Slice is designed primarily for people that shop online frequently, but can also act as a backup tool for those of you who aren't clicking the "buy" button quite so often. Check out some real-world scenarios below. If some of them sound familiar, Slice may be a good fit for you.

September 8, 2008 was an important date in the world of self-improvement writing. Yet almost no one knows this.

To understand what happened on this date we should return, briefly, to 2004 — the early days of blogging. It was then that a web programmer named Merlin Mann stumbled onto a powerful formula: blogging about becoming more productive. He called his site 43 Folders, a tribute to the tickler file from David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.

43 Folders’ timing was good. A new generation of tech-savvy knowledge workers needed help navigating a work environment defined by information overflow, and Mann offered them a tantalizing promise: with the right combination of high-tech productivity tools, you could find your way into a utopian state where work becomes effortless.

Often we think of having very little as a hardship.

It’s bad to be poor, right? It’s not easy struggling with low wages, with debt, with scarcity.

And while all that is true, it’s also not true.

There can be joy in getting rid of things, in living with less, in freeing yourself of debt and possessions. It’s all in your mindset.

I grew up poor, and it wasn’t long ago that I was struggling with an income that was too low to meet my mounting bills and debt payments. One of the worst times of my life, actually.

But as I worked to eliminate my debt, I learned to live with less. And I learned that it can be a wonderful thing.

Struggle is hard, no matter how you paint it. But living in scarcity doesn’t have to be struggle. That’s completely up to you.

While it's no epidemic, it's hard to argue that most of us have a little "too much stuff". Whether you've got a little or a lot more clutter than you'd like in your home, here's a start-to-finish look at how to streamline your Spring cleaning.
Getting rid of your stuff can be difficult. Things have value to you, whether you've formed a personal attachment to your stuff or you believe you'll have a practical use for it... someday. Most of the time, "personal value" means guilt and "someday" never comes.

We're not talking about going ultra-minimalist here, but rather making a concentrated effort to only keep the things in your life that you use and actually matter to you. To do this, we're first going to take a look at identifying the crap in your home, then how to get rid of it so you're not always just throwing it away, and finally discuss some methods for actually maintaining your crap-free lifestyle. Let's get to it.

Today I turn 38 years old.

I’ve been on this earth for nearly four decades. Being in a city like Paris, where there are buildings that measure their age by the millennia, helps put that brief blink of the eye into perspective. But still, it amazes me that I’ve been around that long — I feel like I’ve barely begun.

I’m not usually one to make a big deal about my birthday, but as always, it has given me an opportunity to reflect. I thought I’d share a handful of lessons I’ve learned — as a helpful guide for those just starting out.

I was watching “The Big C” on Showtime the other night, and one of the characters mentioned off-hand that it takes 28 days to break a bad habit. A quick Google search showed me that this wasn’t just a bit of silver screen writing, but a fairly well-accepted theory.

Some people argue it’s more like 21 days, or 30; still others say that it takes 30 days to create a pattern and 90 days to create a habit. Obviously, some habits are easier to break than others. For example, if you are both a smoker and a nail biter, it’s probably more feasible to break the nail biting habit in a month, but less reasonable to think that quitting cigs can get done in 30 days or less.

But how realistic is it to try and break any habit in 30 days? And where did this idea of habit-busting in under a month come from in the first place?

Excessive clutter is often a symptom and a cause of stress and can affect every facet of your life, from the time it takes you to do things to your finances and your overall enjoyment of life.  Clutter can distract you, weigh you down, and in general it invites chaos into your life.  Often times, however, tackling the clutter can seem an insurmountable task if you don’t know where or how to start.  By devoting a little of your time to getting rid of the clutter in your life and maintaining things relatively clutter-free , you’ll reap the rewards of pleasing living areas, reduced stress, and a more organized and productive existence.

The best way to tackle the decluttering of your home, your work space, and your life is to take things  one small step at a time.  Combined, small steps will lead to big improvements that will be easier to maintain over the long-run.

One of my biggest joys is writing about a technique for learning and then finding out that some of the smartest people on earth already use it to learn better.

The things you do when you're tired—like reaching for the fourth cup of coffee, the remote, the cupcake(s)—are almost never the things that'll get you untired. We've got a radical new idea: How about a real rest? Do you even know what that means?

You probably read this blog because you want to get more done each day. But do you want to become more productive so that you can maintain a better work-life balance, or so that you can fill up your newly freed hours with more work? Sometimes the importance of downtime gets relegated to the sidelines, and we forget that optimal productivity cannot occur without it.
You need to rest mind for it to work well on a long-term basis. Believe it or not, some of us need to schedule these rest periods and even lay down rules for what can and cannot be done during those times. I’m a classic case – if I didn’t follow my own advice, I’d work almost every minute I’m awake.

For today’s knowledge workers, every distraction is a drain on productivity and sanity. Every ringing phone, instant message, flashing email reminder, pile of papers, cluttered sticky notes and phone messages and knick knacks and memo posted on the wall — each of these things slows you down, wastes your time and energy, and stresses you out.
To achieve calm, and simple productivity, create a Zen-like working environment.
Imagine for a minute that your desk is completely clear, except your computer monitor, keyboard and mouse, your inbox and phone, and perhaps a framed photo of a loved one. Imagine the walls around you are free of visual clutter, except for a photo or painting or two of a serene nature scene.
You are able to focus, you can crank out your tasks, and you can lower your level of stress.

Given a task, there are essentially two ways we can approach it. Either, we can work as hard as we can until it is “done” or we can fix the amount of time we have available and do the “best” we can. The latter approach is known as “Time boxing“.

Like many of you I work from my home (at least for the most part during the year).

In this bonus I’d like to share eight of my own favorite tips that make it easier for me to get things done and handle challenges that can arise from a working from your home lifestyle.

While we're always using our brains, we're not necessarily doing much to keep them in good shape. Here are the top ten sites and tools to train your brain and exercise your mental muscles.

In the chaos of the modern world, there is a beauty in simply doing.
We’re buffeted wildly by whatever emails, conversations, news, events, demands, that are going on around us. Our minds become a constant deluge of thoughts dwelling in the past, worries of the future, distractions pulling us in every direction.
But all of that melts away when we focus on just doing.
It doesn’t matter what the doing is: sitting, walking, writing, reading, eating, washing, talking, snuggling, playing. By focusing on the doing, we drop our worries and anxieties, jealousies and anger, grieving and distraction.
There is something profound in that simplicity. Something ultimately heart-rendingly breath-takingly gorgeous.

How much of your day is spent doing administrative tasks, and not creating or doing other important work?
How much time do you spend responding to emails and IMs and social networks, making payments, doing paperwork, filing, sitting in meetings, driving, doing errands, and so on? How much of that could be cleared up for more important work?
Imagine this for a moment: you have no administrative tasks, only the core work that you love doing. Your day has been cleared for creating, building, doing high-impact projects. Isn’t it lovely?
Is this a pipe dream? Perhaps for some, who have little control over their work. But if you have a larger degree of control, let’s explore the idea of “frictionless work” or even “frictionless living”.
If you have little control, consider a change.

It’s become apparent that not everyone connects with, relates to or gains value from the traditional personal development language or paradigm. Or words like paradigm (for that matter). Many of my readers have shared with me that their partner (sister, brother, mother, father, boss) needs to hear these (types of) messages but they seem to have an aversion to anything that smells like ‘motivational speaker’. To be honest, I don’t blame them. Some motivational speakers are a little smelly.
So, here it is team: my no frills, twelve-step, personal development philosophy for people who hate self-help stuff and cheesy motivational types. In order to avoid boredom, confusion and distraction, I’ve kept it simple and succinct.

When it comes to the bedroom, there's little more important than creating a space where you can totally relax and unwind, end and begin the day. It’s a part of a healthy outlook (and helps with sanity, too). One way to ensure a good night’s sleep? Keep that bedside clean and organized with these five tips.

There’s a lot of talk about clutter these days–how to clear it, reduce it, and get it under control. Most of this is about what I call “shallow clutter,” which is clutter that stems from having too much stuff, unclear priorities, and a lack of systems for your things and your time.

Tips and tools that reduce shallow clutter are great, but my experience is that they only go so far in alleviating the sense of overwhelm and fragmentation that so many of us feel. That’s because most of us are carrying another kind of clutter, which I’ve come to call “deep clutter.” Deep clutter can be cleared too.

You’ve been offered a long-awaited promotion and pay rise in the company you’re working for and at the same time you spot an exciting opportunity to make a horizontal move into an industry you’ve always been curious and passionate about but never worked in before. All this happens just as you were thinking of finally handing in your notice and starting the business you’ve been talking and thinking about for years. And of course ditching traditional work and traveling the world for a few years is still always a compelling option …
Does this sound anything like your life?

As kids, we’re taught that sharing is good, and yet competition is what is really drilled into us. We compete for profits, positions in a corporation, status symbols, space.
We’re tearing each other down instead of building each other up.
A culture of sharing has always existed, from the earliest tribal times, and it’s seeing a resurgence on the Internet these days. This is a good thing.

You don’t need to be a monk to find solitude, nor do you need to be a hermit to enjoy it.
Solitude is a lost art in these days of ultra-connectedness, and while I don’t bemoan the beauty of this global community, I do think there’s a need to step back from it on a regular basis.
Some of my favorite activities include sitting in front of the ocean, still, contemplating … walking, alone with my thoughts … disconnecting and just writing … finding quiet with a good novel … taking a solitary bath.
Don’t get me wrong: I love being with loved ones, and walking with a friend or watching the sunset with my wife or reading a book with my child are also among my absolute favorite things in the world.
But solitude, in these days as much as ever, is an absolute necessity.

The inconvenient truth of entrepreneurship.

I have a confession to make, I’ve been working too hard.

The whole idea of working for myself was so I could have more time to live life, remember?

Well, over the last two weeks I got carried away with my entrepreneurship. I’ve been working over 40 hours a week on the blog and my next e-book. This is far too much time to be spending on my minimalist business.

Lately, I’ve been on a clutter-clearing frenzy. For me, as for most people, outer order contributes to inner calm, and sweeping away a bunch of unloved, unused stuff has given me a huge happiness boost.
As I sifted through our possessions, I identified nine questions to ask myself when I was confronted with a questionable object. This list helped me decide what to keep and what to toss, recycle, or give away.

There is never a moment at which you could do everything you’ve decided to to, simply because most of those actions require a specific tool or location. Context is also the first criterion that limits your options and keeps you from being reminded of things you simply can’t do.

Charles Dickens once wrote, "He did each single thing as if he did nothing else." Few quotes have captured the core of my personal philosophy so well, so succinctly.

The Earth is like an organism, with each person being akin to an individual cell. Within our bodies, cells exist for as long as they serve a purpose. Once that purpose is revoked, they die. (Science was never my strength, so hopefully this comparison doesn’t fall flat.)

People without a purpose meet the same fate. They may not literally die, but they sit on the sidelines, reserved from doing what they feel matters. But it’s a big ask though to “discover your purpose” or “find your passion” – I was often overwhelmed by those statements. I think it’s much more approachable, realistic, and comforting to simply focus on being useful.

There’s something so powerfully simple, profoundly beautiful, about the Dalai Lama’s quote: “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”

In our hurried world it’s easy to feel like you “should” be on the go constantly. Getting caught up in day to day activities and neglecting ourselves seems to be a common occurrence. Rather than relaxing you might be staying late at the office to finish a report, sending emails, or connecting with friends on various social networks.

Do you sometimes wonder whether your life is in balance? It is easy to know if you lead a balanced life because if you do then:
- you enjoy every moment and every second,
- you can cope with any difficulties,
- you can be happy without any reason to be happy,
- you can be yourself and love the person you are.

I’m a pretty positive person — I consider it one of the keys to the modest success I’ve had in creating new habits and achieving things in the last few years.

The beauty of an empty inbox is a thing to behold. It is calming, peaceful and wonderful.
An inbox that is overflowing with actions, urgent calls for responses, stuff to read … it’s chaos, it’s stressful, it’s overwhelming.

It’s a bias of our culture that stillness is regarded as lazy, as being stuck in inaction, as a negative.
It’s not. It’s an action, and a powerful one.
What’s more, it can change your day, and in doing so change your life.

Most people reading this will have a to-do program, or a paper list or text file, listing not only projects and tasks but separate lists for home and work and possibly half a dozen different contexts.
Those who don’t have a to-do list probably feel they should, because they’re swamped and feeling overwhelmed.
I’m here to suggest: kill your to-do list.

Some rules are there for (probably) good reason. Stop at the red light. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t be rude. Get a good education. Buy health insurance. Make sure you get everything in writing.

Other rules are more or less arbitrary. Do what the boss says. Work from 9 to 5. Buy a bigger house and a faster car. Follow the majority. Keep your silly ideas to yourself.

But no matter what kind of rule (useful or arbitrary) you break, you run the risk of getting hurt.

One of the big-picture questions you should always ask yourself is: “How is this making people better?” This, of course, refers to whatever you’re doing, making, selling, or sharing.

Eva and I and our six kids are moving in a couple months to San Francisco, from our tiny little island of Guam, and as with any move, it’s both nerve-wracking and exciting as hell.

The key to making it more exciting than anxiety inducing is, of course, preparation.

However, unlike most people who are uber-organized (I’m one of them), I’m not attacking our move with a variety of moving checklists and a crapload of things to do before we leave.

I’m moving the minimalist’s way: packing as light as possible, and doing as little as I can. It’s lovely.

The truth is that there are zombies. Millions of people are delaying their lives for the idea of security that’s been pumped into us by a modern society that wants us to comply.

Not long ago, my daily life was in really bad shape. I was sleeping anywhere between 3am to 6am on average, and on the really bad days I wouldn’t sleep at all. Because I slept late, I would wake up late. Subsequently, my day would start off late, which meant I was busy “playing catch-up” and being late for my appointments. My diet was horrendous – I was eating lots of junk food and snacks at night to stay awake. It got worse month after month, and I didn’t want to continue on. I needed to revamp my lifestyle!

“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.” ~Henry David Thoreau

In the modern age it’s so difficult to focus on the important.

What do you want from life? Many people struggle with this question. Maybe you do too? Life can get so busy that we don’t have time to really think about what we want out of life. And when we do find what we want, it can seem impossible to achieve it.

I usually have an idea of what I want to accomplish once I get home from work.

The inconvenient truth of entrepreneurship.

I have a confession to make, I’ve been working too hard.

The whole idea of working for myself was so I could have more time to live life, remember?

Well, over the last two weeks I got carried away with my entrepreneurship. I’ve been working over 40 hours a week on the blog and my next e-book. This is far too much time to be spending on my minimalist business.

At first glance, most of the tips listed below will seem familiar to you. They’re straightforward, simple ways to get better sleep. It’s okay if you’ve seen them before. The question is, have you actually put them into practice since the last time you saw them?

Yesterday morning I ran a few miles in my Vibram Fivefingers (more in a later post), designed to mimic barefoot running.
And then I took off the minimalist Fivefinger shoes, and ran completely barefoot for half a mile. It was liberating.
Later, I walked for a couple of hours, taking my sandals off for a good part of the walk. Today I walked barefoot once again. There’s a sensation to barefoot walking that is light, free, simple, joyful.
Imagine walking barefoot on thick grass, or cool night sand. These are wonderful sensations that shod walkers cannot enjoy.
Going barefoot, I realized, is a perfect metaphor for my philosophy of life: the barefoot philosophy.
When you go barefoot, you become naked, you simplify, you become a minimalist.

During my years as a corporate wage slave, breakfast was a meal I ate alone in my car. Bites snatched and barely chewed while I negotiated the frustrating traffic on my one hour commute.
Lunch tended to be an even more disappointing affair. While I did usually take something fresh from home. I didn’t give it justice. Scoffing my sandwich in front of my computer while I prepared for the next meeting, I often barely registered what I was taking into my body. No wonder I would finish the lot feeling empty and unsatisfied.
With my new schedule I was committed to making a change. No more meals behind the wheel or a screen, I was determined to start practicing the art of mindful eating.

Thursday was birthday number 37 and while I’d like to say I spent the day drinking it up like it was St. Patrick’s Day Part Deux (except I didn’t really drink on St. Patrick’s Day Part Une either, but let’s pretend), I really spent most of the day holed up in Spot Coffee shop in downtown Buffalo enjoying a variety of caffeinated beverages, a delicious chicken foccacia sandwich, and pounded out five thousand words on an eBook I’ll be releasing at the beginning of April about the lessons learned while paying down $36,536 of debt in one year.

I’m writing this from the bloggers’ lounge at SXSWi 2010. It’s my first time attending this brilliant madhouse of a conference, and I’ve quickly discovered that the heart of SXSW is meeting people. There are good panels, free food, free t-shirts, lots of giveaways … but more than anything else, this is about seeing people, saying hi, and making new friends.

But as I’ve written before, I’m a natural introvert. Making connections in a conference crowd is not my forte. Does that describe you too?

A brief discussion first: what is entertainment, and why do we need it?

The word ‘effortless’ says so much to me; bringing with it a sense of calm and peacefulness without the negative stigma of words like ‘lazy’ or even ‘relaxed’ which can be seen as self-indulgent.

The title is taken from a line my Father said to me once in discussing my Grandmother, who thought anything worth having was worth having five of. I have remembered it ever since. I remember it every time I see a tremendous deal that seems just too good to pass up. A sweater on super cheap clearance (us Minnesotans can never have too many, right?). A printer that is practically free after rebate (I can always give it to someone else as a gift, right?

A few days ago I started reading the Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard. I haven’t finished the book yet, but so far it rocks. The book prompted me to think about why I write and why simple living is important.

I write to help others, to constantly reevaluate my own beliefs and to be part of a community. I started this blog as a personal journal and to rethink my world view. My goal is to create social change through simple living. A social movement of people who are living simple, authentic and uncluttered lives.

simplicity brings balance, freedom, and joy. when we begin to live simply and experience these benefits, we begin to ask the next question, “where else in my life can i remove distraction and simply focus on the essential?”

Here are 10 more uncluttering things you can do each day.

We typically think of happiness as “in the moment.” We search for simple things that make us happy right now. A hug. A beautiful day. A fat paycheck. A compliment.

Some people are content to live their lives in three places 95% of the time.

They valiantly wake up every morning, put on clothes, and walk the five steps to their car.

They fire it up and drive to work, where they spend twelve hours checking Facebook and doing what they’re told.

Then they go home, exhausted.

Are you exhausted, annoyed, and ready to throw in the towel on something that once made you leap out of bed with joy every morning? I know that feeling well. It’s one I suffered from often in the past and still encounter occasionally. It typically signals an impending burnout.

Last week my company received only 27 emails. It was pretty much the same amount the week before and before. A year ago though it would have been hundreds.
But no, we’re not dead quiet now and we’re not going bust. In fact we’re super busy. We’re booked up solid till the end of April and still get more and more inquiries. But we hardly get any emails. Weird?

He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities. – Benjamin Franklin

I don’t often write reviews of ebooks, but a handful of them have come out in the last couple weeks that I just can’t ignore — I really think they’ll be of interest to Zen Habits readers who are interested in getting out of debt, in minimalism, or in reducing dependence on cars.

On this site, I embrace a 400-word limit (unless it doesn’t make sense). It forces me to be concise, to focus on smaller topics, to choose the important, to be creative.

Quieting the mind to focus on the important can be difficult. It’s so easy to get caught up in what we “should be” doing, rather than focusing on what brings us joy and happiness.

I’ve been free of email and twitter updates on my phone for the last few months and haven’t missed it. Why did I do this? To save money, focus on my art and end my email addiction.

Awhile back I (a bit ironically perhaps) tweeted this message:
Consider what you give your attention to each day. It’s a precious resource, & determines the shape of your life.
This seemed to strike a chord with many people, who I think are feeling overwhelmed these days. Our attention is being pulled in too many directions, leaving us feeling overloaded, distracted, chaotic, spread thinly, without focus.

If you caught me a year ago and asked me whether I could have left my job, started a very small business, and would be earning enough passive income to live in New York City in only one year’s time, I would have told you that you were crazy.

And yet, here I am, doing all of those things.

Now that I’ve learned to look at things with the lens of simplicity, I can see others making mistakes I’ve made in the past.

I want to gently say to them — and to my past self — “Stop making things so complicated!”

You probably don’t need me to tell you that there’s a global recession at the moment. People all over the world are feeling the pinch and the travel industry is suffering because we all have less money to spend these days on luxuries like travel.
But not being able to afford it doesn’t stop people from wanting to travel. Apart from general happiness, I think dreaming of travel, visiting new places and seeing new things is probably one of the most universal life goals.

There’s a famous Zen story that goes:

A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.”
Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?
The monk replied, “I have eaten.”
Joshu said, “Then you had better wash your bowl.”
At that moment the monk was enlightened.

I’m not going to try to explain that story, as I am far from enlightened enough to understand it. Instead, I’d like to focus the wonderful simplicity of that advice:

Have you eaten your rice porridge? Then you had better wash your bowl.

The idea that time is your most valuable commodity is not new, but it is often overlooked. I’ve done a lot of research on the importance of focusing your attention in the last year.

I am not witty or interesting; I wont pretend to have anything profound to say. I am 26, female, divorced and spent most of my life feeling empty and hopeless. This may not help anyone, but these realizations helped me find my happiness. The points are in bold.

zen_habits: on mnmlist: wash your bowl http://bit.ly/9GobzT

Nothing you do in your lifetime will matter.
Think about that for a second.

We all have days when we’re just not very inspired, when we need passion and creativity breathed into us.
I know I do.
For anyone who needs a little shove, whose creativity has dried up, who needs to be moved … I humbly offer this simple guide.

Here are 4 tips you can put into practice this month so you can look at your spending and be happy knowing that it wasn’t crazed with lustful purchases.

It occurred to me yesterday, as I was doing the laundry (slowly, without rush, because I didn’t have to be anywhere), why minimalism is becoming so popular:

Minimalism is the ultimate lifehack.

The time has come to reject expensive consumer and prosumer software that hinders the extensibility of digital discourse and limits digital production literacy to programs and file formats that are destined for disruptive upgrades or obsolescence.