Components of a Paperless Office

I’ve been doing a lot of planning as part of my Paperless Office Experiment. The comments on my first post have been very helpful in guiding me in the right direction. If you have any suggestions or experiences, please share them.

The biggest portion of my planning has been in trying to identify the components necessary to make a paperless office workable. Simply adding a scanner won’t make you paperless. You have to have a system that works together as a whole not just a few random pieces of technology.

If you want to follow along with my progress, I encourage you to signup to the RSS feed using the button below or the email feed using the form to the right.

Here are the components I’ve identified as being necessary so far. I’d be interested in any input on things I may have overlooked.

Scanner

Most people start with a scanner when they think of a paperless office. While it is important, it is more important to identify how the documents are going to be handled once they are on the computer and then work backwards to determine the best scanner that is compatible with the software you plan to use.

Here are some of the things to look for in a scanner:

1. Automatic Sheet Feeding - If you are using a flatbed scanner it is going to be very tedious to handle multi page documents. Flat bed scanners are typically higher quality than sheet fed scanners, but they are much slower to use because you have to manually switch out pieces of paper. There are some flatbed scanners with additional equipment that give you a sheet feeder using the flatbed quality.
2. Duplex - You want to be able to read both sides of a document. Otherwise it is going to be difficult to piece your information back together once it is on the computer. Ideally you want a scanner that can read both sides of the paper at the same time.
3. Speed - If your are using a sheet fed scanner speed might not be quite as important. If you can just load 25 pages into it and then walk away it might not matter too much how long it takes. However, there are always going to be instances where you are trying to scan something that you need to use. In those cases, it is important to have a scanner that isn’t too slow. The faster your scanner the more likely you are to use it.

At this point I’m leaning toward a Fujitsu S500M SnapScan. It is less than $500 and seems to have most of the features I’ll need. And it came highly recommended in the comments on the original post.

Shredder

Once you scan a document you need an easy way to destroy it. There are a very wide variety of shredders on the market. For a paperless office you need something that can handle a reasonable volume and is fairly secure. Older scanners simply cut the paper into strips. These can be easily pieced back together. At the minimum you want a “confetti” shredder that produces pieces 1 inch by 1/4 inch. The ultra secure shredders reduce paper to a powder, but these usually run a few thousand dollars.

One of the things I look for in a shredder is the ability to shred unopened mail. I want to be able to stick the entire unopened envelope from a credit card application in it without needing to open it and handle each individual piece of paper. The ability to shred CDs and credit cards is also handy.

I already have a shredder. It is the Aurora AS1015CD that I got at Walmart. The closest thing I can find online is the Medium-Duty AS1018CD Confetti-Cut Paper Shredder. So far the only thing that caused it even a slight problem was bubble wrap.

(Yes I know you shouldn’t feed bubble wrap into a shredder, but since it hasn’t ever jammed, I’ve been growing curious as to just how much I can feed it before it has a problem. The bubble wrap didn’t really jam anything, it just got wrapped around the cutters and took a couple pieces of normal paper before it cleared itself off.)

Secure Hard Drive Storage

Going paperless means that all of your information is going to be in one centralized place. While this is convenient, it is an identity thief’s dream target. If your computer were lost or stolen you want to make sure that they would not have easy access to all of your bank accounts, retirement info, etc.

So ideally you want to encrypt your digital documents when you store them on your hard drive. These need to be saved in a way that even if someone steals your computer and gains access to the operating system, they could not access the files.

OS X has a feature called FileVault that does this. Your files are encrypted and a special password is assigned to them. After a period of not being used, it will prompt you to enter the password again before giving you access to the files.

Other operating systems have similar mechanisms and there are third party applications that give the same type of security. It is important to realize that this type of setup will prevent you from retrieving your files without the password. If you die, your spouse will not have access to any of your records unless you have shared your password. I would suggest keeping the password in a safe place like a lock box along with a physical piece of paper along with other important numbers just to be on the safe side.

Document Management System

This is really the cornerstone of your system. When you scan in a document you need some way to track it. It is possible to just use the file system as your document management system. OS X and Vista both provide a way to add metadata to files and this can be an effective way to track things. Spotlight and Vista’s search feature may be all that you need. Another alternative is to use Google’s desktop search to locate data.

While I like Spotlight, it has always seemed a little slow to me. Maybe when I upgrade to an Intel based processor I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I’m planning on using an actual document management system for my needs.

One of the most important parts is having a mechanism to index the content of scanned documents. On many systems, scanning in a PDF results in a beautiful image of the page without any actual text data. That means unless you have tagged the file in some other way, you will never be able to locate it based on a search.

What you want is to have an invisible layer of text that is created through optical character recognition that is generated and kept as part of the PDF. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered my CanoScan LiDE 70 and the included software does this automatically. However, I’ve since discovered that most other systems require a manual step to make this happen.

If you have a version of Acrobat Standard (or better) you can scan to Acrobat and let it do OCR. I’m not sure how accurate Adobe’s OCR package is, but still this requires you to manually tell Acrobat to perform OCR.

I’m looking for a solution that will allow me to scan directly into my document management system and perform the necessary OCR steps transparently. I want to push a button and put the document directly into the document management system. I suppose if it prompts me for a title or keywords, that would be ok but I don’t want to have to go through a 2 or 3 step process on each piece of paper.

DEVONThink Pro Office has been recommended as a good solution, so I’m currently trying to figure out if it can handle this type of workflow.

Secure Backup System

With so much vital information being stored directly on my computer, I think I’m going to need to revamp my backup plan. I will probably keep DVDs or a hard drive in a lock box, but I’m considering the possibility of keeping an encrypted copy online, possibly using Amazon’s S3 service. .Mac has recently upgraded their storage limit, so it might be possible to keep an encrypted version of my documents synched with the .mac servers as another alternative.

High Resolution Monitor

I currently have a 17 inch Powerbook with a 1440 x 900 screen and a 24 inch Dell monitor with a 1920 x 1200 screen. When I upgrade my Powerbook I’ll probably go with the 1920×1200 built in display. The higher resolution isn’t so I can show an entire sheet of paper at only 5 inches tall. However, it should make it easier to read PDFs when I’m displaying an entire page on the screen and reduce the amount of time I have to spend scrolling around in a document. This is particularly important when dealing with multi column documents.

Portable Paper Replacement Devices

One of the common uses of paper, is to take with you. For example, you might print out a map to take on the road, print out your flight information when going on a trip or print out an article to read on a plane.

I’m not sure if you can really replace paper when it is used in this way, but I have a few devices that I plan to try to use. The first is my Blackberry. The second is my Sony eBook Reader that uses digital ink technology. I think I’ll still feel safer having my map or flight information on a piece of paper, but we’ll see.

Digital Signature Solution

One of the big reasons I print documents out currently is so I can sign them and then fax them to someone. I’d like to find a good way to handle digital signatures on PDF documents. The simple way is to just scan in my signature, however Acrobat has some capabilities that allow you to sign or encrypt your document with your personal key which allows people to verify that you indeed signed the document. I don’t know much about what is possible at this point, but I’m looking for something that will give me a single way of dealing with signed digital document–whether they are being emailed to an insurance agent in the middle of rural Nebraska or a banker who has the most elaborate setup for verifying digital signatures.

If you have any suggestions or comments, please let me know. I’m trying to harness the collective experience of my readers to help me be successful while staying under my $1,000 budget.

How to Memorize Verbatim Text

Memorizing does not have to be as hard as most people make it. The problem is that most people only know how to memorize by reading the same thing over and over again. In this post we are going to look at how the brain remembers and then show how to use that knowledge to come up with a method for memorizing verbatim text.

At the end of this article is a Javascript tool that makes it easy to implement this method. If you are reading the RSS or Email version, the tool may not show up.

Synapses and Neurons

In the simplified model of the brain in this discussion, we’ll be looking at neurons and synapses. Neurons are parts of the brain that can send and receive electrical signals. Synapses are the paths between neurons.

When you remember something neurons fire signals down particular synapse pathways to other neurons which in turn fire signals to other neurons. The particular sequence represents a memory. In fact, scientists have been able to make people “re live” experiences from the past by poking around in their brain with an electric probe and starting this interaction.

Strong Pathways

Synapses appear to exhibit plasticity. The strength of the signal they convey is determined by use. The more a particular synapse is used, the stronger the signal it conveys.

For example, consider remembering your home telephone number. Since this is a number you use on a regular basis it probably comes very easily to mind. When you try to recall the number some neurons fire of a signal down some synapses that carry a very strong signal to other neurons which do the same thing. The number comes with very little effort.

Now consider a number that you will have trouble remembering. Lets say your drivers license number. For most people an attempt to recall this number will cause neurons to fire down very weak synapses. If you are like me, the signal is so week that it will probably not create the necessary chain reaction to recall the number. In fact all I get is a vague impression that the first letter is an S or E.

Reading vs. Recalling

This is the crucial concept of any type of memorization. The act of reading something you want to memorize fires different connections than the act of recalling. This means that simply reading a particular piece of text over and over again is going to be the long road to memorization. You need to let your brain practice recalling the data so it can strengthen the same pathways that will fire when you need to remember the information later on.

Now lets look at coming up with a method for memorizing text using our understanding of how the brain works. So lets say we are trying to memorize the Gettysburg Address by Lincoln.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The 278 word speech is not a particularly long oration, but it will work for our demonstration purposes. Our goal is to create a method that will force our brain to practice recalling the speech–even before we have it fully memorized. So first of all we need to get it into our mind so our brain has it–even if we can’t recall it. Here are a few methods that will work:

1. Read through it aloud.
2. Copy the text by hand.
3. Read through the text and create a short outline.
4. Have someone else read it to you.

There are other methods as well, just do something to get a general familiarity with the piece. Now we need to come up with a method to give our brain, just enough information to recall the original text without simply reading the original.

F s a s y a o f b f o t c, a n n, c i L, a d t t p t a m a c e.

N w a e i a g c w, t w t n, o a n s c a s d, c l e. W a m o a g b-f o t w. W h c t d a p o t f, a a f r p f t w h g t l t t n m l. I i a f a p t w s d t.

B, i a l s, w c n d — w c n c — w c n h — t g. T b m, l a d, w s h, h c i, f a o p p t a o d. T w w l n, n l r w w s h, b i c n f w t d h. I i f u t l, r, t b d h t t u w w t w f h h t f s n a. I i r f u t b h d t t g t r b u — t f t h d w t i d t t c f w t g t l f m o d — t w h h r t t d s n h d i v — t t n, u G, s h a n b o f — a t g o t p, b t p, f t p, s n p f t e.

What we’ve done is taken the first letter of each word. Now try to recite the speech while looking at the text above. You’ll probably get part way into it and get confused. Backup a few letters and look beyond the letter you are struggling with to see if you can figure it out. Remember you are trying to help your brain find the right connections. If you have to consult the original, make note of what confused you and start over.

I have found this method to be much more productive for memorizing verbatim text than just about anything else. However, keep in mind that it is simply one method. When you need to memorize something, think about how to help your brain practice recalling the information–not merely reading it over and over again.

Below is a tool to help you produce first letter text as shown above. Simply paste the original text in the top box and hit the button. All the letters other than the first one of each word will be stripped out and placed in the bottom box. You can then copy this into a document for printing.

Setup Your Email to Look Professional

Taking a little time to think about how your email looks from the standpoint of the recipient can go along ways toward presenting a professional image. Here are eight things you should check to make sure that when you send an email it conveys the image you want.

1. Setting Up Your Name to Show up Instead of Your Address - When you send an email, it should show your name in the from field. Sometimes people have it set to just show their email address. The worst setup is when it shows something like NA.
   This is an example of what how your emails should not look to someone else:
   This is an example of how the to field should appear when someone receives your message:
   
2. Include Your Full Name - Some people like to use just their first name, but when the person receiving your message is scanning a list and sees “Tom” it may be difficult for them to know which “Tom” the message is from.
3. Don’t Use a Nickname - I get emails from SmoothGeek and similar names. It is frustrating to try to figure out who the person really is. There might be a reason to use a nickname if you are concerned about privacy, but be prepared for people not to take you seriously because there doesn’t seem to be a real person standing behind the email.
4. Avoid Complicated Formatting - Keep in mind that the email that looks really nicely formatted on your email client may get butchered by your recipient’s.
5. Use Something Professional for the Username - EvilGoddess@gmail.com might have seemed like a good idea at the time. It might be great for your friends who get the joke, but someone who doesn’t know you may not draw the same conclusions.
6. Use Your Own Domain - If you run www.mysite.com you should be able to send and receive mail from yourname@mysite.com. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds. If you like Gmail, you can get a customized version of the service for free by signing up here. The instructions are easy to follow. (If there is interest in seeing a walk through of how to use this, please leave a message in the comments and I’ll try to put something together.)
7. Use Templates for Email - If you find yourself sending similar emails, you should probably invest in a template program. (MailTemplate for OS X is what I use.) Instead of starting each email from scratch a template will let you create a reply and automatically fill in certain fields (recipient name, etc.). You can then customize the message, but it is a lot easier to avoid mistakes if you aren’t starting from scratch each time. For example, I use this when people unsubscribe from the Email RSS feed. It grabs their email address from the notification messages and prepopulates an email with a message thanking them for trying the email list. While it would only take a few moments to write the email myself, the template helps make sure I don’t make a silly mistake and it is fast enough that I don’t put the task off for later.
8. Avoid Long Signatures - Two to four lines should be more than enough. Resist the urge to include several paragraphs or your biography. Include a link. If someone wants to know more, they can follow it without cluttering up your messages. If you do go with a longer signature, don’t include it on your replies. Let people see it once, but don’t keep throwing it in their faces for the rest of the exchange.

Paperless Office Experiment

I’ve talked before about how the paperless office is still a dream. As I look around my desk right now, I have stacks of paper requiring my attention in various places. We are halfway through 2007. Seriously, weren’t we supposed to have flying cars and robots to do the dishes and fold the clothes by now? A paperless office seems like it should be normal by now, but it isn’t.

One of the things that has hindered the adoption of paperless technologies is the fact that they concentrate on the “paperless office” instead of focusing on a “paperless workflow”.  For example, if I have a paperless office that requires printing out incoming documents, signing them and then scanning them back in again, I have created more work for myself instead of less. A truly paperless office needs to provide some type of mechanism for dealing with these routine types of paper handling type tasks without creating more work.

I’m going to do an experiment and see just how paperless of an office I can create. I’ll keep the readers of Productivity501 updated on my progress and thoughts along the way. Hopefully the community will have some ideas to help steer me in the right direction. Here are the constraints:

1. I’m willing to spend up to $1,000. I’m trying to avoid solutions that would be out of reach for a normal home office. $1,000 might be a little on the high side for most people, but with technology getting cheaper, it seems like a reasonable place to start.
2. Must be convenient. I’m not willing to go paperless just for the sake of being paperless. It has to actually make my life easier. Just getting rid of storage space doesn’t make my life significantly easier. The retrieval and use of my documents must save me time.
3. Doesn’t have to be fully paperless. In keeping with the idea that it must be convenient, I’m going to assume that a completely paperless office is impossible. So this experiment is more about trying to see if an investment in paperless technology is worthwhile.
4. Reproducible by others. I make my living working with technology. This solution needs to be something that other people can realistically implement without a degree in computer science.
5. OS X & Linux. I don’t have anything against Microsoft, but right now I don’t use a Windows based machine, so the solution needs to work with my existing equipment.

I have a certain amount of equipment already. Here is a list:

1. Powerbook G4 17 inch. (plan to upgrade to MacBook Pro when the LED screens come out for 17 inch)
2. 24 inch Dell monitor.
3. Canon LiDE 70 Scanner
4. 250 GB External Hard Drive
5. Ubuntu Linux Desktop with 320GB hard drive.
6. Sony Ebook Reader
7. Blackberry 8700
8. Deskjet 970 Cse Printer

I’m looking for advice in this area so if anyone has any experience or suggestions for moving to a paperless office, please leave me a comment with suggestions or links to resources.

Contest Winner Announced

We’ve been running an iPod giveaway contest for awhile and we now have a winner to announce.  Mr. Chee Wee Ng from the Bet Shop Boy blog, was assigned to the number selected randomly using www.random.org.

Thanks to everyone who participated.  We’ll probably be doing some more giveaways here in the near future.

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Tuesday’s Tip: Ziplock Bags for Wires

When we were moving down to Mexico in October, I had several miles worth of various cables that I needed to take with me.  Network cables, audio cables, USB cables, adapters for various devices, etc.  At that point I just had them all thrown into a box and it looked like a huge rats nest.  I got to thinking about how it might look to a custom’s officer and decided I needed something that looked a little less disorganized.

My first idea was to wrap everything up with twist ties, but we didn’t have any.  So I eventually settled on using Ziplock sandwich bags.  It turned out that this worked even better than the ties because it keeps the cables separate so they can’t get tangled up in each other. If you wrap up a wire, put it in a bag and then push all the air out, it tends to stay wrapped up.  The clear bags let you easily find the right cable because you can see the ends without having to follow the wire manually to make sure it has the right connector on both sides.

Productive Blogger: Starting Slow

One mistake I see new bloggers make is to start off by writing 20 posts all in the first week. Write as much as you can, but don’t post all at once. Here is why. When you start of you will not have any readers. If you spread your great posts out over time, you have a better chance of people actually seeing your content.

Obviously you can’t decide not to post anything until you have a bunch of readers, but unless your posts are time sensitive, don’t try to post 5 times a day when you have only 3 people subscribed. A better approach is to post once every two weeks for the first month or so, just to get your blog established and indexed in the search engines. Then start posting every week while you work on building subscribers.

Once you get some regular readers, maybe start posting twice each week and eventually move to once per day (if it is appropriate for your topic). During the time where you are posting once per week, you can still be writing content for the future. When 100 people read one of your posts, it has a better chance of spreading than when 25 people read it, so ramp up your post density as you acquire readers. Otherwise it is easy to get burned out.

The idea of posting slowly while still writing posts for the future also helps give you momentum. You may be only posting once per week with 10 readers now, but when you get to 50 readers, you have the ability to post twice a week without increasing the amount of time you spend writing because you have a pool of posts to pull from.

It use to be that simply having a blog was enough to get lots of readers because the amount of content (particularly blog content) was very limited. Now you have to get to a certain escape velocity before your blog really takes off on its own. By starting slow, you can reserve some of your momentum to push through difficulties. By difficulties, I mean the times where you may be discouraged because the number of readers you are attracting doesn’t seem to be growing or when you just don’t feel like writing.

Use a a slow start to build up enough good solid posts to help you slingshot and take advantage of opportunities. For example, lets say you are posting one post per week and suddenly one of your articles is featured on the front page of Digg. Immediately posting another killer post is a great way to encourage people to come back to see what you post tomorrow. If you have a pool of these posts to pull from, you will be ready to leverage a spike in traffic instead of scrambling to try to retain readers.

Making Room On Your Hard Drive

No matter how big of hard drive you have, you’ll eventually be able to fill it. There are two ways to clean out unnecessary information. One is to go through folder by folder and clean out what you don’t need. This is the “correct” way to do things. However, in the digital world, not all files are created equal. You can easily spend an hour deleting hundreds of files only to discover that you’ve freed 50 MB of space off a 100 GB hard drive.

The most productive way to clean your hard drive is to figure out which files are taking up the most space and start there. Unfortunately most operating systems don’t make it very easy to figure out where your big files are. If you use something that is based on Unix (like OS X) you can use the du command to figure it out, but that isn’t very user friendly if you want to deal with things through a GUI.

There are two solutions I’ve found. One is for Windows and the other is for OS X. Both have free and paid versions.

Treesize Free

This is the windows program. The free version gives you an easy way to see the size of your folders and drill down to see the size of subfolders and files. One thing I really liked about it is the way it shows a graph of each file or directory in the tree view. I was also impressed with how fast it worked. Just the other day, one of my client’s hard drives was filling up to the point that the could no longer back things up. I was able to measure about 200 GBs of files in just a few minutes and point them to 3 users who were using over 50% of the drive space.

The paid version gives you a bunch of extra features. It lets you export information in XML, create graphs, and archive old files. It will also let you search for files that are duplicates of each other. It includes a shell extension that will give you access directly from Windows.

You can download Treesize from Jam Software here.

OmniDiskSweeper

This is the program that I use for OS X. It works basically the same way, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as fast as Treesize. The free version lets you view the size of files and folders. The paid version adds a button that lets you delete the files directly instead of having to go navigate to them in the finder.

You can download OmniDiskSweeper from Omni Group here.

Advice for a New Professional

Congratulations to Legal Andrew on completing the bar exam. In this post he asks about advice for a new professional. Below are my thoughts. If you have any further suggestions for Andrew, please add them to the comments here or on his original post.

1. Live Beneath Your Means

Your first year as a wage earner will really set the tone for how you spend money. Making a conscious decision to live below your means establishes a habit that will give you flexibility in the future. If you can afford a $1200 apartment, look for ones in the $800 range. When I started out after college, I tried to live on 20% of my income. Later on this gave me a great deal of flexibility that allowed me to make certain choices that my peers just couldn’t make. Ultimately these choices resulted in even better pay.

2. Look at the learning potential of each job.

Especially when you are just starting out, the money you make is less valuable than the experience. Getting a solid base of experience will be far more valuable in the long run than taking the highest paying job right out of college. For example, you might be able to get management experience at a smaller organization that wouldn’t be possible at a large company–even if the pay is lower. Pay attention to your Work Zone so you know when it is time to start looking for a different job.

3. Take advantage of retirement and other savings options

This goes along with living beneath your means. It is much easier to put money away when you are starting out, than when you have a mortgage and family to support. Most employers offer some sort of matched savings plan, so at the very minimum you should put enough into retirement to get the maximum employer contribution. Also some retirement programs allow you to save money tax free and then use the money to buy your first home. Other programs will allow you to borrow from yourself at a very low interest rate.

Even if your employer doesn’t offer any type of retirement program, the government will still give you tax breaks for putting money aside for retirement. Take the time to understand the difference between a regular IRA and a Roth.  Do some calculations to understand how each type can benefit you based on your career plans.

A Health Savings Account is another great investment tool. It allows you to save money pre-tax that can be used for medical expenses. The account stays with you even if you change jobs. By spending a few years fully funding this account, you can build up a nice cash reserve for medical expenses. In the future, this cash reserve can give you some flexibility to choose opportunities that may be very lucrative, but have little or no insurance benefits, e.g, starting your own business.

4. Take advantage of educational programs

I once worked at an organization where I was paid a fair amount based on what other employees were making, but where everyone was making much less than equivalent positions at other organizations. When I took the position, I had asked about educational benefits. They had a policy of paying for pretty much any additional schooling, but very few people took advantage of this. As a result, I had access to a budget to take as many classes as I could handle. The value to me worked out to more than $10,000 per year. More important than the monetary figure was the way the organization handled flexibility with school schedules.

To be best prepared for every future opportunity, you are going to have to be constantly learning new things. The average person finishes college and (other than on the job experience) stops learning anything new. By continually educating yourself, you hedge against outsourcing and other shifts in the market to assure yourself of always being in high demand.

5. Work for yourself

Even when you are working for someone else, you need to see yourself running your career like it is a business that you own. Your employer doesn’t owe you anything. Be the best worker possible, but don’t forget that you can work somewhere for 20 years and the company can still go out of business because of decisions that were completely out of your control.

Always maintain practices that will let you quit your job if you need to. Just having the option will keep your mindset in a much more positive state. For example, if you know you have enough savings to live for a year, it is much easier to be true to yourself and your convictions than if you are living paycheck to paycheck and just barely getting by. I’m not saying you should go around threatening to quit, but just knowing that you have the option does a lot to improve your self confidence and keeps you from getting stuck in a “master/slave” type relationship with your employer.

If you want to actually own your business someday, do your homework and learn all you can as an employee. By being prepared, you’ll be in the best possible position to launch your business when it will be the easiest on you and your family.

6. Learn to network

Start by making it a point to keep in contact with your college friends. Even just sending a Christmas card every year keeps you in some measure of contact. Most of the big opportunities in life are going to come from people you know, so increase your chances of success by not letting friendships grow stale.

When you leave one job for another, be sure you have a list of contacts to take with you of all your co-workers. You may have their email addresses and last names memorized now, but 7 years down the road simply remembering a guy named “Scott” isn’t going to help you much.

(Make sure you keep this contact list backed up. It isn’t a bad idea to print it off every few years and keep the printout somewhere safe. )

Be on the constant lookout for new people to meet. Don’t forget that you are looking to form two-way relationships. Finding people who need your help is a great way to make new friends.

7. Take vacations

Highly motivated people often overlook the need to take vacations. Don’t forget to consider vacation time when you are selecting a job. Sometimes if you can’t negotiate salary, you can negotiate an extra week of vacation.

Taking a vacation is not a sign of weakness. You need to take a break from work in order to be able to operate at your full efficiency.

8. Practice good habits

As you start your career, take the time to establish good habits. A regular exercise program, reading program, disciplined sleep schedule, healthy eating, etc. are all things that are easier to establish at the beginning of your career than trying to retrain yourself later on.

9. Make sure you enjoy what you are doing

Don’t just give up on your job just because it is hard, but you should be honest with yourself about your happiness. Don’t waste your life doing something you hate. There a plenty of opportunities for hard workers and it is possible to even change careers if you find something you like better.

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