There are few things that can ruin your productivity like losing the hard drive on your computer. Here are a few tips that work well for me when it comes to backing up my computer. Take some time to imagine the worst case scenario and how you would handle it. For example, what would you do if your laptop were dropped? What would you need to do if it were stolen? Make sure you have some type of off-site backup. I put a copy of important files on a DVD and put it in a bank lockbox. I only do this once or twice a year, but it gives me something to go back to, if necessary. Use an external hard drive for backup. This is usually a lot faster than backing up to DVDs or CDs. The … [Read more...] about Effective Backups
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Important Tasks
Have you ever started a day with some great ideas of everything you want to accomplish, but suddenly it is 6pm and you have nothing to show for your day? While it is probably impossible to keep this from ever happening, we can minimize it by doing something very simple: Do something important first. That isn't really an amazing idea, but it is very very powerful. If you can, early in the day, do one or two things that have lasting value, you'll be taking steps in the right direction--even if the entire rest of the day is shot. The goal of this approach is to make sure you aren't sitting still. You want to make sure you are moving forward, and the best way to do that is to make some … [Read more...] about Important Tasks
Email Receipts
Some people are going to consider this an ugly hack, so I've been hesitant to share it. However, it works very well, so here it is. When I get an email receipt, I simply leave it in my inbox. (As I've said before, I don't worry about trying to delete everything out of my inbox--I just keep everything I might need in there where I can easily search it.) So, all of my email receipts are in my inbox. When I import my credit card statement into my financial software, I like to add a note on each item saying what it was for. I've found that the most efficient way to find the receipt is to do a search in my email program for the price. Most of the time this is a unique number, and I … [Read more...] about Email Receipts
TIP: Wake Up Right
Imagine waking up to your alarm clock. Now imagine gently waking up as the sunlight fills your room with light. Which one seems like a better recipe for having a wonderful, high performance day? Alarm clocks are designed to wake you up, so they make annoying and jarring sounds to jerk you right out of your peaceful sleep. You have to wonder if this is really a good way to start your day. I mean, really, do you want the first few seconds of each day to be associated with something containing the word "alarm"? When I was a kid, my brother and a friend decided we wanted to see what the early morning cartoons were like. I constructed a device with a small fire alarm style bell, … [Read more...] about TIP: Wake Up Right
Messing with Other People’s Time Management
I write a lot about how to be more productive, but what if that really isn't your thing? What if you don't like productivity? What if your goal in life is to ruin productivity for other people? In an effort to expand our readership to people striving for unproductivity, here are six things you can do to guarantee that your co-workers get as little done as possible. Productivity501 takes no responsibility for the results of actually implementing any of these ideas. Randomly put entries on their calendar like: "1:30 meeting with John White Important!" or "Call Sally 535-321-1242". Place them far enough in the future that they won't suspect you did it. Write in fake delegated … [Read more...] about Messing with Other People’s Time Management
International Travel Tips
I've done a lot of traveling in the past, so I wanted to share some of things I've learned (many times the hard way) that make international travel easier. You should try to get as much information as possible about the country you are visiting, but this list of tips should give you some good starting points that are relevant for most any destination. A couple great sources for safety information on foreign countries are the CIA World Factbook and the US Travel Advisory site. Take Copies - Having a copy of your drivers license and the first page of your passport are very handy in getting your visa or vehicle permits. They also serve as backup if your wallet and passport are … [Read more...] about International Travel Tips
Tuesday’s Tip: Removing Superglue
Have you ever gotten superglue all over your fingers and had to live with it for two weeks as it wore off? There is a simple way to take it off, but first, let me tell you a story. When my wife worked in the ER of a large county hospital in Dallas, she saw a lot of very strange cases. One of the most interesting was the guy who came in with his eyes closed. Evidently, his wife had accused him of looking at other women and they got into a fight. Somehow, he decided that he could prove that he wasn't looking at other women by super-gluing his eyes closed. (I am not making this up.) After the glue dried, he began to think it wasn't such a great idea and got some people to drive him … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: Removing Superglue
11 Steps in Becoming Educated for Your Dream Job
I had quite a few comments about taking classes online in my post "17 Things You Should Stop Doing". When LifeHacker linked to the article, they had even more comments from their readers. Many of the comments were negative, saying that you shouldn't take classes online. So, I wanted to take some time to talk about the best way for college to fit into your career. First, here is a little background about my education to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. I have a bachelor's and master's degree in music composition (both taken at physical universities where I was sitting in class). I am currently working on my thesis for a master's focused on software engineering that I took … [Read more...] about 11 Steps in Becoming Educated for Your Dream Job
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5 Tips for an Organized Computer
1. Use Your My Documents Folder The My Documents folder is there for a reason. If you don't have a My Document's folder, create one. The idea is to keep all of your documents in this folder. This makes it easy to backup your computer and easy to find stuff instead of looking all over your hard drive. You can take this idea step further and create folders for the types of items you produce on your computer. Here is an example of how OS X sets up your home directory by default: One of the big benefits of this type of setup is that you can go to one place to start looking for anything you've previously saved. It also gives you a single place where you can tell your backup software … [Read more...] about 5 Tips for an Organized Computer