Matt's Idea Blog

• Matt's Idea Blog has moved! Please update your feed

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  My blog's new home at [matthewcornell.org] is up and running. The feed for it is: [feeds.feedburner.com] If this is not the one you're subscribed to, you'll need to update your reader. This is the case if you're directly subscribed to any of the Blogger feeds [1]. Importantly, [...]
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  Posted: March 28, 2008, 3:21pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• My Academic Productivity post is up

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  Jose Quesada's fine readers over at Academic Productivity (one of my regular destinations) have asked me some great questions around the unique productivity challenges faculty face. I have tremendous respect for education, and I very much enjoy working with the folks in these fields. Their jobs are some' [...]
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  Posted: March 24, 2008, 8:52pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• A heads up: Switching to matthewcornell.org in the near future

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  Just a quick notice that I'll be moving this blog to www.matthewcornell.org in the next few weeks, and you may see some side-effects - including re-postings - as I play with backing up [1] my posts. (Side note: I'll be outsourcing this transfer - see The 4-hour [...]
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  Posted: March 17, 2008, 9:35am EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• An idea (and question) dump from the big-arse text file

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  You know those crisis weeks when everything comes to a head, and then you get whacked by some nasty - and urgent - surprises? Well I've had three weeks of those, which explains the slow post rate. I apologize for that.
  
  So rather than my usual long, link-rich, in-depth,' [...]
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  Posted: March 09, 2008, 10:44pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• A Blast from the past & A little shout out

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  Apologies for the delayed post - I've been out of town on personal and business trips, I'm preparing for up-coming workshops and one-on-one work, plus continuing my switch to the Mac (!), so a short post this week.A few blasts from the pastFor my new readers, here are a few [...]
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  Posted: February 26, 2008, 10:46pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• Three indecisiveness phrases, and when (not) to use them

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  I'd like to tell you about three phrases you and I use that actually mean the opposite, and, when used improperly, hurt productivity and weaken your mind (Gasp!) Fear not, I'll also share the only times they are OK to use. And I'll start with a biggie."Let me think about'" [...]
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  Posted: February 11, 2008, 6:12pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• What GTD and Weight Watchers have in common

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  One of the personal changes I was surprised by when adopting David Allen's work was how relatively efforlessly I lost 15 pounds [1]. In my case a simple engineering-based approach worked: Calories in < average calories burned. But keeping it off can be a challenge. What helped a' [...]
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  Posted: February 05, 2008, 10:59am EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• I promise I will...

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  ...not try to sell you
  I will look for ways to help you, esp. before we work together (if ever)
  
  ...not work with you if I don't think I can help
  and I'll be very clear about it, even if we disagree
  
  ...not worry about "giving away the" [...]
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  Posted: January 31, 2008, 12:41pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• A conversation with Mark Hurst, web usability expert and author of "Bit literacy"

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  Recently I had a nice conversation with Mark Hurst, a leader of the online "customer experience" movement, and author of Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload (see the book's site and sample chapter). Additionally, he's contributed to the web usability field [...]
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  Posted: January 23, 2008, 1:28pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• Extreme GTD: How low can you go (or: Can we 80-20 GTD?)

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  I had a great question from one of my coaching clients who happens to be familiar with GTD [1]. He wondered whether a simpler version of Allen's work was possible, say one that fits the spirit of the 80/20 Principle, maybe even something like 90-20 [2].' [...]
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  Posted: January 14, 2008, 1:31pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• How to help people

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  As I continue building my personal productivity practice, one of the biggest shifts in my thinking is around networking [1]. I've moved from the common "palm down" perspective [2] to the "palm up" variety, in which I work to learn what people care about, and think about afterwards' [...]
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  Posted: January 08, 2008, 1:00pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• A conversation with Marilyn Paul, author of "It's hard to make a difference when you can't find your keys"

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  Another treat in my interview series (kickoff post, all posts), I'm very pleased to share highlights from an hour with Dr. Marilyn Paul, author of the best-selling It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys (The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized) ([...]
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  Posted: January 03, 2008, 2:44pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• Happy end-of-year, and a short collection of ideas, both serious and trivial

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  (A relatively short post, as I'm in recovery.)
  
  
  Five things that are easier with crutches
  
  I broke a leg bone in half a week ago[1], so I have some tips for you should you need crutches. Palm calluses useful for chandelier-swinging.
  Improved ability to re-slip' [...]
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  Posted: December 22, 2007, 10:14am EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• Bloke redux, the 15 minute emergency office, and a short automation experiment

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  A little grab-bag post today.
  
  First, yesterday in Western MA, USA, we had a beautiful, exciting, and hazardous ice storm. The latter I experienced first hand (first foot, actually) when I slipped on a near-frictionless driveway and broke my leg (fibular fracture). This is three months on the [...]
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  Posted: December 11, 2007, 7:15pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• A nice surprise: A short email interview with UK productivity expert Nicholas Bate

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  One of the great things about my series of interviews with top productivity consultants [1] (along with lots of new ideas) is discovering thinkers I've not previously heard of. I'm pleased to share a short email interview with Nicholas Bate (site, blog), who came to my [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2007, 3:10pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• Genius, purpose, and cool job descriptions - What are *you* built to do?

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  Over the past year or so I've been collecting job descriptions I think are tres cool, i.e., stimulating to me. I'm sure this started when I was planting the seeds of my career change - when I was actively thinking about finding my "thing," what Dick Richards calls [...]
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  Posted: November 26, 2007, 4:55pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• A conversation with Sally McGhee, productivity pioneer and author of "Take Back Your Life"

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  Continuing my interview series with the top experts in personal productivity comes another deep and wide-ranging conversation, this time with Sally McGhee, CEO of McGhee Productivity Solutions and author of Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized.
  
  [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2007, 2:31pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• Some tasty morsels from the Ideamatt self help formulary

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  A light post this week, I wanted to share a few select formulas for productivity and self help I've been collecting. Hopefully some will resonate. Let's hear yours! -- matt
  
  Event + Response = Outcome
  From The Success Principles [1]
  
  Flow = Work + Play
  From [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2007, 10:20pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• An interview with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System

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  Continuing my interview series [1] with the top experts in personal productivity, I'm very pleased to share highlights from my conversation with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System and author of Getting Organized: Learning How to Focus, Organize and Prioritize. Chris's company runs a certification [...]
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  Posted: November 07, 2007, 9:52pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• A conversation with Chris Crouch, author and creator of the GO System - Part I

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  Update: There was some confusion about the format for Chris's interview, so I had to pull this older version.
  
  The final one is here: An interview with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System.
  
  Thanks to Chris and you for understanding.
  
  matt
  ' [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2007, 5:34pm EST
  by Matthew Cornell

• Reading gone wild! How to read five books a week (or why Scott Ginsberg is my hero)

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  One of the most popular topics here is reading efficiently, including How to read a lot of books in a short time and A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide". Using Leveen's terminology, I have a candidates library of at least 50 books (i.e., purchased and in [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2007, 5:36pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• Got the email blues? Only three things you can do: Get fewer, Get faster, Get control

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  Email is a huge problem for most of us, and there are tons of ideas for dealing with it. As I continue to work with clients, I've come to believe there are really only three things you can do to master email:Get Fewer,
  Get Faster, and
  Get ControlLet's break them [...]
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  Posted: October 22, 2007, 12:02pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• What the heck *is* productivity all about?

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  A few things got me thinking about why we try to be more productive. The first was a stimulating (and emotional) discussion of value, fees, and life purpose in my recent post A conversation with Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro. Toward the end a reader brings up the important [...]
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  Posted: October 15, 2007, 8:41pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• A conversation with Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro

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  As I announced last week [1], I'll be interviewing the top experts in the field of personal productivity, and I'm pleased to start out with a bang - I had the pleasure of talking with Laura Stack, AKA the Productivity Pro, last week.
  
  Laura (site, blog), [...]
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  Posted: October 08, 2007, 8:17pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals

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  OK, a confession: Like almost everything I've done to create and build my productivity practice, I'm doing goals wrong unconventionally :-) Almost every time management book and blog I've read recommends having written goals, reviewed regularly. For example, Zenhabits' Top 20 Motivation Hacks - An Overview lists (among others): [...]
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  Posted: October 02, 2007, 11:02am EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• Small steps to big results: Do one High Value Task a day

  Number of comments: 10
  We've all been there: Overwhelmed with the day-to-day aspects of life - incoming stuff that's relatively easy to handle - we focus on it, excluding the "big things." After a while it feels like the trivial many have sunk the vital few (from the Pareto principle - see Koch's [...]
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  Posted: September 24, 2007, 2:46pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• So a bloke with a broken thumb walks into a bar...

  Number of comments: 14
  Or: Ways a broken thumb changes your perspective
  
  OK, my doctor told me Mountain biking is dangerous (told to me while he and I were riding, incidentally) but until this weekend I'd been lucky - cuts and bruises, but nothing very serious. But Friday I had a nasty [...]
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  Posted: September 17, 2007, 4:34pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• What can you learn from the world's best productivity consultants? Let's ask!

  Number of comments: 17
  As you know, I'm working on being a top personal productivity consultant. In addition to absorbing every related book I can lay my hands on [1], I've been developing my networking skills [2], building my LinkedIn network, and asking smart, successful people how they got to where [...]
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  Posted: September 12, 2007, 11:19am EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• A dozen small ways to get productivity improvements to stick in an organization

  Number of comments: 16
  As I continue to work with organizations at the individual "key talent" level, I've had some opportunities to expand the impact of the work to the next level up - the team. As I've said earlier [1], I'm very committed to getting the work I teach to stick at [...]
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  Posted: September 02, 2007, 9:57am EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow

  Number of comments: 23
  While reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (site, blog) I found myself playing with the idea of using personal outsourcing to fix a problem I have with my reading workflow. Short answer: It helped a lot.
  
  As you know, I've made reading a central part [...]
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  Posted: August 26, 2007, 12:16pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• Thanks for making Matt's Idea Blog a top personal productivity site!

  Number of comments: 5
  I've recently had the honor of being included in some "top productivity blogs" listings, and I wanted to say thanks to you all for continuing to read, comment, and recommend my blog to others. Some of the listings include:

  • The Best Productivity Related Blogs
    
  • The Top 50 Blogs That [...]
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  Posted: August 19, 2007, 8:09am EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• Deep Thoughts on personal productivity by Jack Handey

  Number of comments: 7
  Note: I'll be taking a break from blogging for the next three weeks. Next week I'll be putting on three full-day workshops at the Kennedy Space Center. I'm taking my family, enjoying the toasty weather (hey - it's even hotter at home), and if we're lucky we'll [...]
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  Posted: August 03, 2007, 5:29pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• What's your feed reading speed?

  Number of comments: 11
  

  If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. -- Peter Drucker? [1], [2]

  As a follow-up to Afraid to click? How to efficiently process your RSS feeds I decided to time a few of my RSS processing and organizing [3] sessions. I've included the results below, [...]
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  Posted: July 29, 2007, 9:46pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• How to use the "I'm not going to ____" mind hack

  Number of comments: 8
  I've been collecting mind hacks, by which I mean surprising little tricks or abilities of our minds that are based on psychological insights. That I'm fascinated by them isn't surprising - I spent 20 years doing AI programming (no I don't have a Lisp machine at home, but [...]
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  Posted: July 22, 2007, 9:38pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• Four small Gmail tweaks Google could make to increase user productivity

  Number of comments: 6
  I'm a grateful Gmail user (my main email address forwards to my Gmail account), and I've been a satisfied user for the past few years. While I don't use Gmail to implement my Getting Things Done system [1], I've noticed four things that, if corrected, could increase [...]
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  Posted: July 17, 2007, 12:01am EDT
  by Matthew Cornell

• Some recent GTD how-tos, tips, and tricks

  Number of comments: 12
  I often see questions about details in implementing Getting Things Done from a number of sources, including calls and emails from clients and readers, and participants of on-line forums. Here's a collection of some recent answers, which I hope you find useful. (You might also enjoy this list [...]
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  Posted: July 09, 2007, 9:52pm EDT
  by Matthew Cornell