Everyone gets older, but have you ever wondered why? Our bodies heal themselves, so why do organs eventually fail? The answer is fascinating. Our cells divide and make duplicates of themselves, but each time this occurs there is a section of the DNA that gets a little bit shorter. DNA replication starts at the middle and a bit of the ends don't get copied. These sections are called telomeres. Telomeres are basically end caps to the information in our DNA. If this was important information for creating a new cell, then the duplicate cell would be incomplete. The telomere data is not necessary data for the creation of a new cell. However each time the DNA is duplicated the telomere region … [Read more...] about Aging – Your Auto Self-Destruction Timebomb
Archives for 2011
Taking A Break
When you are focused on a problem, issue or task, it stays in the conscious part of you brain. However, there are some problems that you are unlikely to solve until the problem gets the attention of your unconscious mind. How do you let your unconscious mind take a look at your current enigma? You have to take a break. Mentally demanding work requires taking break to stay efficient. Unfortunately we have a cultural viewpoint that encourages people to see taking a break as a weakness. Nothing can be further from the truth. Taking a short period of time away from your main task requires a discipline. It takes discipline to know when to start and it takes discipline to get back to work … [Read more...] about Taking A Break
10 Ways to Reduce Clutter
Clutter comes at a cost. A room with a lot of clutter takes longer to clean. A cluttered closet can make it nearly impossible to find what you are looking for. If you are looking for the clear tape in a few very cluttered drawers, it might even be faster to drive to the store and buy a new roll instead of trying to find the one you own. In this post we are going to look at 10 ways you can help keep clutter to a minimum. These aren't hard and fast rules--take what is useful to you personally and ignore what isn't. A few brief decisions acting as a de-cluttering superhero can reap long term rewards--particularly when you start fighting clutter at its source before it even makes it into … [Read more...] about 10 Ways to Reduce Clutter
The Causes of a Messy Desk
Right now my desk is a complete mess. Now I have a pretty good excuse. I am in the middle of switching over to a new laptop. I'm also in the middle of trying to switch from AT&T to Sprint for cell phone service. An order of sample gifts for clients just came in yesterday. I have rebates from sales that are partially filled out and waiting for additional documentation that is on the way. I'm working with a graphic designer on a new logo, so I have samples stuck to my walls. I don't want to throw away any of the boxes for my new equipment so they are all stuffed under the desk or on a bookshelf. Etc. etc. I'd like to say that the picture above is just something I found on Flickr. … [Read more...] about The Causes of a Messy Desk
Personal Outsourcing Caveats
Asian Efficiency has a nice post on personal outsourcing. The article makes some good points, but it falls into a few common traps. I'd recommend reading the article and then coming back here to read my list of gotchas when it comes to personal outsourcing. 1. Not all of your time is valued the same It is easy to assume that if you make $20 per hour, any task that you can pay someone $10 per hour to complete should be outsourced. My normal rate for consulting is $145 per hour. If I was to apply this logic, there are very few things I'd do for myself. But, I have a limited number of hours each month that are worth my $145 rate. Those are my best and highest performance hours. Even if I … [Read more...] about Personal Outsourcing Caveats
Do The Work – Review and Free Book
Steven Pressfield is the author of a number of books including The Legend of Bagger Vance and War of Art. His newest book Do The Work walks you through a process for getting work done. This quote gives you a good idea of what you'll find in the book. Our enemy is not lack of preparation; it's not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is resistance. The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications and a million reasons why he can't/shouldn't/won't do what we know we need to … [Read more...] about Do The Work – Review and Free Book
Excel Transpose Trick
This one minute video shows you how to take a list of items in a column and copy it to a row. It is pretty simple, but when you need it this can really save you a lot of time. … [Read more...] about Excel Transpose Trick
Should he drop out of college?
In a recent conversation, I had a friend explain how he was trying to talk someone out of going to college. The young man he was referring to was going to a community college to appease his mother who wanted him to go to a university. He was talented at computer repair and my friend thought he should drop out and focus on acquiring more computer troubleshooting skills. I disagree with my friend's assessment, but it made me wonder why I value college education so much. Surely there is something to be said for someone who enters the workforce and learns everything then need to know through on the job experience. Is my belief that getting a degree is better rational or is it just … [Read more...] about Should he drop out of college?
Personal MBA
Josh Kaufman sent me his new book The Personal MBA. His "Personal MBA" started out as list of recommended reading for someone who wanted to really learn how business works, but wasn't sure an MBA was really worth it. The list grew with input from others and now consists of this list organized by topic along with reviews of each book. Eventually Josh decided to distill what he had learned into his own book and the result was The Personal MBA. I think the book is excellent. He first talks about his quest for learning how businesses really work and lays out a pretty effective argument that top MBA degree programs are: A poor investment - If you use the things … [Read more...] about Personal MBA
5 Simple Networking Tips
As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, the importance of who you know keeps going up. Here are five tips for cultivating and growing your network. Note: I don't advocate doing any of this to simply take advantage of other people. Networking only works if you are genuinely interested in the people you are trying to connect with. If you try to fake it just to get favors from people, everyone will know. 1. Use Social Networking Tools Sites like Facebook and Linked In make it easy to find people you've known in the past. In particular, the ability to look at the friends of your current friends can save you a lot of time in hunting down acquaintances from school or previous … [Read more...] about 5 Simple Networking Tips
Un-Procrastination Book by Leo Babauta
Leo Babauta has written a nice little ebook called Un-Procrastination. If you struggle with procrastination this is a very good resource. I've seen a lot of stuff written on procrastination that basically says, "I never procrastinate and here is how to be like me." Leo is a bit more realistic and admits that sometimes he even likes to procrastinate. In spite of that he has been able to accomplish a tremendous amount of work by following the suggestions in his book. One tip that I think is particularly helpful is to make sure you really want to do something. I've touched on this idea before in When Procrastination is a Good Thing. Leo also discusses how to deal with the Internet and … [Read more...] about Un-Procrastination Book by Leo Babauta
Questions and Answers
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
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
Understanding Taxes
When it comes to your finances, there are few things you can do that are as beneficial as really understanding taxes and keeping up with current tax law. Most people don't realize just how much they pay in taxes every year. The government is always coming up with various schemes to get you to do this or that and most of the time they try to motivate you by giving you some type of tax rebate or credit. In the past year, I've been able to save over $15,000 simply by paying attention to the changes tax laws and taking advantage of different credits, lower tax rates, etc. That may or may not seem like a lot of money, but considering the average household income where we live is in the … [Read more...] about Understanding Taxes
How to deal with a boring job
Reader question: My job is driving me crazy! I work in tech support, so I'm mostly getting paid to be there if there are any problems that come up. This means many days I'm just sitting there dinking around on the internet for 2 or 3 hours at a time. This might be a dream job for some people, but I feel like I'm losing my skills. I'd look for another job, but I think my place is pretty secure here and I don't want to risk going somewhere else only to get let go in a bad economy. Do you have any suggestions for me? Brad Those are some good questions. I've previously talked about figuring out your work zone to help decide when it is time to leave a company and … [Read more...] about How to deal with a boring job