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11 Lifehacking Tips For Improving Productivity -- And Knowing When That's Not The Point

San Diego -- Gina Trapani, the queen of Internet productivity, shared her tips for getting things done at ETech 2008, spilling the beans on best practices for maximizing results and efficiency. Trapani, editor of the blog Lifehacker and a book of the same name about to go into second edition, said that her whole career stems from a presentation at ETech 2004 -- one she didn't even attend.

"I have to thank Danny because I stole his idea and based a writing career on his idea," Trapani said, at a presentation at the O'Reilly ETech Emerging Technology Conference

The way she tells the story, Danny Sullivan, editor of the blog SearchEngineWatch, O'Brien, a technology journalist and blogger, gave a talk at ETech 2004 in which he interviewed "alpha geeks" -- renowned programmers and one or two Web 2.0 entrepreneurs -- about their tips for productivity. He found they used a lot of shell scripts and plain text files to automate getting stuff done and keeping track of to-dos. Sullivan called the talk "life hacks." Trapani wasn't there, but she read a write-up by Cory Doctorow, co-author of the blog Boing Boing (and later an InformationWeek columnist). She was impressed, and started the blog Lifehacking several months later, as part of the Gawker blogging network, which also includes Valleywag and Gizmodo.

Trapani described her talk as a set of high-level principles, not looking at individual tools and tips (although she did mention a few) but focusing on approaches and philosophies of getting things done. She said she'd provide a list of seven habits, but I counted 11. They are:

Beware of the screen. "The biggest occupational hazard we have as technologists is the incredible seductive power of the screen," she said. Not just computer screens, but phone and especially TV screens have great power to seduce. TV screens in particular can turn us into slack-jawed zombies, even if the program isn't particularly compelling.

Technologists tend to have hyperactive brains and be easily distracted, and information overload contributes to the problem. E-mail, social networks, long instant message conversations rob useful time, she said.

Unplug every now and then. Trapani said she just returned from nine days in Thailand, where she sat on the beach, without Internet or phone access. Her traveling companions brought books and crossword puzzles, but she didn't even do that. "I spent nine days looking at the water and thinking," she said.

Know when productivity and efficiency are not the point. Trapani described a Thanksgiving visit from her sister and her sister's partner, and how Trapani carefully made a shopping list for the supermarket and divided the list into three parts so that they could split up and get the shopping done faster. But Trapani's sister's partner protested. "Her partner said it's not always about being more efficient," Trapani said. Trapani said her sister's partner was right. Splitting up to get things done more quickly would have been a mistake.

"I don't love grocery shopping, but I can't think of a better way to spend Thanksgiving than grocery shopping and walking through the aisles for an hour with my sister," Trapani said.

Get in touch with your feelings. When you shut down the computer at the end of the day, think about how you feel about the day's work. Are you happy about it? Do you feel you wasted your time? Do you feel worn out and stressed? Let those feelings be a guide to planning your future. Have a weekly meeting with yourself -- followers of the system of Getting Things Done by David Allen call that a "weekly review" -- and see how you feel about the past week and let that be a guide to planning the next week.

Have a system. Automate tasks that can be automated. Make a decision once, and stick with it. Always put your cell phone in the same pocket of your backpack, and that way you won't have to rummage for it every time the phone rings, and you won't have to think about where to put it when you're done making a call.

Get information out of your head. When you have an idea, write it down. Use a wiki, or pencil and paper, or send yourself an e-mail on your cell phone. Otherwise, you'll forget.

Pile, don't file. Don't worry about putting things in folders; rely on desktop search to find old e-mails and documents. I assume here that she was talking about electronic records only -- if you don't file paper documents, you'll never see them again.

Give yourself a head start. "When you switch tasks, put yourself on the top of a hill with a clear path downward," Trapani said, adding that productivity maven Merlin Mann, editor of the blog 43folders, calls this parking on top of a hill facing downward.

Trapani said that when you stop a task, you should make it easy for yourself to get started again. Write yourself a note. That especially applies to finishing up work -- write yourself a note what you want to do first thing in the morning and put it on top of your keyboard. Make it the most important task of the day. That way you start the day with momentum and have already accomplished something important before you dig into e-mail.

Build strong filters. She was talking about e-mail filters here. She said prior to going to Thailand, she made ruthless filters to winnow out bacn such as Facebook and Twitter notifications and e-mail from PR people.

I had a similar experience after returning from vacation in October -- I took my iPhone with us and got bombarded by so much e-mail that didn't require my immediate attention that when I returned, I started ruthlessly filtering everything but top-priority mail into folders. I check the low-priority folders three or four times a day. I'm careful about which e-mail messages are permitted to go into my in-box, where they can interrupt me in whatever I'm doing. That's very helpful when I'm at a conference and taking a lot of meetings, as I am this week, but it's also helpful when I'm just sitting at my desk normally and working.

Clear clutter. She apologized for bringing up her Thailand trip so often, but she said she was very impressed while there with friends who were backpacking, and who ruthlessly divested themselves of possessions while traveling. When they hadn't worn a pair of pants for a while, they mailed it home. When they were done reading a book, they sold it at a used bookstore and bought another.

Keep your to-dos do-able. When writing a list, don't write something big and general, like "get teeth fixed" or "upload more Flickr photos." Write the list as though you were giving it to an ignorant assistant and had to spell out every step. Tell yourself to call a friend to get a dentist recommendation, or go through vacation photos and select the five best for uploading.

She concluded the talk by praising her three favorite Mac tools: TextExpander, an inexpensive program for creating customized text shortcuts on the Mac; Quicksilver, an open-source alternative to the command line for controlling the computer from the keyboard without a mouse; and KeePassX, an open-source program for storing passwords that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

During the Q&A, Sullivan O'Brien got up to congratulate her on her talk, and she thanked him for her career. He asked her how she'd like to change her mind or body if she could have one wish, noting that many people at ETech are working on body modification and prosthetics.

Trapani named two: She said she'd like to be able to control her procrastination better -- to have a big STOP button she could hit when she found herself trapped in a cycle of surfing Wikipedia. And she said she'd like a direct brain-to-computer interface, because she hates to type.

What tips do you use to enhance your personal productivity?

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