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For the past 6 months, my wife and I haven't had our own place.  We've been all over the US and Mexico staying with friends, relatives, and in hotels. It has been an interesting experience and I've developed a few practices that help me be the most productive while working out of a suitcase. Obviously you would want to tailor these for your own line of work, but hopefully everyone can find at least a few tips that are helpful. Work Bag - For me, this is my laptop bag.  Almost everything I need to work goes in the bag.  If I am approaching a deadline, I can stop anywhere with internet access and get right to work without needing to pull things from several suitcases. If you do a lot of … [Read more...] about Working from a Suitcase

The last two lists of academic podcast lectures were quite popular, so I've created an updated list for this semester.  Universities are starting to limit podcasts to registered students and some have given up on podcasting.  As a result our list is shorter than last semester.  However, there are still over 60 classes publishing public RSS feeds--most people should be able to find something interesting for their daily commute. The list only contains actual courses.  Many universities have distinguished speaker podcasts that are intentionally not included in this list.  If you are aware of other podcasts of current courses please add them to the comments.  … [Read more...] about Free Academic Podcast Lectures (Spring 2007)

We got a Yorky puppy about 5 years ago. We had resolved that she would be a very well trained animal, etc. etc. She isn't. She is sweet and we love her, but she is spoiled and thinks she is a person. However there was one thing we did that was turned out wonderfully and made our lives much easier. When we first got her, we bought a small bell and hung it from the door in our apartment where she could reach it with her nose. Every time we took her outside, we'd ring the bell with her nose. She learned to ring the bell when she wants to go out and this has proved to be even more convenient than we thought it would be. Whenever we travel, we can just take the bell with us and hang … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: A Bell for Your Dog

This week we reached the 250 mark for email subscribers and randomly selected one individual to receive an iPod Shuffle engraved with www.productivity501.com on the back. The winner was Conrad Zhuang and he should be getting his iPod in the next week or so. Thanks to everyone who entered the contest.  If  you subscribed just for the contest, feel free to unsubscribe now. :)  In the coming months we'll probably do another contest to encourage people to subscribe to the RSS feeds.  If you have any suggestions of something that would make a good giveaway and would cost less than $100 please leave them in the comments. As a side note, I want to mention another 501 site: … [Read more...] about We Have a Winner!

Take a few minutes to reflect on what you've read over the past year.  Now assume 2007 will consist of a similar "intellectual diet".  Will you feel like you've adequately invested in yourself at the end of 2007? If you feel that you'll be pleased with your personal growth in 2007 based on this exercise then you are in good shape.  You already place an adequate emphasis on your personal development. However, for me, this shows how much I fall short of my ideal personal investment. Our health is determined by what we eat on a daily basis.  It doesn't really matter what we do as part of a 1 week diet.  Our intellectual health is determined by what we do … [Read more...] about Intellectual Diet

Just a quick note to let you know the status of our iPod Shuffle giveaway.  The contest is an unashamed self promotional strategy to get  you the reader to sign up to get new Productivity501 posts directly into your email inbox. The contest is still running.  We weren't able to hit our goal of 250 email subscribers by Christmas, but we are very close.  We need another 25 subscribers to get to our goal of 250 subscribers to our email list. If you haven't signed up already, you can use the form on the right hand side of the page to enter.  If you've already entered, you can help by encouraging your friends to sign up.  The sooner we get 250 users the sooner … [Read more...] about Contest Update

We'll we didn't make it to the 250 mark for subscribers to our email updates.  We made it about half way. As I promised, we are going to slightly change the contest in order to give away the iPod Shuffle.  I really want to give away an iPod. So instead of giving it away to the 250th person, we'll randomly draw a subscribers name once we hit 250. That way people who subscribed early on aren't penalized. However instead of giving everyone the same chance, we are going to weight things toward the earliest subscribers.  So the 10th person to subscribe has more chances of winning than the 250th person to subscribe. This provides an incentive for people to sign up sooner than … [Read more...] about Contest – Not Quite There

Since we've nearly doubled our audience in the past few weeks, I wanted to post some links to some older content that has been popular in the past.  If you enjoy reading this site, I'd encourage you to refer a friend.  A great way to invite someone is to let them know about our current iPod Shuffle giveaway. Here are links to some of the more popular articles from this site over the past year: … [Read more...] about Past Favorites