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Personal Development Blog Now Has Podcasts!

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A few weeks ago I’ve taken part in one of the many competitions Darren Rowse regularly sets up at his ProBlogger blog. This time I was extremely lucky to be one of the 3 winners, and the prize is really something I’ve longed to have on this blog for quite some time: professionally made podcasts, courtesy of First Blog Media!

The first edition of a podcast is now up, and it’s based on the 3 Rules To Help You Fight Procrastination article.

What is a podcast?

Podcasts are usually quite short (5-15min) audio recordings accessible from your website or through one of the many podcast catalogues. Podcasts are very similar to blogs in a way that they’re like an information channel which you can subscribe to, thus constantly getting the latest editions for you to listen to. Many blogs have grown their popularity due to podcast service; at the same time, many podcasts became even more successful than the original idea or a website which started them off.

How do your listen to a podcast?

Websites usually have some kind of a widget – an on-page audio player with basic controls (play/pause, seek and volume) which allows you to start listening to a podcast. For my blog, you will find a widget like this in the sidebar:

To get started, simply click the play button!

What can you expect from Personal Development blog podcasts?

There will be 2 monthly podcasts, initially going back and voicing some of my previous posts, but with a plan to start covering new articles.

Right now, it is planned to cover the posts from the website, which means podcasts will be yet another way for you to get the best of the information I have to offer. I think, however, that there’s nothing wrong with posting unique podcasts in the future – something which has never been posted on my pages before.

Tune in to the first edition, and let me know what you think!

How Weight Training Enhances Your Quality Of Life

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This is a guest post by Mark McManus from MuscleHack.com. Mark is a muscle and nutrition enthusiast who has spent years in independent research finding the most effective strategies for building the body of your dreams. Mark will help you build muscle & lose fat. He is the author of the book ‘Total Six Pack Abs‘, the guaranteed system for burning fat & sculpting chiseled abs.

There is something you can do which can improve virtually every area of your life.

Weight-training

You say, “Weight training can enhance my quality of life?” Yes it can.

Any fitness program can, but here’s a few brief reasons why weight-training beats them all…

  1. Less fat, more muscle. Weight training burns calories all day long. You’ll lose fat and build muscle. Ladies, you’ll get that toned look. Fellas, you’ll be brawnier and more defined. With resistance training, it’s not just about weight-loss but about body recomposition, losing body-fat and gaining lean muscle tissue.
  2. It’s not exhausting. Long-distance running, for example, is fatiguing to say the least. If you workout correctly, you can be in and out of the gym in 30-45 mins max, taking 2 minute breaks between sets.
  3. Increased Strength. Weight-training obviously beats them all for strength gains, this can come in handy in your every day life.

Ok, with that said, how can training like a bodybuilder improve your life in general? Glad you asked.

Here’s 5 ways weight training can enhance your quality of life:

  1. More energy – Energy begets energy. People tend to see the amount of energy they feel as only a result of calorie intake. However, you know as well as I do, that movement and activity make you feel energetic. Lack of movement makes you lethargic, regardless of how much you eat – it’s simply a fact of physiology. Movement in the form of exercise, causes the desire to move more, creating a positive feedback cycle of energy and enthisiasm. With weight training, you’ll perform brief workouts almost every day which ensures that you’ll feel vibrant and passionate in all other areas of your life!
  2. Excitement – As readers of this blog, you know all about goal-setting. However, how many of your goals produce quick, tangeable results? Using an effective workout plan can produce remarkable results. In a few short weeks you can see your body change before your eyes! I don’t know of many things more exciting than that.
  3. Confidence – Looking good makes you feel confident. It’s not vanity, it’s empowerment. Apart from the fact that your physical body will make you feel confident, you’ll begin to ask yourself, “If I can control my body with the conscious use of my will, what else can I control?” This is the beginning of unbounded confidence and a mental attitude that will propel you to success.
  4. Sexual attractiveness – No point in dodging this one. Your physical appeal and magnetism will increase. That’s great news for single people and also great news for the spouses of those of you in relationships ;)
  5. Better Health. Here’s some health benefits of weight-training:
    • Increased muscular strength
    • Reduced body fat mass and increased lean body mass
    • Strengthened tendons and ligaments
    • Positive changes in lipid profile (cholesterol & triglycerides)
    • Improved bone strength and density
    • Improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity (warding off diabetes)
    • Increased metabolic rate – You’ll burn more calories even when resting
    • Decreased blood pressure

So what are you waiting for? You can get your free workout plan here, get started with a bodybuilding diet, and head over to the bodybuilding forum anytime where you’ll meet people who’ll be glad to offer help and support.

Online tool review: GTDagenda

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I’ve recently been approached by Dan from GTDagenda.com, and spent some time looking at his online service.

I’d like to share my findings with you in case you’re looking for the next online tasks and projects management tool which follows some of the best ideas of David Allen‘s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach.

What is GTDagenda?

GTDagenda is a new online tool for managing your tasks. It can be used as a simple to-do list tool, or can easily be incorporated into projects-based workflow. To help you stay on track, it supports setting goals and helps you manage your calendar.

GTDagenda - Projects view

Naturally, there are some great features inherited from the world of GTD: contexts, projects and next actions are all here for your convenience.

Frankly, contexts and projects aren’t anything special these days – pretty much every second online tasks management tool has them, but Next Actions, surprisingly, is still very hard to come by. In GTDagenda, Next Actions are put right in the main menu of the website, allowing for instant access to all the next actions in your projects. I believe Next Actions is the default view of GTDagenda once you log in:

GTDagenda Next Actions

At the moment, you can have as many Next Actions for the same project as you like, but I’ve found that you can nicely prioritize them if you use the priority field (can be seen in the screenshot – priorities are the numbers in black-coloured bubbles).

Adding tasks is done in a very standard way, but all the basic are covered: parent project, due date, priority and even a text note for each task, as well as a Next Action flag:

I expect that the bulk tasks creation feature will be implemented very soon, cause adding a few tasks in a go for a particular project would be really great.

Unique features of GTDagenda

Checklists

I really liked this feature, it’s not another representation of your daily tasks, but rather a different way to look at your regular activies. For example, I found it very convenient for tracking my weekly gym attendance or for making sure I work regularly on my future posts for my blogs.

It’s a very simple interface which allows you to create and update as many checklists as you like:

GTDagenda Checklists

Schedules

Schedules allow you to plan your days better. You can create as many daily or weekly schedules as you like, and they should help you manage your time through the day better:

GTDagenda Schedule

For example, you can schedule your writing time, your lunch break or your gym session, just to get an idea of how your day will look. You can similarly block time for any other activities without going into too much detail. But, based on your schedule, you can then expect to spend appropriate amount of time working on specific tasks.

I may want to concentrate on a specific topic for my writing today, and will have a task called “Write more on GTD workflow” in my tasks list, however in my daily schedule I’ll simply know that it’s time to get busy writing based on my “Writing time” slot.

Neither Checklists not Schedules are mapped into projects or tasks, however you can specify which project a particular schedule should be attributed to. Like I said, these features simply allow you to experiment and optimize your time – based on your expectations and not on the actual tasks lists.

User friendly features of GTDagenda

The service itself is very young and is still very much in development – new features are added weekly, and you can keep track of them using this page: GTDagenda – What’s New.

There are some really nice features which make this service universally pleasant – print and email options, for example. Printing allows you to print your projects, tasks or next action lists as a nice-looking list. I thing Next Actions are a great list to print – will help you stay on track even if you’re away from your browser, for example.

Conclusion

GTDagenda is a promising project. It is being actively developed and has good chances of becoming a really useful tool for your daily use. There are different plans – one free and two paid ones, so all options are covered. If the pace of development stays the same for the next few months, I see a really bright future for GTDagenda.

I don’t think it’s good enough for me to jump off my Vitalist account, but it’s going to be good enough for many who are just looking around. I’ll definitely revisit the tool once it gets HTTPS access for access security and AJAX for better interface experience, but the set of core features is a great mix and so it has a lot of potential.

Exam Success Tips on The University Blog

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Just noticed that The University Blog has posted a great compilation of exam success tips for students. I think it’s an excellent read, and find it relevant to many areas of your life which require your concentration, not just the exam week.

Here’s a link: Exam Success: Top Tips from Brilliant Blogs (I’m really honored to be among the brilliant company there, thanks for including my tip!)

Giveaway of the Day: FREE Evernote Beta!

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Evernote Beta

I’ve been using the Evernote organizer for quite some time, it’s the best offline organizer I’ve seen – even the free edition. You can create, organize and easily search notes with text, web clips, images, handwriting and even digital ink!

Evernote guys have been working on online version of their organizer for the past few months, and have released the Evernote service as a private (invitation-only) beta. There’s a browser version of the service with web-clipping add-ons for typical browsers, and there are clients to access the Evernote Beta from Windows and Mas OS X.

For today only, the Giveaway of the Day site is doing a promotion of the Evernote products: you can download the latest full version of their Evernote 2.2 organizer (full version means you have a functionality which automatically recognizes and indexes text in all the images of your notes in Evernote, among many other improvements), and – the best news – you can get an invitation to the Evernote Beta service!

I’ve already activated my account, and you have 15 hours left to do the same if you’re interested. If you’re after the traditional Evernote software (regular price is $49.99, by the way!), be sure to download it right away as it has an activation which will only work for another 15 hours.

If you want to avail of these amazing offers, please go to the Giveaway of the Day: Evernote beta page.