Looking at my web stats, here are some of the frequent questions people end up coming to Productivity501 searching for. In this post, I simply wanted to list them in one place to make it easier for people to find the answers to frequently asked questions. What is a professional email address? A professional email address is something that you feel comfortable giving out to someone who might want to offer you a job. [email protected] is NOT a professional email address. A professional email address looks best when it is from your own domain. So [email protected] looks very professional. However, using gmail or another service can look professional as well. Something like … [Read more...] about Questions and Answers
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7 Ways To Upgrade Your Brain
If you like this article, please share it with your friends on your blog, email, a thumbs up on StumbleUpon, Facebook or however else you share links. A person's mind is their most powerful tool. Yet very few people take intentional steps toward "upgrading" their brain and trying to become smarter. Here are some scary statistics from an article in The Economist: In 1991 a worker with a bachelors degree earned 2.5 times as much as a high-school drop out. In 2010 a worker with a bachelors degree earned 3 times as much as a high-school drop out. There is an obvious trend toward paying people who have "upgraded their brain" more money. This probably isn't too surprising, but … [Read more...] about 7 Ways To Upgrade Your Brain
Read Stuff You Don’t Understand
If you want to grow you must push yourself beyond where you are at. Sometimes this means reading material that you don't completely understand. Obviously you can't pickup a book in a completely foreign language and expect to get anything out of it, but you can pickup a book on a topic where you don't really have the right prerequisite knowledge to understand 100% of the content and still learn a lot. Lets say you are reading something where 25% of it is completely foreign to you. By foreign I mean that you understand the words, but you don't really understand what is being said. Many people would consider this a waste--because you don't understand it. However, your mind is a … [Read more...] about Read Stuff You Don’t Understand
American Express Concierge
American Express Concierge and Restaurants One of the best experiences I've had with American Express Concierge service was early in 2011 when spending a few days in Kansas City for my wife's birthday. On a whim, we decided to visit the Country Club Plaza and noticed a restaurant called Fugo de Chao. It is a place where they bring skewers of meat around through the dining area and cut off pieces at your table. My wife had been to one of their restaurants as a teenager in Brazil and had very fond memories. Unfortunately we were told that there was a 2 to 3 hour wait for "walk-ins". The staff suggested that we get our name on the list and check back in two hours to get a pager. We … [Read more...] about American Express Concierge
Free Tax Preparation Sites
With April 15th rapidly approaching, many will start looking for fast, efficient ways to file taxes. The IRS has partnered with a number of sites to provide free online filings. This helps the IRS by decreasing the number of paper forms they have to process. In most states you are still going to have to file a state return. If you plan to use software, it may be easier to do the Federal and State together at the same time. Still, for states without an income tax, this is an easy way to do your taxes and get them submitted for free. Here are a few free sites that offer free filing … [Read more...] about Free Tax Preparation Sites
Your Money or Your Life
A number of years ago, I was managing the IT department for a large non-profit and I had an opportunity to interview for a well funded startup airline. The airline was just launching and they were going to fly me out to New York to interview for heading up their IT support services. Their plan was to go public within a few years, which at the time looked like it would be very financially rewarding for the early employees. From a money perspective it looked like a great opportunity. However, the more my wife and I talked about it, the more we realized that we'd be trading a significant part of our life away for more money. While this wasn't necessarily a bad thing--everyone does this … [Read more...] about Your Money or Your Life
Questions about Online Degrees
Here are some of the questions I've received from readers about online degrees. Most of these were prompted by my post about getting my masters degree from Harvard's Extension School. So would you recommend the Harvard Extension School program? ~ Dana Yes. If they have a degree that fits your needs and you can meet the residency requirement, the Harvard Extension School offers some of the best value in education that I'm aware of. Be aware that some of the students who are full time on campus have a negative view of the Extension School students. One of the main complaints I've heard is that it is too easy to get into the Extension School. Some students feels that their acceptance into … [Read more...] about Questions about Online Degrees
Skill vs. Better Tools
I have been doing quite a bit of programming over the past few months. Last night I took a few hours to see if I could find some better tools. I tried out a different programming environment and tested some tweaks to Eclipse (the program I currently use for programming). My goal was to see if I could find a way to get my tools to help autocomplete certain parts of the code I was typing into the web templates. For example, if I start to type " I found a few things that look promising, but I couldn't find anything that worked automatically out of the box. I started wondering if it was worth spending those hours looking for a better tool. What if I had of spent two hours in just … [Read more...] about Skill vs. Better Tools
When Procrastination is a Good Thing
Most of us think of procrastination as a bad thing--something we should avoid, but that isn't always the case. People focus too much on the task or job that is not getting completed, but you can't tell if procrastination is good or bad by looking at what isn't getting done--you have to look at what is getting done instead. For example, if instead of writing this post, I start fiddling around on the Internet and spend a mindless hour on social sites or reading jokes, that is probably a bad thing. This post is more valuable to me than an hour wasted on the Internet. However, if I decided I don't really want to write this post and instead decide that it is nice enough outside that I … [Read more...] about When Procrastination is a Good Thing
iPod Giveaway
Congratulations to Violeta on winning the iPod. If you are interested in other contests, go ahead and enter so you'll be notified when they run. We should be doing another one in the next few weeks. We haven't given anything away for awhile, so I thought it is about time we did another contest. Here are the details: The iPod is going to be given away to one person who likes both Productivity501 and Mark Shead's page on Facebook. If you have already liked both pages, you are already entered in the contest. If either page gets over 750 "likes" we'll give away two iPods to two different people. (So sharing the contest with your friends may double the number of prizes given out … [Read more...] about iPod Giveaway