Archiv für den Monat: März 2012

Tips

Continental who´s who – are they serious?

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A couple of days ago I did receive a letter from a company called “Continental Whos´s Who”. Content of this letter basically was a list of compliments regarding the goals that I did achieve in my profession. I now should feel honored because they are about to approve me becoming part of the “who is who” in my industry.

Indeed I did feel honored and I did not doubt that this is a serious association interested in having me in their group of successful professionals. Since they are based in the US we scheduled a meeting at 3pm to avoid inconveniences caused by the time difference.

In this call a Lisa started to ask some questions about my career and about the way I´m doing business. At that point I still had no doubt about their professional attempt. After 20 minutes she finally congratulated me. “You are a real professional that we want to work with, having you in our exclusive group of executives and professionals from around the world”. Man, I really felt proud about this. After all the years of hard work finally somebody was proud of having me as a member.  I almost felt like a celebrity.

Unfortunately this conversation did change dramatically.  After a couple of more questions she than explained that there are two different memberships. Lifetime which goes for $ 899 and a five year plan going for $ 599. Of course all professionals are choosing the  Lifetime plan.#

At that point the red light in my head already did shine and blink like on judgment day.

I was angry at myself. I knew best that nobody in the world ever will give you something for free. Everything in live does cost. Even for death you have to give your live.

Lisa lost in the second she mentioned the amounts. Nevertheless I did want to see how far she goes. It was impressive how much she did push. It became extremely intrusive. Fortunately I already knew how this is going to end up. I kept on playing. During the conversation she came up with new plans that she only can offer for me and that almost will cost her job.  For some reason it seems that they can´t postpone decisions. They want to close the deal during this call.

Ok, I finally agreed on a $ 99 plan for 2 years.

I could hear her breathing out when she finally nailed it down, she thought. She didn´t knew that I was playing since the second she started to talk about money. What came up next almost would have been good enough for an oscar. But I don´t want to go into to much details. At the end even after not closing the deal and not getting my credit card details nor personal information she stopped the conversation by saying:  “It was my pleasure to talk to you”.

Finally I´m not sure about this company. Online I did found tons of reports accusing them of fraud or even scam.  I don´t want to go that far. I just think the way they did approach me was not the way I want to be approached. In my opinion  becoming a who is who simply should be something that can be achieved  instead of bought.

The funny side now will be that I will laugh for myself whenever I see „who´s who“ listed in someones profile. Now I know that this person did not achieve it, he simply did not manage to stand against the pushy sales person of that company. Something that I would not be proud of.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

Allgemein, Tips

Seven easy things you need to do to become more productive.

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Recently I did find an article explaining 7 things you need to know to become more productive. In this article Ilya Pozin explains what he did learn from his meeting with Tony Wong, a project manager whose client list includes Toyoto, Honda, and Disney, just to name a few. This rules are easy to follow. So if you want to get more productive, here is how it works.

  1. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch a wireframe, outline an introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.
  2. Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women).
  3. Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.
  4. Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.
  5. Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead.
  6. Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day.
  7. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.

Hope this one helps you to increase your productivity. Further I would like to recommend a book that is even more effective than this seven rules. It goes far beyond them. Please be aware that you need to be willing to change your way of doing business completely. Are you ready? Ok, than go and get this book.

REWORK by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson. 

By far the best business book on the market. Enjoy the rules as well as the book.