We have done more than our fair share of traveling. When you are going to another country there is always a certain amount of paperwork you have to take with you. When you are traveling with a pet you have even more requirements. Years ago, we started a folder for Travel documents that has everything we might need for traveling. If a copy might work, we have several copies in the folder ready to go. That way when we decide to take a trip, we have one place to go for everything we might need including, copies of our birth certificates, marriage license, passports, dog's immunization records, etc. Having everything in one place has saved us many hours because we don't have to think … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: Travel Paper Folder
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Paper that wants to be Shredded
Someone sent me this video of paper that wants to be shredded. It reminded me of a client of mine. I was coming in to do some consulting so I asked for a copy of their organizational chart to get a better idea of how everything was organized. I carried it around with me throughout their facility for about a week as a reference. Often I'd set it down on a table or desk while talking with an employee. When I really started looking at it in detail, I discovered that it had the salaries of all the executive level staff penciled in under their names! While it wasn't a problem for me to know their salaries, they should have at least warned me about the additional information. … [Read more...] about Paper that wants to be Shredded
The Child Who Has Everything
On the front page of Amazon I saw a list of items that said they were for "the child who had everything". While there were some very interesting toys, I got to thinking about that designation. It definitely isn't how I want my child described. Every parent wants to give their kids nice things and most parents try to give their kids things that they didn't have growing up. This isn't always a good thing. I'm not saying it is a bad idea to help your kids obtain a better education than what you received, but when the only thing your kid doesn't have is a $10,000 replica space suit you've got to question how well you are preparing them for the real world. A lot of my views on money were … [Read more...] about The Child Who Has Everything
Tuesday’s Tip: Get a Good Pen
This may seem trivial and not even worth mentioning, but I think it is important. Your performance is related to how comfortable you are with your tools. Even if you spend most of your time on the computer, a good writing instrument is a necessary tool for getting work done. Since you have to use a pen, you might as well get one that you like. This doesn't mean you have to go out and buy a $50 ink pen (especially if you tend to lose them), but put a little thought into getting pens that you actually enjoy using. It is a small thing, but the happier you are, the better your productivity. … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: Get a Good Pen
HSA – Why You Need to Notice These Special Accounts
I was talking with a physician this past week about health care. I mentioned that HSAs seemed like a step in the right direction for dealing with health insurance. He gave me a blank look and I realized he didn't know what I was talking about. If a doctor doesn't know about this wonderful new tool, some of my readers would probably benefit from a 5 minute explanation. An HSA is a Health Savings Account. Most people are familiar with "flex spending" type medical savings accounts where you set aside money pre-tax in order to pay for health related expenses throughout the year. If you don't use the money for health care, you lose it at the end of the year. So if you are healthy you … [Read more...] about HSA – Why You Need to Notice These Special Accounts
Tuesday’s Tip: File Folders – Hanging or Traditional
Some productivity experts suggest that you shouldn't use hanging files because they take longer to just whip out a new folder for something. They suggest using regular plan folders, so you can grab one and make a new folder when ever it is needed. This makes sense, but I think I've reached the best compromise with my hybrid approach.I use hanging folders for major categories and then put regular folders in for subcategories. For example, I might have "Education" as a hanging folder and then individual normal folders for each year or each class, depending on how I'm organizing things. I have a hanging folder for "Taxes" and then a regular folder for 2006, 2007, and 2008. By using … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: File Folders – Hanging or Traditional
Testing Testing
Sometime back, I was helping a client add some new domains to their email server. Once the changes were made, I started sending test messages to make sure everything was working properly. None of my test messages showed up. Strangely though, other messages were coming through just fine. In fact some of my messages were coming through--just not the ones were I was intentionally trying to test the system. A little digging revealed that their "network administrator" had created a rule to delete any message that contained the word "test". Since all of my test messages explicitly said that they were tests, they were immediately deleted. After querying the staff, I found that someone … [Read more...] about Testing Testing
Tuesday’s Tip: Turn Off Message Notification Sounds
Boing! You have another email. Boing! Boing! There are two more emails to deal with. Right as you get ready to leave for lunch Boing! Boing! Boing! Arghhh! This is not what email is for! If you want to get more done, turn off the audio notification for email. You can turn it back on if you are waiting for an important message, but leave it off while you are trying to do normal work. The whole point of email is so you can communicate quickly but asynchronously. That means it is ok to wait a few minutes before typing a reply. You can't let every email be an interruption. Go ahead and check your email every 15 minutes if you must, but spend those 15 minutes in between getting … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: Turn Off Message Notification Sounds
Visual Voicemail Confusion
My wife and I have used Vonage for our home telephone service for several years. Overall we've been very pleased with the service. It was especially useful when we were living in Mexico. One of the great features is the way that voice mail shows up with your email as an attachment. I use a Blackberry that isn't capable of playing a .wav file so when I'm on the road this feature is only useful to help show me who called so I can call them back. Recently they introduced a feature called "Visual Voicemail" where for $0.25 they will transcribe your voice mail and add it to the message along with the .wav file. This seemed like a great idea, so I signed up for the service. I'm not … [Read more...] about Visual Voicemail Confusion
Tuesday’s Tip: Using a Feed Reader
If you have more than one website that you check on a daily or weekly basis, this tip will help you. You probably don't realize how much time is spent checking a website only to discover that nothing has been updated. You can reclaim this time with a feed reader. Most website (including Productivity501) publish something called RSS feeds. These contain the text (or sometimes just summaries) of each article in a special format that is easy for another computer program to read. Programs that read these feeds are called RSS readers. There are two types of feed readers. One is a program that actually runs on your computer. The other are web based programs like Google Reader. The … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: Using a Feed Reader