Photo by urban_data.

This is a guest post by Evan Meagher. He writes about tech, design, music and gaming at evanmeagher.net.

If blogs are to be believed, it would seem that every aspect of the web worker’s life revolves around one Apple product or another. The image of the hip MacBook Pro-clad designer has become a meme to the point of becoming clichė. As a web worker, it seems like I should be subscribing to digg’s Apple feed, drinking copious amount of tea, and listening to bands that no one has heard of.

The last two are fine, but why not break the mold and use an operating system that no one’s heard of too?

Sure, Apple’s built its reputation on being the hipster brand of choice, but one of the nice things about Linux is the ability to customize virtually any aspect of the operating system to cater to your workflow and computing habits.

For the purpose of structure I’ll break the article into two parts. The first will discuss how Linux can be just as application-rich, in terms of usefulness, as OS X or Windows. In the second half, I’ll cover various productivity-boosting apps and features that allow you do accomplish virtually any task with a few simple keystrokes.

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Photo by metaphors

When doing keyword research for my muse, I was stunned by the amount of searchers looking for ‘free outsourcing’, as if there were ranks of people hanging out online, just waiting to perform menial tasks for fun!

This did get me thinking, though. How would free outsourcing work? How could a free outsourcing system be built?

If we assume a conservative definition of free, then free outsourcing would involve outsourcing at no monetary cost (rather than getting something for nothing). Considering a lack of funds is the key reason why individuals and businesses might not outsource, no cost outsourcing could be very useful.

My freesourcing concept doesn’t involve exploitation. Instead, it would involve trading value for value.

It hinges on one question: what do you need and what can you give?

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Photo by yveslorson

True productivity is often painted as perfect, highly ordered, hierarchical and clean. The ideal system is polished and clinical, rules are followed and the productive person is all things to all people.

In my experience, this sanitized ideal is incompatible with ruthless effectiveness. True productivity is messy and imperfect. It requires mistakes and small sacrifices, elimination and survival of only the most useful actions. Sometimes the quickest, roughest solution is more effective than the right one, and some rules are meant to be broken.

You don’t need to mow down tasks like an unstoppable machine. You just need to stop doing things that don’t matter.

Even if it gets a little messy sometimes.

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Photo by /kallu

I love paper in all its forms and always have. In fact, if given the choice between a notebook and a web app to fulfill the same function, I’ll choose a notebook every time. I tried Google Calendar and didn’t like it. Instead, I have a plain old calendar that hangs above my desk. I’ve got a pen stuck to the wall with bluetac next to it, so it takes about two seconds to update. I tried Remember The Milk, but I found it to involve a lot of unnecessary complication when compared to writing items down on a slip of paper. But it’s portable, they say. Well, so is paper. It even works outside wi-fi hotspots.

I keep my work and life organized with the help of two Moleskines (one un-lined notebook, one weekly planner) and the aforementioned calendar. When I travel, I’ll drop the calendar. It doesn’t quite fit in my backpack.

That’s my productivity system. Because one may be needed, here is my defense of it.

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Photo by Noel Lee

This is a guest-post from Ritu B. Pant, writing from the U.S.

We seem to ignore some of the simplest things in life. In our quest to achieve something, we are constantly trying and searching for the most effective way to tackle a problem. For some reason, we hold the notion that anything priced high is good, anything complicated is better and anything simple is just low on quality or isn’t as effective.This is far from true, and the same rule applies to productivity, as well.

Productivity sprouts from within us. It’s the approach we take that determines how effective we are in letting the productivity inside of us, out. Reading tons of books, following TV shows and other forms of information on productivity will only do so much, until you realize the three core things that makes your productivity run full blast:

You can read as many books on productivity and as many articles as you want. Productivity isn’t about knowing what to do, but how to do things. The three key steps to productivity are – Priority, Goals and Actions. One without the others is helpless and of no significance.

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If there’s one inevitable factor involved in working through the web, it’s this: Email — and lots of it. Wading through email is a necessary (but time consuming) task.

There’s one type of email feared above all others, and that’s long email. A procession of big, chunky paragraphs stare you down, your hand edging ever-closer to the ‘Later’ label in your email client. That ‘Later’ rarely ever comes.

And you know what? That’s a shame, because sometimes there are good opportunities and lucrative work to be mined from a mountain of words.

Every baddy has an Achilles Heel. Here’s how you can meet and defeat the dreaded long email.

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