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Wage Slave Rebel Dispatch
Category Archives: Productivity
10 Absolutely Essential Tools for Aspiring Online Entrepreneurs
Feel free to follow JD and Wage Slave Rebel on Twitter @jdbentley IN my 2+ years since leaving a regular 9-to-5 I’ve been able to create a pretty slick list of tools I use daily that help me get things done. These are tools (either physical or online) that I believe will help aspiring online…
Accomplishing Big Goals Without Getting Overwhelmed
Lately I’ve taken to hanging inspirational fliers all over the wall around my workspace to remind myself what I’m working for and why I must choose to do the things I do. When you are juggling multiple projects and have aspirations as high as mine, it can be difficult to keep track of everything. And it’s way too easy to get overwhelmed.
The Minimalist’s Guide to a Productive Linux Desktop, Part 1 – Installing Linux
I have been and will always be a staunch advocate of the open source philosophy. For those who don’t know what the open source philosophy is, essentially it’s the belief that the users of a piece of software have the right to edit, expand and redistribute it as long as they also provide the same rights to the users they distribute it to. Take WordPress, for example. Anyone can go to WordPress.org right now and download all the source code, not only free of charge but also free of restrictions. You can create your own themes for it or your own plugins for it. If you wanted, you could branch it off and use it as the basis for an entirely new blogging platform. You could even rename it “Super Awesome Blogging Software” and sell it for $20 a download. The only thing you can’t do is limit other people’s right to do the same.
I think this is a pretty healthy philosophy because it means we get to benefit from the best everyone has to offer. We get from the community and also give to the community. Instead of Microsoft or Apple deciding what we need and what we don’t, we can decide for ourselves while saving hundreds of dollars in licensing and upgrade fees.
For this reason, in the past week or two I’ve used Linux almost exclusively. Linux is a free and open source operating system for your computer and, as it turns out, a pretty slick, powerful and productive beast! I’ve set up my computer to be a minimalist’s and a productivity guru’s dream. This series will show how you can do the same!
Dealing with the Worst of Winter
I’m well aware that there are quite a few Wage Slave Rebel readers who live in the southern hemisphere. I wish a good summer to every last one of you lucky bastards!
For the last couple weeks, I’ve been having to deal with the absolute worst winter has to offer. I’m not talking about any dangerous conditions outside (although there’s been plenty of snowy, slushy, icy goodness to be tackled) and I’m not talking about the unmerciful, intolerable cold. I’m talking about everything that comes with it. Everything gets slower, everyone wants to eat more and do less. It makes sense I suppose. It would make more sense if I was a bear.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday were completely unproductive. My hours were divided between sleeping, eating and playing Risk. Even now, I’m only getting around to writing this post at 12:40am on Monday morning despite the fact I’ve had the post in mind since Saturday morning. This laying around and feeling like a lazy bum needs to stop now! Here are some strategies I’m trying to develop for beating these winter blues.
My Quest for Ignorance
I’ve been intending to write this post for nearly an hour now. Why hadn’t I been able to start? Procrastination? No, it wasn’t procrastination. It was because of my irrational desire to be drenched in irrelevant, ineffective, incomplete, up-to-date information.
As I was sitting down at the computer I noticed my Twitter client had just updated. Someone retweeted an agreeable quote that I thought worthy of a retweet myself, others were having arguments that I rooted for and followed closely for ten minutes, but wouldn’t dare participate in. Such-and-such had just published a new blog post, so I headed over to their site and read that. While writing a comment, my phone vibrated and let out a little chime. Like some bizarre human variation of Pavlov’s dog, I reached for it, salivating at the prospect of whatever untold knowledge would be held within whatever message I’d just received.
And now… well, now I’m no closer to the life I want, no more intelligent than anyone else, no closer to finishing my projects and, to make matters worse, I have a disgustingly accurate and elaborate time line of the goings-on of the Gosselin house ingrained into my mind. Those are neurons I’ll likely never get back.