Entries from December 2009 ↓

Image by Ronaldo Cabuhat

Let me start with a story this time: John, a young ambitious entrepreneur needed a partner to create a new store for portable computers. He knew that his friend Alan was good with technology and had sufficient laptop knowledge, so he thought he made the right choice to make him his colleague.

They decided that one of them would work three days per week, than the other one would take over the salesdesk for another three.

As time went by, John noticed that Alan wasn’t very serious about their business. Al would close the store two hours early and didn’t really seem to care when a customer entered the store. I’ll tell you what happened next in just a minute.

In my world, there are three kinds of people. Those who seem trustworthy but will selfishly deceive you sooner or later. Those who don’t care for anything and everyone else sees that. And the third, must-know type, who have found the right combination between helping others and their own personal interests.

Always be on the search for the third kind and be cautious with the first.

Anyway, let’s check out what happened to John and Alan‘s fairly new computer store.

People started noticing that one of the salespeople from John & Al Portable simply refused to help them, no matter how much money they were ready to pay for a new device or tech support. So they just started to go to a store 10 minutes away with a much friendlier staff. Needless to say, the store failed and John made a mistake he’ll never forget. He hadn’t thought that Alan was a good friend, but not a good business partner.

Don’t make John’s mistake.

Image by Amanda Kendal

While reading yet another inspirational ebook on how to build a better blog, I noticed how few of the tips I was actually applying. Sure, all of the ideas and tricks sound great and every blogger knows that that’s they way towards attracting a massive readership, but why doesn’t everyone (including me) put them into practise?

The same goes for real life. It doesn’t really matter how many personal development ideas you have. The question is how many of them are you actually using or on the path towards realizing them.

So what’s the idea here? Reading motivational books is good. Gathering ideas is good. Setting goals is good, too. But putting all of them into practise is much better. That’s what every successful person aims for.

I’ve been having quite a lot of unexpected tasks lately, thus making me spare some of my sleep time for work. This all got me thinking about my personal productive time, or the hours at which I’m most concentrated and innovative at the same time.

You have your own productive time too. It could be in the morning, or after lunchbreak in the office, or like me between 10:00 and 12:00pm. The thing is that only you can find it out, and that’s why I’ve gathered some questions to help you:

• When are you usually most concentrated?
• At what time do most ideas hit you?
• Which hours get you energetic and excited when working?

Maybe you already have the answers but you haven’t put them to good use. So here’s my tip of the month: Find out your productive time and use it as your advantage. Complete personal projects or even work (depending on your mood) during those few hours. But, please, don’t waste them watching a sitcom or updating your facebook profile.

In case you are a night owl like me, you can check out some great tips on how to stay awake from the Marc and Angel Hack Life blog.