Author: Chris Tingom

Personal Productivity Blogs

I read a large number of personal productivity blogs, and thought it would be fun to share two of them with you.

Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development for Smart People

www.stevepavlina.com

A site that became wildly popular after it was revealed that the owner, Steve Pavlina, makes a living off of ads on the site. Pavlina even tried the concept of Polyphasic Sleep to the amusement of his readers (but then discontinued after some time). Another good article is titled How to Become an Early Riser.

David Seah’s Better Living Through New Media

www.daveseah.com

Dave came up with an interesting idea a few years ago to create beautiful and useful productivity tools for himself. On paper. He calls them The Printable CEO, and shares his work with you for free and many people use them daily.

Andy Ferra, a designer in Phoenix I have had the pleasure of working with, wrote this about The Printable CEO:

One of the things I like about it most is it helps you define a clear system for prioritizing tasks and process to go through when you’re not being productive to help you get back on track.

Billing hourly or by the project

Flexibility rocks

I think it’s a trend! More and more web design, development, and marketing companies are learning one of the best kept secrets in the business. Charging by the hour can be incredibly good for business.

A marketing / web design firm we’re friends with in Phoenix just switched from fixed-fee project rates to an hourly rate and wrote an excellent blog post about the switch.

They tout flexibility as one of the biggest advantages of charging by the hour. I would agree. It gives customers way more leeway in making changes, and doesn’t create a problem every time the scope of the project changes. This also frees staff up from writing detailed change orders, and revising estimates.

Our company, Tornado, made the switch to billing by the hour about 3 years ago and we haven’t looked back since! It’s a big relief on so many levels compared to billing by the project (fixed fee). I wrote about our experience a year ago in a post called: Two Years of Tracking Time: It’s worth it!

Which way do you bill your customers? By the hour or by the project?

How many hours do you REALLY work each day?

I’m not sure how many of you read Slashdot? I don’t read it, but a long time ago I subscribed to the Slashdot Poll because I found it entertaining and at the time it was one of only a few polls used online.

The current poll asks “How many hours do you REALLY work each day?” Fascinating question! At this time, 21,364 people have answered the poll. Here are the top 3 responses:

  • 5-6 Hours – 24%
  • 3-4 Hours – 19%
  • 7-8 Hours – 16%

Anyways, I doubt that many of the responders actually definitively know the answer to the question. Nobody can constantly produce 100% efficiency every day. It’s probably impossible to do that with all of the distractions we have today. Hence the importance of limiting distractions in your day.

Innovation in business supplies

This month I’ve stumbled across two really great improvements to every day products. The stapler and the highlighter. Nothing beats a photo, so here goes:

A precise stapler

This stapler has an indent so that every time you staple a piece of paper it’s the same. How freaking brilliant.

Kukuyo highlighter

This highlighter makes it easy to circle or just highlight — fantastic and simple.

Annual Report: For a Person

Here’s a sweet idea! Make an annual report for yourself! Too bad it would probably take 20 hours just to produce a report this spiffy. Nicholas Feltron was recently shown holding his annual report in the Wall Street Journal.

View his annual report for 2007.

I’d wager that Mr. Feltron is the sort of person that wouldn’t spell his own name wrong, but for some reason the Wall Street Journal did. At least he got it right in his report, which is beautiful. I’d also guess that Feltron is the sort of guy that tracks his time — wise. Anyways, I thought it was cool and wanted to share.