This time of year is productivity central. Annoying productivity suggestions in the form of lists of tips and hacks and apps are coming in thick and fast. I mean really…

27 Ways to Get More Sh!t Done – all right, I have to start by saying that I really do wonder why I need to get more stuff done.  What’s wrong with doing less (say no #25), but doing it better (slow down #17).  And why should I get up earlier (3) to do more of it – why not sleep in and do less of it – or is that what take a break (26) is all about?  Particularly when #1 is get more sleep!  And isn’t don’t multitask (7) the same thing as don’t bounce around (19)?  This just doesn’t make sense to me.

45 Things Successful Job Seekers Do on Social Media (Link No Longer Active) – clearly this is what I am doing wrong.  Though I am inclined to think that maybe I don’t have enough of a profile!  Theoretically, I have time to keep up with all of this stuff, but I am not convinced that I have anything professionally relevant to contribute.

60 Simple Rules of Personal Finance (Site Now Closed)- I think there’s some great stuff in here.  Really good simple advice.  I particularly like  numbers 22, 31, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 58, 59 and 60.  I can’t help feeling that the author was getting to the bottom of the barrel of personal finance, but I think these are some key values determinations that can guide spending.

73 Kitchen Hacks to Save Time, Get Organized, and Stay Sane – I couldn’t be bothered reading more than the first few.  And they aren’t “hacks” anyway – the ones I read are household secrets whose origins are lost in the mists of time.  These little gems would normally have been handed down to us by our mothers but these days Mums are out there working to get food on the table, even assuming that they hung around long enough to learn these mystic truths from their own mothers.  Though as I said, I haven’t bothered to read the whole list…  And I don’t care what you do, but I am never, ever, ever going to use dental floss to cut my camembert.

And just because I’m putting the finishing touches on my book (Stress Free Dinner Parties), which explains in a pleasingly entertaining way (if I do say so myself) how to plan and host a dinner party.

101 Party Dos & Don’ts – this one’s a slide show which in my opinion is even worse than a list of things because you have to click to turn the page and these can take so long to load that I often give up before I even make it to five.  And for some of these you have to scroll up and down to see the complete tip as well.  I did like the notion of setting up a DIY cocktail bar (15), but I am not sure that I could use pink light bulbs (82 – though they do make meat look good in supermarkets) because I have LEDs and that’s about it.  The tips were from a bunch of people I had mostly never heard of, and were about parties in general, but there was a lot of duplication and contradiction.

What about you – do you have the patience to scroll through long lists?