The crash of 2008 was supposed to be a wakeup call to the dangers of negligent lending and irresponsible credit use. Yet, financial institutions continue to sell naïve customers on expensive credit products like overdraft protection.  Sold as an “essential” account add-on, Overdraft promises to protect clients for overdrawn funds on their account.

In a recent article on Time.com, Martha C. White writes about the $30 billion in profits American banks have made from overdraft fees in 2011.

“Once overdrawn, customers are subject to high interest rates and outlandish fees. For some customers the deficit is a permanent and damaging fixture in their account, setting themselves up for larger and more destructive financial issues..”

Avoid the fees and exorbitant interest rates that accompany short-term credit products by being better prepared for account shortfalls.

Solid Financial Planning

Financial institutions need to reorganize their priorities. Instead of focusing on credit products, banks need to emphasize sound financial planning and offer unbiased advice to their clients.

Sadly, a simple inquiry at a bank can result in an undisclosed credit check, an offer for a pre-approved mortgage, and unsolicited preapproved credit card offers. Never agree to take on a financial obligation without taking the time to understand its impact on your financial and mental well-being.

Protect yourself by developing a long-term relationship with a personal banker or financial advisor that is acting in your best interests, not the banks.

Do you have overdraft protection?

Remarkably, most customers are unaware that they have overdraft protection until they take a closer look at their account activity. For some, it can be years before they realize that they are paying for a service they never use.

Remember, you are under no obligation to sign up for any service you do not want. This includes any products that the bank wants to bundle with an account opening or credit offer. Tied selling laws in Canada and the United States prohibit financial institutions from forcing you to buy an unrelated product in order to obtain another product.

Overdraft Protection

The key to any budget is avoiding the small incidental costs that can accumulate over time and ruin your financial projections. This means that you have to avoid any additional services that are going to cost you fees or charge you interest.

The first rule, is always keep your account in a positive balance.

While easier said than done, examining your transaction history will allow you to see how, and where, you are spending your money. Sometimes, the reason for overdrawing your account can be as simple as bill payments not aligning with your paycheck. A quick solution is to call your bank and make sure your bills line up with your pay schedule.

Other times, shortfalls in an account are the result of frivolous spending. After examining your account history, it will be apparent where you are spending your money. People are conscious of the large purchases and the essential bill payments, but smaller expenses seem so insignificant that you fail to consider them when examining your spending. Once you tally up the coffee and fast food purchases, you can see how they can push your account into the negative.

Most importantly, be diligent in finding pre-authorized payments. Without checking, you may be paying for a long forgotten gym membership or a cancelled subscription to AOL’s dialup service.

Be alert

No matter how diligent you are about money management, there is always going to be scenarios that are out of your control.

Both financial institutions and financial software packages like Mint.com allow you to create alerts that will send you a text, phone, or email message when your account is low on funds.  Besides low fund alerts, you can also program some of these services to alert you to unauthorized debits from your account. Therefore, allowing you a chance to correct an error before a payment comes out.

Going Old School

Using cash is a great way to avoid account shortfalls. Based on the information you gleam from your transaction history create a cash budget for each week. This way you always know that a certain amount of money will be in the account to cover bill payments.

Unless you are reviewing your transactions on a daily basis, you will find that you will unconsciously spend more with a debit card than you would with cash.

Other strategies include avoiding preauthorized payments. By collecting all your bills and paying them one by one, you can gain a clearer picture of your financial health.  If you choose to go analog, be sure to be diligent about making your payments. Otherwise, a missed mortgage, insurance or vehicle loan payment can have devastating financial ramifications.

Emergency and Reserve Funds

Instead of opening a single checking account, open a companion savings account. Dedicate yourself to putting away at least 20% of your paycheck into the new account. The account will allow you to limit your spending, and give you a financial cushion in case of a budgetary miscalculation or bank error.

Make sure you have the ability to transfer money between the accounts at an ATM, or through online banking.  At any time, you can sure up a low or overdrawn account with the appropriate amount of money and avoid the need for costly Overdraft protection.

In order to serve as a proper reserve or overdraft account, you need to maintain a months’ worth of mortgage, insurance, and loan payments.

Conclusion

In summary, good money management starts with taking responsibility for your spending and controlling what comes in and out of your checking account on a monthly basis. Once, you understand the problem, you can make adjustments to fix any issues and create a backup plan that protects your hard earned money and allows you to avoid any additional credit debt.

(Photo credit: Fees in Wooden Letters via Shutterstock)

Next Article: 11 Alternatives to OmniFocus You Can Use To Get Things Done –>

Philip Viana works as a Financial Adviser for a bank in Canada. He is hard at work developing the formula to a meaningful, mindful and happy life. He writes about productivity, financial advice, technology, and lifestyle at Burnthenegative.com or at his about.me page.

Sick and tired of the lack of “cross-platform-goodness” of OmniFocus but too afraid to switch to something that isn’t as “powerful”? And what about that little change in the new iPhone icon? Wait, that may be just me.

Anyways, these 11 alternatives to OmniFocus give you the power to get things done no matter what platform or operating system you use.

Asana

Asana is the new kid on the block and we here at Lifehack have really grown fond of it (especially Mr. Vardy). You can use Asana as a personal productivity system just like you can OmniFocus, but you can also use it for team and group based projects.

Asana is fast, has keyboard shortcuts, an iPhone and mobile app (although lacking at the moment), and is easy use.

Toodledo

Toodledo has been one of my favorite todo/GTD/project/task apps for many years. Jake at Toodledo has done a great job of making TD flexible, powerful, and ubiquitous (mostly because of TD’s awesome iOS apps and great API).

Toodledo doesn’t necesarrily support “projects” right out of the box, but you can set up folders, tags, or even use the subtasks function that is offered in the Pro version. If you want a decent workflow, you can check out my forum post explaining my GTD setup.

Remember The Milk

Remember The Milk (RTM) is a very powerful and “light” feeling task manager. Once again, RTM doesn’t support projects right out of the box, but you can do some pretty unique things with tags, saved searches, and locations to make it work in that light.

RTM is free, fast, and has dedicated iOS and Android apps. If you are looking for a dead simple task app to get into, RTM is the one to choose.

Todo

Appigo Todo has shown some real growth in the task management space with iOS, web, and Mac apps that all sync together using their over-the-air-sync. Todo supports projects and checklists, multiple task alerts, contexts, and much more.

You can use Todo’s OTA-sync service free for 14 days and then you have to pay $19.99 a year for continued access. The web interface is not as good as some of the other’s on our list, but for a simple GTD system it works well.

Custom spreadsheets

If you are afraid of keeping your data in the cloud and you want to customize your system anyway you want, then go for making a custom spreadsheet. You could use Excel, OpenOffice, or Numbers to whip one up. And if you are real macro-head and VBA junky, you can do some pretty neat stuff by programming your own methods and functions for grouping and handling projects, doing weekly reviews, and much more.

Orchestra

Orchestra is more about team and group task management, but you can use it for personal projects as well. You can tell that the creators of Orchestra like well designed things because the app is beautiful. It’s also intuitive and easy to use with its counterpart iOS app.

We at Lifehack tried it out for team based projects, but decided to stick with Asana instead. Not because Orchestra isn’t good; it’s just not as polished or fully-featured as other team based managers out there. Orchestra lets you create grouped lists, has tag support, due dates, and the ability to assign tasks to memebers of your team or group. It is actively developed, so new additions are being added as we speak.

Todo.txt

If you are a geek and like plain text files, then look no further than the system developed by the much loved “Lifehacker” herself, Gina Trapani. Todo.txt now runs on Android, iOS, and any operating system that can open a text file. On Linux and Unix boxes you can use the todo.sh script to interface with your todo.txt file with some command-line goodness.

Todo.txt supports priorities, contexts, and projects. The nicest part is that with the help of Dropbox, your todo.txt file can be seen by your main OS as well as your Android or your iOS devices to provide you your todos wherever you go.

Astrid

When I was an Android kind of guy one of my favorite apps for interfacing with Remember The Milk was Astrid. Since then, Astrid has grown to not only be an Android app, but is now supported on iOS and features an entire webapp experience that you can sync with.

Astrid supports multiple task lists, repeats, due dates, priority (importance), notes, and sharing with others. It’s a pretty little app too, not to mention it has a cute mascot.

Evernote

Evernote can be used for anything. Yes, even a GTD system. I never was one to believe that you could use Evernote that way, even after some of the “implementations” I found online over the years. That was until I came across The Secret Weapon tutorial series. This tutorial shows you how to setup a GTD system with Evernote. It’s very creative and looks like it could work for many people, especially the ones that use Evernote like crazy.

The implementation supports projects, priorities, contexts, and even agendas. What is really nice is how you can use Evernote’s email plugin with Outlook to move all of your emails over to Evernote and to act on them there, allowing you to empty your inbox.

Doit.im

I’ve been watching Doit.im for a couple of years now. It has gone through a bunch of design changes and I think its latest is by far the best. Doit.im is free and can be used on the web, Windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android. You can setup projects, next actions, tags, due dates, notes, etc. and it all syncs using doit.im servers.

Producteev

Producteev is another team based webapp for getting things done. It uses the idea of workspaces (sort of like Asana) and gives the user some great ways to view their data. One of my favorite parts of Producteev is that they now have Windows, Mac, iOS, and even Android clients.

Producteev supports labels, smart tagging, due dates, and has some of the best email and IM integration I have found for any todo application.

Conclusion

Although OmniFocus is one of the best GTD tools I have ever touched in my life, there are definitely some great alternatives out there for every platform. Are there any other alternatives to OmniFocus that you have been using? Let us know in the comments.

Next Article: Here’s a new approach to email –>

There are so many people that just won’t get out of their email application to manage tasks. While this has been a problem in the past, new solutions like Asana and Flow allow for email and task management to be integrated within the task management solution. In many cases, the person who doesn’t want to go into the task manager can simply respond and check off tasks via email, removing a lot of the friction that can happen in a team environment.

But there’s a new kid on the block that actually lets you manage things from within email — using your email inbox as a task manager. That’s something that many people do already, but in a very impractical way. Mail Pilot looks as if it will add the practicality that’s been missing from the equation.

Mail Pilot is a Kickstarter-funded project that tackles email and task management in a way that is innovative and productive.

What does Mail Pilot do? Well, here’s the word on that straight from the source:

“Mail Pilot is a computer application & service that lets you use your current email accounts in a way that is much more intuitive than today’s email applications. Mail Pilot reimagines email from the ground up, and is built to fit into the workflow of how people use email today.”

But that didn’t answer all of my questions. So I spoke about Mail Pilot with its creators, Josh Milas & Alex Obenauer, shortly after the project went live on Kickstarter.

Mike: I’ve taken a look at Mail Pilot, and it looks really compelling because people who are wanting to manage and/or use their inbox to manage things in terms of productivity and such. Why did you decide to start this thing up and what was the plan behind it?

Alex: So I was in a class in the fall semester and we had to keep a design journal. And a couple of weeks into the semester the professor said that he was going to be doing a check of our journals…and I actually hadn’t written anything in mine yet. So I went home and I tried to come up with a problem that was so big and so problematic that would fill a lot of pages. I chose email because that’s one of my biggest issues — I receive 80 plus emails on average a day, which is less than most people’s average.

And so I started to write about it — and within three pages the entire concept behind Mail Pilot was there. It was very much a thing where I had such an issue with email and really broke it down try to figure out what the essence of email was, and how you would rebuild the client around that essence…ignoring all kind of prior implementations. Then I shared the idea with Josh the next day — and he absolutely loved it. He has very similar problems with email and we had shared our woes together about it.

From there he explained to me that (this) was legitimately something we should act on, that this was much bigger than just changing the way that the two of us use our email, but that this is something that not only do we have the time talents and gifts to make — but something we really should.

Mike:  Now there are a lot of productivity apps out there right now where they tell users to “get out of your inbox”, essentially saying that they shouldn’t be managing from within your email. Did you guys decide to go that route because either you tried stuff other task managers and it didn’t work for you and you just kept going back to managing things from email or do you think it’s just that it’s hard to get people to understand that there is an inbox for email and an inbox for all of their stuff?

Alex: It’s definitely both. You know, one of the biggest time drains for us is translating everything in your inbox into your to-do list and translating them into a calendar…stuff like that. And then trying to put something into your to-do list or put it on to your calendar because you need to follow up with it and then link to that email — it just became a kind of complicated interconnected web of ‘to dos’, events and emails. And it didn’t seem to make much sense.

So we really thought that if you could clear out your inbox, but those messages could still be marked for review, or marked to pop back up — say, reappear in three days — then that would help you severely decrease the clutter in your inbox and you wouldn’t have to spend the time working with a to-do list or a calendar. And the other thing too is that email is a standard. You can’t really get the entire market out of the inbox. Google proved that in a big way with Wave. I really liked what they did with the project but it was clear you couldn’t get people out of their email.

Mike: Right. So you’re raising $35,000 through Kickstarter. Where will that money go to? What’s the plan for those funds?

Josh: The plan is that once we meet that goal is to bring on some additional developers to help us really get the product to market. And their goal would be to then release a beta version by June. That will first go to all of our Kickstarter backers so they can start using it and we can start getting some feedback on it. So essentially, about three months from the end of our campaign the plan would be to release our beta.

Most of the money that we would raise would go to additional development support, ramping up  our server space — because a lot of our features are really services that would take up space. It’s not just folders and stuff that goes into your normal inbox. We have our own data that we have to store with Mail Pilot so we do need an amplified storage space. That’s a pretty heavy cost so that’s where another portion of the money would go to. But then after that, hopefully we can get out of the beta, release to public and go from there.

Mike: I think one of your biggest battles is that there is so many players in this space. What do you think you are going to be able to do to combat that?

Alex: There are definitely a lot of players in the space, but we definitely think that the workflow that fits right into the core of Mail Pilot is just so deliberate to the way that most (if not many) people who have used their email or try to use their email. And we think that’s it. It works so specifically well for people that it would be a very preferred option.

The other thing is that right now we are a two man operation and so we wouldn’t need a majority of the market just to be sustainable. And so we have been excited to see what we’ve gotten so far and we are really excited to see if we can gain enough support to stay sustainable and then to really start spreading the concept around to a lot more people. So far people’s reactions have been so overwhelmingly positive towards the idea in favor over so many other ideas just because it’s so deliberate in the way it really works with your workflow.

(Editor’s Note: Now that the project has been funded, the expectation is that Mail Pilot will hit the market sometime in June of this year.)

Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, and "productivityist". Read more of his writing and learn more about him at MikeVardy.com, and you can also follow him on Twitter.

A (slightly) older reader wrote to me recently, wanting to know how to change her bad habits ingrained after so many many years of doing them. She wanted to know, “Is it too late to change?”

And I can understand the feeling. Doing bad habits for years makes them deeply entrenched, and getting out of that trench might seem impossible, hopeless.

I once was stuck, and felt the weight of built up bad habits crushing, smothering, burying me. I felt helpless, like I had no control over myself, and was too discouraged to even try to change.

This discouragement is what does it. It’s not that changing bad habits is impossible. But if we are so discouraged we don’t try, we will never change them. To try and to fail is of little consequence, but to never start at all is fatal to the habit change.

And I’m here to tell you, that changing bad habits is not impossible. No matter how long you’ve done them, no matter how many decades.

It can be done. By you. By taking a single step.

Here’s how.

Know as you start that you aren’t changing a mountain. You don’t have to change years of bad actions. Those actions are gone — they’ve evaporated into the ether, and you can forget them. Forgive yourself for them, then forget them.

You don’t need to run a marathon to change a habit. You just need to take a step. And you can take a step.

Consider for a moment your bad habit. You might have a dozen, but choose an easy one. Not the one you’re most afraid of — the one you think you can lick.

Take a step back and think about this habit. When do you do it? What things trigger the habit — stress, food, drinking, socializing, boredom, sadness, waking, being criticized? What need does the habit fulfill for you? Know that it does fulfill a real need, and that’s why you keep doing it.

Realize something — stop here to drive home for yourself a crucial, crucial point: you must realize that you don’t need this habit to fulfill this need. You don’t need the habit. You can deal with stress in healthier ways. You can beat boredom. You can cope. You do not need the habit, and you will learn better ones with practice.

You might be feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point, but you’ve done the hardest part. Now you just need to take one more little step.

Commit to yourself to make a small tiny insignificant but powerful step each day. Commit fully, not half-assed. Commit by writing it down, and putting it up on your wall. Commit by telling a friend about it, and asking for help. Commit by putting it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, your blog, a forum you frequent. Be all in.

Find a replacement habit. One that is healthier. One that fulfills the need. One that is easy. One that you can do after your trigger, instead of your bad habit. One that you enjoy and will look forward to. If you need to relieve stress, for example, consider walking, or pushups, or deep breathing, or self-massage.

You’re now ready to climb out of your trench. Remember, just a tiny tiny step.

Notice your urge to do the habit. Pause. Don’t do the bad habit. Let the urge pass, then do your new replacement habit.

Repeat, noticing the urge, letting the urge pass, not doing the bad habit, doing the good habit instead. You might mess up, but that’s OK. You’ll get better with practice.

Practice as often as you can, every day. You’ll get really good at it. Don’t worry about how long it takes. Keep doing it, one urge at a time.

Know, Consider, Realize, Commit, Find, Notice, Repeat, Practice. These are easy steps that don’t take a lot of work. You can do them as you sit here, reading this post.

It’s never too late. There is no habit that can’t be broken by the pressure of a single footprint. Make that footprint by taking a single step, today.

The Mayan Calendar proclaims 2012 as the Year of New Beginnings.

But it doesn’t say that in your overloaded planner, now does it?

Too much to do, too many responsibilities, too many meetings, deadlines and far too little time. Too much crap in the way. Feels more like the end of the world then a new beginning, right?

It felt like that to me when I landed in the hospital over Christmas. Needles pierced my skin begging me to make changes. Three surgeries and weeks of healing later, I decided to cut the crap that is holding back my life and make 2012 the Year of New Beginnings.

From now on all my decisions and time need to be dedicated to those matters most important to me: my health, my family, and my purpose.

Anything not aligning with these areas had to be culled and cleared.

When you face an illness or relationship breakdown (or any other life challenges), you start to understand the importance of prioritizing. So much of our precious and limited time is taken up with unimportant tasks and people pulling our attention this way and that.

The good news is that you have control over where you give your attention. Wake up now and only focus on the essentials.

What are your three most important focus areas?

Decide on your three highest priorities. Then take action using the following nine ways to clear out the crap so you can relish every waking minute as you realign your time and energy with your priorities to recharge your life.

1. Remove Yourself From Negative Environments

Travelling for many years put me in a happiness bubble where everyone was friendly and kind.

As soon as I returned to the real world (and the blogging world), I realized that there are a lot of people who love to argue. I soon found myself getting swept up in the negativity. I thought I was contributing in a positive way — or at least being helpful — but really the very act of me contributing meant that I was taking in and expending negative energy.

It’s not just the arguing in the moment, but the processing of it afterwards that consumes many of your waking hours. I’ve learned that I can’t change people, but I can change my focus and where I hang out.

I have since culled several communities from my online space.

Don’t let people rent space in your head. Make the decision to stay away from any environments that don’t serve you. Hang around only those who help you grow and are positive and encouraging.

2. Shut Down Social Spaces

I’m big on having as many windows open as possible when I’m working online. It drives my husband crazy, but it helps me to keep on track and not forget any important tasks I need to get back to.

But it also ensures that I stay connected to the social sphere.

The notification numbers flash at me and before you know it…I’m distracted by ridiculous status updates about lunch selections, tweets directing me to yet another interesting article, and the explosion of a new online argument.

Take control and shut down the windows of your social communities. Log out. Designate times of the day to check in.

Take advantage of some useful tools like Post Planner to schedule your updates for the day.

You’ll soon be so involved in being productive that you won’t even notice that the social world has disappeared.

3. Forget About Checking Email Five Times an Hour

Why do we feel like we need to check our emails multiple times in an hour? The fear that we are going to miss out on the next big opportunity grips us as we go and check one more time.

Just in case.

Did we ever check the mailbox multiple times a day? No…because we trusted that whatever was wanting our attention or needing us for the next big opportunity would arrive at approximately 3 pm every weekday afternoon.

I have found a great deal of resistance to letting this one go, which I think flags another needed change: a “desperate” mindset.

I have organized set times during the day to check email, and outside of those times I log off and shut down. My productivity levels have increased dramatically as a result, and I could do better still.

Turn off all your email notification pop-ups (don’t forget those phone apps) and schedule in times to check your email. I promise you are not going to miss out on anything.

4. Get Back To Pen and Paper

I wrote this article sitting on a beach chair by the pool. The afternoon breeze blew the sticky heat off my skin and the rainbow lorikeets sang a sunset song to me from the banksia bushes.

I locked the computer away inside and I let the thoughts write freely on the page with the help of my pen — the trusty one that writes well. (Admit it — we all have that one pen that we’re attached to…)

It might seem like extra work because I will have to eventually retype the piece, but it’s not really. I am relaxed, the thoughts are flowing easily, my eyes aren’t turning square, and there are no distracting flashing neon notification lights.

To increase your productivity, it is important to remove yourself from your normal environment and go to a creating space that does not involve technology. You will banish that stilted electronic energy and use a more natural form.

Grab a pen and paper, a hammock (and maybe even a beer), and get creating. You’ll be amazed by the quality of your word flow.

5. Go to Bed Early

If you are a parent like me, you are probably thinking I am crazy for suggesting this. When the cherubs are safely tucked in their beds that is really the only time you have for productivity.

But if you are culling in other areas, then your work hours will be filled with more space for greater productivity. Now you have time to go to bed at a decent hour.

Studies have proven that the human being cannot function optimally if it does not get adequate rest. Burning the candle at both ends is not going to help you progress forward. You might think you are being productive but the quality of your work will suffer — not to mention the dark circles that will develop under your eyes.

The more sleep we get, the more energy we have to create amazing work and complete tasks. Make an effort to get to bed before 11 pm every evening, aiming for no less than 6 hours sleep. Besides, going to bed early will help you achieve the very next important way to increase your productivity.

6. Get up Early and Utilize this Focus Time

Grab the vibrant energy that arrives with the sun. As the world is not quite up and creating chaos around you, this is the perfect time for you to snap up some hours to be highly productive.

Leave the emails, the social sites, and the reading of other posts. Get straight to the creation work; the work that is best going to help you achieve your goals.

You may also wish to use some of this time for exercise or meditation work. I find meditating first thing in the morning helps to clear my mind and gets me feeling relaxed, connected and fresh.

If you get up at around 5 am this will give you a good solid two hours of focused work; it is amazing what you can achieve in this time.

7. Say No More Often

Life comes with a never-ending supply of parties, coffee meetups, meetings, phone conversations, dinner dates, conferences, press trips and every other imagined opportunity demanding our presence.

It is wonderful to feel wanted, but at what cost?

Attending all these functions will have a detrimental effect on your lifestyle and productivity.

Last year, I was laying the foundations for our blogging business so I said ”Yes!” to everything.

The four months previous to ending up in the hospital, I had a baby, was a single parent for two weeks, went overseas twice, travelled domestically for business three times, spoke at four conferences, and had meetings and events non-stop.

We don’t want to miss out or let others down, so we say “Yes” instead of “No.” But this will quickly lead to a case of burnout.

Saying “no” to those things that aren’t that essential will open up the way for those more important opportunities to take priority.

I’ve said “no” several times this year already, and I feel less overwhelmed and more laser-focused. The right opportunities and teachers are now arriving.

For each new invitation or request, ask yourself the following:

“How will saying yes to this help me grow and improve in my three most important focus areas?”

If it doesn’t, then say “no”.

8. Improve your Diet

Have you ever stopped to think of the crap we put into our bodies? I’ve paid attention to this recently while implementing some very specific dietary lifestyle changes.

After a week, it became glaringly obvious the reason for my slump in energy and frumpiness, when I lost 4 kilograms and my natural energy levels shot through the roof.

My productivity levels were now matching my energy.

Reduce the animal fats and sugar in your diet. Eat to live, not live to eat. I now follow the diet of the Okinawan race in Japan who have the longest life expectancy, and little incidence of heart disease and diabetes.

Basically 2/3 of your diet should be plant food and 1/3 meat, comprising of mostly fish.

Your health is your most important asset. Don’t push it to the side any longer.

9. De-clutter your Environment

You’ll notice that up until now you have culled in order to improve your work and health, now it is important that you clear up that stale energy around you.

Letting your head space be taken up with so many unimportant tasks means that we allow the papers to build up around us. And it’s not just the paper, but the clothes, the toys, the gadgets — all those things we haven’t used in months or years.

Usually, we are holding onto them either because we are too lazy (or busy) to clean it, or we have that “lack” mentality that tells us to hoard…just in case.

If you haven’t used it in a year, then you don’t need it. I like to assess my belongings on the basis of a year to account for the change of seasons — mostly in regards to clothing. All other items can be assessed on a shorter period of time.

As a traveller, I want more memories and less stuff. Culling comes easy for me.

I recently discovered old journals filled with the pain of past mistakes and regrets. I am focused on moving forward; holding onto a past I no longer want does not help me with that. I threw them directly in the bin to free up that positive energy space for me.

What are you holding onto that you no longer need? Start with a different section of your room every day to declutter.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do I really use you?
• Is holding on to you going to help me move forward and enable me to be productive?

In Closing

The end of the Mayan Calendar does not really mean the end of the world. It just signifies another cycle; a cycle that gives us permission to break free from the crap that holds us back.

All you need to do now is decide. Are your dreams worth it? Do you believe in them enough? If you do then the choice becomes pretty simple.

No more crap. Just new beginnings.

(Photo credit: Conceptual Image of Papers Coming Out of a Man’s Head via Shutterstock)

(Editor’s Note: This is a featured post in our ongoing series “30 Days With…”, which outlines the use of a productivity tool, service, or product that we have used for the past 30 days. We want to provide our readers with an in-depth view of tools and products that they are interested in, provide them our thoughts anod offer ways to use these products faster and better. Enjoy.)

When I was working independently, I really didn’t have much need for a task manager that could handle communication and collaboration across the miles. However, since I started to be involved in many more team activities – so much so that I tend to spend more time in a team environment than not – I found that my task manager I was using (OmniFocus) was leaving some of the much-needed tasks on the table. In addition, a lot of the people I work with aren’t on a Mac or iOS device, which made using OmniFocus a moot point.

I tried other task management solutions, such as Flow and I even waded into Wunderkit for a bit. But nothing captured all that I needed in a solution better than Asana, the brainchild of former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Facebook employee, Justin Rosenstein.

There was a lot to explore in my 30 days with Asana. And while I did dive in pretty deep, I don’t want to overwhelm you with all of the finer points. Instead, you’re going to get many of the highlights I discovered during my use of Asana during the last 30 days, and I’m leaving some breathing room for more exploration as the product develops.

Let’s get started…

Workspaces

Asana allows you to create Workspaces – which are really more than projects. In fact, you can put projects inside of Workspaces. The best way I can describe Workspaces is that they are really “areas of focus” that you need to keep tabs on – and have several layers to them so you can manage tasks and projects within them. I have created several Workspaces:

• Personal: Contains personal projects and tasks
• Professional: Contains individual projects and tasks that are work-related
• Family: Contains family projects and tasks
• Multiple “Team-Based” Workspaces: Each of which contains projects and tasks associated with the team I’m working with in that Workspace

On that last point, Lifehack has its own Workspace, my podcasts that I have co-hosts with have their own Workspaces, and so on. Basically, any professional area of focus that requires sharing (as a whole) gets its own Workspace. I made the mistake of putting them under Professional at first, but then had to make all of my Professional projects and tasks private to me as a result. So if you’re going to use Asana as both a team and individual task management solution, keep your Workspace solo and add Workspaces for the different clients/partnerships you need to collaborate on and add those involved to those Workspaces.

I also have Family separate so that I can share that with my wife and she doesn’t have to see all of my other stuff that doesn’t directly impact her. Sure, I can share individual tasks and projects with her under that Workspace, but having a Family one basically makes her and I teammates in an area of focus instead.

During my first couple of weeks with Asana, I wasn’t able to move around Workspaces on the sidebar; they stayed in the order in which they had been created. Yet just before I finished up my initial time with Asana, they had made reordering of WorkSpaces (among other things ) happen. That’s how actively developed Asana is.

Each person you add to a workspace will receive an email invite, and you’ll be able to see whether they’ve accepted by checking the Members tab in your workspace settings.While someone can be a member of more than one Workspace, the tasks and projects of each are independent – so they can only see them within that Workspace and not throughout Asana as a whole. I find that – despite not digging getting a ton of email – a regular update email from Asana on Workspaces helps out with this if you’re not used to working in multiple areas of focus. You can turn on or off email notifications in your Asana Account Settings under the Email Notifications tab.

Tip: The great thing about Email Notifications from Asana is that you can send them to whatever email you’d like for the Workspaces you choose. All of my Lifehack notifications come from and go to my Lifehack email account, making the managing of that area of focus far easier.

Projects

Projects are essentially the backbone of Asana, as opposed to tasks in other systems of note. You can view prjects in several different ways: by priority, by assignee, or by associated tags. The filtering that Asana has built-in allows for a great deal of customization so that you can look at what you want and how you want.

Once you figure out how Workspaces work, slotting projects in them is easier to grasp. You can create both public and private projects within a given workspace, the former of which are viewable by all the members of that workspace. You can also create a project by duplicating an existing one – which is great for repeating projects (such as managing a podcast or a weekly blog posting schedule, for example). Just click the arrow dropdown at the top of the project you want to copy, and select “Duplicate Project.” Then you’ll get a list of what items you want to duplicate, as well as the opportunity to change the name of the newly-created project.

Tip: Create project templates using the duplication method above; they are extremely useful to have and you can maintain many of the attributes from the original project so that you can work more efficiently with those projects that cycle regularly. Oh, and you can’t add due dates to projects, so let the tasks inside the projects do that for you. Just archive the project when all the tasks are done.

Tasks

Tasks are the building block of any productivity-type system, and with Asana this is no different. Tasks are basically “to dos” and you can attach a wide variety of things to them to make them more information-laden. Notes and comments are fantastic aspects of Asana, in that comments allow for teammates to communicate with one another on a task outside of email, and notes let you put hyperlinks and much more in side of a task so that you can provide all anyone will ever need for a task within Asana.

You can view tasks by project, tag or person, using the tabs in the left-hand pane. You can ensure that you see only the tasks assigned to you by opening “Your Tasks,” which you’ll also find located in the left-hand pane. While in your own task list, click the dot to the left of a task name (or use the icons in the the task details – located in the right-hand pane) to organize your tasks by “intention” – as in, when you’re going to work on them. When you’ve completed a task, click the “Archive” dropdown at the top of a project to hide it from view.

Something you need to keep in mind when creating tasks is that any you add within Your Tasks (or within a private project) are private by default. But as soon as you add public tags or add the task to a public project, you will make the task public – and viewable by all the members of the Workspace. I add an “x” to tags that are meant for private use (like “xwriting” vs “writing”) so that I don’t accidentally share something that’s meant to stay under wraps. Make sure you put the “x” at the front of the tag so that you don’t auto-complete to a public tag by mistake.

To add a due date to a task, simply click into the task details field (or use “Tab +D” on your keyboard). You can set the task to repeat regularly – or set it to a pretty cool interval known as “periodically”. That bascially allows you to assign a given number of days after it is marked complete to repeat once more. If you need to keep tabs on others, just check the status of a task in an assignee’s workflow by looking at the icon to the right of their name in the task details.

Tip: When you make a list of tasks (for me, it is with Simplenote on my iPhone – although you can use any text editor that syncs back to your computer) and drag it to Asana, it creates a separate task for each item. And if you have a space between each list – using bullet points for example with a heading, it makes the non-bulleted point a Priority Heading. While this doesn’t work in the iPhone app, it does allow you to make simple lists with a text editor and then bring them over to Asana for processing when you’re ready.

Tags

I look at tags as if they are contexts in the GTD sense. Here’s what Asana says about tags:

“Tags provide an additional level of categorization to tasks – they identify important characteristics that tasks share in common.”

I use locations (or activities, like “Writing”) as tags. But unlike contexts in GTD apps like OmniFocus, I can assign multiple tags to a task by looking at them this way. This is a great feature, especially when you consider that you can change a tag to a project if you ever feel the need to do so. I haven’t done this yet, but if I end up using “twitter” as a tag for several tasks to the point where it has gone beyond its usefulness as such, I can change it into a project and then attack it from that vantage point. That allows me to duplicate it over and over again, should I need to spend a lot of time on Twitter (or it becomes a bigger aspect of my Workspace than what a tag would indicate).

Tip: This comes straight from Asana: For tasks that are necessary to the completion of more than one project, you can indicate this by clicking the “plus” button to the right of Projects in the task details, or by typing “Tab + P,” and typing the name of the relevant project.

The Inbox

Here’s how Asana defines its Inbox, which is somewhat different then what most people would traditionally think:

(Asana’s) Inbox shows all of the tasks that have been assigned to you by someone else, or from another context.  You can accept tasks from the New Tasks section by clicking the inbox icon and choosing an option.

The best thing you can do with these is to follow simple GTD practices of Do, Delegate, Defer or Delete. I generally go through each Workspace Inbox every morning and attach tasks to various projects (if that hasn’t already been done by the assignee). Then I attach due dates, tags, etc. to them accordingly. That gets me out of the Inbox and one step further into my Workspaces – which is exactly where I need to be.

The great thing about Asana is that the Inbox is only there to hold tasks, it is not a viable place to keep them. In fact, keeping them there in Asana is far more transparent than if you were to do that in a regular email inbox. Since notes and comments are updated by team members once a task leaves the Inbox is great for those who just can’t wrap their head around getting things out of email and into a task manager. Asana eliminates the bad inboxes by introducing better ones. That’s why it works so well for non-GTDers – and why it’s counter-intuitive for some to move to it after being in something like OmniFocus, for example, which treats inboxes completely differently.

A Seemingly Seamless Connection

As long as people “buy into” Asana, your workflows will improve dramatically. I’ve had one teammate who has jumped in and is playing along with me – and we’re ahead of the game as a result. I’ve had others who just can’t get into it, forget to follow a task or email me back rather than updating through Asana, which creates redundancy. But since I’m using it religiously, I’m able to keep myself on track and am slowly converting the previously unconvertible.

Those unconvertible include those using other team task management solutions, those using individual task managers…and those using none at all. That’s because any changes I make under the Projects, Tags and People tabs will push to everyone else in the Workspace. That kind of connection is hard to keep consistent via email.

That is just one of the things that makes Asana’s barrier to entry exceedingly low (at least by productivity solution standards), and that can only bode well for the company.

The Asana Wish List

If you’ve been using Asana already, you know that’s in active (and steadily active at that) development. Still, there are some things that I was curious about when it comes to features that may or may not be coming to Asana. So I asked Kenny Van Zant of Asana to address them:

Me: Can you convert tasks into projects?
Kenny: We’ve actually been iterating on the design for subtasks/hierarchy for a long time.  There are a lot of interesting nuances, and we don’t think any of the existing services get it quite right.  At this point we’ve been through a number of designs and prototypes in search of the perfect balance of power and ease-of-use/difficulty-of-hanging-yourself, and we’re really excited about the solution to which we’re converging.

Me: Exporting of data for offline access – thoughts on that?
Kenny: We do plan to support that sort of export, beyond the existing Print and multiselect-and-copy capabilities.  But more excitingly, we plan to support offline access, and ultimately even editing, right in the browser through HTML5’s offline support.  Our technology stack makes us really well suited to provide this, as nearly all of Asana’s functionality runs inside the browser.  (Even today, if you disconnect from the Internet while using Asana, you can continue to make changes, leave comments, etc., and your changes will get saved whenever you reconnect.)

Me: Considering the recent rash of posts on the importance of Start Dates vs Due Dates (mainly with OmniFocus), does Asana have any plans for implementation on that front?
Kenny: Our plan around calendaring/timeline is one of the most exciting parts of our product vision.  I don’t want to reveal too much yet, but we’ll be giving individuals and teams a shared understanding of time and a confidence in their ability to forecast their projects’ futures at a level that was previously impossible without an onerous and detailed project management process – well beyond just due dates vs. start dates.

Me: Time of day…why isn’t it there?
Kenny: We actually don’t see too many requests for due-times, but agree it’s a missing feature, and it will be addressed by the aforementioned calendaring/timeline work.

Me: What is down the road for Asana in terms of iPad, iPhone, Android…?
Kenny: The current mobile app is primarily a companion to Asana on your desktop, so you can access your tasks wherever you go.  But that was only version 1: we’re going to build an experience on iOS and Android that’s as responsive and featureful as the desktop app is today.  We’re very committed to providing a great experience on mobile and tablet.

In Conclusion

I am really digging Asana. It has the ubiquity, cohesiveness and adaptability I’ve been looking for in a task management solution. It scales up or down, allowing for team and individual task management – and it is lightning fast in both syncing and connectivity (it takes a page from Google Wave and allows you to see when someone else is typing). And it lets those who want to manage tasks via email do just that without hindering progress for those that don’t because of the integration put in place.

While my 30 Days with Asana are done, my days with Asana are just beginning. I strongly recommend you give Asana a look. It’s a real game-changer.

Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, and "productivityist". Read more of his writing and learn more about him at MikeVardy.com, and you can also follow him on Twitter.

In continuing with the great posts on food, I thought I’d include a few kitchen hacks I’ve come across. I’ll be the first to admit: I’m no chef. I love to cook; to whip up something new or different–but the way it tastes is, unfortunately, not always what I intend. That said, I have found a few ways to make some of the most common foods my wife and I eat actually taste good. While you won’t be able to use these techniques for everything, you can start right now, in your own kitchen! Here are a few hacks to implement before dinner tonight:

The Grilled-Cheese Sandwich Hack

Ah, the comfort food of modern American youth. While my family dips the grilled cheese in tomato soup, my wife likes hers plain–just the good ‘ol wheat bread with a slice of American cheese in-between. Growing up, my mom–who ran a home daycare, and didn’t have time to cook often–used to whip these up for the kids, and they were always good. Use this method to cook your own home-made grilled cheese in minutes, better than you’ve ever tasted.

Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything (a perfect starter cookbook) mentions a few things that have helped my grilled-cheese cooking:

1. You won’t need a special panini press, or Foreman-style grill. Just use a flat-bottomed large pan or skillet, heated on medium-high. Throw in some butter to melt.
2. Prepare the sandwiches by placing a slice of cheese between two slices of bread. Place the sandwiches, two at a time, on the heated pan.
3. And here’s the awesome hack: Place a smaller pot, or heavy object, on top of the cooking sandwich(es). Yes, I mean to say: place another, smaller, object directly on the sandwiches, acting as a sort of “press” to flatten the sandwiches.
4. Cook until desired doneness.

You’ll find that not only are the sandwiches amazing, they’re also dead-simple to clean up after: just wash the pan and any utensils used!

The Chicken Hack

Okay, here’s one that’s less specific: Whenever you plan cook chicken (breasts, thighs, quarters, whatever), you can make your chicken restaurant-quality by doing one simple thing:

Brining.

Brining is the process of submerging your protein in a water bath of saltwater for about thirty minutes. It helps the meat retain moisture, so when it’s cooked it won’t release it’s inner juices into the pan. Actually, brining can help you retain up to 80% more liquid in the meat–making for a much juicer cut–than not brining.

To brine your chicken (or turkey, for that matter), you just need to defrost the chicken and place it in a bowl of saltwater, completely covered. Place the bowl in the refrigerator for at least twenty or thirty minutes, and no longer than an hour. I usually shoot for 45 minutes, but do what works best. When you’re done, drain the chicken and dry it thoroughly, then season/prepare it as normal.

Trust me, it’s different in a really good way.

The Steak Hack

I’ve talked and blogged immensely about how to cook the perfect steak recipe–just check out my site for that–but there’s one thing that really sets my steaks apart from the average weekend BBQer:

Salting the steak.

Again, salting a steak is such a simple process, it’s a wonder not many other people I know of do it. The goal is to dry out your steak (I know, it sounds counterintuitive0 as much as possible before seasoning, marinating, and cooking. You’re literally taking a defrosted, patted-dry steak cut (any cut will work, but the best ones are aged, thick ribeye and top sirloin) on a plate and pouring salt on it. I like sea salt, as its crystals are larger than table salt. Let it sit for awhile–sometimes 30 minutes will do the trick. You’ll start to see bubbles of moisture mixing with the salt–that’s the salt literally pulling the moisture from the inside of the meat.

Rinse it off in cold water, pat it dry, and do it again if you want. When it seems dry enough, you can continue your recipe as desired, and be amazed at the results!

In Closing

These are just three of the ways I’ve discovered to “hack” my weeknight meals in a way that makes them special. My wife and family love them, and not in a “we have to” sort of way. Give them a shot the next time you decide to cook one of these, and let me know in the comments section how it turns out!

(Photo credit: Food Ingredients on the Oak via Shutterstock)

Nick Thacker is a writer from Texas, and he's interested in hacking life to make it better. His posts are helpful for writers, bloggers, and pretty much anyone who wants to hack their life! Check him out on his website, www.nickthacker.com.