GTD or Getting Things Done is a set of strategies designed to help improve your daily Productivity.
In this article by the MacIntosh weblog, we see a nice summary of ideas as presented from David Allen's book "Getting Things Done"
A very interesting set of ideas indeed.
I never was good at economics. Though I ended up with an 80 in the course in university, it was mostly becaue our economics proof "knew what we were thinking" and gave us the benefit of the doubt when we wrote an answer.
Anyway, my understanding is that our economy (or any economy in general) does better the more people spend. It is the movement of existing currency which keeps our economy strong.
When everyone holds on to their money, in low interest savings, under their bed, or whatever savings plan you have then we have to make new money to inject into the economy. Theis creates a problem because more money means that it is "less rare". In theory, the value of an item is dependant upon how rare that item is, so the more money that is available and accessible the less it is worth.
At the extreme example, imagine everyone in the country held onto all the money they earned and never spent anything or gave anything away. Well, except for say the business you work at that payes you -- but then they get their money from customers which have stopped spending money - see the problem?
So, it's kind of ironic, because if we spend all our money we are broke, and have no financial plan for the future, but if we all save all our money the economy suddenly stops.
What this means is that financial health is about keeping a balanced ratio between what you save and what you spend. Not just for your own best interest but also for the economy as a whole.
And when we do save, we put our money into investments (RRSP, RESP, etc) These types of investments allow for our money to work for us. But also allow the money to be re-ciculated through out the economy which lessons the need for the goverment to print more money and devalue our dollar (or loonies for us Canadians eh?)
..But it gets even more interesting the more you think about it because the ratio of what we "save" compared to what we "spend" is dependant upon several external pressures pushed upon us.
Let's suppose the "so-called" financial experts tell us we are going into recession (or worse) depression. Such low periods in the economy are brought on by people saving more then then spend. Taking money out of their investments and putting them under their beds, because they are afraid they will lose it.
But this just starts a vicous circle, because if we hear recession our gut re-action is to get worried that we will loose our money so we stop spending, we take our money out of banks, and investements and now the economy gets WORSE..not better !! and then the finance experts project the problem is getting worse, so we re-act (incorrectly) yet again...and so on..and so on
Yet, if we did the exact opposite, if when we heard the word recession, we all went out and starting spending money, starting investing in funds while they are "on sale". The finanical experts would magically "project" upturn in the economy and the economy would actually do better.
So in short, we could say that the fear of a recession is creates a "sale" at a store. When things go on sale we buy more, not less.
Keep looking up !
Blackberrys, Treo, Palm, iPAQ, iPhone..there are so many choices out there for a PDA, and today of course, cellphones do pretty much everything PDA's do..so what do you choose?
Of course, the most popular today is certainly the Blackberry. A combination cell phone/PDA that was probably the first to include a full keyboard in its design. Blackberries are developed by RIM, a Canadian company, and are distributed among most wireless providers (unlike iPhone which i believe is still limited to AT&T unless you have an unlocked one)
It causes me to wonder, did Blackberry gain the popularity simply due to being "first to market" is this an example of the early bird cathing the worm? They released a cell phone with a full keyboard and the ability to do send/recieve email messages over any cell phone network.
The device appealed to many business people, and the word spreak, and they sort of became a 'leader' in this niche market they created.
I remember around the same time, Palm released the Trio. The Trio also had a full keyboard and email ability. It also featured a camera, bluetooth,Wifi (or an addon for Wifi), and the price was very comparable to that of the Blackberry.
Yet, most people went with Blackberries? I suspect most of this was word of mouth networking. One collegue saw another's blackberry and thought it was cool and wanted one too. It seemed to be this is how it went where I used to work. I still think the Trio was the better device all around, but the blackberry was the "buzz" it was the thing to buy, and everyone did.
Reminds me of back in high school, you just had to have the same jacket, boots, or haircut as the popular kids, never mind if it cost umpteen dollars, and wasn't the most 'pratical' piece of clothes..is this a good example of consumerism at work...I think not.
I don't have a Trio or a Blackberry, I had an ipaq for a while but it broke, luckly I was still able to sell it on ebay for like $10, and the warranty paid me back a good percentage of it.
So the new "hit" product is of couse, the iPhone. Will you buy it because it's popular?, or will it be because it's a good PDA?..I wonder
Shhh ! I have a secret for you. Do you own your own company, and have recently launched your own website? Many years ago the company I used to work for launched their website. It took us a long time to build a steady stream of quality traffic to our site. We did search engine optimization (SEO) had the address on all our business cards, and conducted webinars. We watched our traffic like crazy, an increase in traffic meant an increase in profits (in theory). But always there was this question hanging over us. What can we do to get more visitors, more traffic?
I was the system admin, and part time web developer. I had some ideas and helped out a little to build traffic, but I figured the real magic was up to the marketing gurus. If only I knew then what I know now.
Today everyone has a blog, and wants to be a reporter. Many of these blogs are very popular and receive lots of raffic. So if you have a new website and want to get the word and generate a buzz - this is an excellent opportunity. Today we have sites which combine bloggers and business together, and the best way to maximize this opportunity is to join as early as possible to these programs and get in on the ground floor. iHype.com Launches such a service.
So what does all this mean for you? Simple! Invest your marketing budget into iHype and let bloggers generate buzz for your business automatically. Before the popularity of blogging, there were really only 2 options - a) Emailing webmasters related to your product/service and asking for links and b) Web advertising which can be expensive. Now it just a few clicks, you can have a large network of bloggers review your products and services and post them to be read by their readers.
There are of course, other similar programs, however, as these sites get popular, they can also get more expensive. Therefore, the best time to get in the begging so here's your opportunity. I'm sure once you've tried it you'll see how much easier than traditional website marketing tactics.
If you're like me.. [besides being a bit crazy]..you would be growing more and more annoyed at the advertisements being played in movie theatres !! Haven't seen them yet? If not please let me know, where you live, so I can start going to your movie theatre :-) After paying $10.00 for the movie, plus $15.00 for concessions, then sitting through 30 minutes of adveritsing, finally I get to watch my movie. What's up with that?
Tony Wright gives some tips and suggestions on ideas for startups and working part time in addition to your full time job. Finding the extra time to start your own business can be a daunting task. Will it be sucessful? How much are you willing to risk? When it comes to starting your own business. Careful time management can allow you to have your cake and eat it oo.
