Destination: Success is where internet marketer and web designer Teli Adlam documents her successful journey managing an online business.
In case you needed something to cheer you up, it looks as though the fine folks at Google have a sense of humor. The above is a snapshot from the results when you search for directions from New York to London.
(Courtesy of Vlad)
Right along with time management, multitasking is a myth. The mind can only concentrate on one thing at a time.
The human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections, is a cognitive powerhouse in many ways. “But a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once,” said René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.
…
“We are under the impression that we have this brain that can do more than it often can,” observed Mr. Marois…
I believe we, as humans, simply like to feel as though we’re more productive by trying to juggle a bunch of things at one time…
Personally, I’ll stick to the sage advice I was given a long time ago: Whatever you’re doing in the moment, give your full attention to it. If you’re working, focus on working; If you’re eating, focus on eating; If you’re playing, focus on playing; And if you’re sleeping, well, sleep soundly.
In order to consolidate e-mail, we often set up a catch-all e-mail account, then forward e-mail from various other addresses to this account. Recently, however, I started receiving someone else’s e-mail to my Gmail account.
At first, it took me a minute to figure it out (when it started, I figured that Gmail was simply letting an inordinate amount of spam slip through the filters), but when I received a sale notification for an affiliate program I was 99% certain I never signed up for, I decided to investigate. Sure enough, someone had set up their e-mail forwarders improperly. The worst part? Every e-mail I try to send to this person lands in my mailbox. In other words, there’s no way for me to contact this person letting him know I’m receiving all of his e-mail.
The e-mails I received aren’t simple “hey there and hello” e-mails, they are account confirmations, usernames/passwords, website updates, statements and so forth. His e-mails even give me a glimpse into all his marketing techniques. Everything he’s set up for his affiliate business is being directed to me.
Trying to live by the golden rule, I’ve contacted each of the affiliate programs, but according to them, there’s not much they can do. Some will hope he provided a valid and working phone number and call him, some will snail mail him, and a few say it’s out of their hands — he’s responsible for keeping his information safe and up to date. Unfortunately, sorting this out will take time and the only thing I can do in the interim is filter all his e-mail into my trash bin.
Let this cautionary tale serve as a reminder to double check your own e-mail forwarders. You never really know who’s on the receiving end of your e-mail, and it may end up being the downfall of your business if it should fall into the wrong hands.
As I sat staring at my e-mail inbox, I began to feel deep anal violation. It’s a sad state of affairs when we need to protect our inboxes, blogs, and forums with junk mail filters. Spammers seem to have a misguided delusion that we owe them something and they have the right to defile our property simply because they can. At least with advertising on television, we allow it into our home because we choose to watch television. Instead of being invited into our lives, spammers try to pry their way in like a car jacker and it’s very disconcerting. Maybe Seth Godin should start giving out free copies of his book, Permission Marketing, to current and would-be spammers.
Everywhere you turn online, someone is preaching the virtues of content, but far fewer are providing solutions for keeping up with all of it.
Darren Rowse listed too many posts (the post levels are overwhelming) as the number 1 reason why people unsubscribe from feeds. I can attest to this because I’ve unsubscribed from many feeds, not because I didn’t enjoy them, but because I didn’t have the time to keep up.
Thankfully, there are ways to scale back on the RSS updates, but still get the information from your favorite sites.
Check to see if the site offers a weekly e-mail update or newsletter. Some sites may even offer daily blog updates — once a day, you’ll receive an e-mail compilation of all the posts published that day.
One bonus, which you may not realize, is that some bloggers offer extra information or other exclusives for e-mail newsletter subscribers.
WordPress blogs offer category specific feeds and many larger blogs will also offer category specific feeds. Instead of subscribing to the entire site update, choose which sections you’d prefer to receive updates about, only when an entry is posted in that category will the feed update.
If the blog author is using WordPress, but doesn’t have the category feed buttons visible, you need only add &cat=# (replace # with the category number) to the end of the feed URL or /feed/ to the end of the category URL if the blog has pretty permalinks enabled.
Whichever feed reader or service you decide to use, make sure that you understand how to use all of the features to its fullest potential. Learning how to organize, search, and list your feeds within your reader can make your feed reading that much more productive.
Consider upgrading to a power feed reader if you need to manage large amounts of news and information. Personally, I’ve been using Newzie without too much complaint. It displays which feeds were most recently updated in a color coded list, allows you to search through feeds, quickly delete and add feeds, along with a number of other tasks.
