No, you didn’t misread the title and technology does work for productive measures as well. But if you let it, you can seriously damage anything that resembles real work.

Here are a couple great ways that can help you to do less while giving you the psychological benefits as well as the physical appearance of working.

When you actually get into a project, wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of an alarm or notification when you get a new email. You know just something to pull you out of the zone while demanding an immediate response.

Then once you have your email program open, perhaps then you could have a couple rss feeds that shoot right in. This demands immediate attention as well, those articles aren’t going to read themselves!! There could be a small to large number of precious time consuming links contained within or perhaps there are thoughts and ideas sparked that send you on a wild never ending goose chase. Don’t forget to check your stocks a couple times while you’re at it.

Later on down the road an hour or two you might get back to whatever you were supposed to have been working on.

The other option is to use technology to your advantage. Only use it when you can afford to. Turn off your email notifications, close your browser, and let’s get things done.

Just recently I was reminded that it is important to back up files that you may have stored anywhere. And of course I learned this lesson the hard way. Another domain name that I run was hacked into and the page was trashed.

I made two mistakes on my side that allowed this to happen. I picked an easy username and easy password and I didn’t have a recent backup. Fortunately for me the page was very small, under 2Mb and most of the content was saved on my computer. It was only a matter then of a little redesign and uploading it.

Passwords – For this particular site I used a password that had some of the keywords of the site in it. Bad Idea! People with malicious intent can run programs that simply try plugging in different words from a dictionary to gain access. Here are some password hints to make it harder to do.

1. Use letters and numbers – Adding 0-9 exponentially adds more possibilities to go through as you add more characters to your password.
2. Don’t use whole words – The easiest way to get through passwords is to plug in words.
3. Don’t use the same password for multiple places – If someone figures out one password, what’s to stop them from trying it everywhere and messing up things for you all over?
4. Use acronyms – If you really like Triscuit crackers, your password might contain, ‘bwgwc’ standing for ‘Baked Whole Grain Wheat Crackers’ or you could use lyrics from a song, or take a saying.
5. Use harder acronyms – Instead of taking the first letter, you could make it harder by going for the second, third, or last. In our above example we would have ahrhr, koaec, or dents; however I wouldn’t recommend the last one that makes up an actual word.
6. Use feeling – If you can push letters in some sort of a pattern on the keyboard without even thinking about it, that could be a good start. For example if I roll my left hand right now I get asdf, and as long as I am using a qwerty keyboard, that action will always give me the same thing. I could go anywhere on the keyboard and punch in a pattern and not know the password, but have something hard to duplicate.

Combine the above tips to make the strongest password you possibly can! On Thursday I’ll have the second part of this ‘Remember not to forget’ set, backing up files.

The next time you are surfing the net, take a look at some of the websites you are on. If it wasn’t for the internet, could that company survive? Well it’s not fair to ask that, but how about we modify that to, ‘If it wasn’t for the internet, could that company prosper?’

In a world without the internet, all the content would have to be delivered through the traditional routes. You would get news and articles from magazines, newspapers, direct mail, and television shows.

Fortunately we do have the internet and you can get your Aridni articles quite easily! And we don’t have to print off a thousand copies of articles everyday.

While chatting with a friend the other day, we came up with a great idea for a ‘webusiness’ that we could work on. That is basically any business model that is reliant on the internet to be successful. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo are webusinesses. Could you imagine if they weren’t? How about MySpace? That would be a disaster if everything wasn’t organized neatly in databases.

After hammering out a few key details and determining the additional work that would be required for the new project, we decided to go ahead. I purchased the domain name and hope to have a decent start by next weekend.

Even if I have to put the idea off for a month, domain names are only $7 a year at Godaddy. Hosting is dirt cheap as well. So there is no reason to delay setting up your webusiness today. Or at least you could register the domain name and get a jump on your neighbors. The amount that you would be out if you decided to terminate the project early is quite minimal.

Every project has to start with an idea, what do you do with yours?

We talk a lot about ideas for growing wealth. And if you stop to think about it, I’m pretty sure every plan of attack can break down into one of the four:

1. Business—sell yourself, your product, your idea, or your services
2. Investing—gaining bonds, growing interest, gambling stocks and CDs
3. Real estate—I never thought of this method as a kid…own properties
4. Internet—extend the possibilities. A lot of people are making fast money on brilliant ideas. Even less classy ideas like collegehumor.com has brought in millions for its authors

Don’t spend every minute and dime focusing on one of these money makers, though. I’ve been trying to think of anyone who’s wealthy that only used one of these methods. I can’t think of a soul. Therefore, diversify your avenues just as you diversify your stock portfolio.

When you work on a project for an hour lets say you can produce one unit of work In the same amount of time your friend Wanda can produce 1.1 units of work and John can produce .9 units of work.

If working alone you can produce three units in on hour, then working together you could hypothetically be able to complete three and a half or four units.

This is all dependent on how well your coworkers know each other, their individual personalities, and views toward each other. If the balance here is not there it is easy to go flying off the wrong direction and only produce a fraction of the amount.

You need everyone to keep the other members in check and accountable. They should be able to rely on each other to stay motivated. If Wanda and John are working hard on the project, I don’t want to fall behind or look like a slacker, so I’ll work hard on the project.

People will get tired eventually or overly social so it’s not quite a perpetual motion machine, but it’s the closest the business world can get to it.

Creating something greater than the total of all it’s members is also the goal of Tribe Wanted. 5,000 people are being brought together 100 at a time to live on an island and attempt to create a better economy in Fiji.

So as I have pointed out, and tribewanted is off to prove, 2+2=5 for extreme values of 2

Do you have anything sitting in your Paypal account? Do you treat this same as the rest of your money? Most people seem to discount these funds and are not quite as frugal with them.

But here is the kicker, it is real money. It may take a little longer for it to show up in your hand as cash, but it is money nonetheless.

People are more willing to split with Paypal funds because they are sitting there doing nothing. People are always willing to empty out their account for purchases before going for their credit card.

People don’t get hit by the ‘guilt factor’ nearly as bad as using credit cards, bank accounts, or cash. For entrepreneurs this is a great thing.

What I am getting at here is that it is a good idea to accept this form of payment on your website. It’s spent like Monopoly money, and cashed in like real money.