Displaying All Posts from June, 2010

The Value of an Unpublished Blog Post

It’s happened to all of us. You’re in the shower, at an event or reading a book when an insight strikes. A brilliant insight, at that. Quick, you must inform the Internet immediately!

So you settle in at your computer to peck out your brilliance in the form of a blog post that will surely be read by thousands of people, retweeted dozens of times and lead to your book deal. That’s how it works, right? I mean, that’s what your English degree is for…isn’t it?

Yet what begins as a quick and steady flow of typing soon slows to a trickle. Your hands feel leaden, your mind bound. What you do type is either deleted moments later or left on the page to fester. When you re-read what you’ve written, your points feel weak and unsupported. You begin to panic. This blog post might not come to fruition after all.

Believe it or not, that may be the best thing that could happen to your brilliant idea. Click Here to Read Article …

Cool Technology Fantasies: What’s Your Wildest Tech Wish?

Susan Johnston 18th June Software Leave a Comment

If you could wave your digital wand and create any time-saving, productivity-boosting tool or web app (never mind if it’s technically possible), what would it be?

I’d love to find some kind of automatic attachment suggester. Sure, there are some useful email features, like the one in Gmail that will detect when you’ve forgotten an attachment, but I’d love something that would take care of finding the right document and attaching it for me. I have so many folders and subfolders on my MacBook that attaching documents can be a hassle!

Perhaps such a tool could look at my most recent documents, the keywords in my email and the recipient to figure out what I meant to attach. I wouldn’t expect this to be an exact science (at least not right away), so there would have to be some kind of feature where you could reject the attachment and the computer would eventually learn your habits.

That said, maybe something like this already exists…I just don’t know about it!

What’s your wildest tech wish? Click Here to Read Article …

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Self-Initiated Productivity Killers

Jason Finnerty 18th June General Leave a Comment

While we clearly discuss ways to be more productive here at WorkAwesome, we don’t often delve too much into the productivity killers that you bring on yourself. I was thinking about this as I was enjoying the 10^th round of solitaire on my iPhone, accidentally-on-purpose avoiding a looming deadline.

It’s not that I didn’t want to do the job; I just didn’t really want to start. The getting paid part of it was really great, and landing the project is always exciting. The project itself…not so much. So I found myself focusing my efforts on winning one more round. And if it’s not solitaire, it’s crib – trying to get that elusive 29. Curse you iPhone apps!

So what do you do to avoid doing what you should be doing, and how do you get yourself back on track?

Or am I the only one that does this? Click Here to Read Article …

10 Premium Professional PowerPoint Themes and Backgrounds

Abhijeet Mukherjee 18th June Communication Leave a Comment

We showcased some nice free PowerPoint templates in our article 20 Free PowerPoint Templates that Don’t Suck. While those were some great templates (and free too), if you are looking for some PowerPoint themes with a professional touch – and don’t mind spending a few bucks – then check out these 10 premium PowerPoint themes for creating great business presentations. Click Here to Read Article …

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How Do You Track Deadlines?

Susan Johnston 17th June Goals Leave a Comment

Some people keep a giant calendar listing all of their deadlines. Others use online tools like Google Calendar or ReminderFox to keep track of important dates. Whatever your strategy, I think we can all agree that deadlines are pretty darn important.

I use an Excel spreadsheet that lists all my past, current, and future writing assignments. Upcoming deadlines are in green and projects I’ve completed are in black. I reserve red for when checks are overdue, which (knock on wood) doesn’t happen very often. Admittedly, it’s rather low-tech compared to the other options out there, but it works. After all, Excel is pretty versatile.

What about you? How do you ensure that you never miss a deadline? Click Here to Read Article …

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Productivity Web Apps Bundle on the Cheap

Mike Vardy 17th June Productivity Leave a Comment

The popular lifehacking site, the aptly-named Lifehacker, delivered some fantastic news today that we just had to share!

The website AppSumo is offering a bundle of the professional level of web-based productivity apps such as Evernote, Remember The Milk and RescueTime (the last of which was used to calculate the lost time during Google’s Pac-Man logo day) The package is just $55, which is pretty much the most awesome savings I’ve ever seen on a bundle of pure productivity apps. The best part: they’re not platform-dependent so they’ll work on any OS of your choosing. The not-so-best part: they’re only available at this price for a limited time and also for a limited duration (ranging from 2 months to 1 year before you have to pony up more dough).

Even with that caveat, the value of this package is well over $300 – a great deal no matter how you look at it. So if you’re wanting to upgrade to the premium version from the “freemium” version of any of these apps – or just want to give something new a try, this bundle is the perfect excuse/reason to do so.

Grab Premium Versions of Your Favorite Productivity Webapps for Cheap with AppSumo (via Lifehacker) Click Here to Read Article …

Competence or Confidence?

Peter North 17th June General Leave a Comment

Competence or confidence.

Which comes first? Do your ever-improving skills grant you confidence? Or, alternatively, is it your confidence that catalyzes the growth of your skills?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

You can certainly have one in spades and suffer a conspicuous lack of the other. Some people are brimming with confidence and have no skills to back up all that bravado. Others have a brilliant array of abilities, but don’t have the gumption to put them all to use.

Sure, it would be ideal to have tons of both. But if you could only have one, which would you pick? Which is a “nice to have” and which is a critical component of your working persona? Click Here to Read Article …

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Toxic Coworkers: Dealing with Debbie Downers

Sarah Nagel 17th June Office Life Leave a Comment

When I started an internship at a small nonprofit in the National Press Building, I thought I was on my way up to journalist heaven. I was ready to learn. I was ready to give it my all. But I wasn’t ready to work with Debbie Downer.

Debbie Downer loved to gripe. She could suck all the air out of the room. The worst was when I had to ride the elevator with her. There was no escape. I had to stand there and listen to her go on and on. Click Here to Read Article …

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