The Future Place Blog

Who wants only 2 hours of sleep a night?

LifeHacker has a post abut how to function on just 2 hours sleep per 24 hours. The post is based on an article in Wired magazine. The most extreme strategy they talk about is based on sleeping 20 minutes every 4 hours, or 2 hours every 24 hours.

In terms of astronauts, people engaging in 30 day kayak trips, soldiers, and rescue workers, some of these techniques may well be both useful and necessary. But for most of us, I would hope we would aim to reduce or working hours so that we had enough leisure and sleep!

Time Saving Tips from a Prolific Blogger

Jeremiah Owyang has some interesting tips on staying productive in a busy blogging life. Some of his tips seem little wacky, such as giving up coffee (saving time and money), but others seem really useful. He advises making blogging part of your job, and of keeping lots of drafts on the go.

Have an allergy? Carry a translation

Springwise report a really common sense idea for people with food allergies. Allergy Translation Cards can produce a card for you detailing your food allergy in 22 languages. The cards can then be used when travelling, handing them to waiting staff, chefs etc.

The idea can easily be increased to cover a range of ‘special’ requirements, such as food preferences, medical conditions, clothing etc.

Making Life Easier with Life Hacks

Life Hacks are tricks, ideas, suggestions, and tools for making your life easier and for increasing your productivity. The Economist recently carried an article extolling the virtues of potential of Life Hacking (10th-16th June 2006). One example hack quoted by the Economist is to set your email so that it only downloads email every 15 minutes, or perhaps even every hour (I have set it to 20 minutes and I think it is helping). The idea is that you get interrupted less often and get on with you top priority task instead. Also, I have found that by downloading every 20 minutes I often get 2 or 3 related emails, for example one asking for help, a second clarifying the request, and third a reply from somebody else solving the problem - and I did not have to do anything.

More information on Life Hacking is available at Lifehacker.com and 43Folders.com.

One really useful post at 43Folders is Writing Sensible Email Messages, which focuses on how you can write your emails in ways which make it more likely that you will get the response (be that a reply or an action).