Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category

10 More Investments You Should Know

On Tuesday, we discussed the first ten of the twenty investments everyone should have at least a passing familiarity with. We still have another ten to go, so let’s get started.
1. Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS)
While I wouldn’t recommend buying an MBS these days, it’s still an investment worth knowing. In order to be able to afford to offer mortgages, most small banks package their mortgages and sell them through… Continue reading

November 20 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: bond, investment, stock | 1 comment»

10 Great Free Apps for Blackberry

Blackberries may have been overshadowed lately by the success of the iPhone, but they still offer and incredibly powerful platform.Plus, since the Blackberry operating system is build on Java and has always been open, there are a slew of useful and mature applications, many of which are free. Since I’m a cheapskate when it comes to software, I’ve loaded up my Blackberry Curve with a boatload of free programs. Here… Continue reading

November 19 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: application, blackbery, mobile, software, wireless | 16 comments»

10 Investments You Should Know

It’s impossible to miss the fact that stocks, real estate and bonds all make for decent investments (at least most of the time). But there are so many different investment options, most of which get minimal marketing. If you want to take a look at a wider variety of options, you should be able to at least tell an American Depository Receipt apart from a Convertible Security. There are… Continue reading

November 18 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: bond, investment, stock | 7 comments»

Be Heard. Speak Plainly.

Every semester I get a handful of students who have settled on the idea that the more big words they use, the better. Regardless of whether they know what those words mean or not.

So I get papers elucidating the patriarchal configuration of the social arrangement, rather than telling me about male-dominated societies. Or they pontificate on the topic of inadequate provision of pedagogical resources vis-à-vis… Continue reading

November 17 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: clarity, language, plain, public-speaking, speaking, writing | 24 comments»

Back to Basics: Reference Filing

One of the greatest sources of clutter in just about any office environment is unfiled paperwork. I think everyone suffers at least a little from Keep-It Syndrome, that horrendous affliction that causes us to imbue every scrap of paper that crosses our desks with a mysterious power that makes it nearly impossible to throw anything away.

At least part of the problem is indecisiveness. Many of the papers that we keep… Continue reading

November 14 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: filing, keyword, office, organization, paper-tiger, paperwork, tagging | 14 comments»

An Interview with Jared Goralnick — Founder of AwayFind

A new productivity tool, AwayFind, launched yesterday. I had the pleasure of getting in on the beta and, simply put, AwayFind will change the way you think about email. As a general rule, most of us check our email religiously. We’re all scared that a time-sensetive email will come in and we won’t see it in time — but what if we were notified of the most important… Continue reading

November 14 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: awayfind, email | 5 comments»

Straight Up From ‘Scratch Beginnings’

With nothing but $25 and a backpack, Adam Shepard set out to prove whether the American Dream still exists. He headed for a city he didn’t know — Charleston, South Carolina — with the goal of having $2,500, a car and a place to live by the end of the year. Shepard chronicled his experiment in Scratch Beginnings. The book holds a few gems for average people working… Continue reading

November 13 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: book, goal, plan, shepard | 22 comments»

Should You Be In Business For Yourself? Some Pros and Cons

I write a lot about personal finance. I hear a lot about how different employers are handling the current economic crunch and, lately, what I’ve been hearing makes me pretty uncomfortable about working for a long list of companies. Some employers are slashing benefits — effectively cutting their employees’ salaries while inflation reduces their buying power.

I want to suggest entrepreneurship as an alternative, but I realize that it… Continue reading

November 11 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: business, job, salary | 11 comments»

When Are You Most Creative?

When are you at your creative peak? That is, what time of day do ideas flow most easily for you? What activities bring your best ideas to the surface where you can most easily gather them up?

A recent survey by the Crown Plaza hotel group suggests that certain times and activities are more conducive to creative thinking than others [PDF download]. The most creative time, they found, was… Continue reading

November 10 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: capture, creativity, idea, rhythm, schedule | 10 comments»

The Art of Note Taking in the Digital Age

Note taking is as ancient an art as any. There are hefty tomes on the subject of how to best capture and organize information in a swift and legible manner and courses devoted to the subject in colleges.

And yet, the most popular suggestion in our Skribit widget, which you can use to suggest articles for Lifehack authors to write, is on the question of whether to use digital or… Continue reading

November 10 2008 | By Joel | Tagged: digital, evernote, moleskine, note-taking, notes | 32 comments»

In Uncertain Times, Prepare Yourself for New Opportunities

We live in uncertain times. Global financial collapse, rapid relocation of industries, emerging markets, political unrest, and just the fast pace of change in the Information Era in general all mea that things you take for granted today might be completely different tomorrow.

Now is certainly not a time for rigidity. The career you’re working in this year might not even exist in 2010. And vice versa – the field you… Continue reading

November 7 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: career, change, economy, finance, networking, relationships, self-knowledge, self-promotion | 7 comments»

Time Management For Anarchists

A while back, Jim Munroe started giving a talk called ‘Time Management for Anarchists.’ The talk evolved into a Flash adaptation, complete with historic anarchists Emma Goldman and Mikhail Bakunin. From there, Jim teamed up with Marc Ngui and turned the whole concept into a comic book, now available as a PDF.

The comic, the talk and the Flash presentation all focus on a surprisingly simple dilemma… Continue reading

November 7 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: jim munroe, self-discipline, time-management | 7 comments»

Your Expertise is Worth Money: 5 Sites You Can Write For

Plenty of people start blogging with the hope of making some money off their expertise. But it can be difficult to turn a profit on blogging: until you’ve built up a significant readership, you can expect only a few cents worth of Google AdSense revenue. There are certainly easier ways to earn money by writing about your area of expertise.

There are plenty of sites that will pay for your… Continue reading

November 6 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: expert, Money, writing | 18 comments»

Looking at the Little Things

This year has turned out to be a year of tremendous challenge for me. I realized that the career I’d spent my adult life cultivating was not quite as fulfilling as I’d hoped, and at the same time my relationship started buckling under pressures both from within and without.

Change, it seems, was in order.

If you listen to popular wisdom, especially as expressed in movies and TV shows, profound change comes… Continue reading

November 5 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: career, change, life, motivation, self-knowledge | 12 comments»

Plan For A Crazy Election Day

If you’re living in the U.S, today’s Election Day. And it’s going to be crazy. Twenty-five percent of eligible voters have already turned in their ballots and just about every voting precinct is expecting record turnouts. That means long lines for voters, as well as a pretty high potential for something to go wrong. I’ve got a couple of tips for straightening out any problems you might run in… Continue reading

November 4 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: ballots, Polls, president, voting | 8 comments»

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