99% has some good tips on achieving daily goals when they asked some of their contributors for their thoughts.
If we want to take back control of our workday schedules and priorities, the only way to do it is by relentlessly questioning how we’re spending our time. But what questions should we ask?
I reached out to a handful of regular 99% contributors and 99% Conference speakers to get their insights on daily energy and task management. Here’s what they said:
Via: Medical Billing And Coding
The Wall Streeet Journal has a very interesting article by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert about how education could be modified to fit the abilities of different types of students.
I understand why the top students in America study physics, chemistry, calculus and classic literature. The kids in this brainy group are the future professors, scientists, thinkers and engineers who will propel civilization forward. But why do we make B students sit through these same classes? That’s like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn’t it make more sense to teach B students something useful, like entrepreneurship?
Lifehacker has an interesting post on the correct way to crack an egg and minimise shell bits ending up in the dish.
Business Insider has a nice article on how information on facebook can possible hurt your job hunt. What was more interesting was the highlighting of how much more important linkedin (and others like xing) are for looking for new opportunities. Remember facebook is social, linkedin professional.
LinkedIn Gets Top Marks
This is how recruiters are using social media, according to the survey.
- LinkedIn is by far the most popular social media tool, with 74% of recruiters saying they use it to find candidates.
- About half of recruiters use LinkedIn to check up on candidates’ professional backgrounds
- Some 21% of recruiters use LinkedIn to research candidates’ networks.
- Candidates like LinkedIn too. As one says, “The lack of photos of people puking or wearing dumb costumes at some Really Great Party helps keep the professionalism up.”
- Facebook is used by about 11% of recruiters to get a handle on candidates’ reputation
- Twitter is a distant third, with only 3% of recruiters saying they use it
Keep the Racy Photos and Posts Private
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-could-be-hurting-your-job-hunt-2011-2#ixzz1DNMkdkci
The Financial Times covers the Oracle Vs SAP courtcase which starts on Monday. What was particularly interesting if you work in this area and thought about developing some utilities what could bolt-on to any of that software is the last paragraph.
The theatre has obscured a more serious side to the TomorrowNow trial.
Through its lawsuit – and another case against a similar company called Rimini Street – Oracle has left a chill over the independent maintenance business, according to some analysts.
“Oracle is using that tactic to intimidate entrants into the market,†says Paul Hamerman, an analyst at Forrester Research.
With more than 70 per cent of his software revenues coming from maintenance and support, the tactic is understandable.
Michael Lewis, the famous author of “Liar’s Poker”, went to Greece to find the back story of why the finances of the country are in such a disastrous state. Read the whole article for the full story but one of the notable passages was:
As he finishes his story the finance minister stresses that this isn’t a simple matter of the government lying about its expenditures. “This wasn’t all due to misreporting,” he says. “In 2009, tax collection disintegrated, because it was an election year.”
“What?”
He smiles.
“The first thing a government does in an election year is to pull the tax collectors off the streets.”
“You’re kidding.”
Now he’s laughing at me. I’m clearly naïve.
Now this is an interesting device which was reported by laptop mag has reported. The article also mentions a device where a 12 inch table can attach itself to a keyboard to transform itself into a notebook. However, I’m a fan of devices becoming as small as possible but also to be usuable. The iPad (which I saw for the first time yesterday) is too heavy and too big for my liking. That’s what makes the third device to interesting.
As a note-taker, the Eee Tablet could hardly offer more functionality. Its stylus uses Wacom technology to give it an incredibly smooth drawing / hand writing experience. But if writing down notes or drawing diagrams when you’re in a meeting or class is not enough, why not take a picture of the whiteboard? The Eee Tablet has a back facing camera that will take photos of anything and let you annotate it. You can also record sound while you take notes. So just imagine recording a college lecture and then playing it back while you read the notes and look at photos of the whiteboard.
It seems to me to be something business people would take to in droves. The iPad is notoriously unhelpful for productive tasks like writing, there is no camera and as far as I’m aware, there is no microphone. The ASUS tablet has all three. It seems that ASUS has stolen a march on their competitors yet again. Watch them try and catch up.
The Guardian reports that the optimum time to buy an airline ticket is eight weeks.
Help is at hand. An economist, Makoto Watanabe, has calculated that the optimum time to buy an airline ticket is eight weeks in advance of flying.
His yet-to-be-published findings also suggests that airline tickets are cheaper when purchased in the afternoons, rather than the mornings, prompting him to speculate that airlines are assuming business travellers will book their tickets at work in the morning on the company account, whereas leisure travellers are more likely to book from home in the afternoon
Hmm, I did a couple of searches yesterday but for me, the theory didn’t hold true. But Sunday wasn’t a normal day so perhaps that is the exception.
I just rewatched “Before Sunset”, the sequel to one of my favourite films “Before Sunrise”. I was struck during the dialogue that Ethan Hawke’s character notes that 6 months after a life-changing event whether it was winning the lottery or becoming a paraplegic, a person reverts to the psychological state that they inhabited before the event. Then I read the latest post by Tim Harford this evening.
It’s quite possible that our image of these possible futures is not very good. As the psychologist Dan Gilbert points out, you might think that winning the Lottery would make you happier than being permanently paralysed from the waist down, but the empirical evidence suggests that this is just a failure of imagination: paraplegics are not, in fact, less happy than people who have won the Lottery.
By the way, the film is definitely better the second time around. I wish that I could see Before Sunrise again right now. My favourite part is at the end of the film where they show all of the places in Vienna where the story unfolded the next morning, deserted. I felt that way about Prague for a long time.