#productivity

#productivity

Actually, it makes perfect sense once you understand what's really happening in your brain. After spending months unemployed following media layoffs, I became intimately familiar with this paradox. Days spent scrolling job boards and refreshing email left me more drained than my busiest workdays ever had. The exhaustion wasn't physical-it was something deeper, something that sleep couldn't fix.

The first light hasn't broken yet, but somewhere in London, New York, or Silicon Valley, a millionaire is already awake. The coffee is brewing, steam curling up in the darkness. Outside, the streets are empty except for the occasional delivery truck. Inside, there's just the quiet hum of possibility-those precious hours before the world starts demanding attention. I discovered this myself when I started running my own company.

Listen, I don't know about you, but I'm generally not so big on listening. I tend to be more of a "words in front of my eyes" kind of guy when it comes to taking in information (which, as I've come to learn, also means I'm "an old person" by modern-day standards-hey, I'm okay with that). Sometimes, though, there's something to be said for sitting back and enjoying an aural experience-or, as the cool kids call it these days, a podcast.

The morning hours before 8am are like a secret society that unsuccessful people don't even know exists. While they're still dreaming about success, the people actually achieving it are already hours into their day, doing things that most would dismiss as "excessive" or "unnecessary." After running my own startups and studying high performers obsessively, I've noticed a pattern. The things that separate the ultra-successful from everyone else happen before most people's alarms even go off.

Choosing the right paint color can have a huge impact on your capacity for concentration, according to the experts. "Color can be a powerful, everyday way to support mental health because it speaks directly to the nervous system," says Hillary Schoninger, LCSW, an individual and family psychotherapist based in Chicago. "When we perceive color, our brain processes it as information and responds - sometimes with comfort and ease, and at other times with stimulation."

True to its name, Ramble can take your meandering, unstructured speech and turn it into organized tasks. The app will also capture other details you mention, like project deadlines, priorities, duration, and assignees. The idea is that people often think of things they need to do while on the go, but taking out their phone to jot down a note or create a reminder can be challenging.

Spend an hour talking to 37signals CEO Jason Fried, and you'll find yourself drawn into his fixation on three frustrating facts about productivity tools today: They're boring. They're complicated. They're overpacked with overhyped AI features that fail to do what they promise and end up providing little in the way of practical value. Those same realities are the reason Fried decided to launch Fizzy -a new app that aims to reinvent organization software by undoing everything that's happened to it over the past several years.

There's nothing like laying out a new planner with to-do lists and goals at the start of a new year. In the past, I would buy a new planner every year, but would eventually abandon filling it out by April. Sticking with a planner means it has to be something completely customizable to how you take notes and what your priorities are, and I think I've cracked the code to the perfect planner.

Bank CEOs have praised the pivotal efficiency changes promised by AI. Some have said AI will cut jobs, and others say it will create more employment opportunities. As banks reported earnings this week, CEOs dropped more insight into how generative AI could boost productivity, replace some roles, and keep head count from growing.

Lately, I've tried more overhyped, overly ambitious apps than I can even remember - all of 'em with lofty promises of completely changing my life and/or the way I get stuff done. Spoiler alert: None of those has lived up to that promise or really even stuck as something I'm still actively using in any significant way, as of this current moment.

If you're an aspiring (or successful) streamer looking to upgrade your production value, the Elgato Stream Deck family is an excellent way to put your most important controls at your fingertips. Right now you can score the upgraded Elgato Stream Deck +, with eight buttons, an LCD screen, and four knobs, for just $160, a $40 markdown from its usual price.

Anthropic has launched Claude Cowor, a general-purpose AI agent that can manipulate, read, and analyze files on a user's computer, as well as create new files. The tool is currently available as a "research preview" only to Max subscribers on $100 or $200 per month plans. The tool, which the company describes as "Claude Code for the rest of your work," leverages the abilities of Anthropic's popular Claude Code software development assistant but is designed for non-technical users as opposed to programmers.

It utilizes the context of your conversations, files, channels, and more to answer questions about your workflow and even take action on your behalf, such as scheduling meetings, from just a single text prompt. The company emphasizes that the experience is meant to be intuitive, with no training required and just a simple conversation needed to get started, such as, "What did we decide about the Q4 budget?"

Japanese design philosophy has long celebrated the marriage of form and function, transforming everyday objects into tools that spark joy while serving practical purposes. This ethos shines brightest in stationery design, where minimalism meets innovation to create products that streamline workflows and declutter both physical and mental spaces. The items on this list represent a modern evolution of this tradition, offering solutions that fit seamlessly into contemporary life.

Many organisations are entering the year facing economic headwinds, while the early promises of AI have yet to be fully realised and hybrid working has still not fully settled. Leaders will be asking what it will take to unlock higher productivity in a period of uncertainty. At the same time, the labour market will feel unusually static. With a frozen jobs market for recent graduates, fewer people will want to take risks by moving roles.

But I realized that rather than avoiding YouTube altogether, I could reshape how I use it. So I did just that: I put certain rules around it, stopped clicking around, and, while still using the same videos, it quickly stopped feeling like a temptation. YouTube is now part of my workspace, and I don't have to juggle several productivity apps.

We have seen quite a number of laptops bearing mind-blowing flexible screens that fold or roll, and while they do help push the envelope of laptop design, they might be the future, but it is definitely not yet here. Foldables still scratch easily and are expensive, rollables are at a concept stage, and both rely on technology that is impressive in a demo booth but nerve-wracking when you actually need to get work done and cannot afford downtime or repair bills.

Barely 10 days into the new year, it already feels like you can't look away from the news. In the last week alone, the U.S. military captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and took over operations of the country; President Trump withdrew the U.S. from dozens of international organizations, including a major climate treaty; and an ICE agent fatally shot a Minneapolis resident, sparking outrage and widespread protests.