Open Source Blogging

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal development, personal productivity, or entrepreneurship book.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m a huge fan of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. That one simple volume (which I identified as one of the ten books that changed my life) pretty much transformed how I organized my time, moving me from an unorganized slacker who had difficulty managing just a tiny apartment, a job, and a dating relationship into a person who managed a full time job, … Continue Reading

I’m excited to share the new webiste for my upcoming book, THE POWER OF LESS: ThePowerOfLess.com. My book will hit bookstores and online book retailers on Dec. 30, 2008, and this website will share information about the book and much much more:

Audio podcast tips on topics such as handling email, setting and achieving goals, losing weight, and focusing on one task at a time.
Audio interviews with top names in the productivity field.
A free ebook entitled “THRIVING ON LESS: Simplifying in a Tough Economy”.
THE POWER OF LESS New Year’s Challenge: form one habit in 30 days, just 10 minutes a … Continue Reading

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project.

Maybe you’re feeling down because of the financial crisis. Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed by holiday tasks. Maybe you’re rushing around to try to get things done before you leave for vacation. Or maybe you’re just having a lousy day.

If so, you can make yourself happier – right now. In the next thirty minutes, check off as many of the following items as possible. Each one will lift your mood, as will the mere fact that you’ve tackled and achieved some concrete goals; by doing so, you … Continue Reading

Roughly a year ago, I wrote an article entitled Goals and Plans for 2008 that specified the things I intended to do during this year: eliminate all of my family’s non-mortgage debt (didn’t quite make it), start an investing plan (yep), double the readership of The Simple Dollar (yep), pull the trigger on three writing projects (two out of three ain’t bad), and spend more time with my children (yep). All in all, a pretty good year.

Just like last year, I find myself looking forward to 2009, identifying the things I want to accomplish during that year. … Continue Reading

As I’ve written about on here and Twittered about more than a few times, I’ve been through some serious health issues over the last month and a half. It’s actually been a long string of semi-related things - ear infection, sinus infection, TMJ, a very strong allergic reaction to Bactrim, a virus that threw a bunch of levels out of whack, an eye infection, and now apparently some troubles with my liver that may or may not be related to the virus. I haven’t felt normal since before Election Day, to tell the truth.

There have been a lot … Continue Reading

Your lives are always busy, I’m sure, but the holidays always seem to add even more craziness to everyone’s schedule. Christmas parties with family, friends and co-workers, gift shopping, decorating, Christmas pageants, caroling, bell-ringing, snow shoveling (unless you live on Guam like I do), making cookies, baking turkeys, and all the rest.

It’s enough to make you want to give up!

But it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. If you’re a busy person (and who isn’t these days?), I’ve compiled some of my favorite time-saving tips — things I use in my daily life that I’ve found to work wonders for freeing … Continue Reading

Over Thanksgiving and the following weekend, my wife and children and I went back to our home town to visit our families. There were many nice meals, some long and lazy afternoons spent together visiting and playing games, and lots of getting in touch with people we hadn’t seen in years.

One of the big things I notice is that my personal interests are quite a bit different than most of the interests of the people in my hometown. My circle … Continue Reading

Let’s say you are a bank, like Washington Mutual, and you’ve been forced to join another bank. What happens to your data center? How do the IT guys left in charge reduce cost? What other things are happening in the data center to squeeze cost out and return investment dollars fast? Well, today I went over to Cisco’s headquarters to see what they are doing in their datacenters. There I met James Urquhart (here is his Twitter account, he was just hired by Cisco because of his CloudComputing expertise and blog, titled appropriately “Wisdom of Clouds“) and friends … Continue Reading

“Eric” writes in with a question/suggestion:

We all want to attack our debt, but can we be “gazelle intense” for the next 10 years (or more, depending on your income)?? Even if we could, is that a life really even worth living? If not, then what progressive, yet normalized, steps can we take so that we feel we are making a difference in our battle, yet still allowing ourselves a normal life (and not feeling guilty for it!)?

Eric’s question, at its … Continue Reading

Article by Zen Habits contributor Jonathan Mead.

What if I told you that you could be totally lazy and irresponsible, and still accomplish just as much? What if you could slack off, loiter, and essentially do nothing and get more done than the average person. It’s a bit of an art, but you can master this skill with some practice.

Some of these things may seem like a lot of work up front, but that’s the price you have to pay to lounge around all day.

1. Be effective.

The indigenous lazy tribesman knows the value of hard work. But he also … Continue Reading