Customer Reviews

Lifehacker: The Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, and Better

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I will admit to being a sucker for books like this. I love books that offer ways to improve your time management, limit interruptions, and streamline your life. Lifehacker helps you do all that and more. It is the most practical book I have read on this subject, and I promise that it will improve the way you work.

There are a ton of "theory" books out there. Books that will tell you to spend your time more productively, not visit certain site, and get rid of all the extra emails. All great advice, but it can be hard for you to put into place without the right tools. Adam Pash and Gina Trapani give you those tools in Lifehacker. From email reduction to time-wasters to creating doable to-do lists, this is the best resource to turn to.

The book is structured in an easy to read way. At the beginning of each hack, the authors tell you the three most important pieces of information right up front:

Level: How easy is this going to be?

Platform: Where do I use this? Web, Windows, Mac, All?

Cost: How much does it cost?

This is a great way to evaluate the hacks that you will need quickly and will help you to find the information that will benefit you most. Fortunately, most of the hacks offered in this book are both easy and free.

Some of my favorite hacks in the book include:

Hack 1: Empty Your Inbox (and Keep It Empty)

Hack 9: Script and Automate Repetitive Replies

Hack 14: Instantly Recall Any Number of Different Passwords

Hack 24: Design Your Own Planner

Hack 25: Make Your To-Do List Doable

Hack 29: Dash Through Tasks With a Timer

Hack 39: Limit Visits to Time-Wasting Websites

Hack 53: Reduce Repetitive Typing

Hack 59: Become A Scheduling Black-Belt with Google Calendar

Hack 82: Augment Reality With Your Phone

Bottom Line: There is a ton of great information contained in this huge 476 page book. You probably won't use every hack and you probably already follow some of the author's advice, but you will (at least you should) use most of the hacks in this book. Highly Recommended.

BONUS: Lifehacker also has a companion website that has updates, additional information, and more tips and tricks.

BONUS #2: For the best theory book on why you should implement these time-saving tools, read The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content. They complement each other very well.

I bought this book as a birthday present to myself. Lucky me!

Adam Pash and Gina Trapani have distilled the very best tools from the Lifehacker blog to help you streamline your workflow, focus your attention and work on the stuff that matters. I read it straight through in a weekend and now I am going back through, and following their clear, detailed instructions to implement very meaningful changes to the way I work. They have included hacks for everyone - newbies to geeks.

This is an outstanding example of book written to take full advantage of the digital format. They have included many links, allowing readers to go deeper into the content if they want. The table of contents is like a toolbox filled with gems. After reading it on my ipad, I downloaded it to my desktop and I am working from there to upgrade my digital life.

Lifehacker continues to be a Lifechanger!

If you've ever visited Lifehacker.com and thought, "I wish this was a book", then consider this a prayer answered. Even if you've never heard of the site, if you are looking for a highly accessible, user-friendly guide to making better use of the technology that you likely use on a daily basis - a PC or Mac, a smartphone, and Google - then this book (and its parent site) are well worth your time and attention.

Four stars for those of us who already use keyboard shortcuts and know what macros are. Novices should give it one more star... or be given this guide for the holidays.

I've read the occasional article from Lifehacker blog and often found them to be hit-or-miss. However, the Lifehacker guide is a great collection of the best-of-the-best tips and tricks for making you more effective and efficient. Most of the tips are completely free and many of them don't even require a third-party application (such as using your smart phone, Outlook, or Mail client more effectively).

The authors also make an effort to provide instructions/tips for Mac/Windows/iPhone/Android/etc. They also provide step-by-step instructions and links to software to minimize confusion or hassle.

The three caveats about this book are:
1. The book appears written for a computer novice, but many of the tips require you to be fairly proficient with computers and "tinkering" with applications. While the step-by-step instructions make it fairly easy to follow, the troubleshooting instructions often leave something to desire (especially if mess up a step). However, there are ample warnings when you can irreparably mess up your computer.

2. The tips have a relatively short lifespan--that is, within a year or two, many of the tips will be outdated or the instructions will be incorrect. There's a website to get updated instructions for the tips, but it's not clear how long the website will actually be maintained. A proficient computer user will still be able to understand and apply the tips provided even if the written material goes out of date.

3. The sections on social engineering are not nearly as useful as the ones on tech tips. Unless you are a person who gets a lot out of self-help books, those sections won't add much value. They will sometimes throw in ideas on how to 'remind' yourself to be more efficient, but your mileage may vary.

Overall, a pretty good book. Worth the read as most people will get at least a few, really useful tips. Heck, anyone who uses Outlook and hasn't "mastered" inbox rules will find the book worth reading.

While I wouldn't quite call this a life-hacking book - it's almost all hacks involving your digital life - this is a fantastic tool for anyone who spends a lot of time with their computer, email, smartphone, etc and wants to streamline their processes. It's very heavily inspired by the David Allan and Tim Ferriss brand of efficiency, which I love, so the book is almost entirely composed of little tweaks you can make in your life to save you time on repetitive and stupid tasks.

However, they also have a surprisingly insightful section on how to trick yourself into getting things done, and include a lot of mental hacks and processes that actually work in making your workday more productive and streamlined.

While the average computer user (think: your mom) won't understand a word of how to install the browser plugins or create email filters, anyone who is reasonably proficient with their computer should be able to follow the simple instructions for the tweaks in the book. I found a few small projects that seemed beyond me, but honestly, I do believe that if I read the instructions really well and did a bit of googling for help, I'd be able to make it happen.

So, if you're somewhat tech-savvy (but not so tech-savvy that you've already read this stuff on Lifehacker's site and Four-Hour-Workweek-ed your life years ago), you'll really enjoy this book, and it will definitely change how you operate. The advantage to reading it in the book and not all over their website is that you have it organized in a very clean way to where it's easy to see how their mental and digital hacks fit together into a cohesive way of managing your digital self. Plus, the table of contents and the index are awesome.

Lifehacker is a a fabulous resource for making your life more productive. I haven't read the entire thing from front to back because, like any other resource, you only read the subjects that apply to your particular situation. I do a lot of research on the web so when I opened the book I immediately went to HACK 49: Search the Web in Three Keystrokes. It gave me some ideas on how to make quicker searches (which I already knew, but still, others might not). Each Hack is formatted in this manner:

Hack #: Title of Hack
Level....beginner, easy, medium, advanced
Platform....all, windows, linux, mac and a few others
Cost...free (there may be a few with costs associated, but I haven't seen any)

There is a plethora of information and most if it is really handy. For instance HACK 14: Instantly Recall Any Number of Different Passwords. In this hack they suggest using a base password and changing prefixes and suffixes according to the site. For example if your password is asdf and you want to log into ebay it would turn into asdfeba or ebaasdf. You're just adding the first three letters of the site to the beginning or the end of the password. To make it even more secure you can add two numbers that you typically use. This is far better than using the same password for everything.

If you're not familiar with lifehacker.com, then you're missing out. Every week there is a list of the most popular articles. They cover such things as "How I Cut My Utility Bill by a Third with Common Sense Tech" to "How to Duel Boot Multiple ROMs on Your Android". There was even one on a portable shower that involved water, soap gel and plastic dish. It was actually pretty clever, even though I doubt I would use this particular hack.

I am absolutely in love with this book. I'm definitely not the kind of person you'd think would be reading a book with "LIFEHACKER" written across the front, but even I got something out of it. It's very easy to follow, laid out nicely, and it's written in a style that holds your attention. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who loves efficiency. Warning: this book is 465 pages of highly addictive content. It can veer into productivity porn territory, so make sure that you know when to put the book down and into practice :)

Here's what I like -

~ All hacks have a clear descriptive title so you can skip over things you don't want.

~ All hacks are graded by skill level as - Easy, Medium, or Advanced.

~ The potential problems from implementing a hack are clearly identified - usually these are security issues. If you don't understand these or don't want to manage the risk, then you can easily avoid that type of hack.

~ A lot of the hacks reinforce or support GTD (Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity) which is a protocol I like and sometimes struggle with - so anything that automates GTD is a boon to me.

~ I immediately found several useful hacks at the easy level which I already knew about but this book pushed me over the edge into actually using them. The first one was installing the adblock plus extension to Chrome. Also, I knew about some but not all the ways to "Google like a Pro" and I have found these very useful (Hack 90).

~ There's lots of hacks here that I might find somewhat useful. I'm not implementing them now but I'm glad to know they exist and something about them so that if my work changes so that these would become more useful, then I can easily find and implement them.

Here's what I don't like

- Hey, enough about my computer, tell me how to fix my life! Just kidding - they define a lifehacker as someone who uses clever tech tricks to get work done. And they meet that goal.

This book has tons of neat ideas and hints for managing email, todo lists, etc. A lot of the ideas involve free programs available on the internet. Love it!

I am always looking for tips and tricks to make my myself more productive. Lifehacker considers these ticks to be "hacks" and they provide plenty of them. Most of them are technology related, but a few relate to general motivation and organization. Considering that I have a PC, Xoom, and a Smart Phone, most of these tips apply to me. As a pretty advanced computer and Internet user, I found that I already knew a lot of it (such as keyword shortcuts), but I did learn a few new things which made the book worthwhile to me.

Lifehacker is basically a book about simplifying, automating, streamlining, and organizing, to save you time and hassle when working with technology. For example, the book mentions common keyboard shortcuts, such as "Ctrl-C" for copying, and "Ctrl-V" for pasting. Also, "Ctrl-B" functions like the "bold" button, and "Ctrl-U" for the "underline" button. I already knew about these, and use them a lot, and they save me lots of time and hassle. Some of the tips I wasn't aware of include the software "texter" a Windows application hosted on the lifehacker website that allows you to type an abbreviation, and it will replace it with the whole phrase. So if you say "I love you" a lot in your emails or documents, you can type "ilu" and it will always replace it with the full text every time. Another tool mentioned in the book is to keep your inbox clear. They suggest immediately prioritizing incoming email. If it must be done immediately, then it goes into a priority folder; otherwise you send it to the other appropriate folder. This has been very helpful, since before I would often have hundreds of unread emails sitting in my inbox. I was very impressed that I could learn something from this book, since I am pretty familiar with technological tips and tricks. With 121 "hacks" this book is useful for most people.

The only criticism I can think of is that the book will be more useful to newbies and less useful to people like me. I did learn quite a few new things, and I was honestly not interested in some of it (I am not interested in hosting a website using my computer as a server for security reasons). Since each "hack" is ranked according to "level," "platform," and "cost" it is pretty easy to figure out if a hack is appropriate for you. I give it five stars because it does what it claims to do, and it is really entertaining too. I highly recommend this if you want to better use your time, streamline your technology use.