Have you ever gotten to the end of your day and felt like you had been moving through molasses and accomplished absolutely nothing? Me too. So often have I felt like this that I jumped recently at the opportunity to take a new training course that suggested it had a solution to the universal time-suck that we all struggle with.

About two weeks ago I started a productivity and time management training program designed to take you to the next level in your quest to eliminate distraction and interruption. It uses some of the principles found in the Getting Things Done book I reviewed a while back, as well as more wide-ranging ideas and concepts that are all combined in a remarkable process-based, web-video training system that takes the potential of GTD and goes well beyond that in so many ways.

The program is called Wake Up Productive and it’s a 90-day, time management training program developed by a guy named Eben Pagan who quietly and diligently built a $20 million dollar per year business from home. He takes you all the way from morning ritual to finding the elements that sap your focus, effectiveness and energy. It uses principles that apply to both to-do-list types as well as the so-called right-brained types (that’s me).

It’s also specifically designed for “work from home” entrepreneurs and self-employed business owners, which also happens to be me, but I suspect may apply to you too. Even if you don’t work at home, or have your own business, the principles are universally applicable and will change the way you look at productivity.

The approach to time and energy management is fresh and unlike any of the systems I’ve been monkeying with for years and the benefits I’ve gotten so far are profound enough to move me to actually make a post to my blog, the first in over a year, and attempt to get the word out to anyone who might be able to jump in and take advantage of this class while it’s available tomorrow.

I know, I wish I could have posted this earlier, but I didn’t realize it was opening up again till yesterday.

I expect that they will eventually offer it to a much wider audience, but at the moment they are teaching small groups at a time and the registration is only open for one day starting Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 3 PM EST.

Well the time has passed, but you can still watch the video if you sign up for more info. Just click the screen-shot below to do that. It seems they’ve taken down all the free training at this point. If they offer the program again, I’ll update the links on this page.

They guarantee you will be at least twice as productive as you are today and offer a 100% refund if you’re not. After two weeks, I’m already unable to ask for a refund as I’m too productive

You can learn more and get a free intro, training video for the 90-day, Wake Up Productive program here www.wakeupproductiveprogram.com

I sincerely hope this is the kind of thing you will find wildly useful—so far it has been for me so I thought I’d pass it along. Please let me know if you think otherwise though as my goal is to share only really great ideas and assistance.

All the best!
-Zack

P.S.—Although I primarily intend to write about tech gadgets, time-saving software and tech solutions, this is so widely appealing in nature and such a great opportunity, I felt I would be doing a disservice by not mentioning it. Besides, check it out—I posted! After a year! Now that’s something.

I’ve been needing a new external hard drive myself for a while now and after considerable research and deliberation, I selected one that did the trick. This drive is by Fantom and the reviews are consistently very good. The company also appears to be very responsive to faulty, or defective products.

The first drive is about $15 more than it’s USB 2.0 brother, but I absolutely wanted the Firewire option for doing video work and high speed transfers, so it’s worth it by far. It has BOTH USB 2.0 and Firewire 1394a (400) interfaces.

The drive is very quiet and cool with the only complaint from a very tiny minority of folks being the bright, blue LED light on the front, but frankly, that’s a non-issue for me. If it’s in your bedroom facing your pillow, well then you may have a problem, but now c’mon, are you serious? It’s next to your pillow . . . ?

The second drive is double the capacity at 1 Terabyte (approx. 1000 gigabytes) and an outstanding drive for backups or video or anything else that needs a lot of space and speed. It has top ratings and an unbeatable price. It has only eSATA or USB though so watch it if you need Firewire.

Check them out and please comment back if you decide to get one and have any thoughts about it . . .

May your tech forays be fruitful!

-Zack

Fantom Titanium-II 500GB 3.5″ External Hard Drive [with Firewire interface]

Fantom 1TB 3.5″ Silver GreenDrive External Hard Drive

We’re assuming here that a Mac is out of the question for various reasons.

This is a box I can recommend. Check the reviews. I think this one will be the right answer. I’ve gotten Acer products on a number of occasions and been very happy with the product and their support on the rare times I’ve had to call.

ASUS Eee Box EBXB202-BLK-X0023 Intel Atom N270(1.60GHz) 1GB DDR2 Intel GMA 950

And if you need a low-cost, high quality LCD monitor to go with that, check this out. I think you’ll be more than happy with it (this monitor is NOT intended for high end color critical design work!) But it will be fantastic for 100% of what 99.9% of folks who use a computer need a monitor to do.

Hanns·G HW-191DPB Black 19″ 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor Built in Speakers

Your comments are most welcome!

-Zack

I needed some more basic CDs for burning and found these Verbatim CD-Rs which are very reliable and burn at their rated speed of 52x, unlike many other brand-name CDs which we shan’t mention.

About $20 for a spindle of 100 CDs. (Note that these are your standard shiny surface for labeling with a Sharpie or similar pen, not for printing from a custom CD printer, if you have one of those; most folks don’t.)

Verbatim 94554 700 MB 52X 80 Minute CD-R, 100 Disc Spindle with Reinforced Packaging to Minimize Breakage

If you DO have an inkjet printer capable of printing on CDs, you’ll want to get these instead:

Verbatim 97019 700 MB 52X 80 MIN DataLifePlus White Inkjet Hub Printable CD-R, 100-Disc Spindle Tape Wrap (White)

Well now the IMPROVED 10 Mpixel version of the old 10 Mpixel version is out and it’s cheaper than my original 7 MPixel Powershot! Sheesh. At least you can take advantage of it and I can live vicariously knowing you got the best deal I’ve ever seen on the Canon digicams. Get it, you’ll love it.

Canon PowerShot A2000 IS 10.0 MP Digital Camera

Yup, it supports Windows, Mac and Linux.

You can pick it up here (click the image below):

CyberPower Intelligent LCD Series GreenPower UPS CP1500AVRLCD 1500VA 900W 4 x 5-15R Battery/Surge Protected 4 x 5-15R Surge Protected Outlets UPS – Retail