Do you make to-do lists?

Most methods for productivity include making various to-do lists of the things you want and need to get done. Whether it’s David Allen, Stephen Covey or Jerry Seinfeld, everyone suggests making lists.

But do you ever find that your lists keep growing? Or do you get discouraged looking at a never-ending list of stuff that needs to get done? Or worse, do you find yourself not getting things done because you’re overwhelmed by your to-do list? So, what happens when your to-do lists start doing you?

What happens when the to-do lists you make begin getting in the way of actually getting things done?

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What do you do with your Monday mornings?

So many people I know sit down at their desks and mess around for an hour or two - reading news or catching up on email. Others grab a cup of joe and jump right into the project they left on Friday.

If you’re in business for yourself, mornings are often crucial to your workday. A well-spent morning can often mean the difference between a productive workday and not.

But what about Mondays?

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I’ve found a lot of business owners have one thing in common - they think they can do everything themselves.

Feel that way? After all, you’ve built your business from the ground up. That didn’t require much help, right? Sure, you may have gotten some marketing help or worked with a web designer. And it’s likely you’re using an accountant. But basically, when it comes to the daily workings of your business, you probably go at it alone, right?

Yet running a business requires you managing and completing a whole bunch of tasks that have little to do with your expertise.

For instance, if your a business coach shouldn’t your time be spent working directly with prospects and clients? Or even better, planning how to increase your business to reach your revenue goals?

Yet if you look at your daily workload, how much of it is spent doing things that have little or nothing to do with either growing your business or working with clients? Likely quite a bit.

Let’s see, most business owners push around paper, set appointments, do their own billing, sort and answer all their own emails and phone calls, manage content updates on their website, act as a editor for their marketing message, do their own promotion, manage their own marketing campaigns - and the list goes on and on.

Aren’t these the tasks that business executives hire assistants to do?

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Many things go in to creating a successful business. Whether it’s vision, marketing, message or audience, each has its importance in the growth of your business.

Yet each part of your business needs a plan and a structure to get accomplished. And how you get accomplish your plan is just as important as what you try to accomplish. That’s why productivity is so important.

So, thanks to Ben Yoskovitz’s efforts a short time ago, we have 137 ways to increase your productivity. [ continue reading & share your thoughts → ]

As you know, I’ve been away for a while remodeling our home in preparation for our new baby and then welcoming our latest Little Miracle into the world. So I haven’t “officially” worked or blogged in weeks.

For a moment, imagine the mountain of voicemail, email and blog posts I came back too.

The first few days I was back in my office, I have to say, were overwhelming. It took me almost an entire day to just to listen too, make notes on and begin wading through all the voicemail.

And email…do I even need to go down that road? I hadn’t checked my email at all in three weeks, at one point. That stretch, alone, left me with 1,500 messages to sort through - not including spam. I started sweating as I watched the number of new messages keep climbing in my various inboxes and folders. Needless to say, I didn’t even try to get through them. All told, I had thousands of messages waiting for me when I returned. Not through them all yet.

Then, there’s the 190 or so feeds I regularly follow in my reader.

I’m usually quite judicious at going through my reader; looking for the most interesting and useful post titles. When open my reader daily, it takes me less than an half-hour to scan and partially read all the posts on 190 feeds. But that’s usually a few hundred.

What do you think happened when I didn’t check my reader in a month? Same as email…but worse. Thousands of posts sitting unread in my feed reader. I know some of them have to be great. I know that some of them have to be helpful. What’s more, I know reading some of them would help me as a blogger and a business owner.

But there’s just no way I have the time to wade through all those posts to find the jewels.

My option…just not read any of them. Let them all go. Mark them all as read. What I missed, I missed. Simple as that.

I does pain a bit. But I guess that’s just comes from being afraid I’ll miss out on something amazing. And, well, I haven’t really. Information that’s that good will be back around. And I’ve certainly not missed out on the important things…like family.

Anyhow, when you’ve gotten way behind, what have you done to catch up? Have you slogged the mountain of email and lived to tell about it? How?

Does blog comment spam really work?

I guess it must because it just keeps increasing. And not only increasing, but it’s getting harder to spot - especially for those of us who often get a lot of comments and get a lot of spam.

Take a look at this image. Look at it closely.

Looks like a benign comment at first glance, right? But look closely at the text in the next image:

Notice all the little blue underlines under some of the characters? Each one of those is a link. Hard to see, huh? And if you weren’t looking for them, you might think this is a legitimate comment and let it through.

But it’s not a legitimate comment - it’s spam. All told, this comment had more than 25 links in it. It’s just, as you can see, they’re under individual characters - making them hard to spot at a glance.

This comment spam thing is a real pain in the rear. Darren Rowse even wrote about the cost of comment spam to our blogging. Can you imagine how much spam Problogger or Scobleizer get?

That’s why I’m siding with Lorelle:

You cannot stop comment spam on your blog…Comment spam can only be stopped when comment spammers are stopped. The efforts you make on your blog only stop comment spam from reaching the public eye.

…I’ve put out a call repeatedly to bloggers (read her post on The Blog Herald) to use the power of their blogging voices to put an end to the rewards of being a comment spammer. We need to put comment spammers out of business. Anyone listening?

As a united voice, I believe that the same creativity and sense of community spirit that built MyBlogLogs, MySpace, FaceBook, and Digg can put their energy into stopping the virus that infects all of us.

We know what spam bots do and can watch their behavior. I agree with Lorelle, we can’t stop spamming unless we stop spammers. So what can we do about it? Any ideas? Know anyone who might have an idea?

What browser do you use?

Being a Mac user I hardly ever think about Internet Explorer except when I’m coding and testing websites. Primarily I use Camino (love it) and Safari (now available for Windows). Sometimes I open Firefox, though most for StumbleUpon. And I really love OmniWeb’s thumbnail tabs. And, of course, I didn’t mention probably the best browser I don’t use much - Opera. Okay, maybe I have a bit of an obsession, but each of these have some great features that the others don’t.

But most people, however, don’t use multiple browsers. They choose one browser and stay with it. And it appears more and more people are choosing Firefox.

And that’s exactly what my stats in Google Analytics showed me this morning. Two-thirds of all my site visitors this year are using Firefox. And less than one-third are using Internet Explorer.

Now I do have a bit higher rate of Mac users - around 12%, but that certainly doesn’t account for the huge percentage of Firefox users.

What I’m thinking is that a large number of bloggers use Firefox. Why? And why are so few using Internet Explorer? And what does this say about browser trends?

An article from Popular Science that I saw predicts that by 2009Â Firefox’s market share could be as high as 50%. When I read it I thought, “no way.” But looking at my stats makes me think otherwise.

Then I found a post from PC World reporting that Firefox’s market share in Europe is nearing 30% - almost double the U.S. market share.

Does it matter?

I’m not sure. But maybe you know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What browser is most used in visiting your site?Â