I’m sharing a few posts from the New Leaf archives. Here’s what was on our mind in August during the past couple of years. Productivity depends on being able to work in comfort. Eliminate at least one pain in the neck with a wireless headset. Successfully planning for the future requires acknowledging past wins. Are…
Category Archives: Products
Need a Net Nanny? Rescue Time Provides the Loving Discipline.
How do you waste time at your computer? Are you an obsessive email-checker? Do you while away hours playing solitaire or backgammon? Are your achievements in Farmville and Mafia Wars huge compared to your achievements in the real world? Are you a connoisseur of funny pet videos on YouTube? With temptation never more than one…
Wireless electricity – the ultimate cable control!
Why do they call my printer “a wireless device”? Though it communicates with my computer via bluetooth technology, it still must be plugged into the wall. Now on the horizon: the promise of a truly cable-free future. Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity, presented the future of wireless electricity at the TED Global 2009 conference. (See…
Five productive jobs for Evernote
Evernote‘s logo is the elephant, the creature with a reputation for never forgetting, and it’s true that Evernote allows me to capture tasks and to-dos whenever I think of them and funnel them into my task management system. The logo could just as well be a lasso, though, since what Evernote does best is to…
Four no-excuses ways to exercise for better productivity
If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish. – Charles Dickens Balancing stress and recovery is essential to high performance, and I am in need of a tune up before I, in the words of Dickens, “explode and perish.” Yesterday I sat on a rock at Pescadero…
Good economy, bad economy
Call me a spendthrift, but I’ve noticed a disturbing tendency in these uncertain economic times, as otherwise savvy business people focus on measly economizing steps of dubious value. See whether you recognize yourself in any of these scenarios: Do you live with chaos caused by bags of un-filed paper, because your rusted, second-hand filing…
Offsite data backup revisited (Mac version)
Recently I wrote about the devastating loss that can occur if business data isn’t backed up, and I shared ways to back up both onsite (for ease of retrieval) and offsite (in case the onsite backup is stolen or destroyed). Courtesy of The Unofficial Apple Weblog comes this notice: “There’s a new kid on the…
2009 NAPO Organizers' Choice Awards
Last week at the annual conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers, we (the 800 or so organizers present) voted for the recipients of the 2009 Organizers’ Choice Awards. And the winners are… Taking “Best Product – Business” was OfficeMax, for the [IN]PLACE System by Peter Walsh. A series of plastic binders, files, totes,…
Small is valuable: data backup for the micro-business
A few short years ago, data backup for the micro-business was tough. An external hard drive sat on my desk, as big as a pond turtle and about as swift, and pokily copied my data. That was all. I could keep all my data at home when I took my computer out, but there were…
Belt and Suspenders: what everyone needs to know about data backup
Sometimes we joke about the “belt and suspenders” solution – those situations where people look for not one but two powerful sources of security. When it comes to data backup, don’t be afraid of the “belt and suspenders” title. Businesses need two kinds of backup. One will be on-site, the other off-site. The first protects…