5 tips to easier life!
Internet has truly revolutionized our lives. From bill paying to finding the next mate, it has made the world accessible. It is amazing how internet has touched so many aspects of our life. Things that took hours, are handled now in minutes seamlessly. If you are not handling things efficiently in the following areas, then you may want to reconsider:
BILL PAYING: Used to be a major chore. Checking past history on each bill to see if you were not over billed. Writing each check. Making sure you had the right postage. And after all that exercise, making it to the mail drop and hoping it gets there on time (that is where the old adage 'check is in the mail' came from). Internet bill paying has truly revolutionized all that. If you are not paying on the internet then please look into it. It saves countless hours of checking and writing checks. Best of all no postage and no worrying if it will get there on time.
First time when you set up the people who bill you, it takes a little time but subsequent months you just click and pay. Your transaction history is all there at your finger tips and you don't even have to worry about payment not getting there. It is almost like child's play.
SHOPPING: If you are in the market for a car or paper clips, you can get price comparisons across the city, state or country right there with a few clicks. No more having to feel like a dumb consumer. Information is power. Now you can feel powerful to know what you should pay for the product.
RESEARCH: How often you have been taken advantage because you did not know enough about a product? Internet is a great research tool. Anything and everything you want to know is on the internet. You can also get opinions from other people. Sometimes there is so much information that you get 'information overload'.
To avoid getting lost on the internet, I always set the amount of time I will spend on research on the internet. Say like 30 minutes or one hour. Because I know it is very easy to get side tracked on the internet. You go to one site and you see 10 other links. One of them catches your curiosity and you click there and next thing you know you have been all around the world but forgot what you originally came for.
This is why I set a time frame. For example, say I am going to research for a 'car' for 1 hour. I will not click away to sites unrelated. And after 1 hour is up I will stop. If I feel I need more time, I will schedule it again at some other time. This way I stay focused and not end up staying at my computer till the 'cows come home'.
EMAIL: is a great way to communicate. Short, sweet and quick. No more taking out a piece of paper, making sure all your salutations are right and fighting the writer's block. If you somehow struggle through and happen to get your thoughts down, then you mail and wonder if it will get there. If it does get there, you have to wait patiently for a response. Days or weeks was usual and if you were dealing across the globe then it was more like months.
All that is now history. You can communicate in real time. I talk to my programmers who are sitting half way across the globe everyday. The emails fly back and forth in a matter of nanoseconds (at least it seems like it).
Best of all, email communication is self-documenting. Two months down the road, if you forget what was said, you can refresh your memory by reading the emails in chronological order.
If you get a bounced email just forward it to 'find at switch email dot com' and they find you the new email address. So you can locate a person quickly when they move.
FIND A MATE: The 'mate' could be a life partner or someone to help you with a problem. Internet allows you to get a lot of upfront information on the person, so you can make an intelligent decision. If it suits you then you can go further. Without the internet just finding information was difficult. For example: say your dryer broke. You can find the manual online and try to fix it yourself. Or find out repair people in your area. Yellow pages used to do it before, but Yellow pages have an inherent problem. They are only ads and there is hardly any information about their repair habits, testimonials etc. Now online you can find in depth information on the person before picking up the phone to call them. Same goes for romantic match. There is already so much information available upfront on the person that in the old days would take months to find out. Sometimes you never found out because it was too embarrassing to ask. On the internet asking questions is the norm and not at all seen offensive because you have not yet met the person. I am not professing you don't need to meet the person. All I am saying is that a lot of the preliminary checking can be done quickly and easily.
Use the tools of the internet for the benefit of your daily life. If you don't use the tools then you may be burning your time and energy doing the old fashioned way.
By : Bob Young
Keyword : easier life
