Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better
Whether youre a Mac or Windows user, there are tricks here for you in this helpful resource. Youll feast on this buffet of new shortcuts to make technology your ally instead of your adversary, so you can spend more time getting things done and less time fiddling with your computer. Youll learn valuable ways to upgrade your life so that you can workand livemore efficiently, such as: empty your e-mail inbox, search the Web in three keystrokes, securely save Web site passwords, automatically back up your files, and many more.
Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better Accessories
 Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)
Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain (Hacks)
One Year to an Organized Life: From Your Closets to Your Finances, the Week-by-Week Guide to Getting Completely Organized for Good
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life
Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook, 2nd Ed.
The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play
Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better Reviews
Very eye-opening. It taught me things about what Windows, Office, and Firefox can do that I would have had no idea about before - and I thought I was reasonably astute. It also points you in the direction of an enormous number of great downloads, websites, and other resources - most of them free or quite cheap. I have tagged several dozen ideas to implement when I get around to upgrading.
I'm currently running XP Pro and Office 2003 and it offers a lot of ideas for turbocharging those programs, but has even more ideas for Vista and Office 2007. You won't regret it. I've given this book as a gift a number of times and have always heard raves. I loved its predecessor, "Lifehacker", and love this one more.
This is an outstanding tool. I'll keep this review short and sweet: I love this book.
My one issue - at least a quarter of the book possibly more are tips that apply only to PCs. I would have like to be able to read through only relevant ones. While often there will be a separate entry for PCs (usually longer) and Macs, there are a good number of suggested tools/tricks that only apply to PCs. This book has some great tips as responses have noted.
Since buying the book I have changed my browser from IE and my e-mail from Yahoo to Thunderbird, as well as downloading some of the many freeware programs she recommends. What's good is that Gina has covered the recommendations down to the last detail, especially living your life with them. I would guess it's made me 50 percent more effective in the first week. Otherwise I have more programs that I know what to do with, but that's because there are so many of them.
So thank you Gina (and Terra) for bringing this book about. So if you're a person with any level of computer experience you will be using these programs and tips more or less from when you adopt them. I've had it for over a week and I look at it every day. Too many books on software run through the features with no recommendations as to where and how to use them. It's improved my life immensely, and often the time spent downloading has been paid back in minutes.
I can't think of anyone who wouldn't do marvels after reading this. I have plenty of experience in computers, so I can see the advantage of many of the tips. I stop short at some of the suggestions for advanced users, but that's because I don't want to change things for the sake of changing them. If there's one book that's provided me with value for money recently, this is it. The other reviews here do a fine job of telling you the content, so mine is a more personal review.
Still, it's good information to have around should you need it at a later time. Of course, when the second edition came out, I had to get that one too. Contents:. I wasn't quite into the Managing Multiple Computers as much, as my current setup doesn't call for that. Control Your Email; Organize Your Data; Trick Yourself into Getting Done; Clear Your Mind; Firewall Your Attention; Streamline Common Tasks; Automate Repetitive Tasks; Get Your Data To Go; Master The Web; Hone Your Computer Survival Skills; Manage Multiple Computers; Index. Well worth the time and money you spend here. After going through some of the Automate Repetitive Tasks hacks, I have started to look at a lot of things I do with a view towards eliminating the manual repetitive effort that I just accepted as necessary before. Then there were the hacks that opened your eyes to whole areas you didn't even know you needed.
Master The Web also had some cool tricks, like having multiple home pages in Firefox and using Google Notebook for web clippings. Let's call that finding AND scratching the itch you didn't know you had five minutes prior. Taking away even a small handful of nuggets can radically change the way you do things. As with most books that are a compilation of different tips, some will resonate strongly with your current needs, while others are skimming material that may not be relevant. Over the span of the chapters above, Trapani presents 116 different "hacks" that you can incorporate into your daily computer life to, well. I highly recommend this book to everyone who spends most of their waking hours in front of a computer, and/or earn their living in front of one. For instance, the hacks in the first chapter, Organize Your Data, hit home. Similar to scratching an itch that you couldn't quite reach.
And as with the first one, I have all sorts of post-it notes scattered throughout the book for reference and "go back and try this" notes. I'm working towards consolidating multiple email addresses with Gmail, and I'm cutting down the number of folders I have, relying on search to find what I need. I remember reading the first edition of Gina Trapani's Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better and thinking how wonderful it was. work smarter, faster, and better. I actually found a couple different things occurring as I read through the material. There were hacks where some software was presented that did a certain task, and I'd realize I've been looking for something just like that.
Upgrade Your Life is a great book. I've followed the blog for several years, but it's nice to have an analog version when you want to practice the best techniques available. Recommended for information or technology workers who need to get more productive to survive and/or avoid insanity.
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