I guess I’m on a productivity trip right now. Probably because I’m reading Tim Ferriss 4-Hour Workweek. This time I learned about a great new application. It’s called YouMail. Among other great features, the best feature is the Voicemail to Text feature. For only $3.99 a month you can get up to 50 voicemail messages sent to you through text. I don’t know about you, but I hate listening to voicemail, most of the time they could have sent a text anyways. Also, this way I can check voicemail in classes, or movies, or church, etc. without causing a disturbance. Check it out and see if its for you.

When I talk about procrastination, I talk from years of experience. I’m the guy who will write a 5 page paper less than 24 hours before it’s due, even though I had the assignment for over 3 months. My wife still makes fun of me for getting her a moose ornament one Christmas (exchanging ornaments is a tradition we have) because I waited till the last minute (it had a nice little message on it, by the way).

I’ve procrastinated just about everything, but now I’ve found something that helps me stay focused and get work done. Its called the Pomodoro Technique. It’s really simple to learn, but extremely effective if used. The idea is to have 25 minutes of focused work, then you get 5 minutes of break time. These numbers aren’t fixed, but they do work well for most people, the idea is your focused work should be significantly greater than your break time.

To go along with this I found a free App you can download for your computer, which will help you stay on topic, and off Facebook and Twitter. Its called the Focus Booster. It is a simple countdown timer that always sits at the top of your screen, meaning it is never in the background, always in the front and visible no matter what screen you’re using. It can be set to almost any time periods and can be extremely effective.

Here’s how to use it. I recommend using Parkinson’s Law along with it. Parkinson’s Law states “that a task will swell in importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.” This means essentially that deadlines matter. Essentially if you give yourself a shorter deadline, say 25 minutes for a task, if you crack down on focus you can likely complete it in that time period. Obviously you can’t do everything this way, like rebuild a ’70 Camero in 40 minutes. But if you set a realistic, maybe a little short deadline, and crack down, you will get more completed in less time.

I use the Focus Booster two ways. 1: I keep my ToDo list right next to me, set the timer for 25 minutes, and start hacking away. 2: I will set a time for a specific task, say 10 minutes to write a blog post, click start, and get it done. Simple as that, and yet enormously helpful.

Try it, experiment with it, and post how you use it below for others to learn from. This is something no one should be without. Good luck, and God bless.

Recently it became known that some of the most critical data for Global Warming has been doctored. This actually is not very surprising to me because I’ve seen there is a lot of data against it. In the 1970’s there was in fact a scare over Global Cooling (not making that up). The fact is that even if the world is warming, we aren’t the cause, and it is very arrogant for us to think we can have such an impact on the earth. We haven’t even been watching the earth long enough to know if this is normal, or even what normal is. We’ve only been recording things like temperature and conditions of the earth for MAYBE a couple hundred years. The Earth is a lot older than that.

However like I was saying, we’re learning that the scientists who are presenting us with this data are so biased that they change the data because ‘they know Global Warming is true’. So the fact is we cannot trust the data. There have been thousands of scientists over the last few years who have said that either Global Warming doesn’t exist, or that it is not something we should concern ourselves with (meaning we aren’t the cause, and can’t do anything about it, it’s part of the normal cycle).

My conclusion: I don’t think it exists, and if it does, we aren’t the cause. Should we try to protect the environment? Yes, I recycle, I try to use less gas, etc. But I don’t believe we are effecting the planet. I do what I do so I don’t have to live in a dump. I do believe we can make the earth less pleasant, which is obvious. But we aren’t killing the planet. Check out the links below to see other articles written on Global Warming.

We need to pick our battles in the fight for our country, and there is nothing to fight for with Global Warming, which makes all our efforts toward preventing/reversing Global Warming wasted and worthless.