If it’s important to your business and/or career to network with others then using LinkedIn (the professional social networking site) correctly can streamline the process. Earlier this year LinkedIn expert and consultant, Crystal Thies, wrote a guest post on this site about the Three Top LinkedIn Tips. That one post has generated so much interest that I asked Crystal to do an interview to discuss her system in more detail. When...

Every week someone tells me that they would like to use social media marketing but it just takes too much time. What this really means is “I don’t know how and don’t know where to start.” Why are we talking about marketing on a web site about productivity? Well we’re all about saving time and being more effective. You can become much more effective at promoting yourself and your business if you take advantage...

Do you need to read more but find you don’t have enough time? Welcome to the club. I’ve been falling way behind in my reading, particularly business books, and have found it difficult to catch up. There are so many good business books being released that it’s impossible to pick the right ones let alone read all of them. So how do you keep abreast of the latest yet still have time for everything else you have to do? ...

have you ever tried to explain something verbally or written that would be faster and easier with a screen capture or even a short video?  It’s easy to do  with  Jing, the free screen capture and screen recording software from Techsmith.  Here’s a short video that shows you how it works and how to get...

If you’ve listened to even a little of my training you know I harp about the evils perils of attempting to multitask. You can’t actually do two things at once you can only switch quickly between them, "switchtasking" it’s been called. I won’t repeat myself here, but I will refer you to an excellent discussion about the subject that took place on the Marketing Online Live podcast a few weeks ago.  This...

Automated message alerts in e-mail software and cell phones interrupt your concentration than you think.  Fortunately you have the ability to disable them. Earlier this week I promised to show you how to disable the message alert lights and alarms for several popular software tools and smart phones.  This by no means an exhaustive list but it’s a start. If you have any tricks of your own,  please post a comment or send me an e-mail...

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a post about gratitude. I saw a speaker the other day who said that scientific studies about happiness revealed that the the key is gratitude. I think she’s right. If we focus our energy on the good things in our lives then we use less on the not so good. Enough with that. Here’s a video of Conan with comedian Louis CK. It’s very funny and a little crude, but he makes a good...

My wife and I have discussed joining Weight Watchers for the past several months.  She’s in great shape and doesn’t need it, but I love to eat and it was time for some moderation. We signed up over the weekend and I began to use Weight Watchers’ online tracking program.  You use it to plug in everything you eat as well as activity levels.  It then shows you in graphic detail how well you’re doing.  After two...