Category: Articles (Page 136 of 258)

Personal opinions and how-to’s that I’ve written both here and as contributions to other blogs.

Being More Efficient with Email

January 27, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Becoming more efficient with email is one of those things I think many of us aim to do. After all, we spend a significant chunk of our day working out of our inboxes, don’t we?

The ironic part of is we all complain about the amount of email we have in our inbox, but yet we’re also responsible for filling up other people’s inbox.

First, when it comes to the idea of inbox zero, I see that like a dog chasing its tail: Even if you’re to reach it, what then? The tail still exists, and more email comes in.

I’m being a bit facetious of course, but if I’m honest, I don’t worry about constantly being in a state of inbox zero. If I can reach it by the end of the work day, I’m good.

So, if your an Inbox user (and I am), how can we turn this into something that helps us be a bit more efficient with email?

In Defense of “In Case You Missed It” (or ICYMI)

January 21, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

In case you missed it, or ICYMI, is one of those new-fangled Internet terms that people use when tweeting something that they’ve previously tweeted. Ultimately, it’s a strategy to raise awareness to a group of followers that may have missed something when sharing it the first time.

It used to annoy me so much.

I get it. You’ve shared something. You want more people to see it. Why not just expect them to catch up on their feeds later?

What a bad attitude. I know. Bear with me, though.

Check your computer, check your phone.

As I’ve done before, I decided to give it a try. And you know what? It works. I’ve no problem admitting that I was wrong, nor do I have a problem defending the whole idea behind it.

If you’re a blogger or someone who has a following or is working on building a following or you just want people to see your content, then go for it.

Introducing Shorter Blog Posts

January 20, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

In a previous post, I began talking about how one of the things I wanted to begin doing this year is to introduce shorter blog posts.

Notes

Because the truth is with the amount of information coming from other blogs, Twitter, and whatever other social networks and news sources you read, odds are that this site is one that can also be easily marked as read or thrown into Pocket oblivion never to be read again.

And I’m perfectly okay with that! But if I can make any changes on my end to help mitigate that, then why not?

Tips For Generating Blog Post Ideas

January 15, 2016 / Tom / 0 Comments

Recently, Chris Lema published a blog post titled Have You Run Out of Blog Post Ideas? And if you haven’t read it, then I highly recommend it. (In fact, if you’re involved in WordPress, I highly recommend you subscribe to his blog.)

Running Out of Blog Post Ideas?

In the post, he shares some practical tips for how he comes up with ideas for blog posts. If you’re someone who’s looking to blog more regularly but aren’t sure how to do it, then the post gives you some great advice for how to help capture ideas and turn them into posts.

Since I try to blog daily and I try to make sure what I have to say isn’t something that’s meant to fill some type of weekly quota, I thought I’d follow suit and share how I go about coming up with ideas for posts and then turning them into actual posts.

Our Critics and WordPress and The Silver Screen

January 14, 2016 / Tom

As much as I love movies (and I’d venture to say that few people don’t), I rarely talk about them on this blog. I mean, there’s very little overlap between whatever it is we experience in the theater or via Netflix that crosses lines into what we, as those involved WordPress, do for a living.

Sure, I mean there are plenty of TV shows and movies that try to show some type of computing or programming angle – probably now more than ever – but it’s rarely worth mentioning unless you’re simply writing to make fun of it.

But good movies, you know, those that make you feel something or that connect with you on a level that doesn’t happen often can end up creating some type of connection between what you’ve seen on the screen and what you do for a living.

So for a moment, let’s pretend there’s some type of connection that can be made between our critics and WordPress and the movies that we watch.