The following is a guest post by Zack Shapiro.
Zack Shapiro is an entrepreneur, tech blogger, journalist and world traveler. You can find him on Twitter @ZackShapiro and on his blog at ZackShapiro.com.
Over to you Zack:
Humankind has never been more linked together than we are today. And tomorrow, we’ll be even more connected.
With the increasing levels of connectivity, we became slaves to our means of digital outreach. Facebook, blogging, Twitter, email, Skype and the list goes on and on.
Chances are you suffer from being incredibly over-connected to at least one of the tools listed above.
It’s time to begin to break away. If it sounds scary, don’t worry. We’ll take baby steps.
As with any change in habits small steps are important towards reaching your goal of being digitally free. Jumping into things cold turkey often leads to a relapse because we can’t mentally commit.
My foray into digital relaxation began with No Email Saturdays, where, as the name suggests, I take a break from email for one-seventh of the week.
At first it was harder than I imagined it would be. I had no problem leaving Mail alone on my laptop but I forgot to turn off the email on my iPhone. That meant I was constantly checking my phone not to see what the email was but to see if I had gotten anymore. As the day went on and the number of unread emails climbed higher I was no better off than digging into the actual emails themselves.
There was still digital weight on my mind. This you do not want.
If you’re apprehensive about cutting the cord remember this: unless you work for an organization that requires you to be connected all the time, you don’t need to be.
Sure an email on Wednesday morning about Friday’s meeting may be an important one but ask yourself this, “What could I possibly get on Saturday that can’t be taken care of on Sunday?
Leave the Mail our Outlook icon alone, don’t go to your webmail and turn all email on your phone off. Every phone has a way to switch it off without deleting precious accounts or stored email. Leave it all alone.
If you find yourself itching to see what’s waiting in your inbox remember this: You have to physically allow yourself to check your email. Be strong. I believe in you.
It has been a little over a month now with No Email Saturdays and I love the concept. It frees my mind from whatever’s coming up and I trust that whatever I get on Saturday can be dealt with later. It’s unrealistic to expect yourself to be connected at all times.
Now I’m ready to take the next step: No SocMed (Social Media) Saturdays.
You may not be able to get to me by email on Saturdays but you can still get my attention through my blog, an @reply on my Twitter account, a comment on Flickr, etc. So I’m still connected; I’m still checking.
Next Saturday I plan to cut out the blogging. The following week, Twitter. Those are my big two. Identify yours and make a plan. Set goals based on your level of comfort after realizing what the extra free time means.
Go outside. Spend time with friends. Watch TV without your computer around. Read a book. Go for a run. Have some fun.
There are two types of people. The Shipper and the Perfectionist. The shipper ships a product on the deadline date even when the product is not fully finished. The perfectionist only ships a product when it is fully complete. For the perfectionist, even if a small feature is incomplete it is a good enough reason to delay the delivery of the product.
Who do you want to be? Which style is better?
Here is my personal take on this issue.
While we should always strive for best quality in the products we produce, the perfectionist mentality is the NOT the right attitude for today’s fast phased market place. In today’s market place the product has to be delivered at the right time. Velocity is key. The market place moves at such a rapid phase and by being a perfectionist you may not be able to deliver the product right on time. Another problem with the perfectionist is that the perfectionist always works under more pressure compared to the shipper. Since the perfectionist prolongs the delivery of the product, the product becomes (or feels) stale over time. This is why we often end up throwing up work that was dragging for moths or weeks. Overtime the passion fades away and we perceive the product useless, even though the product has some value. Perfectionist often get stuck with a product development because they are not willing to move on to the next stage.
On the other hand the shipper attitude is great for for today’s fast phased market. Shippers are usually in better control of their products. They are much happier people than the perfectionists. By shipping the product at the right time, shippers feel a sense of achievement. Therefore they are able to do a much better job in their second delivery of the product. By shipping the products on time, the shipper tames the Lizard Brain and Resistance that has been telling the shipper all sorts of negative things such as “the delivery will not happen”, “be careful”, “your product will not be received well in the market” etc.
Do you agree with what I am saying? Which camp are you in?
If the product has a quality score of 90% and if it is going to take substantially more time to achieve a quality score of 99%, will you ship the product as it is? or will you try to achieve a score of 99% and delay the delivery of the product?
Ok, that is a bit exaggerated. Apple is not the king of the tech world but no one can refute the fact that the company is a dominant player in the technology market. What makes Apple a successful company? As entrepreneurs what can we learn from Apple? In this post I try to answer these questions by identifying some of the key characteristics that set Apple apart from other tech companies.
1. Market Creators
Apple under Steve Jobs has had tremendous success in creating new markets. In the past decade alone the company has created many new products and ventured into markets that never existed before. The iMac, the iPod, and the new iPad are perfect examples of such products. While others try to capture market share, Apple succeeds in creating new markets!.
WordPress is a free blogging platform that was created in 2003. The software was originally intended for creating blogs. Over the years WordPress has been continuously improved. Today WordPress is used is to create all types of websites. In this post I look at the top 7 reasons for creating your Business Website using WordPress.
1. Free
The WordPress software is opened sourced. You can use the software free of charge for both personal and commercial projects.
2. Community
WordPress has a large user community. Therefore it is very easy to get resources and help from fellow WordPress users.
The 80 20 rule states that 80% of results come from only 20% of work or effort. This rule has been observed by many researchers in various situations. Here are some examples to illustrate this rule:
- 80 percent of revenue of a company is made by only 20 percent of workers
- 80 percent of software bugs come from only 20 percent of the code
- only 20 percent of the population in a country enjoys 80 percent of its wealth
While not everyone would agree on the percentages, the important thing to learn from this rule is that most things in life are not distributed evenly. That is to say, the ratio is never 1 to 1. For 1 unit of input you will not get 1 unit of output.
1. One Million
This is the number of job applications that Google receives each year! This is a staggering number considering that Google currently employs only 20,000!
2. Whiteboards
At Google offices whiteboards can be found at many places. The whiteboards are there for Googlers to share their ideas and to visualize concepts.
3. Paperless
Google employees use their laptops to take notes during meetings. By taking notes directly on the computer it is easy to share it with others.
1. Blogs that disguise affiliate products as posts all the time.
2. Blogs that always talk about what to do, but provide very little information on how to do it.
3. Blogs that churn out very basic content again and again.
4. Blogs that talk all sorts of topics without any focus.
5. Blogs where the blogger does not engage with you in discussion.
6. Blogs that primarily publishes guest posts.
7. Blogs that attack other bloggers, just to gain attention.
8. Blogs where the blogger pretends to be the “expert” on the field.
9. Blogs that just rehash what others say without giving a unique perspective.
10. Blogs that are not updated consistently.
The delivery of rich content on mobile devices is arguably the next big thing in the evolution of the Internet. 10 years ago many would have dismissed the idea of accessing the web using their cell phones. But today more and more people are accessing the web using mobile devices. The battle for the mobile platform market has already started.
Today, there are 6 prominent mobile platforms in the industry, each fiercely competing with each other.
1. Symbian
Symbian is the platform promoted by Nokia. Recently the Symbian Foundation, along with a new version of the software, made the platform fully open and free. Currently, Symbian has the largest share in the market. But in recent years Symbian has been gradually losing this share. Symbian’s future is less promising because the Symbian OS has aged and doesn’t provide a rich UI (User Interface) experience compared with other platforms such as iPhone and Android. Since Symbian has a large market share (around 40%) it will continue to be a dominant player for few years, until competition eats its share eventually.
This week I came across a blog called LifeBeat. It is a personal development blog with lots of valuable content. As an entrepreneur I do a fair bit of reading on the topic of personal development as it helps me to keep myself motivated. LifeBeat is written by, writer and musician, Oleg Mokhov.
Oleg has written a wonderful ebook called Life Maximization Guide. In this guide Oleg teaches you how to maximize your potential by doing more of what you like and by eliminating things that aren’t necessary in your life. Most of the information in this ebook is commonsense! But, it is worth a read because it reminds us of the importance of keeping our life simple to realize it’s full potential.
In order to create a successful blog you should blog on a topic that your are passionate about. This is the most common advice that many of us learned when we started blogging. But, the people who give this advice often fail to define what passion really means.
If you thought that passion is the same as what you enjoy doing then you are sure to fail with your blog. Passion is more than what you enjoy doing. Let’s take an example to illustrate this point. Let’s assume that you have a great love for travel and you like to go often on vacations. Does this mean that you are passionate about travelling? Not always! If you enjoy travelling, you will go on a vacation, have a great time and come back home. Your enjoyment and excitement stops once you are back home. This means you are not really passionate about travelling but rather enjoy travelling.