Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola

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Time Tips: Tooling Up Tip #1

The numbers given in this tip will increase over time, so adjust accordingly.

How often do you waste time staring at the hourglass on your computer? A small hardware upgrade can eliminate that wasted time altogether. Simply add more RAM. This machine I am on has 1GB of RAM. It never gets an hourglass. If you sit in front of an hourglass for 5 seconds a dozen times a day, that's a minute lost. After a month, you have half an hour. In a year, you have lost 6 hours. Suppose you went into work and told your boss, "Today I am just going to sit here and stare at the wall for 6 hours." Do you think your boss would approve? If not, why subject yourself to the same insanity at home? You don't have to!

Right now, you can buy 512MB sticks for under $100. For most computers, these simply snap in. But before you start changing components, print out the instructions for what to do if the computer fails to boot (see the XP Help menu). Particularly, look for instructions on what to do about FailOnAudit--a likely cause of boot failure.

Don't order RAM from the cheapest place. Instead, take your motherboard manual with you to a local computer shop. Let them tell you what RAM you can add. Before you do that, see what RAM you already have in your machine.

Also, if you are running one of the DOS systems (e.g., Win9x or WinMe), a RAM upgrade might not be doable above 512MB. And, it would be rather pointless since your biggest problem is your OS anyhow.

Why would you need "so much" RAM? Ah, that gets into technical LaLa Land. But, you can determine your own need just by listening to your computer. If you hear the hard drive(s) doing read-writes all the time even when you are not opening or saving files, you are using your Windows PageFile to make up for insufficient RAM. Well, that is if you are running Windows.

The point here is you need adequate computer resources if you are going to use your computer efficiently. The most common problem is not the processor speed--it's inadequate RAM.

 

 

Do you want to radically improve how well people in your organization make use of the limited number of hours in each work day?

Contact me to arrange a time when we can talk about a presentation: mark@mindconnection.com. Why arrange a time? So I can give you full attention during the call. There's a really powerful time management tip. Ask me why it works.