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Several years ago, I lost hundreds of digital photos after a drive crashed in our computer. You never realize how important those pictures are until they’re gone. This was particularly painful since I’m in IT and would never dream of running a system at work without a backup.

I decided then to put automated backups in place to protect every computer in our home. I braced myself for a difficult and expensive task.

To my delight, I found a few great options that are easy to setup and dirt cheap, especially since they can handle unlimited data. These services put your backups on autopilot and you’ll never have to think about them again.

The leading solutions are Carbonite and Mozy. Both are great and you should check each site for the solution that works best for you. I’ve been using Carbonite for several years (ever since that fateful day) and I’ve always been pleased with the service.

Bonus tip: Download the freeware version of SyncBack to pull important documents from shared drives into your Carbonite protected directories . You can also setup daily, weekly, and monthly local backups, which is nice if you need to recover an older version of a file (which happens more often than a complete loss of data).

Are you good at organizing your tasks in a to-do list, but have trouble actually executing them? You’re not alone.

Completing things on your to-do list is difficult because it’s really a collection of habits that most people don’t think about. Today, we’ll look at addressing those issues that stop you from doing things, and the habits needed to overcome those issues.

“I feel resistance when starting work on something.”
First of all, it’s good to analyze your resistance, which is something we don’t do often. Why don’t you want to start on something? Identifying the problem can help lead to the solution.

Having said that, there are a couple of suggestions that could help:

• Tiny chunk. Tell yourself you only have to do 5 minutes of work on it. That small amount of work is less intimidating.
• Just start. Once you get going, it’s much easier to keep going. So tell yourself that all you have to do is start. I like to compare this to my philosophy of running: instead of worrying about having to do the whole run, I tell myself that I just have to lace up my shoes and get out the door. After that, it’s really easy. Do the same thing with any task — just fire up your program, and do the first few actions (i.e. start typing). It gets easier after that point. (more…)

When your home is filled with clutter, trying to tackle a mountain of stuff can be quite overwhelming.

So here’s my advice: start with just five minutes. Baby steps are important. Sure, five minutes won’t barely make a dent in your mountain, but it’s a start. Celebrate when you’ve made that start!

Then take another five minutes tomorrow. And another the next day. Before you know it, you’ll have cleared a whole closet or a room and then half your house and then … who knows? Maybe before long your house will be even more uncluttered than mine. We’ll have a challenge!

For those who are overwhelmed by their clutter, here are some great ways to get started, five minutes at a time. (more…)

Looking for ways to get the most out of your time? There are some great resources available to help. Here are just a few of the best productivity lists.

Don’t read these all at once. It would ruin your productivity. But I’m hoping this will be a resource you come back to every now and then when you feel you need it. Bookmark it for later.

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