Some homes, especially homes with teenagers, have more Apple devices than house keys. But you need to be signed into different iCloud accounts to track each device. One way around that: add a single-purpose iCloud account to each device you want to map and track.

iLounge suggests picking one iCloud account in the home (probably tied to mom or dad), and adding that account to each device, but with only one service enabled: Find My iPhone. You might not have known that you can add a secondary iCloud account to an iOS device. It's quite nice, for the purposes of creating an "Every person, every device" command center. The only downside would be if sneaky children went into their settings and enabled sync for your own email and Notes—so a secondary, non-personal iCloud account would be a nice thing to create, the next time you pick up a new Apple gift.

The iLounge post has a full step-by-step on enabling a find-only iCloud account.

Using a single iCloud account for Find My iPhone | iLounge

Android: There are handy apps to disable your Android password when connected to certain Wi-Fi networks, but this app lets you go a bit further, based on connections to Bluetooth devices.

Bluetooth and Wifi Unlocker is an Android app that does just what it sounds like: removes the need to type in a passcode or phrase or gesture whenever you're connected to either a familiar Wi-Fi network, or a particular Bluetooth device. Adding Bluetooth lets you keep your phone accessible when you're streaming music at home, to headphones, when you have your Fitbit attached, or when you're in your Bluetooth-enabled car (only while you're stationary, we hope). The passcode goes back on the moment your phone is out of range of your chosen device, so would-be snoops are out of luck if you're not near your phone.

Bluetooth and Wifi Unlocker is available as a free app, with tough limits on the number of Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices and preferences. The $3 paid version removes those barriers.

Bluetooth and Wifi Unlocker | Google Play

You should feel great wearing a good dress shirt you just bought, not like a kid in his dad's work clothes. Use a military-style tuck to prevent billowing, or "blousing," around your belt line.

Australian styling and fashion blog A Good Man provides five steps toward tucking in shirts that fit in such a way that they seem to blow out and over the top of your belt, making it look like you're carrying water for a long desert trip. In short, it involves pinching excess fabric at the sides of your waist, then pulling up that fabric and fastening your belt line around it.

Sound a little confusing? Hit the link below to see a detailed diagram of how it should work. Of course, going to a good tailor is the best solution, particularly if your shirt needs more help than a little tuck can fix.

How to tuck in a shirt (so that it stays tucked) | A Good Man via Put This On

Photo by Farrukh.

Evernote user bluecockatoo did a lot of thinking about how Evernote could easily and reliably fit into his day-to-day workflow, much like our own editor. His publicly visible "EverMetaNotes" are a wealth of answers what-about-that Evernote questions.

Bluecockatoo struggled with many of the same issues as Lifehacker editor Whitson—keeping a handle on his notebooks, figuring out how Evernote fit into his to-do structure, and more. When he came up with a good solution, he posted it to Evernote. For example, how to separate his personal and work Evernote use:

But in that case I log into the web interface for my personal account and use the Evernote bookmarklet (not the FireFox plugin) to clip to that account. The FireFox web clipper will post things to the desktop client of my work account. So it's basically two clicks if I want to save something to both places from the browser.

There's a lot of Getting Things Done, a good bit of tool and setting tweaking, and some good general advice on what Evernote is really for, at least for one avid user.

Evernote shared notebook: EverMetaNotes | Evernote

Roger Ebert started at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966 and worked there until his recent death—itself a pretty big feat. But looking at how Ebert made savvy but sincere moves to expand into manageable side projects, you can see him as an original multimedia brand manager.

Writing at the New York Times, David Carr points out some of the smartest moves made by Ebert throughout his long and multi-faceted career. Without a business background, and while focusing always on simply expressing his thoughts on what makes movies worth seeing, Ebert secured his career early on by treating his output as a product, not a job.

Just as Jay-Z is more than a musician, Roger Ebert was much more than a guy who wrote about movies. He was a newspaper writer, a television personality, a public speaker, a book author, an event impresario and a Web publisher. And through his Web site, RogerEbert.com, he is still with us even though he is gone, demonstrating the kind of stickiness and durability that media brands crave.

... Mr. Ebert saw the power of syndication early on, negotiating rights to his written work and appearing in 200 newspapers and then repurposing the reviews for best-selling film guides.

It is very easy to see the flaws and hubris in the web chatter and success stories of "marketing yourself" and "personal brands," but it's also encouraging to see how a passion for your field can translate into lucrative ventures.

Roger Ebert's Legacy as a Relentless Empire-Builder | NYTimes.com

Original photo by Bob Kotalik/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated Press

You have heard and read by now about the rather terrible impact of sitting all day. You also know that meetings involve lots of sitting, and are often terrible. Kill two birds with one stone, and extend your life, by taking every walking meeting you can.

Forbes makes the case that taking more meetings out to the streets, or just around the office/campus/neighborhood loop, can foster greater creativity while simultaneously boosting health and energy. That can seem like a fairly easy thing to act on, if you want to, but only certain meetings really work for walking about, Forbes suggests:

According to (Silicon Valley executive Nilofer) Merchant, walk-and-talks are best for exploring an idea, building a shared purpose, or getting to know one another more deeply. But routine planning meetings don't work well for a walking venue. "Project management meetings where you're just trying to get through status updates aren't a good fit," says (frequent walk-and-talker Kristen) Galliani. "Walking meetings are more about ideation than about ticking the box."

You can actually make meetings a three-in-one benefit, if you have a dog that needs walking and your meeting partner might not mind you, well, taking care of the product of that walk. In any case, it's a novel concept that moves two different personal progress bars forward.

How Taking More Meetings Could Save Your Life | Forbes

Original photo by tedeytan (Flickr)

Automatic bill payment saves you from paper clutter, fees for forgetfulness, and the drudgery of wading through payment sites every month. Yet they also open you up to blind overpayment and unseen fees and usage hikes. There is a middle path, however.

Personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly makes the case that you can gain the benefits of automatic bill payments while not becoming someone who leaves their wallet open to any service that wants it. In a post with many smart suggestions, here's one:

Only autopay set charges and minimum payments. If you're worried about too many higher-than-expected variable bills socking it to your balance, don't put those bills on autopay. Just set up automatic payments for the non-variable bills like Netflix. It's also pretty low-risk to set up autopay for minimum payments, such as on credit cards, to avoid accidental late fees.

That's what I do—only auto-pay the bills that are fairly constant and not subject to spikes. Phone bills, utilities, and credit cards all become priority/star emails and text messages. Now, though, I'll think about auto-paying at least the minimums on these bills.

Are automatic payments all they're cracked up to be? | Get Rich Slowly

Original photo by StockMonkeys.com (Flickr)

A few years back, in-flight Wi-Fi was something maybe available to the President of the United States. Now it's on every airline, but not quite every plane. Which airlines are most likely to give you the option?

The ReadWrite site has done the good work of rounding up all the published reports of flights with Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi, sorted by airline. The numbers are always improving, but some airlines annoyingly report only the types of planes which have in-flight Wi-Fi. For those of us who don't study amateur aviation just to know if we can email our boss mid-flight, Hipmunk does a good job of reporting which flight plans likely involve Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi Above 10,000 Feet: Which Airlines Provide Best Connection? | ReadWrite

Original photo by jsmjr (Flickr)

Facebook is not making its own phone, or a version of Android, because Facebook thinks Android works just fine. Their Facebook Home suite of apps, announced today, replaces the lock and home screens that normally hold your Android apps with updates, pictures, and messaging, all delivered through Facebook.

Put simply, Facebook thinks that you'd like to see photos and quips and links from friends, in simple full-screen display, on your phone, rather than always seeing rows of apps you might launch. That's what Facebook Home does, updating your phone with Facebook material you can double-tap to Like or comment on something. The notifications—which only come from friends, not apps and brands—will also stack up and be available to view or dismiss. Facebook Home also combines text messaging with Facebook messaging into an app called Chat Heads.

So what happens to your non-Facebook stuff? You can get to it by pressing on your own profile image in a button, roughly where the Android home button is now. You then see options to check your messages, look at your apps (divided into a "favorites" section and the full list), or head into the full Facebook app.

Facebook Home will be available starting April 12th in the Google Play Store. It's only going to support a few devices out of the gate (the HTC One X, One X+, the Samsung Galaxy S III, Note II, and soon the HTC One and Galaxy S4). Facebook says they're planning to bring it to more devices and many manufacturers have signed on to build phones with Facebook Home pre-loaded, starting with the upcoming HTC First. The pre-loaded phones will have a bit more integration, like system notifications inside Facebook Home.

For more details on how the software looks and works, check out the full walkthrough over at our sibling site, Gizmodo, and at Facebook's official announcement below.

Introducing Home | Facebook Newsroom

Original photo by Gizmodo.

Canned food, crackers, MREs, beer—it's all fun to eat for a little while when the power's out. Eventually, though, you want actual meals to eat, and that's when you'll be glad you found Chef 5 Minute Meals.

As posted at Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools blog, Chef 5 Minute Meals are far more ambitious in their flavors than other self-heating foods, like military-style Meals Ready to Eat (MRE). They have a "patented water activated heating pad in every box," and use the box as a kind of makeshift oven. Cool Tools writer Joe Stirt describes the process:

1. The box starts to puff up
2. Steam starts pouring out
3. Sounds - amazing sounds - emanate from the box
4. The smell of cooking food pervades the immediate vicinity
5. You open the box and peel back the plastic lid and darned if your chicken cacciatore isn't all piping hot and smelling scrumdiddlyumptious - tastes great too!

Many of the meal types are available as Amazon Prime purchases, with a direct link available at the Cool Tools post.

Chef Minute Meals Inc | via Cool Tools

Google Drive/Docs is great at working everywhere and offering instantaneous collaboration. Drive is not so great at letting you review changes and track specific versions of your document. Enter Draft, a writing webapp that works with Drive—and Dropbox, and Evernote, and Markdown.

On its own, Draft is a very nice and minimalist place to write. What sets Draft apart is its collaborative editing powers. You can invite people to pick at your words, but Draft tracks the changes they make and asks you to accept or reject them, individually, while showing the two different versions of the document in side-by-side columns. This way, you can invite more than one person to review your work and keep track of who made which suggestion. You also mark drafts as you write, making it easy to get back to ideas you may have discarded as you went along. That is, suffice to say, nicer than running through Drive's color-coded overwriting and immense list of revisions by username.

Draft packs in a lot of other features without intruding on the writing-focused interface. You can bring in professional copyeditors for important work, write and convert from Markdown, and import and export documents from all the popular cloud services. But my favorite feature involves installing a Draft Chrome extension that lets you click in any text field on the web to open a new Draft, then click again to paste your work back into that field, in HTML or Markdown or regular text again. In fact, that's how I wrote this Lifehacker post.

Draft is free to use, and you can sign in using your Google account.

Slight disclosure: Draft's creator is a friend-of-a-friend, and I had access to a test version of the Chrome extension for a short period before Draft promoted it.

Draft

Knowing how much to charge somebody is easy for full-time jobs—it was figured out the day you were hired. What if you have a job, but you're also working freelance: on the side, on weekends, or for one-off projects? It can seem much trickier, but there's actually a simple way to figure out your rate.

I went from jobs in newspaper writing, where the pay is very stable (no matter how many hours you work!) to Lifehacker (as an independent contractor, but with a set rate) to freelancing full-time. Like most things in my career, the beginnings involved fumbling around, guessing, and sending apologetic late-night emails to editors.

Looking back now, however, I think there were was a much more simple means of figuring out my rate.

In August 2011, Melanie tackled this same question, but with a notably different approach. Melanie approached freelancing like setting up a business for yourself: figure out your operating costs, average billable hours, dividing those figures, factoring in profit and taxes, and keeping track of important details. Toward the end of her post, Melanie wrote:

You can try several other methods for setting your rate, such as marking up your current salary ... or just dividing how much you want to earn by how many hours you'll work, but I wouldn't recommend them because they're not realistic; they don't take into account your everyday expenses or account for long-term success.

It's hard to argue against setting up good estimates in a spreadsheet and using math to figure out your operating costs. That's the kind of thinking that gets you some kind looks and firm handshakes from bankers and business owners. But some people may not be jumping into freelancing full-time. For a side gig, a weekend project, a half-time schedule, or one-off job, setting up your long-term business plan can seem intimidating and overly complicated.

So do what I (eventually learned to) do: apply for your own fake job, with your real credentials, and negotiate with yourself to figure out what you should earn.

Step 1: Know Your Actual Expenses

Even if you aren't creating a home office and obtaining a DBA and reading books about marketing, you still need to know what your costs are going to be before you ask for money. Most importantly, you need to know what your tax rate is going to be for the self-employed income you earn. The rate changes every year, but Bankrate.com has a handy calculator.

The rough number I always hear freelancers and self-employed types use is 30 percent. That is, expect to give back 30 percent of what you earn in taxes and miscellaneous fees, so charge that extra 30 percent to clients. And plan to do that in quarterly estimated tax payments, or else face a small but painful penalty at the end of the year (and a not-so-nice tax surprise). It's not a bad number, but it doesn't apply to everyone, especially those who joint-file their taxes with spouses.

You can take expenses off of your freelance income, such as qualified business travel and meals, equipment you need to buy, and the like. But if this is a side gig, and you're mostly using your home and your personal computer to work, you will mostly just earn some side income and have some of it taxed. Once you know that, you're ready to interview yourself for your freelance job.

Step 2: Make a Fake Resume, Interview for Your Kinda-Job

Want to drive yourself crazy, alienate friends, and seem completely unprofessional? Start asking around to every freelancer you know about their rates, ask people "how much would you pay" for services, and try to figure out exactly how much you should charge, based on a very vague idea of how many hours the job will entail.

Want an easier way to figure out what you should charge for your freelance side/weekend/one-off work? Figure out what kind of worker you are. For your Actual Job, you created a resume, you applied, you pitched your skills in a letter and/or an interview, and you negotiated your salary, based in part on what skills you were bringing to the table, versus how much of your work would involve winging it and learning on the fly.

This is why interns are paid a certain small amount (if at all), and why professionals at the top of their field are haggling over things like jet access and ocean-front time shares. When you're negotiating your freelance rate, why not ask yourself what kind of job you'd be applying for if this was a full-time position, and what would that job pay? It's good advice I received when I asked designer Nicholas Barone about new work I was taking on.

More specifically:

• Figure out what kind of job you could get, at this firm, in this field, with the skills you've built up.
• Figure out what kind of salary would make sense for you to earn at that gig, if you were working full-time.
• Add roughly 30% onto that salary, given the taxes you'll be paying (or use the calculator.
• Ask for that amount, divided down to an hourly rate (yearly rate, divided by 52 weeks, divided by 37.5 or 40 hours or whatnot).

If you have more than one freelance gig, or you're freelancing in a field that's slightly outside your main field, you'll have to do a bit more pondering. I mostly write for web-based publications about technology, so when another site comes along, it's not too hard to extrapolate to an hourly or per-piece rate. But when someone asked me to do one-on-one computer setup and consulting, I had to figure that out. If I opened up my own shop as a fix-it computer consultant, how much would I want to earn, to live where I live and not eat off the 99-cent menu every night?

Step 3: Be Prepared to Negotiate the Little Stuff

If you think you've come to a realistic number for your hourly rate (or your per-piece/project rate, given a realistic time estimate for that piece/project), you're still not quite there. There could be bits and pieces of a freelance agreement that necessitate moving the number up or down. Retaining the rights to your own work, for example, or being required to take part in long meetings (hint: they are all long).

In general, though, doing work on the side can be a simple calculation: I'm doing this work, and I think I'd get paid X amount to do it full-time, so here's what you should pay me to make use of my limited extra-hours time to do it for you. It's an easier way to respect yourself and your monetary worth.

Original images by Pixabay, theimpulsivebay (Flickr), legenda (Shutterstock)

Android (2.2+): For whatever reason, Google can't or won't filter the apps you've installed in your orders & settings to show just the paid-for apps. If you want to see what you've spent, for guilt or accounting purposes, the My Purchases app does the job.

My Purchases could definitely stand to improve in its next few updates. There only a few minimal options, to filter out canceled purchases or apps you have installed at that moment. And the only sorting is reverse chronological, though the app did catch everything I had bought from my primary account. For those simply looking to check up on their buying history, it's an app that does just what it should.

My Purchases' free version has advertising, while the $1.29 paid version removes the advertising.

Update: Whoops! Looks like we already posted this app yesterday. Sorry about the duplicate news, everyone!

My Purchases | Google Play

Smartphones have definitely struck a blow against boredom—while traveling, in the checkout aisle, when friends are running late. But consider that boring moments are traditionally when your brain can reach out for some new input and ideas.

Brian S. Hall writes at ReadWrite about the findings and thoughts of many creativity researchers and theorists, whom have noticed our tendencies to use the phone in place of other traditional boredom killers—like daydreaming.

But this victory comes at a cost. Spending so much time texting and updating, tweeting and watching, calling and playing at every free moment, from every location, never alone with our thoughts, never allowing our thoughts to drift, impacts our creativity, which in turn can limit our full potential.

Edward de Bono, business consultant and self-described "father of lateral thinking" has authored numerous works on creative thinking. de Bono calls moments of boredom "creative pauses," which allows the mind to drift, and avails the person to new forms of input and understanding.

As noted in the full post, nobody should throw themselves into a terrible meeting for the sake of inspiring daydreaming, but consider letting yourself go without a screen for a bit the next time you're in line, or at a family function that's not quite captivating.

The iPhone Killed My Creativity | ReadWrite

Original photo by "PictureYouth" (Flickr)

Android (4.0+): Tasker, the Android tool that lets you set up nearly any "If A then do B" scenario on your phone, is only $1.99 for a limited time. With a revamped interface and nearly limitless potential uses, it's a great time to try it out.

We've shown you how to automate your phone with Tasker, how to push those setups further, and given you some pre-packaged setups to play with. Those all work with the modern-day Tasker, and I've definitely found many other battery-saving, hassle-reducing uses for the app, too, especially since getting a Bluetooth stereo in my car.

If you're still not sure about whether Tasker would work for you, grab a 14-day free trial download at the Tasker creator's site. Meanwhile, the Google Play version with free lifetime updates is $1.99, while that sale lasts.

Tasker | Google Play

If you're caught without your reading glasses, or you encounter some terrifically fine print on a box or contract, you have two options: curse your abnormal retina design, or pinch your fingers together. It's like adjusting the f-stop on your eyeballs.

Instructables poster mikey77 shows us how it's done, using three fingers—the thumb joined up against an index finger, with a middle finger forming the base—to create a small hole through which to see tiny things more clearly. It's obviously not for lengthy reading, but it can help in a ... pinch (sorry). Here's how it works:

You are effectively creating a pinhole lens. This gives a slight magnification and significantly increases your depth of field (the range that is in focus). It does this by greatly limiting the amount of light going through the lens in your eye. It is like adjusting the F stop in a camera.

Tried this out? Got another last-ditch reading and vision tip?

How To Make Instant Reading Glasses | Instructables

If you live inside Outlook, you might not know that you're already using a pretty good Google Reader replacement. Outlook can import and process a Google Reader feed export, and handle your items like a slightly different kind of message.[More]

The How-To Geek site runs down the relatively simple process of exporting your OPML file from Google, importing it into Outlook, and then, well, just reading your feeds like you're used to. Outlook is an inbox tool, and it makes sense for an RSS handler, especially if you have a limited number of important feeds. It's a solution used and requested by Lifehacker readers, and really easy, to boot.

How to Import Your Google Reader RSS Feeds into Outlook | How-To Geek

Wouldn't it be nice if colleges all used the same terms and language to describe their financial aid packages? Sure would, but only 700 of about 6,000 U.S. colleges have done so. It's up to you, and this chart, to make sense of the rest.

The Wall Street Journal is out with an interactive ranking of college financial aid packages, because it is that time of year in pre-collegiate households. For those not considering schools on the list of amazingly beneficent institutions, you'll need to figure it out yourself. The Journal offers a nice, simple summation table, and some advice on how to use it with long-term planning in mind.

To be safe, families should calculate costs over four and five years, because many students take more than four years to graduate. Just 53% of students at nonprofit private schools and 31% at public colleges graduate in four years, according to the Department of Education.

What's the worst, most confusing financial aid package you've seen? How do you make sense of what's really being offered? Gather in the residential comments lounge and share your story.

Making Sense of College Aid | WSJ.com

Maneesh Sethi hired somebody on Craigslist to slap him every time he opened up Facebook while he was working on a project. He got that project done. You don't have to hire a slapper, but you get an idea of how "precommitting" can work wonders for procrastination.

Sethi, of the Hack the System blog, writes about the ways he forces himself to commit to something: a words-per-day writing gig, a time-crunched project, a diet, an exercise program—whatever he needs to get done. You've heard that paying for a gym might force you to actually go, but, no, Sethi says. What you really need is a person to get mad at you, and a monetary incentive. To wit:

I used the same tactic with Leo Babauta - for a week, I had to write for thirty minutes at 9am. Failure? $50. And Leo ended up getting paid. ... I use this tactic all the time. Heck, if I don't finish the article you are reading now by 11:59 PST, I owe a friend $250 :p

Are you trying to finish something, but just not finding the motivation to do so? Find a friend to bet with. It doesn't have to be money-one of my female friends puts her favorite dress on the line.

Have you used wagers and friendly disappointment to propel yourself toward a goal?

How To Make It Impossible To Fail | zenhabits

Original photo by Mike Burns (Flickr)

Ubuntu Linux installs just fine on many laptops. The fingerprint scanners on those laptops, though, are built for custom Windows security applications. There is, however, a relatively easy way to enroll your fingers and log in with them in Ubuntu.

The OMG! Ubuntu! blog points to a repository you can add to your system, from which you install a few packages (remember: Control-Shift-V pastes into a terminal). As noted at the original post, you should take note that removing that fingerprint repository requires manually re-installing a policykit package. Sounds scary, but you likely won't have to worry about removing the repository. Once you've pasted and run those two lines, you're all set to run Fingerprint GUI, enroll your fingers, and set your fingers to log you into your system, or use your finger to enable sudo commands.

If you're a ThinkPad owner, you might need to do one or two more things to enable your fingerprint—thankfully linked in the original post's comments, at Frontier Computing and Network Services and ThinkWiki.

Do you have fingerprint authorization working on your Linux system?

[How To] Get Your Fingerprint Reader Working in Ubuntu | OMG! Ubuntu!

Original photo by fazen (Flickr)

There are the firms and sites that compile public data about you and offer it up to anyone, and then there are the data brokers quietly sketching a picture of you from your purchases and behaviors. You should know what they know about you.

Non-profit journalism center ProPublica details the business and craft of data brokering, in which layer upon layer of information is compiled to sell to marketing firms. Often times the profiles are unnamed, but if you're wondering why your junk mail and back-of-receipt coupons seem so specific lately, it's because you're not that hard to figure out. Register for a Disney vacation, for example, and a whole bunch of subsidiaries get an idea of what you might like:

(Disney) described sharing even more information: not just a person's name and address and what they purchased, but their age, occupation, and the number, age and gender of their children. It listed companies that received data, among them companies owned by Disney, like ABC and ESPN, as well as others, including Honda, HarperCollins Publishing, Almay cosmetics, and yogurt company Dannon.

You can do something to cut back on your own data broker profile, even if you can't exactly clean the slate:

Some companies do offer more access. A spokeswoman for Epsilon said it allows consumers to review "high level information" about their data - like whether or not you're listed as making a purchase in the "home furnishings" category. (Requests to review this information cost $5 and can only be made by postal mail.)

RapLeaf, a company that advertises that it has "real-time data" on 80 percent of U.S. email addresses, says that it gives customers "total control over the data we have on you," and allows them to review and edit the categories (like "estimated household income" and "Likely Political Contributor to Republicans") that RapLeaf has connected with their email addresses.

If you've had experience with overly personalized marketing, or feel like it's being made into a bigger concern than it is, let's hear about it in the comments.

Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You | ProPublica

Original image via RapLeaf

This site, among others, have told you time and again to make your to-do list clear, concise, and specific. Want another way of thinking about it? Boil your work down into widgets you can crank.

Writer and podcaster David Caolo doesn't have the kind of job he had in college, when he delivered vans full of envelopes and paper to medical offices. He now has wider projects, farther-out deadlines, and self-motivated work. But if he approaches every morning as if it was arriving at a room full of widgets to crank, he can simplify his thinking.

To find the answer, I ask myself this question: "If I had nothing else to do in the world but work on the podcast, absolutely nothing at all, what could I do right now to make progress on it?" And by do I mean a concrete, observable action. Let's say my answer comes back, "brainstorm topic ideas." OK, great. What do I need to do that? Well, a piece of paper and a pencil.

OK, but bah! My beloved brainstorming notebook is out of scratch paper. I guess I need to get more. So, the next step on the project Produce the Podcast is "drive to Staples and buy my favorite notebook paper."

That first bit—"If I had nothing else to do in the world but X, how would I make progress on it?"—is a rather keen way of looking at work that often refuses to shape up in your head.

Get your job down to cranking widgets | Unclutterer

Original photo by BinaryApe (Flickr)

Android: There are many, many apps that can tell you how much battery each app on your phone is using, and how you might save some juice with certain changes. Battery Doctor does those things, but also encourages better overall battery health by well-timed charging.

Battery Doctor uses the best practices of batteries—charging to certain percentages, never letting your charge go below a certain amount, using up fewer cycles—and gives you examples and opportunities to live with them. Instead of just letting you know you're at 64 percent and need to charge, it will tell you that you should charge for 24 minutes soon, or 40 minutes later on today. Battery Doctor is packed with many tools for explaining and optimizing battery life, and its notification icon (which is kind of a widget, too) is a handy shortcut for enabling or disabling features for better battery life. Play around with Battery Doctor a bit, and you'll probably find a few optimizations that give you more peace of mind.

Battery Doctor is a free download for Android.

Battery Doctor (Battery Saver) | Google Play via Ghacks