Every one likes to hear how awesome they are.  I like it.  You like it.  One of the best things you can do to advance your career is to sincerely compliment the things you admire in the people around you.  The key here is the word sincerely. However, you need to be very aware of praise that is being given to you with ulterior motives.  Some people will try to flatter you just to get on your good side. Others will outright lie in hopes of getting you to make a mistake or look foolish.

In 2003 there was a singing competition held in several major cities around the US.  Contestants were selected, flown to Hollywood to take part in a competition.  They were given vocal coaching, makeovers and critiqued on their performance and told that one of them was going to become a superstar.  Over time, singers were eliminated until they eventually found the winner.  I’ve just described American Idol right? This was something a bit different. Actually it was completely different–the polar opposite of American Idol. It was called Superstar USA and the three judges specifically eliminated anyone who had any trace of talent while advancing and flattering the people who could not sing at all. The judges did their best to praise outrageous behavior from the contestants simply to make fun of them. The final contestants performed in front of a live audience.  You might wonder how they got a large group of people to keep from laughing or at least walking out.  The producers told the audience that the performers were all terminally ill teens whose last wish was to perform in front of a live audience.

FYI: There was British show called Space Cadets that followed a similar technique of lying to the participants that tried to convince people they were in outer space.

By the end of the show, the judges narrowed it down to the worst singer, crowned her the “winner” and then explained that she had actually been selected as the worst singer for the entertainment and ridicule of television watchers across America. She did get $50,000 in cash and a budget to make a record (which still hasn’t been made).

My point is that not everyone who pays you a complement has your best interests at heart.  Also a compliment may be trying to get you to continue self-destructive behavior.

Here are a few strategies for dealing with compliments and praise that can help avoid perils from false praise.

• Be honest with yourself. Like the singers on Superstar USA, it is all too easy to believe what we want to believe and not be honest with ourselves.
• Be humble. Graciously deflecting praise toward others is often a good strategy. If you have done something praiseworthy, giving credit to the people who helped you.
• Have honest friends. Everyone needs people who are close enough that they will answer honestly when you need to ask their opinion. (This is discussed in the book Who’s Got Your Back.)
• Make sure you aren’t just listening to people who say what you want to hear. This is an easy trap to fall into.

Hopefully you’ll never experience such a large group of people trying to set you up to fail and look foolish as the participants in Superstar USA. Everyone needs to be very aware of the dangers of false praise and how to protect yourself from it. Even a single individual can cause considerable harm if they can influence your actions in negative ways.

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Here are a few things I’ve run across that I thought might be worth sharing.  If you find these types of things useful, you might want to subscribe to my personal blog at http://blog.markwshead.com. These are some of the types of things I usually post over there that may or may not eventually make it to Productivity501. Look for the red button on the right hand side to subscribe by email, or use an RSS reader.

Charcoal Bob

Charcoal Bob Cooking Schedule

Charcoal Bob is a website designed to help you grill food.  The main feature is a grilling calculator.  You tell it everything you want to grill, what the temperature is outside, what type of grill you have, and when you want to eat and it will give you a minute by minute plan to cook everything.  So if you are cooking a rare hamburger for Aunt Bertha and a well done filet for Uncle John, the calculator will tell you exactly when to put each item on, when to flip them and when to take them off again.

So far, I’ve only used it for simple things like checking the cook time for chicken, but it looks like a great way to handle a complicated grilling schedule where you want everything done at the same time and are trying to accommodate a number of different types of meat the cooking preferences.

Google Power Meter

Google Power Meter gives you a graph of your electrical usage. Some power companies work directly with Google.  We have a device called a TED 5000 that tracks the usage and sends it to Google.  One of the features Google offers that I like the best is the way it shows you your “base” electrical usage or the amount of electricity you are drawing 24/7.  This is from things like computers, lights that are left on, etc.  When the graph shows an increase in your base energy usage, it is a helpful reminder to see what is causing it.

Another useful feature is the way it compares your current usage with the past. For example, yesterday we were 37% under what we have averaged in the past.  Today so far we are 3% over.  Yesterday was a very cool day so the air conditioner didn’t need to run as much.  Today I have an extension cord running over to the neighbors where they are building a house, but don’t have power yet.

Being aware of how your power is being used can make it a lot easier to make sure you aren’t being wasteful.  It is great to be able to see exactly how much you’ve used instead of having to wait until the end of the month to see your bill and still have no idea what was causing an increase or decrease.

I wish the service would graph the temperature throughout the day along with the power consumption. For us, the temperature seems to make the biggest difference in how much power we use and it would be nice to see these two metrics together.  It would also be nice if there was a way to do the same thing for gas consumption in the winter, but I’m not sure what type of device would be needed to actually measure that.

The Energy Detective

The Energy Detective is a three part device.  One part hooks into your breaker box, another part hooks into an outlet and your home network and the third device is a display unit that shows your power usage.  This is what we use to send the data to Google for Google Power Meter. The Energy Detective display unit shows your current energy usage, and can precisely show you how much you’ve spent so far today.  The actual cost analysis is much more detailed than Google Power Meter and it can handle tiered rates.  There is a web interface as well, but (unless you do some complicated setup) it is only available from your own network.

I have heard that most people reduce their energy consumption by about 20% just by having it visible so they can see what they are using.  It really helps you remember to turn off lights when you flip on a switch and see that your cost per minute has gone up from $0.10 per hour to $0.12 per hour.

Ninite Software

Ninite gives you a simple way to install multiple pieces of open source and free software on Windows when setting up a computer.  Instead of running around and downloading each piece of software piece by piece, you can select all the software from one place and install it all at once.  It includes many of the most popular free pieces of software including: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Skype, Google Talk, Thunderbird, iTunes, VLC, Hulu, Songbird, Acrobat, Picasa, AVG, Ad-Aware, Gimp, IrfanView, Eclipse, Java JDK, FileZilla, Putty and many more.

If you are the person who always ends up doing the software installs for your family and friends, you might want to check it out.  It looks like it is Windows only, so I haven’t tried it.  Please let me know how it works for you if you give it a whirl.

Miscellaneous

Don’t forget, the links on this page were originally published on my blog at http://blog.markwshead.com.  If you find them useful, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed or the email subscription service (red button on the right hand side of the page).  The stuff posted over there is usually much shorter and much more eclectic in subject matter. Here are a few other miscellaneous links from my blog covering many different random topics.

• My favorite classified ad
• Bank robber with an interesting use for lemon juice
• Education by state in the US
• Angry would-be time traveler visitors
• Opensoure enterprise education applications
• Wikireader – Wikipedia-in-your-pocket device
• Sharks with lasers
• Interesting facts about the building of the Panama Canal

Want to go paperless? Checkout the Paperless Office website.

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Are you average or above average? By definition, you are probably average although I like to assume that most readers of Productivity501 are above average. But for the moment, lets assume you are average.  How can you become above average?

Time is the great equalizer. Everyone has the same amount of time–whether you are average, below average or above average.  The simple difference between people who are average and those who are above average is that above average people spend more time on the things that really matter.

While this is simple to state, identifying the things that are really important and that really matter can be surprisingly. When Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, it probably didn’t look like he was focusing on the things that were really important, but it turns out he was.

Lots of decisions in life involve taking calculated risks.  You have to ask yourself, “what are the chances that this will pay off and how big might that pay off be.” You may not be able to predict the future, but you can at least avoid doing activities that only have potential for a very low pay off and have a very low chance of success.

What’s amazing is that so many people don’t even do this.  They will invest huge portions of their life in things that have very little chance of succeeding or that have very little chance of being valuable if they do succeed.  Sometimes they invest in both.

In 1901 a school teacher in her 60s named Annie Edson Taylor was concerned that she wouldn’t have enough money.  She had traveled around different parts of Michigan looking for work and even traveled to Texas and Mexico unsuccessfully looking for work.  Her husband had died in the Civil War and she was looking for a way to provide for herself in her later years.

Her solution?  She had some friends seal her in a barrel and became the first person to go over Niagara falls. While she briefly made a bit of money speaking about it, she never really made any significant money off of it.  Looking at the chances of success and the potential payback, you wonder how in the world she convinced herself to try such a stunt.  No one had gone over the falls before although they had sent a cat over in a barrel, so it wasn’t like she had at lot of reason to believe she’d survive.

Even if she survived, it was dubious whether or not she could make any money off of it. If she had skills as a speaker–maybe it would work, but plunging over the Falls doesn’t automatically make you a decent orator.

This is the same way many people choose what activities to invest in.  They randomly select something without looking at the probability of success and without looking at the potential if they do succeed.

Being above average means being deliberate about how you choose to spend your time.  It means choosing activities that are likely to be profitable rather than simply trying random things and hoping some how you get lucky.

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The older I get and the more people I meet, the more I come to realize that biggest thing that determines your level of financial freedom has to do with your beliefs about money.  I’m not talking about the “if you think positive thoughts, you’ll become rich” line of thinking. I’m talking about our expectations related to how we get money, what happens when we receive money, what are good ways to spend money, how you define wealth, etc.

Here are some common myths about money:

When I receive money, someone else loses it.

From a total economic perspective, money represents productivity and productivity is not a zero sum game. A zero sum game is one where in order for me to win, someone else has to lose. Money and productivity doesn’t work like this.  When you spend $10 at McDonald’s, some of that money goes to help put one of the workers through college and some of those college graduates are going to innovate and create labor savings devices which in turn increase the amount of productivity you can buy with the same amount of money, etc.

The value of stuff is well-defined.

In other words, this is the belief that there is some type of intrinsic price for a particular service.  So a car wash should cost $8 and the value of mowing your lawn is $34.78. This isn’t how the world works.  The value for a particular service or product can vary wildly. People are willing to pay more for something that will make them feel good about themselves–beyond the actual utility. People will buy more expensive coffee even if they can’t tell the difference in taste with a cheaper option because it makes them feel better about themselves.

There are all kinds of things involved in the price of an item or service.  This is very important to understand when you are selling something.  Often what people are really buying isn’t the thing itself, but the experience and emotions that go along with it.  When you are on the purchasing side of the fence it is important to understand what is driving your purchases.  I don’t mean that you shouldn’t ever make a decision to buy something more expensive because of its emotional appeal, but you should recognize what you are really paying for in the transaction. If you are actually purchasing an emotion, there may be much more cost-effective ways of doing it.

Selling something for a higher price in the future is always a profit.

Lets say you buy a house for $100,000 and 10 years later you sell it for $120,000.  You made $20,000 right?  Not necessarily.  If inflation was 6% each year, it wiped out pretty much any gain you made.  The $20k ten years ago could buy much more than it does today so in terms of purchasing power, you may have lost money. This doesn’t mean your house was a bad investment–just that you think of as profit may simply be inflation.

On the other hand, if you borrowed money for your house at a lower interest rate that $20,000 might represent significantly more profit because you didn’t have to actually commit all $100,000 to buy the house.

My point is that not everything that looks like you are making money is actually putting purchasing power into your pocket. You have to do the math to really see if you are gaining or losing.

The amount I can spend is determined by what is in my checking account

While it is good to have some type of limit on the amount you spend any approach that encourages you to simply spend as much as you make is going to set you up for problems down the road. The money you earn today needs to not only provide for today’s needs but tomorrows emergencies and your eventual retirement. Most people are in the habit of spending money as they earn it, but the people who manage their money most effectively are careful to live well below their means in order to prepare for the future.  This doesn’t mean they don’t ever spend a lot of money, but when they do it is deliberate and they can tell you where their money went–it doesn’t simply disappear in random small purchases.

The cost of an item is what is on the sticker

With many purchases there are other additional costs after the purchase.  When you buy a car, you must pay for insurance, gas and maintenance.  When you get a pet, you have to pay for the vet and food.  If you put in a swimming pool, you have to pay for water and cleaner.  Your computer will require software, your house will require paying taxes, etc. Wise people look at the entire lifetime cost of something rather than just the immediate cash requirement.

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Here are some random question we’ve had from visitors to this site along with some attempts at answers:

How does a paperless office work?

A paperless office means different things to different people. Some people consider themselves paperless if they aren’t storing any paper.  Other people are trying to keep from producing or consuming paper. I once worked at a hospital that switched to a paperless system in order to save a couple million dollars in medical records storage space.  They still produced and consumed paper, but the eliminated the storage part.

Most people who want to move to a paperless office are going to try to find some way to scan in their existing documents so storage and retrieval is electronic.  They will also try to find ways to keep from producing paper in the first place.  For example, they may switch to electronic signatures in order to put signatures on documents without printing them out and they may look at using digital signatures and certificates to electronically sign email and PDFs in a legally binding way and transfer them back and forth over secure email.

Are online degrees from Harvard Extension School valuable?

Yes.  You can learn a lot from them–particularly when getting a masters degree. I wouldn’t recommend an online degree for bachelors level work because so much of what you learn your first four years of college occurs outside of the classroom.

Degrees from Harvard’s Extension school don’t have the same level of prestige as degrees done onsite at Harvard. The Extension schools is much more of a merit based system–if you can do the work you can get the degree. Other Harvard colleges have much more limited resources when it comes to class size so they are more selective at the beginning in what students they let in. So where the Extension school will let anyone try for a degree, the other colleges select a very small number of people who are allowed to try to get a degree.

In addition there seems to be something of a lowered view of online degrees simply because so many people associate them with for-profit schools with a poor reputation and diploma mills. From that standpoint, if you are going to get an online degree, Harvard is probably one of your better choices because it is a very strong reputable school.

Can you get a masters degree from Harvard Extension School in 2 years?

Maybe if you do nothing else but school and take advantage of the summer semesters. Part of the problem I see is the thesis.  Degree programs that require a thesis are going to give you nine months to complete it.  It is probably better to not be trying to take a bunch of other classes while you work on your thesis.  It is probably possible, but it could be pretty tough.

I did my masters degree while working full time and I finished the bulk of my classes in four years.  I also took several classes that didn’t count toward my degree program because in the beginning I wasn’t sure I was going to get a degree–I was just taking classes that were interesting. I think I could have finished up the classes in 2.5 to 3 years and then given myself another 9 months for the thesis if I had of gone in with a definite plan.  Originally I didn’t think I would be able to complete the residency requirement so I wasn’t sticking to any type of degree plan sheet.

How long does the FBI keep things on file?

Why do you ask? :) Honestly I’d assume that the FBI is going to have a data retention policy that is different depending on what the information is.  Vasts amount of raw data with no particular use is likely to get purged, but the file on a specific person who is considered to be a threat will probably be kept indefinitely.

I’m just speculating here so don’t rely on this if you are planning on doing something that may put you in jail or something.

Should I get experience before pursuing an MBA?

Yes.  I think MBAs without experience are greatly over-valued by small and medium sized businesses. There are probably some companies that can use freshly minted MBAs, but they are probably going to be focused only on recruits from the very top tier schools.

A few years of real world experience can go a long ways toward preparing you for an MBA education because you’ll have a better context to retain the information you learn. However, there are a lot of companies out there that will pay you a high salary with an MBA and no real experience.  You may want to take advantage of this by going straight into an MBA program and getting one of those jobs.

Should I use IMAP instead of POP?

In most situations IMAP is superior to POP.  This is particularly true if you have multiple devices (laptop, desktop, cell phone) that you want to have a synchronized view of your email.

How big of monitor is too big?

Well if it doesn’t fit on your desk, you might have a problem.  Generally the bigger your monitor the better.  Most monitors top out at 30 inches.  The best cost to size ration is probably in the 24 inch range. Many people overlook that the resolution of a monitor is just as important as the size.  The resolution determines the size of items on the screen.  A small monitor with extremely high resolution will show things smaller than a large monitor with average resolution. On the other hand a very large monitor that has very high resolution may still make it difficult to see items on the screen–even though the monitor is large.

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1. Go to work

When you work from home, your workspace may be just down the hall, but you still need to intentionally go to work when you are ready to start your day. Some people will walk around the block go to work in their home office and then walk around the block to “go home” at the end of the day. It may seem silly, but you will be much more productive by making a concrete breaking point between when you are at work and when you are off. You can still take advantage of a zero commute by breaking your day up and perhaps doing a few equivalent hours of work late in the evening or early in the morning–just be intentional about it. You don’t want to get into a situation where your work habits are the of “channel surfing.”

2. Create long, distraction-free periods

One of the advantages of working from home is being able to see your kids take their first steps, be there for the cable repair man, and be able to help your spouse bring in the heavy grocery items. On the other hand, with too many distractions, you won’t get any significant work periods where you can really get into your productive zone. Here are some things that can help:

• Shift your work hours to be be earlier or later in the day. For example, if your kids get home at 3pm, you might want to start working from home early so you can be off when they get home. Alternatively, you may find you get more done late at night when everyone else is asleep for the evening.
• Establish expectations with the rest of your household. For example: When your office door is closed, that means no interruptions unless it is an emergency. If a personal phone call comes in on your home phone, you are unavailable during work hours.
• Make sure your office isn’t in an area that needs to be frequently used for other purposes. You don’t want to be working in an area that is going to get a lot of traffic. Better to have a less desirable room for your office than have a constant stream of household members coming through all the time.

3. Get good equipment

There are definitely some ways you can save money with your home office. You can use a door as a desk or deal with an ugly file cabinet, but don’t put up with equipment that will lessen the quality of your work. Make sure you have a decent, reliable computer and a good backup plan for dealing with inevitable technology malfunctions. I don’t mean you need to spend money on the most expensive computer out there, but you definitely don’t want to spend hours each day dealing with unreliable technology.

Here are some areas that I would not recommend cutting corners:

• Computer – Doesn’t need to be fancy and doesn’t need to be particularly fast. Must be reliable.
• Computer Warranty – If your computer breaks, make sure you have a spare or a quick way to get it fixed.
• Monitor – If your eyes are tired, you aren’t going to get much work done.
• Chair – Doesn’t need to be expensive, but it needs to be comfortable.
• Climate Control – If you don’t get this right, you aren’t going to be able to concentrate.
• Lighting – Don’t subject yourself to hour upon hour of flickering fluorescent lighting when you work from home.

4. Dedicated office

Don’t try to use your kitchen table as your office when you work from home.  You need a dedicated area–preferably with a door.  If you don’t have an extra bedroom, you can finish a space in the attic, basement or garage.  Some people will put a storage shed in the back yard, run electricity to it and use that as their office. Regardless of how you do it, you need a separate space for work in order to keep your sanity.

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When it comes to organizing your stuff, most people deal with every item and ask “Where do I put this”? This is not the question to ask.  When you go to look for the item you may or may not be able to remember the answer to the question “Where do I put this?”      

The real question to ask yourself is “Where will I look for this when I need it?”  There seems to be a big separation between the way the brain makes connections when you are trying to store something and when you are trying to retrieve it.

This makes sense because when you ask yourself “Where do I put this?” your brain is going to start thinking in terms of size, available storage space, danger to surrounding objects, etc. It isn’t thinking in terms of the context in which the item is needed.

If you organize your stuff by thinking about the context in which you need each item you’ll spend far less time looking for things.  This type of approach helps you find simple but innovative solutions that make sense.  For example, if you ask yourself where  you should store your postage stamps, you’ll probably put them in a drawer, but if you think about the context in which you’ll actually use them, you might decide to keep them in the box with empty envelopes.

By imagining the context in which you will need something in the future,  you can organize your stuff in a way that makes sense and works best for you personally.

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Graduate school is the next academic step after getting a bachelor’s degree.  Graduate schools award masters and doctorate and several other types of recognition.  In this post, we are going to look at some of the different types of graduate school options and talk about what each one entails and how it benefits you in the job market.

Graduate Citation

A graduate citation isn’t a degree, but it recognizes the completion of a collection of classes on a particular topic. A graduate citation is similar to a certificate (see below), but smaller in scope. It is the smallest unit of work you can do beyond a single class that is formally recognized. It generally requires three or four classes tightly focused on a specific topic.  The citation classes can be used toward other graduate school degrees.  If you are pursuing a master’s the citation gives you a resume enhancing way to get recognition along the way.

For people who aren’t pursuing a master’s degree, the citation and certificate offer a very good way to get some recognition for additional study in your field and can be valuable in preparing you for additional responsibilities or a slight career shift.  They are also an excellent way to beef up your academic credentials by including a very strong college on your resume.

If you are looking at taking classes toward a master’s degree, but don’t know if you’ll actually complete the entire thing, it may be beneficial to select classes that can be used toward a citation.  It will look a lot better on your resume to say that you earned a citation from Big Name University than just saying you took a few classes.  A citation helps show that you completed something and often that is what employers are looking for in your education.  In many cases, it isn’t as important what you studied–they just want to see that you could start something and see it through.  The citation helps you do that when you aren’t sure if your finances and family responsibilities are going to allow you to obtain the full degree.

Graduate Certificate

A graduate certificate is similar to a citation, but it requires more classes.  Generally the certificate classes are well focused and are suited toward helping you expand your career into a particular area.  Graduate certificates are usually pursued by students with a bachelor’s degree that want a bit more specialized training or by students who already have a graduate school degree that wish to expand their knowledge on a particular topic.

There isn’t a particular number of classes in a graduate certificate.  Harvard’s Extension School formerly offered certificates for 32 credit hours or 8 four-hour classes for 32 credit hours.  Their master’s degree programs only require 40 credit hours so the certificate is only two classes away from a master’s degree.  However, the certificate program doesn’t require a thesis and for some people the thesis represents a major hurdle to graduation.

If you are pursuing a master’s degree and your thesis may take you awhile to complete, a certificate allows you to get a level of recommendation that can enhance your resume while you finish out your program.

Professional Degree

Professional degrees have so many different meanings and the term has so many different usages that they are by far the most confusing graduate school option. This section will provide a bit of background, but every school and program tends to treat these degrees a little differently so make sure you thoroughly understand the particulars of a given program before enrolling.

Professional degrees are usually designed to prepare people for practicing in a particular profession while research or academic degree programs generally prepare one for doing research or working in academia. There are some professional degrees that are similar in scope to a bachelors degree, some are similar to a masters degree and some are similar to a PhD. There seems to be a trend to move professional degrees to the level of a masters degree or higher.

At some universities the professional degrees are actually masters degrees but with a focus on practice rather than research.  At other schools, some professional degrees are only available to those who have already completed their masters in a given field and wish to further their education, but aren’t interested in academic focus of the PhD track.

The downside of a professional degree is that unless people are familiar with your school and your particular program, they may not know what it is or what level if education it represents.  If you are getting the degree to get into a job where it is specifically required, that might not be any big deal.  However, if you plan to work in a field where your level of education is less common, it might give you less of a benefit than a degree that people understand.

Master’s Degree

A master’s degree is a postgraduate degree that falls between a bachelors and doctorate.  Generally these degrees require around 40 to 60 credit hours and can be completed in 2 to 4 years. In recent history there has been a great increase in the number of master’s degrees offered.  There are twice as many master’s degrees available today than there were 40 or 50 years ago.

There are two primary types of masters degrees.  The master of science and master of arts.  Different schools have different criteria as to what is classified as an art and what is classified as a science. The master of science is usually awarded for study of the sciences and master of arts covers pretty much everything else.

Most master’s degree programs will require a thesis in one form or another. My wife’s thesis for her master’s of nursing was a research project looking at how people deal with diabetes.  My thesis for my master’s of music composition was a significant composition for full orchestra. For my master’s degree from Harvard, I wrote a “non-trivial” piece of software along with an 80 to 90 page paper explaining the design, operation and software engineering decisions that went into the project.

Some degrees have options where you can avoid the thesis.  The ALM in IT with a concentration in Software Engineering added a “thesis free” option at some point, so you can now choose between a thesis or a capstone course.

Doctorate

A doctorate is the highest level of education.  While all of the other options generally prepare you with a breadth of information on a topic a doctorate is usually very focused on a very narrow area.  Upon completing a doctorate you will probably be one of the top experts in the world on a very narrow sliver of knowledge.  When I was getting my master’s degree in music composition, I had a teacher with a doctorate who was one of the top experts in the world on a two or three-year period of the life of composer George Frederic Handel’s life. He was in demand as a speaker on Handel’s view of women.  In my undergrad studies I had a class from a professor who was the worlds top expert on a single book written by C.S. Lewis.

Doctorates are usually earned through a great deal of research.  Since they are so specialized, you can’t rely on someone to teach you everything–you are often studying things that have never been studies in such depth.  Because of this doctorates are much more fluid in what they encompass and a great deal of your studies and research program will be designed by you and your adviser rather than trying to take a list of classes.

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It is amazing how good people are at problem solving.  Think of all the inventions and methods people have come up with to fix everything from minor annoyances to large scale worldwide problems. Even as good as everyone seems to be at solving problems, we are notoriously bad at identifying the correct problem to solve.  Let me give a few examples.

Aviation safety

Our public aviation security in the US is based around the idea of keeping bad stuff off airplanes.  The idea is that if we can keep anything dangerous off planes, we will be safe.  Lots of problem solving effort has gone into keeping dangerous stuff off planes, but is that the real problem?  There is stuff all over in a plane that could potentially be dangerous.  I’m not going to try to give people any ideas here, but trust me there are many MANY items already on a plane that are far more dangerous than the pieces of plastic the 9/11 hijackers used. So what is the real problem?  We need to keep terrorists off planes.  It is going to be impossible to keep all the bad stuff off planes–particularly when some of the things that could be dangerous are part of the planes safety mechanisms. But if we can keep terrorists off planes then it doesn’t really matter what is on the plane.

Keeping specific types of people out of the air isn’t as easy as making knee jerk reactions to ban random stuff but it isn’t impossible and it is much safer.  Israel seems to do a pretty good job of this–they don’t let you on the plane until they are convinced that you aren’t a terrorist.  They still check baggage and stuff like that, but they are trying to solve a different problem than we are trying to solve in the US.  They want to keep terrorists of planes.  The US wants to keep tools a terrorist could use off planes. How you identify the problem determines to a great extent what type of solution you will achieve.

Foreign aid

When it comes to countries where people don’t have enough to eat, governments and charitable organizations often go in and do problem solving on the issue of”People don’t have enough food.”  Of course the solution to that problem is simple–send food.  In many instances it doesn’t help very much because the food is thrown away because of local superstitions or stolen or left to rot because of inadequate distribution and red tape. Worse still, giving away food often causes bigger problems.

Most people understand that giving food to wild animals can do a lot of harm.  If an eagle gets accustomed to being given fish by a human, he may lose the desire and skill of hunting for himself.  This can happen to people as well.

What incentive does a farmer in Africa have to work hard to raise a crop, when he knows his inferior foods will be in competition with what some foreign charity is giving away for free near the market? Giving away free food can kill any self sufficiency that may exist.  The free food might temporarily keep people from being hungry, but when war or politics drive out the people who are giving aid, the people are left in a worse position than they were before because they are less self-sufficient on local resources.

When it comes to helping people who are starving in foreign countries, the problem must be defined as “how do we help them become self-sufficient?” I’m not saying that you should never give away food, but it has to be done very carefully in much the same way that doctors may prescribe addictive drugs as pain killers for extremely sick patients.

I talked with someone from the United Nations who explained that his job was to go in and try to find way to help people without causing more harm.  He said that many times, giving people the ability to own property by establishing banks and loan programs could reverse poverty in an area and create a self-sufficient ecosystem while having the fewest negative side effects.

Autos and the Environment

When it comes to pollution from cars, the obvious problem is: How can we make cars that produce less pollution in manufacturing and produce less pollution while driving? Hybrid vehicles are not the solution to this problem.  Hybrid vehicles solve the following problem: “How can we make a car that people will pay more for because they think they are helping the environment and/or saving on fuel?”  The car I drove in high-school and college required less pollution to make and got significantly better gas mileage than the current hybrid cars.  Hybrids solve a marketing problem more than they solve the pollution problem. The pollution problem will be better solved with vehicles that are simple to make and inexpensive to propel.  A car with both an electric and a gasoline drive system is going to require many many more components and much more mining of copper and nickle than a simple efficient gasoline vehicle.  If a hybrid vehicle costs more than an equivalent non-hybrid vehicle it is probably because there is more involved in its manufacture and it contains parts that aren’t required in the plain version.  The additional manufacturing and additional parts are all going to add pollution.

The smart choice for a strictly environmental perspective is going to be getting a used vehicle that can get 50 MPH.  That’s better mileage than you’ll get with a hybrid AND you skip all the pollution of making a new vehicle.

Kids and self-esteem

Somewhere someone has decided that kids have problems with self-esteem.  According to research that I’ve seen, this isn’t as much of an issue in the US.  Kids in the US think they are very good a math and science.  A study confirmed that most US kids feel they are better than other people at math and science.  The problem is that they aren’t. They have the self-esteem, but not the skills.

Anyway, the people are trying to solve the “self esteem problem” have decided that they need to lower the passing scores on tests to 40% so kids can all feel good about passing and don’t have to experience failure. It seems to me that school would be a good place to learn from your mistakes so you don’t have to encounter that type of education on the job for the first time, but I guess that is the view of someone with real world experience and not as many hours of child psychology classes.

So back to what they are trying to solve.  Is it really a problem that kids don’t have good self esteem? Maybe.  Maybe not.  But I can guarantee you this: Poor self esteem isn’t caused by tests being too hard. If you want to give kids self esteem, give them things to do that if they work hard they can succeed at.  The problem is not that public school education is too rigorous, yet that is the problem they are trying to solve.

Welfare

Welfare used to try to solve the problem of “How can we give these people jobs?”  WPA projects started around the time of the Great Depression built a nearby lake, the highschool football stadium, and the cement picnic tables at a local park. In a nearby town, they hired people to go down the brick streets and flip each brick over.  It looked a bit nicer, but it wasn’t really something that had to be done.  The point was it gave people work for which they were paid.  They could take their paycheck and buy food for their family.

Much of the welfare we see today tries to solve a different problem.  “How can we give these people money?”  This is a completely different problem that is solved in a completely different way.  Trying to give people jobs helped foster a sense of self reliance.  When other higher paying jobs became available it was easy for these people to transition to other work.  Trying to just give people money creates as many problems as it solves.

I can see the need for unemployment, but I think it is horrible that you can sit at home and get an unemployment check.  At the very least you should be required to spend 10 to 20 hours a week doing some type of public service work in exchange for the money you are getting. I think you’d see a significant drop in the number of people claiming unemployment if it still required some type of work. Work is a great way to weed out people who are simply taking advantage of the system and keep the benefits focused on people who it is actually helping as they try to find another job.

Conclusion

My point was to show that we often try to solve the wrong problems and put a tremendous amount of effort in to fixing the wrong things. If your car doesn’t drive well because the wheels need aligned, you can change the oil all you want with out fixing the real issue. When you are trying to solve problems, make sure you don’t jump so quickly to the solution stage, that you skip the part where you identify the actual problem that needs solved.

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Occasionally I’ll get some criticism that I’m too focused on productivity. People say that I need to lighten up, etc.  The problem is that on this site we focus on productivity–not on what to do with the free time that being productive buys you.  Here is a short video about enjoying the fruits of productivity–free time to do things with family. (If you want to more of the other side, you can checkout my personal blog.)

The Other Side of Productivity from Productivity501 on Vimeo.

It’s great to strive for efficiency, but it is also important to make sure that being above average in what you accomplish buys your above average rewards.

Inspirational leadership quotes from Leadership501.

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My company spends about 25% of our effort doing consulting with other businesses to help them become more productive and efficient.

If your job encompasses any type of business responsibility, you’ll probably benefit by signing up for my monthly business newsletter. The content covers a wide range of business and technology information that will help you make better decisions, avoid dangerous technology mistakes and make your business operations more efficient.

You can sign up using the form below (you may need to click through to the website if viewing in RSS or email) or go to my company site and sign up in the right sidebar: Xeric Corporation

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Everyone is familiar with a to-do list, but most people don’t really understand the importance of having a list of the things you want to accomplish. Creating a to-do list is creating a list of goals. The list tells you what you need to do to achieve some larger outcome in your life. The power isn’t so much in the list itself, but in the overall goal it helps you to achieve.

A list is a way to break down your life goals into easy manageable steps that you can complete in a specific amount of time. In this sense, your list becomes a guide showing you how to succeed in life.

The way most people start off creating to-do lists, isn’t particularly effective. It is easy to end up with many items that aren’t important, that you don’t want to do, and that don’t contribute to your overall goals.

Developing a talent in creating your lists is very beneficial First, you need to see your list as a sacred place. It is there to help you achieve your life goals. It represents items on which you plan to spend part of your valuable and limited time. This doesn’t mean you can’t put smaller items on the list–like getting groceries. It does mean that you need to make sure you only use your list for things that are actually valuable to you.

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I’ve updated the design of Productivity501, please check it out and let me know what you think.  In particular, let me know if you see anything that looks wrong or needs fixed. The design is similar to the original so you may not notice too many changes.  The biggest differences are in the ways the site deals with images–it will now autosize images so we don’t have to do quite as much work in an image editor.

Let me know what you think!  Also if anyone has suggestions for improvement, please let me know. I can’t change to match every suggestion I get, but I’d appreciate any feedback about any aspect of the site.  It helps me plan ahead for the next time we revamp the design.

For anyone interested, the theme being used is Magazine from StudioPress.  The previous theme was Revolution Pro Media which was a predecessor to the current theme.

If you like Productivity501 you may like Mark Shead’s personal blog.

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Routines are a simple method to guarantee that you do the same thing at the same time in the same way every day.  Routines allow you to decide ahead of time what you are going to do, make the decision once, and then spend all of your effort executing rather than pondering what you should do next. Here are some examples of beneficial routines:

• Reading something helpful for your career for 15 minutes each day during your lunch break.
• Going for a 30 minute walk every evening.
• An hour first thing in the morning spent with 15 minutes organizing your desk, 15 minutes sending networking emails and 30 minutes writing for your blog,

Those are just some simple examples, but the point is to create habits that cause you to repeat productive behavior. You don’t want to allow yourself to decide over and over again whether or not you are going to do it.  Most people brush their teeth as a routine.  It isn’t something that they put any mental energy into trying to decide if they should do it or not. When you can take other beneficial habits and move them to the same type of position in your daily activities, you can dramatically increase the amount you accomplish.

Most people drastically underestimate how much time and effort goes into deciding what to do next.  Time management systems are designed to help decrease the amount of time you spend on this activity. Routines help make sure you are making continual improvement toward your goals.

Just as positive routines are very valuable, negative routines can be extremely damaging.  Here are some examples of regular activities that can have negative long-term results:

• Buying a soda and/or candy bar every afternoon.
• Channel surfing for hours everyday.
• Browsing the web for “five minutes” first thing in the morning.
• Staying up late watching TV instead of going to bed.
• Looping around the parking lot “just one more time” to try to find a closer parking space.
• Skipping your child’s baseball game.

Routines are the systems you use to run your life.  Good systems will get you good results while bad systems will get you bad results.  Pay attention to what you are doing on a regular basis and work to develop habits you will be proud of that will push you toward your goals instead of away from them.

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I’ve been surprised at how difficult it is to let go of my paper. As I move more and more of my paper to a digital format I keep finding myself hesitating when I get ready to shred a document. We are trained so very well to keep our paper records. Has anyone else experienced this?

I think part of the issue is that most people have suffered some type of data loss with their computer. Even though I have multiple systems in place for backup I’m still haunted by losing important files years ago. Another issue is the physicalness of paper. You can hold paper in your hand. Spread it out. Write notes in the margin, etc. Not that I ever do that with my car insurance statement or gas bill, but somehow the idea of having something physical is comforting.

Little by little I’m training myself to let go. One trick I’ve found is to not shred the paper right away. I simply put it on top of the shredder to shred later. My daughter’s sleeping schedule was the original reason for this habit, but it is easier to give myself a few hours–just in case I think of some reason a document needs saved. So far I haven’t come up with any reason to save something that I was planning on shredding, but it makes me feel more comfortable.

My files have stopped growing and are starting to shrink!

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