for just getting rid of all the clutter in your life any of the books from Peter Walsh, How to Organize (Just About) Everything, and Enough Already, are great even though they tend to recover some of the material from his other books somewhat but thats not a big deal since the info is worth repeating. (Cured that recently too with the Kindle 2).I run three business. First I have been working diligently on de cluttering my personal and business life. I have done this with pictures too as you can also save them info Jpeg and Jiff files. And suggestions from the life hacker Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better by Gina Tripani has some interesting ideas for sure.Keeping your inbox empty we use suggestions from Stress Less and Zen to Done by Leo Babauta and you would not believe how much better you feel when things are under control.
For the ones we do answer the questions are predictable and we saved the answers as email drafts that way we just cut and paste and all done.For the Spam we ran our eight email accounts into one google mail as they have the best spam filters and you can reply from the email address to which the mail was sent so they dont know that anything is happening.
I was getting over four hundred emails a day and was drowning in mail and spam.
The books by Koch on the 80/20 principle are also worth looking into.
I have read so many simplifying and de-cluttering and efficiency books I almost have a clutter problem with all the books on the subject.
Another good author but she covers pretty much the same thing is Julie Morgenstern.
So I utilized ideas / suggestions from several sources to cure my problems.
From the Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss we started using detailed faq's lists on our websites and an auto-responder that answered many questions so we would no longer have to reply to as many emails.
For the paper clutter in my life I have a digital sender scanner and have scanned over four full file cabinets into Adobe PDF computer files.
While there are tons more books out there and I seem to have most of them, these are the best to get things under control and to get you the time to do the things that matter to you.
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