To-Done, 'life hacking', and blogs that save you the time to read them

I've been having multiple conversations lately about blogs that save you the time to read them.

I think in some ways this is do to the hubbub around Make Magazine, and the increased talk of 'life hacking'. What I'm beginning to notice though is it's not just productivity applications. Many times it can be experiences that can whisk us away to unique and beautiful places.

You might consider these alternative time savers to be mini-vacations for the mind, and boingboing.net is one of them. When you're crunching some code, or writing, or researching or even keeping up on the news these blogs can be very important to keeping sharp and alert. Often times when we're really straining or brain on a problem of a certain sort it can actually be very helpful to back up a step and forget about it for a bit. Blogs seem to fit this roll infinitely better than traditional media.

Think of it as a jumping-jack, a coffee break. MUCH better than a cigarette break, but for the mind, these sites get the endorphins flowing and the brain thinking. They surprise the brain with pleasant impulses it's may well be deprived of. They stimulate creative thinking, they create connections that get the synapses firing. My friend Devon would call it neurolinguistic programing. Others simply self-diagnosis.

For some this might be a blog on obscure fun news bits like boingboing.net, for some it might be juicy mac tidbits like Think Secrete, for others it might a gadget blog like Engadget, or a design blog like MocoLoco.

These seemingly anti-productivity blogs are actually very productive. They differ greatly from the blogs we read for news or information to the degree that they allow us to escape a troubling stimuli and problems and stimulate unconventional thinking.

But today, the thing I found refreshingly stimulating was a blog that open my eyes to the surpassingly fun world of personal productivity, To-Done.com. I hope you like it.