As my eCash Generator students already know, I had my much loved but rather old laptop die on me this week (yep, another one) and so much of my time has been taken up restoring from backup, reinstalling programs etc. on to my shiny new notebook.
It’s never as simple as it should be because inevitably there are issues when you are upgrading operating systems, negotiating licenses that only apply to one PC and so on but a program that helped immensely is one I have mentioned before as a disaster recovery solution and that’s Macrium, the free version of which you can download here:
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
Super simple to use and a real lifesaver – I heartily recommend it.
As I now have Windows 8, I also found a rather nifty solution for those of you who also have it and hate the fact there is no Start button. Apparently, Microsoft have addressed this issue in Windows 8.1 but if you, too, can’t live without it on your desktop and are struggling with Windows 8 for that reason then try Pokki, an excellent free fix:
http://www.pokki.com/windows-8-start-menu
Along with setting up my new system, I decided to streamline everything else as far as possible and so I have some great suggestions to save you time and a great deal of stress so you can be far more productive.
The best ideas are usually the simplest and I love Boomerang because it does one thing really well – it lets you write an email in Gmail and schedule it to be sent whenever you want. This means that, as with an autoresponder, you could queue up your weekly correspondence in one session as well as organize your Inbox, receive reminders and generally get on top of that groaning heap of emails:
http://www.boomeranggmail.com/
Another great Gmail tool is Rapportive which gives you additional information about everyone on your contact list such as their company, location etc – use it to build your network and relationships with customers and prospects:
Then there’s the wonderfully named Remember The Milk which is an online productivity tool to help you manage all your tasks in one easy space:
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
And the rather oddly named If This Then That which helps you set up ‘recipes’ to effortlessly handle all kinds of online tasks on autopilot such as autosaving all your Instagram photos to your Dropbox :
My Kindle freebie suggestions this week are also centred around this time-saving, life-hacking theme. First up is one entitled just that – Life Hacks is from the team at Instructables and I particularly recommend this to my eCash Generator students as a great example of how to promote your tutorials:
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Hacks-ebook/dp/B004JN0D10/
Then there’s this freebie from the Dummies tribe with a little bit of everything to help you solve life’s little niggles:
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Bit-Everything-Dummies-ebook/
Finally, you can’t be wholly productive if you’re not centred and happy and besides, I love the title of this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Happy-Fairy-Moonbeams-Required-ebook/
Of course, my TED talk recommendation has to be on productivity and this one’s excellent – Andy Puddicombe on how 10 mindful minutes can make a huge difference:
I’m going to leave you this week with this thought-provoking article on why sex doesn’t necessarily sell – not salacious at all but rather a measured piece from Psychology Today on how the shock jock tactics employed by certain marketers actually distract a prospect away from buying.
It’s based on a study of TV advertising but I think the points made apply to a lot of what we see online as well:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/time-out/201007/does-sex-really-sell
