How To (Finally) Hit Your Top 5 New Year’s Resolutions Thanks To High-Tech

Thinking about setting the “usual” New Year’s resolutions of losing weight, being more organized and getting out of debt, but have a feeling deep down you aren’t going to follow through? We’re here to help! Below are 5 common New Year’s resolutions and simple techie ways to keep you on track.
#1: Be More Productive
If improving your time-management skills is one of your New Year’s resolutions, this will be a BIG help: Turn off the automatic send and receive for your e-mail (we can almost hear the gasps of horror). Admit it, you’re addicted to e-mail and if you’re like most people, you’re checking it constantly. In fact, there’s a good chance it’s the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night. If you want to stop the constant temptation to lose focus on your work, simply turn off the automatic send and receive function, forcing you to click on the “Send And Receive” button at set times. If that’s too “cold turkey,” you could at least turn off the sound and icon popup so you’re not distracted by it while working.

#2: Save Time
After e-mail, checking social media sites can be another huge time suck. If you (and possibly your staff ) are wasting a lot of time on Facebook, good content filtering software can keep you in check by preventing you from accessing these sites from your work PC. You can also allow certain people in your company access while blocking others; so if you have a web manager or marketing manager who needs to access these sites for work but find it too tempting for YOU, we can configure the system to assist you with that temptation.

#3: Get Out Of Debt And Start Saving More
If you feel like you can’t get a handle on where your money goes, check out www.Mint.com. This site automatically compiles all your bank statements, retirement and credit card accounts to give you one snapshot of where you’re spending money – and it’s FREE! Best of all, you only need to set it up once and it will automatically update your finances and put them into easy-to-read graphical reports – and since Mint.com connects to almost every US banking and financial institution with internet banking capability, you won’t have to manually enter your information over and over again. The site offers ways to save money, allows you to set financial goals and keeps track of those goals automatically.

#4: Lose Weight
Pearson’s Law states that anything measured improves, and anything measured and reported upon improves exponentially; so if you want to lose weight, you might sign up for www.MyFoodDiary.com and start tracking everything you eat. This site allows you to set and track your weight loss goals by allowing you to post what you ate and then counting calories for you. If nothing else, it will help you think BEFORE you eat because you need to track the calories!

#5: Get Organized!
If you’re like us, you’ve got a million things going on – from business, family and everything in between, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and forget tiny (but important!) details. Using Evernote can help. Evernote allows you to capture and organize any files, notes, websites, audio or hand written notes in one easy-to-learn interface. And with the mobile app, you can capture a to-do item or reminder at any time without the fear of losing it.