Knowledge and Help

Personal Economy

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 19:58:38 -0600

Everyone talks about the global economy, we are obsessed by it. In reality your local economy is much more important. Even more important still is your personal economy. That is, how assets flow through you personally. This includes how you spent your time.

Humans are blessed with the capability of 4,000,000,000 heartbeats. This is double that number of any other animal known. There is a concept called “life blood”, which basically measures how many heartbeats are expended when you perform any activity. Working, driving, eating, even sleeping. In reality, a large part of life is maintenance. We must do things to remain in existence - eat, sleep, etc. Another large part is doing things for ourselves. Then growth and things we do for others or to leave for posterity.

A well balanced personal economy will enable you to experience all of these things with optimal expense of your life blood.

The easiest way to achieve this is to perform “the armchair test” when making a decision to take action or not, make a commitment or not. Push through fear or play it safe. When confronted with a situation, imagine yourself in an armchair in the distant future... when all the effort you can muster amounts to being able to sit in an armchair and contemplating the decisions and accomplishments of your life. This is the armchair test.

Secondly, always do what you enjoy. Steve Jobs wakes up everyday looks in the mirror and asks himself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I do what I am about to do today?” - if the answer is “no” too many days in a row, he does something else.

Live life on purpose... that is know what you want to accomplish in life and do it every day by making decisions and taking action on whatever will improve your situation in priority order. If you are working on a project that has the potential of benefiting a large number of people or improving yourself in some way, make it high priority - do it first or commit to getting it done no matter what ASAP.

Finally, think about your personal economy in the same manner a farmer thinks about his farm. A farm is easy to picture, soil, seeds, sunlight and water - with proper care, location and conditions a bounty will result. Various crops mature in sequence providing a sustained yield. In modern life, soil replaced by money to a large extent - but the principle remains the same. You must construct your world in such a manner that when you expend your life blood the net result is value for you and your client or employer that creates a positive cash flow. Same goes with time spent in travel, work, etc. This configuration is your personal economy.

In the future, I will construct models to demonstrate how to visualize positive, cyclical and neutral personal economies based on modeling techniques for complex systems. For now, just following these rules and learning from the references on the site will provide excellent results.

Social Networking

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:54:20 -0600

The Internet has become integrated with our lives. Your social network is the people that you know or who know you by name and reputation. A huge part of human and primate brains are devoted to establishing and maintaining relationships. It has been proven that humans will go mad and die if left isolated. Human and primate brains have a capacity to maintain about 400 relationships without external memory. With the assistance of computers and the Internet, some people maintain thousands of relationships. Web 2.0 is the term used to enhance a website with social networking capabilities and harness the power of people.

Facebook, My Space and LinkedIn are but a few of the popular sites. Many sites have applications available for the iPhone that enable you to keep in constant contact wherever you are.

There is no substitute for meeting in person. LinkedIn groups are sponsored by an organizer. Many of these groups meet for networking events. This is a great way to meet people who you have something in common with.

Career Coaching, SCORE and Other Professional Help

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:52:27 -0600

Everybody needs help. With unstable companies and confused career paths, finding a mentor or just plain good advice is hard to come by. Career coaching is on the rise and I’m happy to say, it works. I chose to The Reinvention Institute as my resource. See my blog article about the experience.

On my road to using a career coach, I spoke with Christy Seawall, the Career Catalyst. She spent over an hour talking to me about my options and was very helpful.

If you are interested in starting a small business, SCORE is the place to go. The Society of Retired Executives is sponsored by the Small Business Association. These seasoned professionals volunteer to help you start a business. It’s free and available all across the country. I visited SCORE a number of times and was very pleased with the help I received. It is a great way to meet people who are willing to help and who are connected in the local business world.

Beat the Recession - check out this blog

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 08:54:58 -0600

I ran into the GeekMBA360 blog today. The January 16th, 2009 entry really caught my eye. It shows a video of Nick Vujicic who was born without arms and legs, showing that continuing to try, despite the odds is the only road to take.

This blog is chock full of good information about how to beat the gloom and doom so prevalent in the media. Everything is temporary, enjoy what you have and only spend time on things that make you happy or at least content. Everything else will fall into place.

Avoiding Anxiety by Staying Organized

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:22:21 -0600

Staying organized is the best way to avoid anxiety. A documented daily, weekly and monthly routine, that follows the following pattern is recommended by most of the gurus in the field:
Start daily with mediation and exercise, give yourself one hour to prepare for the day.
Set goals for the day.
Gather all work and separate it into tasks, projects and incubation.
Process tasks in order - do not leave unpleasant tasks for later.
Try to complete the task quickly (2-5 minutes), if you can’t
Create a new project or incorporate the task in an existing project.
Plan projects by setting objectives, breaking it down into tasks, delegate or schedule tasks.
Assess progress daily. Celebrate successes. Renegotiate or delegate work that is causing stress.
Have some fun - do something with someone you enjoy vs. just relaxing alone.
Stretch, read and imagine your best life before retiring for at least 8 hours of sleep
If you wake during the night - record your worries, quickly, then go back to sleep.
Trusting that your system will get everything important completed will relieve the anxiety.