As the summer draws to an end, it is a good time to consider arranging your surroundings to maximize your productivity. 1. Purge Old Files If you still have paper files, it may be time to get rid of some of the older ones to make things easier to find. Even with paperless digital files, there are times where it makes sense to delete or at least archive off the older files to reduce the amount you have to look through. 2. Take Stuff Home Whether your office is in a spare bedroom or in a skyscraper in downtown New York, there are always going to be items from home that migrate to work. Taking a few minutes to identify these items and move them back to where they belong in your home … [Read more...] about Fall Cleaning & Organizing
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Starting a Business in a Down Economy
A friend of mine is starting a business selling Cupcake Towers. When I first heard what she was doing I thought, "Why would you want to start a business right now?" After further consideration, I realized that if you have a good product or service, now might be the best possible time to start a business. Here is why: There is less competition for workers right now so you can get good help for a reasonable cost. If you have a business idea that you can run on the side, it makes sense to start before you quit your day job. Technology has drastically reduced the cost of running a business. You can get a web store up for $20 to $40 per month (sometimes even less). If you want to … [Read more...] about Starting a Business in a Down Economy
Save $10 on Ambient Nature Sounds
For the next 24 hours we are doing a sale on our Ambient Nature Sound CDs. These CDs are designed to make it easier to concentrate by covering up distracting conversations. You can choose from the sound of a Brook, Rain, Ocean or Rain on a Lake and if you use the code HKBHVUXS you'll get $10 off each CD. (You can also buy directly from Amazon, but there they sell for the full $21.75.) … [Read more...] about Save $10 on Ambient Nature Sounds
4 Day Workweek 3 Day Weekend
On April Fools day, I made a post about working all 40 hours of your work week at once and then having the rest of the week off. In the post where we discussed working from home, I mentioned that one way to reduce your commute is to work a shorter work week. Before I go any further, let me address all the people who are poised to send me vicious hate mail saying things like "What type of world do you live in?!" or "My boss would never let me do this!" Please recognize that this won't work for everyone--I know that. However, it is a good thing to keep in mind throughout your career because there may be a point where it would work for you. Okay. Now that that is out of the way … [Read more...] about 4 Day Workweek 3 Day Weekend
That Looks Easy!
This weekend, my brother-in-law graciously offered to tile our bathroom. He does this for a living, so he is naturally very good at it. I, on the other hand, do not, and am naturally very, very bad at it. What struck me as amazing is how easily he came in, looked at the bathroom, came up with an optimal placement and started on it. It looked pretty easy. Later, he was marking the tiles that needed to be cut and handing them to me to cut on the tile saw. He would hold the tile one way, make a mark, hold it another, make a mark and then use a square to draw a line showing me where to cut it. Simple. Not really. I tried my hand at marking the tile while he made some complicated … [Read more...] about That Looks Easy!
Making Sense and Dictation Software
The other day my assistant told me, "When I proof your writing I can tell if you used Dictate. Usually you make sense." Every once in a while she will run into a sentence that she can't make heads or tails of that came from MacSpeech. It is still a wonderful tool, but her comment underscores the importance of carefully proofing your work if a computer transcribed it for you. … [Read more...] about Making Sense and Dictation Software
Skill & Focus
Personal productivity is something that is fairly difficult to quantify. Most people tend to just assume if they are doing better than the average person, then they are doing well. For people who really want to achieve their full potential, simply comparing themselves with others isn't particularly rewarding because it doesn't say anything about their true capabilities. If most of your work is repetitive or easily quantifiable, it is easy to measure your productivity against yourself. You just consider how many of units of work you accomplished in a given amount of time. Unfortunately, most work doesn't lend itself to this type of measurement. If we could measure both our … [Read more...] about Skill & Focus
Experienced-Based Education
Everyone is familiar with traditional education. You sit in a class and a teacher teaches. This is an important part of development. But at some point, every individual has to take charge of their own education. To do this, one must look at the root of learning. What is it that makes some experiences add tremendous value to our lives while other experiences do not? On a very basic level, experiences that are unfamiliar usually add more value than experiences that are familiar. This is because unfamiliar experiences require much more of our attention, which means we are in a better state to learn something new. Obviously, this concept must be used in moderation. Someone who … [Read more...] about Experienced-Based Education
Doing Something Difficult
Increasing your personal abilities is just like increasing your strength. You have to exercise in order to get stronger. If you want to grow as an individual, you have to do things that are hard in order to make it easier for you to do difficult things in the future. They Stop Growing Many people graduate from college, have a few years of growth and then stop growing. Maybe they don't stop growing entirely, but they stop attempting things where they might fail. After all, they now have a mortgage and family to think about! They may still continue to grow incrementally in their area of specialty, but they aren't going to experience any exponential gains in their … [Read more...] about Doing Something Difficult
Prepare for the Worst to Save Time
It isn't uncommon for small crises to turn into a huge time drain if you haven't planned ahead. I'm not saying that you should spend an inordinate amount of time trying to plan for every possible emergency, but there are some very basic level precautions that are worth the small amount of effort they require. Here are a couple crises to consider: Your wallet gets stolen while you are traveling to another city. Your car gets a flat tire. Your cellphone gets its memory erased. These are all fairly minor issues if you are prepared. They can become catastrophic issues if you are not prepared. For example, if your cellphone memory gets erased, as long as you have a backup of … [Read more...] about Prepare for the Worst to Save Time