Tuesdays Tip: Start Something

Procrastination is the initial hump we have to get over to do something. Here is a trick to get over procrastination. If there is something you don’t want to work on, promise yourself to start the task and work on it for 15 minutes and then you can quit.

Much of the time, once you get started you’ll find that what was really holding you back was just starting the task. This is a great way to handle exercise. If you dread going to the gym, go for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes if you still don’t want to be there you can leave. If you don’t like it that day, no problem, you made the effort and you’ll stay longer on a day when you like it better.

We can apply Newton’s first law of motion to fight procrastination. It is easier to keep something in motion if it is already moving. Once we start something it is easier to keep at it, but starting is the hard part.

Your Turn — Three Questions

Previously I interviewed about 30 bloggers asking them to answer three questions. The responses (linked below) were very insightful.

1. What is the single biggest way people waste time without even realizing it?
2. What change has made the most difference in making you effective in life?
3. If someone were to read just one post from your site, which would you recommend the read and why?

However, as with any large group interview, it is easy to leave out people who have some great ideas to share.

So if you would like to give your opinion on any or all of these questions, please post the answers to your blog and I’ll link to them in this post. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to answer in the comments. Just drop me a note at mark (AT) productivity501 (dot) com with your URL and I’ll add you to the list below.

Here is the list:

1. Joyful Jubilant Learning
2. Juggling Frogs
3. Matton Marketing
4. Xtreme Computers
5. Your Answers Here.

10 Tips for Creating Secure Passwords

If you do anything with computers you deal with passwords and you probably have a handful of different passwords for different sites and systems. The best password is something that you will never forget, but even your family or closest friend would never guess.

In my experience people either have extremely secure passwords like J!*xurQ1# that are so difficult to remember that they have to write them down (which defeats the security of a password) or extremely unsecure to start with like Jonny (the name of their spouse). The goal of this post is to give you some ideas on how to generate secure passwords. The tips start out with some simple ways to come up with terms and end with ideas of how to combine these terms into secure passwords.

It should be obvious that you shouldn’t directly use any of the examples shown here. However, some of these ideas should be useful in generating your own secure passwords.

Here are a collection of tips for creating useful passwords.

1. Use Different Character Classes - Many systems require that your password be from a variety of character classes. The letters a to z are one character class, A to Z is another, 0 to 9 is another, and the symbols are a fourth. In general the more character classes you use in your password, the more secure it is. So “guitar” is less secure than GuiTar which is less secure than Gu1T&r. One simple way to add different character classes is to capitalize all vowels or consonants.
2. Use Letters from a Phrase - Use the first letter from each word in a phrase, line from a song, etc. “There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea.” could become Tahitbots.
3. Numbers From Word - Use your phone keypad to convert a word to its numerical equivalent to use as part of your password.
4. Keyboard Patterns - Creating terms from rows of adjacent keys. 12345 is not very good, but \][po combined in the ways specified below can make for a secure password that would be very difficult to guess and is fast to type.
5. Use More Than One Word - Single word passwords are easy to break. If a hacker runs a program to try a bunch of words from the dictionary they shouldn’t be able to figure out your password. Choose words that you will remember, but that someone else won’t be able to guess. So a password like shinynail or flyingrock or tallwater are more secure than single word passwords.
6. Ideas for Passwords - Sometimes coming up with a password can be pretty difficult. Keep in mind you need to choose terms that you won’t often talk about. Here are a list of ideas to help come up with words:
   • Choose two objects from a picture that you’ll always remember. For example: a drawing at your grand parents house, the illustration from a children’s book, a painting at an art museum, etc.
   • Choose two terms from a memorable purchase. For example: bluev6 (first car), thinibm (first computer), gold3crt (engagement ring), 7ftgrand (piano), pinedoor (first house), sunshore (honeymoon destination).
   • Look through a catalog and choose terms based on something you see.
   • Lookup a random article on Wikipedia and choose a word found or related to a word you find in the article.
7. Separate Your Two Words With Symbols and Numbers. For example: pine&1&door, kit!2!cat, etc.
8. Modify the Password For Each Site. In theory the most secure password strategy is to use a completely different password for each system. In practice, this means you’ll have to write them down. By choosing a secure password and modifying it based on where it will be used, you can keep from having to write passwords down, but still have a slightly higher level of security. Here are some examples showing how they were created
   • blue.Mv6 for Amazon.com - blue and v6 from first car. M from the second letter in site name.
   • blue.Av6 for SAP logon - same as above.
   • thin!5!ibm for Amazon.com - thin and ibm from first computer. 5 from the number of letters in the site name.
9. Multiple Passwords for Different Types of Sites - Another option to keep from using the same password on every site is to use two or three passwords based on how secure the site is. For example, your banking sites might all use derivations of the bluev6 password. Ecommerce sites might all use a derivation of a different password and community type sites might use a third. The goal is to make sure that a rouge administrator at a forum you frequent isn’t able to get to your 401k.
10. Date Based Component - Some systems require you to change your password every 180, 90, or 60 days. (One client had setup their system to require a password change every 30 days!) If you are familiar with the cycle, you can add a date based component to your password and change it each time it is required. For example J07 could be added when you need to change your password in June of 2007.

Father’s Day and Productivity

Having been a father for a whole 3 months, I am not the most experienced person to comment on fatherhood. However, I do have something to say on how your productivity impacts one’s ability to function as a father.

In a recent post about wasting time I received the following comment:

We mustn’t get too obsessed with efficiency, otherwise we become machines ourselves. Chill out a bit, guys!

I agree that when productivity becomes an end in itself, work has very little meaning. However, when productivity enables you to live a life that is richer than what others experience, it can add value. Productivity is what lets you provide for your basic needs with less effort. The less effort it takes to provide for your basic needs the more time you have to spend the way you choose.  You can choose to spend this time working even more or you can choose to spend this time doing the things that you feel have lasting value.

If you can work 1 week per month and have everything you need to be happy, you free yourself up for a much better life experience than the person who works 60 hours a week for 30 or 40 years.

When the pursuit of productivity is just an exercise to get more stuff, it just means you’ll spend more time working. When productivity is a means toward spending more time with your family and more time investing in things that you feel have real value, it is a rewarding journey with lasting rewards.

Whether you are a father or not, I would challenge you to take some time today and reflect on your personal productivity. Is it allowing you to spend more time with the people who you truly care about or is it just perpetuating a vicious cycle of working more and more?

Best Posts from 2005

I’ve had some readers asking what I considered my best past posts, so I took some time and went through the archives for 2005 and compiled a short list of what I consider to be the best content. Some are long, some are short, but these are the posts that challenged me the most in my personal productivity.

• Two Types of Technology User
• Paradox of Powerful Tools
• Social Glass Ceiling
• The Rat Experiment
• Making Decisions in Advance
• Define and Conquer

4 Reasons You Should Use a Credit Card

When you pay off the balance each month, most credit cards don’t charge you anything. This can be one of the best ways to manage your finances. Below are four reasons you should consider using a credit card.

1. Avoiding Fraud

Debit cards and checks are some of the worst ways to pay for anything. Sticking with credit cards or cash can save you a lot of money.

Pretty much anything you do involves risk. When you carry around $50 in your pocket, there is a risk that you might lose it or get robbed. When you give a credit card to a waitress, there is a risk that she might steal the number. When you write a check at the grocery store, there is a risk that someone might take your personal information and use it to steal your identity. When you carry your ATM card with your there is the chance that you it might get stolen, lost, someone might watch you type in your pin and then steal it, etc.

No matter what you do there is an element of risk. What you want to do is minimize your financial exposure. Unfortunately the two money vehicles (debit cards and checks)that are usually most touted to help keep people out of debt are also the ones that give you the least protection from fraud. Here is why.

Lets say someone steals your check book or uses the account number to withdraw money from your account. You notice the problem on your next statement and call the bank. You now have to prove to the bank that they need to refund your money and put it back into your account. The money is already gone, you have to try to get it back. In the mean time your mortgage and car payment are due, but you can’t pay them until you can convince the bank that fraud was committed.

Now assume that your credit card number is stolen. You notice a bunch of fraudulent charges on your statement and you call the credit card company. Normally they will mark the charges as disputed and work with the merchants to obtain proof that you indeed made the purchases. You will pay the amount of undisputed charges.

Notice the difference? With checks and debit cards, you have to get your money back if it was taken by fraud. With a credit card, the credit card company acts as a buffer. The money doesn’t come out of your account until you pay the bill.

In addition, the information provided on a check gives away a lot of personal information that isn’t present on a credit card. Sometimes checks even have your SSN or drivers license number. These are excellent starting points to get access to your credit or other accounts.

Using a credit card helps minimize your exposure to fraud. There are some very ingenious crooks out there. The more you can do do reduce your risk the better.

2. Keeping Records

Credit cards are one of the easiest ways to track your spending. When coupled with a program like Microsoft Money or Quicken, you can easily see where your money is going and keep track of how your spending is changing from month to month. Some companies are adding management features into their accounts so you can categories charges online and view the totals for each categories even without downloading them to your computer.

3. Cash Back and Rewards Points

Most credit cards have some type of rewards program. Generally these will give you 1% of the total of your purchases back in cash, points toward airline tickets, gift certificates for stores, etc. When looking for a credit card compare these reward programs. Some only give you the equivalent of .05% back.

4. Other Benefits

Most cards have a bunch of other benefits that are buried in the fine print and people generally don’t take advantage of. For example, most VISAs have an extended warranty plan. If you buy something with a 1 year warranty and it fails 18 months after the purchase, the credit card company will replace or repair the device for you–even though the original warranty has expired.

Some cards offer a service where they will keep track of all of the warranties on all of your appliances and home electronics. A number of cards give you theft protection if you have an item (that was purchased on the card) stolen within a certain period of time.

Other cards give you travel insurance in case you die or are dismembered (the term they actually use) on a flight paid for with your credit card. Many have insurance that can be used in lieu of the additional insurance car rental companies try to sell you when you rent a vehicle.

Some cards (particularly American Express) offer roadside assistance, travel planning, international travel emergency assistance and even personal concierge services.

Take the time to look through the fine print that came with your credit cards. You’ll probably find a bunch of features that aren’t useful to you, but you may find one or two that are actually valuable and could save you some money.

Interview: Best Post

This is the third and final post where we interviewed a number of experts in personal productivity, time management and organization. I wanted to thank everyone who participated and also thank Leo at ZenHabits for putting together the list of 50 Productivity Blogs back in April which gave me a great starting point for these interviews.

The first question we asked had to do with identifying the biggest way people waste time without realizing it. The second gave the experts a chance to share the single change that has had the biggest results in terms of being effective.

The third and final question was:

If someone were to read just one post from your site, which would you recommend the read and why?

Read on for links to what they consider their best content.
[Read more]

Thoughts on Safari For Windows

Steve Jobs did his annual keynote for Apple’s developer conference earlier this week. People weren’t particularly impressed as seen by the in Apple stock price right after the keynote that is continuing. The “big” announcement was Safari for Windows. This struck me as pretty odd and only made a little more sense once he went on to explain that the only way developers could put applications on the iPhone was to create web applications.

My biggest problem with Safari is that it doesn’t support WYSIWIG editing in Wordpress. Maybe it is the other way around–Wordpress doesn’t support Safari, but from what I understand the problem has more to do with Safari than Wordpress. I’ve heard rumors that this will be fixed in the next version of Safari and that it partially works in the current beta.

Some people said the idea that Safari is fast is really meaningless when you consider the bottleneck is the network. This isn’t exactly true. Firefox does great when you are dealing with one to five tabs. But if you want to launch 20 or 50 tabs at a time, it starts having problems. It also gets bogged down when there is a lot of javascript on the page. Worse yet, when I’m really busy Firefox likes to hang for a few minutes at a time. I think this is related to having a bunch of windows open, but I don’t notice that happening with Safari.

I use Firefox for most of my browsing because I like the way it handles search better than Safari and it has some toolbars I use, but if I ever run into a site that seems slow to render, I jump over to Safari. I also use Safari if I’m trying to work with a bunch of websites at the same time. So if I want to compare a bunch of cars for sale and open all the ones I’m interested in separate tabs, I’ll probably use Safari because Firefox starts getting really slow. Over the past few months, I’ve found myself doing more and more of my work in Safari.

So if you are currently using Internet Explorer or Firefox, I’d suggest giving Safari a try when it comes out. There is a beta available for download already. Depending on your browsing habits, you may find it really speeds things up.

I was a little disappointed that the iPhone isn’t going to allow developers to write apps for it.  The reasoning?  To keep it secure.  Steve said they didn’t want a rouge app taking down Cingular’s network.  This doesn’t really make sense.  Most phones allow you to run java based programs, so the idea that it some how is protecting Cingular’s network really doesn’t make any sense from a security standpoint.

However it might make sense from another.  If Apple has negotiated a special rate for data services, it might be based on the types of traffic the iPhone can generate.  By not allowing third party applications it will reduce the amount of traffic each phone can possibly generate.  So if the data plan turns out to only cost an additional $20, this might make sense.  If the data plan comes in at $60 per month it doesn’t.

I’m interested in playing around with an iPhone because I think it is going to be pretty much impossible for the keyboard to beat what I have on my Blackberry right now, but just like I don’t think it would have been a good investment to buy a first generation iPod the iPhone looks like something that might have some promise in the second or third revision.  Fortunately for Apple, I’m sure there are enough people who will buy it to make things worth the R&D for the next generation.

Interview: Becoming Effective

What change has made the most difference in making you effective?

Mmmm…tough question. Ironically, I think having less time available for discretionary projects has made me more effective in the areas of my life that I choose to spend time in. So get married, have kids and take a job that keeps you busy all the time: it’ll make you more effective!
Brendon Connelly from Slacker Manager (rss)

This seems counterintuitive, but I guess it makes sense. Having more stuff to do should help force you to be more efficient. [Read more]

Interview: Biggest Time Waster

Welcome Stumblers.  If you like this post, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed.

This is the first of a three part post where we asked a bunch of productivity experts three questions. Read after the jump to see their answers along with my commentary about each one. Thanks to everyone who participated.

What is the single biggest way people waste time without even realizing it?

[Read more]

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