Archive for October, 2011

Top 5 Productivity Devices of 2011

I honestly want to make sure you are doing something every day and making progress towards making more money every single day you are online. That's why, since it's November now and Christmas is coming up, I want to share with you which items I use every single day to stay happy, get things finished and enjoy life...

Philips Hf3485 Wake-up Light Plus ($150)

http://youtu.be/BdboMtXfa9w

It's really important to wake up early and get as much accomplished in your business before noon. When I had days off in college, I'd sleep until 12PM to 2PM and not really get anything done on a typical day -- not good! But when I had to balance internet marketing and a day job, I found myself waking up early (5AM or 6AM) and I'd get more finished during that one focused hour than I used to do in a week.

Now that I am full time with internet marketing, it's even more important wake up early (and usually go running or swimming) so that I can hit the ground running every morning and have afternoons and evenings free to relax and unwind. Routine is important. I don't use the alarm clock function on this, but when I wake up, I reach over and turn on this light. It shines a very bright light that completely wakes you up and gets you ready to hop out of bed in just a few minutes.

Cuisinart SS-780 Coffeemaker ($169)

I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but I do like to make tea or hot chocolate and on occasion put some ice cubes in a mug and pour iced coffee. This machine is amazing. You put a cartridge on the top of the machine and it makes one cup for you at a time (you can adjust what size your "cup" is) then you just throw away the cartridge or "K-Cup." They make several flavors, my favorite is the Chai Latte. If the machine is off it takes about 3 minutes to warm up and then about 30 seconds to make a cup. If the machine is already on standby then it literally takes 30 seconds to make yourself a cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa and then you're back to writing some emails, making some products and generating some traffic.

G-SAFE 2TB ($560)

We all take backups for granted. It's not an exciting subject even though at some point or another we have all lost files we wish we could get back. I used to store all my files on my hard drive... bad idea. Then I tried putting things on a USB stick... also a bad idea. External hard drive... even worse! And Internet bandwidth is not yet fast enough where we can store 100% of our files online in the cloud (especially video), so here is the next best thing.

This is external hard drive that connects using USB2. If your computer has an E-SATA port then it will run even faster. But I store all my videos, products, articles, graphics, all my large files on this device. It holds two 2TB hard drives but what makes this special is it "mirrors" the data on both drives. It's basically a constant backup. So if one hard drive ever fails (it hasn't happened yet) you can slide it out, stick a brand new hard drive in its slot without even turning it off, and it will back up all your data to that 2nd drive.

iPad 2 16GB 3G ($579) & Logitech Zagg Keyboard ($102)

It takes a lot of willpower not to use my iPad at home to play games all day, but when I'm traveling it's a must-have. It's a lot more convenient than taking a laptop on the road: it's lighter, smaller, and the battery lasts a lot longer, and although it can't do 100% of the things a laptop can, it's pretty close.

When I travel, I put movies (sometimes internet marketing courses) on my iPad, I can browse the internet, play games, write emails to my list, use a word processor. But the biggest headache is the keyboard. I've tried a few iPad 2 keyboards and this is my favorite. It connects via Bluetooth so I can use this keyboard for my iPhone as well, it stands up and doubles as a case. It's also not too small which has been my complaint with many of these keyboards. I have used my iPad 2 and Logitech Zagg keyboard to write articles, emails, and sales letters from the plane.

Roku Player ($100)

If you haven't removed live TV from your home yet, I would encourage you to. Just the fact that I can't waste time flipping channels or watch reality TV gives me extra hours of free time every single day. If you're single or live alone then this is your motivation to make friends. If you have a family then this is your way to spend more time with them. But I'm not saying remove all TV, just live TV.

This box costs 100 bucks (one time payment) and plugs into your TV whether it's HDMI or Composite-RCA, and then connects to your home network over Wifi. It streams all Netflix movies right onto your TV. If you subscribe to Hulu Plus (7 bucks a month) then it streams about half of all Comedy Central, NBC, ABC, FOX. Whatever movies or TV shows aren't on there are probably available for you to buy on Amazon Instant for about 2 to 4 dollars. I consider this a far better (and cheaper) alternative to using cable TV.

I hope that gives you something to get yourself if you want to be more productive, someone who has a birthday coming up for a loved one for the upcoming Christmas season. What item do you use to make yourself more productive?