The Contigo Autoseal didn't just win our Kinja Co-Op for best Travel Mug; it completely dominated the voting. If you still haven't picked one up, you're in luck today.

As part of their daily Gold Box deal, Amazon has 16 oz. West Loop mugs for just $14, and 20 oz. models for $16, both of which represent all-time low prices. Even if you already own one, this is a great gift idea for anyone still on your shopping list, so be sure to stock up before they sell out. If you're getting it for a tea lover, be sure to pick up the tea infuser accessory as well. [Amazon]

Bonus: If you really want to treat yourself, the Gold Box contains a couple of espresso machines as well:

• Breville 800ESXL 15-Bar Triple-Priming Die-Cast Espresso Machine ($210) | Amazon | Today only
• Nespresso Citiz C111 Espresso Maker ($144) | Amazon | Today only
  

Need more coffee gear gift ideas? Be sure to check out our guide to the stuff that's worth your money.

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Clutter is tough to manage, but a simple solution like this shoebox wall looks great and puts things in their place. Much like museums, using similar boxes for similar items makes them easy to store without looking terrible.

Shoeboxes can be great, cheap, solutions to fit stuff like cords and miscellaneous items that don't fit in folders. In her book The Creative Habit, choreographer Twyla Tharp described her creative process and how when conceiving ideas for a new show, all the inspirational source material goes into a big box. Designer Dave Seah, stumped on how he could organize and compartmentalize his projects, ran with the idea and realized he could organize his clutter like that as well.

In order to keep a consistent look, you could order parcel boxes in large batches (Seah used dozens of these ones). This will help you organize your stuff neatly in an easy-to-access system.

Project Shoebox: Making a Physical Filing System | Dave Seah

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You may think you were done taking notes after school, but taking notes at work can really boost your productivity. Not only can you prevent having to follow-up later on the same topics with your boss, but it can even be a great source for others who are less prepared.

Kate Stull at The Muse explains in more detail:

On the flip side, taking notes is an incredible way to show respect to people. It shows you're listening and that you think what they are saying is important. Your notes serve as your guide to doing your job better, too; you can easily refer to the important information you need to succeed whenever you need it, without delay.

I've found that taking simple notes during meetings can be invaluable, especially if you jot down action items for yourself and others. Once you do that, it makes following up easier. If you opt for handwritten notes, convert them to digital for easy access later. For more details on when you should take notes at work, and how to find the right note taking style for you, read the full guide linked below.

The Most Important Thing You're Not Doing at Work (and How to Get Started) | The Muse

Image from rhodesj.

Coding isn't for everyone, but there are plenty of other tech and even development jobs that don't require you to be an actual developer. If you love technology, but aren't sure programming is right for you, explore some of these options too.

There's much more to developing, launching, and maintaining software than just writing lines of code. MakeUseOf compiled a short list of tech jobs that work very close with developers to create applications and websites, but don't require a programming background. To name a couple:

• Project Managers, who delegate the tasks and focus on tending to the developers needs. Project managers keep the development process organized and on track.
• UI/UX Specialists, who are responsible for ensuring the app interface is as intuitive as possible and providing the best user experience.

There are plenty of other jobs too, from technical writing to marketing to graphic design, that all have a huge impact on the development and success of an application. Hit the link below to see the full list and details.

Coding Isn't For Everyone: 7 Tech Jobs You Can Get Without It | MakeUseOf

Photo by Marco Nuñez.

When you're deciding to start your own business, where you live and the rules governing small businesses is one important consideration. Some states and cities are friendlier than others towards small business owners.

For the third year in a row, Thumbtack and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation asked small business owners (nearly 13,000 across the country) what their states' entrepreneur environment is like. How easy is it to start a business, hire employees, follow the tax code, and so on? You can filter by these individual factors on the interactive map of the results, but, overall, business owners in Utah, Idaho, Texas, Virginia, and Louisiana rated their states highest for small business friendliness.

The three most important factors that determined how entrepreneurs viewed his or her location? Professional licensing requirements (at the local, county, state, and/or federal level), tax laws that are easy to follow, and the training and networking programs offered by government agencies for entrepreneurs.

View the full results below or dig in deeper into the methodology behind the survey (PDF).

United States Small Business Friendliness | Thumbtack

Homemade muffins and cupcakes are usually a far cry from professionally baked ones, coming out flatter and more compact. If you really care about that domed, picture-perfect top, though, Food52 offers a few tricks.

Consulting expert baker Zoe Nathan, the Food52 folks tested a few different approaches, from adding more flour (increasing from 1 1/4 cups to 1 2/3 cups), starting at a higher temperature, using the oven's convention setting, and leaving the original chocolate chunk muffins recipe as is.

The extra flour muffin was the only one that came out rounded. However, it also ended up tasting more flour-y and dryer, more like a purchased muffin than homemade. Despite the sinking of the muffin in the original recipe, however, staff preferred that version.

A floury muffin taste might not be worth the mounded look, but if you want to try it, Food52 suggests going with lighter and airier recipes (without heavy add-ins) and making the batter as light as possible by using a folding motion.

Check out their post for even more tips and details.

How to Make Domed Muffins | Food52

Decluttering and making money go hand in hand, as long as you find the right place to sell your stuff. Last week we asked you for your favorite sites to make a profit off of your used belongings, then looked at the five best sites to sell your stuff. Now it's time to crown the community favorite.

Predictably, you guys preferred the site that gave you the most control over who you sold to, when, where, and how much you made from the sale—even if it also came with issues ad drawbacks like the potential for scams, lowball offers, or less-than-normal people showing up to try and buy your stuff from you. That's right, Craigslist took the top spot with close to 42% of the overall vote.

Hot on its heels though was eBay, still riding high and bringing in just shy of 32% of the votes cast. Desite its issues with payment processor PayPal, its buyer-centric policies (that led many of you to call it out for rampant abuse and scam buyers that can leave sellers without both item and money), it's still a wildly popular place to sell you stuff, with a global reach and tons of users and potential buyers for all sorts of things. In third place with close to 14% of the vote was Amazon, which offers a great seller program that makes it easy to get rid of your stuff—from direct buybacks to easy listings next to new versions of the stuff you're selling, but many of you hit them for their fees. In fourth place with close to 6% of the votes cast was Facebook, with many of you noting that your local Facebook buy and sell groups are a great—and underrated way to sell things in your community. Bringing up the rear is tablet-and-smartphone-centric service Swappa, which brought in over 3% of the overall vote.

For more on each of these and the honorable mentions not listed here, make sure to head back to the full hive five feature to read more.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email attips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!

Daily routines help many of us stay productive and balance work with our personal lives. While the perfect routine will differ for every individual (as they have for even the most famous creative people), you can design your ideal day with these tips from Comfort Pit's Jon Brooks.

Brooks offers a great guide on planning out the activities you want to do every day, from tracking your time and sorting activities by how meaningful they are to your life to creating daily rituals based around four categories of activities:

In the creation of our perfect daily routine we need to find rituals and systematically employ them to best suit their context. Watching television or playing a video game all day is obviously unproductive. But as a ritualised recovery or a reward, such pastimes can improve productivity.

Everyone will have different meanings for different activities but as a general rule of thumb, all activities fall into four categories: biological needs, meaning, rewards, and happiness boosters.

Basically, the first layer is biological needs, so you'll schedule sleeping, showering, exercise, and eating first. You then layer in meaningful (but optional) concrete activities like working, studying, and creating art—and then—this is the important part—tie rewards such as watching TV or web browsing to those meaningful activities. For every three hours of work or studying, for example, you reward yourself right after with one hour of a pleasurable activity. This reinforces your daily good habits.

Finally, happiness boosters are things outside of your daily routine that should still be part of your weekly routine—like visiting friends or going to the movies.

Every day won't be exactly the same because life won't let that happen, but you can structure your days and keep tweaking while focusing on these important areas.

Designing the Perfect Daily Routine | Comfort Pit

Photo by kayakaya.

If you want to have a group YouTube party using your Chromecast, you usually need to get everyone on the same Wi-Fi network, but a recent update to the Chromecast Android app lets anyone cast to the Chromecast as long as they're in the same room.

Basically, once you enable the setting on the Android Chromecast app, devices can pair with the Chromecast. From there, anyone can cast to your TV as long as they're nearby. The update's rolling out to devices today.

Chromecast, now with guest mode | Google Chrome Blog

iPhone: Checkmark 2 has long been our favorite alternative to Apple's Reminders, and today it gets a couple of handy new features with a Notification Center Widget and interactive notifications.

The big new feature here is the iOS 8 widget. From Notification Center you can see what tasks are due today. Likewise, you can now interact with notifications from the lock screen. Just swipe left to mark reminders as complete. Perhaps more importantly, Checkmark's on sale for $2.99 right now, which is much more affordable than it's typical $9.99 price tag.

Checkmark 2 ($2.99/$9.99) | iTunes App Store

Falling asleep and waking up to the radio is great, and while there are plenty of devices out there with sleep timers, Instructables user univership shows off how you can build your own with a Raspberry Pi.

The setup here is pretty simple. The Raspberry Pi queries a Google spreadsheet that has wake up and sleep times along with the play time. When it's time to start playing, it does. You can also turn the radio on with a button and change the volume with a little knob.

Raspdio | Instructables

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A dozen great ideas are useless if you can't follow them through. Even with endless ambition, having too many goals can pull you in too many directions, making it difficult to actually finish anything. Instead, you need to choose a small number of goals and focus your attention.

Our brains behave like a beach ball filled with bees. Hundreds of conflicting impulses, pushing us in different directions.

People never want to do one thing. We want to do all the things. We simultaneously want to exercise and to learn Spanish and to go out for pizza. Our desires are countless, independent agents, working to nudge our beachball in their own selfish direction.

And so usually, that ball is going nowhere. It's controlled more by the terrain than by the will of what's inside it.

This is how most people live their lives. We feel endlessly conflicted. We never have enough time. And what happens to us is stronger than our ability to combat it.

Let's fix that.

The Curse of the 'Great Idea'

Imagine if 20 years ago you were a genius who had the idea of starting up Google, and Amazon, and Facebook. You just invented three of the best business ideas of the last century, and if you had started any one of them you could now be worth billions. But if you were determined to do all three simultaneously, you'd be absolutely nowhere.

It's not enough to have great ideas. Lots of people have great ideas. The problem is that too many great ideas cancel each other out.

This is why a committee of smart people is called an "idiot." Leadership doesn't always work in volume. The more directions you're being pulled in, the less distance you'll travel.

How People Achieve the Impossible

Imagine an insanely ambitious goal for yourself. Say you want to write a book, or land on Mars.

If you absolutely had to do that—if your life and the lives of everybody you cared about depended upon it—how would you? How could you?

You'd simply drop everything else. You'd become one giant bumblebee, pushing in one direction, and you'd move very, very quickly:

Monomaniacal focus on a single goal is perhaps the ultimate success stratagem. It's a pattern found in everyone from Edison to Einstein. When you're able to focus on a single goal, constantly, your achievements reach their theoretical limit:

Most people aren't failing because of their potential. They're failing because their potential is spread in too many directions.

How to Tame the Swarm

You will always want to attempt more than you can achieve.

Unfortunately pulling yourself in too many directions is the single quickest way to ensure failure. And putting your all into a single direction is the quickest way to ensure success.

So try this:

1. Aim higher. If your ambitions are small, they're easily overpowered. Big goals are paradoxically more likely to stick because they're worth ignoring smaller goals for.
2. Limit to three. Keep up to three lists for different parts of your life—say "work," "home," and "weekend." Each list only gets one objective. If you absolutely must have more, just know that each addition quarters the odds of that area succeeding.
3. Put it off. Anything which isn't top priority now can be done optimally later. Mark Zuckerberg was smart to start Facebook first and then learn Chinese. Your goals are the same, you're just usually too attached to them in the moment to notice.
4. Beware your idle wants. Watch out for "other things that you also want." They will feel comforting, harmless, and automatic. They are deadly. One new direction will quarter what you can accomplish.
5. Line up your bumblebees. You may not be able to create the next Google, cure cancer, and land on Mars at the same time. But you might be able to simultaneously become, say, a successful and athletic CEO. Success and fitness can be complementary goals: a healthier person can be a better leader. They're like two bumblebees, pushing in the same direction, and stronger for it.

The few people who have achieved the most staggering, world changing things with their lives didn't do so by dividing their intentions. They aimed high, got their bumblebees in line, and said no to all the other opportunities that life presented them.

If you want the power to follow your dreams, you have to say no to all the alternatives. It's not easy, but if that's for you, at least you know the price.

If you want to follow your dreams, you have to say no to all the alternatives | Oliver Emberton

Oliver Emberton is an entrepreneur, writer, programmer and artist who writes about life and how to make the most of it.

Title image by BoBaa22 (Shutterstock).

Want to see your work on Lifehacker? Email Andy.

When you encounter a failure, you want to learn how it happened so you can prevent it in the future. Just like a crime, investigating the suspects can help you find the flaw in your system.

Everyone approaches problems differently, so while learning from others' mistakes can be helpful, it's important you focus on yourself. Guy Winch at Psychology Today suggests approaching your failures with the mind of a detective. First investigate the likely suspects, like poor planning, inadequate preparation, and weak execution. Comb through each crime scene and, as Winch explains, note everything down:

...make a list of items and issues you need to pay careful attention to in the future. Don't assume you'll remember them and don't assume you'll catch them just because you see them now—blind spots are just that—blind spots. Use your list whenever you pursue goals/tasks so you can compensate for your 'usual suspects', catch mistakes as soon as they appear, and correct them immediately. Creating an accurate and honest list of your most common errors and figuring out how to prevent them will make you close to failure proof.

Failure isn't always easy to deal with, but if you grab your magnifying glass and investigate your failure thoroughly, you'll find the real causes. Don't rule anything out as a suspect and get to the bottom of your own failure mystery. Read more at the link below.

Why You Should Investigate Your Failures Like a Detective | Psychology Today

Photo by Eddi.

Truly awful events in our lives have a tendency to leave their mark. You might feel better as time goes on, but there's still a chance you'll be hanging on to some traumatic experiences after time has closed the wound. Writing about these events gives you a chance to properly digest how you feel about things so you can move forward.

Talking about your experience with someone you trust is helpful when you've gone through difficult events, but Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries at Harvard Business Review explains that writing does something no other form of communication can:

This doesn't mean, however, that just talking about painful experiences will necessarily help you get better. Healing depends on your interpretation of what happened, which is where the process of writing up the experience rather than only talking about it can be of great additional value. The combination of reflective writing and talking about certain key experiences creates a powerful force to help us surmount difficulties and can hasten our capacity to come to terms with (or to digest) events and move on.

Writing, along with talking about the event in question, can help you ultimately see how you feel and what you've processed. The same way journaling allows you to take an inventory of your day, this can give you an inventory of how you see the past. Keep in mind, however, that writing about traumatic events can trigger some distress, so it might not be an ideal option right after the event has occurred. So, if you think you're ready to move forward, spend a little time writing about what happened. You may be able to move past leftover feelings of anger, sadness, or fear in the process.

To Get Over Something, Write About It | Harvard Business Review

Photo by Alan Levine.

As we get older, parties become gatherings where your behavior may determine whether you get invited again. Bringing something to the party that's a hassle to cook, set up, or serve is a no-no.

Parties are meant to be fun, but sometimes people forget showing some of the most common courtesies to their host. Nancy Mitchell at Apartment Therapy suggests that bring something to a party is courteous, as long as it doesn't require extra work for the host:

If you're bringing something to the party, good on you. But don't bring something that will require a ton of prep space or kitchen time on the party end. Chances are your host has been cooking all day and counter space in the kitchen is at a premium. If you're in there chopping things and looking for bowls and knives and whatnot, things can get chaotic.

It all boils down to the golden rule: how would you want your guests to act at your party? You can read more great party guest tips at the link below.

Dos and Don'ts: 7 Ways to Be the Perfect Party Guest | Apartment Therapy

Photo by JD Hancock.

Ask any Windows Phone user and they'll tell you that square tiles are a great way to launch apps. But have you ever considered how much better they'd be at a 45 degree angle? Yes, today's home screen is just that wacky.

This design comes courtesy of My Color Screen user Veroake@XDA. To get it on Themer, download the .zip file here, then follow these instructions:

1. Move the .zip to sdcard0 > MyColorScreen > Themer > Exported > zip (Your initial location may vary.)
2. Open Themer and browse for themes.
3. Under "My Themes" select "Exported."
4. Choose "Mosaic Tiles.zip

Do you have an awesome, tweaked-into-oblivion home or lock screen of your own that you'd like to share? Post it in the comments below, or on your own Kinja blog with the tag "home screen showcase" (no quotes). Be sure to include a description of how you made it so we can feature it as the next featured home screen.

Mosaic Tiles | My Color Screen

Every week, we highlight interesting workspaces as well as what's in others' everyday carry bags. Here are the most popular featured bag and featured workspace posts of the year.

The Always-Ready Go Bag

"Always be prepared," the motto of the boy scouts, isn't a bad one to live by. You may not need a backup battery most days, or multiple USB flash drives, but they don't take up much space and, when needed, they're indispensable. Reader Brian Geraghty assembled a go bag with a GRID-IT stuffed full with preparation.

The CIA Escape and Evasion Survival Bag

CIA agents to be prepared for everything and sometimes that means surviving on limited resources. Their survival kit is tiny, but includes everything needed to get out of town and live for a while.

The System Admin's Everyday Bag

Being a systems administrator and programmer means you need to be prepared for just about anything on a whim. Reader Scott Buffington shares his bag with us, which includes everything he needs to do his job (and live his life) all in one place.

The Minimalist IT Everyday Bag

Just because you're in IT doesn't mean you have to have a ton of gadgets with you all the time. In fact, for reader Nicholas Moore, the less junk the better.

The Non-traditional Student's Bag

Reader MATT DB is a non-traditional student studying music, foregoing the backpack in favor of a leather messenger to keep his important goods nearby.

The System Administrator's Organized Backpack

System administrator's have one of those jobs where they need to be prepared for a wide variety of problems every day. Reader Chris Collins shares his nicely organized bag that helps him do just that.

The PhD Student's Bag

Being a student is tough enough as it is and when you're getting your PhD, you require a whole different set of tools. Case in point, PhD student, Samuel shares his bag over on Everyday Carry.

The Gadget Lovers Go Bag

Sometimes we love to see bags that pare down to just the essentials, but oftentimes, it's fun to see one that goes all in. Everday Carry spotlights one such bag from Simon, a self-described "collaborator, gadgeteer, and outdoors lover."

The Lean Engineer's Go Bag

As a lean engineer on the go, Mechanic Matt needs to fit a lot of stuff in one bag for his factory visits. He fits everything he needs for the work week into a single backpack—and it's more than you'd expect.

The Short Notice Travel Bag

The Underground Secret Battlestation Workspace

Need to get away from your five kids to get some work done (or read some comic books)? Imgur user vannatter knows the feeling, so he crafted this over-the-top amazing office in his basement for just that.

The Picture-Perfect, Apple App Developers' Workspace

Today's featured workspace is meticulously designed, elegant in its gray, white, and red color scheme, and incredibly slick—just like a great iOS or Mac app. It's the home office of Mark Jardine, who runs Tapbots (the company behind Tweetbot) with his business partner Paul Haddard.

Linus Torvalds' Home Office (with Walking Desk and 3D Printer)

Let's take a tour of Linux creator Linus Torvalds' home office. Unlike other photo-perfect workspaces we've seen before, this looks like an often-used, practical home office any geek could see inhabiting.

The Neat, "Crow's Nest" Workspace

Today's featured workspace is a fun-filled space. Despite all the eye candy, it's so finely organized, fellow neat freaks will likely be impressed.

The Custom Mac Pro Workspace

Today's featured workspace is a minimalist home office with one quirky feature: a carved spot on the walnut desk for the cylindrical Mac Pro computer.

The Minimalist Loft Workspace

If you're a fan of the "less is more" approach to interior design, you might appreciate this minimalist workspace setup.

The Designer and Drummer's Rocking Workspace

Dark home offices don't appeal to everyone, but if you're building a man cave for both music and work, this is an inspiring setup.

The Floating Shelves Workspace

An adjustable shelving system can really transform the way a room looks, making it look quite open and modern with the flexible positioning of the shelves. Today's featured workspace has a Mondrian-like arrangement to the shelves and looks like a bright and colorful place to get things done

The Inspiring Eye Level Workspace

Reader Bobby Kane makes good use of monitor stands to keep everything at eye level, and hide away unsightly speakers in his small but homey workspace.

The Inspirational Workspace

Hang up some motivational posters and you're not only decorating your office, you're also encouraging yourself to be more productive every time you're in that space. Hand lettering artist Sean McCabe's workspace is a testimony to the power of words and design.

So there you have it. It's always interesting to look at other people's setups. If you're looking for more inspiration, check out the most popular featured workspaces of 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009. (This is our first roundup for featured bags.)

Also, don't forget you can show off your own bag on our Lifehacker Go Bag Show and Tell Flickr pool and your workspace on our Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Flickr pool.

Some of us watch a lot of TV. We may read more articles than we need to (the irony is not lost on me here). We go on Twitter to kill our boredom. By consuming information more carefully and treating it like food for our minds (which it is), we can do it in a way that actually works without completely cutting it out of our lives.

Create A Separate Account (or Use A Separate Device) for Consuming Information

We get distracted much more easily while still managing to feel productive because we use the same devices for work and play. In order to draw a clearer line between these activities, author and marketer Seth Godin suggests using different devices for work (e.g., a laptop) and play (e.g., an iPad).

For those who don't have a second device, Guiding Tech founder Abhijeet Mukherjee suggests creating different user profiles on your computer - one for work and one for play. On your work profile, you can block distracting websites. If you use your phone for both work and play, here's how you can remove distractions for iOS and Android devices.

Similarly, you can keep your work inbox as clear as possible by creating a separate email address for subscribing to email newsletters and updates. You may also want to organize these newsletters by automatically labelling incoming mail. Creating distance between all this information means you don't tempt yourself into unintended binges.

Information Sets the Stage for What You're About to Do

Vegetables may make you feel light, whereas a heavy beef roast may put you into a food coma. A cup of coffee may wake you up. A glass of wine may relax you. Much like food and drink, the information and media we consume affects the way that we feel after we consume it.

For example, if you want to get excited about your afternoon's work, it may be more helpful to listen to an inspiring talk or an interview with one of your heroes rather than catch up on the news. If you're about to go to bed and want to minimize the amount of time you spend tossing and turning, make sure the media you're consuming relaxes you.

Similar to how coffee can wake one person up and put another to sleep, the same information can have different effects on different people. Although one person may find comedies very relaxing, someone else may find them exciting and stimulating. Observe how you feel after consuming certain media, and sequence it appropriately for the activity. For example, if you're at work and feeling drowsy, try switching from the podcast to upbeat, exciting, music.

Ask Yourself What You Want Out of This Information

Social media makes it extremely easy for you to impulsively click on articles. Headlines are designed to provoke your curiosity, fear, or outrage. Many articles are quick reads, and it's easy to mentally snack an afternoon away.

In order to counterbalance this lure, you should ask yourself what you want to get out of reading an article before you read it. For example:

• Do you want actionable advice on a specific topic?
• What question do you expect this article to help answer?
• Are you trying to get ideas, inspiration, or references for a project?
• Does this actually interest me?
• Does reading this make me more knowledgeable, informed, entertained? Does it enrich my life?

If it takes too long for you to articulate a clear purpose, you may want to reconsider investing the ten minutes and instead, refine your question. Those 10-minute increments of time gradually add up. Worse yet, they break whatever flow state you may have entered. Naturally, reading articles out of curiosity, or for fun, may not be a good idea if you're trying to get things done or maximize your use of time.

In order to measure the merit of an article, you can use Evernote's web clipper to highlight its interesting and valuable parts. When you clip something, you can point out the question that the passage of text or the photo answered, or a thought that it stimulated.

Moreover, you can clear your feeds by following fewer sources on Twitter (or use a tool like Hash, which pulls trending information from Twitter). You can also better control your information on Facebook by using Groups to gather information instead of your main feed.

Make the Information Come to You

You don't need to spend time cycling through bookmarked sites or checking Twitter to keep up with information. Instead, use a customized news aggregator that automatically updates feeds to make the information come to you.

We naturally surround ourselves with similar people, and similar opinions and values. However, it's crucial to our personal development and creativity to expose ourselves to new types of information. Breaking out of your filter bubble can be uncomfortable, but highly rewarding.

Alternatively, many journalists and industry experts already summarize and share the best articles they come across through their own email lists. Subscribing to these updates can be extremely useful to keep you on top of professional or personal topics of interest. It's similar to having a friend or favorite chef recommend new dishes for you to expand your palette - you're expanding your mind and not just eating the same old mental food.

Tightening the Belt On Information

The amount of time we spend mindlessly consuming information can be astonishing. In order to get a grip on your information diet, separate your information consumption and let it digest, understand what you want from each piece of information, and save time and expose yourself to new ideas by making the information come to you.

Photos by Daniela Vladimirova, TeppoTK, Dana Voss, Matthew Frederickson, Juanedc, and David A Ellis.