I’ve been able to supercharge my motivation and productivity lately — using a new method that doesn’t involve Evernote (shocking, I know!) or any digital tool at all. It’s a productivity method I gleaned from a talk that John Cleese gave on the subject of creativity some years ago. I’ve used it to decide what types of projects I want to be involved with, to better communicate my approach and to generate new ideas for ongoing projects.
Got a speaking gig coming up and wondering why on earth it’s taking you so long to get your slide deck ready? Well, don’t worry, all that effort you’re putting in can totally pay off, and beyond just the event itself.
Last week, I slept with a potato. Actually, that’s misleading. The potato was on the nightstand near my alarm clock, and I can’t with certainty say whether it was sleeping or not.
I felt so proud of checking off the last priority thing on my Evernote daily to-do list yesterday that I had to screencap it to preserve the productivity goodness for all time. While I was at it, I thought I’d share my Evernote to-do list setup and how I use it in my daily process as someone who works in marketing.
I had a phenomenal week off. Check out this sunrise! Sigh. #PortsmouthLOVE!
I ate some great food with friends, enjoyed a lovely Christmas with besties, learned a lot about myself, saw family, and did ALL OF THIS:
With this simple shortcut, you can instantaneously copy an Evernote note link to your clipboard, ready to paste into an email, Facebook post, or tweet.
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| Pasted a few recent recommendation links into a note for a pal, and with the stroke of two keys, ta-da: note URL copied! |
Is your browser packed with bookmarks to read later? Do you use a service like Pocket (formerly Read it Later) or Bitly as a way to save links to visit later? Have you ever pinned on Pinterest or posted a link on Facebook as a reminder to yourSELF to read something later? It’s okay, we’ve all been there—but there’s a better way to save articles and websites of interest: Web Clipper for Evernote.
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| Evernote Web Clipper is available for all major browsers (and Internet Explorer (*zing!*)). |
The Web Clipper is my new favorite Evernote application/extension. The control over how much of a web page it clips, the ability to direct it to a specific notebook or tag it right there while you’re saving the web page is invaluable. And of course, in Evernote, once it’s in, it’ll never take up future space so you can save it forever. You know, in case you suddenly want to tell someone about something you recently read. Whip out your phone and type in a keyword or tag and BOOM, derailed conversation thread saved!
Let’s answer a few questions…
If you do a lot of mobile browsing, you’ve likely mistyped out your email address about a hundred billion times. “There’s gotta be a better way!” Well, there is, Kevin!
Ever want to get an Instagram filter on a photo without sharing it publicly on Instagram?
1. iPhone Settings > Airplane mode > on 2. Post photo to Instagram. Fail. Remove. 3. Filtered photo is now in your camera roll w/o posting
— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) September 30, 2013
That’s it! (Don’t worry, I also Instagrammed this tip.)
Personally, I usually use Camera+, as I recommended in a previous post, because it gives much more control and filtering options. However, this trick can be quicker, or come in handy if you want the specific look of an Instagram filter you love.
A few months ago, I learned about Coffitivity. It is a tool based around the notion that some people work better with the ambient noise of a bustling coffeeshop around them. I like Coffitivity a lot. I like even more that they’ve built in a volume level that can be adjusted in tandem with the volume of your own music, making it likely that you’ll at least give it a try, and that you’ll hopefully keep using it even if you are a music listener.
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| Coffitivity |
Thanks to Netted by the Webbys, I just discovered another new service: focus@will. This site offers channels of various genres of music for focusing and productivity—and the kicker is, they are all ambient, wordless, lyricless tunes, which is optimal for not losing focus.
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| focus@will |
I’ve created Rdio playlists for writing—some classical, some movie soundtracks (which are great for writing fiction, and which I lean heavily upon for NaNoWriMo in November), but this is one-click access to curated ambient music, which is way easier than culling your own wordless tunes.
So there you have it—two new productivity tools for writing, working, and getting things done! I love finding this cool tools, so please let me know what neat-o productivity hacks YOU have discovered!