This post was written for Organize IT by Mike King who is the author of Learn This, a productivity blog for passionately learning career, leadership and life improvement tips. He’s written many articles about finding your passion in life, goal setting and many other ideas around learning to have a better and more positive life. You can subscribe to his RSS feed to read more of his articles.

There is a lot of value in making change in life and so learning to do things differently is worthwhile for improving your own life and the life of others around you. Habits make up a good portion of our behavior and so there are many things we do that become habitual and there is a lot of value in learning to change some of those habits and overcome the bad ones. These are my tips and methods to do that.

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This post was written for Organize IT by Tage Aaker. You can check out his blog, Glimmerick, where he writes about pertinent topics such as productivity, organization, finances and personal development. Check out top posts such as Ten Valuable Productivity Tips and Practicing Humility Continually.

Many times, when people think of listening they don’t equate it with an arduous task. I would say that most people simplify the process down too much, and miss many of the important facets of tuning into your counterpart. In fact, to become a good listener, it takes a lot of hard work, patience and attentiveness. Below are my nine tips to achieve that. These aren’t the answers to becoming the best listener, but practicing these ideas will help you communicate with others on a day to day basis. Feel free to add to the list, or bring up counter points. I’m open to anything.

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When it comes to planning out your life there are two approaches. You either plan from the top down (start with where you want to be and plan how you’re going to get there) or plan from the bottom up (start with what you’re doing now and plan how you going to get to where you want to be). Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages but is there another way?

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The GTD vertical map (or horizon of focus) has always stood out like a sore thumb. It’s a neat idea and can certainly offer a lot of value to people, but in a book that focuses so much on the here-and-now, it just feels tagged on with too little detail on it. I decided it was about time it was really addressed but as I thought about it and tried to really implement it, something occurred to me. It actually kinda sucks.

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We all know the importance of keeping promises to people. Keeping promises leads to trust which is one of the bedrocks of any good relationship, whether it be with friends, work colleagues or your partner. However there is one element of keeping promises that gets overlooked - keeping promises to yourself.

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