Post a Productivity Tip

[Retired_Member42]

Criticism is fine as long as its constructive and well-intended. I urge contributors to this thread to keep the tone helpful and free of negativity. That way we all profit. Thanks.

I think it's a great idea for a thread to be honest but if someone posts a tip and 90% of people think it's shit then you'd hope they'd be free to say so. No need for hostilities and negativity as such. Just allow people to question it / offer a difference in opinion and the thread will be better for it.

 

[websaway]

I think if you applied the rule for this thread that there were to be no quotes from a post it may flow more fluently as I think is intended.
Brain storming does not work if it ends in argument, it's designed to keep ideas flowing.
Take what you want from each idea and leave the rest.

So my tip is ...
Don't deliberately look for what you don't agree with, simply take anything from each tip that may be helpful or productive.

 

[accelerator]

I agree with your thinking, so I've amended the original thread description to say:

"In this post I would like people to post their productivity tips. EVERY post must contain a productivity tip, so even if you just want to make a reply to someone, you MUST include your own additional productivity tip AS WELL."

In the spirit of this, here's my tip:

Create a calendar in an Excel spreadsheet or similar with major upcoming events that you can use to market around, e.g. new film launches.

Rgds

 

[bonusmedia]

I think it's a great idea for a thread to be honest but if someone posts a tip and 90% of people think it's shit then you'd hope they'd be free to say so. No need for hostilities and negativity as such. Just allow people to question it / offer a difference in opinion and the thread will be better for it.

That would be fine it was expressed halfway civilly.

It's all very well that people want to 'say what they think', but that'snot an excuse to display all the social skills of a pickled whelk.

My productivity tip: Set aside a period of time for forum browsing rather than just idly clicking. I need to stick to this one better

 

[WalkinDude]

Collaborate. tHat's where I think our cousins across the atlantic are wiping the floor with us, Still working on this theory!!!~

 

[steww]

Great thread -

Writing things down.

I find keeping a list of top level goals with target dates & strategy in one document is extremely useful to keep on-track and refer back to. It gets tweaked over time in line with any opportunities etc but core elements remain fairly fixed.

Also for individual projects at project outset writing down all the steps that are going to be needed, adding the approx amount of time it will take to undertake. When juggling time between projects it makes it really easy to then pick steps that you've got time to complete that day & plan etc.

 

[DaveP]

Take some time out to enjoy life once in a while.

 

[The Ferryman]

Whether you keep a paper, electronic or mental to do list, at the start of each day, or work session, look at your list and choose the most difficult task on it.
Do that one first, then you'll be walking on sunshine for the rest of the day.
Regards
Bruce

 

[accelerator]

If you are marketing on Twitter, use the Retweet and Favourite a lot, it will help you.

 

[Admin]

Here is what I do to save time setting up new WordPress sites:

• Keep a folder on my PC with the Plug-Ins or Themes I use on most sites
• Install Wordpress using Scriptalicious - provided by my Hosting package
• Once Wordpress is up, use an FTP to copy over all the plug-ins and themes I want
• Run Fresh Start plugin
• Set Wordpress and Plugins to auto-update

Quick way to get a site up plus it will update automatically with zero touch. The Fresh Start plug-in does some cool stuff I used to do manually each time I build a new site: http://www.freshstart.com

The other time drain for me is emails. Set up an Inbox filter so that any emails addressed to me go to Inbox, any where I am only in copy got to a CC folder. Read and deal with the Inbox ones first.

Admin

 

[Edwin]

Stick an SSD into a 2.5" external housing and use that as a glorified USB stick to carry data around on.

While it's admittedly going to be much larger than a USB stick, if you're regularly having to cart big files around you'll find that you can read/write to a SDD from 2x to 10x faster than you can to even the top USB sticks on the market. Plus of course you can get drives up to 1TB in size.

(Of course if you only have USB2 rather than USB3, then the above is irrelevant since the speed limiter is the interface, not the thing plugged into it)

 

[Edwin]

Bonus tip: if you have a relatively modern PC, then an SSD is going to give you much more responsive performance than your existing hard drive, so consider getting one and cloning the OS disk onto it.

(The difference in speed between a decent mid-range SSD, such as Crucial's M550, and the tip top SSDs is much much less than the gap between a HDD and a SSD, so unless you're the kind of person who wants to wring the last percentage point of performance out of your system you don't have to go for the super-fancy SSDs at the high end of the market)

 

[Admin]

If you have a recent laptop chances are it has an HDMI port (rather than the old VGA). Carry an HDMI cable with you on business travel then use the hotel TV as an extra large monitor for working or streaming movies from your Netflix account

Useful if you go places where the English TV channels is minimal.

Get a VPN account and pretend to be located anywhere you want to access free TV services in that country.

Admin

 

[bonusmedia]

Get a VPN account and pretend to be located anywhere you want to access free TV services in that country.

Or use the Hola.org browser plugins for free.

 

[Aegean]

1. If you are building a commercial ecommerce site with tangible products, ask your granny, mother-in-law or someone who's never seen the site to buy something, then watch what they do (without interfering). It can be an eye-opener & non-techy folks will probably be your real customers.

2. In relation to the above, remove every possible hurdle between the customer & checkout. Each hurdle loses you a percentage of potential sales.

 

[Adam H]

1. If you are building a commercial ecommerce site with tangible products, ask your granny, mother-in-law or someone who's never seen the site to buy something, then watch what they do (without interfering). It can be an eye-opener & non-techy folks will probably be your real customers.

2. In relation to the above, remove every possible hurdle between the customer & checkout. Each hurdle loses you a percentage of potential sales.

Have done these my self in a number of different ways, they are with out a doubt most eye opening thing you will ever do, especially when added into different types of computers, screen sizes and platforms.

Many moons ago i used to do something similar with a small part of keyword research, asking your Gran to find a certain type of product or service using google and see what they type. Priceless.

 

[MikeJDS]

Unfortunately my Granny passed away a few years ago.

That's when I started using 'Google Realtime Analytics'

 

[Adam H]

Unfortunately my Granny passed away a few years ago.

That's when I started using 'Google Realtime Analytics'

Like i said many moons ago, GRA was only released in 2011...but obviously the granny example was just a constructive insight lol, im not saying ask your granny and don't bother looking at any other kind of Analytic lol

 

[Edwin]

If you want to do some quick and dirty usability testing on the cheap, take a look at http://www.feedbackarmy.com/

Ask a decent question and you get some relatively informative answers (and junk ones too - but then the price is ludicrously low compared to "pro" testing solutions)

Here's a link to US$80 worth of responses to some questions I asked about our very old sales lander so that you can get a feel for what sort of scope you might expect...
http://www.feedbackarmy.com/get_fee....co.uk/&code=87c259798d224d3b7361939c79d8edc4

 

[accelerator]

Think about "pain vs gain". "pain" is anything you have to do to keep your business running, e.g. renewing domain names, and it does not help you make more money. "pain" activities may be possible candidates for outsourcing. "gain" activities are optional activities which are going to help you make more money, e.g. deciding to attend a domaining conference, identifying a valuable new business sector to get into, making an industry alliance or new contact etc.

Think about how you can spend less time on your "pain" activities, e.g. outsourcing, efficiency gains, and more time on your "gain" activities.

Also a reminder guys that every post in this thread must contain at least one productivity tip, even if you are just replying to someone else.

Next!