Kolz Blog

Why are some people effortlessly popular and well liked? By contrast, other people, no matter how hard they try, never seem to be able to gain the same trust and respect. Even if we may not like to admit it, most people secretly crave the respect and admiration of other people. These are some factors which can lead to a natural popularity. 1. Don’t Try to Be Popular. It is a mistake to try and become popular. When we seek to impress others and please them, it inevitably encourages us to offer false flattery and think about what they want us to do and say. When we behave like this our ego comes to the fore, and we hide our real self. This kind of behaviour may temporarily impress some people, but, in the long term it is not sustainable. We have to base friendship on being our natural self, and avoid extravagant attempts to rise in other people’s esteem. 2. Think of Others more than you think of your self. People appreciate those who are considerate of others. If you only talk about yourself and your achievements, people will merely start to try and avoid you. We naturally respect people who are willing to spend time listening to others. This means offering goodwill to everyone, not just a select few who have a high social standing. [Read more]

Previously I wrote about why I prefer to use IMAP for my primary email accounts. Gmail recently enabled IMAP access for their accounts. Not only does it work for accounts at gmail.com, but it also works with their hosted apps account where you use your own domain. Productivity501.com uses Google’s hosted apps for email, so IMAP is a very welcome addition. You can find this control by going to Settings > Forwarding POP & IMAP. [Read more]

Published in 1902, the classic As a Man Thinketh by James Allen is an exploration into how our thoughts influence our outcomes. If you think good thoughts, you’ll lead a happy life. If you think about sadness, then misery will follow. [Read more]

The administrator confirmation pop-ups are quite annoying. And I really don’t get it why the guys from Microsoft decided that the best security for your [Read more]

In response to the recent wildfires in Southern California, Wired's How To Wiki details how to protect your home and family in the event of a wildfire, from what precautions you should take before a fire to what you should do in the event of one. Keep in mind that—according to the post—strong winds and heat like we've seen in Southern California can tear through almost any security measure you take, but following a few [Read more]

Exactly What is Success? Is success measured by how much money you have? How happy you are? How satisfied? Is success really just up to you?

Here’s the Merriam-Webster definition:

 

noun 1. satisfactory completion of something. 2. the gaining of wealth and fame. 3. one that succeeds.

I especially like the first definition. Success is the “satisfactory completion of something”, but the satisfactory completion of what?

I’ve come up with this formula:

S=GxA

“S” is success, “G” stands for goals, and “A” for achievement. Success is the result of your goals multiplied by the number of times you achieve your goals. In other words, the more times you achieve your goals, the more successful you are.

Simple…

However definition number two says “the gaining of wealth and fame”. Can you really be successful without wealth and fame? I don’t think so. However, the way you define wealth and fame is very important in determining your personal vision of success.

In the Dynamic Components of Personal Power philosophy wealth means to have “enough”. You need enough to create satisfaction in 3 areas of life: material, emotional and spiritual. Wealth means having abundance in each of these areas. What constitutes abundance in each area depends entirely on your personal needs and desires.

Fame is the people you know and the people who know you. You can’t create success in a vacuum. You need people who need your services, and you need people who can help you create and deliver those services.

I’d have to say that to be successful; you have to develop wealth and fame. The rest is really up to you!

This is why goals are so important. You decide exactly what your goals and ambitions are. The more often you design goals specific to your vision of success, and the more often you achieve your goals, the more successful you become.

That’s why someone may have a lot of money without feeling successful. That’s why people who control others by fear and domination are not necessarily successful, only feared and tolerated for a time.

On the other hand, you may be very well respected and admired and feel a great spiritual connection with the universe, but if you don’t have enough money you also may feel like a failure.

There are people who have very little money and still feel successful materially, emotionally and spiritually. I admire these people. Remember, anyone who has “enough” can be successful. Only you can determine what “enough” is for you is.

So, how does one become successful?

Pay attention to all three areas, material, emotional and spiritual. Set goals in each area and achieve those goals. It’s really that simple.

Of course, things don’t always go the way you planned. One of the most interesting traits of successful people I’ve found through my study is that successful people fail…a lot! They’re also the ones who pick themselves up, dust themselves off and…you know the rest!

Create a big picture vision of your ultimate success. Then set manageable goals that take you incrementally toward this ultimate success. [Read more]

Windows only: Freeware application AutoSizer automatically resizes and moves application windows to specific, user-defined sizes and screen locations as soon as they're opened. That means that if you've got a widescreen monitor with the perfect window layout that packs every last pixel with useful information, you can save each window size and location with [Read more]

It goes without saying that stress levels skyrocket when you go into crunch mode to get last-minute work done before a big deadline, but a lot of us still think we do our best work under pressure. According to the IGDA web site, though, if you're putting in overtime beyond your basic 40 hours for an extended period of time, it's unlikely you're getting all that much more done. [Read more]

If you share your office in your home chances are that your effectiveness is a fraction of what it could be. So, carve out a space of your own for work. This article is aimed especially at field representatives, entrepreneurs, and telecommuters who work a meaningful time in their home office each week. I probably don't need to remind you about the distractions that come along with working at home in the first place – the kitchen offering snack breaks all the time, the temptation to go out for a run when the weather is beautiful and just the right temperature, or the X-box where you can better your score. Those and similar distractions are the reason to designate your own work hours. The reasons to designate your own work space include:

• You can keep a project out without disarray coming from other people as always happens when someone uses the dining room table as a workspace
• When you put something on your desk, it should stay there
• Someone else looking at then commenting on your work is discouraged
• You can be sure to have all your own supplies which support your work at hand
• When you're on the phone you can concentrate
• You can implement good ergonomics such as good lighting and a perfect chair to create an ideal physical environment
• You probably grew up with your own room and actually function best when you have your own time in your own spaceReasons not to share your space include:

• Someone walking off with your stuff is frustrating and slows you down
• An eavesdropper who offers commentary on what you're doing means you're not doing your work and they're not doing theirs
• Things get moved and delay you getting your work done as you hunt for things
• It's probably bad for your body – keyboards that are the wrong height is an example
• You can't both, or all, be in there at once using the same work surface
• No privacy

I find a desk in a kitchen utterly useless in 100% of the homes that have a desk in the kitchen. A desk in the kitchen is an anti-productivity workplace. It's pretty obvious to me that the architects and designers [Read more]

Do too many of your magazines make a circular route from the mailbox to the recycling bin without being opened? New website Brijit aims to help you decide what's worth paging through all those ads to read. The site's paid staffers create 100-word abstracts from the articles inside more than 50 popular (and mostly high-minded) magazines and rate them on a 0-3 scale from "not a priority" to "exceptional, a [Read more]

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes we start a day with the previous day still in mind. We think about the mistakes we made in the previous day, how things went wrong, and how we felt bad about it. No wonder it becomes difficult to focus on the current day. And since we cannot fully focus on the day, our performance may drop and things may once again go wrong. This pattern could repeat again and again, where the burden from the previous day is taken to the current day and make it bad, which will then be a burden for the following day. The chain may be hard to break and your overall performance may drop, not to mention the difficulty to have a peaceful mind. So it’s important leave the past day behind. Always start your new day fresh, without thinking about yesterday. This way you will be able to fully concentrate, do your best, and improve your performance. Here are some steps on how to do that: 1. Take time to evaluate your day At the end of a day, take some time to think about it. You should do it at the same day and not wait until the next day. You should finish dealing with your day before the next morning comes. The purpose of this thinking time is not to regret how bad your day was, how things went wrong, or how people treated you negatively. This won’t do you any good to improve your life. Instead, the purpose of this thinking time is to extract lessons which you can bring to the following day. [Read more]

One thing about Word is that, once you type in something that has “http://”, “www.” and a “.com” in a sequence, it automatically creates a hyperlink pointing to that specific URL. While keyboard ninjas would swear by Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V combo. There are still more ways to create hyperlinks in Microsoft Word. Here’s a nifty trick that you can do using the right-click and drag technique.

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There’s not much you can do in terms of some creep stealing your laptop physically from you. Unless, of course, you try to strap it to yourself with cuffs and shackles. But sometimes, all the security you need is from that bozo from the next cubicle who’d like to mess with your computer when you’re by the water cooler or that brown-noser in the meeting room always fidgeting with your laptop right after your presentation. That can easily be fixed by a simple security measure - enabling the password request on wakeup. (more…)

One of the most popular topics here is reading efficiently, including How to read a lot of books in a short time and A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide". Using Leveen's terminology, I have a candidates library of at least 50 books (i.e., purchased and in my bookcase), and a pre-candidates list of around 600 (kept on Amazon, but it's not perfect). So I really want to read a lot (actually, to learn a lot), but the problem is my eyes are bigger than my stomach, and I've fallen behind. This is in spite of outsourcing voice note transcription [1]. Thankfully, I came across Scott Ginsberg's post [2] Before we make our move, let’s call... where he writes in passing:

(FYI, I read five books a week.)

This was just the whack to the head [3] I needed! The essential idea I forgot? I don't need to read the whole book. D'oh! He elaborates in How to read a book (part two here):

You don’t need to read every word. You don’t need to devour every page. You don’t need to understand every concept.Just get the key ideas.

(See his post for details.) I have to say, it's great to reminded of the basics, but humbling as well. [Read more]

Windows only: Freeware application DriveImage XML creates and restores images of any drive or partition on your system. That means that next time you freshly install Windows on your computer (whether XP or Vista), you can back up that clean and sparkling system state with DriveImage XML. If things get messy down the road, you can just as easily restore that fresh system state with the program's simple interface [Read more]

Those elusive projects that always stay undone could benefit from a red, hot go, as Leo Babauta suggests, instead of slowly chipping away at it. However, you need a plan. These steps cover everything from setting your time up to resolving the project at the end. Won’t you feel awesome once you get this one done?

4. Make a project modular. Similarly, sometimes there’s a project where it would be impossible to do all in one go. It might be too large, or sometimes you have to wait for certain things to happen before moving to the next phase of the project. In those cases, see how you can make the project [Read more]

These are those things that you have to say but could hurt other people. Confrontation and honesty are sometimes taboo, so how do you get the truth out and keep the other person happy? Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks [both Ph.D.] say that if you don’t want an argument, you can speak on unarguable terms.

If I say to you, “My stomach feels queasy,” you’d have a difficult time arguing with me. If I say to you, “You make me sick to my stomach,” you’d probably find plenty to argue with me about in that sentence. The difference is intention. If I say, “My stomach feels queasy,” my intention is to reveal my inner experience. If I say, “You make me sick to my stomach,” my intention is to blame you for my experience. In speaking difficult truths so that people thank you afterwards, the trick is to reveal your inner experience and stay out of blame.

Now in the scenario of a breakup, no matter how you put it, things can turn sour. However, if you aren’t [Read more]

Although your next job interview won’t have as many as 64 questions, your would-be employer will almost certainly ask at least one of these.

Tell me about yourself. TRAPS: Beware, about 80% of all interviews begin with this “innocent” question. Many candidates, unprepared for the question, skewer themselves by rambling, recapping their life story, delving into ancient work history or personal matters. BEST ANSWER: Start with the present and tell why you are well qualified for the position. Remember that the key to all-successful interviewing is to match your qualifications to what the [Read more]

“The brain is a monstrous, beautiful mess. Its billions of nerve cells — called neurons — lie in a tangled web that displays cognitive powers far exceeding any of the silicon machines we have built to mimic it.”

- William F. Allman

The human brain is able to constantly adapt and rewire itself. Even in old age, it can grow new neurons. Severe mental decline is usually caused by disease, whereas most age-related losses in memory or motor skills simply result from inactivity and a lack of mental exercise and stimulation. In other words, use it or lose it. Warm up right now with a small change: Until you click out of or close RirianPoject, use your weaker hand to navigate the website. That hesitation and awkwardness is not you “sucking at” something; it’s your brain firing on unfamiliar paths, trying to learn what it does not yet know. The more often you encounter this, the more beneficial the neural exercise. You should strive for this sensation. The following workout routine features 3 elements: A small change to reinforce mental flexibility, a focus on a perceptive sense to foster the imagination, and a critical thinking tool to apply throughout the day to nourish a healthy skepticism. MONDAY

Small change: Spell some of those long words backwards. Sense: Vision On your break at work, step outside and find something to focus on. Take a tree, for an instance; how many shades of color do you see? How many of these colors can you put a name to? Consider the kinds of associations or metaphors you can make out of it, such as a “family tree” or the “tree of life” found in many religions. Critical thinking tool: The Principled Juror Subject what you hear or read to intellectual due process. This is possibly the most complex method of critical thinking because it requires more integrity, humility, tolerance of uncertainty, and courage than most of us find easy to summon. Thus, be prepared to admit that you don’t know something, that your experience and intelligence have limits or that a potentially offensive or repulsive notion might have merit. Bonus exercise: Brain Buttons This exercise helps improve blood flow to the brain to “switch on” the entire brain. The increased blood flow helps improve concentration skills required for reading, writing, etc.

Put one hand so that there is as wide a space as possible between the thumb and index finger.

Place your index and thumb into the slight indentations below the collar bone on each side of the sternum. Press lightly in a pulsing manner.

At the same time put the other hand over the navel area of the stomach. Gently press on these points for about 2 minutes.

TUESDAY

Small change: Brush your teeth with your “wrong” hand. Sense: Hearing As different individuals speak to you throughout the day, cue in to the inflections they use to accent certain words or points. Listen to the words they’re stressing and ask yourself why these inflections are being used. Critical thinking tool: Hume’s Razor Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. David Hume wrote, “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless that testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.” In other words, don’t accept amazing claims from anyone unless the evidence they offer up is unimpeachable. Bonus exercise: Cross Crawl This exercise helps coordinate right and left brain by exercising the information flow between the two hemispheres. It is useful for spelling, writing, listening, reading and comprehension.

Stand or sit. Put the right hand across the body to the left knee as you raise it, and then do the same thing for the left hand on the right knee just as if you were marching.

Just do this either sitting or standing for about 2 minutes.

WEDNESDAY

Small change: Shower or bathe in the dark. Sense: Taste Pick a recipe composed of mostly unfamiliar ingredients and prepare it. Try choosing something that [Read more]

Windows Home Server Event Monitor is a new add-in from Dave Mercer which monitors your home server’s event log and sends an email to the address of your choice when a pre-defined event occurs. [Read more]

Here’s one super neat trick, a friend of mine shared to me. Since she’s working the more or less clerical post she usually has to draft and format corporate communication in a flash. And one underrated (sometimes even berated) features of Word is the AutoCorrect feature. Well, I haven’t really thought about it until my friend pointed out that one can simply use AutoCorrect to insert images in the document. In most cases, these would be logos and signatures. Here’s how.

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In my previous posting, I wrote about Virtual PO Boxes. Another similar handy service I use for my own business is a lockbox, which is something my bank offers. It is basically a PO Box I use just for checks that are mailed to me, like for affiliate payments or invoice payments. I get over 100 checks like this a month, and with the lockbox my bank automatically deposits the checks to my bank account on a daily basis, and then sends me copy of each check for my records. Before I had a lockbox, I had to go to the bank several times a week to deposit checks (yes, I know, if having to go deposit money is my biggest problem in life, then I have it easy). Also, one time before I had the lockbox, I was out of town for 3 weeks, and checks piled up in mailbox but I had no cash in my bank account and I bounced some checks due to automated payments that were taken out while I was gone. So, having a lockbox solves this problem. [Read more]

Along with releasing a new mini-site featuring the HP MediaSmart Server, Hewlitt Packard this week also issued an updated data sheet for the EX470 and EX475 models. You can download it from HP’s website. [Read more]

Firefly is a media server application which allows you to stream music to DMR’s like the Roku Soundbridge and to iTunes. It’s an open source, community build application, offering the following features:

• Support for running on unix/POSIX platforms
• Support for Windows (beta versions)
• Support for Mac OSX (coming soon!)
• Support for on-the-fly transcoding of OGG, FLAC, Apple Lossless, and WMA (beta versions)
• Web-based configuration
• Support for user-created smart playlists (beta versions) [Read more]

If you’re just starting out as an independent web worker, there can be an overwhelming temptation to say, “this is great! I can work anywhere and any time!” The problem is that this can turn into working everywhere and all the time if you’re not careful. Even when you have no boss other than yourself, setting boundaries between work and the rest of your life is a good thing. In addition to keeping yourself sane, there can be legal and financial reasons to draw lines around your business existence. Knowing some of the practical consequences can help you make better decisions as you launch your web working career. Here are five areas in particular to think about. Business name: While there’s some benefit in terms of personal branding to doing business under your own name, prospective clients may be happier signing a contract with an actual business - even if it only has one employee. Choosing a business name also gives you an opportunity to market your services in a way that using your own name does not. Telephone: If you only have a single phone line, there’s no way to guess whether that 9PM Saturday call is Aunt Sally or a panicky client. Having separate telephones gives you the luxury of ignoring one or the other - and it makes it possible to deduct the cost of one of them as a business expense. If you don’t want to spring for a second line, look at using something like Grand Central to let you manage your business line as a separate virtual phone number instead. [Read more]

Piles of paper on your desk, a full email inbox, clutter in your home, anything that’s piled up really, are all results of a lack of decisions. While indecision can have many costs, from lost revenue to a suffering reputation to hindering your career, one of the surest symptoms of indecision are piles of any kind. On the other hand, an empty inbox and a clear desk are the results of quick decisions. Quick decision-making can have many positive results: it can help you stay on top of a rising flow of information and communication, it can reduce stress, it can improve your productivity, and give you a reputation for being on top of your work. But the habits of years of indecision can be hard to break. Let’s take a look at some tips that can help build the habit of quick decision-making, and clear the piles from your life. 1. Determine your criteria. Often the reason for indecision is that you don’t really know the basis for making a decision. Determine your criteria beforehand, and decisions will be a snap. As an example, let’s look at the decisions required to clear your email inbox: you need to make a decision on the action needed for each email, and then take that action. So the criteria for each email should be: does this email need a reply, an action to be taken, info to be forwarded or action to be delegated to someone else, an appointment to be made on my calendar, info filed for future reference, or no action needed at all? And once you’ve determined which of the criteria the email meets, you should know what decision (or action) should be taken for each one. It’s the same for any other decision-making process: determine the criteria and the action to be taken. 2. Know where things belong. Once you’ve determined the criteria, you should know where to put something based on that criteria. For example, if you decided that a document needs to be filed for future reference, do you know where to file it? If you decided that you need to take action on an email (but can’t take that action at this moment), do you know where to list that action? Do you have a to-do system where that action can go? After each decision is made, the result of that decision should have a place to go. If it doesn’t, you need to designate it now. Where do appointments go? Where do actions go? Where does reference stuff go? Where does stuff you need to follow up on go? Where does stuff you don’t need at all go (in the trash, probably)? 3. If there’s still a pile, analyze why. If you’ve taken the first two steps above, and there’s still a pile, you should figure out what’s creating the pile. Is there a reason you’re putting off the decisions? If there’s a fear of making a decision, perhaps you should ask yourself what the worst possible outcome of making the decision. Whatever the reason for the pile, you’ll need to figure out how to address it. Usually it just means you need to create a system for preventing the piling (or modify an existing system), and teach yourself to stick to that system. 4. Know what matters. For decisions slightly more difficult than what to do with an email, you may want to decide how to get to the heart of the matter. What matters most with this decision? If you know that, you can eliminate all the other factors cluttering your mind and make a decision based on what matters the most. [Read more]

Today's guest post is from Lisa Hendey of Productivity at Home. One of the great things about running the Productivity @ Home blog is sharing fun tips and tricks for making life simpler and more productive. Today, I am happy to be sharing with you a new tool I've been testing for the past two weeks. This particular product, the Jot It by Cocoa, is stylish, eco-friendly, and strangely fun to use. I'll admit I was skeptical when I was originally asked to review the product. What's wrong with paper and pen, PDAs, online systems and the myriad other ways in which we keep track of our lives and the things we need to get done? Turns out, nothing is wrong with those things but the Jot It is just one more option for working smarter, not longer. My Jot It has been sitting adjacent to my computer for the last ten days and has become a regular part of my GTD system. Here's a blueprint of the product: your Jot It is a desktop write board which comes bundled with all you need to make it a great productivity tool. Included with the board are an Expo ultra fine tip marker with eraser, three pre-printed interchangeable templates and two blank customizable templates. The templates are inserted below the writing surface of the desktop, which includes a handy tray for keeping track of the dry erase marker. [Read more]

Microsoft PR sent out a link to this slick new Windows Home Server Demo this afternoon. Nothing really notable about it (although I do want one)…except the demo is in Flash. Microsoft has been pushing their alternative framework to Flash called Silverlight since announcing it earlier this year, even going so far as to have a new search user interface created that shows off some of the Silverlight [Read more]

This white paper provides an overview of SyncToy, and explains how it can be used to enhance your file management workflow.

SyncToy helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers quickly and easily.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

There's no shortage of tools out there for tweaking those hard to reach settings in Windows Vista. Want to disable the user account control or at least disable some of the warnings? How about disabling auto-complete in file dialogs? You could muck around in the Windows registry, or you could just check a few boxes and let someone else do the heavy lifting. VistaTweaker 0.5 is the latest tweaking tool we've taken for a spin. It's lightweight, at just 664KB. There's also no installation required, which is always nice. And it means you can also run VistaTweaker from a flash drive. There's even a U3 setup file for installing VistaTweaker on a U3 compatible flash drive. [Read more]