Productive Life

2010 is just ahead of us, everyone must more or less have some New Year’s Revolution in mind. However, J believes that many people would make a long revolution list at the beginning of the year while keep the wishes unrealized until year end.

How to change the situation? Here J would like to share some tips with you.

1. Brainstorm: list your wishes as many as you can, in spite of possibilities or categories.
2. Filter: choose a few wishes from the brainstorm list according to realistic conditions.
   ● Limit the number of wishes: better no more than 10. if most of your wishes are about changing habits, Leo from Zen Habits suggested limit the number to 6, so that you can develop 1 habit every 2 months.
   ● Expend the types of wishes: don’t do similar things all the time which may make you feel boring. And you may easily ignore other aspects of life if you only focus on one area.
   ● Mix easy and hard wishes: you may feel frustrated when you meet too many obstacles.
   ● All in all, when you filter your wish list, please consider both internal and external facts: importance of the wishes, your willingness to achieve them, your own capabilities, financial conditions, network needed, etc.
3. Plan: Making a plan is not as easy as it sounds like. You should list all possible difficulties you may face, and plan it well to overcome them.
4. Announce: Tell more people or important people around you, and ask for their help to check your progress. You can also share your plan with you interest groups online or offline.
5. Implement: just do it. 
6. Prizes: Give yourself some small gifts when you have made some achievements.
7. Review: Regularly review your plan. If there are any difficulties, or any unexpected obstacles? if the plan needs to be adjusted according to the real situation? In addition, you will fell motivated when you see your progress during review session, and be more confident to achieve your goal.

This is the last day of 2009 today. Please move and make a good plan for next year! 

Happy New Near! And wish you a productive 2010!

Tap Money Tracker is the first app J has ever paid for upgrading to Pro version, even which can only be used on a mobile phone. That's all because it is so good from J's point of view.

A good financial situation is the foundation of a productive life. And tracking expenses is the first step to it. Like most people, J felt it too complecated to make expense records. Think about it, Excel tracking can be only showed in computers, online tools are not convenient for tracking on the way, while most apps for mobile phones lack strong analysis functions. All these excuses stopped J from being more organized and productive.

Tap Money Tracker became J's financial life savior as it was just designed for lazy or busy people.

• Add, edit, and delete transactions without a computer or network;
• It was designed user-friendly: if categories and payees are set up, it may take you only 6 to 8 taps to add one expense record without open either physical or virtual keyboard;
• Report summary of transactions by category, account or group;
• Budget for each category, and reminder supported;
• Categories and subcategories assign to transactions.

Here are other useful functions:

• Multi-accounts support
• Transaction remind and can repeat it
• Support multi-currency
• Support password protection

The free version is enough for daily use. J upgraded it to Pro version only for backing up all the data to SD card. 

Tap Money Tracker is developed for Android by Josh Chang from Taiwan.
Free download in Android Market. $9.95 for Pro version.

Productive Life Rating: ★★★★★

Pictures from d.hatena.ne.jp