Sample Content Preview

Introduction

Productivity is often a misunderstood concept. Being productive isn’t necessarily about accomplishing more, but rather it’s about investing your time and attention in a more strategic way to add value to your career, life, and relationships. If you’re like most people, you probably wish that you could be more productive in your life. However, one thing that you may have failed to consider is the reason and motivation that drives you to work toward accomplishing your goals.

Too often, our desires to be more productive are based on the belief that it is what is expected of us by society or because we think we are being overloaded with work and don’t feel as if we can handle the workload. You might feel a desire to be more productive to impress your coworkers and boos or even to appear as though you are busy. While these are all valid reasons for wanting to be more productive, they are all external reasons. Other external motivators for wanting to be more productive may include material things, money, or fame.

While money can be a great motivator for many people, it is vital that you consider whether or not there is something else driving you. If your reasons for wanting to be more productive are shallow ones that don’t serve a higher purpose in your life, changes are high that it will decrease your motivation down the line, allowing your productivity to fall by the wayside.

If you want to increase your productivity then you need to take the time to consider what is driving your desire for productivity. If you need more money to support your family, then the love you have for your family might be your driving factors. Perhaps, you’ve found yourself in poverty, and your drive is the desire to improve your situation and yourself. If you want to improve your productivity, you need to determine what drives you on a deeper level and understand why you are working so hard.

It is critical that you make sure that you know what you are striving to achieve. Only you know what is driving you. Only you know what will make you wake up early and work hard. Only you know why you need to be more productive.

It doesn’t matter what you tell other people, and it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. You may have a desire to tell people what they expect to hear, but it may not be your real reason for wanting to improve your productivity. What does matter is what you tell yourself. If you want to improve your productivity you have to be honest with yourself. To keep your productivity from falling as quickly as it has risen, you need to continue to remind yourself why you are working so hard, being sure to always keep it in your heart and mind.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic pill that you can take to fix your lack of productivity. Improving your productivity is going to take you time and hard work and you will have to change how you work before you will ever see a permanent boost in your productivity. The next chapters in this book will provide you with the best things that you can do if you want to improve your productivity and start getting more done in less time.

Chapter 1 – Putting an End to Procrastination

Before you can begin to improve your productivity, you have to slay your habit of procrastination. This chapter is going to present you with the three general strategies for overcoming your procrastination, followed by specific tactics to optimize your personal productivity in the proceeding chapters. These tactics can motivate you even more to continue staying clear of the habit of procrastination.

Keeping it Simple When it comes to a habit of procrastination, tasks and projects that are complex and ambiguous can make it harder for even the most disciplined of people avoid procrastination. Simple plans of action and expected results are much easier to understand and implement. Also, plans that are easier to understand and implement are plans that are at low risk for procrastination, that is unless you are already a habitual procrastinator.

You can look at it this way, are you more likely to procrastinate when you have the task of giving your boss a homemade cake that you’ll bake yourself, even if you don’t have any previous experience baking, or when you have to order a customized cake from an online bakeshop to present to your boss? Chances are pretty high that you’ll procrastinate on baking a cake yourself because it is more complex and complicated, compared to ordering a custom cake online. The mere thought of having to find the perfect recipe, buying all the ingredients, and actually baking the cake can be enough to make you put off doing it until the last minute.

Talk to Yourself

To beat procrastination, you have to use positive self-talk. If you don’t know how to start positive self-talk, here are a couple of ways to get you started. First, you can use positive affirmations or declarations to help you overcome bad habits like procrastination. You may be wondering how this works exactly.

The human mind controls how you behave and act, but there are two aspects of the human mind that account for different kinds of behaviors. There’s the subconscious mind, which regulates many of your actions, especially those that you’re not aware of but are important, like breathing, your heart beat, your ability to walk. All the actions that require conscious thought or awareness, like solving a math problem, writing, and eating, are all controlled by your conscious mind.

Habits, like procrastination are unconscious and they fall under the control of the subconscious mind. This is the reason why you can only go so far when trying to consciously changing your habits before you revert back to your normal habits. This includes things like smoking, cursing, and procrastinating. The only way you can make lasting personal changes is by converting them into habits, either subconscious or conscious, through reprogramming your subconscious mind.

According to Dr. Maxwell Maltz, the author of Psycho Cybernetics, the subconscious mind can be likened to heatseeking or laser guided missiles launched from fighter jets and warships. When these kinds of missiles are launched, they automatically seek out the targets given to them. After the missiles are launched, the pilots and warship captains no longer have control over the movements or trajectories of the missiles. The missiles’ on-board computer systems are what control them in route to their programmed targets. The best way to control these kinds of missiles is to give them their targets before they’re launched.

Your subconscious mind is like these guided missiles. You can make it go wherever you want and achieve what you want by simply programming it to acquire certain targets or habits, like eating healthy, exercising, and ending procrastination. You can do this by using your conscious mind through visualization and affirmations or through declarations and positive self-talk.

To help you retrain your subconscious mind and end procrastinations, you need to say your positive declaration several times a day and with emotion. An example affirmation might be, “I will stop procrastinating and, instead be a very proactive person.” When you continually tell yourself this, you can change your subconscious mind’s programming over time so that it will manifest the affirmation. It can even become more powerful if you combine it with visualization exercises, where you play a movie in your mind’s eye and you see yourself acting or living out your affirmations.

Another way you can use positive self-talk to reprogram your subconscious mind and end procrastination is by asking the right questions, particularly positive and empowering ones. An example of a right question to ask would be, “What should I do to start closing more sales?” rather than “Why am I not able to close enough sales?”

By asking how you can achieve something rather than why you can’t, allows your subconscious mind to focus on how you can. When you ask why you can’t achieve something, you are effectively programming your subconscious mind to continue keeping you from successfully accomplishing something or getting rid of a bad habit.

What you focus your mind on often determines, to a great extent, how your subconscious mind will be programmed. If you can program your subconscious mind for the possibilities, it will go after those possibilities. If you program it for limitations, it will do what it can to enforce them.

Sample Content Preview

Introductory

When the topic of home security springs to mind, most people seem to think of burglar alarms and little to nothing else.

Alarms can be a great way to protect your home, although they are only a small part of what makes up an effective home security system. Burglar alarms are a key to protecting your home – although there are other things you’ll need as well.

Believe it or not, the windows are actually the key to home security. Homes that have poor constructed windows tend to get broken into a lot more than homes with secure and sturdy windows. When you are dealing with your windows, you should make sure that you have tough glass and locks that fit to the windows.

When you are away from home, you should always make sure that your windows are locked. Even though some windows may be hard to reach, you should always lock them. Burglars make a living out of stealing – and they will normally find a way in if they see the opening.

Along with the windows, doors are also known to be a weakness of security around the home. Doors should always be strong and sturdy, complete with tough locks that aren’t easy to force open. If you have a spare key, you should be careful where you leave it. Losing your keys can also make you a target, especially if you have anything on your key ring that reveals your home address.

To better protect their homes, most people choose to invest in a home surveillance system. These systems are great for monitoring the home, as they can record video and keep it stored for you to view later. If you travel a lot, a home surveillance system can be an ideal way to keep a check on your home while you’re away.

Guard dogs are also common with home security as well. A guard dog can protect your home from burglars, thieves, and other types of trouble. Guard Knowing Home Security dogs can be very handy to have around, as most dogs are more than capable of scaring away trouble with their bark. The only downside to guard dogs is the fact that you’ll need to train them and ensure that they always have food and water.

Last, but certainly not least are burglar alarms. Burglar alarms can be effective to an extent, although they are primarily good for scaring thieves away. If you put an alarm in a visible location from the outside of the home, most burglars won’t even attempt to enter your home.

Even though burglar alarms are great for scaring off thieves – you’ll still need to have other areas of your home safe and secure as well to get the most of your home security.

Chapter 1: Information About Home Security

A majority of us that reside in the United States are worried about leaving home while either at work or on vacation.

If the neighborhood is considered to be bad in terms of crime, it may be troublesome going to sleep. A lot of people live in fear or leaving their kids or an old person at home due to the fact that someone could easily break in to their home and harm them. Due to this fear, some may even hide weapons in the house.

Each and every one of these fears that people develop stems from incidents that have happened in the past to others. These days, people are getting more cautious about protecting their loved ones and their homes. Most use burglar alarms, keep their doors locked at all times, never open their doors to strangers, and keep their windows locked. When going out of town, they will inform neighbors that they will be away – and then will invest in a home security system.

Burglars and intruders alike will often keep a watchful eye on any opportunities that present themselves to gain entrance to a home. Thieves do their research well and look for any entry that they can use to enter the home such as doors, windows, skylights, and chimneys.

They will also pay attention to any surveillance systems as well, and do their homework on how to disable or avoid them. If a house is well equipped with alarms, cameras, and motion detectors, a burglar may actually think twice before he attempts to ransack a home.

What many fail to realize is the fact that burglars are smart people. They spend a lot of time planning to rob a home, carefully studying and watching.

Although locking your doors and windows will help to an extent, it normally won’t keep a determined burglar out of your home. If a burglar sets his mind to something and has a plan in mind, simply locking your windows and doors isn’t enough.

If you have sturdy and strong doors and windows on your home, it will take the burglar extra time to break in. In the process, he can easily get caught due to the high level of noise he will make trying to get into the home. If you have a lot of valuables in your home, you can always invest in a strong fireproof safe to store them in. To protect the exterior of your home you should have always have good lighting in your yard.

Alarms are popular to use as well, as most will go off the second a burglar tries to open a window or a door. They are very popular these days, providing a high level of security for your home.

Alarms and surveillance systems include a variety of detectors, control panels, alarms, and cameras. Although they may cost you a bit of money – the peace of mind and safety of your family is more than worth the investment.

No matter what area you may live in, you can always secure your home. To better secure your home and know what equipment you need, you should always try and understand the frame of mind that burglars use. This way, you’ll know what you need to protect your home.

Sample Content Preview

Introductory

Myrna, 38 and a successful physician, sought my help because she often felt inadequate. While she really valued herself as a doctor, she did not value herself in her important relationships with friends and family.

In addition, she said she wanted to be in a loving relationship but she took no actions to meet available men.

In the course of our work together, it became apparent that Myrna rarely took loving action in her own behalf with her friends and family. For example, Jessica, one of Myrna’s friends, would often get angry and blame Myrna when Myrna was not available for dinner with Jessica.

Myrna would feel guilty and responsible for Jessica’s feelings and meet her for dinner even when she was exhausted from work. Myrna would feel drained after these dinners and depressed for a few days after, never realizing it was because she had not taken loving care of herself.

Myrna realized that the reason she was afraid to be in a relationship was because she had no idea how to take care of herself around others. She was terrified of completely losing herself in an important relationship.

She realized that if she could not speak up for herself with Jessica, how could she ever speak up and take loving action for herself with a man she was in love with? She realized that she would continue to feel lonely, anxious, inadequate and depressed until she learned to take loving action for herself.

Many people suffer daily from anxiety, depression, stress, and anger as well as from feelings of guilt, shame and inadequacy. The major cause of these feelings is a lack of loving action in their own behalf.

Loving actions fall into two categories: Loving actions for yourself and loving actions in relationship to others.

Loving Actions For Yourself

Loving actions for yourself are those actions that attend to your own needs. When you take loving action in your own behalf, you are letting yourself know that you matter, you are important, you count. When you fail to take loving action, you give yourself the message that you are not important, which leads to feelings of depression and inadequacy.

Loving actions for yourself might include:

• Eating nutritious foods, avoiding junk food and sugar, eating when hungry and stopping when full.

• Getting enough exercise.

• Keeping your work and home environments clean and organized.

• Getting enough sleep.

• Creating a balance between work and play. Making sure you have time to get your work done, as well as time to do nothing, reflect, learn, play and create.

• Creating a good support system of people who love and care about you.

• Being organized with your time, getting places on time, paying bills on time, and so on.

• Choosing to be compassionate with yourself rather than judgmental toward yourself.

• Creating a balance between time for yourself and time with others.

• Making sure you are physically safe by wearing a seat belt in a car, a helmet on a motorcycle, scooter, or bike, goggles when necessary, and so on.

Loving Actions In Relationship To Others

Loving actions in relationship to others might include:

• Being kind and compassionate toward others without compromising your own integrity or ignoring your own needs and feelings.

• Saying no when you mean no and yes when you mean yes, rather than giving yourself up and going along with something you don’t want to do, or automatically resisting what another wants from you.

• Taking care of your own needs instead of trying to change and control others. Accepting your lack of control over others and either accepting them as they are or not being around them.

• Speaking your truth about what is acceptable to you and what is unacceptable and then taking action for yourself based on your truth.

• Taking personal responsibility for your own feelings and needs, instead of being a victim and making others responsible for your feelings and needs.

• Creating a balance between giving and receiving, rather than a one-way street with another person.

As a result of learning to take better care of herself alone and with others, Myrna no longer felt depressed and inadequate. She gradually lost her fears of being in a relationship, and is delighted to be meeting available men.

Sample Content Preview

Introductory

"It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it." - Vince Lombardi.

How does ecommerce differ from entrepreneurialism? Well, the former is dependent on the latter. What this means is that for every ecommerce business there is an entrepreneur that had to balance risk and reward and determine to move forward with a business plan, proposal and ecommerce site.

Entrepreneurialism is bolstered by the ability to develop a business that can reach around the world and back.

Entrepreneurialism is the mindset and soul of a business; ecommerce is how an entrepreneur can realize a very personal dream.

Entrepreneurialism is a patchwork quilt of ideas that seeks out likeminded consumers through ecommerce.

These two roles are uniquely different, but also distinctly compatible in the development of an online business. In all phases of development, the entrepreneur should express positive emotion as the very thing only dreamed about comes closer to becoming a reality.

There are many wannabe entrepreneurs who have dreams, but they gather dust in the back of minds because of fear, poor choices or other limitations that make it difficult for these individuals to consider developing their own business.

Did you know that President Abraham Lincoln, one of the most revered Presidents in history, had a track record that indicated he was less than an ideal candidate for success? He had little formal education coupled with personal, political and business loss. He often seemed to side with the minority political opinion and he even went through bankruptcy.

Yet it was this President that brought about the end of slavery in America. It was his belief in justice and freedom that caused him to rebound from failure after failure. He learned what he could from the mistakes and discouragements he encountered. In the end he prevailed in the radical alteration in how America treated its citizens.

You may have tried using your entrepreneurial ambitions in an ecommerce setting and failed. In that knowledge you may be gun shy about giving ecommerce a second try.
If there is anything to learn from the life of President Lincoln it is that no matter how difficult things get it does not have to signal the end of a dream. Difficult circumstances can simply be the mechanism needed to come at the problem from a new perspective of perseverance.

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” - Thomas Edison

Chapter 1: Accounting Principles

Ecommerce was seen as a passing fad or gimmick when the pioneers of the process began.

Certainly, being tied to a computer screen to make a purchase you would need to wait for wouldn’t hold the interest of consumers. Yet inroads were made and sales were conducted.

One of the prevailing difficulties associated with early online transactions was the safety of personal financial information. As hackers gained access to non-encrypted data it was a rallying point for many ecommerce businesses. There had to be a better way to do online business.

The Debut of Encryption

Webopedia describes encryption this way, “The translation of data into a secret code. Encryption is the most effective way to achieve data security. To read an encrypted file, you must have access to a secret key or password that enables you to decrypt it.”

The keys to ecommerce were given back to online business when transactions became encrypted. The privacy of customer data allowed ecommerce to become a viable option for consumers once more.

Suddenly the world of cottage industry and extensions of brick and mortar stores began to flourish and entrepreneurs began to willingly dip their toe into the cyber frontier.

This was a new way of doing business in the cutting edge of intangibles. No longer did business owners absolutely need a sales staff, no longer was an outgoing personality required for business startup, no longer did business mean a storefront.

Sample Content Preview

Introductory

"It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it." - Vince Lombardi.

How does ecommerce differ from entrepreneurialism? Well, the former is dependent on the latter. What this means is that for every ecommerce business there is an entrepreneur that had to balance risk and reward and determine to move forward with a business plan, proposal and ecommerce site.

Entrepreneurialism is bolstered by the ability to develop a business that can reach around the world and back.

Entrepreneurialism is the mindset and soul of a business; ecommerce is how an entrepreneur can realize a very personal dream.

Entrepreneurialism is a patchwork quilt of ideas that seeks out likeminded consumers through ecommerce.

These two roles are uniquely different, but also distinctly compatible in the development of an online business. In all phases of development, the entrepreneur should express positive emotion as the very thing only dreamed about comes closer to becoming a reality.

There are many wannabe entrepreneurs who have dreams, but they gather dust in the back of minds because of fear, poor choices or other limitations that make it difficult for these individuals to consider developing their own business.

Did you know that President Abraham Lincoln, one of the most revered Presidents in history, had a track record that indicated he was less than an ideal candidate for success? He had little formal education coupled with personal, political and business loss. He often seemed to side with the minority political opinion and he even went through bankruptcy.

Yet it was this President that brought about the end of slavery in America. It was his belief in justice and freedom that caused him to rebound from failure after failure. He learned what he could from the mistakes and discouragements he encountered. In the end he prevailed in the radical alteration in how America treated its citizens.

You may have tried using your entrepreneurial ambitions in an ecommerce setting and failed. In that knowledge you may be gun shy about giving ecommerce a second try.
If there is anything to learn from the life of President Lincoln it is that no matter how difficult things get it does not have to signal the end of a dream. Difficult circumstances can simply be the mechanism needed to come at the problem from a new perspective of perseverance.

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” - Thomas Edison Good Ecommerce

Chapter 1: Accounting Principles

Ecommerce was seen as a passing fad or gimmick when the pioneers of the process began.

Certainly, being tied to a computer screen to make a purchase you would need to wait for wouldn’t hold the interest of consumers. Yet inroads were made and sales were conducted.

One of the prevailing difficulties associated with early online transactions was the safety of personal financial information. As hackers gained access to non-encrypted data it was a rallying point for many ecommerce businesses. There had to be a better way to do online business.

The Debut of Encryption

Webopedia describes encryption this way, “The translation of data into a secret code. Encryption is the most effective way to achieve data security. To read an encrypted file, you must have access to a secret key or password that enables you to decrypt it.”

The keys to ecommerce were given back to online business when transactions became encrypted. The privacy of customer data allowed ecommerce to become a viable option for consumers once more.

Suddenly the world of cottage industry and extensions of brick and mortar stores began to flourish and entrepreneurs began to willingly dip their toe into the cyber frontier.

This was a new way of doing business in the cutting edge of intangibles. No longer did business owners absolutely need a sales staff, no longer was an outgoing personality required for business startup, no longer did business mean a storefront.

Sample Content Preview

Chapter 1 – Niches To Write

As we mentioned earlier, the Google Keyword Tool is one way to help you identify topics through researching interesting keywords. In this chapter, we'll walk you through how to use the Keyword Tool to get the best results. It's not just a matter of sitting there thinking up words, but actually using the tool to think them up for you.

However, that's not the only way to really ramp up your potential topic appeal. The #1 way to make your topics appealing to a wide audience is to have a knock-out title. Yes, that's right, the first step of identifying topics starts with titles and the search engines weight these heavily in their search engine algorithms. So, while you can use the Keyword Tool to help you locate words to use in your title, to give your articles some Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the real way to make them profitable is to make them grab the reader as well as the search engine.

Finally, even having a good idea of what topics you want to address, you still might have to think up multiple articles for the same topic. That's where a tool called Rack and Write Mixer can help you generate titles from various disjointed phrases and power words that you have thought up. This way, it takes a little less time to brainstorm potential topics and they are targeting all of the elements of good Internet marketing too.

How To Use The Keyword Tool

We've talked a little about the Keyword Tool already, but now we will go into the details of how to use this tool to start generating titles that make your topics profitable and optimized for maximum exposure.

Set It Up For The Proper Language

One of the first things you should do is to set up the tool for whatever country and language your major audience happens to be. You can find out what your biggest audience is regionally by checking the administrative panel of your website for the makeup of countries visiting your site. This is important, even for all English language sites because even English is spoken differently around the world. People in the UK will visit a site and see different spellings and instead of realizing that you are an American company, they might think you are just not a very good speller, and thus unprofessional. So, try to suit the tool to the language you want to highlight most.

At the very top of the tool you will see a sentence that says: “Results are tailored to English, United States.” There is a link next to that that simply says, “Edit.” Choose the link and change the main language and country, if necessary.

Search Descriptive Words Or Phrases

The tool can search three different ways, based on a keyword or phrase, based on a URL, or based on some content. For this section, we'll concentrate on choosing to search by descriptive words or phrases by making sure that radio button is selected. Next, you want to enter the word or phrase that you've brainstormed to start the process of finding other ideas or words that might work for you. You will need to type in the letters in the capcha facility that keeps spammers off the site, but it doesn't do anything to your search results.

After you get the results back, you can search through the list and look at the competition for the keyword or phrase, the approximate search volume for the month, and the average search volume. In general, what you want to find is a word that has a low level of competition with a high search volume.

Of course, that's nearly impossible to find these days as advertisers are very savvy. But, you can at least get a good idea of which ones are worth trying to use. If you use something with a high advertiser's competition value and a high search volume, the odds of being in the top search results are practically non-existent because major players are hogging the traffic on those.

There are other search metrics that you can add to your list after it is generated. You have to use the drop-down box that says,”Choose columns to display” to add other columns. One other column that is great to see in the results list is Estimated Avg. CPC, which gives you an idea of the payout associated with the keyword or phrase in the Google Adwords system. Using low competition words with high CPC values is one way to generate more Google Adwords dollars on your own sites, as SEO articles will cue the Google server to serve up ads related to what's on your page. If it sees high-paying words, the ads served that people can have the opportunity to click are often also high-paying ads.

If you find some additional keywords in the results that lead you to new keywords, don't be afraid to pull them out of the list and run them alone in the Keyword Tool to see what comes up. You will find this helps you to brainstorm different ways to find words for your topic title that are going to bring in traffic and money to your sites.

Search Web Page URL

Another way to use the Keyword Tool to analyze the keywords being use on another web page. This is a great way to generate keywords off competitor's sites without too much effort. If you know of sites similar to your own that are already doing a great job attracting traffic, then you should use this tool to find out what keywords they are using.

The way you do that is to switch the radio button from descriptive words or phrases to “website content.” It will then return a results list that will be sorted in groups by whatever the major keyword or phrase used happens to be. This is a very easy way to get a list of usable keywords, but do realize that keywords campaign change frequently as new trends are identified.

Generate Keywords For Already Written Articles

Maybe you've written articles already, but they're not generating much attention. You can still use the tool to help you optimize the articles and change the titles. All you do is choose the “website content” radio button and use the link under the box for the URL to add your text into a box instead. Then, the tool will go through the topic and suggest keywords to use in it. All you have to do is change some words here and there and add a different title to get these stale articles to become stars in your writing lineup.