Documenting Success

How to use To-do lists effectively 3 comments
Published on January 22nd, 2007

A to-do list is your greatest tool in organizing your workflow and life. I can certainly attest to that myself – having first started using them a few years ago, my productivity level shot up through the roof. Nonetheless, a poorly kept to-do list can become your productivity’s biggest nemesis. In this article, I’m going to present some of the tips I developed on how to keep the to-do list your friend.

Do not split your list into categories

If you split your list into various categories, eventually you’ll notice that you tend to favor some areas over the others. For example, my “Things to-do around the house” category often got neglected to my fiancée’s dismay [Editor’s note: it still gets neglected.] Eventually I switched to having just two lists – “to-do now” and “to-do sometime”.

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How to make and keep New Year’s Resolutions 29 comments
Published on December 24th, 2006

Does this scenario sound familiar? As the year draws to a close, you look back fondly upon last year’s resolutions. Since you forgot where they are, you decide to make this year’s resolutions instead, and come up with something like this:

Lose weight

Eat healthier

Quit smoking

Go out and make friends

Make a lot of money

Feeling quite satisfied with yourself, you put the list “away”, and make a valiant effort to follow it. Maybe you last a couple of weeks, maybe only a few days. Maybe even less (I believe a record belongs to my friend Anonymous, who broke his resolution to quit smoking exactly 15 minutes after midnight on January 1^st.)

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How to start and keep practicing any activity 5 comments
Published on November 28th, 2006

You all know the scenario: inspired by reading, seeing or hearing how great and useful something is, you decide to incorporate it into your life. Be it going to the gym, learning how to play golf, writing a page of your novel a day, it’s going to make you healthier, make your life better, it’s good for your teeth, etc.

Bursting with enthusiasm, you set bold goals for yourself, faithfully following your new schedule. Until one day, you miss it. You might have a perfectly good excuse, but it really doesn’t matter. You missed a day, and then another one. You know where this is going – soon enough you stop doing that activity altogether, felling pretty bad about yourself. You might make up elaborate excuses as to why it didn’t work out. You might do the opposite and get depressed, thinking that you’re a weak-willed person, since you can’t follow through with something that is beneficial for you.

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How to get your money back from an unethical business No comments yet
Published on November 19th, 2006

I’d like to share a story that happened to me very recently. The reason for describing it online is too many times I’ve witnessed same or similar scenario happen to people, and not just myself. You see unethical companies try to take advantage of common people all the time. And unfortunately, most of the time the outcome isn’t good – “The Man” wins, little guy gets screwed, and that’s it. But, what happened to me proves that it doesn’t always have to be that way.

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