Three Types of Activities

Three types of activities are keeping you busy:

Type 1: Bad

These are the things you should not be doing. They are wasting your time but still you do them. Stop it! For example, I just received a message from someone who never received the package I sent her. Now I have to spend my valuable time sending her another package. This sucks. I’m a writer and speaker, not a fulfillment agency. This is not how I want to spend my time. The challenge here is to figure out how to get rid of the bad activities.

Type 2: Good, But…

These are the things you should be doing, but they take too long. They are also wasting your time because you’re being inefficient. For example, I received a message from someone asking me about pricing for my keynote talks and I spent a few minutes answering it. This is silly, because I work with standard fees. The request is great but my response is slow. The challenge here is to figure out how to be more efficient.

Type 3: Good, And…

These are the things you should be doing, and you’re not doing them well enough, probably because you’re wasting your time with type 1 and type 2 activities. For example, I received a message from someone offering me to collaborate with Happy Melly. Wonderful! Sadly, I hardly have time to schedule a call with him. I merely sent a brief note (for now) while he deserves a deeper conversation. The challenge here is to figure out how to be more effective.

Which types of activities are sucking up your time?

Source: http://www.noop.nl/2014/08/three-types-of-activities.html

3 money lessons your child should learn before college

College is an exciting time. New classes, a new atmosphere, and seemingly limitless possibilities. But with that new-ness, there can also be a lot of fear. In addition to worrying about their ability to handle the course load and thrive without their parents and friends, many students wonder if they will be okay financially.

College costs a lot of money. So before you send your child off to school, make sure they are prepared to make good financial decisions that will allow them to have a bright financial future. Here are three money lessons your child needs to learn the summer before college.

Savings is more than “rainy day”

Most people would agree it is a good idea to save money, but not everyone agrees why. Before your child heads off to college, it’s important to talk about what a savings fund really does for you.

Some people believe you only need to save for a “rainy day,” and therefore only need a limited amount of money in your savings account.

Others believe a person’s savings account should go above and beyond the basics, to provide security and to enable you to take on exciting, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

That’s just the conversation you need to have with your soon-to-be college student.

Ask your child to think of their current financial situations, with and without savings. What if they were offered a job or vacation opportunity right now in a desirable foreign country? Would they have the funds to make it happen? Would they be able to say “yes,” or would their lack of savings tie them to their current job or location?

The sooner your child begins to see his savings account as more than a “rainy day fund,” the sooner he will take saving money seriously.

Learning the value of an hour

Hourly jobs are staples of the college experience, so encourage your child to get a jump on it with an hourly summer job before he departs for college. This is a great way to meet new people while taking an active role in his or her finances. It’s also a great way for a college student to learn the value of an hour.

Everyone has the same amount of time in a day, even though some people make a lot more money than others. Use this example to teach your child about diversifying their income with passive income.  Also help them understand how developing a diversified set of skills / interests is important to wage growth and long-term employment prospects.

Passive income is recurring income you earn for work that you have already done. For instance, authors earning money from books they have written is passive income. Earning royalties for a product or idea you create is also a way to earn passive income.  Investing, though, is probably the most common form of passive income.

Over time, earnings from passive income can greatly outrun earnings from hourly jobs, allowing people to enjoy a higher quality of life and a better financial situation in retirement. So teach your child this lesson, and encourage them to prioritize working on ways they can reap the rewards of passive income.

It is also important for people to have a diverse set of skills / interests, because you never know if what is lucrative one year will be lucrative the next. For instance, knowing a great deal about how to make a typewriter work was a good idea in the 1970s, because it made life easier if you worked with a typewriter. But nowadays, not so much.

Help your child experience the difference between hourly work, diversifying their skills, and passive income to motivate them to build wealth early on.

Budgeting and buying low-cost

When children first head to college, it is common for them to discover large box stores that try to sell college necessities to them. From couches and mini-refrigerators to cutlery and coffee machines, students can end up with a large total just purchasing the bare necessities.

But your child does not have to pay the big tab when it comes time to prepare for college life.

Teach your child that new is not always worth the price tag, when a used item would do the same thing. Consider checking out yard sales, Craigslist, and thrift shops to compare prices for new versus used items.

While doing this, a fun game you can play is to teach your child the difference between purchasing new and used items in terms of how much money they save. Have your child shop and compare the prices of new and used items. Challenge them to find the items they want at the cheapest costs possible.

Then, have your child subtract the difference between the average cost of a new item and the lowest price they could find. After your child makes their purchases, reward your child with the difference in price, and tell them to use the money as a beginning to their savings.

Getting off to a good start with 3 basic money lessons

College is an exciting, scary, expensive time. So make your child’s college experience a worthwhile investment before they ever set foot on campus. Teach your child these three money lessons before you drop them off, so you will know you have set them on a path toward financial responsibility and success.

Source: http://blog.wealthminder.com/goals/education/3-money-lessons-child-learn-college

If You’re Always Working, You’re Never Working Well

In early April a series of reports appeared online in the United States and the United Kingdom lamenting the “lazy French.”  A new labor law in France had apparently banned organizations from e-mailing their employees after 6 p.m. In fact, it turned out to be more a case of “lazy journalists” than “lazy French”: as The Economist explained, the “law” was not a law at all but a labor agreement aimed at improving health among a specific group of professionals, and there wasn’t even a hard curfew for digital communication.

Like all myths, however, this one revealed a set of abiding values subscribed to by the folk who perpetuated it. Brits and Americans have long suspected that the French (and others) are goofing off while they — the good corporate soldiers — continue to toil away.  They’re proud about it too. A Gallup poll, released in May, found that most U.S. workers see their constant connection with officemates as a positive.  In the age of the smartphone, there’s no such thing as “downtime,” and we profess to be happier — and more productive — for it.

Are we, though?  After reviewing thousands of books, articles and papers on the topic and interviewing dozens of experts in fields from neurobiology and psychology to education and literature, I don’t think so. When we accept this new and permanent ambient workload — checking business news in bed or responding to coworkers’ emails during breakfast — we may believe that we are dedicated, tireless workers. But, actually, we’re mostly just getting the small, easy things done. Being busy does not equate to being effective.

And let’s not forget about ambient play, which often distracts us from accomplishing our most important tasks. Facebook and Twitter report that their sites are most active during office hours. After all, the employee who’s required to respond to her boss on Sunday morning will think nothing of responding to friends on Wednesday afternoon. And research shows that these digital derailments are costly: it’s not only the minutes lost responding to a tweet but also the time and energy required to “reenter” the original task. As Douglas Gentile, a professor at Iowa State University who studies the effects of media on attention spans, explains, “Everyone who thinks they’re good at multitasking is wrong. We’re actually multiswitching [and] giving ourselves extra work.”

Each shift of focus sets our brain back and creates a cumulative attention debt, resulting in a harried workforce incapable of producing sustained burst of creative energy. Constant connection means that we’re “always at work”, yes, but also that we’re “never at work” — fully.

People and organizations looking for brave new ideas or significant critical thinking need to recognize that disconnection is therefore sometimes preferable to connection. You don’t ask a jogger who just ran six miles to compete in a sprint, so why would you ask an executive who’s been answering a pinging phone all morning to deliver top-drawer content at his next meeting?

Some parts of the workforce do rely on constant real-time communication. But others should demand and be given proper breaks from the digital maelstrom. Batch-processing email is one easy solution.  Do it a few times a day and reserve the rest of your time for real work.  Most colleagues and clients will survive without a response for three hours, and if it’s truly urgent, they can pick up the phone.

The great tech historian Melvin Kranzberg said, “technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.” That statement should become a real tenant of the information age. I don’t advocate abstinence or blanket rules like that fictional post-6 p.m. email ban.  (Though, if you want to try unplugging for a weekend, check out my “analog August” challenge.)

However, I do think our cult of connectivity has gone too far. We can’t keep falling prey to ambient work or play. Instead, we must actively decide on our level of tech engagement at different times to maximize productivity, success, and happiness.

Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/08/if-youre-always-working-youre-never-working-well

Work Smarter Not Harder

It is said that when one lives for a stronger purpose, then hard work is not an option but a necessity. No matter how inspirational this saying may sound, it doesn’t have much to do with real life scenarios. The endless list of tasks that need to be completed on time, the overbearing bosses and ever-increasing work pressure render the convention of hard work ineffective. When time is your enemy and productivity is your goal, you need to be a step ahead. That’s when your mental agility and out-of-the-box thinking comes into play.

Smart work is the latest buzzword in the modern-day corporate world. It means getting things done with minimal efforts, resources and within deadlines. Creativity, pragmatism, flexibility, enthusiasm and astuteness are the most important qualities that will help you work smart. Keep reading to learn how can you work smart on the job and expect better results.

Maintain a To-Do List 

Smart working people like to have a clear picture of what needs to be accomplished during the day. Maintaining a to-do list, preferably on paper than just in your mind, will help you prioritize your tasks. You can delegate the responsibility of each task to the right person with clear instructions. A well maintained and religiously followed to-do list will help you avoid duplicate work, waste of time and avoid missing out on important activities.

Steer Clear of Over-Scheduling

Today, workplaces are bursting with workload and it is up to you not to let it get the best of you. If you think working for longer hours or on multi-tasking at once can help you pull off everything, then you are downright wrong. These approaches will only diminish your productivity in the long run. Therefore, do not commit to tasks that you cannot complete within the day. Learn to say no when you are asked to bite off more than you can chew.

Synchronize Your Work and Life

Keeping your productivity high is the priority when you want to be a smart worker. It is important that you establish a balance between your work and personal life. A lack of balance between work and home can cause you to fail at fulfilling the demands of your profession and your family, leaving you feeling down in the dumps. Therefore, follow the right lifestyle in order to composedly cater to the demands of your work and family. This is a great way to avoid job burnout and depression.

Learning through Reflection

A collective study conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School, University of North Carolina and HEC Paris suggests that learning new things by dedicating some time towards thinking about it proves effective. By thinking, we mean reflective thinking. A person should articulate the key steps about what they just learned before putting it into practice. The result will decrease the probability of having to retake the lesson, better performance and higher productivity.

Engage is Creative Endeavors

A recent research study conducted by researchers from, San Francisco State University, Air Force Research Laboratory, Ohio and Illinois State University suggests a strong positive correlation between one’s engagement in creative activities and their work-place performance. The findings have been published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Engaging yourself in non-work creative activities will stimulate your intelligence and create a bend of mind that favors out of the box thinking. You are more likely to come up with creative solutions at work to resolve the routine complexities of business.

By maintaining a learning attitude, following the learning by reflection technique and by developing logical workflow patterns, you can work smart and be a step ahead of time. Always remember, slogging like a beast of burden will only affect your productivity and push you in a vicious circle.

Source: http://runapptivo.apptivo.com/work-smarter-not-harder-12228.html