Matthew Cornell

Entries by Title

• How Will You Measure Your Life?
• "Above all, think of life as a prototype."
• "An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature."
• "Beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else."
• "Constraints force creativity"
• "I can always make myself better."
• "I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing..."
• "Interesting, but not useful," or Does it pass the scribble test?
• "Knowledge makes everything simpler."
• "Love your experiments as you would an ugly child."
• "One of my goals is to catalyze an army of good self-experimenters"
• "Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice."
• "Self-correction is a sign of intelligent behavior."
• "Tell me, Betty. Has your husband always been..."
• "This isn't working"
• "To be respectable, it is necessary to spend your leisure time..."
• "lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most"
• 10 GTD "holes" (and how to plug them)
• 100 books from the IdeaMatt Anti-Library
• 12 Myths about Self-Tracking
• 12 Wild Things people are visualizing, in addition to "Success"
• 18 Ways to Enjoy the Ride at Work, or, Why "Don't worry, be happy" Isn't Computable
• 2010-11-29: They did WHAT?
• 2010-12-06: They did WHAT?
• 2010-12-17: They did WHAT?
• 2011-01-04: They did WHAT?
• 2011-01-22: They did WHAT?
• 2011-03-11: They did WHAT?
• 2011-04-20: They did WHAT?
• 33 Great Sci-Fi Movies
• 47 Ways to Kill Your Curiosity
• A Big Congratulations to Chris Brogan on his new book "Trust Agents"
• A Blast from the past & A little shout out
• A GTD WorkFlow tool: The five stages on a business card cube
• A GTD-er's perspective on Mission Control's "Productivity and Accomplishment" workshop
• A Huge Congratulations to Bob Walsh on his new Web Startup Success Guide
• A Huge Congratulations to Jason Womack on his new book "The Promise Doctrine"
• A Matt Update
• A New Edison Feature: Categories!
• A Problem in GTD Blog Land?
• A Self-Tracking Operating System for Your Brain?
• A big congratulations to Chris Crouch on his new book, Getting More Done
• A big congratulations to Laura Stack on her new book "SuperCompetent"!
• A brief interview with Gretchen Rubin, experimenter extraordinaire and author of The Happiness Project
• A call to GTD practitioners: An invitation to share your top questions, tips, and insights
• A conversation with Kerry Gleeson, author of "The Personal Efficiency Program"
• A conversation with Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro
• A conversation with Marilyn Paul, author of "It's hard to make a difference when you can't find your keys"
• A conversation with Mark Forster
• A conversation with Mark Hurst, web usability expert and author of "Bit literacy"
• A conversation with Ron Hale Evans, author of "Mind Performance Hacks"
• A conversation with Sally McGhee, productivity pioneer and author of "Take Back Your Life"
• A daily planning experiment: two weeks of accountable rigorous action
• A discussion with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System - Part 1
• A dozen important productivity blog posts that haven't been written yet
• A dozen small ways to get productivity improvements to stick in an organization
• A few highlights from "My job went to India"
• A few ideas around citizen involvement and government/media oversight
• A few thoughts and insights from my "stuff" workshop
• A few thoughts on capture
• A few thoughts on vacations & GTD, used time management books, a few productivity tips, and heroes - both super *and* real
• A geek "gets" networking: The strange magic of connecting with others
• A heads up: Switching to matthewcornell.org in the near future
• A hearty congratulations to my Ruzuku friends on their release!
• A key to continuous learning: Keep a decision log
• A late adopter's productivity experiment with Twitter, plus some 140 word humor
• A nice surprise: A short email interview with UK productivity expert Nicholas Bate
• A question for readers: Advice re: Blogger.com beta switch?
• A question for readers: Digital voice recorder for transcription?
• A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide"
• A review of "How to make people like you in 90 seconds or less"
• A review of "Time management for dummies" from a GTD perspective
• A roundup of my Quantified Self posts
• A simple Fabric.js-based web app for annotating SVG files
• A simple and useful networking gift that anyone can give for free
• Actually getting things done with Getting Things Done! Surprises and learnings from my implementation.
• Add, subtract, multiply, divide: Productivity lessons from basic math
• Afraid to click? How to efficiently process your RSS feeds
• An Arduino Relaxation Tool Using Two Cell Phone Motors
• An IdeaMatt Update 2010-05, The IT Crowd, TTL, and a Call For Help switching to Tumblr
• An RC Weather site update, plus a micro visual language
• An XML Clipboard for Semi-Structured Data
• An end-of-the-year idea grab bag: Smelly videos, photo stickers, dissolving staples, and darkening ink for NAs
• An idea (and question) dump from the big-arse text file
• An idea for 2006: Track completed GTD projects (plus some "greatest hits" for 2005)
• An interview with Alexandra Carmichael, co-founder of CureTogether and Director of The Quantified Self
• An interview with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System
• An interview with Scott Ginsberg, author of "Hello, My Name is Scott"
• An invitation to share your top GTD questions, tips, and insights
• Announcing Edison 2, with Group Experiments and Quantitative Data!
• Announcing Edison 2010-12: Privately-shared experiments, Facebook Connect, and more!
• Announcing Edison v1.0 - The Think, Try, Learn Experimenter's Workbook!
• Announcing Edison v1.2!
• Announcing PeepWeather.com! The at-a-glance weather forecast for outdoor enthusiasts.
• Another GTD Plus - Moving offices made much easier
• Another Mother Dies, Plus a 2005 Blog Round-Up
• Anyone using Disqus for blog comments?
• Anyone using Getting To Yes for Negotiations?
• Applying 'Boss' Blogging to a Research Lab
• Applying GTD to aging gracefully - Improved memory!
• Are We Too Linear? (The Case for Curves)
• Are daily to-do lists and GTD compatible?
• Are you a worrywort? Make some experiments and get a free book!
• Are you experimenting with email? Should you?
• Are you having trouble commenting ("email not valid")?
• Are you still human when you're under general anesthesia?
• Are you too hard to impress?
• Attention Data Hounds: What Personal Data Are You Tracking?
• Available! Versatile Software Engineer, 20+ Years Experience, Object-Oriented & Extreme Programming
• Best practices for GTD and administrative assistants
• Beware Binary Success Measures, or, Why "All or Nothing" Stinks
• Blast from the Past: Academic, GTD Tidbits, Change, Hats, Math, and Bitstreams
• Blog subscribers, Bloglines, and geographical locations
• Bloke redux, the 15 minute emergency office, and a short automation experiment
• Books, value, fees, and major changes in perspective
• Brief report: Boston Python User Group: Favorite Libraries Meetup
• Bugs, Tickets, and Projects: Integrating GTD and Specialized Systems
• Building a Personal Productivity practice from thin air: An update
• Camera Phones and Ten Cent Augmented Reality
• Can listening to ambient sounds make you more productive? Experiment with a Productivity501 giveaway!
• Check Out My 12 Minute Slidecast, The Experiment-Driven Life
• Check Out the Productivity501 "Where Did My Day Go" Daily Planning Contest!
• Check out the Men's Health November 2008 issue
• Coffee, Booze, and Sex: Is it the journey or the destination?
• Collection habit infection, routines, and the value of creating space
• Combining a "Really Useful Attitude" + smiling = pleasant surprises!
• Commitment Time! (Taking the big leap)
• Congratulations to Bob Walsh on the release of his book "Clear Blogging"
• Congratulations to Frank (Mr. "What's the next action") on his two year GTD anniversary!
• Consider removing "maybe" from your productivity vocabulary
• Control your email addiction by ... checking more often!
• Could you outsource painting your life? Or, Would Mick Fleetwood do GTD?
• Custom workflows for knowledge workers
• Dealing with Meeting Notes - GTD to the Rescue!
• Dealing with multiple/dependent next actions in GTD
• Debbie Downer and the Six Thinking Hats
• Deep Thoughts on personal productivity by Jack Handey
• Deep thoughts on personal growth from designer Bruce Mau
• Depressurize your email with a 24 hour response time
• Designing good experiments: Some mistakes and lessons
• Did, Doing, To Do: Why your Past, Present, and Future Selves Need to Chat
• Discuss: The Quantified Worker
• Do You Need a Don't-Care-o-Meter?
• Do, Don't Do, Stop Doing
• Does having fewer projects make us more productive?
• Double your income in a year ... by reading!? An update on reading for learning, plus a current list with brief comments
• E + R = O (Event + Response = Outcome) - dealing appropriately with "cringe" Inbox items
• Expectations
• Experiment Ideas 2010-11: Silence, class!, Web apps only, Social irritation, and the Labeling hack
• ExperimentLab follow-up: That's not MY garbage. Or is it?
• ExperimentLab: That's not MY garbage. Or is it?
• Extreme GTD: How low can you go (or: Can we 80-20 GTD?)
• Famous Examples of Self-Experimentation [Guest Post]
• Fare thee well Hipster PDA - I barely knew ye
• Five life changes that ... uh ... changed my life
• Five secret filing hacks from the masters
• Five ways to generate data
• Four small Gmail tweaks Google could make to increase user productivity
• GTD Workflow Assessment/Tips Checklist
• GTD and Faculty Productivity: Notes from a small pilot project
• GTD is like GPS for Time Management
• GTD: A tool for *forgetting*?
• Genius, purpose, and cool job descriptions - What are *you* built to do?
• Get out of your "shell" and exercise your people muscles for fun and profit
• Getting Things Done stages - Saints, Prophets, and Evangelists?
• Getting the most from David Allen's RoadMap seminar?
• Google Satellite Maps - Easter Eggs Gallery!
• Got the email blues? Only three things you can do: Get fewer, Get faster, Get control
• Great time management ideas from the world of improv wisdom
• Handling worries: keep a list, schedule them, and have a worry place
• Happy end-of-year, and a short collection of ideas, both serious and trivial
• Happy holidays 2008
• Help me celebrate a little success!
• Hey - I'm published! Check out "Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level"
• Hipster BC - My GTD business card, with a surprise on the back
• Honors, Mac tips, plus (apparently) a iCal-GTD-Quicksilver mini-tutorial
• How I wasted two years on Twitter, all because I wasn't tracking
• How OK are you with what you did today?
• How contagious is courtesy? An informal experiment
• How do you measure personal productivity?
• How do you treat life as an experiment?
• How else can you see this? Perspective and the Value of a Tool Change
• How self-tracking and experimenting can generate wisdom
• How to Approach Solving Procrastination (Hint: Think Magnifying Glass, Not Tips & Tricks)
• How to Bottle Up Good Feelings (Group Experiment)
• How to GTD-ify fuzzy emails, plus a subject line hacking primer
• How to Make The Ultimate Cup of Hot Chocolate
• How to experiment: Guidelines from Stewart Friedman's "Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life"
• How to get your Edison updates to go to Twitter
• How to help people
• How to process stuff - A comparison of TRAF, the "Four Ds", and GTD's workflow diagram
• How to read a lot of books in a short time
• How to stay balanced and productive during uncertainty and crisis
• How to use the "I'm not going to ____" mind hack
• I know about you! (I think)
• I promise I will...
• IdeaLab 0105: Top 15 posts according to PostRank
• IdeaLab 0505: Put pockets, trash bags, Swiss cheese, and faith
• IdeaLab 0604: Giving, horse mouths, allergic cars, and a 2x2 matrix grab-bag
• IdeaLab 0624: Ice Cream, attitude, danger, and dishwashers
• IdeaLab 0729: A little GTD heresy, willpower, jealousy, and straight talk
• IdeaLab 0826: Systemic self-repair, over-blogging, faith, and "doing it" productivity style
• IdeaLab: Risky performance, kill your Netflix, and don't be so certain
• If not now, when? The importance of being bold
• Incremental vs. Batch Processing: Examples, Dos, and Don'ts
• Indecisiveness is a bi-product of thinking [IdeaMatt Reader Series]
• Induced personality disorder, or: I tried it, but I'm not proud of it
• Information provenance - the missing link between attention, RSS feeds, and value-based filtering
• Insights, stories, and surprises from Edison, December, 2010
• Insights, stories, and surprises from Edison, October, 2010
• Introducing: The Nothing Store!
• Is GTD the "Extreme Programming" of Time Management?
• Is The Great American Experiment really one, and how do we measure it?
• Is There a Self-Experimentation Gender Gap?
• Is Think, Try, Learn for Christians?
• Is life is a series of ... wows? A selection of "made me think" ideas
• Is success a function of the number of experiments you try?
• It's not about productivity...
• Join my new IdeaLab newsletter! "Productive tools for the curious intellect"
• Just do it? But HOW? 24 productivity experiments I tried, plus a QS time management recap
• Keeping motivated in your self-tracking
• Knowing when you're on to something special
• Lessons Learned for 2009. Unfinished Business, Only the Best, and You Never Know
• Lessons for Work and Living from Julia Child and the Movie "Julie & Julia"
• Life, Death, and Questions
• Lighted Laptop Keyboard
• Limited posting for the next week or so
• Limited posting next ten days, plus a request for readers
• Living in the moment, preventing regret, and appreciating life
• Look for me at the Quantified Self!
• Loving the wonderful book Code Complete 2
• MUS - Trusting and Tracking What Catches Your Fancy
• Madelon Young, 1928-2009
• Make this blog ROCK: Take a quick survey. You could win a prize!
• Making citizen scientists
• Matt is Back!
• Michel de Montaigne and The Experiment-Driven Life
• Micro Experiments
• Micro-Experiments
• Mini-Review: DYMO LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo Label Printer
• Misery, pain, happiness, and brains - Thoughts on Hacker News comments about TTL
• My @Context Interview Podcast Is Up!
• My Academic Productivity post is up
• My Big-Arse Text File - a Poor Man's Wiki+Blog+PIM
• My Black Belt Productivity article is up, FYI
• My Business Networking Advice article is up, FYI
• My Collective Genius! article is up, FYI
• My Four-part Interview at Another Step Forward is up!
• My GTD Masters interview is up on Cranking Widgets
• My GTD collection points - guided tour, with pictures
• My GTD tally: 70 NAs, 30 PROJs, & 15 AORs
• My Happiness Of Science podcast with Jason Womack is up
• My Life Coaches Blog interview is up
• My Productivity501 contribution is up, FYI
• My favorite GTD list? Waiting For!
• My interview at AccessRx Health Blog is up
• My men@pause interview is up, plus an invitation to a four-square-o-rama!
• National (or any) news driving you nuts? Here's one way to talk yourself down.
• Networking surprises - Some recent unexpected (but successful) outcomes
• New Edison Feature: Ongoing Group Experiments
• New blog series: They did WHAT? Experiments and Ideas from the World Wide Lab
• New! Matt's Guides: Where the !@#% did my day go? The ultimate guide to making every day a great workday
• New! Matt's Guides: You Did WHAT? 99 Playful experiments to live healthier and happier
• Not Doing Rudux: Check Out the Latest Success Magazine
• Not blogging for a few weeks
• Notes From a Conversation With Political Activist Josh Silver (Represent.us)
• Notes from The Personal Productivity Show #021 with Jason Womack (a GTD coach)
• Notes from a conversation with writer and journalist Jaclyn Stevenson
• Notes on the book "Why Not?" (How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small)
• Notes on using a digital voice recorder for taking reading notes
• On Keeping an Umberto Eco-like Anti-Library
• On saying yes - 3 possibilities: Always yes, always no, or only when you really want to
• On the goal of meeting three new people a week - A ten week retrospective
• On the power of saying "Thank you"
• On using Post-It notes for GTD projects, instead of lists
• One way to enjoy the ride - celebrate surprise!
• Organizing Electronic Documents GTD-Style?
• Paper planner guest article up on diyplanner.com
• Past experiments you didn't know about? You bet!
• Personal Development, Self-Experiments, and the Future of Search
• Personal Lessons Learned in 2008 - The Intersection of Past, Present, and Future
• Personal Productivity Playing Cards!
• Personal productivity, IBMs (not the company), and NUTs: Some surprises about the brain
• Photo Blogs, Wikis, and Memories for Life
• Pickle jars, text files, and creative idea capture
• Playing with LinkedIn's Answers feature - A brief analysis, plus community advice on starting consulting (part 2/2)
• Playing with LinkedIn's Answers feature - Goals, saying no, changing careers (part 2/2)
• Playing with LinkedIn's Answers feature - Time, cutting costs, and the meaning of life (part 1/2)
• Please let know if your comments aren't getting through
• Productivity Group Experiment: The 96 Minute Rule
• Productivity for Programmers, #2: Efficient vs. Effective
• Productivity lessons from mountain biking. Or, what sports can teach us about doing
• Productivity? Are you SERIOUS? (A selection of Time Management Humor)
• Programmers: Get out of your shell and exercise your people muscles - for fun and profit
• Projects, on-going activities, and areas of responsibility
• Proposal: An online skeptical toolbox
• Quantified Self Boston Meetup #5, The Science of Sleep: Recap
• Question for you: How do you organize a book?
• Reader question: Getting personal productivity changes to stick?
• Reader request: Feed the IdeaMatt!
• Reader special: A chance to play with the home productivity tool WeGeo before it's released
• Reading Books The GTD Way
• Reading Redux, plus a 501 Productivity Roundup
• Reading gone wild! How to read five books a week (or why Scott Ginsberg is my hero)
• Reboot Your Work productivity seminar, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
• Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity
• Report on a little experiment: Daily random entries from my personal log
• Resistance is Data
• Returning to my IdeaMatt Roots
• Review my childish draft of "Think, Try, Learn: A scientific method for discovering happiness"
• Scientists don't get to pick and choose the data and results...
• Seth Roberts and Self-Experimenting: Thoughts on his excerpt in 'The 4-Hour Body'
• Share Your Inbox Delights!
• Share your Daily Planning Tips and Win a $199 WinAutomation copy!
• Simple project planning for individuals: A round-up
• Simulating the Future to be in the Present
• Small steps to big results: Do one High Value Task a day
• Smith College Guest Lecture, "How to build a simple production web site in Python"
• So a bloke with a broken thumb walks into a bar...
• Some David Allen "twos" - two reasons we procrastinate, and two kinds of problems
• Some GTD warning signs
• Some answers to "Should I keep it?" when filing
• Some common GTD questions, with answers
• Some hopefully humorous reflections after oral surgery
• Some recent GTD how-tos, tips, and tricks
• Some tasty morsels from the Ideamatt self help formulary
• Some thoughts from attending Time/Design's trainer certification
• Some thoughts from the book "Getting Organized" by Chris Crouch
• Some thoughts from tracking "lessons learned" for a year
• Some thoughts on "Eat that frog!" by Brian Tracy
• Some thoughts on Peter Bregman's HBR post "Live Life as an Experiment"
• Some thoughts on the book "The Instant Productivity Toolkit"
• Sometimes laser, sometimes blind: How natural converge/diverge cycles explain progress
• Spotlight + Data Detectors + AdSense: Champagne PIM on an OS Budget
• Step 1: Just measuring, not judging
• Still alive :-)
• Stories from Edison: Lucid Dreaming, Dropping Twitter, Sleep, and Personal Medical Experiments
• Surprise: David Allen's folders look just like the rest of ours
• Surviving a Job You Hate
• TTL thinking in action: A case study of installing steam pipe insulation
• Tackling Life at the Heart of Complexity [Guest Post]
• Temporal Binoculars
• Temporary hiatus, plus Struggle, and the Quest to Determine What Matters
• Testing the classics: A Time Management Experiment: Time Blocking
• Thanks for a great 2009, plus, for 2010, The Word is... Open!
• Thanks for making Matt's Idea Blog a top personal productivity site!
• The 20 top time wasters, stealers, nibblers, and how to nab them
• The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow
• The Beginner's Mind Operationalized: Cut-Throat!
• The Big Bucket Personal Informatics Data Model
• The Definitive Guide To Superhero Novels
• The Definitive Guide To Superhero Novels
• The Experiment-Driven Life
• The Experiment-Driven Life Universe v0.1: What do you think?
• The Intrinsic Poverty of Thumbs Up/Down Popularity Voting on the Web
• The Path of Maximum Productivity: Seven tensions, and how to resolve them
• The Personal Productivity Encyclopedia of Superhero Powers
• The Word is "Waste"
• The World's Simplest Productivity Method, with Bonus Mini-Processing Examples
• The artifacts of getting organized, and their misleading prosaic nature
• The best worst hobby
• The crucible of teaching: Want to learn in a hurry? Teach!
• The joys of renegotiation
• The most important networking question
• The productivity I/O sweet spot, or Why balance is a bad thing
• The real reasons for the modern productivity movement
• The thrill of witnessing an "Aha!"
• The ultimate productivity tip
• The word is ... "Law"
• The word is... "Stick*" Notes, Girth, Laziness, and Pasta
• These are the inboxes of our lives
• Things that sit around and invite delight
• Three indecisiveness phrases, and when (not) to use them
• Time Management and Surprise: When You Want It & When You Don't
• Time, Space, Objects, and Interrelationships. Plus: FastCompany.TV Goodies
• Tool update: Matt goes digital! Plus a few Mac productivity lessons
• Toothbrush With Built-in Toothpaste Squeezer
• Top 10 things people are Getting, in addition to 'Things Done'
• Torture is absolutely not acceptable
• Towards a calculus of happiness
• Track Your Multitasking and Be Surprised
• Training My Wife to Use My Inbox - And It's Working!
• Transitions: A secret ingredient to Getting Things Done?
• Two Second Poll: How do you like my new blogging style?
• Two little joys and sorrows using my filing system
• US national priorities are really screwed up
• Update: Still alive, busy. Plus some Twitter tidbits
• Use Gmail's "star" to highlight your good news
• Use gimmicks to get an NPR story, a book tour, and speaking gigs
• Use the STING method to stop procrastinating
• Use these 5W/1H Questions to Test Your Productivity Chops
• Using "Follow the energy" to refine your personal development experiments
• Using Grails to Make a Simple RC Weather App
• Using Greasemonkey to Re-balance (and Re-write) Journalism
• Using word clouds to get a birds eye view of a large professional programmer's notebook
• Variables
• Wandering minds, self-tracking, and citizen science
• We have to remember to...
• Welcome to Matt's Idea Blog!
• Welcome to The Experiment-Driven Life blog
• What GTD and Weight Watchers have in common
• What a day - Buzz, TKD, DIY/hPDA, & GTD
• What a difference a framework can make
• What are the essential habits of GTD?
• What are the laws of work?
• What are the origins of change in our world?
• What can you learn from the world's best productivity consultants? Let's ask!
• What caught your attention? Some recent WOWs
• What does it take to work with flourish?
• What gets better with age?
• What group experiment would you most love to see performed?
• What if you...
• What is the relationship between uncertainty and success?
• What is your best advice to people who seek to develop themselves?
• What makes a successful personal experiment?
• What the heck *is* productivity all about?
• What to do when an excited person person is waving something at you.
• What will you track over the holidays?
• What's a Good Experimental Design to Test "Oil Pulling"?
• What's in a name - GTD project naming conventions
• What's your favorite little philosophy book?
• What's your feed reading speed?
• What's your maximum response time?
• What's your office/productivity set-up like? Mine's up at The Weekly Review
• When inputs exceed your workflow system's capacity
• When is it best *not* to be curious or observant?
• When the boss is Getting Things Done ... you'd better too!
• When you don't want to decide
• When you hear that little voice, listen!
• When your lists undergo radical surgery (or should!)
• Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals
• Where the rubber meets the road
• Where's the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for personal information?
• Whose job is it? Mine!
• Why *my* NUTs should not be *your* NUTs!
• Why Blogruptcy is a great idea but doesn't work, and why SPAM is easy to fix and information overload isn't
• Why Doing Research and Collecting Information Can Unstick Your Tasks
• Why Doing Research and Collecting Information Can Unstick Your Tasks
• Why collect data about yourself? To be happy!
• Why every problem should be a GTD project
• Why experimenters are luckier...
• You Know You're Experimenting When...
• Your life in data: Is it all about events and properties?
• Your portable A-Z section - not just for contacts
• iPhone + RedLaser + Where's George = Cultural Enlightenment?
• test post - please ignore