LifeHack, GTD, ZTD and Friends

What is LifeHack, GTD, ZTD, and LifeHack 2.0?

LifeHack 1.0 is productivity tips to cut through information overload, and generally to get better organized. It was extracted from highly efficient IT people, similar to Steven Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Efficient People" for the general case.

For example the book "LifeHacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day"
includes hacks such as emailing your future self (reminders), installing a personal Wiki, avoiding time wasting sites, automate repetitive tasks, control email, keep the Inbox empty, Google searching, firewalls, backups, etc.

GTD (Getting-Things-Done) is a set of tools (manual or electronic) to externalize our to-do lists, so that we need not keep them in our heads, and thus reduce stress. GTD can be seen as a glorified to-do-list, it includes calendars, workflows, 6 levels of focus and planning.

ZTD (Zen-To-Done) is a book by Leo Babauta: "Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System" , which claims to have combined GTD with Stephen Covey 7 Habits. ZTD focuses on developing 10 habits.

LifeHack 2.0 is a term I coined for the extension of LifeHack 1.0 to non IT subjects such as creativity, happiness, procrastination, writing and presentation skills, negotiation, investing, relaxation, mindfulness, exercise, sleep, eating habits, and giving gifts. These are some of topics you can find at LifeHack.org.

I am trying to compile LifeHack 2.0 hacks, some of these have appeared on this blog already. Hacks should be action oriented, and not domain specific. They can be inspired by philosophies and spiritual traditions, but should be acceptable to people from various beliefs.

LifeHack 2.0 Examples:

• Slowing down, take time to smell the flowers, relax
  

• To see the extra-ordinary in ordinary things

• Do simple ordinary things such as dish washing, sweeping the floor, gardening

• Less Multi-tasking, more focus on here and now
  

• Bare Attention Suspend judgment once in a while

• Clear Comprehension of Purpose
  

• Mindfulness, using every day events for reminders to be mindful (Thich Nhat Hanh suggested every time when a phone rings, to compose ourselves, before picking up the phone)

• Mindfulness of bad habits to break them

• Refactoring and re-purposing, get the task completed first and improve by refactoring (as in extreme programming). Re-use by re-purposing
  

• Continuous Learning

• Sub tasking, take one bite at a time

• Systems thinking things are interconnected. Thich Nhat Hanh's InterBeing
  

• Nice guys finish first it is always good to be good
  

• Helping others to help ourselves

• Don't use violence

All of the above hacks still need to be reworked, elaborated, or subdivided into smaller hacks.

I would be grateful for comments and suggestions of such LifeHack 2.0 tips from the readers.

Revised version: Life Hack 2.0 How-to's