Ever have one of those days when you’re just completely overwhelmed? Too much to do, not enough time. Deadlines looming (or whizzing past), phone ringing, emails pinging.

Just everyday life for a lot of us.

And most days we manage to roll with it, deal with things as they come up, and get along just fine.

Some days, though, the clamor of multiple competing demands on our time, energy, and attention can be just too much to bear. We feel overwhelmed and out of control. It can paralyze us — dozens of things to do, and we do none of them, because we don’t know where to start. We fight the urge to just quit — crawl under our desk and hide, hoping it will all go away.

Quitting isn’t an option, though, and fortunately, it’s not necessary. In fifteen minutes or less you can take a few simple steps to retake control, overcome the panic, and move forward. So when it’s all too much but you must get it done, try this:

1. Close your eyes for one minute and just breathe. Grab hold of your mind, block out the screaming voices of panic, and purposely focus on just breathing in and out. Notice where you’re feeling tense, and intentionally relax those muscles. Slow your breathing, calm your mind. Just take those sixty seconds to reclaim quiet and peace.
2. Clear your workspace. When we get too busy, our workspace usually reflects the clutter of our minds. Our carefully prepared organizational systems go by the wayside; we leave papers on our desk or on the kitchen counter as reminders to do something, and pretty soon the desk or counter is a mass of piles and sticky notes and reminders. Whether or not you consciously recognize it, the chaos of those piles distracts you and makes it nearly impossible to focus on anything. So take five minutes to clear off your workspace. Don’t sort or file anything unless you can do it in seconds. Toss the trash, drop the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, and stash the piles of papers in a nearby drawer or shelf for later attention. If you’re afraid you’ll forget something important, take a second to schedule an appointment to tend to those stashed piles. Your immediate objective is to create a clear, clean, distraction-free space for focused working.
3. Take five minutes to write down everything that needs to get done. Use whatever method works best for you to capture everything. I rely heavily on technology, but when I’m in this situation, I prefer old-fashioned pen and legal pad. Don’t try to organize or prioritize the tasks; just do a brain dump. Part of the anxiety you feel is a fear that you’re forgetting something, so get it all there on paper in front of you.
4. Scan the list. Is there anything there that somebody else could do? Your secretary or assistant? A colleague? Your spouse or child? This is no time to be too proud to ask for help — remember, we’re in crisis mode here. Take five minutes to offload anything that reasonably can be delegated.
5. Is there anything on the list that can be put off until tomorrow (or the next day) without knocking the earth off its axis? Take one minute to check off those tasks that don’t truly have to be done right this minute. Circle the ones that do need immediate attention.
6. Choose one of the circled tasks. Don’t spend a lot of time agonizing over priority. Just pick one. If there’s something that can be done in a couple of minutes — responding to an email or returning a phone call, maybe? — do that and enjoy the catharsis of seeing your list begin to dwindle immediately. But the main thing is to just pick one.
7. Clear everything else away, and do it. Gather the materials you need for that task, then sit down and get it done. If it will take more than half an hour or so, considering using the Pomodoro technique: set a timer for 25 minutes and work steadily until the timer goes off. Then take a five-minute break — stretch, walk, get a drink of water — and then get back to work, with the timer set for another 25-minute segment. Keep up that approach until you’ve finished the task.
8. When you finish that task, cross it off the list and choose another. One item at a time, work through the list until you’re caught up.

I know this approach works, because it’s saved my sanity numerous times in my own professional life. I’d love it if you’d give it a try and then let me know how it works for you.

Related Lifehack articles:

• 10 Apps That Help You Stay on Time and Remember Things
• 29 Ways to Beat Procrastination Once and For All

(Photo credit: Meditating in Office via Shutterstock)

Laura McClellan is a lawyer, a writer, a productivity fanatic, and a tech geek. Married for 30+ years to her high school sweetheart, with whom she's raised five amazing kids, she's passionate about encouraging women in their individual journeys as people, wives, mothers, citizens. While she prepares to launch her new website, Laura blogs at I Was Just Thinking . . . and Real Estate Law Blog and is working on her first novel. Connect with Laura on Twitter as @LauraMcMom.

Imagine this: Your desk is full of paper and it’s all related to unfinished work. Also, your task list never seems to shrink – instead, it’s growing bigger and bigger.

Even if you work hard on your tasks, you have this nagging feeling of incompletion in your head. You also feel that it is impossible to meet your inner critic; you are never satisfied to your results.

You are frustrated and burnt out. And even if that’s not enough, you start to procrastinate on your tasks.

You only wish that you could leave the office at 5PM and spend time with your family. And then you look at the piles of paper on your desk.

It is going to be yet another night spent working.

There is no finish line in sight

Unfortunately, this image is way too common in offices around the world. Most people are overwhelmed by the amount of unfinished work they have.

There are really four reasons why this is happening:

First, it’s because the amount of distractions. They don’t have a chance to work in a focused manner and their work performance slows down.

Secondly, it is because working on too many things (tasks, projects, etc.) at once. When they work like this, they are unable to get anything properly completed.

Third, they don’t have an organized way of handling the workload; they have issues with prioritization and they don’t know what tasks to focus on next. This in turn may be caused by a non-existent day planning.

Now, even if those three previous conditions are met, there is still one thing that causes people to procrastinate and be overwhelmed: It’s the unfinished work and the fact that they are never 100% percent satisfied to the quality of their work.

When they are unsatisfied to their work quality, they keep tweaking and tweaking the results but they are unable to finish anything. This is a sure way to overwhelm their selves and generate unnecessary stress.

It is also a sure way to make other people angry – especially if their performance is dependent on the person who is never capable of finishing his/her part of the task/project.

If it’s not perfect, it is not ready!

Inability to let go of tasks and never finishing them are symptoms of perfectionism.

The fact is that you are never going to satisfy your inner critic because you think that there is yet another tweak that you have to do until you can let go of the task.

What is causing all this?

It’s the underlying fear that is holding you in its arms; the fear that others label you as a failure if you release something imperfect. The fear that you are letting yourself down (and not meeting your standards) if everything is not 100% perfect.

Well, I have some news for you — perfection doesn’t exist!

I admit that in certain circumstances (for e.g. professions) you always have to be striving for perfection, for example when you are an airline pilot or a surgeon.

But in 90% of other cases perfection is not serving you. Instead, it is slowing you down, making you procrastinate and increasing your stress levels.

Let’s talk Scrum

If perfection is slowing you down, help can be found from a surprising source; from the world of agile software development and Scrum.

“Hmm… Scrum? What is Scrum?” you are asking.

Scrum is a software methodology that software developers use and one of its components is “Definition of Done” (DoD). It describes what a development team has to have ready by the end of the development iteration (also known as sprint).

When the team declares something as done, it means that the new functionality is fully tested, documented and could be even put to production.

Even if the DoD is used in context of software development, it can be easily applied to individual productivity needs as well.

Definition of Done describes clearly and explicitly what needs to be achieved until a task can be declared as done. And when you define your “done”, you can get rid of your perfection bug.

What is your definition of done?

Let’s take the concept DoD, simplify it a bit and put it into the context of personal productivity. To create your definition of done, follow these steps:

1. Define a task you want to accomplish
2. Explicitly describe (in written form) what requirements have to be met before it can be called ready
3. Mark a task as checked when it’s ready
4. When all the rows are checked, that particular task is done

Let’s say that you are blogger, you want to define your “done” regarding a new blog post. In that case part of your DoD could look like this:

Writing a blog post:

• Outline a post [checked]
• Write a post [checked]
• Proofread the post [ ]
• Create a compelling headline [ ]
• Find a accompanying picture [ ]
• Schedule the post in WordPress [ ]
• Write an email message to your autoresponder [ ]
• … [ ]

The previous DoD is clearly explaining what has been achieved so far and what still needs to be done.

To make your DoD even more effective, share this with an accountability partner if you have one. This way you can make continuous checks on how you are progressing with your work and if the individual tasks have been accomplished or not.

If you still try to strive for 100% perfection, your partner can remind you of the agreement that you have created (your DoD). This way you are not endlessly wasting your time by making irrelevant tweaks to your tasks.

Conclusion

I have been guilty of striving for perfection and this bad habit has slowed me down on my projects.

However, once I started defining my “done” (in a written form), I was able to see clearly which parts of the project were finished and which still required my attention.

Once the item on the list is checked, it’s done and I can move to the next task or project.

How do you handle perfection?

(Photo credit: Program code on a monitor via Shutterstock)

Timo Kiander, a.k.a. Productive Superdad, teaches WAHD super dad productivity for work at home dads. If you want to get more productive in your own life, grab 222 of his best Tips for Becoming a Productivity Superstar.

Too often we come home after a long day at work and open the takeout food, then plop down on the couch and watch TV until it’s time for bed.

The next day, we do the same thing again.

While I have been known to indulge in this from time to time, there’s an issue with this lifestyle. You basically spend each day, trying to get through it. You’re just living for the weekend.

The weekend is never long enough, of course, and then it’s another week of the same.

The problem with this is that months — or years — can go by. That’s time you won’t get back.

It wouldn’t be so bad if you knew how long you had on this spinning rock called Earth. The truth is, we aren’t really sure. So I propose to you to make the most of it.

Spend some time learning something new, or creating something…or taking up a new hobby. There’s a thousand different things that you can do. You might even return to an existing hobby that you haven’t indulged in for a while.

You dont have to be a productivity guru or sell your television. Just get up off the couch and do something.

Write a blog post. Start a novel. Pick up a paintbrush and make art. It only costs you some time…and you were wasting it anyway.

The key to this is: don’t worry about whether or not it’s good enough. You don’t have to show it to anyone. The first draft of anything is never all that good anyway. You can always revise it later or learn from the mistakes that you made.

Just do it for the sake of the craft. You just might surprise yourself. You might even start learning a new skill, one that may get you out of your current job and into a new one.

The clock is ticking…

For some people, they feel that because they have a ton of ideas, they are doing something productive. Sadly, there are a million people with a million ideas. The difference between those million people and you is execution.

It’s not enough to have the idea, you have to do the work. If you want change, you have to put in the effort.

The other end of the spectrum is taking this advice too far. Remember that this is not your job. It’s your time to relax, to do something fun. Taken too far, you will stress yourself out even more.

Think about “The Soccer Mom Syndrome”. You spend so much time doing other activities that you don’t have any down time.

I’m suggesting a balance between your job and relaxation. Just…turn off the TV once in a while and go create something. You’ll be a lot happier.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

(Photo credit: Time for Change on Blackboard via Shutterstock)

Brian K. Vagnini is a musician, designer, engineer and writer of fiction and technical topics. He was a technical trainer for five years and learned about almost every class of software. His additional writing can be found at Grey Matter Ideas and "a href="http://www.wicketbang.com">Wicketbang.com.

To-do apps are great because they help you to remember and complete the tasks that you need to do. Whether it is a task in business or family life (or any other field), to-do apps can help you keep on top of them and complete them in time. They make your life easier. They make you more productive.

The iPhone has many to-do apps available, but it can be difficult for you to find out the best to-do app for your iPhone from the plethora of choices from both paid and free app lists. To help you get started on being more productive with your iPhone, let’s take a look at the top five to-do apps.

1. Orchestra

Orchestra is a free to-do list app. You can create your to-do list and even share the list with others. It also allows you to send tasks to others. Even if the other people are not using Orchestra, then also they can check the tasks sent to them. You can add task in several different ways. You can type the task; speak to the app or forward emails. There are several filters that you can use to filter your tasks and you can also organize your tasks in different methods. It is very simple and easy to use.

Orchestra Download Link

2. Wunderlist

Wunderlist is another popular to-do app — and it is also free. It is a simple to-do app that focuses on the basic features necessary for managing your tasks. It has got its Windows and Mac counterparts and allows you to create multiple lists. You can add different tasks to the lists you make and can also sort out the tasks by due date and priority — as well as add notes to the tasks. Then when your task is done, you can check items off the list and it syncs with the Wunderlist servers, meaning that no matter what version or platform you’re using Wunderlsit on you will have an updated list. As a bonus, the app allows you to add tasks using your e-mail, which is great if you find you spend a lot of time in your email inbox.

Wunderlit Download Link

3. Reminders

If you have iOS 5 in your iPhone, then you can easily use this very good built-in app. Reminders is one of the simplest to-do list apps that you will ever find. Another great advantage is that you can make use of your location and the app will remind you when you’re near a place that allows you to complete a task. You can also create to-do items with deadlines attached to them. And Reminders integrates with Siri on the iPhone 4S, allowing you to add tasks, appointments and errands using your voice.

4. ToodleDo

ToodleDo is a popular paid to-do app, costing $2.99 USD in the App Store. You can easily add your tasks using its simple interface — a common theme throughout all of the to-do apps mentioned here. When adding tasks, the app allows you to set priorities and due dates and you can also assign the tasks to folders, schedule reminders, and much more.

ToodleDo Download Link

5. TeuxDeux

TeuxDeux is another solid paid to-do app that also comes in at $2.99 USD. It got its starts as a web app and has since moved into the world of iOS. Featuring a stylish interface, the main focus of the app is on your to-dos. It doesn’t offer many features like other to-do apps, but you can sync your tasks with the web app and rearrange your tasks as well. But if you feel you need lots of additional features, then this is not an app for you.

TeuxDeux Download Link

Do you have any to-do apps for the iPhone that you use that deserve consideration? Let me know about them in the comments.

Bikash Kalita writes for the technology blog Take the Plunge and also manages Nirvana Sutra, the complete Content Management Agency. He is a netpreneur, who is working on some other online projects for offering more value to the Internet users.

A subject of great interest to most of us is productivity. We want to be more productive, and we’re willing to do anything to achieve this, yet we spend a major part of our lifetime doing something that makes us less productive while at the same time posing the risk of reducing our lifespan. Unfortunately, this particular thing is so common these days that a lot of us now see it as something normal.

It is called sitting.

While sitting isn’t a totally bad idea, spending the larger part of our day doing it can damage our productivity significantly.

Unfortunately, in the digital age we are today, we now spend more time sitting than ever before; the average human being spends around 9 hours sitting every day, when sitting down for just 6 hours a day increases your risk of dying in the next 15 years 40% higher than that of someone sitting for just 3 hours a day.

The bad news is, this also crushes our productivity; and while some of us might not be that concerned about living for 100 years, what’s the point of living for a thousand years if you can’t achieve anything significant?

Start Using a “Standing Desk”

Since sitting can be a huge productivity killer, what kind of solution can there be to something so fundamental that it is a part of human nature?

Well, there is standing. And there are desks that make it easy to work with a standing desk.

It wouldn’t be easy at first, especially when you’ve spent the larger part of your life sitting than standing, but this article will be showing you a few benefits of standing while working, and how to get the best from it.

Standing while working has a few advantages that makes it more productive when compared to just sitting, and here are some advantages to why you should stand while working from now on instead of sitting.

1. It constitutes to a little bit of pain.

Comfort can make it difficult for us to produce, but pain makes us concentrate.

Standing for prolonged hours constitutes pain and only leaves us with one thought: “how to quickly finish what we’re doing so we can go back to sitting down”. Unfortunately, this is the natural way of things, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Success isn’t possible without struggles, and productivity is hardly possible in a comfortable environment. The key to productivity is to challenge yourself, leave your comfort zone, and introduce more pain; standing does all that, while sitting is the direct opposite of these things.

2. Unlike sitting, standing is associated with work.

The world we now live in is more about perception, instead of reality, which is why productivity is more of a psychological process than physical.

Creating is a mental process, and this means you have to be in the right frame of mind to create. Unfortunately, sitting is mostly associated with rest and relaxation thereby making it less productive for work when compared to standing; for example, we spend a huge part of our time watching TV, playing games, and chatting with ourselves; the reality about this is that we do all these things while sitting, while the majority of the activities that can be classified as “real work” are done standing.

3. Standing while working is actually healthier than sitting

Health is wealth, and no matter your desire and mental preparation for getting things done, nothing is possible if you’re not healthy enough to do what needs to be done.

Sitting for prolonged hours has its health dangers, but very few people are aware of this. Some major health dangers to sitting that can be eliminated by standing are:

• Death: The reality is that sitting for 6+ hours a day will increase your likelihood of dying within 15 years when compared to someone who only sits for 3 hours a day, by 40%.
• Obesity: Obesity is a great enemy of productivity, and the more obese you become the less you feel like working. Research has shown that obese people sit for 2.5 more hours a day compared to their thin counterparts.
• Diseases: Research has also shown that those who sit for 3 or more hours a day watching TV are 64% more likely to die from heart diseases. People with sitting jobs have also been observed to have twice the cardiovascular disease as people with standing jobs.

What’s more? Research has also shown that exercise is nearly ineffective for those who spend a large portion of their day sitting, even if they exercise for an hour a day.

All the stats quoted above can be found here and here.

How to Get the Best from Standing While Working

Now that we’ve seen how critically important standing while working is, it is important that we also realize that there are things we should do to maximize our productivity.

There is a huge difference between being productive and abusing your body. Here’s a couple of tips to help you get the best from standing while working:

1. Create a resting interval.  Don’t just work for prolonged hours on your feet without taking any measures. Make sure you segment your work into various periods, and take a break every hour or so of standing. A 10 – 20 minutes break per hour can go a long way to enhance your productivity, so make sure you don’t exhaust yourself by working while standing for prolonged hours.
2. Alternate sitting with standing. Know when to stand and when to sit. If you think you need to get a lot of work done for a particular day, and that you will probably be working for a very long time, make sure you sit for a few minutes as a way to rest your brain. Standing for way too long can increase your chances of having back pain, so make sure you alternate it with sitting every once in a while.

This is especially important if you’re just getting starting with using a standing desk.

(Photo credit: Two People Standing via Shutterstock)

Bamidele Onibalusi is a young blogger, blogger, and freelance copywriter you should hire to take your business to the next level. He also has a free guide designed specifically for those who want to write for traffic and money titled, The Writer’s Handbook: How to Write for Traffic and Money.

Let’s face it – no matter how excited you are about a new project or priority in your life, there will always be days when your motivation lags. Days when – despite all the progress you’ve made in the past – it just sounds easier to sit on the couch playing video games than to buckle down and crank out the work needed to meet your goals.

In order to be successful, you must be able to motivate yourself past these humps. So whenever you feel your drive and determination lagging, turn to motivational quotes from famous authors to provide the extra spark of passion needed to keep you on track.

The following are some of my favorites, divided up into a few different categories. I hope you find them useful when it comes to sustaining your own motivation through difficult projects!

Motivational Quotes for Work

Great businesses aren’t born overnight. Instead, they require consistent, committed effort to succeed – which means that you’ve got to find a way to maintain your passion over the long-run. Whenever you encounter doubts creeping into your mind, read through the following motivational quotes for work and reference the categories that are appropriate to your unique needs:

Goal Setting

Whether you’re still in the planning phases of your business or whether you’re plotting a plan of attack to bring about your long-range vision, setting good goals is a critical part of succeeding in business. Check out the following quotes for extra inspiration on how to turn your business dreams into reality:

“The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”–Benjamin Mays

“By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands — your own.”–Mark Victor Hansen

“Give yourself an even greater challenge than the one you are trying to master and you will develop the powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty.”–William J. Bennett - The Book of Virtues

“The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and actualizer… He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.”–Robert L. Schwartz

Excellence in Work

Once you’ve got your goals together, you’ll need to put in 110% of your effort in order to transform these visions into reality. To increase your motivation to work at a consistently high level, take a look at the following words of wisdom:

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”–Aristotle

“If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.”–Charles R. Swindoll

“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal — a commitment to excellence — that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”–Mario Andretti

“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”–Pearl Buck

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”–Vince Lombardi

Determination and Persistence

Since every business or other endeavor is bound to hit some rough patches, it’s often a person’s level of determination and patience that brings about either success or failure. Read through any of the following motivational quotes for work related to determination whenever you need an extra boost of encouragement:

“Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses… on your powers, instead of your problems.”–Paul J. Meyer

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”--Hal Borland

“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”–Calvin Coolidge

“An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.”–Thomas Fuller

Leadership

Leadership is an important quality for businesspeople to possess, whether you use it to run your own company or simply to motivate others to follow your unique way of thinking. To boost your skills in this area, take your cues from the following renowned leaders and their most famous sayings:

“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.” –Warren G. Bennis

“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”–John Kenneth Galbraith

“Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.”–Peter F. Drucker

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.”–John Buchan

“High sentiments always win in the end. The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”--George Orwell

Success

Think of success as a holistic process – one which results from the combination of goal-setting, excellence, patience, determination and leadership you prioritize throughout your business career. The following quotes from famously successful business people reflect this reality, providing an excellent source of motivation for whenever you feel your spirits lagging:

“Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.”–Stephen Covey

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”–Norman Vincent Peale

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”–Winston Churchill

“Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.”–John Maxwell

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.”-- Thomas J. Watson 

“The great successful men of the world have used their imagination.  They think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building – steadily building.”–Robert Collier 

“It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.”–Arnold Toynbee

Motivational Sports Quotes for Athletes

You don’t need to be a Michael Jordan-caliber athlete to draw inspiration from the following quotes. Even if you’re just a recreational player or someone who’s using sports as a means to get back in shape after long periods of inactivity, the following motivational sports quotes for athletes should provide the extra encouragement needed for you to stick to your fitness goals:

“My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength.”–Michael Jordan

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”–Lance Armstrong

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”–Arnold Schwarzenegger

“I know what I have to do, and I’m going to do whatever it takes. If I do it, I’ll come out a winner, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else does.”--Florence Griffith Joyner

“Every time you stay out late; every time you sleep in; every time you miss a workout; every time you don’t give 100% – You make it that much easier for me to beat you.”--Unknown

“If you are hurt, whether in mind or body, don’t nurse your bruises. Get up and light-heartedly, courageously, good temperedly get ready for the next encounter. This is the only way to take life – this is also ‘playing’ the game!”–Emily Post

“We must train from the inside out. Using our strengths to attack and nullify any weaknesses. It’s not about denying a weakness may exist but about denying its right to persist.”--Vince McConnell

Motivational Quotes for Students

Education matters, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to achieve! Committing yourself to pursuing knowledge in a single area is a tremendous endeavor – one that often seems overwhelming given the depth and breadth of information that’s available today.

So if you want to better yourself through education, keep the following motivational quotes for students in mind. Hopefully, you’ll find them inspiring when the thought of cracking open yet another textbook sounds as arduous as writing such a tome of your own!

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.”–George Washington Carver

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.”–William Arthur Ward

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”– Aristotle

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”–Albert Schweitzer

“Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one.”–Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”–Chinese Proverb

“Study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing.”–William Arthur Ward

“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life’.”–Helen Exley

“A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.”–Chinese Proverb

Famous Motivational Quotes

Finally, whatever your goals are in life, you can’t go wrong by taking the advice of the following famous motivational quotes:

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”–Norman Vincent Peale

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”–Steve Jobs

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”–Maria Robinson

“Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies Opportunity.”–Albert Einstein

“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”–Lyndon Johnson

“If we did all the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.”–Thomas Edison

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”–Wayne Gretzky

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”–Winston Churchill

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”–Ralph Waldo Emerson

To use these motivational quotes effectively, find the one that speaks to you. Although all of the phrases listed above can be considered “motivational,” only you can decide which one resonates with you most directly.

Next, take the quote you’ve settled on and copy it onto small index cards or other pieces of paper that can be stored around your home and workspace. If you’re creative, you can create inspiration boards, signs or other decorative displays featuring your favorite motivational quotes – really, though, the most important thing is that your chosen phrase be accessible in a variety of different places. This will make it easy to access and review whenever you feel your motivation slipping away.

Do you have a favorite motivational quote?  If so, how do you reference it throughout your day in order to stay motivated?  Share your favorite sayings and recommendations for using motivational quotes effectively in the comments section below!

(Photo credit: Bright Flamy Symbol on Black via Shutterstock)

Pawel Reszka is the founder of Affhelper.com. On his blog he talks about ways to make money through content marketing.

One of the keys to a good life hack isn’t just finding the right technology to do the job, but actually finding the right combination of technologies to get the job done. Many of you wonder how us writer folks keep our writing projects on track and in sync, regardless of the where or when we’re doing our writing (sometimes we wonder ourselves, actually). I’ll tell you sometimes it’s not easy, until you find—and set up—the right apps and services to make things all come together. This post is all about how to go from your desktop to iPad and back and keeping everything a couple clicks away from being ready to publish online.

The first, and most essential, part of this whole system is Dropbox. If you’re not using Dropbox, now is the time to sign up and set up. Without Dropbox’s easy and fast file syncing—syncing that works on pretty much any device you throw at it—this system wouldn’t work at all.

Next thing is the file format. Writing for the web—and blogs specifically—is a no Word zone (or Pages either for that matter), basic, boring text files are the files of choice here. Well, text files with a twist. While I’m writing this in a text editor, I’m also using the markup system called Markdown that is essentially a shortcut for HTML and let’s me format this post for posting—even put in links and such—without having to type HTML, per se.

With the foundations in place (Dropbox and text files), let’s move onto the actual writing part. On my Mac my writing app of choice is Scrivener (Mac and PC). I’ve written several books and lots of posts in it already, so I’m no stranger to it in the least, but one of the features I haven’t used too often (though I should have been) is Sync an external folder. The basics of how to do this are pretty simple and this post from Jamie Rubin puts it all together nicely. At the guts of it, you’re just telling Scrivener to look in a particular folder on your machine (in this case a folder within my Dropbox account that my iPad app saves to) and import files from that folder into the project. It’s important to have your Scrivener project be saved in a different location than the sync folder.

The next part for the writing on the go element is, actually, Elements. This is a great, simple iOS (iPad and iPhone—which is one reason I really like it) app that just creates text files. And syncs to Dropbox. And (optionally) syncs to iCloud. And supports Markdown with a nice preview window and the ability to copy (clean) HTML to paste into your blog editor of choice (I’d opt for WordPress for iOS, actually). Elements isn’t the only choice out there—believe me, I’ve bought and tried almost all of them—you can also check out Nebulous Notes, iA Writer, Byword, Plain Text, and Edito (I told you I tried them all). The essential part is syncing with Dropbox so you can write something on the go and have it “automagically” appear on your machine at home when you get back.

The last bit of magic is Brett Terpstra’s app Marked (sorry Mac only). See, while I can copy and paste HTML from Elements on my iPad into the WordPress editor on my iPad, I’d rather pull everything together on my Mac at home. Inserting images and such is still a bit of a chore on the iPad, so forcing myself to open, review, and edit the post on my Mac is a good safety net. While I can export HTML from Scrivener, I don’t like to because the exports are designed as complete web pages, and I don’t want that. This is where Marked comes in. I just drag and drop the text file (with Markdown) onto Marked and I get a beautifully rendered document and when I copy the HTML from Marked, it’s just the HTML needed for a post. Nothing more, nothing less, and no extras that might mess things up.

So I can start a post in Scrivener, then finish it on my iPad, and then post it. Or, like I’m doing now, write the whole post on my iPad, and put the final polish on it on my Mac at home (along with images and such) and post it. All the while I’m still just editing the same files, seamlessly, efficiently, and transparently.

(And if you’re wondering about typing on the iPad, I’ve used the on-screen keyboard for light writing and the Apple Wireless Keyboard for heavier projects. For this post, however, I’m trying out the Zaggfolio keyboard and case…and really, really liking it.)

Tris Hussey is a technologist, author, teacher, and Canada’s first professional blogger. He has written several books on social media and technology including Create Your Own Blog (1st and 2nd editions), Using WordPress, Sam’s Teach Yourself Foursquare in 10 Minutes, WordPress Essentials (video lessons), and Sam’s Teach Yourself WordPress Themes in 24 Hours (forthcoming in late 2012 with Catherine Winters). You can read Tris’ posts on TrisHussey.com, the FutureShop Tech blog, and other sites around the Internet.

To many, a manager title means increased pay and prestige. Sometimes, you’ll get a new boss and a new office too. You’ll also get a totally new job.

You got to this point because you were good at your work, but now you will have to let the details of the work go. Your job now is to grow and position your organization so that others can perform the work in a way that positively impacts the bottom line.

There are many mistakes that new leaders make, but the biggest is refusing to operate at a higher level and spending too much time personally attending to their prior tasks. In this, they limit their contributions as a leader and fail to grow the people on their team.

Patty Azzarello, a Silicon Valley management consultant and the author of Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life, calls this phenomenon missing the “level transition” and claims that it leads to the following management problems:

• Leaders compete with subordinates about who is smarter
• Leaders torture their teams for inappropriate amounts of detail
• Leaders fail to hire smart people beneath them because they feel threatened
• Leaders fail to develop team capacity to do more

So if you’re no longer supposed to do the work that you’re good at, what should you be doing? Ms. Azzarello suggests working on the business instead of in the business and spending more time thinking and less time doing. This includes:

• Building a plan to drive the overall strategy for your team and its role in the business
• Tuning everyone’s workload so that your team delivers on the most important priorities
• Ensuring that there is alignment of your team, peers and managers
• Assessing your organization’s fitness for what it needs to do, and making changes, training, and/or upgrading talent where necessary
• Creating systems and frameworks to execute, track, and measuring the work so that you feel comfortable that you know what’s getting done without getting mired in specifics
• Supporting your team members in becoming better leaders themselves by promoting continuous learning
• Finding ways to steadily reduce the cost of things you do every year to make room for new approaches
• Improving communication and relationships inside and outside your direct organization
• Making connections outside your direct organization to generate positive visibility for your team and create a broader base of support
• Finding senior-level mentors who can advise you on how to raise your focus

Hopefully, if you’ve made the transition to management already, you’ve realized that you enjoy this work, maybe even more than what you were doing before.  But if you are still in discussions to advance to the next level, it is worth considering whether or not this is how you want to spend your days.

There is nothing wrong with remaining an individual contributor, and if you truly love what you do, who is to say that you have to advance up and out of it?  The desire to rise to the upper echelon of an organization is a matter of preference, so give it some serious thought and don’t allow others to sway you to their point of view.

(Photo credit: businessman writing leadership via Shutterstock)

Alexandra Levit is a career and workplace expert at the Intuit Quickbase Blog , a daily source for advice on how to be exceptional at your job. You can follow her on Twitter at @alevit.

Weight loss doesn’t have to be a slow process that takes months on end of bland foods and long, boring workouts. You can safely lose a significant amount of weight in less than a month. This article shows you how. Following the tips in this article will help you lose 10 (or more) pounds in just 21 days. I’m not going to recommend a “miracle” nutritional supplement, expensive workout equipment, or hokey gimmick either. Just 3 things that work, quickly.

The weight loss tips in this article are supported by scientific research and don’t require you to buy anything, starve yourself, or do anything that’s dangerous or downright silly. All you have to do is make a few changes to the way you exercise and eat.

1. Stop Doing Hours of Slow, Boring Cardio

Forget about spending hours every day on the treadmill to burn calories. Doing this doesn’t work. Walking at a moderate (brisk) pace will only burn about 295 calories an hour. Do this every day for a week and you won’t lose a pound. The better way to exercise for weight and fat loss is to do interval style resistance training workouts .

Also referred to as circuit training, this style of workout burns twice as many calories. Studies also show that doing some type of resistance training (calisthenics, kettlebells, weights, etc.) is also superior to cardio for burning off fat, especially abdominal fat which hurts your health and hides your 6 pack.

When you workout this way your body will continue to burn calories from your stored body fat for up to 36 hours post-workout. This means you’ll continue to lose weight after your workout is done. These workouts will help you build muscle too which will have you looking better when the weight you want to lose is off.

Circuit style workouts are easy to perform. You can do them barbells, dumbbells, and machines at your gym. One of the best way is to do bodyweight workouts. This is because they can be done anywhere, are really effective, and don’t require any equipment.

When you train this way the key is to choose exercises that train several muscle groups (squats, push ups, pull ups, shoulder presses, etc.). This will make the workout more challenging and burn more calories. Select 4-5 exercises so ensure all of your major muscle groups are being trained. This can include: squats (legs), push ups (chest/shoulders/arms), pull ups (back/biceps), and military press (shoulders).

You’ll perform each exercise one after the other with no rest between sets. Only rest after you’ve performed the last exercise of the circuit. Rest as little as possible between circuits. Do 8-10 reps per set and repeat 3-5 times every workout.

Below is a sample bodyweight exercise circuit training workout for fat loss.

1. Squats
2. Push Ups
3. Burpees
4. Pull Ups

Here’s a circuit workout that can be done with a dumbbell or kettlebell.

1. Two Handed Swings
2. Standing Shoulder Press
3. Squats
4. 1 Arm Rows

If you are just getting started or back into a workout routine give yourself a chance to get used to the intensity of these workouts. Rest as long as you have to between circuits and do as many reps as you can with 10 per exercise being your goal. Stick to it and you’ll be doing these workouts like a pro.

2. Cut the Carbs

This is probably the most important tip to follow. It alone can help you lose 10 or more pounds in 21 days. Eating a low carbohydrate diet turns on the fat loss switch in your body and by getting it to use your stored body fat as energy. You’ll also lose excess water weight too. Best of all you don’t have to obsess over calories or reading labels.

When I write cut the carbs I don’t mean that you have to avoid them entirely. You simply need to limit certain types. Once you lose the weight you can even eat them albeit in limited quantities.

The foods you need to really limit for the next 21 days include processed carbohydrates (bread, cookies, pasta, rice) and simple sugars (candy, fruit juice, and soda). You can pretty much each all of the vegetables you like. Fruits in small amounts are okay too. All in all, your daily carbohydrate quota should not exceed 75 grams. Don’t worry about counting carbohydrates excessively or reading the label for every food you eat. Instead follow this simple tip, if it’s white or comes in a bag or box don’t eat it and you’re most likely eating the right amount. If you do want to count carbohydrates, use one of the many websites or apps that does the counting for you. I recommend reading this Lifehack article for more great tips to eliminate grains from your diet.

In addition to limiting certain types of carbohydrates, the next thing you need to make sure of is that you eat plenty of protein and healthy fats. High protein foods you should eat at every meal include eggs, fish, pork, and red meat. You do not have to count grams of protein either. Just make sure the protein you eat is about the size of the palm of your hand at every meal and you’ll be on track to get enough every day. Last but not least, eat plenty of fat at every meal. You’ll stay full longer between meals. Fat also makes your food taste better too. Limit corn and other vegetable oils and instead make sure you get your fat from avocados, coconut, and olive oil. Almonds and macadamia nuts are also good sources of healthy fats.

3. Ditch Diet Soda and Drink Lemon Water Instead

I know, diet sodas don’t have calories and taste good. The way their bubbles make your mouth tingle feels great too. Unfortunately, they can kill your weight loss progress. Studies show that drinking diet soda can actually make you eat more and gain weight. Scientists believe this is because the artificial sweeteners in these drinks send signals to your brain that make you want to eat, even if you’re not hungry.

Instead of drinking diet soda I suggest you drink cold lemon water. Doing so has many benefits. You’ll feel full longer between meals and because of the lemon juice in the water you’re body will digest food slower and can even help keep your energy levels stable. One study shows drinking cold water can help you burn more calories too.

Drinking your water before you eat may also help you eat less at every meal.

Conclusion

Make these 3 tips part of your life for 21 days and you’ll easily lose 10 pounds. More important, they will become habits that you follow for the days, weeks, and months to follow. Then you’ll really reap their benefits that go beyond weight loss to healthier, stronger, more energetic you!

Sources: (1) Fowler SP, Williams K, Resendez RG, Hunt KJ, Hazuda HP, Stern MP. Fueling the obesity epidemic? Artificially sweetened beverage use and long-term weight gain. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2008 Aug;16(8):1894-900. (2) Ostman E, Granfeldt Y, Persson L, Björck I. Vinegar supplementation lowers glucose and insulin responses and increases satiety after a bread meal in healthy subjects. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2005 Sep;59(9):983-8.

(Photo credit: Diet via Shutterstock)

Curt is the founder of Stayfitcentral.com, a website which features reviews, guides, and other information to help people buy the right nutritional supplements and fitness products for their specific needs. Curt has published numerous fitness, nutrition, and health related articles online at leading online publications including: eDiets, iVillage, and Askmen.

Due to the widespread confusion and misinformation on the following subjects, please take a few moments of your time to alert yourself to the following:

It’s Okay to Unplug…

Your phone. The impulse that you must answer anything that rings dates back to olden times when people had to answer the phone as there was no other way of knowing who was calling or whether it was an emergency. The advent of technology such as caller ID, voice mail, and text messaging has freed us from this urgency. We are now able to tell who is calling us, decide whether we are free to pick up, and the caller has the option of leaving a message which we can then use to determine the action we need to take.

You are hereby officially allowed to turn off your ringer or your phone altogether for important occasions like: family dinners, driving a car, sleeping, and having anything else you need to concentrate on. Please note that this permission extends to both work and personal phones.

The TV. The average American watches 5-6 hours of television a night. The percentage of quality entertainment on the 50,000+ stations currently in existence is approximately 7%.

In contrast, human beings have the capacity to perform up to 100 billion different tasks at any given time, from playing with their children to starting their own business to lying in a hammock under a tree and watching what shapes the clouds take. The average human being utilizes around 0.000001% of these abilities on a daily basis.

None of these statistics are scientific, but they’re probably pretty darn close. Turn off the TV.

Twitter/Facebook. You will never be able to catch every single remark your friends/random celebrities have made. You will never manage to see every picture someone posts of the dinner they’re having which I’m sure is magical in person but just looks like a glob on a plate when viewed on a computer screen. Your friends will not hate you because you missed their witty 140-character review of Ice Road Truckers—and if they do, you hereby have permission to find new friends.

On the rare occasions when social media is used to impart truly significant information like the birth of a child or the arrival of a hurricane, be assured that you will eventually hear the news by some other means even if you miss the tweet/post about it. Your sister will undoubtedly mention the arrival of your new nephew the next time you talk to her. You will see things like trees and cars flying past your window. You will know the big things without having to constantly monitor for them. Everything else is just fluff. Entertaining fluff, granted, but still fluff.

Your e-mail notifications. E-mail is a non-urgent form of communication. By its very nature, it is sent out into cyberspace with the understanding that it will be opened and read whenever the recipient gets to it/feels like it. There is no way for the sender to know when this will happen. If the sender has an urgent message to convey, it should be done by another method. This is the responsibility of the sender to understand.

As such, there is no need for you, as the recipient, to have a little pop-up notification alert you every single time a message comes in. This is the equivalent of the Postal Service taking each individual piece of mail the moment it’s dropped in a mailbox and delivering it immediately—by standing outside your window and tapping on the pane, waving the letter in the air and mouthing “Got another one!” (Then coming back five minutes later when another letter is sent.)

Turn off the notifications. It will be okay. I promise you.

Addendum

If you feel any other devices/sources of distraction should be added to this PSA, please feel free to leave your vote in the comments.

(Photo credit: Hand Press Power Button via Shutterstock)

Kelly Gurnett runs the blog Cordelia Calls It Quits, where she documents her attempts to rid her life of the things that don’t matter and focus more on the things that do. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook and check out her ebook here. She also offers her services as a blogger extraordinaire to those in need of some bloggy awesomeness.

There’s nothing like waking up the day before Mother’s Day 2012 not having any clue what you are going to get for the lady that put up with you for so many years. It’s a little too late to order anything online but that doesn’t mean you can’t find something awesome for your Mom on her special day.

Here are 10 last minute Mother’s Day gifts that are both thoughtful and easy to procure at a moment’s notice.

Surprise breakfast (or lunch or dinner)

You can really show your mom that you care by cooking her a meal and bringing it to her for a surprise breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Cooking her one of her favorite foods is the best way to get her Mother’s Day started on the right foot. Oh, and if you are a terrible cook, then may you just want to buy and bring her some food instead.

Flowers (duh)

While flowers aren’t  the most “creative” type of Mother’s Day gift, the are one of the most popular. You can go all out and get a huge pre-made arrangement with all of your Mom’s favorite flowers. Or you can hit a store that sells single flowers where you can create your own bouquet. This will put a little “uniqueness” in a somewhat non-unique gift. And don’t forget the chocolates.

Gift certificate for traveling spa treatement

It may be a tad late for this one, but if you have a local spa that is open on Saturday give them a call and see if they do home visits. If so, get a gift certificate for your mom for a home spa day so she can have herself pampered. A good “side-gift” with this one is some candles and bath gels or even some of her favorite perfume.

Bake

All mothers like sweets and pastries. Ok. Everybody likes sweets and pastries. So, look up some recipes online, write down some ingredients, go to the store and procure them, and have a little baking day before Mother’s Day. Make her favorite cookies, cake, or pie. This is a good gift because you are putting some of your time and thought into it.

Create a Mother’s Day mix

I remember growing up and listening to a lot of the music that my mom liked. It was quite an eclectic mix. Show her you know what she likes by buying her some of her favorite music on the Amazon MP3 store or iTunes and make her a mixed CD. Or, if you want to get real crazy, go grab an iPod Nano and fill it up with all of her favorite music. This works really well for a “non-techy” kind of mom who may not know exactly how to load up all of her songs to an MP3 player.

Clean her living space

I personally can’t stand cleaning, so if I cleaned my Mom’s house for her it would be probably one of the most astounding things she has ever seen. Ever. Instead of just doing regular cleaning which gets done on a regular basis, why don’t you do some of the more “hardcore cleaning” like clearing out a basement or attic, cleaning out gutters, “summerizing” the outside of her house, or even rearranging parts of her house that she has wanted to have done for years.

Car maintenance

If there is anything that needs done to your mom’s car like an oil change, brakes, tires, inspection, etc. then set her up an appointment with her local garage and foot the bill. As a side bonus you could fill her gas tank and get the car detailed inside and out or even do it yourself.

Clean up her PC or teach her some tech

If your mom is like mine she knows just enough about her computer to be dangerous. Take a couple of hours on Mother’s Day to “tune-up” her PC or Mac. Also, if your mom has a ton of questions about technology you could give her a made up “coupon” for your time to show her how to use a certain application or even a new device.

Write for her

If you are a writer then put your talents to good use on Mother’s Day by writing your mom something heartfelt, funny, and sincere. Instead of the normal “thank you and I love you” inside of her mandatory Mother’s Day card, get some decent stationary and truly write for her. Let her know how much you care about her and how important she is in your life. Write about some of your memories growing up with her. People love to be remiscent, and writing something to bring that out can be one of the best Mother’s Day gifts of all.

Any other ideas for last minute Mother’s Day gifts from all you sons and daugters out there? If so, please throw them in the comments to help each other out!

(Photo credit: Pink daisy, old stylized. Still life on white via Shutterstock)

Ask The Entrepreneurs is a regular series where members of those involved in the Young Entrepreneur Council are asked a single question that aims to help Lifehack readers level up their own lives, whether in a area of management, communication, business or life in general.

Here’s the question posed in this edition of Ask The Entrepreneurs:

What productivity system can you not live without as an entrepreneur?

1. Manage Projects With Asana

Although Asana is a project management tool it doubles as a productivity system by making our team and clients more efficient every day. By tracking, assigning and follow up on individual tasks, Asana allows us to eliminate the noise and focus on what action has to be taken today.

-Kelly Azevedo, She’s Got Systems

2. Share Files Through Dropbox

This must-have app is installed on all our laptops, tablets, and phones. Since we’re often traveling or working remotely, Dropbox is absolutely essential in helping the whole team stay literally in sync. In addition, it makes updating and distributing decks that need to stay extremely up-to-date, like our Media Kit, very simple and efficient.

-Annie Wang, Her Campus Media

3. Check It Off on Ta-da List

Ta-da List is the simplest way that I’ve found to create and share a checklist of action items for our team. Team members claim the items that they are working on by checking them off. We have staff ranging from Palo Alto to Senegal (an eight-hour time difference), and Ta-da List keeps us on the same page.

-Allie Siarto, Loudpixel

4. Producteev Keeps Up Productivity

Producteev is a cross-platform productivity application. It works online, on Desktop and across mobile applications to help streamline your personal or corporate activities. Producteev is ideal for small teams and we use it extensively in my businesses.

-Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.

5. Keep Track of Tasks on Any.DO

I organize my life around “to-dos” and without a doubt the best app to organize these tasks is Any.DO. It’s simple and beautiful, which makes it a pleasure to use on a daily basis.

-Ben Lang, EpicLaunch

6. Track the Noteworthy on Evernote

Without a doubt, Evernote. I keep all meeting notes, client info and personal ideas in one place, and am able to access anything and everything from any of my devices on the go. I’ve used it religiously for the past couple years, and can’t help but wonder, “What the heck did I do before Evernote?”

-Matt Cheuvront, Proof Branding

7. Get It Back With RescueTime

RescueTime is a great app that runs in the background on your computer. It graphs your activity and breaks it down onto a scale from “very distracting” to “very productive.” It helps me to find the leaks in my productivity so that I can address them and get the most out of my time.

-Jennifer Vargas, Accompl.sh

8. Stop Guessing With Wunderlist

Wunderlist has become a wonder for me. Not only is it very easy to input all of your projects, your clients and their associated priorities, but the accessibility of it constantly syncing to all of your portable devices, such as your smartphone, tablet and computer. It is unrivaled and has made my life that much easier, whether in the office or on-the-go.

-Steven Le Vine, grapevine pr

9. Root Back to BasecampHQ

I’ve used a ton of others and even tried to have my own built, but I always come back to BasecampHQ for project management.

-Roger Bryan, RCBryan & Associates

10. Keep an Eye Out With Trello

Trello allows me to easily keep track of our major tasks and the stage of development on each. It’s a simple and intuitive interface is perfect for web development teams. Best of all, it’s free.

-Patrick Curtis, WallStreetOasis.com

11. Money Matters on Freshbooks

Client perception is important when you’re small. They need to see you have your act together, especially on the basics. If you can’t get that right, how can you handle their business? Invoicing and expensing with Freshbooks makes it easy for me to look good and work efficiently.

-Susan Strayer, Exaqueo

12. Day-to-Day on Google Calendar

Without Google Calendar I’d never get anything done. Since the calendar is web-based, I always have access to it whether it’s on my laptop, iPad, or smartphone. I also use the calendar to block off times when I want to focus on a task for several hours straight.

-Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh, Inc.

13. Capture Leads on Instant Customer

This CRM system allows me to capture leads when public speaking or networking. From the audience, people can SMS to opt-in to my email list and special offer. Or they can give me a business card, and minutes after I scan it in, it sends them a series of pre-programmed emails with follow-up resources, and a promo offer.

-Michael Margolis, Get Storied

14. Top the To-Do on Google Tasks

I’m a very process-oriented person and I need to have a list of things to accomplish every day. Google Tasks, which is part of your Gmail, is a free task-list service. I update my tasks constantly and it keeps me focused each day.

-Eric Bahn, Beat The GMAT

15. Mix Business With Pleasure on Yammer

Yammer keeps my whole team organized, on track, and in-the-know on all important communication for a particular project. It’s where we share files, discuss goals, and most importantly, where my virtual team has an opportunity to build real relationships with their peers.

-Natalie MacNeil, She Takes on the World

16. Stay Up-to-Date Through Glasscubes

My team and I use Glasscubes on a daily basis for managing documents, keeping track of tasks and organizing information. It’s great because it’s really cut down on the amount of emails we were sending back and forth — and helps keep track of content and its status.

-Heather Huhman, Come Recommended

17. Keep It Clear

I’m finding a nice balance with Clear, a new iPhone app that’s gotten tons of attention because of the way the designers rethought the touch screen user interface. Underneath, it’s a very basic to-do system, but I’ve never been big on bells and whistles when it comes to productivity. The truly incredible UI is the kicker, and seems to fit well with how I prioritize in my head, so it’s stuck!

-Derek Shanahan, Foodtree

18. Just Do It With Do.com

I use Do.com to manage all of my various business projects. It helps me track who is doing what and what is left to be done on any given project. Track time, billable hours, share files, etc. — This site can do it all for free. When I discovered it, I knew I would never go back to emails or Excel for managing projects.

-Lucas Sommer, Audimated

19. Hire a Remote Assistant

As a startup social entrepreneur, there is absolutely no way that I could afford a traditional executive assistant. Through YourRemoteAssistant.com, I have a full-time assistant for just $1,099 per month. This serve has enabled me to delegate in an entirely different way at a cost that my organization can afford.

-Garrett Neiman, CollegeSpring

20. Pomodoro Technique for Top Productivity

Apps and project management tools can help you manage and prioritize tasks effectively, but when it comes to getting stuff done, use the Pomodoro Technique. Dedicate laser focus to one and only one task for 25 minutes — make sure to use a timer! Once the timer goes off, take a 5-minute break. I find that when I use this technique, I tend to not get distracted by small urgent things.

-Brenton Gieser, JoynIn

21. Teux Deux

Teux Deux is perfect for simple to-do lists and I love the accompanying iPhone app!

-Erin Blaskie, BSETC

(Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson via Flickr – CC BY 2.0)

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment and provides entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth.

I was meeting the new lady I’m dating at our local federal tax center before going out to dinner with her. This is because when it comes to filing her income tax returns, she’s a chronic procrastinator. This particular day was the deadline for filing tax returns and when we spoke just the night before, my lady friend revealed that she had not even started on her income tax yet.

Because of her procrastination, she would have to get to one of those tax preparation services before work and pick up her completed return after the work day is over. The plan was to meet her at the federal tax office where she will be dropping off her completed return.

When I got to the building, the staff already set up huge bin containers in the lobby for people coming in to drop off their returns on deadline day. As I was sitting in the lobby waiting for my lady to arrive, I was actually quite shocked to see a steady, continuous stream of people coming in to drop off their returns.

The staff told me that this would be the scene all through the evening until midnight when the deadline passes. So it seems that my lady is in good company of many procrastinators who also put off doing their taxes until last minute.

Because procrastination is often a general habit, I’m willing to bet that these folks are major procrastinators in other areas of their lives besides just getting to their income taxes on time. And since many people are often surrounded by other procrastinators, the habit of putting off things they don’t like doing becomes quite contagious.

Some of the government staff actually joked to some of the public, “See you next year!”

So this implies that the staff already knows that the procrastinators will likely repeat the same thing next year and make a frenzied run into the tax center just before the deadline.

So if you can relate to this, you might be asking yourself, “How do I stop procrastinating?”

Solution To Procrastination

Many productivity experts will suggest that a way to beat procrastination is to break up challenging tasks into little pieces. It is quite often easier to get little successes which will all add up over time to become a big success. Indeed this is helpful but I personally think that in order to really get over major procrastination, much more drastic measures must be taken.

What I always suggest to procrastinators during my talks to audiences is to spend a bit less time around other procrastinators and instead, actively spend more time with people who are action takers. Like-minded people tend to motivate each other and if you get involved with the right group, you could end up with a few new friends who will be happy to constantly keep you in check.

This is a secret weapon for many successful people who can’t afford to let procrastination creep back into their lives. They use such groups of other action takers to keep motivating them to push on. In fact, in many groups, people will go as far as helping each other keep accountable for their actions and more importantly, non-actions. Now that’s effective teamwork for success.

We see these types of interactions between people in high level sports teams as well as business groups (mastermind groups). People are there to push each other and get pushed to keep procrastination down to a bare minimum.

Sometimes it costs membership fees to be in certain groups but if it’s the right group that can influence you to take action rather than procrastinate, the money is well worth it. I’m in such a group myself that costs me $2,400 per year to participate in (I do what I advocate here).

So hopefully my new lady friend will start to procrastinate less if she hangs around more action oriented people. I’m sure that she doesn’t want to spend another year running around like a headless chicken during the income tax deadline.

(Photo credit: Colleagues at Water Cooler via Shutterstock)

Clint Cora is a motivational speaker, author & Karate World Champion based near Toronto, Canada. Get his FREE 3-part Personal Development Video Series on how to expand your comfort zone and finally conquer even your most daunting goals in life.

What makes people do what they do? Why do some people succeed while others fail? The answer just might be motivation. We know that from an early age motivation prompts us to want to learn and exhibit different types of behavior and stimulates us to accomplish new feats of success. As we grow and mature through the different stages of our lives, we hopefully learn what motivates us and what does not.

What is motivation?

Motivation is generally defined as the force that compels us to action. It drives us to work hard and pushes us to succeed. Motivation influences our behavior and our ability to accomplish goals.

There are many different forms of motivation. Each one influences behavior in its own unique way. No single type of motivation works for everyone. People’s personalities vary and so accordingly does the type of motivation, that is most effective at inspiring their conduct.

Types of Motivation

Incentive

A form of motivation that involves rewards, both monetary and nonmonetary is often called incentive motivation. Many people are driven by the knowledge that they will be rewarded in some manner for achieving a certain target or goal. Bonuses and promotions are good examples of the type of incentives that are used for motivation.

Fear

Fear motivation involves consequences. This type of motivation is often one that is utilized when incentive motivation fails. In a business style of motivation often referred to as the, “carrot and stick,” incentive is the carrot and fear is the stick.

Punishment or negative consequences are a form of fear motivation. This type of motivation is commonly used to motivate students in the education system and also frequently in a professional setting to motivate employees. If we break the rules or fail to achieve the set goal, we are penalized in some way.

Achievement

Achievement motivation is also commonly referred to as the drive for competency. We are driven to achieve goals and tackle new challenges. We desire to improve skills and prove our competency both to others and to ourselves. Generally, this feeling of accomplishment and achievement is intrinsic in nature.

However, in certain circumstances be motivation for achievement may involve external recognition. We often have a desire or need to receive positive feedback from both our peers and our superiors. This may include anything from an award to a simple pat on the back for a job well done.

Growth

The need for self-improvement is truly an internal motivation. A burning desire to increase our knowledge of ourselves and of the outside world can be a very strong form of motivation. We seek to learn and grow as individuals.

Motivation for growth can also be seen in our yearning for change. Many of us are wired by our personality or upbringing to constantly seek a change in either our external or internal environment or knowledge. We view stagnation to be both negative and undesirable.

Power

The motivation of power can either take the form of a desire for autonomy or other desire to control others around us. We want to have choices and control over our own lives. We strive for the ability to direct the manner in which we live now and the way our lives will unfold in the future.

We also often aspire to control others around us. The desire for control is stronger in some people than others. In some cases, the craving for power induces people to harmful, immoral, or illegal behavior. In other situations, the longing for power is merely a desire to affect the behavior of others. We simply want people to do what we want, according to our timetable, and the way we want it done.

Social

Many people are motivated by social factors. This may be a desire to belong and to be accepted by a specific peer group or a desire to relate to the people in our sphere or in the larger world. We have an innate need to feel a connection with others. We also have the need for acceptance and affiliation.

A genuine and passionate desire to contribute and to make a difference in the lives of others can be another form of social motivation. If we have a longing to make a contribution to the world around us, it is generally a sign that we are motivated by social factors.

The real importance of understanding the different types of motivation is in our ability to determine which form of motivation is the most effective for inspiring the desired behavior in either others or ourselves. None of these styles of motivation is inherently good or bad, the positive or negative outcome is truly determined by the way they are used.

(Photo credit: Businessman Placing Motivation via Shutterstock)

Royale Scuderi is a writer, life and business coach who empowers individuals and businesses to achieve higher productivity, growth, business success and work - life balance. She offers wisdom, insight and ideas to help you get the most out of your life at Productive Life Concepts.

Losing weight and getting healthy is a huge commitment and if you don’t take the time and energy to track your progress and your goals, the chances of you falling off the “health bandwagon” are great.

Rather than fail at your weight loss goals, why not use a tool to track those goals that’s at your disposal 24/7? With the capabilities of the iPhone, use these top 10 iPhone apps to lose weight and get in shape.

1. Fitocracy (Free)

Some people don’t like the idea of “gamifying” applications, but having some fun goals to accomplish when it comes to losing weight and getting healthy can really push you to succeed.

Fitocracy is basically an RPG for getting in shape where you can unlock achievements and earn points by accomplishing workout plans and reaching your fitness goals. It’s built around being social interaction with groups as well as challenging others.

2. RunKeeper (Free)

If you have an iPhone and you want to lose weight by running, instead of buying an expensive GPS watch, just download RunKeeper instead. RunKeeper is a great tool for tracking your runs and activity by using the GPS capabilities on your iPhone. You can also keep track of your progress on runkeeper.com, share your results with friends, integrate your iPod music with the app, geo-tag photos while on your run, and more.

Something else that is nice is you can manually enter data, so if you are caught inside on a treadmill one day, you won’t lose your activity tracking for the day.

3. Lose It! (Free)

Lose It! is a great free iPhone app that allows you to track your daily calorie intake as well as the calories you burn during your workouts. You can track your weight and set up daily calorie in/out goals to challenge yourself.

With Lose It! you can also use the camera on your iPhone to scan barcodes on foods and they will automatically be entered into your diary. Lose It! has a great food database, so if you need a good app for tracking food as well as activity, Lost It! is it.

4. SparkPeople (Free)

SparkPeople is the best way to interface with the popular SparkPeople online fitness community. You can track your food intake as well as your workouts, your weight, and even your calorie differential. Another nice touch is the added exercise demos that show you how to do popular exercises that are in your scheduled SparkPeople workouts.

5. Gain Fitness (Free)

Gain Fitness wants to be known as your own “digital personal trainer”. The app can basically build you a custom workout on your available time and the equipment that you have at your disposal.

After your workout is built, Gain can keep track of your progress and create you a custom “Gain Plan” calendar to keep you working out regularly. It sounds like magic, because it sort of is.

6. Nike+ GPS ($1.99)

The Nike+ GPS apps uses the iPhone’s GPS to track your runs, sort of like RunKeeper, but is much more focused on running. You can see your runs on a map, share them socially when you are completed, keep track of your calories burned, and get voice feedback during your run.

One of my favorite features is that you can share on Path :)

7. Fitbit Activity and Calorie Tracker (Free)

The Fitbit app requires a Fitbit to really get the most out of, but if you are serious about losing weight, a Fitbit is a great $100 investment just for the shear fact of seeing how much you are active during a day.

With the Fitbit app you can track your food intake and see your current steps taken (as long as your Fitbit has recently been synced). You can also track your weight, water intake, and added activity (that wasn’t tracked by the Fitbit).

8. Nexercise (Free)

Now, if you want to truly “gamify” your fitness experience, then Nexercise is the app to do it (it even has Game Center integration!). Nexercise allows you to gain “XP” (‘experience’ for all you non-RPGing playing nerds), earn rewards, defeat challenges, and interact with a the Nexercise community.

Nexercise doesn’t track food intake, just activity, but it supports 90+ different activities. Also, you can use your Fitbit, Fuel Band, and Jawbone Up to integrate your activity.

9. Weightbot ($1.99)

Weightbot tracks your weight in a beautiful way. If you want the best app for tracking your weight on the iPhone, then this is the app. Seriously, look nowhere else.

Input your weight for the day, view your BMI, view your weight over a timeline, and also view your weight goals. Simple, easy, and a beautiful way to track your weight loss.

10. Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker (Free)

Calorie Counter is another reliable app for tracking your calorie intake and your weight. You can track what foods you have eaten and at what times. According to MyFitnessPal (the makers of the app) Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker has the largest food database of any iOS app out there. The app also has a barcode scanner for scanning in nutrition labels from popular foods.

Sometimes what helps us to be successful in our professional lives is not such a great idea in our personal lives — competition is a quality that comes to mind. At the same time, we all have a limited amount of time each day to do the things that we want to do.

So for the sake of saving time and energy, I’m sharing a list of tips that will help you be successful in both life and in business.

1. Add Value

No matter what you do and where you go, you can’t go wrong with adding value. Simply put value is anything that people are willing to pay for. In your professional life, the more value you can offer the more money you can make. In your personal life, more value translates to closer relationships and strong personal growth. The best way to add value is to find the intersection between what people are willing to pay for and what service or product you can offer that is aligned with your values, strengths and goals.

How are you adding value to your employers and loved ones today? What can you do to increase your ability to add value?

2. Follow Your Passion

Reading numerous biographies on great people and from my own personal observations and encounters, I’ve realized that those who achieve greatness professional and personally follow their passion. The reason why great people are few and far in-between is because most people don’t even know what their passion is. For those that do figure out their passion, most of them don’t follow their passion consistently. This is one of the main reasons why people don’t reach their goals.

Do you know what your passion is? If not, what are you going to do to find out? If  you do know what you passion is, are you following it?

3. Be Extraordinary

If you do the same thing as everyone else, it’s hard to be successful. It is important to find the edge and then push past it. That is how you become noticed and get what you want. Whether it is money, meaningful relationships and/or a sense of personal accomplishment, the extraordinary person attracts them all.

How are you extraordinary?  If you feel just ordinary, what are you going to do to become extraordinary? For those who don’t know, you may want to check out articles on my blog and also How to go from Ordinary to Extraordinary.

4. Start Now

There are many factors that go into become a success in both your professional and personal life but the one factor that is required is taking action. Most people miss out on reaching their full potential because they never start. They are always preparing, planning and waiting for the best time to start. If I waited until I was ready, I would not have a coaching practice, a website, a blog, a workshop, etc. The stars rarely align and you will never be completely ready so just start now and adjust along the way.

Are you waiting for something before you start? What is your planning to doing ratio? What’s really the worse thing that can happen if you got started right now? If you are someone that’s just been waiting, stop reading this post and get started on what you have been wanting to do. This article will still be here when you get back.

5. Hunt for Good Mentors

People who “make it” usually credit their success to a mentor or a group of mentors who really helped guide them to get to where they are. Mentors have gone down the road that you want to travel and can guide you to get to your destination faster than if you went at it alone. If you want to be healthy, you would find a mentor who is already healthy. If you want to be rich, then you have to find someone who is already rich. What surprises me is how rarely people engage in mentoring relationships and those who do usually find mentors in only one aspect of their lives. If you want to be successful, be active about finding mentors that will help you achieve what you want. Jeff Goins has a nice short article on finding mentors.

Do you have a mentor in your life now? If not, ask yourself what barriers are preventing you from finding or establishing a mentoring relationship? If you do have a mentor, do you have one for the different aspects of your life (financial, health, professional, personal, spiritual, relationships, parenting etc.)?

6. Build a Support Group

While mentors serve as a guide with whom you review your past actions and plan your next steps, a support group are your companions that help you with during the actual execution of your plan. This may be in the form of a mastermind group or accountability partner where you keep each other accountable for your goals and to help each other deal with situations that may arise while you are on your journeys. It is extremely helpful to have someone you know that is willing to listen to your frustrations and self doubt and to encourage you and remind you of how far you’ve already come.

Who is in your support group?

7. Personally Know Your Finances

Numbers scare a lot of people. Start talking about assets, liabilities and net worth and people’s eyes just glaze over. If you are one of these people who run away from numbers, please stop running because you are hurting yourself. If you want to be financially independent, you need to know how to keep score. If you have your own business or want to successfully invest, finances tell you how well you are doing and reveal the health of a business. If you don’t understand finances, you have to learn. It’s easy once you get over the limiting belief that you are no good at numbers. For those interested in learning more, you may want to check out these personal finance resources.

Do you know you net worth? If you are bad at numbers, what specifically makes you believe that? How can you improve your financial intelligence?

8. Get Help

I have a tendency to try to do everything myself and in some ways it is good and in many ways it is bad. It is important to know and understand all aspects of your life and business but that does not mean having to do all the tasks involved in maximizing your potential in those areas. It is true that we can always learn new things and become competent in them but what is also true is that we are only given 24 hours each day and to live full lives, it is more effective to do what we do best and to outsource tasks that we’re not good at to people who excel at them. Delegating effectively takes trust and the ability to clearly communicate what you want. For those that want to outsource, Elance is a nice way to find some quality freelancers.

How are you spending your time? Is it doing things you are awesome at? If not, what are you doing that you can outsource or delegate so you can devote more time doing what you’re great at? What’s stopping you from outsourcing or delegating?

9. Learn Sales

Many people cringe when they hear the word sales. “I would never be in sales, that’s a sleazy job.” It is exactly this type of thinking that stops people from being their best. Sales is nothing more than persuading someone of something. When you are looking to get a date, you are selling. When you are interviewing for a job, you are selling. When you are trying to persuade your spouse or kids to go to Europe for your family vacation, you are selling. In a professional setting, sales is paramount and the lifeline for any business. If you want to get the most out of life and business, learn the skills for effective selling. I am beginning a series of blog posts on How to Sell on my blog and you can learn from other successful sales trainers by reading material from Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracey and Og Mandino.

When you hear “sales”, what associations come to mind? Are they positive or negative? Do you know the how to sell effectively? If not, how do you plan to learn?

10. Be Resilient

Things rarely work out the way you planned and there will always be distractions and stumbling blocks that you have to deal with when you are on your road to success. The key point to remember is to persist and to develop the courage to move on even when everyone around you is telling you it is ok to give up. This does not mean stubbornly holding on to your original plan but rather continuing to pursue your goal as long as the reasons for doing so is still valid (Make sure you know the “Why” of what you want). When everything seems to be going wrong, keep in mind that “the road to success is paved with a thousand failures” so each failure actually brings you closer to where you want to be. If you have trouble being resilient, check out the 6 Effective Ways to Be Persistent.

How often to you quit because things got tough? Would you descrive yourself as an unshakeable optimist? Do you view problems as opportunities or warning signs? How do you view failure and are you making sure that you don’t make the one mistake people make when learning from their mistakes?

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does provide a good starting point. I would love to hear what tips you have found especially useful in both life and business in the comments section.

(Photo credit: Road with an Arrow Going Up via Shutterstock)

Robert Chen is the founder of Embrace Possibility and his passion is to help undervalued individuals reach their full potential. Visit his website to learn more about him and his philosophy on personal mastery. If you're having trouble getting what you want out of life, check out How to Always Achieve Your Goals

Alfred is more than an application launcher for your Mac, though I bet that’s what most Alfred users do most often—I’m certainly no exception. A quick command-space, type what I’m looking for, tap enter, done. But there is so, so much more that you can do. In fact I learn more things to do the more I use it. But to get you started here are my top 10 tips and Alfred actions…

1. Powerpack Alfred App – Powerpack. Yes, the free version of Alfred is great, more than half of my favorite things to do with it are core to the free version. The thing is that some of the most useful shortcuts come with the Powerpack.
2. System commands. Need to quickly lock your machine to step away? How about empty the trash without your hands moving to the mouse? Oh yes, all of these and more are right at your fingertips with Alfred. You can even change the default commands so if “emptytrash” is too pedestrian you could use “eradicate”. If “shutdown” doesn’t work, maybe “abort”. They are your commands…do as you wish.
3. File searches. Sure Spotlight is great and doing a search in a Finder window when you’re in a Finder window is convenient, but what if you aren’t? Start with “find” and Alfred will search through all your files or use “in” and Alfred will search within your files instead. Found what you’re looking for? Email it, open it, go to it, even delete it. Pretty much just control it.
4. Searching the web. Sure it’s simple, but just start your Google (or other engine) search with a couple taps and your fingers barely have to leave the keyboard. Oh, and it’s not just Google, it’s Bing, Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, IMDb, even your Gmail and Google Docs, and even more.
5. Calculator. Quick what’s (3+4)/2*8+10? Yeah, with Alfred you start with the “=” (enable the advanced calculator in the preferences) type it in and the result is there to copy (38 is the answer).
6. Spelling. Look up definitions or find the right spellings in a few seconds.
7. Clipboard (PP only). This is my fav of all the Powerpack add-ons, built in clipboard history. And with Alfred 1.2 you can now append to the current clipboard item and then paste that. You can even save snippets of things (like in TextExpander) that you wind up using often.
8. Address Book (PP). Look up people in your by just typing their name. Then copy info to the clipboard or email them. Right there.
9. Email (PP). Speaking of email, you can start emails right from Alfred too. Oh and with the myriad different file actions you can do, emailing a document to someone is never more than a few taps away.
10. 1Password (PP). This is another new feature in Alfred 1.2 for Powerpack users. If you use 1Password start with 1p then start typing the service you’ve saved a password for…select, enter, and your browser opens and logs you in.

You can download Alfred either through the Mac App Store or directly through the website (which is the course I’d recommend actually) and while the features included for free are, well, awesome, the real fun comes with spending a little coin, £15 (about $25 US/CAD) gets you the Powerpack, which ramps up Alfred to a whole new level of awesome.

Frankly, even pulling together this top 10 list I found another half dozen Alfred actions I want to try. Like opening the last files a particular app opened or navigating through the file system or launching URLs or controlling iTunes. Alfred is one of those apps that is awesome for the moment you start using it—and then it just keeps getting better from there.

(Photo credit: Man in Bowler Hat by Wonderlane via Flickr)

Tris Hussey is a technologist, author, teacher, and Canada’s first professional blogger. He has written several books on social media and technology including Create Your Own Blog (1st and 2nd editions), Using WordPress, Sam’s Teach Yourself Foursquare in 10 Minutes, WordPress Essentials (video lessons), and Sam’s Teach Yourself WordPress Themes in 24 Hours (forthcoming in late 2012 with Catherine Winters). You can read Tris’ posts on TrisHussey.com, the FutureShop Tech blog, and other sites around the Internet.

At the end of the week — or even the end of a Monday — you are depleted. You’ve given your all, physically and emotionally. You can’t imagine thinking about one more creative solution or doing one more chore. How will you do it all again tomorrow?

When you do work you love and engage in a purposeful life, it’s hard to recognize when it’s time to stop. While there is a big difference in the tired you feel after working a soul sucking job and doing work that makes your heart sing, you are tired either way.

Instead of waiting until something’s gotta give, recharge on a regular basis. By carving out this time, you will be more creative, productive and happy and less grumpy, blocked and miserable to be around.

Recharging and refocusing allows you to generate creative energy.

Your Creative Energy Strategies

Take a Nap

The longer you’re awake, the more difficult it is for your brain to store new information, whether it’s names and faces, the details of a conversation, or your grocery list. An afternoon nap seems to refresh this short-term memory and open your mind for new information, researchers found. This makes sense to me. I am much sharper in the morning and tend to get a little fuzzy towards the end of the day when it comes to processing new material.

In the study, the researchers asked 39 college students to learn a series of new names and faces at noon and match the faces and names a few minutes later. They then performed the same test at 6 p.m. the same day. A group of students who took a 90-minute afternoon nap at 2 p.m. performed better than non-napping students, who had a serious decline in their memory test scores.

“Why? The part of your brain where short-term information and memories are stored is a bit like your email inbox, says the study’s lead author, Matthew P. Walker, the head of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. “You can only receive so many emails before your inbox starts to bounce,” he says. “When you sleep, essentially what you may be doing is clearing out that inbox to another folder, so you have a refreshed capacity to receive new emails.”

Move every day

The best way to stimulate creative ideas is to move. Take a walk, go to a yoga class, or jump in a pool every day. Taking 10-60 minutes to disengage from your work and get your heart rate up will actually save you time. You’ll spend less time procrastinating and more time creating. Have a small notebook and pencil nearby while you are exercising, and get ready for the ideas to flow.

Give

You are so wrapped up in your work and your life that when you step away and focus on someone else, you will naturally relax and take yourself less seriously. All the little things that cause stress and anxiety will become less important when you give and help someone else. Give your time, talent and treasure to benefit a worthy organization or individual. They benefit from your gift and your creativity will soar.

Don’t wait until you crash and burn. Instead, intentionally add these healthy habits into your daily life. By simply directing your energy to napping, moving and giving, you will benefit in more ways than one. Not only will you experience more creativity, but better health as well.

Courtney Carver is an artist and consultant specializing in simplicity for life and business. Read more from Courtney at her blog, Be More with Less and follow her on Twitter.

Have you ever been stuck as a customer in a large structure that functions like a black hole for cellular and broadband wifi?

If you have, you know the fury-inducing helplessness that accompanies being cut off from instantaneous access to whatever data you want.  If you own or manage any business that has a captive audience for more than a few minutes, this article is directed at you in hopes of aiding in the reduction of your clients’ stress and the enhancement of your customer service reputation.

I’ve written several articles previously on the fact that an inability to access data all of the time is good – and how to manage it – but the truth of the matter is if you haven’t planned for it, or you’re frequently caught in one of these places, it’s likely to be far less serenity-enhancing and far more stress-inducing.  The effect of this inability to access data actually reduces your productivity instead of enhancing it if you had planned to work through your GTD @Phone or @Internet contexts. In fact, if you find it particularly troublesome, you may find this piece on “iDisorders” of interest.

If you’re one of the folks who owns or manages a business, such as a restaurant, grocery store, car repair shop, department store, office building, or hospital whose building functions like a cellular black hole, and you aren’t providing free wifi, you’re making your clients’ lives more stressful.  I’m likely to stop being your client over this, whereas some others might tolerate it long enough to boost their blood pressure to dangerous levels.  It’s like the old adage about boiling a frog (although I would never advocate such a thing); if you throw it in hot water, it jumps out.  If you slowly raise the temperature, the frog sits comfortably until it overheats dangerously.

It’s 2012. If you can afford to operate a business that caters to customers who are required to wait, you can afford to save them from a dark hellhole of no broadband cellular signal.  You can do this by providing free wifi so they can access data services.

Solving this problem, and making your clients happier (or at least less stressed), is easy. Two effective solutions are:

• Install a wifi access point and make it free for clients. Invest in a lot of bandwidth…more than you think you need. At least as much as your geeky neighbor kid says you need. Ask him or her. You’ll probably get a good answer.  If you find you bought more wifi than your customers are using, yet you still have a waiting area full of customers, try streaming some movies or the news to a tv connected to the router.

• Install microcell repeaters. Pricey, but worth it in client satisfaction if you have a captive clientele.  Sure, the ability to access free broadband wifi will satisfy a great many people – clients and employees on break – but the ability to make calls inside a building that otherwise blocks them due to weak signal is a huge boon to everyone who has a phone.

(Photo credit: Wifi Road Sign via Shutterstock)

Andrew writes at 360 Minutes, where he shares his best advice on becoming more productive and effective, so you can gain the time to do the things that you love. Get his RSS feed directly, and take a look at his Getting Started page if you're looking for ways to get your head above water at work.

 ”You might say, a focus on being right is actually “wrong!”

Do you ever have an argument, and end up feeling badly even if you “win?” Winning and being “right” does not ensure that things will end well. In fact, if your sense of victory is dependent on another person’s defeat, the victory might be hollow, indeed. Being “right” is over-rated. When people are in an argument – what really are they doing? They want to defend themselves!  In an argument, each person is trying to change the other.  And who is really the only one we can change?  We all know the answer: ourselves! 

Although most of us know better, we give it a valiant try to change others anyway, because we are just so convinced that if they saw it our way, things would be better. All too often well meaning souls think they know what is best for others, and want to tweak someone else’s mind or convince them why they need to change. That is called Aggressive Behavior.  Aggressive Behavior is characterized by “YOU” statements, and focuses on how the other person “should be.”  Many times aggressive communication is designed to “get back” at someone else or control how they behave or think.  An example of an aggressive statement is “You have no right to say that to me!” Many people think that aggression is okay if the end justifies the means, but really anything short of physical danger does not merit aggression, because by definition the behavior is authoritarian and judgmental.

Of course, children need parents to set guidelines, limits and consequences, and it is the logical consequences that help children to learn from their mistakes.  but they don’t need scolding and yelling to learn, and in fact they learn to be fearful and inhibited rather than learning the lesson at hand.   The emotional consequences of power struggles, fear and anger lead to a lot of negativity, guilt and low self esteem. Healthy communication in parenting and otherwise is focused on self-expression without the goal of changing someone else. That is called authoritative parenting, which is differentiated from authoritarian parenting which relies on anger, negative emotions and criticalness.

Authoritative, assertive communication uses “I” statements.  “I” statements are meant to be honest, but uses tact.  It is not judgmental and expresses personal feelings without trying to change the way someone else sees things.  An assertive statement is “I felt angry when you raised your voice at me and called me names”  in contrast to the victim-like “You make me so mad!”

Communication Takeaways 

• Strive to use assertive behavior and remind yourself that your goal is to express yourself rather than change someone’s mind. The motto of assertive behavior is like the popular 70’s Psychology book, “I’m Okay, You’re Okay.”
• Aggressive Behavior is characterized by “You” statements and the focus is on controlling and being right over another person. That type of behavior erodes relationships. The motto here is: “I’m Okay – You’re Not!”  
• Very few relationships flourish with the type of attitude that you want to achieve superiority in an argument, rather than seeking a “win-win’ solution.  
• Instead of striving to “win”  seek to be assertive, show empathy, and work on validating others without putting them down. 
• Ask yourself – “Would I rather “judge” or show someone that I care?”  Love wins over teaching hands down! 
• Victories become empty over time if your need to be right becomes a pattern. Others might distance form you, or feel tense in your presence.  It’s lonely out there!
• Don’t pull!  Trying to be right is like putting your fingers in the Chinese Finger Trap carnival you are stuck. The more you try to prove you are right, and the more the other person pulls, your relationship suffers.

So think of the most recent conflict you had with someone close to you.  Were you focusing on proving how you were right?  If so, how would it had gone differently if you focused instead on validating and empathizing with how they felt rather than setting them straight?     So next time you are close to getting  in an argument and want to prove you are right, just imagine or pull out the carnival toy, the Chinese Finger Trap, and remind yourself not to get stuck in it!

How can you listen and really understand when you are too busy defending yourself and trying to change their mind? Remember that a focus on being right ends up making you wrong!  

(Photo credit: Tin Can Phones via Shutterstock)