This will be nothing new to anyone who’s done research on improving their productivity, but it’s a great habit to get into. If you’ve never tried this, just do it for a day and you’ll be amazed at how much you get done.

Thanks to Andrea Warner for today’s tip:

Get yourself two egg timers, or some other type of external timer. Don’t use your computer clock – go spend the 2 dollars to get an external timer.

Set the first timer to 45 minutes. Set the second one for 15 minutes. Don’t start either yet.

Shut down twitter, facebook, email, phone, web browser, or anything else that will distract you. Go to the toilet and have a glass of water next to you. You won’t be leaving your desk for the 45 minutes, so be ready.

Start the timer and work on whatever task you have set yourself. Don’t do anything else, no matter how urgent it seems. Don’t go off at a tangent, don’t start anything new, just work on the task until it’s finished.

If you finish the task before the 45 minutes is up, go onto the next task, etc until the alarm goes off on the timer.

Start the second timer (the one for 15 minutes). Do whatever you want during this time. Things like stretch, walk around, have a chat at the water-cooler, fire up twitter/facebook/email, make plans for the evening with your friends, send me a tweet thanking me for this article (try the link lol). Just relax during this time – you earned it.

When the timer goes off, start the 45 minute timer again and repeat the process.

At the end of the day, make a list in your business journal about what you got done during the day. Prepare to be amazed.

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If you’re a victim of the latest Twitter malware virus, you may need to clear your cache and delete saved passwords. To do this is Mozilla Firefox 3.5+ (the version current as of 16 November 2009):

Clear your cache:

Go to Tools –> Options. Open the Advanced tab, then the Network tab under that. Hit the “Clear Now” button. And you’re done.

Delete saved passwords:

Go to Tools –> Options. Open the Security tab. Hit the “Saved Passwords” button. Either click the “Remove All” button, or go through the list, delete your twitter password and any other sites you don’t recognize. Then you’re done.

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There is a lot of malware spam on twitter at the moment. I’m getting between 100-500 Direct Messages (DMs) a day from compromised accounts. They say things like:

“i made $426.23 online today with”

“I make money online with google. i learned how here”

“this you here”

“hey can you do me a favor? take this iq test. here”

“hey. can you take this quiz thingy? here”

“wow. i didn’t know my iq score until now. i got it here”

“can you do this quiz for me?? go here”

“hi there. this place has the best ringtones. i just got some.. go here:”

“hey, i got free ringtones from here…”

“get some ringtones for me here;”

“hi! i just got a bunch of ringtones from here:”

“omg! i took this quiz my score is higher than yours!! check here”

“Let’s find out if your IQ is higher. Here”

“OMG I can’t believe I found you”

“Hey, this you?”

“Hah. this you?”

“you look funny on here”

“i can’t stop laughing at this..”

“this was funny”

“rofl this you???”

“LOL, omg this you?”

“hahah you should see this”

“You’re on here…”

… all with links at the end. I just copy/pasted some of the ones I received today.

DON’T CLICK THE LINK

even if it’s from one of your friends. It seems the link takes you to a site where your twitter account gets hacked and sends the same sort of DMs to your followers.

If you’ve been hacked: go to your list of connections –> http://twitter.com/account/connections <– and click “revoke access” to any application you don’t remember allowing. Then go to your password reset –> http://twitter.com/account/password <– and change your password.

If your account is still infected, repeat the above, then go to your Browser Settings and clear your cache and delete your saved passwords (reader tip – thanks @Pepperfire)

You should be fine after that.

If you receive a malware DM like the ones listed above: send the person the following message:

I just received a virus DM from you. Changing your twitter password & revoking access to bad apps may fix it. More info: http://su.pr/2whKig

You can just copy and paste that – it’s designed to be the right size for a twitter DM. The link will take them here so they can go through the “unhacking” procedure above.

Remember: the malware comes from hacked accounts. The people generally have no idea their account has been compromised. They aren’t sending the malware; someone else is controlling that. Unless you go to your sent messages –> http://twitter.com/sent <– you wouldn’t know you’ve been hacked.

Be Gentle With Them

It’s not their fault (apart from clicking on a link in a message they may have received from a friend).

Please pass this message around. The more people know about this, the quicker we can stop this mess.

Click here to automatically fill a tweet  for you to post.

It doesn’t post for you – you still have to hit the “update” button on twitter, so you’re in total control. It will fill in this message to whatever account you are currently logged into:

WARNING: Do not click any suspicious DM links. See how to protect your account here: http://su.pr/2whKig (via @mikehaydon)

Thanks. @mikehaydon

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I was just reading the introduction from Robert Kiyosaki’s excellent book “Before You Quit Your Job” (see left) and one of the headings struck me as being a little odd: “Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Poorly”.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for producing quality work all the time. But sometimes it’s better to have your 2nd or 3rd draft as your product, rather than waiting until the product is perfect. There comes a time when you have to say “it’s good enough“. Don’t worry what your mother taught you, in business near enough is often good enough.

Kiyosaki uses Microsoft as an example for just getting a product to market that isn’t perfect but is good enough to partially satisfy the demand. You then work on improving the product and put out an updated version. Now Microsoft isn’t the best example, in my opinion, because you could argue that it crosses the line between good enough and just plain shoddy (just look at all the bugs in Vista), which you never should do. I think Wordpress is a better example. It’s now up to version 2.7.1. Each of its versions have been pretty good, but the next has almost always been a bit better than the previous. Imagine if they didn’t release the product until at least version 3 – the world would certainly be a poorer place.

There are many examples, but all of them lead to this truth:

There comes a time when you have to stop developing and start marketing.

If you wait until your product is perfect, you risk missing your window of opportunity. You risk another company coming in and grabbing the market share you easily could have taken. That’s a whole lotta money that will be in your competitor’s pocket rather than yours. You had the brilliant idea, you found an effective way to solve peoples problems, you deserve to profit from that. But you can screw it up by being a perfectionist, just as you can by being sloppy.

Have a look at your websites “under construction” or books you are working on. Is it good enough to go to market? Good enough to go live? Is it time to stop researching and start writing? Time to stop learning and start doing? So what are you waiting for? Get cracking.

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For today’s article, I decided to take a break from my usual format and point you in the direction of 5 recent articles that I think will greatly help you improve your presence online:

8 Essential Apps For Your Facebook Page

If you have a facebook page (see my previous post for why you should have a facebook page), I highly recommend you use some or all of these applications to improve your connection to your readers.

7 Myths About Blogging

Diane is an experienced blogger and author (ok, they’re kinda the same thing lol) who has helped many people break through barriers to become successful bloggers. She is actively involved in Jack Humphrey’s BlogSuccess training center and is someone worth listening to. This article is particularly useful for beginner and intermediate bloggers.

9 Ways to Improve Your Writing

This article is short and to the point. It has some great tips that you can use to become a better writer.

10 Ways to Put Your Content Before More People

I think this is one of those articles that changes the way you think about writing. Paul suggests you focus on getting your content out there more than getting traffic to your site. Of course it depends what you are trying to achieve, but in many cases, I think his approach is sound.

12 Easy Mistakes That Plague SEO Newcomers

This is obviously required reading for anyone beginning in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). More advanced/experienced people may still get value from a glance over this. Particularly note point 9 (ignoring non-Google search engines).

I hope you find these useful. Until next time.

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If you are just starting to market your product or services online, I highly recommend you focus first on building these properties:

Build a Blog

Running a blog properly can build your authority and promote your brand like nothing ever. I recommend posting as often as you can, as long as the quality doesn’t suffer. Regular, quality posts give people a reason to keep coming back to the site. A blog can also be thought of as an eNewsletter that people actually read because they can subscribe to the feed and receive the new posts when they are published… you know what, just head over to the Friday Traffic Report for this great article on why you should run a blog. Jack explains it better than I could, maybe because he’s one of the recognized blogging leaders.

As you can see from my archives, I’m a huge fan of Wordpress and recommend you get a self hosted wordpress blog. I use Godaddy for hosting (get good discounts here). I also highly recommend you spend the money to get the Thesis Theme. I’ve tried using the free templates and customizing them to suit and even though I’m fairly good at CSS, Html and Php, I’ve wasted so much time that is worth a lot more than the $80 or so that Thesis costs. I’ll be changing this blog over to Thesis in the next few days and I wish I’d done it ages ago when I first heard of Thesis.

Twitter

If you don’t have a twitter account, go and sign up now for free at twitter.com. It’s ok, I’ll wait … Now you’re back, we’ll go through why you just did that…

Twitter is a powerful social communication medium. People can follow you and receive your status updates (140 characters per update). It is the best tool available now to easily keep people up to date with what you are doing, your take on the world and resources you think people can use as well as interact with your audience, find new resources and get ideas for new articles. Don’t go and post what you had for breakfast; no-one wants to know that. Think who your target market is and only write tweets that they would find useful.

Feel free to follow me @mikehaydon on Twitter and let me know, so I can follow you too.

Facebook Page

I’m assuming that you’ve got a Facebook Profile. If not, get one for free here.

A Facebook Page is like a profile except for 2 important differences:

1. A Page has “fans”, not “friends”; and
2. Pages are indexable by the search engines.

The difference between friends and fans is that friends have to be “accepted” by you, whereas anyone can become a fan, meaning your facebook profile can be used for what it was intended – keeping in touch with your friends. I don’t think I need to emphasize how important the second point is.

Go here to setup a Facebook Page. You should setup a page for each facet of your business, each brand or each niche. There is no limit on how many Pages you can setup, but remember that the more Pages you setup, the more work you’ll have to do interacting with your fans and keeping the Page up to date. See here for an example.

Once you have these setup, you’re on your way to great visibility online. Regularly update these sites with quality content and watch your presence soar.

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Sometimes life gets you down, but no matter how bad things seem, there is always a bright side. Good can always come from the worst misfortunes. Take Nick Vujicic for example: he was born with no arms or legs, but just have a look at his take on life in this video:

Let him inspire you to get back up and keep going strong. If things are going great for you right now, be thankful and then realize that if Nick can achieve what he has without any limbs, how much more can you accomplish? Nick Vujicic has brought hope to millions. Let this video inspire you to be the best that you can be.

Keep going strong. You’re worth it.

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Following on from my recent list of useful Worpress Plugins, I came across a plugin that seems to greatly improve the ability for your readers to interact with your site. Check out this video from the creators of IntenseDebate:

You can get it here.

I’ve tried other comment plugins, like disqus, but this beats them hands down IMO. You can see it in action below. It’s better than disqus because your readers don’t need to be signed in to comment, which is important to me. It was easy to install/customize and I had no problems importing my comments.

Unfortunately, the CommentLuv, Delink Comment Author and Ajax Edit Comments plugins won’t work, so take that into consideration. I think that the features that come with IntenseDebate (like being able to branched reply to commentsoutweigh losing those plugins, but maybe that’s just me.

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I think Twitter is a great medium for communication, if used properly. It is great for getting your take on the world out there. But seriously, no-one really cares what you had for breakfast or the fact that you just dyed your hair. I came across this video which pretty much sums up my thoughts on Twitter:

The best way to use Twitter, in my opinion, is to be consistent in your Tweets. Consistently try to add value. Don’t tweet just to see the sound of your voice. And don’t try to pretend you’re a celebrity. You aren’t. Even if you were, no-one cares that you’re going to bed now or you’re just getting up.

What caused this explosion of people being boring? I think it’s Twitter’s line “What Are You Doing?” – It’s just asking for trouble. I think it should rather be “What are you doing that someone else might care about”.

Use Twitter, but think before you tweet: will this tweet help someone or are you genuinely communicating with someone? If not, post to Facebook

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Get Simpleology
Get Action Machine

I use a couple of tools to manage my time – Simpleology and Action Machine. On Simpleology, I brainstorm the things I need to do each day and go through the daily target praxis. Once I’ve done that, I move my “to do” list over to the Action Machine program, set the estimated timers and away I go. Using the two tools in this way, I’ve greatly improved my efficiency. How do you keep track of your time?

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