Our video from the Keep Productive YouTube channel:

We also sponsored their apps of. the month video which you can see here

In the second of this weekend's link posts, an excerpt from an article by Ron Gibori on the common mistake that keeps businesses at a standstill.  The excerpt below resonated this week due to writing a post about Jimmy Iovine to be posted soon.

Remove your ego and make the best decision for your company.

The simple truth is that networking and investment are priceless and necessary for any entrepreneur. Whether or not it means giving away equity, having consignments for your idea from influential thought leaders is crucial. A page in a local publication or being highlighted on a high-traffic site because you know the editor is a quick route to growth and success.

As much as you spend time working on and refining your idea, don't forget to nurture the relationships of the people around you. Nobody climbs to the top by themselves, somebody had to build the ladder.

Read the whole article here

A few people at my day job have recently left to "pursue other opportunities."

One got made redundant, is close to retirement but yet did not want to go and retire on the pay-out, instead wanting to carry on working and will seek another job after a small break. A couple of people have gone into consulting for some big money but a lot of travel and long hours, so they will be impacting their family life as a result.

What are they working for? What are they earning the money for? DO they love what they do? Do they hate their families? Who knows? Maybe not even them if they have not stopped to work it out.

The latest person to leave has given extended notice (six months instead of three) so she hopes that a replacement can be found and have a good handover.  How novel an idea that there would be some continuity in a key job. I wonder if HR will catch on ;-) But she is leaving to do charitable work or work for a non-profit. They always said later in their career they wanted to give back rather than working for big corporations all their lives.

I thought that this was so refreshing. Obviously, people who have made big bucks, celebrities and politicians wives always go on the non-profit train because it is noble and because they have the means to do it. But to hear from a 'normal' person that they have always wanted to do this and actually having the courage to follow through with it, with nothing to go to, is quite inspiring.

If you do not follow through in actions, that which your mind desires, then they can never come to fruition.

I found it strange that I know no one who has left to start their own business apart from a consulting business of one person, for tax purposes.  But no one has built a product business or anything remotely scalable. It is like everyone is brainwashed to use time to earn money rather than the other way around.

It is time for the weekend link posts again. This one is from a great article  by Christopher D. Connors on 30 excuses stopping you from living your best life. Number one is close to my heart, here it is:

At MeeTime we help people save time to do the things they love. It is so easy to carve out twenty minutes of a meeting.  Do this every day and you have the time to make progress in whatever you choose.

Read the original article here

If you spend 100% of what you earn, inflation will go up (or the value of money approaches its true worth - nothing) and you will, therefore, need to get paid the same percentage more as inflation to stay even.

If you get a pay-rise in line with inflation (assuming inflation is calculated fairly which it is not) then you will be even.

But inflation is not calculated correctly because it excludes things you actually need to live, like rent and house prices, like pensions moving to defined contributions etc. So why should you settle for a percentage increase?

Skip ahead to consider the flip-side. Imaging you are already 3 to 4 times higher on the hierarchy at work and you are making good money now. Groceries are only 10% of your salary and you have loads of extra cash to spare from your wage even after all expenses. Why should your wage go up by the same percentage as retail prices? TO keep the maths very simple, if groceries cost you £100 a month, 2% increase is £2, but you are getting 2% increase on your £1000 a month salary which is £20.  You are £18 better off for a cost of living increase.

The cost of living rise does not work.  It benefits the rich. Or does it just benefit those who happen to be living below their means? Both.

The rich could be squandering all their extra salary on 'stuff' and why should they be worse off if RPI goes up? Similarly, you can have the effect of the rich right now by living below your means and taking the upside.

Or you can just earn more money, work harder, work on yourself, become a lynchpin, suggest new ideas, start a side business, sell stuff in the attic, sell things from garage sales.  But do not complain.

I saw a homeless person with an iPhone.  You can start a business with that same device in your pocket. You have all the knowledge you need inside it even if you do not know where to start - the internet. Just fucking do something to pull yourself out of the hole, but do not moan about economic conditions. You can see what the economy is going to be like if you educate yourself - factor it in. Get ahead of the game.

Will it make the boat go faster? Benjamin P. Hardy wrote a great article yesterday on how to keep focussing on the right things with a lesson from the British rowing team of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Read the whole article for context but my favourite excerpts are below:

Find out what you want in life and for everything that gets in the way, ask yourself, will this help me hit my goal? If not, you know what to do...or not do.

Read the full article

If you do not love what you do, you are not likely to stick with it long enough to be able to make it successful. You need to love the process. And when you love the process it does not really matter if you are successful as you are getting to do what you love.

However, as a side effect, it is more likely that you will be successful BECAUSE you are doing something that you love, and all the positive energy slowly makes an impact. 

I was speaking to a server in a cafe whilst getting my lunch.  It was 31st Jan after having a dry January and also cutting out caffeine, grains, any white carbs, sugar etc. As I was paying for my salad I joked that I might treat myself to one of everything they sell tomorrow as a treat for being good in January. She said, "if I was as skinny as you, then I would eat everything every day." Clearly, we were both joking, but as I walked away I found it interesting that people do want results without knowing what it takes to get there. If I ate anything every day, then I would not be skinny.

It is strange how our brains do this to us.  It is easy to see the muscled man or the toned woman and assume that it is easy for them, they are just fit, rather than thinking that they might have been fat, geeky children for all but 1 year of their life and they have worked really hard every day to keep working out and avoiding the temptation of eating crap in order to look like that.

The same thing happens in business - nothing is an overnight success. People with overnight successes have worked for ten years behind the scenes (and will work hard for at least 10 more years) to make something that you have not heard of one day and that everyone's heard of the next day.

It builds, it does not bang.

People want results without the effort.  If you asked someone if they wanted to win the lottery they would, of course, say yes. If you said to them that they could have even more money than a lottery win and all they had to do was work on themselves for 15 years for 15 hours a day without a day off, do you think that they would do it? I think not.

Enjoy the journey - make the results be the side product.

Is it mindless to constantly do the same thing over and over and lose conscious thought about it?  When thinking about the daily commute or the grind of working for a big corporation in a low-grade job, then it seems prudent to stop and reassess where you are where you want to get to.

When thinking about daily habits, it seems more sensible to set it and forget it - to keep the existing ones and build on top. Unless you have bad daily habits, in which case replacement should be the focus.

The ones I am talking about are the ones that were developed from active thought.  Ones that were developed from Hal Elrod's Miracle Morning, for example.

These active habits: exercise, meditation, yoga, journaling, affirmations - these do not ever seem like they are mindless or futile to just keep doing every day.  Quite the contrary.  

Doing this practice every day helps to be more mindful, more present and more grounded.  And if you have reached the stage where you are doing them consistently without thought, then you have truly mastered the habits necessary to bring whatever wealth you desire into your life.

I have just finished Antifragile and realised the reason why document versus create works.
 
Usually, the people on TV are blowhards with no skin in the game.  Instagram and YouTube vlogs have allowed the doers to document what actually happens rather than an author interpreting what happened after the fact (although there are obviously a lot of people that can teach you how to make money by teaching people how to make money... ad infinitum).

​This is the first time this has happened in history. Before, the doers did and the theoreticians pontificated and changed history through retrospective writing.
 
Just like the famous Theodore Roosevelt quote though, be the one documenting (or creating).  Not the one consuming the content.

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What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog

There is no excuse not to have a date for your work.  You can go back three iterations (only three without being absurd) but a date can and should be stated.  If you are providing work to someone else or vice versa, in my mind here are the only acceptable responses when asked when the work can be expected to be delivered:
 
1. Preferred:  Date when you will get the deliverable to the person who needs it

2. Good:  A date when you will get back to the person to tell them when the deliverable will be delivered
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3. Worst (but still better than nothing):  A date when you will get back to the person with the date when you can tell them when the deliverable will be delivered.
 
An example of the worst one:  I need to check in with Dorothy on how long the task will take, so I will get back to you by Monday with the expected date of the report you need.
 
I cannot see why anyone would not be able to at least provide the worst date, and yet this is accepted a lot in corporations.  Dragging “deadlines”, effort and money along with it.

Fed up of meeting hell? Our iPhone app can help. Find out more.

What would you do with an extra hour per day? More from the Blog