The Idle Times

Four of the most useful productivity apps have joined together to form the Productivity Pack — a $60 bundle that includes year-long subscriptions to password manager LastPass, archiving service...

An encouragement to be "children of the moment," a people with the spiritual discipline of being fully present in the here and now.

"If you’re feeling overwhelmed, there’s a reason: The processing capacity of the conscious mind is limited. This is a result of how the brain’s attentional system evolved. Our brains have two dominant modes of attention: the task-positive network and the task-negative network (they’re called networks because they comprise distributed networks of neurons, like electrical circuits within the brain). The task-positive network is active when you’re actively engaged in a task, focused on it, and undistracted; neuroscientists have taken to calling it the central executive. The task-negative network is active when your mind is wandering; this is the daydreaming mode. These two attentional networks operate like a seesaw in the brain: when one is active the other is not."

How to Actually Stop Checking Your Email All the Time: Why should you stop check your email? It all co...

15. GO BACK TO SCHOOL TO LEARN ABOUT SOMETHING YOU LOVE!

"People thought the general decline of ‘future thinking’ was linked to a fatigue due to over saturation. Since the invention of the Internet the connected world had become obsessed with looking into the future, many had discussed a speeding up of culture. But nothing could have been further from the truth. The continued gaze into the fog of the nearly present, had meant an ever-decreasing productivity in the now. We became all strategy and no tactics." Matt Ward

Wendell Berry

Mr. Chaplin's foreword to his picture was dangerously meaningful. "'Modern Times,'" it reads, "is a story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness." Verily, a strange prelude to an antic.... and "We should prefer to describe "Modern Times" as the story of the little clown, temporarily caught up in the cogs of an industry geared to mass production, spun through a three-ring circus and out into a world as remote from industrial and class problems as a comedy can make it." a film review written by Frank S. Nugent for the New York Times, 1936

The future of productivity according to Microsoft

How to Be Idle: A Loafer's Manifesto [Tom Hodgkinson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. From the founding editor of <em>The Idler</em>, the celebrated magazine about the freedom and fine art of doing nothing

We spend our days sifting through productivity advice and have come up with the three tips that stand the test of time.

Stressed? Forgetful? Losing your sanity? Take our quiz to find out which apps can help.