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The view from my favorite chair in the den this morning as I listen for purpose in the silence. Great strength can be found in the quiet moments before the day starts. The time where no cat mews and the night's dew rests quietly upon the ground. Before the tyranny of the noise and the barrage of notifications and matters of nonimportance glare at you with self important demands. Hearing your purpose in the silence... Yet, through the quiet, I can hear the whisper of the true priorities of this day speak to my heart and mind and settle my spirit. To demand that those among us who don't get the mornings and don't like them become morning people is silly. But I would be remiss if I didn't at least point out that much time and peace awaits you if you'll set that alarm earlier and get up before anyone else stirs. The younger your children are, the more you need this time alone. The more you work with kids, the more you need this time alone. For, to me, truly, t...

I have a second generation Kindle. I will use it until it won't run for a few reasons: These Kindles are newer than mine but still offer a focused reading experience without notifications. I can operate it with one hand (I like to read everywhere.) I get no messages or notifications of any kind, meaning I can focus on what I'm reading. Silence is really golden, especially when it comes to reading. I can organize my reading in intentional and powerful ways. Brian Tracy shares in several of his books that if you want to be in the top 10% of any field that you should read an hour a day in field. That is my goal. Michael Catt , my pastor says "Leaders are readers." I'd like to lead and encourage others, so reading is important. It brings new ideas. It motivates. It encourages me when I'm down. Now that I've written one book and almost done with a second, I see that a book is really an author bleeding on a page. It is that much of your li...

Do you solve problems or sit by and whine? The difference is profound. Whiners are like ambulances that never stop. Zipping through neighborhoods of critically ill people - they just whine - pointing out the problem, upsetting the pets, causing everyone to be sleepless - but never doing anything about it. Give me people of action. Give me people who actually put on the brakes, stop the ambulance, triage the problem and take action steps to isolate, remediate, and medicate so there is hope for recovery. Every time you hear an ambulance - ask yourself if you're the siren or the solver who stops to do something. Be the solution, not the waaambulance. Written by Vicki Davis, author - Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds - Posted with Blogsy from my iPad

A good filing system includes not only the files you need but the action steps, all in one place. Earlier this week, I talked about recording checklists and action steps in Evernote . But what happens when you go to a folder and don't remember where you put those action steps? I create shortcuts to the evernote notecards for that action step. Wherever you put your checklist, you should link to it so it is bundled with the files that will be used. Here's how. But know this, checklists will save you time, mistakes, and I've found they curb my natural desire to procrastinate hard tasks because I know that it is all in one place. Step 1: Copy the Note Link If you can get a shortcut to anything, websites, google docs , one note . This process will work in other apps, if you just replace the step 1 with however you copy from that resource. I'm an evernote fangirl, so we're using Evernote. a. Go into Evernote and open the card that you want to link to. b. Cli...

I like to use the Reddit forums to turn up cool things on productivity , education , teaching , and also to follow my favorite technology shows on Twit.tv . (Forums follow this format - reddit a forward slash and r another slash and the forum like this one http://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/ ) But Reddit can be clunky, so I found a great app called Alien Blue that lets you easily drill down, comment, and vote up or down the things that you like and find and subscribe to different channels. I've grabbed some screenshots to show you how this looks. While I don't check reddit every day, I get on the forums at least once a week. Breaking tech news often breaks there before it "breaks" in mainstream media and I've found it an increasingly influential place where people "in the know" hash things out and vet stories before they are ready for prime time. If you want to be part of this process, I recommend you join reddit. I'm coolcatteacher over ...

You are the air traffic controller for all of the planes in your life. You decide what lands, what takes off, and what doesn't leave the runway. The more planes you have in the air, the more planning and automation you have to orchestrate - you have to plan the flight path. Otherwise, you will crash and the things that are important to you: your health, your family, your life will crash too. Pareto's principal is that 20% of the causes have 80% of the effects. So, there are tasks that you can do weekly that will impact 80% of whether you'll have a smooth week next week. Also, 20% of the things give you 80% of the headaches. If you can identify those things, you can structure a Pareto Saturday that will help your next week go so much more smoothly. Meet your new lifeline: Pareto Saturday Pareto Saturday is taking time every Saturday to do the things that will help you the most the next week. It never fails, if I do these things the Saturday before, the week is usually...

The wordle made from the tags and bookmarks shared in this post. Wordles are a phenomenal productivity tool and I'm starting to have students put them on the front of longer documents to help me scan and preread. I collect productivity books, tips, and ideas. Going through my bookmarks on Diigo, I realized I had some great stuff in here that I still use and ponder. In this "best of" post, I'm sharing some of the best productivity tips, tricks, and apps for those of you who are trying to get the most out of every moment. BlogSieve.com: Advanced Feed Processing for Atom, RDF and RSS. Create new feeds by filtering, merging and sorting existing feeds. This website lets you mashup and create new feeds from existing ones. Take some time to manipulate feeds into smaller ones and you'll be glad you did. tags: educaiton rss socialmedia productivity app Feed Sifter: Get only...