In an effort to help you be more productive during the Christmas shopping season, here are two ideas for family Christmas gifts that are focused on sharing photos with family. I've given both of these devices as gifts to family members in the past and they have been very well enjoyed for years. Google Chromecast The Chromecast might seem like an odd family gift, but it has a nice little feature that lets you set it up to play a slideshow from a Google Photos album. If you hook this up to a TV at Grandma's house and give all of her grandkids access to add photos to the album, she'll have a very nice picture frame she can leave on when she isn't watching television. The Chromecast also … [Read more...] about Photo Sharing Christmas Gift Ideas for Family
Archives for 2017
Minimal Minimalism
Minimalism means very different things to different people. What someone living in downtown LA considers a minimalistic existence is probably very different from what someone who lives a nomadic life on the plains of Africa would consider minimalistic. What I want to talk about here is a type of minimal minimalism. The goal isn't to get rid of all of your stuff or get down to only 100 possessions. Minimal minimalism is about recognizing that most things cost much more than simply their purchase price and very few things are actually "free" when all factors are considered. When you upgrade your cell phone, there is a cost in time. You have to move your contacts over, learn the new … [Read more...] about Minimal Minimalism
See Your Mail Before It Arrives
Some time ago, the New York Times had an article talking about how the United States Postal Service started scanning every piece of mail in response to the anthrax attacks back in 2001. This was part of a program called the Mail Isolation and Tracking system. That infrastructure can now be used by most people to get images of the pieces of mail that are going to be delivered to your mailbox each day. This service is called Informed Delivery and if it is available in your area, you can sign up for it here. Every day you'll get an email showing you the mail that will be delivered. It doesn't seem to include some of the local items that are delivered directly from the post office. For … [Read more...] about See Your Mail Before It Arrives
Finishing vs. Starting
If you want to be productive, you must complete work. Almost everything we do has multiple stages to completion and in many situations, you don't actually create value until you finish the last stage. Farmers can't sell their grain until it is harvested. Automakers can't sell a bunch of cars that have made it 90% of the way through the assembly line. Most employers aren't going to pay you for having a degree unless you finished the last class and graduated. Now all those things require starting, but if you have work in progress, the most valuable thing you can do is to pick something and finish it. Finishing is where you start benefiting from the value you've created. I've noticed … [Read more...] about Finishing vs. Starting
Best Bluetooth Headset I’ve Owned
I've tried a number of Bluetooth earpieces and headphones and finally found one that I'd buy again after using it for two years. The earpiece is the Plantronics Voyager Legend. One of the big things I was looking for in an ear piece was the ability to mute it from the device itself. If I'm on a call, and there is some sort of background noise I don't want to share, I don't want to have to find the mute button on the phone or on my computer. This is especially important because I make a lot of calls while we are traveling and it is easy to get into a situation where I need to say something quickly in my local environment that would be a distraction on the call. The Legend has a physical mute … [Read more...] about Best Bluetooth Headset I’ve Owned
What Is Your Current Work Zone?
If you are really focused on expanding your capabilities, your salary is probably a secondary motivation when it comes to employment. Your major motivation is going to be your learning and growth opportunities. The graph below shows how learning opportunities change over time. At the beginning of any job, you will have many opportunities to learn because everything is new. This section is marked by the green zone. Every day will involve new experiences and learning new things. As time goes on, this tends to level out, as shown by the yellow zone. Sometimes the yellow zone is only temporary and you will be given new responsibilities that will have new learning opportunities--you'll … [Read more...] about What Is Your Current Work Zone?
Social Glass Ceilings
If you want to reach your full potential you must constantly evaluate yourself. There are always obstacles. Sometimes, it might be a lack of skill, so you go back to school. At other times, it might be interpersonal skills that you need to develop. However, one of the biggest hurdles is something that doesn't get much attention. I'm going to call it a social glass ceiling. Whether we admit it or not, our ideas about what we can accomplish are very much related to the capabilities of the people we are around. It is as if we have an internal bell curve that we use to compare our performance with our peers. If you outperform everyone around you in a certain area, it is going to be … [Read more...] about Social Glass Ceilings
How Much Time Do You Actually Have
Back in 2005 we wrote about the September/October 2005 issue of The Futurist where they examined Americans' use of time. According to the article, the common perception that there just isn't enough time isn't supported by the stats from a national study using time-diaries. Basically, the findings show that Americans average 35 hours per week of work time and 35 hours per week of free time. So how does that compare to today? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics people spent an average of 35.91 hours each week on leisure activities in 2016. The average time spent working was closer to 40 hours, but it isn't clear that the methodology is the same. Regardless of the exact numbers, it … [Read more...] about How Much Time Do You Actually Have
Red Butler Review
The last two years have been very busy and required a lot more travel than normal for me and my family. I'll typically book my own travel and call American Express when I have something more complicated than I can just book online. However American Express is a bit focused on their particular programs and partners. They will take your frequent flyer numbers and hotel program numbers and use them when they book, but they won't necessarily look at your situation as a whole and try to find the best place for you based on your status level. I started looking for other options that provide concierge/travel booking/executive assistant type services thinking that when we are spending a lot of … [Read more...] about Red Butler Review
Power of Expectations
If you are like me, you've probably heard enough about "positive thinking" that you tend to just ignore it. Today I read an article in the New York Times that reminded me just how powerful our expectations are--both positive and negative. The article talks about what is called the "nocebo" effect. You are probably familiar with the placebo effect. People who are given a sugar pill and think it will cure their ailment will often see improvements simply because they expect it to help. The nocebo effect is the tendency of people to get expected side effects even when they are taking a sugar pill. If they think that a pill may cause stomach problems, a higher percentage of people taking the … [Read more...] about Power of Expectations
Top 5 Worst Productivity Ideas
Here are some of the top five traps I find people fall into when they try to increase their productivity. Most of them aren't bad things in and of themselves. However, if they become your focus, you can be sure you aren't going to be getting the benefits you are striving for. Buy (yet more) software to make you more productive Software needs to enable your system. Just buying a piece of software won't make you any more productive. Sometimes when you buy software you are also buying the system and procedure that comes with it. This isn't bad, but if you don't understand that the real thing of value is the system you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I know people whose … [Read more...] about Top 5 Worst Productivity Ideas
Five Productivity Tips
Here are five (slightly random) tips that I've found make me much more productive. Do you use any of these? Password Manager Tools like LastPass and 1Password are great ways to handle logging into the hundreds of websites we all deal with. Last time I checked, I have over 300 passwords I have to keep track of. There is no way I could do that without some software to help me. Learn Excel Excel is a very powerful tool and I regularly use it instead of writing a piece of software when I need to do something. Investing some time in really learning how to use Excel is a very good way to boost your productivity. TIP: If you want a place to start, read the help files on Pivot Tables. They … [Read more...] about Five Productivity Tips
Get More Done With Less Stuff
One of the biggest road blocks in the path to productivity is stuff. We surround ourselves with the things we own, but in many ways our stuff really owns us. We have to maintain our stuff, clean our stuff, sort our stuff, get a bigger house to hold our stuff and move our stuff to find other stuff. Now it isn't that stuff is bad, but we have to recognize that everything comes with a cost. Most people recognize this with pets. Before you get a dog, you think through the responsibility it will entail, who will watch it when you travel, etc. While stuff may not be as high-maintenance as a dog or cat, there are very few things that are truly maintenance free. The problem is that many people … [Read more...] about Get More Done With Less Stuff
Spend Less Time Deciding
One of the biggest ways people lose their productivity is in trying to decide what to do. This probably seems silly, but if you look at most planning techniques, they are mostly designed to reduce the amount of time you have to spend making a decision on what to do next. Why? Because that is probably one of the biggest time drains people face. Instead of working on something important, they spend time trying to decide or worrying about what to do next. If you are really bad about this, you can spend more time trying to decide which task to do than it would take to just complete the tasks. Years ago, I went to several Franklin Planner training sessions. The whole point of how they teach … [Read more...] about Spend Less Time Deciding