5 life lessons you can learn from emptying your inbox

This entry is part [part not set] of 11 in the series 7 Days to Inbox Zero

You’ve probably got a handful of e-mails that are still in your inbox because you are, on some level, avoiding them. These e-mails, more than anything else, illuminate your core personal or professional blocks. Forcing yourself through them — the way you have to in order to empty your inbox — is not just a path to e-mail efficiency, but a very meaningful exercise in character-building. Here are some of the lessons that may lie waiting in your inbox.

The 5 questions to ask about online distraction

Whether you’re worried about the Internet’s impact on your attention span, or tired of hearing about how life online is driving us to distraction, these 5 questions will help you think more deeply about online distraction.

7 practices to strengthen your online presence

This entry is part [part not set] of 6 in the series 10 reasons to stop apologizing for your online life

True online presence offers opportunities for authentic experience, connection and discovery; opportunities for joy and fulfillment. Practices like meditation, yoga and day-to-day mindfulness help cultivate the capacity for offline presence, so that we live our lives more fully. Now that we live so much of our lives online, we need similar practices for our networked time so that we can integrate our online moments into a meaningful life rather than experiencing them as moments deducted from our “real” lives. Here are some practices that foster online presence.

5 ways to get authentically naked

What’s the line between authenticity and over-disclosure? This post offers 5 ways you can keep track of the boundary between sharing and over-sharing.

6 Ways to Get Wired and Inspired

We tend to think of setting goals and seeking inspiration as highly personal. But achieving our goals is not always a solitary pursuit: The encouragement and resources of a larger community can help us do something we couldn’t do alone. Your computer can support both sides of this equation.

Kill your tech truths

We’re taught to think of technologies as constants…and so we fall into thinking of tech in absolutes, and getting attached to truths that hold us back more than they help us. Here are 10 tech truths you would do well to question.

5 ways to shape the soul of the Internet

We can direct the Internet’s flow towards our most craven instincts (spam, porn, gambling) or towards our vision of what the world can be like (online volunteering, e-giving, digital art). Just as the soul of money, or the role of money in the world, is the product of individual decisions as well as systemic forces, the soul of the Internet can be shaped by how we individually engage with the online sphere.