Whether you use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that comes default with Windows Operating Systems, Safari with your Mac, or Firefox there is one simple change that you can make to your browser that will increase your productivity by an order of magnitude.

This change does NOT require you to add any of the multitudes of toolbars and widgets available for your browser. It does NOT take longer than 30 seconds. It WILL help you to stay focused and get done what you need to get done.

Think about your internet usage habits. When you first turn on, or resume your computer and bring up your browser, what do you see?

If you are like most people, you see a start page that includes all the latest news stories, human interest stories, and top trends in fashion, sports and entertainment. It takes more will power then I have got to keep from clicking on links that are interesting, and before I know it, hours have passed and whatever it was I set down at the computer to do, has not been done.

The way to keep this from happening is to set your home page to either something very non-distracting, like Google’s search page (NOT their iGoogle page or your gmail page), a blank page, or a page that you make.

This is easy to do.

First, navigate to the page that you want as your home page. You can do this by clicking on the location field, and entering in the url of that page. To use google, enter in http://www.google.com. If you are using file on your computer, the URL would look like: file://c:/mypage.html (assuming that you have a file named “mypage.html” in the root of your C drive.)

On the latest version of IE (Internet Explorer) find the icon in the tool bar that looks like a house. To the left of it is a down arrow that will pull down a menu when clicked. One of the options on that menu is “Add or Change Home Page”. When you click on that, one of the options is to “Use this webpage as your only home page” Check that and then click “yes” and then you are all done. The next time you open your browser, it will be set to a page that keeps you more productive and on task.

The following video shows how to do what I am talking about:

I have a young son who is a bit behind his age group developmentally. One of his favorite things is to listen to me sing. Very sweet right? Well after two hours or so of the same song, it gets a little old. So I recorded myself singing the song into the computer, and then whenever he begs me to sing it, I can boot up my laptop, and put the song on continuous play, and he is happy and I can work.

Except like most things in life, it is not that simple.

Now whenever he sees me sit down with my laptop, he associates that with the song, and sits besides me, and demands that I play it.

Which seems kind of sweet also, I mean, I do like him to sit beside me. But one of the things I do for work is record screen shot – how to videos, where the screen is recorded along with my narration. And of course, I can’t do that while he is listening to that song.

So, I found another thing that is a favorite of his. Popcorn. We have a hot air popcorn popper and one of his favorite things is to watch a batch of popcorn pop. But even more, he likes to sit down and taste the bowl of popcorn.

Yes, I mean “taste” and not “eat.” That would be better.

You see, he has an oral aversion, which basically means that he has a really hard time swallowing things. We feed him through a special tube that is in his stomach wall. But he doesn’t mind putting things (like popcorn) in his mouth, he just won’t swallow.

The dogs in our house LOVE him. Because he tastes, chews, masticates, and thoroughly slimerizes his food, and then spits it out somewhere. If a dog is around, he gives it to them. (Unless I am sitting next to him, then I am his first choice.) But if not, he just spits it back in the bowl. This can make sharing popcorn with him quite an adventure. Is that extra butter? Or is it one that he has thoroughly tasted?

And so while I have distracted him from wanting that song played (over and over and over and over) he is sitting next to me trying to share his popcorn, giving me all the pieces he has tasted even though I tell him to give them to the dogs instead. It makes it hard to get things done. So I better type this while I can.

Timothoy Ferris has a great blog post on
traveling with children. I am going to go show my wife.

This was a wonderful Christmas, we were able to get each of our children the thing(s) they wanted.

And we were able to get the Christmas dinner dishes done without the usual whining and complaining.

We played the dishes game.

This is game is deceptively simple, and surprisingly fun. It works if there are at least 4 people participating, but the more the merrier. It makes the chore of cleaning up the kitchen and washing dishes after a big meal into a fun activity. Here is how it is played.

We use a pen and paper. One person is “it” or the writer. That person chooses a number between 1 and 100 and writes it down. Then everyone else takes turns trying to guess the number. The writer tells everyone after their guess if the actual number is higher or lower. When someone guesses the number, then they go start the dishes. Then a new writer is chosen and a new number is written and everyone (except the person currently doing dishes) takes turn guessing again. When someone guesses the number, they trade places with the person doing the dishes.

But here is the catch. If a number right next to the writer’s number is guessed, then the writer has to trade places with the person doing dishes.

So, if I was the writer and I wrote down “19″ then the first person guessed “50″ I would say “lower” the next person guesses “10″ and I say “higher”. If someone then guessed “19″ I would show them my written down number and they would go do the dishes. If someone guessed “18″ or “20″ then I would go do the dishes. After each change of the dishwasher, a new writer takes their turn.

It is more fun than it sounds, and it is a great way to avoid complaining and/or help out the host.

If you have more than 6-8 people, it works best to have 2 doing the dishes and rotate through them.

I learned of this game from my sister-in-law, and having grown up grudgingly taking my turn at doing the dishes, and watching my children do all they can to avoid the dishes, (I wonder who they learned that from!) I really appreciate the goodwill and fun it brings to a what has been a chore to avoid or complain about.

Aaron Brandon asked about how to stay motived while working on business. One of the answer’s (Aaron’s favorite one) was Relying on motivation is risky - that is a new blog for me and one that I want to spend more time investigating.

I had a lot of fun with my 15 and 16 year old kids last night sharing music videos from the 80’s, mainly weird Al songs. I would show them the original song, and then the weird Al parody of it.

So I decided to collect some of them here.

Original: Michael Jackson’s “Bad”

Weird Al: “I’m Fat”

Original: Michael Jackson’s “Beat It’

Weird Al: “Eat It”

Original: Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”

Weird Al: “Like a Surgeon”

And not from the 80’s but still, a couple of my favorites (Weird Al’s versions, not the originals)

Original: Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”

Weird Al: “Amish Paradise”

Chamillionaire’s “Riding Dirty”

Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy”

And just for fun, a Weird Al Polka Medley:

I am thankful for silliness and for kids to share it with
Happy Thanksgiving!

This is short because at noon EST the video goes away and a sales
page replaces it.

http://stevelikes.com/arbitrage

check it out!

I administer my own dedicated server that has this and many other domains on it.

Part of the problem of doing this is when the server goes down, It is up to me to get it back up.

this is definitely NOT good practice for a Freedom Business System

I am working on changing this.