Take Permission

The Right Tools & Mindset For Success

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How to save time by creating WordPress bookmarks

If you want to create more content can capture ideas when they come to you then creating shortcuts (in this case bookmarks) can help tremendously. There are a few things I do every day on my site that it made sense for me to make shortcuts to (in the form of bookmarks).  Here are three things I do a lot with my site and how you can create bookmarks to save you time and create more content.

I add new posts.

Upload new images.

I create new Pretty Links, which allows you to create custom URLs.

Ugly link: http://kolakube.com/?a_aid=traub&a_bid=4f4321b4
Pretty link: http://www.takepermission.com/theme

You can see in the picture below where I’m dragging the highlighted option to my bookmarks bar. It creates a small globe as I drag it.
Keep reading to learn how to create these shortcuts

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Consuming content with Instapaper (How I Work Series)

Does anyone else see the irony that reading sites that are supposed to make you productive can have the opposite effect?  For fans of GTD (Getting Things Done) and sites like LifeHacker.com, productivity can be a wonderful pursuit but are usually a phenomenal waste of time. Ironically LifeHacker.com, which is supposed to help me “hack” my life to be more productive, used to distract me endlessely.  Instead of  just spending time on web sites and telling you to follow a Franklin Covey planner (I don’t own one) I’m sharing on how I get things done in my business.  Here’s why I’m sharing my work tips;

Reason #1 – Systems are critical to productivity. Even if you write poetry or paint canvases for a living you still need systems. If artists needs sytems, habits and structure to be productive then the rest of us do too. What’s your system for checking email, corresponding on Twitter, processing new customers or forecasting your cash flow? Yeah, we need systems.

Reason #2 – The more I share about how I work the more accountability I have to keep those systems going. I like to practice what I preach because I like to preach/teach a lot.

How I read articles when I don’t have time to read articles.

– Go to Instapaper.com
– Click on the “Register” button on the top right and get an account
– On the right side of the page under the “Folders” section click on “Add Folder”
– Name your folders by topics that you have interest in. Keep the names short.

Here are my folders;

BetterBiz – Tips on improving productivity, marketing
BlogThisAT.com – Articles that are great sources of blog posts
For client – Articles my consulting clients would benefit from hearing about
Personal – uh, personal stuff
Post it – Articles that I want my Virtual Assistant to Tweet about. I also add comments to these articles once they’re in my Instapaper list. He uses that text and then creates a link to the article using Hootsuite and schedules the tweets to go out throughout the day. More on Hootsuite in future posts.
SMStrategy – More specific articles about my social media strategy
BTWshow – Articles for my Business Tech Weekly podcast

– Click one of your folders
– On the right side of your page you’ll see “Folder tools”. Drag the folder name in that section to your bookmarks toolbar and put it in a folder. Repeat this with all of your folder bookmarklets. When you click on the bookmarklet the page/article will be automatically added to that folder.
– To read your articles:

Four ways to visit your Instapaper.com account.

Email them to your Kindle (see “Extras” button on Instapaper.com for instructions).
Read them on your iPad with the Instapaper App
Download them to your Kindle automatically with Ephemera (mac only)
Download them to your Kindle automatically with Calibre (mac or pc) using this process

Happy reading. Let me know if this helps.

Oh yeah, don’t forget to take action on what you learn. The world needs you to ship.

HERE’S A SIMILAR POST I DID ON INSTAPAPER

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Gmail Master Tips #1: How to search for messages with attachments

Gmail is my go to tool for email and it should be yours too. If it is then you may not know the true power of its features so here’s a good one. Have you ever wanted to search for a message from a friend that you know had an attachment included but found yourself sorting through dozens of messages looking for the small attachment icon? This video explains how you can search for messages with attachments using an advanced search term in your gmail “has:attachment”

So try it out and let me know if it works for you OK? If you’ve got more Gmail questions then you can email me at [email protected] and I’d be happy to help you out. I’m a few days away from releasing “Mastering Your Gmail”, which is an hour and ten minute tutorial. Stay tuned for that as well.

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How to add To Do List Templates in Basecamp by 37Signals

For those who use 37signals’ Basecamp service to manage projects this tip might save you some time. If you have repetitive processes for clients/teams you can create templates of to do lists and import them to projects with just a few steps. Here’s how. Let me know if it works for you and specifically what lists you’re automating.