I have been using my MacBook pro for 7 months now and I am a proud customer. Though I do most of my work in Windows, I use Mac for personal use like browsing, importing photos (I just love iPhoto), organizing personal files and most importantly – syncing my iPhone 4 with it.

After a while I realized that my MacBook is a great piece of machine except that it is slow. I noticed that I do not use much space on the hard drive. I do not have many apps installed and mostly the laptop is just used to stay online.

The most straight forward upgrade for any computer in terms of speed is SSD. To explain the benefits of SSD, I need to derail from the topic of this post, so I will save that for later. I bought this SSD from Delta Peripherals in Chennai for Rs.5,300 Approx. I did not need a bigger capacity SSD and this fit nicely in my budget.

The Upgrade Process

I thought that opening a MacBook Pro and installing an SSD was something like a brain surgery, but it turned out to be much simpler than I thought. It’s just that the components inside are so small and you need delicate hands. Especially while removing the old hard disk, you need to handle the SATA cable carefully.

I will not go through the whole process of upgrading, as it is already covered in the video below. If you want to buy the screw drivers in India you can buy Jackly 31 in 1 screw driver set which is available in ebay.in for about Rs.100

After physically installing the drive I inserted my Mac OS X Lion DVD into the optical drive. If you have upgraded to Lion and do not have the .dmg file you can get one from the internet.

Just burn the .dmg file into a DVD and you have the installation medium ready. I booted up my MacBook Pro using the DVD.  I am following this procedure because I am doing a clean install and taking my MacBook Pro to a fresh condition without carrying any of the excess baggage (used software and unorganized files) in my old setup.

You first have to partition the new SSD in Mac Extended Journaled format. You can do this from the disk utility provided in the installation disc itself. Just click erase and select the format. Erase it and you are done. Close the disk utility and you can move on to the installation.

The installation took around 20 minutes to complete. Another 10 minutes for me to enter the details and I was done. Now my boot up speed is at least twice as fast and I am going to sleep today with great satisfaction – having done the best possible upgrade for my MacBook Pro at a very affordable price.

Ever wondered how to connect you Mac to the internet using Airtel Mobile Office (GPRS) via Bluetooth? Hopefully I have found the solution and this setup seems to be much more stable than the Windows – Nokia PC Suite – USB connection.

First you have to make the correct settings in your Phone. I am not sure about other makes, but here I am demonstrating in the following video. with my Nokia E5.

The process should be similar in most of the other Nokia phones I guess.

Next, you have to pair your phone to your Mac via bluetooth. I tried to connect my phone to my Mac via USB but it did not get recognized. So Bluetooth is the way to go. Click on the bluetooth icon on the top right of your screen and then click Setup bluetooth device.

Select your device from the table.

Pair it using the codes.

Enter the APN as airtelgprs.com. No need to enter username and password.

If all iz well, you will get the following screen.

Go to network settings via system preferences and select Bluetooth DUN. Enter the Phone number as *99# . No need for username and password. Make sure to select show modem status in the menu bar.

Go to advanced tab and enter airtelgprs.com in the APN field.

Click on the PPP tab and make sure the settings are as follows.

Now go ahead and connect to the internet as shown below. Enjoy.

I’ve been an internet marketer for the past 4 years and throughout my business journey I’ve come across many productivity tips. I’ve learnt from many experts. I’ve read many books on the subject.

Productivity is a topic which doesn’t have any solid foundation. Each person approaches this topic in a different manner and a piece of advice that works for one person may not work for another person. If you’re a reader of productivity books yourself, you’ve probably found that many of the tips that are shared contradict each other. I’ve tried many different productivity techniques and strategies and I’ve compiled my own list with my favourite productivity tips.

1. Empty Your Mind

As you may know, our mind has a short-term memory and a long-term memory. We all have a lot of tasks to do in our daily lives. We remember most of the tasks in our short-term memory. Our short-term memory is very much like RAM memory in our computer. Just like with the RAM memory, our short-term memory is limited and therefore there’s a limit to how much data that we can hold(how many things that we can remember) at any particular time.

The more your short-term memory is occupied, the less you will be able to focus on the task at hand. When we restart our computer, the RAM memory is cleared and as a result, our computer performs better. We can do practically the same thing with our short-term memory.

This is usually done by creating a to-do list.

To create a to-do list, just simply jot down any tasks (the phone call that you have to make, the bills that you have to pay, etc.) that you have to do. As soon as you’ve put down everything on a paper, you will feel more productive instantly. And once you’ve made sure that you will revisit the to-do list at a later time, you will be free from the thoughts that you put down on the paper.

You can also add another step to the creating of your to-do list. You can divide the items on your to-do list into two categories; do it now and do it someday soon. In the do it now category, you can list all the things that you have to do right away. While in the do it someday category, you can list all the things that you would like to do at some point in the future but that you don’t have the time to do immediately.

I personally jot all the things that I have to do on my whiteboard that’s in my office. That way it’s very easy for me to jot down new tasks that I have to do and it’s easy to erase the tasks that I no longer have to do. It’s important that you keep this to-do list in front of you all the time. I don’t recommend keeping your to-do list at a place where you don’t look often. Keep it at a place where it’s visible to you at all times.

That way you can review it often and you will also be reminded of the things that you have to do.

2. Have Two Monitors for Your Computer

I recommend going for big HD monitors (22” and above). Many people have proved that our productivity increases by up to 30% when we use two monitors. Dual monitors and supporting graphics adapters are not so costly nowadays.

3. Have a Home Office (if you work from home)

If you don’t have a traditional 9-5 job and are working from home, it’s not a good idea to work from your own bedroom or living room. It’s a much better idea to have your own little office that is situated a short walking distance from your home.

This will make your business and work feel a lot more important and professional. This way you can focus completely on work when you’re in your office and you can focus on entertainment and rejuvenation when you’re in your home.

If your working space is inside your home you won’t be able to concentrate and focus fully and you will also not be able to enjoy your time when you’re not working as much. It’s easy to get distracted when you’re working from home and as you know, distractions are productivity killers.

Another benefit of having your own office outside your home is that it will prevent you from working late into the night. If you’re at home in the late evening and you’re not feeling sleepy, you won’t be tempted to work if you have your office outside your home. This is a good thing because working late at night is not a good thing for our productivity and energy.

4. Avoid Taking Your Mobile Phone to your Home Office

If you leave your mobile phone at home and someone calls you, you can always get back to them when you get home later in the day. Receiving calls can be a major distraction and talking on the phone about non-business matters takes away from your time.

5. Limit your Working Time

This is the most important tip out of the 5. Following this piece of advice has been very useful in my business. If you’re a freelancer who works from home, which I think most of you who read this are, don’t think that you have 24 hours in a day.

I work for no longer than 5 hours a day. I do this because when you limit the time that you spend working, during your working hours you will be much more likely to just do the important tasks and you will value your time much more, therefore, be more productive.

If you don’t limit the time that you spend working each day, you will spend too much time on things that isn’t work such as chatting, browsing the Internet, and watching videos on YouTube. When you limit the amount of hours that you work, you will spend those hours doing real work.

This technique may sound counter-intuitive, but if you try it you will find that it’s a very powerful technique that you can use to increase your productivity. If you now spend 10 hours each day working, try to decrease that amount and you will probably find that you get a lot more things done each day.

A lot of very successful people follow this method and I think that you should give it a try.

These are just my tips for increasing productivity and I know that a productivity technique that works for me, may not work for you. Therefore I would like you to share your thoughts on productivity and share any piece of advice that you have in the comment section below.

Deepak,
The Productive Professional

When many people hear the term ‘personal blog’ they immediately think of a blog that has a writer who rambles and writes about what they had for lunch.

But a personal blog doesn’t have to be like that. A personal blog can give you a great way to share your opinion and thoughts on various important things, without feeling tied to just one subject like many bloggers do with their blogs.

There are many reasons why you would want to start a personal blog and here are 7 of them:

1. A personal blog can give you attention.

We humans like to get attention from other human beings. We’re social animals.

We live in a world where basically everyone has a Facebook or Twitter account so by starting a blog you will differentiate yourself from the masses.

Also, on your Facebook profile you’re just talking about yourself while with a personal blog, you can choose to write things that are valuable to the people who visit your blog.

2. You get the chance to form and lead a tribe.

A lot of people are without a good leader. We can all be leaders in various areas of life, but we all also need others to lead us in various areas of life ourselves.

E.g. a person may be a good leader in the business world while following another person when it comes to their health.

The Internet makes it very easy for us to communicate with others and starting a blog is a great opportunity to lead others in virtually any area of life.

3. You can blog about any topic

If you already have a blog that’s tied to a specific niche but you feel inspired to write a blog post on another subject, you can then use your personal blog to publish that post.

E.g. you may have a blog on the topic of mobile phone reviews but you feel inspired to write a blog post about a fancy car that you saw. Starting an entirely new blog on the subject of cars just to publish one post would be tiresome and annoying. Thanks to having a personal blog, you can just publish that blog post on your personal blog.

A personal blog is not a business venture so posts of any subject can be published there.

4. A personal blog can give you authority and respect from others

If you publish valuable, helpful content, it can really improve people’s opinion of you.

5. A personal blog is a great Networking Tool

A personal blog gives you a great new way to communicate and network with other people and it also gives other people a great and easy way to come in contact with you.

If you blog visitors like your content, they can then write a comment or send you an email and from there, a relationship between the two of you can be built.

6. It can help you find out what you’re passionate about.

It’s usually not that easy to find out what your passions are. A personal blog can be helpful in finding your passions because it lets you write and publish posts about various subjects and over time, you will see what type of blog posts that you enjoy creating the most.

You will discover that you naturally gravitate towards a certain subject and that can give you a great clue about what your passion is.

You may also discover at what subject you’re talented at based on the response and criticism from your blog readers.
If your personal blog helps you discover your interests and passions, you can then consider starting a new blog on the particular subject that you’re passionate about.

7. A place to receive constructive criticism

A personal blog can be a great way to get feedback and constructive criticism on your ideas.

Usually when you come up with a new idea, you just see the positive aspects of the idea while you don’t see the negatives.

E.g. if you’re thinking about starting a new business, you can then ask your blog readers about what they think about the idea. If a reader sees things from a different perspective than you do, chances are that they will voice their opinion and give you their feedback and thoughts on your idea.

But…

Remember that a personal blog should not be a business venture. The only motivation that you need is people reading your articles, benefiting from them in some way, and leaving comments.

If your primary goal is to make money through blogging, making money with a personal blog can be very difficult.

If you want to make money through blogging, it would most likely be a better idea to start a blog in a particular niche and trying to dominate that niche.

Most people who make a lot of money through personal blogs started those blogs quite a few years ago, and they were therefore able to build up a lot of traffic of new and regular readers to their blogs early on. Today however, there are simply so many blogs out there that it’s very difficult to make any significant money from a personal blog.

So when are you going to start your personal blog? Let me know!

Deepak,
The Personal Blogger