Kolz Blog

Save time and energy by using these easy features in your Word documents.

Sony has confirmed that it will be bringing its anticipated movie download service to US PlayStation 3 users this summer. The PlayStation Network will be Sony's first service to offer the movie downloads and the service will move to the popular handheld PSP later in the year.

Kazuo Hirai, head of the PlayStation division, said that they service will also be available to Japanese and European users as well, but details wont be available until next month at least.

Any official details will be revealed at the upcoming E3 expo in July, added Hirai. He also noted that they company was continuously cutting costs to achieve profitability for the division by the Q2 2009.

"Please expect more from our evolving PlayStation business," Hirai told reporters.

With the announcement, also came word, through Sony documentation that the company was planning to offer a similar service through its video-capable Walkman line and through Internet Link enabled BRAVIA LCD TVs. No other details were available yet however.

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Windows Mobile phones only: Web based service Dashwire syncs your Windows Mobile phone data to the web site with a Dashwire applet you install on your phone. Dashwire backs up and syncs photos, videos, text messages, ringtones, bookmarks, speed dials, contacts, and call logs automatically and makes them accessible in your online Dashwire account. Dashwire even supports web based voicemail using previously covered voicemail management service Callwave.

Sync your phone's contents to Dashwire either through your cellular data plan, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi. (Use a Wi-Fi connection the first time, which will speed up the initial sync.) In addition to syncing and remote cell phone data backup, Dashwire also has a social element built in: you can share photos and video from your dashboard via SMS, email, or through Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Friendfeed, Bebo, or the Dashwire web site itself. Dashwire is free to register and use, and currently runs on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones; Symbian and BlackBerry support is in the works.

The Workers' Edge blog digs into Windows tweaks that one normally has to dig pretty far into nested menus to find, and comes out with a real find for hands-on-the-keys fans. To have Windows always show the keyboard shortcuts next to menu items for easier learning, head to to the "Ease of Access Center" in Vista's Control Panel, check "Underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys," and hit apply. In XP, right-click on the desktop, hit "Properties," head to the Appearance tab, click the "Effects" button, then un-check the "Hide underlined letters ..." option. Now your toolbar menus will always have their keyboard access letters underlined, saving your wrist a trip to the mouse or trackpad.

Free A/V website Wirewize takes most of the guesswork out of hooking together your television, DVD player, stereo speakers, and other gear. After a free sign-up, enter in the model and make of each component, and Wirewize will offer up which cables are needed, and diagram how they should run. Not every bit of equipment will be listed, especially those no longer sold, but the site has PDF manuals for some of the goods it does have. For A/V neophytes and those trying to troubleshoot friends' systems over the phone, it's pretty helpful.

Photo by Dan H.

When I was first introduced to GTD some five years ago, I was immediately drawn to David Allen's appreciation of "the right tool".  It was as if someone out there was as quirky as me, caring about such little things as the kind of pencil you used or the way in which you organized your PDA.  Amazing!

Since then, I've been mindful of a number of good articles on GTD-related tools.  These include:

• 5 Simple and Effective GTD Tools
• List of GTD Tools
• Top 5 GTD Computer Tools

I recently discovered a phenomenon called "tool boredom" and you'll probably know what I'm talking about.  Your cell phone was so cool and then you saw the new iPhone 3G ad on TV.  As a result, your tool looks tired and so ordinary.  Yet, you can't just jump ship and go out and sign up for another cellular carrier's two year contract.  What to do?

I use a Blackberry 8830 which I find to be very utilitarian.  No camera, no fancy ads on TV.  It just works but occasionally, I admit that it feels ordinary and un-iPhony.  I'm not in a position where I can just pay an early termination fee to drop Verizon and head over to AT&T. Instead, I do the following:

1. Discover new things that the tool is capable of.  I recently learned how to watch TV shows on my Blackberry- very cool!
2. Dress it up.  A silicone skin costs less than two cups of coffee at Dunkin Donuts so head over to Ebay and make a purchase.
3. Entertain the fantasy of trading.  On CraigsList there are countless people in your area who are looking to trade productivity tools.  People want planners.  They are interested in gadgets.  Joe from the next town over is looking for an audio recorder, etc.  Check it out and find out who is willing to trade what.  If nothing else, it will jog your creativity about tech tools and who knows?  Your unsexy gadget just might look new after all.

Today's post also appears on Productivity in Context, by Stephen Smith.

There are several ways you can customize the menus in Word. You can even delete menu items very quickly using the shortcut shown in this tip. ((This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.).)

Read this WordTip: Deleting Menu Items
Microsoft Word Tips - Learn Word Faster!

As I have promised in a previous post here, I’d like to share with you that useful little plugin that allowed me to automatically update/upgrade my WordPress blog version.  Thanks for being patient.  I intentionally wanted to post this at the end of the month.

OK, I used: Wordpress Instant Upgarde by Zironoa .

Here’s a little blurb from their homepage:

How does it work?
The InstantUpgrade plugin downloads the latest WordPress version from the WordPress server and unpacks it at your server. In the next step, it deletes all of your old WordPress files (except wp-content/ and wp-config.php) and puts the new files into your WordPress directory. Finally, it runs the database upgrade script. That procedure is exactly what the official guide proposes, only 30 times faster and with you leaning back.

Is it safe to use?
Yes. The plugin interfaces are very intuitive, everything is well explained. Before the upgrade process, comprehensive checks are performed to ensure that nothing can be broken. As for security: The plugin cannot do anything that you or your webserver couldn’t do anyway. So, yes, it is safe to use. (However, bad things can *always* happen, so you should always have backups of your database and files.)

I encountered a few snags along the way, though. Snags like directory permissions (mostly writing privileges), but that was because I changed write privileges as my WordPress blog needed a little more security.  For standard WordPress installations though, the plugin install and activation was very smooth. 

Zirona noted that you should not use this plugin if you installed WordPress via Fantastico.  The only harm that may happen to you is that you cannot use Fantastico to update/upgrade your WordPress anymore.  You’d be using this plugin from thereon.  Well that’s all the harm it did me.

Suggestions:

• I would suggest that you install another WordPress blog to test the plugin first.  I have one that just sits there for this purpose.  So everytime a new plugin surfaces, and I believe is useful to me, I install it on that test WordPress site first.  Don’t worry about overcrowding your hosting account, hey most hosting accounts have the basic 5GB standard package anyway. 
• I would suggest that you BACK-UP your data first.  Everything …. texts, images, your database… hey you better backup your directory tree even through FTP.  I did.  Believe you me that backup is hard work… but definitely worth it!

David Allen calls the calendar your “hard landscape”. There is a reason for that, primarily because your calendar is the foundation of your productivity practice. The raw data you put into your calendar determines the information that comes out. This is the “landscape” that you are going to traverse on any given day.

What goes in your Calendar

Three types of raw data go into your calendar:

1. Time-specific actions - This is jargon-speak for meetings and appointments, some will be with other people and some will be for yourself. Make a habit of scheduling your Most Important Tasks for the day.
2. Day-specific actions - Less-structured than a meeting or appointment, this type of entry is for an action that needs to get done on a particular day, but any time is fine. I suggest that you use this category carefully, as your calendar should not become a to-do list. Your 3-5 Most Important Tasks will often fall in this category.
3. Day-specific information - This category of entry is for data like telephone numbers, directions, or specific information about a person you are meeting or the agenda for that meeting. If this category gets too bulky/takes up too much space, consider just writing a note in the calendar as to exactly where you can find that information.

Your Calendar is a Tool,

…not your taskmaster. Work toward the habit of limiting your calendar entries. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, keep the entry as simple as possible, (but not too simple) for you to be able to make the most of the information. A cluttered or messy calendar leads to a day of frustration!

Remember: the appointments that you make with yourself for your most important tasks are just as binding as appointments that you make with other people.

If you aren’t able to trust yourself to show up, how can you trust your system?

Where is your to-do list

I’d love to know what kind of information you are getting from your calendar, or what kind of assistance you are not getting.

(Click the links below to learn more about the specific questions)

• Does your to-do list migrate into your calendar?
• Do you use a pencil for your entries, so you do not have to cross things out when there are changes?
• Is your calendar format the right one to maximize your way of working?

Leave a comment, perhaps we can work together on a solution.

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Check out this new e-book!

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Collis Ta’eed, co-founder of AudioJungle, FlashDen, many other sites. You can find him on Twitter.

Have you ever written out a list of goals you’d like to achieve and thought, ‘How can I get all this done’? Or seen an opportunity that you’ve had to pass by because you are just flat out? Life is a torrent of choices and possibilities, and often it’s hard to let them go. Should you compromise? Or do you just need a better game plan?

As an easily excitable person, I have a really hard time constraining myself to doing just a few things. Every project seems worth doing, every opportunity worth taking. Still I know that for many people, work is a way to make enough money to relax and enjoy life. If that sounds like you, then you may not get much out of this article. However, if your days are filled to the brim and yet you still can’t wait to start that new project, then I am speaking to you!

In the last two years I’ve become a successful blogger, co-written a book, built a large business that employs dozens of people, sold all my possessions to travel the world with my lovely wife, and co-founded an annual non-profit event. It sounds like a lot, and in a way it is. But there’s no reason not do more with our lives. After all, we only get one.

Here are seven techniques that could potentially enable you to do more with your time. Have your own personal additions? Leave a comment, because I for one am always looking for more ideas!

1. Find the Platform That Gives You The Time You Need
Aside from sleeping, your work life very likely takes up the most hours in your day. So it makes sense that the greatest savings in time and productivity can come from how and where you work.

Your aim should be to align your work and your goals of what you want to get done. While it might be that your goals can be achieved through a job, I found that the biggest change in my productivity has come from starting a business.

When I worked for someone else, I spent a lot of time working on their projects. Consequently everything else took a back seat and was allocated to the early and late hours of the day, and only received a small portion of my energy.

When working for yourself, you have mastery over your hours, how you divvy them up and what you spend the lion’s share on.

To gain mastery of your own time, you sometimes need to sacrifice now for gains in the future. I took a major 6 month hit of working terribly long hours for two full-time jobs – my regular work and building our start-up – so that I could achieve the platform that would give me more freedom later on. My wife will tell you it really wasn’t much fun and there was some real lows, but it was a sacrifice we both think was worth it. Now I am able to work for myself full-time while travelling the world – and those six months of sleepless nights and heavy stress seem a small price to have paid for this lifestyle.

2. Plan, plan, plan!
If you want to make the most effective use of your time, you need a plan. Without one, trying to do a lot will give you a major stress attack. Whether it’s daily to-do lists, business plans, or a productivity system, choose your weapons and put them to use.

Personally I have two planning tools that I use constantly. Next to me I keep a notepad with daily to-do lists. They usually span two A4 pages because I like to do some serious multi-tasking.

I also carry a Moleskine notebook with me literally everywhere I go. I spend a couple of hours a week writing ideas, goals, plans, and lists in it. What’s coming up next, how to increase income on a website, lists of actionables to launch a new project, the chapters for a book, points to write in an article. You name it, it’s in there, combined with enough squiggles and doodles to impress the most idle mind.

All this planning means that my time in front of a computer is spent purely executing. There’s less wondering ‘what next?’ or ‘what should I write?’ and more getting things done.

3. Work Smart
I love the idea of working smart because it is a great enabler to getting more done. The tricky thing is figuring out what exactly “Work Smart” means. I have found the best way to think of it is to ask yourself this one question:

If you only had a year left to do the things on your lists, would you be satisfied with what you’re spending your time on today?

Deadlines have a way of quickly prioritising things and revealing what is trivial and what is essential. The biggest enemy to getting a lot done is the inane and trivial tasks that it’s so easy to get bogged down in. Distractions, unnecessary emails, low-yield tasks and jobs, and all kinds of wastes of time. Cut out the time wasters and you have more time for the important stuff.

The biggest deadline of course is our own mortality. Faced with that question, pretty much everything that isn’t truly important fades away. Steve Jobs of Apple put it best in his Commencement address at Stanford in 2005.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

4. Push Yourself, But Don’t Overjuggle
You won’t get a lot done if you don’t try to do a lot. For every person the number of tasks, projects, and things they can keep in their heads at one time is different. So it’s important to find your ideal load where it’s enough that you’re a bit uncomfortable, but not so much that you find yourself feeling overwhelmed.

It’s important to be a little uncomfortable because you need stress for peak performance. A little stress will bring out your A-game. This is called “eustress” and if you think about a time when you’ve delivered a great speech, run a race, or pulled out a top performance at work, you will find you’ve been in this sort of stress zone.

If you overdo it though, you break through into another type of stress, called “distress” and here the anxiety and panic effects become a hindrance so that your productivity starts to drop.

It’s tricky to find the balance, and I find I periodically overshoot and break into the bad stresses and pressures. When this happens, it’s best to bite the bullet and drop or delay a project or two. Relieve the pressure and pull back into the right level of difficulty.

5. Team Up, Delegate, Outsource, Don’t Try To Do It All Yourself!
One person no matter how optimised, skilled and driven can only produce a fixed amount. If you really want to get a lot done, you need other people on board.

Working with other people increases the amount of resources in both time and skill that you have at your disposal. It will help you to achieve much, much more. Of course it isn’t easy to do and there are a number of natural barriers that you will need to cross. Some important things to realise:

• You need to accept that you can’t do it all yourself. Because it’s hard to let go of things, oftentimes you will put up the most resistance to plans to work with others. I often have to forcibly tell myself “I can’t do this, it’s just not physically possible to be everywhere, doing everything.” Realise that it is a choice between doing less and holding on to it all tightly, or letting go and accomplishing your goals.
• You need to accept that others might not do things the way you would. This is perhaps the biggest hurdle for many people in working with others. You know that you can do a certain thing just so, but someone else will inevitably do it his or her own way. Accept it, and you’ll come to realise that you also open up to things being done much better than you could have done them! And even when it’s not as good, it’s often a sacrifice that is worth it in the long run.
• Realise that working with others needs to benefit everyone involved. Other people are not your tools to achieving your goals. You can’t simply use others to pursue your own agenda without thinking about them. If you are teaming up with someone, you need to figure out how everyone can win out. If you are hiring people you need to make it worth their while.
• Realise you need to be systematic to make it work or you just escalate your disorganisation. Working with others is not a magic formula to increase your productivity. If you aren’t ready for it, adding more people to your endeavours will have the opposite effect and slow you down. You need to plan and be systematic in how you work so that everyone knows what they are doing, and works together efficiently and productively.

6. Work Hard!
A common desire is to amass multiple achievements, but well… not actually have to do a lot. If that is possible, it’s news to me. Last I checked, working got results, and working hard did even better.

So you have to make a choice. What’s it worth to you, what are you prepared to sacrifice? And just as importantly what are you not prepared to sacrifice? It’s important to have boundaries and not lose sight of what is important in life, so figure out what works for you.

Earlier we discussed working smart, well if you work smart and work hard, then you’ll really get a lot done.

7. Don’t be Bound by What Others Tell You Is or Isn’t Possible
If you don’t think something is possible, guess what? It isn’t. People do some pretty wild and unbelievable things. You’re a person, what makes you think you can’t do them?

In life you will encounter a lot of cynicism and disillusion, you’ll be told that certain things are or are not possible. Listen at your peril, as these are self-fulfilling prophecies.

While everyone has doubts, it’s important not to let them overpower you. If you’re feeling particularly low on confidence, there are still many things you can do to get over that. For instance:

• Start Small. There’s no need to take on the whole world in a day, and building up to things is the best way to get over low confidence. Tackle a set of smaller projects or milestones, and accomplish them. Give yourself some positive feedback to build on and then go upwards from there.
• Just Start. If you spend your time looking up at the top of a mountain, the climb seems a lot more daunting than if you just start with the bit in front of you. I often just jump into projects and ideas, deliberately not thinking them through, because I know that once I start, things inevitably work themselves out.
• Give yourself time. Everyone needs time to accomplish their goals, and as a general rule, things usually need more time than you would think. I can’t even count the number of projects that have taken me waaay longer than I had hoped or planned for. But looking back, none of that matters. There is only what you did and what you didn’t do.

Thank you, Collis, for this excellent guest post! - Leo

Last week I discussed several techniques to help you keep promises to yourself, whether it be with sticking to your decision to work on a project or as a motivational tool in your efforts to build new habits. One of those techniques was to treat your promises almost like a business/legal contract. We don’t readily look to break those sorts of contracts so it makes sense to apply the same principle to your own personal work and growth. Shanel Yang commented on that post, using her legal background to leave a great, authentic example contract. This gave me a great idea to take that example and turn it into a contract template for everyone to use.

You can view the results here. Give it a try by printing it out and filling in the blanks. Add your name and then the specifics of your designated goals. Then to complete the deal, be sure to sign and date it for added authenticity. Below I’ve included some examples of how you can fill in the contract so you have a better idea of what format it should take. Make sure the target you want to achieve is small and actionable and has a time period attached to it.

• For my goal of writing the project analysis and review, I will spend thirty minutes each day working on it during the period of July 2008.
• For my goal of improving my fitness with exercise and healthy eating, I will go to the gym twice during the period of 25th June to 29th June 2008.
• For my goal of smoking and drinking less, I will drink two less units of alcohol during the period of the week beginning 30th June 2008.

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• Best Of Organize IT: May 2008
• Best of Organize IT: April 2008
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Focus is important for making improvements.  If your focus is spread too widely, you won’t make much progress.  If you can’t stay focused on one project for long, you won’t be able to reach a foothold before you slide back to where you started.

One trick I like to use to stay focused is to decide on a theme for my life.  Summed up in only a word or two, this theme gives me a specific direction I want to invest in for several months.  Deciding on a theme helps you focus on what is important to you if you find yourself getting off track.

I’ve gone through a few different themes in the last couple years.  Several years ago, my theme was habits.  I spent a lot of energy trying to get the routines I wanted without the need for constant willpower.  When I moved to go to school, my theme was socializing and relationships.

So far, in 2008, my theme has been focusing on this business.  Already this year I’ve written three books, set up partnerships and written over a hundred articles.  Having a theme has paid off, because it has helped me stay motivated.

Choosing a Theme

Ideally, a theme should last anywhere from a few months to a few years.  Less than this amount of time and you won’t get the benefits of a consistent focus.  Weekly or monthly themes don’t have the staying power to let you make meaningful progress.  Longer than a few years and you have the risk of falling into a fixed lifestyle.

Since a theme should last for several months, it isn’t a decision you want to make in fifteen minutes.  Your theme should drive you enough that it will help you ignore distractions.  Although I don’t recommend setting a deadline for when you should switch themes, you should feel able to commit to it for at least 3-6 months.

I believe there are three important questions that come with choosing a theme:

1.     What do I really want to accomplish?
2.     What accomplishments would benefit my life most right now?
3.     What opportunities do I have, that would make growth easier in one theme?

I’ve listed those three questions in order of importance, but consider all three before you decide on a theme.

What do I really want to accomplish?

When I decided to go for my theme of business in 2008, I was incredibly motivated to work towards it.  For several years, I’ve dreamed of being able to run a business full-time.  Although I’ve had work as a theme before, this was the first time I was relatively close to achieving it.  Picking this as a theme made sense because I knew it would connect me with my current motivations.

Don’t work on the themes you feel you “should”.  Even if there are other issues slightly more pressing, you’ll get a lot more done if you focus on your strongest motivations.  If you’re only mildly interested in your health and incredibly focused on your career, I wouldn’t make fitness a theme, even if someone said you were fat.

What accomplishments would benefit my life most right now?

Often there will be several themes that you find motivating.  Business, relationships, health and learning are all themes I could be intensely interested in right now.  The next question is to look at where a theme would benefit you most.

For me, this decisions was also easy because I knew that becoming financially independent would help trigger more independence in other areas.  Reaching that first business success milestone could have a ripple effect.

I ask this question second and not first.  The reason is that I feel it is always better to focus on process and deeper motivations than results.  There might be one area of life you feel more compelled to focus on, but your motivation will always be shallow if you have something else you want more.

What opportunities are available?

Even through a second filter, there are still many options I could pursue.  Relationships, business and socializing are all areas I’m motivated towards and would benefit my life.  The last question I ask is what opportunities are available for improvement.

I decided to focus on the theme of socializing when I went to University.  This made sense because the opportunities of going from an isolated, small town life to a big campus with thousands of people were obvious.  When I decided to focus on my business this year, it was with the knowledge that I would have four months of summer where I could work full-time on personal projects, something I haven’t been able to do before.

If the first two questions point to a clear theme, ignore this question.  If your motivation is strong enough, you can make up for a lack of opportunities.  I only use this question as a tie-breaker between competing themes.

When Should You Switch Themes?

I mentioned previously that I don’t think you should set a timeline for a theme.  Themes aren’t the same as goals, so it doesn’t make sense to pick an arbitrary date where you will switch one focus to another.  I don’t switch themes too frequently (at least 3-6 months is needed), but there are a few trigger events that can let you know it’s time to switch themes.

If you make a big accomplishment towards a theme, that would be an indicator that it’s time to switch.  For me, I’ve decided the amount of income I need from this business to be comfortably financially independent.  If I can reach that amount, I’ll know the time has come for me to focus on a different theme.

Another trigger moment can be a complete shift in opportunities.  A lack of opportunities can force you to keep one theme in the background.  But, if life changes, you might find the current theme doesn’t suit you.  Moving to a new city or getting a new job might force you to reevaluate the themes you’ve set.

Just as important as noticing trigger moments, you need to notice what isn’t a trigger to switch.  Reaching a plateau in your theme isn’t a sign you should switch.  If the desire is still there, a temporary lack of progress shouldn’t make you flip-flop.  In fact, these are often the times you need to focus on one theme the most.

Writing your theme down can help you stay attached to it.  Summarize your motivations into one or two words.  You can use that word to help you decide what goals to set and avoid distractions.

What is your current theme?  Add your word to the comments below.

If you believe in evolution, you know there wasn't some superstar golfer caveman from which Tiger Woods evolved centuries later. His talent and subsequent success were not a genetic lottery win -- let's take a look at 12 factors that we can adapt from this legendary golfer.

Even if Tiger Woods was somehow physically superior, all that gossip could be laid to rest, when Tiger Woods won this years U.S. Open playing with a bum knee. Ok, so maybe a knee isn't that crucial to a golfer, but walking on it while experiencing a great deal of pain and keeping the focus does prove that there's more to this man than his stroke.

12 Rules for Success From Tiger Woods

1. Constant and Never Ending Improvement

"No matter how good you get you can always get better and that's the exciting part"~Tiger Woods

Never settle for good enough, not when you know you could always be better tomorrow than you were today. That's how Tiger keeps himself excited, into the game, and appreciating his life on a daily basis. Each day he practices his technique and improves a little bit. You can be sure he takes this principle out of the game and into life.

2. A Bigger Plan

"I think it's an honor to be a role model to one person or maybe more than that. If you are given a chance to be a role model, I think you should always take it because you can influence a person's life in a positive light, and that's what I want to do. That's what it's all about."~Tiger Woods

Tiger looks at the big picture, which is usually bigger than his own success and accomplishments. One thing he does is mentor individuals, both in Golf and in life. The kind of impact he has on these people will extend past his network, past what he could do himself, and he knows this.

3. Embrace Defeat

"I'm trying as hard as I can, and sometimes things don't go your way, and that's the way things go."~Tiger Woods

Defeat will come from time to time but it's much better to accept it and move on instead of sticking your claws into it and not letting go. This includes wallowing in your own misery, feeling sorry for yourself, and gossiping about your opponent. The quicker that you can pick yourself up and start training for the next challenge the more prepared and successful you will be.

4. Take Life Lightly

"If you can't laugh at yourself, then who can you laugh at?"~Tiger Woods

Not every moment has to be spent with a serious face on your mug. It's perfectly okay to laugh, even in the face of tragedy. Realistically speaking we don't ever know if we'll be here tomorrow, so we might as well make the best of today. Even if we were guaranteed tomorrow, it doesn't mean we shouldn't extract every morsel of pleasure out of whatever we've committed our life to at the moment.

5. Don't Stop

"Tiger may have used his golf club as a cane, but he refused to use his injury as a crutch." ~Brian Clark

Tiger faced serious post surgery trauma during his last game. It hurt like hell. Despite his injury Tiger did not complain. He did not want to even consider using his injury as an excuse and instead focused all his energy on winning. Less talking, no stopping, more winning.

6. Live Your Own Expectations

"One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people's expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectations, and those are the only things I really care about it." ~Tiger Woods

The moment we start allowing ourselves to live the way other people want us to live we become average. We become this culmination of wants, needs, expectations -- and none of them belong to us. Not Tiger. Tiger lives his life by his self-made rules. Be the best he told himself, and then he defined what the best was.

7. Do What You Love

"I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for - getting paid for doing what you love."~Tiger Woods

When you're doing what you love it doesn't even matter if you're getting paid.When you think about it, you spend more time working than you do with your family or your place of worship. You might as well take pleasure in the time you spend 'on the clock' or in Tiger's case on the field.

8. Focus

"My main focus is on my game."~Tiger Woods

Having one solid goal which you can devote all your focus into pools together all your available resources. You begin to enroll other people into your vision and they start to believe in you. This will give you access to new tools, mentors, and even more resources to get to your goal faster and better.

9. Pay It Forward

"My dad has always taught me these words: care and share. That's why we put on clinics. The only thing I can do is try to give back. If it works, it works."~Tiger Woods

You don't know how much money you have until you give it away. I'm sure you've heard that before many times. The same thing goes for our talents, skills, and other opportunities. When we can empower people by giving a piece of ourselves to them we can leave a legacy or live on through them. Besides we're programmed to feel good when we are kind to others.

10. Learn From All Mistakes

"The only thing you can do is take a learning experience from it, positives and negatives, and apply them to the future. What did you do right, what did you do wrong, and I did a lot of things right this week" ~Tiger Woods

You can subscribe to the idea that everything is put into our life as a challenge. When things are going bad it is our challenge to over come them. When things are going great it is our challenge to remain grounded and humble. It's all there so that we can learn from it and grow, so there's no point getting hung up on or experiencing a huge grief over a bad mistake. Be happy that you learned a valuable lesson.

11. Celebrate Your Victories

"It's been a lot of fun to see some fruits of my hard labor."~Tiger Woods

No matter how many times Tiger wins he treats each win as if it is special. This provides a constant positive reinforcement to keep him interested in giving the game his best. Perhaps if he only celebrated once a year, after the final stats were in and he saw he was still the best, he wouldn't be living so much in the moment. If Tiger wasn't living in the present, or at least one game at a time, there is no way he would be as happy as he could be.

12. Pay No Attention To Naysayers

"You know, all the nay-sayers said that I was doing the wrong things. They can understand why now I made those changes."~Tiger Woods

Had Tiger payed attention to the first critic that told him he wouldn't make it he would have given up when he started golfing at the age of 5. If he gave up the second time he wouldn't be here either. During Tigers career there have been thousands upon thousands of people commenting and gossiping that this game wouldn't be his game, and even if it is he still won't win it all. Nonsense. By going for his goals despite the nay-sayers Tiger made it all happen.Practical Application.

By now I hope you realized that Tiger Woods is both an amazing athlete and an incredible person. While you may not be a golfer, or if you are you may not be as good as Tiger, you can see how his wisdom could be applied to your every day life. Be the Tiger Woods of whatever you are passionate about. Don't stop, don't listen to anybody except your own expectations, and achieve your bigger plan.

-Alex

Pamela Skilling’s Escape from Corporate America and Daniel H. Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

I just read something scary on Twitter. Jonathan Fields – entrepreneur extraordinaire (I interviewed him on Lifehack Live) – posted about a conversation he’d had with a friend who “didn’t get how I could live w/ ‘stress’ of being entrepreneur and not having someone else pay me.”

It’s true: there are people in the world who will take an amazing amount of crap – layoffs, verbal abuse, boredom, office politics, and more – in exchange for the perceived security of having someone else write them a check every week.

This isn’t a post about becoming an entrepreneur, it’s a post about doing something to deal with a job that drags you down. More specifically, it’s a post about two inspiring books I’ve recently read, both of which take on the subject of career change in interesting, creative, and very different ways.

The first is Pamela Skillings’ Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams. Skillings was good enough to come on Lifehack Live recently to talk about her book, and I highly recommend people listen to what she has to say.

The other book is Daniel H. Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, a guide to business life with a twist: it’s written as a manga, a Japanese-style comic book. Before you scoff, believe me when I tell you, this is not a book for kids!

Change Your Life, Change Your Career

Let me quickly clear something up: neither of these books is about changing from one job to another. You’ll find no tips on building the perfect resume, no how-tos on dressing for an interview, and nothing about getting the most our of monster.com.

Instead, these books are about changing your career – even if you stay in the same job. What that means is the focus is on you as a person, not the mechanics of your working life.

Escape from Corporate America is, as you’d probably imagine, the more straightforward of the two. The book begins with a look at what’s wrong with the typical American corporate job – the frustrating lack of control many workers feel, the soul-deadening demand for conformity, the feeling of “going through the paces” year in and year out – and in the end, having nothing you can point to that says “I made a difference”.

Skillings points to recent surveys that show 50% of Americans are dissatisfied with their jobs – and almost all American workers fantasize about leaving. Why do we do it? Why don’t we stick our heads into our boss’ office, scream “I’ve had all I can take and I’m not going to take it anymore!” and storm out?

It’s tempting to say “fear”, and I’m sure that plays a part in it, but I think a more realistic answer is “inertia” – the tendency of objects (and people) in motion to remain moving along the same path until an outside force acts on them. Skillings’ book aims to be that “outside force”.

Skilling’s talked with hundreds of people – corporate workers as well as successful “corporate escape artists” – about their experiences in and out of the corporate world, and compiled their responses, along with her own experiences and the latest research, into a guide to career satisfaction. The second part of her book offers the pros and cons of a variety of alternatives: from going to work for a company that “gets it”, starting your own business, to becoming a teacher, fighting the good fight at a non-profit, or launching a creative career.

But more importantly, she offers a set of exercises in self-exploration, walking you through the process not of finding a new job but of finding the real you – figuring out your strengths, your preferences, and your values and matching them to a career that will give you the room you need to grow as a person.

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is also about figuring out and playing to your strengths. Poor Johnny Bunko is Everyman (or Everywoman), trapped in a job that he neither enjoys nor is all that good at. Then he comes into possession of a set of magical chopsticks – stay with me here! – that, when opened, call forth a magical career advisor who offers a set of six lessons.

It’s lighthearted and silly – but then again, the problem Pink is trying to help you deal with is the deadly seriousness that traps so many of us into dead-end jobs we don’t enjoy and don’t see how to get out of.

It’s a short read, so I won’t rehearse all six lessons here, but let me focus on the first two by way of introduction. When we meet our hero, he’s a low-level accountant at a company that does… what, we don’t know. He is a practical man with a practical job at a practical company, following “The Plan” laid out for him by his father, his career counselors, his employers – and it’s killing him.

Lesson #1: There is no plan.

Too many of us get stuck because we had it all worked out years ago – college, starter job, pay our dues, a couple of promotions, maybe a move to a bigger company, and, at some point, a comfortable perch in a corner office where the “good stuff” happens.

It’s a good plan, from a project management perspective; not so good for life, though. It assumes, for one thing, that we will remain the same person, with the same drives and the same ambitions, forever. It also assumes that when the time comes, the opportunity will present itself.

Those killer assumptions blind us to all the other opportunities that are constantly presenting themselves – as well as the ones we have to hunt out ourselves.

And when we hit a snag, when The Plan fails to come to fruition, we turn inwards, looking for the things we can fix in ourselves to make us more promotable, more desirable as a job candidate, more well-suited to The Plan. We become entrapped in a never-ending cycle of rooting out weaknesses.

Lesson #2: Think strengths, not weaknesses.

For one reason or another, all of us are better at some things than others – and find more satisfaction in some things than others. A life spent ignoring our strengths so we can “better ourselves” by improving in those areas where we’re weakest is no life at all – it’s a one-way ticket to perpetual dissatisfaction with who we are.

This doesn’t mean that if you’re a slob, say, everyone around you should just get used to it so you can focus on refining your brilliant wit. What it means is that you pay attention to those things only inasmuch as they affect your ability to function, while focusing on expanding the scope and strength of the things you’re best at. It means spending your time and energy to improve in those area where improvement itself is satisfying, where the return on your investment will be greatest, and where you are most likely to be able to make a mark in the world.

Why waste your efforts on improving your weakest skills only to achieve mediocrity?

Stop What You’re Doing and Read These Books

Given the statistics, chances are you need to hear what Skillings and Pink have to say. Even if you’re satisfied with where you’re at right now, read them for tomorrow – you never know when you’re going to hit a wall and find yourself floundering.

Neither of these books are very expensive: I picked up both in paperback for about $10 US each from Amazon. Escape from Corporate America is slightly better-suited for professionals, people with several years of experience in the corporate world under their belt (although my corporate years are almost a decade behind me and I still found a lot of value in the book). The Adventures of Johnny Bunko might appeal slightly more to younger people in more creative fields – or who wish they were in more creative fields. But both have a lot to offer to anyone, regardless of your age or current career.

Get them and read them, and let your mind absorb what they have to say. You don’t have to run out and change careers tomorrow – in fact, Skillings is pretty adamant that the only way to fly is with careful planning – but the change in perspective will do you a world of good. And once that ball starts rolling, once that outside force changes your path, there’s no going back – the next steps will come to you, inevitably.

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Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and women's studies in Las Vegas, NV. His personal site can be found at dwax.org.

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Are you expecting better results in your life? Do you want to achieve more in your career and relationships? I think most people do (and I’m no exception, of course). Most people want to be more successful in whatever they do.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get the results we want. We may work hard without ever getting them. That happened in my life and, in reflection, I realize why it happened. There is a quote by Albert Einstein that helps me understand:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

That’s exactly what’s wrong with me:

I did things the same way

I might work hard, but I did things the same way. How could I expect different results then?

The solution is obvious:

I must change the way I do things

Changing the way we do things is one of the most difficult things to do. When we do something for the first time, we try to find a rhythm and adapt ourselves to it. But once we adapt to it, we become comfortable and there is inertia that hinders us from change.

Here I’d like to share ten essential things you should change in your life to get what you want. For each point below, I also give you practical tips in the form of action lists. Here they are:

1. Change your priorities

This is important if you want to live a balanced, fulfilling life. Many people are successful in their career but don’t have good relationships with their spouse or family because of wrong priorities. They put things like money and reputation above their relationships. Don’t let it happen to you. You should put relationships as your top priority.

Another important point is to put your passion above money. When you encounter a situation in your life where you must choose between money and passion, choose passion. Having a fulfilling life is more important than having a lot of money.

Action list:

• Make (not find) time for your loved ones. Allocate certain blocks of time for your loved ones and defend them ruthlessly.
• Find the intersection between what matter to you and your personal strengths. You may want to make one list for each and find similar items in both lists. These are your passions you should focus on. Then make time for them. Aim to develop your competences so that you can provide value to others.

2. Change your self-talk

Your self-talk has significant influence in your life. When you say that something is bad, you will - either consciously or not - develop a negative attitude toward it. Look at these statements:

• I hate doing this.
• I’m not creative.
• The situation is too difficult to solve.

Can you feel how such statements influence your attitude? You won’t have positive, winning attitude with this kind of self-talk. The opposite is also true. When you say that something is good, you will develop a positive attitude toward it. Compare the previous statements with these:

• I love it!
• I’m creative and talented.
• The situation is challenging and fun to solve.

Can you feel the difference?

Action list

• Watch your mind closely. What does it say about something or someone?
• Is it negative? If the answer is yes, find a different angle and craft a positive statement in your mind.
• Speak out the positive statement in your mind,
• Next time when you encounter the negative self-talk again, quickly replace it with the positive one.

3. Change your motivation

Motivation is the reason why we do things. It gives us the power to move and work. You can significantly change the way you do things simply by changing your motivation.

I like to see motivation through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There are eight levels of needs there (from the lowest to the highest): physical, security, belonging, esteem, learning, aesthetic, self-actualization, and transcendence. Our motivation is always to meet one or more of these needs. The way to change your motivation is to upgrade your motivation to higher levels in the hierarchy. For example, if your motivation to work is money (which resides in either physical or esteem level), you can upgrade it to helping others (transcendence level).

Action list

• Read Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
• Find at what level your motivation currently is.
• Look at higher levels and for each of them imagine how it will be like to work with that motivation.
• Take one or two that resonate with you and set them as your new motivation.
• Replace your self-talk. If previously you say to yourself “I do this because I want to (low-level motivation)”, change it to “I do this because I want to (higher-level motivation)”. For example, replace “I do this because I want to earn money” with “I do this because I want to help people.”
• Act as if you already internalize your new motivation. Continuing the example in previous point, act as if you genuinely want to help others.

4. Change your habits

Is there any bad habit that holds you back? If the answer is yes, then you should break the bad habit and replace it with a good one. For instance, perhaps you have the habit of rising late. But - since many people testify that early morning the most productive time - that means that you lose the most productive time of the day. You can get better results simply by replacing the old habit with a new habit of rising early.

Action list

• Take one new habit you want to build and do it every day for at least 30 days without fail.
• Find people to share your progress with. Accountability will make it much easier for you to adopt the new habit.
• Reward yourself along the way. It will motivate you to move forward.

5. Change your friends

Changing your friends doesn’t mean discarding your current friends. No, what I mean here is you should change the friends who influence you or, in other words, your close friends. Find close friends who can encourage, equip, and challenge you to move to the next level. If your friends currently do not meet this criterion, find new friends who do. Interact with them and you are more likely to come out as champions in life. Remember, winners breed winners.

Action list

• Join a professional organization in your field.
• Join a good social organization (for example, a church) to meet positive people in your area.
• Join an online forum in your field or a field you are interested in.

6. Change your commitments

You may have commitments in your life that don’t add value to your life. Perhaps you take too many roles or responsibilities. Most likely, some of them just take your resources away from doing the most rewarding ones. You should change your commitments in such a way that you get the most out of your time.

Action list

• List your roles and sort them from the most rewarding one to the least.
• Look at the least rewarding roles and ask yourself: Can I eliminate this? If the answer is no, ask the second question: How can I delegate this?
• For the remaining roles, list your responsibilities for each role, and again, sort them from the most rewarding one to the least.
• For each responsibility, ask the two questions again.

7. Change your inputs

Your inputs determine your outputs. There is no way you can get high-quality outputs if you feed your mind with low-quality inputs. So watch your inputs carefully. What programs do you watch on TV? What books, magazines, or blogs do you read? Discard the low-quality inputs and replace them with high-quality ones.

Action list

• Turn off your TV (except for a few special programs).
• Assess the value you get from each input stream (like blogs, books, and magazines) regularly. Does it give you enough value? If the answer is no, then discard it.
• Visit Recommended for You page at Amazon. The page gives book recommendations that are tailored to your preferences. You will get better recommendations if you actively rate books you have read.
• Read classic books. These books have passed the test of time.

8. Change your methods

You may have done something for years that you forget there are new, more efficient methods to do it. For example, can you imagine writing a document with a typing machine while everyone has used computer?

It’s essential to monitor your field continuously and adopt new methods that are available. Of course, you should be careful not to try every method. Take only the proven ones.

Action list

• Visit these Amazon pages regularly to check if there are relevant books you can read:
  • Bestsellers in Books
  • New York Times Best Sellers
  • Hot New Releases in Books
  • Bestsellers in your field (here is example for business and investing)
  • New books in your field (here is example for business and investing)
• Subscribe to blogs in your field. One way to find them is through Technorati’s Blog Directory.

9. Change your intensity

Perhaps you do not work intense enough these days. If you want to produce more in a given period of time, you need to increase your work intensity. You should increase your focus and energy in doing your tasks. Learn to work intensely for certain period of time and then take true rest before starting another session of intense work.

Action list

• When you are about to work, turn off your cell phone (or at least put it to silent mode).
• Close all unnecessary windows in your computer.
• Set a target duration to work and don’t stop before time is up.

10. Change your way of spending

Money is an important resource and the way you spend it will significantly affect the results you get in life. Instead of falling into the trap of consumerism, spend your money to buy asset. Use your money to invest in your future.

Action list

Depending on your circumstances, you may want to:

• Buy books. Point 8 above has tips on how to find good books.
• Attend seminars.
• Take a degree.
• Hire an assistant so that you can focus on your core competences.

* * *

It will be much better if you have the habit of changing. By having the habit of changing, you will change constantly and not just occasionally. To build the habit of changing you should:

1. Be aware of how you do things
   Don’t work and live on autopilot. Take a moment to stop and observe how you do things.
2. Continually find something you can change
   From your observation, try to find what you can change. They may be some of the ten things above.
3. Write your findings in a journal
   Don’t waste your time by finding the same thing twice. Record whatever you find. I prefer electronic journal because it’s searchable, but you can use paper-based journal if you want to.
4. Take the first step to change
   The first step is the most difficult to take since you need to overcome initial inertia. The action lists above gives you some possible first steps you can take.

Do you have any thoughts?

If you liked this article, please share it on StumbleUpon. I’d appreciate it.

Photo by lomokev

Veteran Lifehacker reader Scott writes in with a tip for anyone who regularly renames groups of pictures, documents, or other files, but doesn't need a bulk renaming utility to get it done. Just start renaming the first file in a folder or list (by hitting F2, right-clicking or "long clicking" on the name), but instead of hitting enter or clicking to finish, hit "Tab," and Vista will instantly head over to the next file for renaming. XP users don't have this ability, but they can get Vista's ability to select just the file name for renaming. Thanks, Scott!

Profitability often requires better rules and speed, not more time. (Photo: Jetta Girl)

I wrote this “margin manifesto” several months ago and somehow neglected to post it. Your requests for more content on start-up economics and processes reminded me.

These are the principles I review whenever facing operational overwhelm or declining/stagnating profits. Hope you find them useful.

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The financial goal of a start-up should be simple: profit in the least time with the least effort. Not more customers, not more revenue, not more offices or more employees: more profit.

Based on my interviews with high-performing (using profit-per-employee metrics) CEOs in more than a dozen countries, here are the 11 basic tenets of the “Margin Manifesto”… a return-to-basics call that gives permission to do the uncommon to achieve the uncommon: consistent profitability (or doubling of it) in 3 months or less.

1. Niche is the New Big — The Lavish Dwarf Entertainment Rule:
Several years ago, an investment banker was jailed for trade violations. He was caught partly due to his lavish parties on yachts, often featuring hired dwarves. The owner of the dwarf rental company, Danny Black, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying: “Some people are just into lavish dwarf entertainment.” Niche in the new big. But here’s the secret: it’s possible to niche market and mass sell. iPod commercials don’t feature dancing 50-year olds, they feature hip and fit 20-30-somethings, but everyone and his grandmother wants to feel youthful and hip, so they strap on Nanos and call themselves Apple converts. Who you portray in your marketing isn’t necessarily the only demographic who buys your product — it’s often the demographic that most people want to identify with or belong to. The target isn’t the market. No one aspires to be the bland average, so don’t water down messaging to appeal to everyone—it will end up appealing to no one.

2. Revisit Drucker — What Gets Measured Gets Managed:
Measure compulsively, for as Peter Drucker stated: what gets measured gets managed. Useful metrics to track, besides the usual operational stats, include CPO (“Cost-Per-Order,” which includes advertising, fulfillment and expected returns, chargebacks, and bad debt), ad allowable (the maximum you can spend on an advertisement and expect breakeven), MER (media efficiency ratio), and projected lifetime value (LV) given return rates and reorder %. Consider applying direct response advertising metrics to your business.

3. Pricing before Product - Plan Distribution First:
Is your pricing scalable? Many companies will sell direct-to-consumer by necessity in early stages, only to realize that their margins can’t accommodate resellers and distributors when they come knocking. If you have a 40% profit margin and a distributor needs a 70% discount to sell into wholesale accounts, you’re forever limited to direct-to-consumer… unless you increase your pricing and margins. It’s best to do this beforehand if possible - otherwise, you’ll need to launch new or “premium” products — so plan distribution before setting pricing. Test assumptions and find hidden costs by interviewing those who have done it: will you need to pay for co-op advertising, offer rebates for bulk purchases, or pay for shelfspace or featured placement? I know one former CEO of a national brand who had to sell his company to one of the world’s largest soft drink manufacturers before he could access front-of-store shelving in top retailers. Test your assumptions and do your homework before setting pricing.

4. Less is More - Limiting Distribution to Increase Profit:
Is more distribution automatically better? No. Uncontrolled distribution leads to all manner of head-ache and profit-bleeding, most often related to rogue discounters. Reseller A lowers pricing to compete with online discounter B, and the price cutting continues until neither is making sufficient profit on the product and both stop reordering. This requires you to launch a new product, as price erosion is almost always irreversible. Avoid this scenario and consider partnering with one or two key distributors instead, using that exclusivity to negotiate better terms: less discounting, prepayment, preferred placement and marketing support, etc. From iPods to Rolex and Estee Lauder, sustainable high-profit brands usually begin with controlled distribution. Remember, more customers isn’t the goal; more profit is.

5. Net-0 — Create Demand vs. Offering Terms:
Focus on creating end-user demand so you can dictate terms. Often one trade publication advertisment, bought at discount remnant rates, will be enough to provide this leverage. Outside of science and law, most “rules” are just common practice. Just because everyone in your industry offers terms doesn’t mean you have to, and offering terms is the most consistent ingredient in start-up failure. Cite start-up economics and the ever-so-useful “company policy” as reasons for prepayment and apologize, but don’t make exceptions. Net-30 becomes net-60, which become net-120. Time is the most expensive asset a start-up has, and chasing delinquent accounts will prevent you from generating more sales. If customers are asking for your product, resellers and distributors will need to buy. It’s that simple. Put funds and time into strategic marketing and PR to tip the scales in your favor.

6. Repetition is Usually Redundant — Good Advertising Works the First Time:
Use direct response advertising (call-to-action to a phone number or website) that is uniquely trackable - fully accountable advertising — instead of image advertising, unless others are prepurchasing to offset the cost (e.g. “If you prepurchase 288 units, we’ll feature your store/URL/phone exclusively in a full-page ad in….”). Don’t listen to advertising salespeople who tell you that 3, 7, or 27 exposures are needed before someone will act on an advertisement. Well-designed and well-targeted advertising works the first time. If something works partially well (e.g., high response with low percentage conversion to sales, low response with high conversion, etc.), indicating that a strong ROI might be possible with small changes, tweak one controlled variable and micro-test once more. Cancel anything that cannot be justified with a trackable ROI.

7. Limit Downside to Ensure Upside — Sacrifice Margin for Safety:
Don’t manufacture product in large quantities to increase margin unless your product and marketing are tested and ready for roll-out without changes. If a limited number of prototypes cost $10 per piece to manufacture and sell for $11 each, that’s fine for the initial testing period, and essential for limiting downside. Sacrifice margin temporarily for the testing phase, if need be, and avoid potentially fatal upfront overcommitments.

8. Negotiate Late — Make Others Negotiate Against Themselves:
Never make a first offer when purchasing. Flinch after the first offer (“$3,000!” followed by pure silence, which uncomfortable salespeople fill by dropping the price once), let people negotiate against themselves (“Is that really the best you can offer?” elicits at least one additional drop in price), then “bracket”. If they end up at $2,000 and you want to pay $1,500, offer $1,250. They’ll counter with approximately $1,750, to which you respond: “I’ll tell you what — let’s just split the difference. I’ll overnight FedEx you a check, and we can call it a day.” The end result? Exactly what you wanted: $1,500.

9. Hyperactivity vs. Productivity — 80/20 and Pareto’s Law:
Being busy is not the same as being productive. Forget about the start-up overwork ethic that people wear as a badge of honor—get analytical. The 80/20 principle, also known as Pareto’s Law, dictates that 80% of your desired outcomes are the result of 20% of your activities or inputs. Once per week, stop putting out fires for an afternoon and run the numbers to ensure you’re placing effort in high-yield areas: What 20% of customers/products/regions are producing 80% of the profit? What are the factors that could account for this? Invest in duplicating your few strong areas instead of fixing all of your weaknesses.

10. The Customer is Not Always Right — “Fire” High-Maintenance Customers:
Not all customers are created equal. Apply the 80/20 principle to time consumption: What 20% of people are consuming 80% of your time? Put high-maintenance, low-profit customers on auto-pilot—process orders but don’t pursue them or check up on them—and “fire” high-maintenance, high-profit customers by sending a memo detailing how a change in business model requires a few new policies: how often and how to communicate, standardized pricing and order process, etc. Indicate that, for those clients whose needs are incompatible with these new policies, you are happy to introduce other providers. “But what if my largest customer consumes all of my time?” Recognize that 1) without time, you cannot scale your company (and, oftentimes, life) beyond that customer, and 2) people, even good people, will unknowingly abuse your time to the extent that you let them. Set good rules for all involved to minimize back-and-forth and meaningless communication.

11. Deadlines over Details - Test Reliability Before Capability:
Skills are overrated. Perfect products delivered past deadline kill companies faster than decent products delivered on-time. Test someone’s ability to deliver on a specific and tight deadline before hiring them based on a dazzling portfolio. Products can be fixed as long as you have cash-flow, and bugs are forgiven, but missing deadlines is often fatal. Calvin Coolidge once said that nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent; I would add that the second most common is smart people who think their IQ or resume justifies delivering late.

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This week's Friday 5 comes from Escape from Cubicle Nation: the top 5 nitpicky mistakes that drive me crazy.

Well, they drive me crazy, too!

Sharing an email address with your spouse.
...

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Read the full article at We Got Served.