I am writing this blog post based on my own experience fighting waste of time while working on a computer. You are all familiar with this scenario. You sit in front of your computer with all the good intentions of starting working on something, be it to write a letter, finish off an assignment, or whatever. You are all set and focused to do your best to finish the task today or at least a good chunk of it.

But then without realising you immediately get the urge to check your email. This decision is done unconsciously, just like when for example you close your eyes to avoid a speck of dust from entering your eyes. You do not know why you did it but you just have to do it.

Same thing happens with email. As soon as you switch on your computer you just have to check your email. This action in itself is not bad, but what follows is a chain reaction of actions that lead to huge losses of time.

When you read this you will smile to yourself when you realise how familiar you are to this same behaviour.

So you check your email and in your inbox you get let’s say 5 new emails. Some are spam which somehow got past your junk mail filter; others are promos from Amazon or some other online store, while others are from your friends.

So what happens is this… oh look how cool that new book or gadget being promoted in the Amazon email. Let me just check this one out, since I might be losing out on a good one time offer. So you follow the link to the Amazon product web site and then you are bombarded with recommendations like… people who bought this product also bought this other stuff. So you must check it out… and you do. Everybody does. That is why Amazon and other online stores use these techniques. Because they invested time and money to research the psychology of humans , and they know it works.

Problem is, you start a never ending loop of link hoping from one product to the other, until you finally realise that one you do not have the cash right now to buy the product and two an hour and a half has just flown by. Of course your project is still waiting on the sideline.

But hey, we are not over yet with the time wasting. Next in line you realise that you still have to check out the email from your buddy. Oh, the subject says, you must see this. This video is hilarious. And… you guessed it… you click the link to watch the video on YouTube everybody else has seen. Same thing happens, you watch the video get a good laugh (which is always good by the way) and then YouTube offers you recommendations. Related videos suddenly sprout in front of you… begging you to click them.  Then you wake up from your euphoric state and yet another hour has gone by.

So what had all started as a quick check my email thing before I start working hard on this project, ended up being a two and a half hour detour of scanning products and laughing at videos. In the meantime your task is still waiting for your kind self to dedicate sometime to it… maybe, just maybe it will get finished someday.

So my friends… from experience… the best way to be productive on your computer is to just start working on your task immediately as soon as you switch on the computer. Do not say to yourself let me check the email or that website before you begin working, or you will end up wasting precious hours of your time. At the end of the day you will feel guilt for having wasted yet another day without completing anything.

If you want to check email or a website, do it after completing your work for the day. Use this as a reward for achieving your goal for the day. In the end you will be more productive, have fun anyway and at the end of the day will feel much better with yourself.

Last year, my friend, Peter told me of his resolutions for 2007. Back then, he told me proudly that he has only 2 resolutions – both related to his career. He was very focused on his career and really wanted to move his career forward – big time.

When I asked about goals for other areas of his life, he simply said other areas of his life were fine and there wasn’t any need to set resolutions for them. Although I didn’t agree with Peter, I didn’t pursue the issue with him. I regretted not doing so…

Sure enough, for the whole of 2007, I never saw or heard from Peter the entire year. His attention was all on his work and nothing else. The last time I met Peter’s wife, whom I also know on a personal level, she told me his time was all spent at work and he had even neglected much of his family life. This wasn’t a big surprise to me.

THE DANGERS OF UNBALANCED GOALS

When you set a goal, you are actually committing attention and focus to an area of your life. According to the Law of Attraction, “energy flows where attention goes”. Although I am not a believer in the Law of Attraction, I agree with this statement.

The danger of setting goals in only one area of your life is that all your focus and attention goes there. As such, other areas of your life get neglected. Over the long run, this results in an unbalanced life and it’s your own life that suffers from this neglect in the end.

I know this because I have been there. I was a very career-minded person (and still am, to a certain extent) and I devoted all my time and energy to work. Like Peter, my goals were only about my career. I thought that by achieving top results in my career, I would have it all. Obviously I was wrong.

BALANCE YOUR GOALS FIRST, THEN BALANCE YOUR LIFE

Later, through reading and learning from personal development gurus, I learned to set goals for various areas of my life:

• Career and Work
• Money
• Family and Friends
• Spirituality
• Physical fitness and health

It seems a lot to do, but for most cases, you don’t have to do much – just make sure you do enough to maintain it. For example, for physical fitness, I merely set goals to run at least 2 times a week. Unless you’re aiming to be a top athlete, a goal like this will suffice to ensure that your health doesn’t get neglected due to overwork and stress.

So my friends, in 2008, as you go about setting your resolutions, remember to balance them so that you will lead a balance life. Have a great 2008.

Lawrence Cheok writes about living a balanced life and provides tips to improve your career, relationships and money at A Long Long Road. Other than writing, Lawrence does business development and project management in his day job.

A to do list software helps you keep track of your to do list in a more elegant way than pen and paper. There are two main variations of to do list software:

• Web to do list software: A web to do list software is a hosted service, where a company offers to host the to do list software for you. There are various web to do list software. Please refer to our previous post about why you should not use a web to do list software.

Desktop to do list software: A desktop to do list software is software that runs on your desktop PC. The most important advantages are:

• Desktop to do list software is cheaper than web to do list software: Once you buy a desktop to do list software, there are no more running costs. Most of the desktop to do list software have a fixed cost which you pay once. This is unlike web to do list software where you have to pay a subscription fee every month or so. This advantage helps business to reduce cost of ownership and faster return on investment.

• Desktop to do list software offers maximum Security: Security should always be given maximum importance especially in a business environment. Businesses must definitely avoid using web to do list software. If the hosting server is hijacked, the business plan may be revealed leading to disastrous situations.

A to do list is a brain dump of tasks that need to be completed. A to do list is a very simple yet effective tool in time management. Writing down tasks in a to do list helps you get organised and this will in turn help you focus your energy on what needs to be done first. To create a to do list go through the following steps:

• Think of everything that needs to be done: Focus on what needs to be done and write all the tasks to be done down. Keep refining your to do list until all tasks are written down in proper English and can be easily understood.

• Prioritise your tasks: Some tasks are more equal than others. Hence make sure that you prioritise your to do list, putting the tasks that need urgent attention first. This helps you focus on what is most important, leaving last those tasks that are less important.

• Assign a start date or end date: If a task in your to do list can be assigned an end date or a start date, then do so. This will help you further priotise your tasks, giving attention to the tasks with the nearest deadline.

Creating a to do list requires an initial effort but it will pay off later on. This is because once you have all your tasks written down in a neat to do list, you can easily measure how much work has been done and how much more work is left. Since a to do list is something dynamic, to do list software are developed to help you create a to do list.

A to do list software helps you keep track of your to do list in a more elegant way than pen and paper. Creating your to do list on paper has several disadvantages, such as, you can easily lose your tasks, writing tasks on multiple pieces of paper quickly gets messy, and you cannot edit, filter and sort tasks easily. With to do list software you can do what you do on paper and more and at the same time do it easily, efficiently, securely and with no hassle.

There are several online todo list (also known as task managers) such as RememberTheMilk, Ta-da Lists, Bla-bla List, VitaList and voo2do. Four of these web based todo list were even compared on the much respected TechCrunch. In this post I am going to point out why you should shun away from such services. Yes…. we recommend you not to use them.

First of all for your own privacy. We give great importance to privacy, yet why would you be willing to provide detailed information about which tasks you are planning to do, when, with whom and where. Giving such information to third parties is a privacy invasion. Your tasks should be kept to you and shared only with people who you trust. One should avoid divulging such sensitive information to third parties when you can have the same functionality by using a desktop application. A desktop application has the advantage that all the tasks and related information is safely kept on your computer without allowing anyone to peak through your task list.

Most (if not all) of the web based todo list services start as a free service. This is a marketing technique used to gain popularity and users will start referring other users. Once the service catches up, they will make premium accounts. Such a move will force users to either pay a subscription fee or else to seek another service. To perform the latter the user would need to export the tasks (if an exporting feature is implemented) and import all your tasks in the new service. See the comments of sad users of VitaList when they got to know that they have to pay to keep on using their current service.

The last point is: “Why should you pay a subscription service for a simple todo list?” With the cost of a one year subscription for an online todo list service, you can get a todo desktop application that does the job efficiently and more securely. Having a desktop application as your todo list will free you from any dependancy on the quality and availability of service, change in subscription agreements, change in pricing and other problems that online todo list tend to create.

The only advantage I can think of that an online todo list service offers over a desktop application is that you can access your task list from anywhere, as long as there is an internet connection. But this point is nowadays not that valid since most desktop todo list applications support installation on a USB drive. This allows you to carry your task list with you without having to worry about an internet connection.

A todo list application is great when it matches the following basic requirements.

1. Simple Stupid. A todo list application is there to make my life better. Any extra complications in the todo list application tends to put me away from it. The user interface should be simple, intuitive (that is, it is self explainable) and requires a smooth learning curve.

2. No complicated features. It is not about quantity but quality. It is not how large is the feature list of a todo list but which features does it have. Also, the todo list application should be sound and complete, that is, the features should not be isolated on their own but they should all fit together smoothly.

3. Stores my tasks in accessible media. I will refuse to use a todo list application that stores my tasks in proprietory format. This is very common in todo list software and I think it is done for a reason. Basically there will be no way how you can retrieve your tasks from a propritory store. This will make it the biggest nightmare for you to move on to another todo list software. I tend to favour a todo list application that stores my tasks in an open store such as an XML file. This will allow me to take the open store and import it in another todo list software if need be.

The above are the three points that I check for when considering a todo list software. I will ignore any todo list application that goes against any one of the above points. For isntance, most of the online todo list goes against point 3. That is why I don’t recommend the use of online todo list applications.

A todo list software can help you remember important stuff and keep everything organised.

Todo list software is your best friend when you want to get your life organised. Basically a todo list software is a computer program that allows you to keep track of all your tasks and subtasks, along with their priority, due date and their progress. In short, it will handle all the details about your task list, freeing you from remembering detailed stuff about what you are working on and what the next step is. If you never used a todo list software I really suggest you try it out. I am sure that you will never regret it.

A todo list software is a very simple yet effective software. Once you start using it you will see the benefits of having all your tasks gathered in one place and you will never go back to paper based todo lists. In this post I am going to give an example of people for whom todo list software would be great.

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It does not happen only to you… it happens to everyone. At a certain point in your life, you will get rejected. Rejection can come from a friend, school mate, girl friend, boy friend or colleagues. There is no silver bullet to handle rejection but fortunately enough there is one way how to handle it and make it less painful. 

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The Positivity Blog featured a great article about writing things down. This article focuses on the benefits of writing things down. It puts emphasis on writing our goals down, since it make us focus on them. The act of writing things down is suggested by “a lot of very successful self improvement writers – Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar and so on”.

Apart from the fact of organising oneself, todo list software makes you write your goals down, attaching a deadline and a priority to them. Read more about todo list.