As mentioned earlier in use of a master list, do not try to plan as you take notes or at the end of the day. Any planning you do later in the day should be flexible, to allow for changes. Rather prioritize and organize first thing in the morning, when you arrive and check your memos, voice mail, and email.

Review your ML throughout the day. Then, at the end of the day, look for items that need to be scheduled. Put them on your Daily List (DL) and cross them off the ML.

Only write your ML once a week, each Friday. Why Friday you may ask? It is the lowest productivity time of the week. This way, you focus on a week at a time, not just today and tomorrow. You also save time, since you are not moving items from a “today” list to “tomorrow” list at the end of every day. Also, that daily move is emotionally difficult; you feel discouraged because you have not accomplished enough and you feel greater pressure to do more.

Accept the reality that you would not be crossing off every item on your list by the end of the day. Reduce the pressure. Remember!! Do not work late: there is no correlation in productivity between the length of the day and the amount of work accomplished.

On Friday, when you rewrite your ML, you can evaluate your performance. Then, transfer the items not yet completed to a new ML. Compare items that you completed and items you are transferring: can you learn anything about your tendencies? Finally, staple the old ML and file it for future use and review time.

Keep your list handy at all times, This will help reduce “drive-by shootings” – those situations when you are walking somewhere and somebody asks, “Do you have a minute?” with your ML in hand, you are less likely to try to handle the request immediately. Look at your list and schedule the request appropriately. That is how you develop discipline in your time management. Do not allow requests that pop up to take priority over items on your schedule. Do not reward interruptions and give them control over you.

Here are some suggestions for managing tasks with your ML:

Use noon as deadline: That will motivate you to accomplish more in the morning and allow you to feel less pressure later in the day. 90% of all productivity gains occur in the morning.

Apply the “veggie principle”: A “veggie” is a task that is good for you and your career or personal life that you put off, probably for late in the day – like vegetables that children avoid eating. Try instead to start each day with a “veggie” and may be do another before noon.

Balance your ML with personal items: You definitely need to manage your personal life as well as your work life and it is easier with a single system - and better for you as a whole person.

This post was published with my N95.

This little hack could be useful if a website is busy and you do not want sit and manually refresh the page, Firefox will show you “connection time out” page, but will try automatically reload it until site respond.

The original hack can be found at http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~ryross/ however, I think the file is outdated. Unfortunately the author did not provide any details on what was changed in that file and I could not find any other details or other method to do this.
I found only one extra line needed to be added in the original file to get the same effect.

1) close Firefox
2) locate and backup C:\Program Files\Firefox\chrome\toolkit.jar (assuming your Firefox is in C:\Program Files\Firefox)
3) using WinRAR (or other archiver) find and extract from toolkit.jar: content\global\netError.xhtml
4) open netError.xhtml with a text editor
5) find the code

var title = document.getElementById(”errorTitleText”);

6) above that line insert this line:

if(err==”netTimeout” || err==”connectionFailure” || err==”netReset”) location.reload();

7) save the file (make sure the filename and extension was not changed)
using WinRAR replace content\global\netError.xhtml inside toolkit.jar with the modified netError.xhtml

Happy hacking!!

When examining ways to market their businesses online, many companies look no further than the ubiquitous click. For budget conscious businesses that require a dollar spent to equal a customer gained, a cost-per-action ad model is worth evaluating.

Cost-per-action is exactly what it sounds like-a marketer only pays a publisher or ad network provider when a customer takes a specific action (beyond just a click). Earlier this year, Google, which has become synonymous with pay-per-click advertising, began a new cost per-action trial that requires some publishers to dedicate a portion of their total inventory to serve as Google cost-per-action ads.

Another popular cost-per-action model is pay-per-call, where the advertiser does not pay unless they receive a customer call, there by getting businesses much closer to a buying customer than a click does. Why do these approaches work for marketers? They:

• Get advertisers closer to qualified customers
• Result in higher customer conversion and ROI
• Help eliminate click fraud, a common drain on small businesses’ ad budgets
• Are ideal for service-based businesses that need to generate sales; not just people perusing their Web site

Cost-per-action models ensure that you only pay for tangible leads, like a phone call or a completed online application. As an actionable ad model, cost-per-action marketing helps give businesses greater control and return on their ad dollars.