Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better

by Gina Trapani

Whether you're a Mac or Windows user, there are tricks here for you in this helpful resource. You'll feast on this buffet of new shortcuts to make technology your ally instead of your adversary, so you can spend more time getting things done and less time fiddling with your computer. You'll learn valuable ways to upgrade your life so that you can work'and live'more efficiently, such as: empty your e-mail inbox, search the Web in three keystrokes,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0470238364
• ISBN13: 9780470238363
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 450 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Ideas and then some

First I have been working diligently on de cluttering my personal and business life. I have read so many simplifying and de-cluttering and efficiency books I almost have a clutter problem with all the books on the subject. (Cured that recently too with the Kindle 2.) I run three business. One brick and morter and two online. I was getting over four hundred emails a day and was drowning in mail and spam. So I utilized ideas / suggestions from several sources to cure my problems. From the Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss we started using detailed faq's lists on our websites and an auto-responder that answered many questions so we would no longer have to reply to as many emails. For the ones we do answer the questions are predictable and we saved the answers as email drafts that way we just cut and paste and all done. For the Spam we ran our eight email accounts into one google mail as they have the best spam filters and you can reply from the email address to which the mail was sent so they dont know that anything is happening. And suggestions from the life hacker Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better by Gina Tripani has some interesting ideas for sure. Keeping your inbox empty we use suggestions from Stress Less and Zen to Done by Leo Babauta and you would not believe how much better you feel when things are under control. But it is you who must Work the system or you will be overwhelmed again. A much more detailed program is used in Getting Things Done David Allen book, but the above is kind of the simplified version that I currently prefer. And for just getting rid of all the clutter in your life any of the books from Peter Walsh, How to Organize (Just About) Everything, and Enough Already, are great even though they tend to recover some of the material from his other books somewhat but thats not a big deal since the info is worth repeating. Another good author but she covers pretty much the same thing is Julie Morgenstern. The books by Koch on the 80/20 principle are also worth looking into. For the paper clutter in my life I have a digital sender scanner and have scanned over four full file cabinets into Adobe PDF computer files. I have done this with pictures too as you can also save them info Jpeg and Jiff files. While there are tons more books out there and I seem to have most of them, these are the best to get things under control and to get you the time to do the things that matter to you.

The second edition is just as good as the first...

I remember reading the first edition of Gina Trapani's Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better and thinking how wonderful it was. Of course, when the second edition came out, I had to get that one too. And as with the first one, I have all sorts of post-it notes scattered throughout the book for reference and "go back and try this" notes. Well worth the time and money you spend here. Contents: Control Your Email; Organize Your Data; Trick Yourself into Getting Done; Clear Your Mind; Firewall Your Attention; Streamline Common Tasks; Automate Repetitive Tasks; Get Your Data To Go; Master The Web; Hone Your Computer Survival Skills; Manage Multiple Computers; Index Over the span of the chapters above, Trapani presents 116 different "hacks" that you can incorporate into your daily computer life to, well... work smarter, faster, and better. As with most books that are a compilation of different tips, some will resonate strongly with your current needs, while others are skimming material that may not be relevant. For instance, the hacks in the first chapter, Organize Your Data, hit home. I'm working towards consolidating multiple email addresses with Gmail, and I'm cutting down the number of folders I have, relying on search to find what I need. Master The Web also had some cool tricks, like having multiple home pages in Firefox and using Google Notebook for web clippings. I wasn't quite into the Managing Multiple Computers as much, as my current setup doesn't call for that. Still, it's good information to have around should you need it at a later time. I actually found a couple different things occurring as I read through the material. There were hacks where some software was presented that did a certain task, and I'd realize I've been looking for something just like that. Similar to scratching an itch that you couldn't quite reach. Then there were the hacks that opened your eyes to whole areas you didn't even know you needed. Let's call that finding AND scratching the itch you didn't know you had five minutes prior. After going through some of the Automate Repetitive Tasks hacks, I have started to look at a lot of things I do with a view towards eliminating the manual repetitive effort that I just accepted as necessary before. I highly recommend this book to everyone who spends most of their waking hours in front of a computer, and/or earn their living in front of one. Taking away even a small handful of nuggets can radically change the way you do things.

Great book for those wanting to be a bit more efficient

This is a collection of hints, tips and hacks for the technologically inclined. Areas covered are email, organizing your data, tricks to overcome your procrastination, clearing your mind, focusing your attention, streamlining common tasks, mastering the web, honing your computer survival skills and managing multiple computers. Not at all ironically, the people for whom this book will be most useful - real geeks - will already know some, not all, of these things. I am most definitely a geek, but I did learn many new things and happy for that. In some ways, the book will a half-loaf for many. There's a lot of Macintosh stuff that will not be helpful to Windows users and vice-versa. There's Windows Vista material that will not be useful to those (most of us, perhaps?) who are sticking with Windows XP. But this is not a major problem: the book has so much good stuff in it, that there is plenty for everyone. Trapani's writing style is wonderfully clear, direct and concise. Overall, other than calling it useful, versatile, eclectic and well-done, this book is difficult to classify. It merges real life (remembering to pick up the milk) with the technical (setting up a VPN) and lots, lots more. It is definitely a fun book to browse, packed with lots of great information. A very worthwhile addition to your library. Jerry

The book will pay for itself

I've read the entire book and implemented quite a few of the Hacks in my daily routine. Based on the amount of time I've already saved in just a few weeks, this book has easily paid for itself 2 or 3 times. Some of the specific Hacks that I'm using and their results: * Email Control - My Inbox is empty and I've finally got my email under control with filters and the 3-folders system created (I added a 4th folder - Print - for emails that I want a hard copy of but my laptop isn't connected to my printer) * Digital Photos - I've got all my photos tagged and organized for fast searches * Repetitive Typing - how did I ever get along without Texter??? * Google Calendar - I love using my mobile phone to update my calendar when I'm on the road or need to post a quick reminder that Calendar will email and text me. I've still got a few things from the book on my To-Do List: * Get my bookmarks moved over to del.icio.us as described in the book * Setup my automated data backup to my external hard drive (I do it manually right now) Gina's written a great book that really works. The book is platform independent and she tells you when something is Mac or Windows specific. She also lets you know the skill level (Easy, Medium, Advanced) that a Hack will require. I enjoyed reading it and will probably go through it again soon to make sure I've implemented any hacks that can make my life easier - I'm sure I missed a few.

Making your life simple and portable

This is a great book. The hacks described in this book can simplify anyone's work (and personal) life. If you are too hard-pressed to implement even the simple suggestions of the productivity guru David Allen, Gina Trapani makes them even simpler. I randomly implemented some suggestions from the first edition of the book with very satisfying results. I believe that this edition is a major upgrade and I hope to get a lot more out of it. (I haven't finished reading it yet -- but what I have read and implemented so far is impressive enough.)If you are not a full-time geek, it is hard to figure out all the shortcuts to streamline your work and make it as "online" as possible. This book not only describes many hacks but provides step-by-step instructions to implement them. This is one of the best practical books on streamlining your life. I'm glad Gina Trapani wrote it. (I guess that anyone whose last name ends in "rapani" has to have something going for them.)