I’m getting married tomorrow and shortly thereafter I’m heading to Mexico for my honeymoon. I’ll be pretty much off the computer, getting the most out of my time away, but I don’t want to leave my readers hanging, so I’ve brought in a guest author for the next two weeks.
His name is Peter Flaschner and he’s a very productive designer and blogger from Toronto who I’m sure will have some good stuff for you while I’m away. I’ll let him give you a proper introduction.
So, show Peter some love, wish me luck tomorrow and I’ll see y’all in a few weeks.
I love Dreamhost, and yeah, this post might sound a bit like a sales pitch, and in a way it is, after-all I do get a kick back on people I refer to Dreamhost. But they’re having a sale that’s almost over (end of August) and it’s such a good deal I figured I’d give y’all the pitch. First though, here’s the details on their “triple sale”:
Sign up for our Code Monster hosting plan and you’ll save 50% off our normal pricing! You’ll pay just $19.95 per month instead of the usual $39.95! (Get 20% off for two-year pre-pay too!)
These two sales will remain in effect for as long as you keep your account active with DreamHost! Sign up for two years of Code Monster and you’ll get 192GB of bandwidth and 7680MB of disk space for just $15.95/month, forever! You can’t lose!
They’ve got other deals as well, but this is what I did and it’s been great.
Having said that, let me explain why I like them. Dreamhost been a great help in making sites like this one possible as well as allowing me to spend time writing and thinking and not setting up servers and e-mail and installing CMS systems. I recommend them because I’m totally jazzed about their service and think it’s an almost unbeatable deal.
Over the last year or so, when I attend conferences (or meetings, or anything I want to make sure I remember something) I leave my laptop either in it’s bag during sessions, or I don’t bring it at all. This has worked out great, and just how I thought it would. I get much more out of sessions (etc.) when I’m taking notes by hand.
I think the main reason is that when I’ve got my laptop open, I’ve also opened a whole world of distraction. When you’ve only got a pad of paper and a pen or pencil, you can better concentrate on the world around you. I’ve also found that my notebook is a great place to capture ideas. Sometimes I get really great ideas when I’m at a conference. What I’ll do is open my notebook so that I’ve got two pages showing. On the right, I’ll take notes. On the left, I’ll jot down any ideas that come to mind.
At the top of each page I write the date and title of meeting. This way I’ve got kind of a running journal of everything I attend. It might seem awkward at first, but it really works well.
I highly recommend you give it a try. I can see how it might not be an improvement for some, but my guess is many of you would begin to get a bit more out of your meetings and conference sessions.
In my last post I asked my readers for tips to help me be more productive as an at home worker. They responded with a boatload of tips–thanks all! I also did quite a bit of online surfing and reading to see what I could turn up. I found some great stuff.
So, I thought it’d be a good idea to summarize what I’ve learned in the last few days.
Read the rest of this entry »
As some of you may know I left my full time job last week to head out on my own and make my attempt at doing something great.. So far it’s been wonderful. I’ve had more “me” time and I’ve been able to get quite a bit of work done.
However, I’ve heard tell that it gets harder and harder to stay motivated and productive. And I am only 3 days in!
So, I figured I’d see if any of y’all had any productivity tips for the new “at home worker.” What can I do to keep my motivation going? Are there any resources out there for home-based entrepreneurs?
Anything you’ve got would be great!
Throughout my professional life I think meetings have been one of the biggest sources of frustration. I’m one of those people who really likes to work at work and while I do find some meetings very useful, and the occasional meeting totally necessary, I think the majority of meetings I’ve attended over the years could be done away with.
Or at least done better.
I wanted to take a stab at offering up some tips to get more out of meetings in general. These come from years of being frustrated by useless meetings and a true desire to help people get the most out of their work day. If you’ve got more tips, please add them in the comments.
Information overload is one of the biggest hurdles you’ll have to deal with on the road to being more productive. There is so much out there and it’s so damn easy to spend hours sorting through your favorite blogs and Web sites. I’ve always been pretty good in keeping my reading time under control, that is until I started really using NetNewsWire to subscribe to feeds. I went through a phase where I really felt overwhelmed by the amount of news coming in and amazingly huge number of unread items I’d have.
I decided shortly thereafter to put into place some kind of rules, and a process, to keep control of all the information. I needed to do this so that I could stay sane and keep focused on my work.
I imagine many of you feel the same way. I’ve been asked by readers about this and I think it’s something anyone who reads blogs could benefit from taking some time to look at and reevaluate.
If you’re interested, I’ve got a few tips that have helped me keep control of the information, stay focused and actually get more out of the blogs I do read. After all, how much can you really take in if you are flying through hundreds of posts a day?