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Will you join my virtual flash mob? (There’s a freebie in it for you!)

December 2, 2014/in Apps, Books, Increase Productivity, Learning With a List, List Making, People, Technology/by Paula Rizzo

Have you ever heard of a flash mob? It’s where a bunch of people get together in an unlikely place (like a mall or Times Square) and start doing a choreographed routine. Usually it’s to the surprise and sometimes horror of others around them. Sounds fun, huh? I’ve never actually been in one but I think it could be a fun bucket list item one day. In the meantime — I hope you’ll help me with this virtual flash mob of sorts I’m putting together to promote my book, Listful Thinking: Using Lists to be More Productive, Highly Successful and Less Stressed.

I’m testing out this new site called ThunderClap.it, which allows you to write a message and have people sign up to share it all at the same time. See — kind of like a flash mob. Read more

I Spent My Weekend With Oprah!

September 28, 2014/in Happiness, Learning With a List, Oprah, Relationships, Tool for Success/by Paula Rizzo

As soon as tickets for “Oprah’s The Life You Want Weekend” went on sale – I snagged two tickets for my mother and me. I knew we had to be in the audience and I’m still beaming from our experience. The tour visits eight cities including Newark, NJ, which is where we were this past weekend. We were given workbooks, which you know I love! And special bracelets that lit up with inspiration. The tour included Oprah and her handpicked trailblazers: Mark Nepo, (who btw also published a book with my publisher, Viva Editions!) Rob Bell, Elizabeth Gilbert (remember Eat, Pray, Love?) and Iyanla Vanzant. Stedman and Gayle were there too of course. Read more

This Productivity Tip Will Blow Your Mind

February 2, 2014/in Apps, Increase Productivity, Reduce Stress, Saving Time, Tool for Success, Uncategorized/by Paula Rizzo

I use Twitter every day to gather news, ideas, recipes, and the occasional “cute emergency.” I often “favorite” tweets with articles so I can read them later. They are usually ideas for blog posts, interesting tidbits, and, of course, productivity tips. I have all of these stockpiled in my “favorite tweets” but I never actually go back to read them. NEVER. What a waste, right?

Then I found IFTTT.com and discovered the most amazing productivity tip ever! “If this then that” is a service that allows you to connect different apps and sites (channels as they call them) to create your own “recipe” or action that you want your media channels to perform.

IFTTT.com has almost 10,000 pages of different “recipes” to choose from or you can create your very own for pretty much any function. For example, want to know when there will be a chance of rain? Create a recipe to receive a text whenever a drizzle or thunderstorm is near – no more bad hair days! Or want to save all your Instagram photos to your computer? There is a recipe that will automatically save them to Dropbox.

5 Ways to be a Better Complainer and Get What You Want

January 21, 2014/in Apps, Reduce Stress, Saving Money, Saving Time, Tool for Success/by Paula Rizzo

United Breaks Guitars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few weeks ago, I told you about an app that helps you skip the wait-time when calling customer service. However, just because you get to talk to a person faster doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get what you want. I’ve had amazing customer service, but I’ve also had really horrendous help that leaves me so frustrated. You know what I mean – it can be really hard to keep your cool when the stranger on the other end of the phone is being difficult about their company shipping you the wrong pair of pants.

A few years ago Dave Carroll was flying United Airlines when he noticed that the people loading the plane were throwing his guitar around, resulting in a broken guitar when he landed. He spent months dealing with United’s customer service, only to discover that they weren’t going to do a thing about his smashed guitar. Dave took matters into his own hands, writing the song “United Breaks Guitars” and exposing the airline’s bad behavior in a viral video that resulted in United reaching out to David and offering to replace his unusual guitar. Now, when the rest of us have to get a new guitar, we can’t quite get United Airlines to send one for us. Instead, we can compare a range of small bodied guitars on a site like thesoundjunky until we find the guitar that is right for us.

I know that we don’t all have the luxury (or the musical ability) to handle bad customer service the way Dave did, but here are a few ways anyone can complain smarter and get better customer service: Read more

Fab Find: Stop Waiting On Hold With Fast Customer

January 2, 2014/in Apps, Fab Find, Increase Productivity, Saving Time, Technology, Tool for Success/by Paula Rizzo

As far as annoying things go — waiting on hold is right at the top of the list. It can literally take hours out of your life that you will never get back. Talk about being unproductive — well, luckily there is another way and it’s my Fab Find.

I recently had to call customer service to report a duplicate charge on my credit card. Instead of being aggravated and waiting on hold, I tried out a new app called FastCustomer. It does the waiting for you! Skip the menus and bad hold music – with a few taps you can choose what business you need to speak to and then sip coffee, check email, whatever – a representative will call you when the wait time is over!

It works for major companies like American Express, Bank of America, 1800 Flowers, insurance companies and even airlines. It is really a great way to outsource a necessary but irritating task. When I used it — the app called me back and I waited an additional three minutes for a representative. I think that’s time well spent.

Think about all the things you can do while someone else is waiting on hold for you!

1. Read a few articles on ListProducer.com for a more productive day

2. Clean out your email inbox Read more

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