- What is Stepcase?
- Where are you located?
- What products do you produce?
- What is productivity?
- What is personal productivity?
- What is Stepcase Lifehack?
- What is a “lifehack”?
- Where does the word “lifehack” come from?
- What is GTD?
- Who should read Lifehack?
- Who writes Lifehack?
- I want to write for Lifehack! Can I?
- What is Lifehack Live?
- What is the relationship between Lifehack, Lifehacker, and 43Folders?
- What is Stepcase Apps?
- What is the idea behind Stepcase Apps?
- Who will benefit most from Stepcase Apps?
The Company
Stepcase Ltd is the next generation in productivity. We publish Stepcase Lifehack, a Technorati Top 100 blog offering daily content on productivity, organization, and personal development, and we’re developing Stepcase Apps, a suite of integrated productivity tools for collaboration and project management.
Stepcase Ltd’s headquarters are in Hong Kong. Our writing staff is spread throughout the world, with regular staff from the US and Australia and guest contributors hailing from the UK, India, Europe, and elsewhere.
In short, we are a true Internet-age company, with staff and partners around the globe.
Stepcase Lifehack is a content site offering daily tips and advice on productivity, organization, and personal development. We’re working on Stepcase Apps, a suite of web-based tools for collaboration and project management.
Although there are many definitions of productivity, we prefer to define it as the process of getting work down as effectively, efficiently, and satisfyingly as possible. In short: Good work, done well.
What is personal productivity?
The demands of the modern world often place work at odds with our personal lives, leading to stress and unhappiness. Personal productivity emphasizes work-life balance, ways of dealing with stress, maintaining a healthy mind and body, and personal growth — all of which combine to make us not only more efficient but more efficient at things we love doing.
Lifehack
Stepcase Lifehack is a Technorati Top 100 blog offering daily content on productivity, organization, and personal productivity. Launched in 2006 by Leon Ho, it currently consists of three staff editors and a stable of recurring guest contributors, and a community of over 60,000 subscribers and tens of thousands of unique daily web surfers.
A lifehack is, at its simplest, a little “tweak” or “trick” that helps you manage some aspect of your life better. Some simple lifehacks include carrying a notebook or stack of index cards with you to capture ideas wherever you are or creating checklists for packing when you’re going on vacation.
In the years since Lifehack’s launch, the term has evolved somewhat to include more general advice about working, family life, and other activities.
Where does the word “lifehack” come from?
The term “lifehack” was made popular in a presentation by Danny O’Brien called Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks given at the Emerging Technology Conference in February, 2004. O’Brien’s talk focused on applying the tricks that productive programmers use to daily life.
GTD stands for “Getting Things Done”, a personal productivity process derived from David Allen’s book of the same name. Allen’s method focuses on turning all the “inputs” in our lives into clear actions that can be done immediately, recorded on contextualized action lists, or scheduled into our calendar. GTD has been immensely popular with web workers, programmers, and other knowledge workers because it offers a simple and easily graspable way to routinize the complex demands of their jobs.
You! Lifehack offers tips and advice for web workers, college students, homemakers, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, freelancers, writers, and just about everyone else concerned with becoming more effective—getting more done with less work and less worry.
Lifehack is written by a team of staff editors and guest contributors, including yoga experts, TV writers, novelists, organization coaches, personal trainers, college professors, writing coaches, freelancers, computer programmers, university students—there’s even a pop star or two in there!
I want to write for Lifehack! Can I?
Lifehack accepts applications from potential guest contributors on an ongoing basis. If you have something useful to say about one or more of the topics Lifehack covers, write clear and engaging prose, and you can produce a new post on at least a monthly basis, we would love to hear from you! In return, we offer you the opportunity to put your work—with links to your own site(s) or product(s)—in front of 60,000-plus subscribers and tens of thousands of additional site visitors.
Lifehack Live is a podcast launched in December, 2007 by project manager Dustin M. Wax. Every episode, Dustin interviews an expert on productivity and related topics. His guests have included “Connector” Liz Strauss, “Zen Organizer” Regina Leeds, serial entrepreneur Jonathan Fields, TV and film writer Jurgen Wolff, as well as a range of writers, bloggers, and coaches from across the productivity blogosphere.
What is the relationship between Lifehack, Lifehacker, and 43Folders?
There is no direct relationship between these sites, except for a general similarity of focus and a confusion of names. Lifehacker is a website run by programmer and writer Gina Trapani, which focuses on productivity using technology and software. 43Folders is run by Merlin Mann and also focuses on productivity, especially with regard to Mac users. Danny O’Brien, the original popularizer of the term “life hacks”, redirected his site to 43Folders.com shortly after its launch. Lifehack is Stepcase’s daily content site, which covers a wide range of topics from health and fitness, finances, study skills, personal growth and traditional workplace productivity.
Apps
Stepcase Apps are web-based productivity apps built on the philosophy and principles derived from several years of feedback from Lifehack readers, as well as founder Leon Ho’s extensive experience managing international teams of programmers, academics, and other experts at Red Hat. We are currently developing a suite of web-based tools to help small businesses and teams to collaborate and manage projects more efficiently and effectively. It is still under development and in private beta.
What is the idea behind Stepcase Apps?
Stepcase Apps was founded on the principle that productivity and life do not have to be at odds. We believe that the success of any project needs to be measured not only in terms of how many units are produced or how profitable the project was, but also in terms of the happiness and satisfaction doing and completing the project creates. The Internet has given workers the power to move beyond the industrial processes of the 20th century, in which human “resources” were just another part of the machine. Stepcase Apps aims to help workers improve their productivity by making their work more satisfying and ultimately more human.
Who will benefit most from Stepcase Apps?
Stepcase Apps will benefit everyone concerned with effective collaboration and project management. Employers and corporate leaders will benefit from their teams’ increased productivity and creativity. Small business owners and entrepreneurs will benefit from the increased ability to work with their staff. Team members and individual workers will benefit from using tools that make them more effective without making them more stressed. Small businesses and non-profits will benefit by being able to easily coordinate efforts among their staff. Families and groups of friends will benefit from the social nature of the apps, making it easy to share and plan events and outings with each other. And independent workers will benefit from tools that allow them to complete their projects easily.