Productivity Pr0n: 5 Unusually Useful Notepads
Feb/100
Hi. My name is Dustin, and I’m addicted to notepads.
I first realized I was addicted when I found myself prowling office supply stores in the wee hours of the afternoon, trying to score a college-ruled composition book. Pretty soon, I couldn’t go anywhere without my works – a battered red Moleskine and a black Sharpie click-pen.
And it got worse. I started thinking, “maybe there’s a perfect notebook out there for this particular project.” My Moleskine’s 192 leaves bound in pocket-sized covers wasn’t enough to satisfy my growing need for specialty papers.
The worst part is, I liked it. And I stand here before you, still liking it. Loving it. Yes, my name is Dustin, but I”m not a mere addict. I’m a paper enthusiast, a connoisseur of the carnet, a gourmand of the grid line, a foodie of foolscap.
Let me show you a few of my more exotic finds.
1. Rollabind
Also marketed as the Levenger Circa system, the Rollabind (or just “Rolla”) is an infinitely customizable, assemble-it-yourself notebook made using a Rollabind punch and Rollabind discs. Basically, you take the pages you want to assemble, punch the binding edge with the special punch, and insert the discs into the punches to hold it all together. The holes are open on one side, so you can remove and insert pages at will, and the unique design allows the whole thing to be opened flat, making them easy to write on.
The system can be used to compile planners, address books, journals, or just about anything else you can imagine, using pages of your own design, pre-printed pages akin to those sold for Dayplanners and the like, or templates from the DIY Planner site. Both Rollabind and Levenger sell a range of kits with punches, discs, and covers (from simple pressboard to luxurious leather). Circa/Rolla notebooks are a bit pricey compared to off-the-shelf notebooks (though some of the expenses, like the punch and reusable discs, can be amortized over years of notebook-making) but are pretty comparable in price to organizer sets from DayRunner or FranklinCovey.
2. Whitelines
Whitelines paper has white lines. Seriously.
If you’ve ever, say, tried to photocopy something you wrote or drew, you already know one use case for paper with white lines. If you’re a creative sort who maybe needs some lines to keep everything at the same scale but would rather not have to compete with those lines when displaying your ideas, you know another. And Whitelines has you pegged, because they make paper with white lines.
So here’s the deal: Whitelines notebooks are made with a lightly toned paper lined or gridded with white ink, so you can definitely see the lines while you’re working (meaning you avoid the “over-the-cliff” curve you get when you write on unlined paper) but step away just a bit and the lines fade away. And there are bindings for everyone, from hard-bound Moleskine-like notebooks to perfect-bound paperbacks to glue-bound notepads (so you can tear sheets off),
Available in the US only through specialty retailers (mostly book stores), Canadians and Western Europeans can find them at your national Amazon stores as well as in several chains. Prices are comparable to Moleskines of the same size and format. Use the store finder to find out how to get yours.
3. Behance Dot Grid Book
Behance notebooks are beloved of creative professionals, and the Dot Grid Book and Dot Grid Journal are a pretty good indication of why. Designers want the precision of a grid, but they also want the grid to “disappear”, to get out of their way so they can work. In other words, they appreciate good design in notebook grids as in everything else.
And these notebooks from Behance are nothing if not good design. The “Book” model has a semi-hard “suede touch” cover that is spiral-bound to lay flat on a table or other surface; the “Journal” model is hard-bound like a Moleskine for portable knee-top use. Both have a super-light but functional grid of dots to guide without constraining so you can do layouts, tight design work, or whatever else strikes your fancy.
4. Aquanotes
The age-old problem of how to capture notes in the shower may have found a solution. No more messy bath crayons or grease pencils – here comes Aquanotes! Aquanotes are suction-cup-mounted notepads made of 100% waterproof paper that can be written on however wet they may be. So you always have a notepad handy at what experts say is our most creative time, shower time.
The only problem is, where do you keep your pencil?
5. Notepod
Got an idea for an iPhone app? There’s a pad for that.
Notepod is an iPhone-shaped notepad, with an unlined writing area where the iPhone’s screen would be and gridlines on the back, packed in 100-page board-backed notepads. The implementation is new, but like the iPhone itself, the idea goes back a long ways, to the original battery-less paper Palm Pilot. Of course, you don’t have to be an iPhone developer to use a Notepod – it works just as well for on-the-fly note-taking and jotting down phone messages or, for the real low-tech, replacing your iPhone entirely (though you need a really good arm for the text messaging function…).
Know any other cool, super-functional (or just super-neat) notepads out there? Let me and the other addicts- er, afficionados know all about them in the the comments!
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He can be reached though his freelancing site at DustinWax.com</a., where his various projects can be viewed. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don’t Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
Home Based Business Opportunity Ideas
Dec/090
In an attempt to balance career and home life, many people in this day and age are seeking a home business opportunity that is valid and lucrative.Niche Blueprint 2 Reviewed Unfortunately, many positions heavily advertised as a home business opportunity are neither legitimate nor profitable. However, there are many ways in which a person can turn their current career or educational expertise into their own home business opportunity.
For example, graphic designers often advertise their services and include an online portfolio of their work on web sites that are geared towards those who are interested in graphic design. Although some of these individuals are currently working outside the home, these sites allow them to build a home business opportunity of their own by promoting their services through an online marketplace. These types of sites typically include a member forum that visitors can use to post and obtain information associated with their trade including how to obtain free trade magazines and publications that provide useful information. Job leads and home business opportunity tips can also be found on these sites that are geared towards those in the graphic design field. These sites and forums also provide an area where those graphic designers who wish to build their own graphic design home business opportunity can share business thoughts and ideas in an effort to help themselves and others achieve profitability.
When it comes to graphic design work, finding additional work and learning about the market, these types of web sites can be a valuable source of information when you are creating your own home business opportunity. Some of the information provided is free, and other access options depend on the membership status of the individual. Although it is always a personal preference as to whether or not an individual will want to become a member of the site and pay the membership fee, if applicable, many people do find the site helpful during the course of a business year.
Niche Blueprint Reviewed Finding a legitimate home business opportunity is a popular goal for professionals currently working outside the home, as well as those who need to work from home in order to accommodate caring for young children or tend to other personal needs. There are many online advertisements as well as print ads boasting a legitimate home business opportunity and a large percentage of these advertisements pertain to completing surveys online. Although this type of legitimate home business opportunity may not provide a large enough salary to be the primary source of income for any one individual, completing surveys and questionnaires can provide additional revenue and can easily be done from home in one’s spare time.
It is important to be aware that completing surveys online does not always provide monetary compensation. This does not mean that completing surveys is not a legitimate home business opportunity. In fact, most companies that offer to compensate others in exchange for their participation in the completion of questionnaires and surveys do offer a legitimate home business opportunity and typically are not interested in collecting any type of fee from those who choose to perform this type of work from home.Niche Blueprint Bonus It is quite common to be compensated for this type of legitimate home business opportunity with gift certificates to major department stores, restaurants shops, stores and professional services organizations frequented by the average consumer.
Depending upon the amount of survey and questionnaire work completed in any given month, these types of gift certificates could easily cover the cost of groceries or some other additional or typical household expenditure. To make completing surveys a truly worthwhile and legitimate home business opportunity that works to your advantage, you might want to consider working for several different survey companies to vary the type of compensation between monetary and gift certificates and give yourself the opportunity to earn as much as you possibly can.
What Is Your Time Worth?
Dec/090
I don’t like to take risks.
I also haven’t had my own business for very long, so I’ve felt like every penny I made had to be sealed away in a vault for safekeeping in case I’d wake up one morning and have no writing assignments, no consulting clients, and no speaking engagements.
Mentors told me I needed to invest in my business, but I didn’t really listen. The thought of parting with any of my hard-won cash made me feel a little sick. What if I didn’t get that money back?
So even as my business grew, I did everything myself. And I mean everything. If a book needed to be overnighted to a new contact, I ran to the post office over lunch. I learned the rules of small business accounting. I became a scheduling pro.
In the last year, I decided to develop two workbooks for my corporate seminars on recruiting and retaining members of the Millennial Generation. I designed the first one myself. It looked pretty decent – after all, I do have a modicum of talent when it comes to print design. The only trouble was, all the formatting and tweaking and formatting and tweaking some more took me 22 hours over the course of a week.
Online print firms charge about $200 to design the same type of workbook. My hourly consulting rate is $100, so I spent $2200 of my own time.
That was when I realized that doing any and all tasks myself to save a few bucks was actually harming my business. I could have been spending those 22 hours fostering new client relationships, or improving the ones I already have. These are the relationships that allow me to do what I do, and without them, I wouldn’t have the freedom to do the work that’s personally meaningful to me. Things needed to change.
So for the next workbook, I decided to get smarter. I let an online firm handle the design. They finished the project in a week, and it looked just as nice as the first one. I saved $2000. And incidentally, this $2200 figure doesn’t take into account the speaking engagements I do every other week, which command a much higher hourly rate. So if I had used the workbook design time to secure additional speaking gigs, I would have saved thousands more.
Even if for some reason I didn’t care about the clients or the money, my 21 month old son would love to spend 22 hours with me. I would take him to the park and music class. I would watch him run around the Chicago Children’s Museum squealing with excitement. I would pocket the memories of these hours, because he’s never going to be 21 months old again.
You all are just as busy as I am. And while there’s this pull to be independent, we need to realize that our time is worth something – a lot, actually. We can all be happier, wealthier, and more successful if we play to our strengths and spend our time doing things that only we have the unique combination of talent and experience to pull off.
Alexandra Levit’s goal is to help people find meaningful jobs – quickly and simply – and to succeed beyond measure once they get there. If you’re struggling with what to do with your career in the New Year, visit www.newjobnewyou.com for free guidance and resources.
Getting The Best Out Of Searching Freebies UK
Nov/090
You’ve had the idea to get hold of some freebies, maybe you found out about about a friend taking delivery of some ace freebies, or maybe you just enjoy getting stuff for nothing. Who can argue with you for that. I certainly wouldn’t, I love getting freebies posted to me in the UK. Imagine when the package drops through the front door and you rip it open to find that great freebie you gave your details on a website for a week previous. So perhaps you have to take a ride down to your nearest post depot to collect the package which couldn’t be delivered, but the freebie was still great to get.
In order to find the very best free stuff you need to carefully think about how to use the Internet most cleverly to find the most useful freebies online. For instance, if you are wanting freebies particularly for your geographic location you could input free stuff UK in the search box. This way you will only get returned web sites which will have written UK in the text on the page and therefore it is highly likely that the free stuff they show you will be available to people in the UK.
It is easy to spot when doing your own searching for free goods, that some of the pages chanced upon were frequently out of date. The free offers they showed were expired and it was a waste of time using their site. The best way to see if the site isn’t being updated regularly is to check the overall design of the site. If the design of the logos and site layout looks dated then it highly probable that the free stuff on the site will also probably be out of date.
There are so many different free stuff websites on the net that you will need to refine your search still further if you hope to discover what you are searching for as speedily and hassle free as possible. For example, if you needed some free stuff for your computer you would include the word computer at the front of your search phrase written in the search box.
As soon as you have found a site that links to the type of freebie you want and the site is constantly updated don’t forget to bookmark it as you won’t remember it otherwise. Often you will discover the freebies uk website will offer you the chance to sign up to their newsletter that you can join just by adding your email address in the box available. The newsletter is a method for the owner of the site to provide you with the newest freebies as quickly as possible and lacking the need to redo their website with freebies UK that may only be on offer for a short period.
Obtain helpful things to know about the topic of emotional freedom technique training – please make sure to go through this page. The time has come when concise information is really at your fingertips, use this possibility.
How to Be A Good Web Firm Consumer
Jul/090
So you’ve hired a web firm to design your new web site. Now what? Today I’m completing my Business Web Series and talking about what you can do to be a good consumer of web site developers and designers.
Just like most business owners have tales of woe from having their web sites designed, most web developers and designers have stories of their own. Educate yourself, hire the right experts to help you through this process, and hold up your end of the bargain and you may sail through without being the star of one of the web firm’s horror stories (or your own!).