8 Tips for Traveling Around the World for Less Have the urge to see a few countries? Here's how to afford the journey.

Don't let money stop you from seeing the world.

The idea of taking a trip around the world might sound like an impossible dream if you’re not rich, but there are practical ways to do it. You might have to live with fewer belongings and skip fancy hotels and meals. But who knows? That might just add to the adventure.

If you decide to take the challenge, consider these eight ways to reduce your costs as a world traveler.
1. Take advantage of credit cards.
You may find credit cards to be a handy tool for many of your travel needs, such as booking flights and, of course, paying merchants. Some cards let you earn airline miles to cut down the cost of air travel, whereas others have no foreign transaction fees. This lets you cut off what can be an extra 3 percent fee on your purchases, which can add up.
Before leaving the country, though, you should inform your bank about your trip. If you start making international purchases and your bank thinks you’re at home, it may suspect the transactions are fraudulent and freeze your accounts.
2. Buy one big plane ticket.
Instead of buying separate flights to each place, consider getting an around-the-world ticket, which can cost as little as a few thousand dollars. This can be a much cheaper option and keep you on an itinerary, but there are some restrictions. You may have to complete the trip within a year and move only in one direction, like eastward.
Once you’re in a country, you can search for shorter flights on search engines such as Expedia and Momondo and choose budget airlines such as Ryanair in Europe and Tiger Airways in Asia and Australia. Plan to spend more time in cheaper destinations such as Thailand and South Africa than in places that will cost you more.
3. Pack light.
Pack only what you can carry on your back, if possible. Consider getting a travel backpack designed to work as an airline carry-on bag. Not only can this help you avoid losing luggage between flights, but you won’t have to pay extra fees for checking bags or for overweight items. The cost for one bag is around $25 for many airlines, but that cost can go up to $250 if you take 10 flights during your time abroad. You might pay even more if you decide to take smaller trips within a country. Plus, if a checked bag is over the weight limit, it can easily cost you $100 per flight.
As you pack, focus on taking clothes for different climates and bring handy items such as a Swiss Army knife and reusable bottle for your carry-on luggage.
4. Eat locally.
Street markets let you taste the local food for cheap, but make sure you know how to avoid getting sick from unsanitary conditions. To avoid spending too much on restaurant meals, choose places that locals tend to frequent. If you have a kitchen where you’re staying, consider cooking to save money. You may also feel healthier by taking a break from constantly going out to eat.
5. Skip hotels.
If you’re traveling alone or in a small group, your cheapest option might be a hostel. You might think hostels only accommodate students, but international organizations such as Hostelling International and Youth Hostel Association welcome all ages. Hostels often offer amenities such as free Wi-Fi, and sometimes they offer free breakfast. Bigger rooms with 10 to 20 people tend to have the lowest prices, but if you want more personal space, private rooms may be available.
If you plan to stay a week or longer in one place, consider a peer-to-peer rental such as Airbnb or HomeAway so you can cook, have privacy and still spend less on lodging than at hotels.
6. Get travelers insurance.
This might be lower on your list of priorities at first, but having travelers insurance can be a lifesaver if you get any expensive items stolen or have a medical emergency. One popular travel insurance company is World Nomads, and you can also search for others at insuremytrip.com.
7. Explore on your own.
Instead of paying for tours, explore cities and towns on foot and use public transportation when necessary. Buy local maps and guidebooks so you don’t get lost. If you stay at hostels or other shared living spots, fellow travelers can often offer valuable insights.
8. Try a work exchange.
If you can’t finance your whole trip ahead of time, you may be able to work for a few days or weeks through organizations such as HelpX and Workaway. Their sites feature work exchange programs, which let you work a few hours at farms and other locations in return for a full day’s worth of food and sleeping accommodations.
Do your research ahead of time so you find the kind of job, work schedule, meals and sleeping accommodations that work for you. When you get in touch with hosts, it doesn’t hurt to ask about Wi-Fi or bikes, especially if you’re in a rural area where it’s hard to get to the nearest town.  
Traveling on the cheap can let you enjoy the foods, scenery and culture of other countries more authentically than you would from the comforts of hotel rooms and fine dining. As your trip progresses, you’ll learn how to live experiences as a savvy traveler rather than pay for them as a tourist.
NerdWallet staff writer Spencer Tierney contributed to this article.

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17 Tips To Motivate Adult Learners by Christopher Pappas

The introduction of learning technology and the changing workplace recently increased the importance of adult learning. However, there comes the problem of motivating adult learners. There are a few things that stand in the way to motivating adults to start learning.

How To Motivate Adult Learners

Adults, unlike children, teenagers and students, in most cases, have a lot of things on their minds and your eLearning course is probably the last one of them. In addition, your adult learners don't see the rewards
of their efforts as soon as they would expect, and giving them candy doesn't work as it works with children. Also, academic habits, they once possessed are also long forgotten. Least but not last, a lot of the learners are often forced to take on your eLearning course to enhance their skills, keep their job, get a job, or continue further with their career plans. All this makes it difficult to motivate learners and make them active participants.
Here are 17 Tips To Motivate Adult Learners that you might try.

1. Create useful and relevant learning experiences based on the age group and interests of your learners
   Emphasize on the practical knowledge. It is important to design a course that provides immediate relevancy. Learning materials that can be put into practice. Adult learners appreciate more practical knowledge, rather than extraneous facts and theories.
2. Facilitate exploration
   Even though children are famous for their exploratory nature and curiosity, adult learners, too, sometimes like to take the opportunity to construct knowledge in a way that is meaningful to them. For this reason, you should have all sorts of materials, references, infographics, short videos, lectures, podcasts and free resources available.  In such a perfect learning environment learners are more likely to get inspired or find something that makes them want to learn more.
3. Build community and integrate social media
   Keep in mind that social media websites are a powerful tool for collaboration, commenting and sharing. You can facilitate group discussions and communities. People will quickly start exchanging knowledge, and will also have fun, social media is fun!
4. A voice behind the video is not enough
   Add a personal touch. Your course needs to have a face. Make yourself available to people, invite subject-matter experts, authors, professors and other specialists in live online discussions and question and answer sessions.
5. Challenge through games
   Come up with different problem solving exercises and case studies. Make your learners look for and find solutions.
6. Use humor
   Humor would work great even with the most demotivated learners on your course. When your students know you are funny, they will listen to your material carefully, cause they wouldn't want to miss on your witty sense of humor. You can never lose with that.
7. Chunk information
   Chunking is essential, as it helps people remember and assimilate information. Small bits are easier to process.
8. Add suspense
   Don't give out everything your course is about in the beginning. Yes, you need an overview, but keep some interesting points until the time is right. No one likes to read a book if they know what's about to happen.
9. Accommodate individual interests and career goals
   Empower learners to work on these goals and individualize the training to suit their needs.
10. Stimulate your learners
    Encourage them to think by either providing them with brain teasers, or by asking thought-provoking questions.
11. Let learning occur through mistakes
    According to a German proverb "you will become clever through your mistakes". Have you heard the famous expression: "Practice makes perfect"? Of course you have! Henry Roediger who started a learning experiment divided his students in two groups. Group A studied natural sciences paper for 4 sessions, while group B studied the same paper for one session and was tested on it three times. According to the experimenter, one week later, students from group B performed 50% better than Group A, even though they studied the paper less. The results clearly support the argument that "practice makes perfect".
12. Make it visually-compelling
    Did you know that 83% of learning occurs visually?
13. Get Emotional
    If you don't sound inspiring, if your materials are not exciting, how will you motivate your learners? Get them emotionally involved too – come up with controversial statements, tap on memories, add real-life stories.
14. Get examples of their workplace
    Your learners may not always remember to associate what is learned with its application at the workplace. Sometimes they might need reminders and a clue to help them make that connection.
15. Be respectful to them 
16. Ask for feedback: It is motivating to know that your opinion contributes to the course.
17. Present the benefits of undertaking the course
    I don't know why I didn't start with this one. Sometimes outlining the benefits is all it takes.

You may also find valuable the 9 Tips To Apply Adult Learning Theory to eLearning. In this article I'll discuss how Knowles' 5 adult learning theory assumptions can be translated to modern day eLearning experiences, so that you can integrate the 4 principles of Andragogy into your eLearning course for maximum learner engagement and motivation.
What other tips do you believe that motivate adult learners? What motivates you as an adult learn?You may also find useful the

• 8 Important Characteristics Of Adult Learners
• The Adult Learning Theory - Andragogy - of Malcolm Knowles

Highly recommended resources on How to Motivate Adult Learners

• Get Your Audience Pumped: 30 Ways to Motivate Adult Learners
• Motivating Adult Learners
• Motivating Factors in Adult Learning
• Fostering Motivation in Professional Development Programs (PDF)
• How to Motivate Adult Learners (PDF)
• Understanding the Adult Learners Motivation and Barriers to Learning (PDF)
• Innovative Ways for Motivating Adults for Learning (PDF)

Motivating Adult Learners
I really like the following video by Ashley Odom. By wathing it you will be able to answer the following questions:

• What is Motivation?
• What is an Adult Learner?
• What is the Importance of Motivation in Adult Learning? and
• How to Motivate Adult Learners

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THE MONEY SECRET OF THE WEALTHY

 

Earning a lot of money doesn't make you wealthy, but these strategies do.

By Kimberly Palme
Several years ago, New York Times Wealth Matters columnist Paul Sullivan opened up his finances to a group of high-powered, high-net worth investors known as Tiger 21. Members gather regularly to discuss investing strategies and at one meeting, Sullivan asked them to critique his own – relatively meager by their standards – financial life.

New York Times Wealth Matters columnist Paul Sullivan.

“Given what I do, I thought [my wife and I] had a handle on it, but what I learned from that meeting is that we hadn’t thought enough about the risks in life,” Sullivan says. Those risks include declining incomes and the unexpected death or disability of a household wage earner. As a result of that meeting, Sullivan and his wife took out life and disability insurance policies and sold off a condo in Florida that had been a vacation home for the family.
“They were so direct and harsh about that being a possible drain, if we weren’t able to sell it if something bad happened. That was a wake-up call,” Sullivan says.
The lessons he absorbed from that wealthy, exclusive group of over 300 members across the U.S. and Canada led Sullivan to write his new book, “The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy.” The title refers to the security that can come from knowing you’re prepared for a negative event, like a layoff, no matter how much money you have or earn. “The people in the book who I call wealthy, whether they’re a teacher or a hedge fund manager, are wealthy because they have security. They have behaviors around money that let them be in control of their lives when something bad happens,” he says.
Those behaviors, Sullivan says, can be learned or even adopted later in life. As someone who grew up without much money, he says it took him a long time to have a healthy relationship with it. He would avoid credit card debt and overspending so assiduously that he often wore threadbare clothing and skipped even affordable purchases he would have enjoyed. “You should be able to spend money on things you enjoy. If you love $4 Starbucks lattes, then buy it,” he says.
If you're looking to adopt some secrets of the wealthy, Sullivan suggests the following strategies:
1. Focus on the things you can control, not what you wish you did in the past. “Too many normal Americans think, ‘I wish I bought Apple stock 15 years ago' – that’s the wrong way to think. You can’t control that,” he says. But you can control how much money you save each month. So instead of fretting over specific stock picks, just put your money into a broadly diversified portfolio and forget about it while it grows slowly over time.

Columnist Paul Sullivan's new book, “The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy.”

2. Load up on insurance. Term life insurance is very cheap, Sullivan points out. While there is a low probability of a family breadwinner dying early, it would be disastrous if that were to occur. Sullivan suggests asking, “How many years will the surviving spouse need to get back on his or her feet?” Paying around $400 to $500 a year for a basic policy can help alleviate that risk​.
3. Don’t worry so much about taxes. “People waste a lot of time obsessing about taxes,” Sullivan notes. Instead, he recommends sitting down with an accountant to figure out your tax rate – ​and then accept it.
4. Find a fee-only financial advisor. “A bad advisor is worse than no advisor, so find an advisor who is really going to act in your best interesting,” Sullivan says. Fee-only advisors are obligated to work in clients' best interest and are not paid based on products they sell to clients.
5. Get your 401(k) benefit. Take advantage of any 401(k) plan your workplace offers, Sullivan says. If you put in even a small percentage of your paycheck each month and your employer matches it, you’ll slowly build a nest egg for retirement.
6. Spend on what makes you happy. After the Tiger 21 meeting, Sullivan says he became mindful of the purchases that brought him joy​. “What I really like is to go out to dinner and have a nice bottle of wine once or twice a month,” Sullivan says, so that is what he and his wife do.
At the end of the day, Sullivan says, it’s not earning a lot of money that makes you wealthy. “There are people on the wrong side [of the thin green line] at the top of their earning potential,” he says. Even from where he sat at a tennis club near his home in Connecticut during the interview​​, he says, “there are people all around me who are in the process of making horrendous decisions every day. They have too many cars, giant homes. But it’s a house of cards. If the bonus doesn’t come in, they could be in a lot of trouble when they shouldn’t.”
In fact, he says, one of the wealthiest people he knows is his aunt, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Western Massachusetts. “She has a pension, some investments and she gets to do everything she wants. She volunteers at a church, spends time with her grandkids and goes on one big vacation a year,” he says. You’re truly wealthy, he adds, when you have enough money to do all the things you want to do.

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Rankings & Advice News U.S. News Home money Facebook Twitter Money Rankings & Advice Home Retirement Personal Finance Credit Cards My Money The Frugal Shopper Alpha Consumer The Smarter Investor Reboot Your Finances Careers Investing Real Estate Important Money Tips for Older Adults Going Back to College Careful, or your finances will get an F.

How can you manage responsibilities and college costs later in life? Study up on these areas to learn how. By Geoff Williams

Returning to college, or going for the first time, can be harder than the course work itself, as Cliff Robertson, Jr., of Tyler, Texas, is discovering, in large part because he refuses to go into debt to pay for school.
"It's requiring every penny I can scrape up, applying for every program even remotely available. Then there are the bills of life that simply do not stop," says the 49-year-old, who attends the University of Texas–Tyler.
This is his second go-around with the university. Robertson graduated in 1991 with a communications and media degree. But he returned to his alma mater this summer to work toward a masters in clinical mental health counseling, while juggling a job in administration and sales for a local manufacturer and work as a part-time youth pastor.
"It's tough to balance," Robertson says, of all his commitments. He lost his first wife and little girl in a car accident 15 years ago, but has a 24-year-old son and now a grandson. Robertson also has an 8-year-old son from a second marriage that ended in divorce. "Going to see him while trying to stay on top of a 19-hour course load while working is tough. But I'm somehow managing … most of the time."
It isn't surprising that adults like Robertson are interested in going back to college, no matter the sacrifice or stress. After all, the more you learn, the more you earn. Plus, life is short, and you may really feel like you're missing out by not pursuing higher education.
"I chose this path because I am committed to helping people. It's my calling," Robertson says.
But returning to college is fraught with financial danger. It isn't only the expense; you have so many more responsibilities to juggle, much more than when you were young and naive and unappreciative of your freedom and flexibility. Toying with the idea of going back to school? Want the experience to go well? Study up on the following.
Understand that college degrees don't always mean big bucks. Yes, an advanced degree should help you earn more, but don't forget: Your success may depend on what you're studying. For instance, a 2012 census report concluded that engineering majors had the highest earnings of any bachelor's degree field, bringing in $92,000 a year in 2011. But if you were going to major in, say, education, psychology or communications, your median annual earnings would be $55,000 – or less.
Or you could have bad luck and not find a great job. This isn't to discourage anyone – there's a lot to be said for getting an education for the sake of an education – but if you're going to take this on, you want to do it right, especially if you are going to be steeped in the world of student loans.
"Older students should be more cautious about borrowing to pay for college," says Mark Kantrowitz, senior vice president and publisher at Edvisors.com, an informational website about college costs. He has also authored college-cost books, including, "Filing the FAFSA."
Research student debt. The rule of thumb, Kantrowitz says, is that "total student debt at graduation should be less than your expected annual starting salary."
If that's the case, he says, you should be able to repay your student loans in 10 years or less.
Kantrowitz also mentions that if you're 24 or older, as of December 31 of the academic year, you're automatically considered independent for federal student aid purposes.
"This may qualify them for more financial aid, since parent information is not required on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid," or FAFSA, he says.
He also advises older and nontraditional students to apply for financial aid just as dependent students would.
"Use a free scholarship matching service, such as StudentScholarshipSearch.com or Fastweb.com, to search for scholarships," Kantrowitz says.
Also consider going to a private college or university, says Alejandra Mojica, a 31-year-old public relations intern in San Francisco who is completing her Bachelor of Arts at the University of San Francisco.
"Although the tuition is higher, they often have better financial aid packages, and other tuition assistance can be much easier to access than with public universities," says Mojica.

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Be the very best you can be

BE CAREFUL THAT YOU DON'T STEAL PEOPLE'S POWER! Friends, If you want to help people on your team to excel... The best thing you can do is to let them figure some stuff out on their own. Hand holding and babysitting breeds an attitude of expectancy and laziness. SERIOUSLY! You may think you're being the best leader in the world. But the fact is you're not. It's not good for you. And it's not good for them. Of course you should help your team. But there's a line. People come to me all the time with various kinds of questions and problems. "Vic, I'm broke. Can you lend me?" Vic, I'm stuck with this. Can you do it for me?" Usually, the same people asking these questions didn't watch the videos, didn't even attempt to solve the problem themselves... AND WERE OUT AT THE BAR POUNDING SHOTS ALL NIGHT! Do yourself a favour. Do them a favour and let them figure that shit out on their own. They may hate you for it now. But one day they will thank you for it. DON'T ROB THEM OF THEIR CHANCE TO BECOME A MORE POWERFUL AND CREATIVE HUMAN BEING!

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For marketers and online entrepreneurs

HERE'S A FREE 6 FIGURE MARKETING LESSON...
This is the most life changing post I've written in a long
time.
Why?
Because it will give some of you the financial
breakthrough you've been desperately searching for.
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION AND TAKE NOTES.
Making money on the internet is simple. It all comes
down to something called positive expectancy. The rest is
just the wrapping paper we place that positive
expectancy in.
So what is positive expectancy?
" The skill of creating hope and making people feel like
they will take a positive step toward their desired
outcome if they follow your simple advice."
And that raises another question.
What do people desire?
Simple...
HAPPINESS!
But Ben, tell me why are they unhappy?
Ok you twisted my arm.
People are unhappy because they have lots of problems
stressing them out and keeping them awake at night.
Problems like:
-Debt
-Feeling trapped in the rat race
-Lack of free time
-Not enough vacations
-No control of their life
-Lack of choice
-Limited freedom
-Feeling undervalued and underappreciated
-Feeling unloved and disrespected
-Low self confidence and self belief
And the list goes on!
Now the thing is, people see money as the answer to all
those problems. But that in itself creates an even BIGGER
problem.
Why?
Because they don't understand how to get more money.
That's where your job comes in as a marketer.
You have to tap into their pain and problems and get
them to the desired outcome. You have to give them
what I like to refer to as their...
MOSES AND THE BURNING BUSH EXPERIENCE
You have to be the light.
You have to be the almost supernatural voice that calls
out to them in their wilderness of hopelessness.
You have to point them to the promised land.
And the way you do that is by showing them how to get...
1)Traffic
2)Leads
3)Conversions
Because that = money = choice = freedom...
AND FREEDOM = COMPLETE HAPPINESS!
It's as simple as that.
Take this post. Study it. Apply it. All the answers are here
for you to see. It's up to you to act on them.

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14 Tips To Make The Rest Of 2015 Your Most Productive Year Yet

In case you haven't noticed, we're a little obsessed with productivity.
To make your quest for a more productive self this year something you can really work towards, we asked some of the most productive we work with all year what they do in their everyday lives to get so much done. Here's what they had to say:

1. Visualize And Set Up Your Day The Night Before

Before emotional intelligence expert and author of The Other Kind of Smart Harvey Deutschendorf goes to sleep, he says he makes some basic decisions about the next day like what he’ll wear, eat for lunch, and the route he plans on taking to work. "The less time and energy you take to focus on routine, everyday things, the more you will have to work on what is important," he explains.
He also suggests visualizing what exactly you plan to accomplish the next day. "Become extremely focused upon making this an ongoing part of your routine and you will surprise yourself by how much more you accomplish," he says.

2. Surround Yourself With Productive People

"It's very easy for me to work alone, but I find that my productivity is maximized when I surround myself with productive people I don't know," says Vivian Giang, a freelance journalist who covers leadership, organizational psychology, and gender issues.
She says working around productive strangers keeps her accountable for staying on task. "I'm not browsing social media without purpose. I eat healthier, I don't take long breaks. I semi-compete with them because they always look like they're coming up with great ideas," she says.

3. Stand While You Work

When journalist and co-author of The Art of Doing Camille Sweeney had to interview 15 prominent newsmakers in just a few days, she made her calls standing. "This was the year I got out of my chair and on to my feet at my desk," she says. "It’s made such a difference."
Before Sweeny’s portable standing desk arrived in the mail, she improvised and put her laptop on top of a nine-inch square cardboard box on her desk. Now she alternates every few hours between sitting and standing.

4. Focus On One Word For The Year

"A one-word theme creates simplicity, clarity, and life change," says Jimmy Page, author of One Word That Will Change Your Life and vice president for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. "You’ll find renewed passion and purpose by achieving laser-like focus that drives productivity," he says.
"Best of all, one word transforms not only what you do, but who you become; it impacts every area of life—physical, relational, mental, spiritual, emotional, vocational, and financial. One-word focus eliminates distractions and turns our intentions into actions."

5. Maximize Your Most Creative Time

Sally Poblete, Founder and CEO of healthcare technology company Wellthie, tells us to first track and explore when we're the most creative and then create the space in our schedules to capitalize on it.
"I find that I think best in the mornings with fewer interruptions, so I do my best to keep that time open for brainstorming, writing, and meeting with others who inspire and challenge me," she says. "I save my necessary meetings for the afternoons, when I am energized from my morning productivity and excited to share my plans with my team."

6. Know When To Not Be Productive

On the flip side of this, Starr Million Baker, CEO and cofounder of PR agency INK Public Relations, points out that there are only so many things we can do in a day. More importantly, she says, there are only so many things we should do in a day.
"Knowing when to say ‘that’s not going to happen today’ is a skill that has given me a greater ability to have a laser focus on the stuff that really, truly must get done." Baker says she uses the task management tool Todoist to get all of her tasks in one place. she then religiously clicks the "postpone to…" button throughout the day as the clock marches towards 5 p.m. "I evaluate my tasks more than once a day as I work in a field full of fire drills, so priorities are ever-changing."

7. Slow down and reassess to avoid getting overwhelmed

"When you have more things to do than you can count," says Scott Eblin, author of Overworked and Overwhelmed, "it can quickly throw you into a fight or flight state of overwhelm. If you feel yourself getting spun up like that, stop before you start to do anything else." He instructs us to think of STOP as the acronym for Slow down, Take three deep breaths, Observe what needs to be done most, and then Proceed.

8. Prioritize what matters

One of the secrets to feeling satisfied with your productivity according to Erin Baebler and Lara Galloway, certified life and business coaches and the co-authors of Moms Mean Business: A Guide to Creating a Successful Company and Happy Life as a Mom Entrepreneur, is spending the majority of your time on the things that really matter to you—your priorities.
"When you’re clear on what you want to accomplish and the actions that will get you there, it becomes much easier to decide what needs to get done and what can either wait for later or not be done at all. Plus, and here’s where the real productivity comes in, we are much more motivated to work on things that truly matter and therefore able to get more done in a shorter period of time."

9. Batch Tasks To Create Flow

As a writer, The Five-Minute Mom's Club: 105 Tips to Make a Mom's Life Easier author Stephanie Vozza’s day consists of research, interviews, first drafts, and final edits. She’s more productive she says if she can stay in one task mind, instead of changing gears. "I try to schedule my day around one activity; a day of interviews, for example, or a morning of writing and an afternoon of research. I discovered this after interviewing Steven Kotler, author of The Rise of Superman for Fast Company, who writes about how being in a state of flow can quintuple your productivity."

10. Be Intentional About Email

Before opening any email, cofounder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics Neil Patel says you should first ensure you have the time to respond to it. "If you decided to respond later on, it will cause you to have to re-read the email, which is an inefficient use of your time," he says.
And remember that most emails don’t need an immediate response—or any reply at all—says Zendesk CEO and founder Mikkel Svane. "Take a breath and wait a minute before jumping into the fray on group emails and non-urgent issues. You’ll find that sometimes the most powerful response is no response at all. You’ll suddenly have more time for the replies that deserve your time and attention."

11. Do Whatever It Takes To Block Out Distractions

Vozza likes to spend an hour unplugged from the Internet, removed from distractions like email and Facebook, and sometimes ventures to spend an entire workday offline. "I discovered how much time the Internet sucks when my service went out for a day; in six uninterrupted hours I finished work that would normally take me two or three days. If you need to check something online, make a list and when you restore your service look up everything at once."
David Johnson, COO and CFO of craft brewery Fireman's Brew, Inc., suggests simply closing your door. "You'll find that it's much easier to make progress on your own work when you're not being pulled in a number of different directions."

12. Create A List Of Easy To-Dos

Carson Tate, author of Work Simply: Embracing the Power of Your Productivity Style, makes a list of tasks that can be done in 15 minutes or less. She suggests we keep this list with us at all times so we can convert those odd moments of time like waiting in line or waiting at the dentist’s office into productive microsegments of work.
"This list is also your go to when you feel the tug of procrastination. You can quickly complete a task, which gives you a little energy boost, helping you transition into working on a more challenging or complex project."

13. Create A List Of Your Most Important Tasks

Speaking of lists, Jones Loflin and Todd Musig, coauthors of Getting to It, have another kind of list to make you more productive: an IT list, or Important Things list. This list requires us to identify the three tasks or activities that would most effectively move us toward the accomplishment of our highest priorities.
"So much of today’s productivity depends on having the mental clarity to fully focus on the task of the moment. That can be difficult if there are items you haven’t addressed and they are holding some of your mental resources hostage." Loflin and Musig offer these tips to help determine if any of our ITs may be limiting our productivity:

• An Essential IT: Something that if accomplished would significantly increase your ability to focus
• An Avoidance IT: This could be something you keep putting off, but your mind won’t let it go
• An Incomplete IT: Our brains are wired to not let go of something until it’s finished. Once you finish the task, your mental resources can be fully focused on the task in front of you.

14. Consistently Self-Evaluate

"Rigorous self-evaluation is the beginning, middle, and end of self-management. It is the essential habit of self-improvement," says Bruce Tulgan, author of The 27 Challenges Managers Face.
Tulgan instructs us to constantly assess our own productivity, the quality of our work, and our behavior. We should continuously ask ourselves: "What can I do to get more work done faster?" "Should I revisit my priorities?" "Do I need to focus my time better?" "How can I eliminate time wasters?" "Do I need better time budgets?" and "Do you need to make better plans?"

"But remember: Self-evaluation is an engine of self-improvement only if you use the information you’ve learned from it," he says. "Start on one small goal at a time—the smaller the better. Once you meet that goal, take another small step. Self-management and self-improvement come one small step at a time. It’s a never-ending process because there is always room to improve."
Hopefully these tips will make for a more productive 2015.
Do you have any tips of your own? Let us know in the comments.

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