I’ve only by trying to use the Pomodoro Technique for a few days now but it does seem to be helping me to be more productive.

Here’s a link to the Pomodoro Technique website where you can read about it and also download a pdf that explains it. Here’s a little to give you and idea

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method. For many of us time is an enemy. The anxiety triggered by “the ticking clock” and deadlines to be met leads to ineffective work and study habits and procrastination. The Pomodoro Technique transforms time into a valuable ally.

Francesco Cirillo created the Pomodoro Technique in 1992 after a long search to improve his own study habits. Starting in the late ’90s the technique was embraced by professional teams. It can help us accomplish what we want to do and chart continuous improvement in the way we do it.

Lifehacker recently posted this video that clearly explains the Pomodoro Technique in less than 5 minutes.

Let me start at the beginning. A couple of months ago I won a copy of XSitePro. I’ve been building websites since 1998 or 99. Taught myself html and the whole thing. I’m pretty good at building websites, or at least I thought I was. I have tried a few website builder programs in the last few years but to be honest, they didn’t really do anything special. No matter how hard I worked at them, my sites looked pretty basic and didn’t come up to what I feel a truly professional website should look like.

A couple of weeks ago I started playing around with XSitePro. All I can say is WOW! I watched their training videos that walked me through building a site. Talk about easy, this program really seemed easy. But I’m sort of a skeptic and the thing that kept nagging at me was, how hard would it be to build a site from scratch? So that’s what I set out to do. I had a domain that I had bought with only a general idea of what I was going to do with so that’s what I decided to use.

After thinking about what I wanted the site to be, and pulling together a variety of content for it, it was time to get started.

In a matter of a couple hours I had built a professional looking website with 27 pages of content, including several articles, resource pages, some press releases, a privacy policy and even a sitemap. When I was finished putting it together, XSitePro uploaded it to my server and it was live. More importantly than that, anyone looking at it would think that a professional web designer had spent days building it.

I’m convinced that XSitePro is by far the best website design program on the market. It doesn’t just make a static website, it makes a true internet 2.0 website. In fact, here’s just some of the things you can do with just a few clicks of the mouse.

• Change the look (template) of your site without having to change any of your pages.
• Add audio or video files.
• Add Google Adsense.
• Add Amazon products.
• Set up an RSS feed.
• Make a mobile site so people can view your site on their phone.
• Add content with an RSS feed reader
• Easily change the colors of your site, and so much more.

If you build a lot of websites, or just want to build your own site rather than paying someone else to build it for you, I strongly recommend that you purchase a copy of XSitePro. I’m so impressed with it that if you look over to the side, you’ll notice I’ve put up an advertisement for it. I’m rather picky about what ads I allow on my site but I had no qualms at all about putting that one up.

To be honest with you, I wouldn’t expect you to go buy it just based on my recommendation so here’s what I recommend.  Visit the XSitePro website and read about it. In fact, there’s a video on the site that really showcases what XSiteProwill do. I think you’ll be as impressed as I am.

I have to admit though, unlike most people, I spend most of my day on the internet, reviewing sites, changing sites, marketing sites. Most people aren’t like that. You go onto the internet to do something. You want to go somewhere, find something, you don’t really care how it all works. UNTIL that is, you have your own website and want the people to come there. Then it becomes important.

Whenever I talk to people relatively new to the website owner side of the net, I try to help them understand the importance of backlinks. Frankly, because of the way my brain works, I haven’t been able to effectively explain it to them. Sure, they may understand, but I seldom think that they really get it.

The problem has been solved. No, I haven’t hit upon the perfect way to explain backlinks. But I know who has. I know this guy by the name of Allyn Hane and he has a blog called Blogger Illustrated. A few days ago he put up a video post with Everything You Need To Know About Backlinks.

If you want to know about backlinks, then go check it out.  Be warned, there are 5 videos that take about 25 minutes to view so make sure you have time.  When you finish you’ll really understand the importance not only of having links, but of having links from the right sites.

Allyn has a very easy going teaching style and you’ll come away knowing so much more than you went with.

When the history of personal technology in our times is written, 2009 won’t be singled out as a watershed year. There were no stunning new products, technologies, or trends that immediately promised to change everything. Instead, it was a year of ongoing evolution on multiple fronts, from smartphones to social networks.

Which is not to say that it was a dull year in the world of tech. Here’s a quick recap of the year that was, including highlights, lowlights, and an oddity or two.

Read the rest.

Your business has a big problem. You’ve thought about it, but you can’t seem to crack it. So you consult your colleagues — to no avail. Then you turn to the big guns — your industry’s top experts. They’ve got nothing. (Well, to be precise, they’ve got 40 PowerPoint slides worth of nothing, and you’ve got $225,000 less of something.) Now what?

You might take some inspiration from Pete Foley, associate director of the cognitive science group at Procter & Gamble, who was looking for an inspired solution to challenges faced by P&G’s feminine-care business unit. Its R&D staff had pursued several approaches, but none of them offered the breakthrough that Foley craved. So he did the next logical thing: He took his team to the San Diego Zoo.

Really good advice in this article from the folks over at Fast Company, A Problem-Solver’s Guide to Copycatting.

Over at the ClickBank blog there’s a new post by Simon Slade, the CEO of Affilorama that gives you 6 techniques for increasing your CTR.  Here’s the tiplist:

1. Know the Fold
2. Eye-catching Header
3. Clickable Advertising Image
4. A Large Text Affiliate Link
5. An Affiliate Link at the End of the Article
6. Focus on One Product

It’s not a long article, but there’s information there that could bump up your CTR without taking you a lot of time.  Sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference.  Take a few minutes and read 6 Quick Tips to Fire Up Your Click-Through Rate.  You’ll be glad you did.

Matt’s just started a new series on “How to Set Up Your Desk”, which at first glance may make you go, “huh”.   Why is this important?  Here’s an excerpt from the introduction;

Why Desk Setup Matters
It makes sense to think through your workspace setup for several reasons.

First, when you have your desk set up well you minimize resistance to carrying out your work and thus can get more work done. That’s the key principle here: Set your desk up well in order to minimize resistance so that you can give your focus and energy to actually doing your work.

Second, you will simply work better if you have your desk set up well and know how to use it. Which is another one of my aims here: A desk is a workflow system. Therefore we ought to approach it with intentionality and purpose. We can be more effective when we know how to use our desks and are intentional, rather than ad hoc, because we deal with them every day and have to use them to get all sorts of important things done. The principle here is: Understand your tools and know how to make the most of them.

Third, when your desk is not set up well it creates drag and thus drains time, energy, and focus. I like how they put this in Organizing for Dummies:

You don’t need to be an efficiency expert, interior designer, or feng shui master specializing in the Chinese art of placement to know that the right work space can set you up for success, while a whatever approach to your workplace layout can sap your time, energy, concentration, and creativity” (p. 183).

Or, to put it another way: “Clutter sucks creativity and energy from your brain” (To Do Doing Done, p. 92).

Fourth, you use your desk about every day, and knowing how to use it is not hard to figure out. So the benefits you get from this are large, but the cost involved is small.

Fifth, it makes work more fun when you know how to use your desk. A well-run desk is a work of art!

I believe that if you follow the advice Matt gives and you’ll find yourself more productive and less stressed. Both of which should be goals that we all strive for.

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged.

They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.

If you think you can provide the same old customer service as you did even 5 years ago in the age of YouTube and Twitter, you are just asking for trouble.  The below video was posted to YouTube on July 6.  Today, July 8, it’s been view 131,526 times.    Google the term “United Breaks Guitars” and there are 4,460 results.

How would you like that to your business that someone is making a video about? So many small business owners don’t think about the consequences of their actions. After all, it’s just one customer right? How much business United is going to lose because of this video, not to mention the general bad feeling that people are going to have toward them.

Think about this next time you deal with a customer, and next time you fly, remember that United breaks guitars.