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Hi - found this great article in Early To Rise - read and get wise!

By Tim Ferriss

I just landed back in CA from a long overdue mini-retirement through London, Scotland, Sardinia, Slovak Republic, Austria, Amsterdam, and Japan.

Some unpleasant surprises awaited me when I checked in on the evil e-mail inbox. Why?

I let them happen.

I always do.

Here are just a few of the goodies that awaited me this time:

• One of our fulfillment companies has been shut down due to the president's death, causing a 20%+ loss in monthly orders and requiring an emergency shift of all Web design and order processing.

• Missed radio and magazine appearances and upset would-be interviewers.

• More than a dozen lost joint-venture partnership opportunities.

It's not that I go out of my way to irritate people - not at all - but I recognize one critical fact: Oftentimes, in order to do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen. This is a skill we want to cultivate.

What did I get in exchange for temporarily putting on blinders and taking a few glancing blows?

• I followed the Rugby World Cup in Europe and was able to watch the New Zealand All Blacks live, a dream I've had for the last 5 years.

• I was able to shoot every gun I've ever dreamed of firing since brainwashing myself with Commando. Bless the Slovak Republic and their paramilitaries.

• I was able to film a television series pilot in Japan, a lifelong dream and the most fun I've had in months, if not years.

• I met with my Japanese publisher, Seishisha (Tel: 03-5574-8511) and had media interviews in Tokyo, where The 4-Hour Workweek is now #1 in several of the largest chains.

• I took a complete 10-day media fast and felt like I'd had a two-year vacation from computers.

• I attended the Tokyo International Film Festival and hung out with one of my heroes, the producer of the Planet Earth television series.

Once you realize that you can turn off the noise without the world ending, you're liberated in a way that few people ever know.

Just remember: If you don't have attention, you don't have time. Did I have time to check e-mail and voicemail? Sure. It might take 10 minutes. Did I have the attention to risk fishing for crises in those 10 minutes? Not at all.

As tempting as it is to "just check e-mail for one minute," I didn't do it. I know from experience that any problem found in the inbox will linger on the brain for hours or days after you shut down the computer, rendering "free time" useless with preoccupation. It's the worst of states, where you experience neither relaxation nor productivity. Be focused on work or focused on something else, never in between.

Time without attention is worthless, so value attention over time.

Here are a few questions that can help you put on the productivity blinders and put things in perspective. Even when you're not traveling the world, develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don't, you'll never find time for the life-changing big things, whether important tasks or true peak experiences. If you do force the time but puncture it with distractions, you won't have the attention to appreciate it.

• What is the one goal, if completed, that could change everything?

• What is the most urgent thing right now that you feel you "must" or "should" do?

• Can you let the urgent "fail" - even for a day - to get to the next milestone with your potential life-changing tasks?

• What's been on your "to-do" list the longest? Start it first thing in the morning and don't allow interruptions or lunch until you finish.

Will "bad" things happen? Small problems will crop up, yes. A few people will complain and quickly get over it. BUT, the bigger picture items you complete will let you see these for what they are - minutiae and repairable hiccups.

Make this trade a habit. Let the small bad things happen and make the big good things happen.

[Ed. Note: Timothy Ferriss is author of the #1 New York Times best-seller, The 4-Hour Workweek. He is the world's top lifestyle blogger - more than 20 million hits per month - at www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog, which details all of his latest experiments and how-to case studies.]

 

 

Author, Angela Wickenberg, has an MBA in Strategy and International Business from Linköping Univerisity in Sweden. She will passionately help you find the tools you need to succeed.  She can be found at http://angelawickenberg.com.

 

This is just a quick note to wish one and all a very Happy Easter/Passover/Spring.  I imagine that your family celebrates Spring in one way or another and I wonder what the traditions and "rituals" are in your part of the world.

In my family in L.A., we celebrated on Easter Sunday.  Today, which is “Good Friday”, the religiously devout went to church, and we always ate fried fish - really "blackened fish" on this day.  Saturday, on the Eve of Easter, we boiled eggs (for far too long) and dyed them in lots of pastel colors.  They were then hidden in the yard for us children to go hunting for them the following day.  Easter Sunday was one of the few times that we went to church.  I have a vivid mental photo of the white dresses that we had on.  It was always beautiful weather and like one of the warmest days of summer but the air was clear in a blue, cloudless sky. We always received a basket with Easter chocolates in the form of Easter bunnies, See's Candy BonBons and chocolate eggs of various sorts. Also other types of candy eggs, too. And then there was the Easter egg hunt.

Lots of distant cousins and family would come to feast on the Easter goodies, which consisted of “filé gumbo“, ham, potato salad, "deviled" eggs, and probably about 10-20 other dishes, including homemade ice-cream and an array of desserts, depending on what some of my relatives brought with them. Many of the women in my family loved to cook and eat and it certainly showed!  This is a fond memory.

Here in Sweden, the traditions are different. Easter is celebrated from Thursday to Monday, and Easter itself is celebrated on the Eve of Easter.  This time of year, I am out in the yard, tending my garden, grooming and pruning bushes and trees, raking up the leaves that I didn’t have the energy or inclination to take care of the previous fall, and planting flowers that can take the frost, like Easter lilies (not the bulbs but potted plants) and pansies. A well-needed Spring cleaning and painting indoors are also normal chores of March and April.

On the Thursday before Easter, which is called “skärtorsdag” or “Maundy Thursday”, the children, really the girls, get dressed up like “witches” from “the Brocken”.  This is a German tradition that came to Sweden sometime in the 19th century. Like in most of Europe and in the U.S. there was a time when women who were learned in natural herb lore and were healers were pointed out as witches, hunted down and burned at the stake. Halloween has come to Sweden only in recent years; Skärtorsdag, or Maundy Thursday, was the day when the children got dressed up and went from door to door to beg for candy or other goodies.

On the subject of witch hunts, I recently received an email from a fellow marketer who wrote that America is on a witch hunt and Rhonda Byrne, the creator of The Secret, is being burnt on many stakes.  She is the woman behind the wildly popular film and best-selling book, “The Secret”.

The Secret has been debated on CNN, Oprah, Larry King, and in The New York Times.  And now, for the first, last time, and only time in 2007,  you can hear Rhonda's side - The (insiders) Story Behind The Secret

http://www.linkbrander.com/go/37072


Let your friends and family also register - this could make for an interesting dinner discussion!

Whatever your religion and traditions, have a wonderful weekend!  Celebrate Spring!

Angela Wickenberg

Creating, discovering, searching, sharing, storing etc for videos

1. BigContact : social podcasting/videocasting (#,a-b)
2. blinkx : tv / video / podcast search (#,a-b)
3. blip.tv : video/podcasting sharing service (#,a-b)
4. Bolt : video/photo/music sharing service (#,a-b)
5. Boltfolio : video sharing service (#,a-b)
6. BroadbandSports.com : sports video portal (#,a-b)
7. BroadSnatch : podcasts/v-logs (#,a-b)
8. Castpost : social video hosting / sharing (c-d)
9. Clipshack : social video sharing (c-d)
10. Dailymotion : video sharing (c-d)
11. DiviCast : social podcasting/videocasting (c-d)
12. Dropshots : social video sharing (c-d)
13. EveryBit : search multimedia web content (e-f)
14. EyeSpot : simple video mixing and sharing (e-f)
15. FireAnt.tv : social video sharing (e-f)
16. Flukiest : music/photo/video sharing (e-f)
17. Freevlog : video logging tutorial (e-f)
18. GetDemocracy : internet television (g-h)
19. GlideDigital : social photo/music/video/file/etc sharing (g-h)
20. Grinvi : social video sharing (spanish) (g-h)
21. Grouper : social video sharing (g-h)
22. Kolablog : multimedia blogging service; free (k-l)
23. LifeBlogger : free blogging service (k-l)
24. Loomia : podcast/video search engine (k-l)
25. Magnoto : free modular blogging service (m-n)
26. MediaMax : online media / file storage ; free (25 gb) and paid accounts (m-n)
27. MediaTurner : rich media player service (m-n)
28. mefeedia : social video sharing (m-n)
29. MetaCafe : social video sharing (m-n)
30. MyVideoKaraoke : social karaoke video sharing (m-n)
31. Openvlog : video recording and sharing (o-p)
32. Orb : secure access to media (music/photo/video) (o-p)
33. Ourmedia : online storage (o-p)
34. Phanfare : social photo / video sharing (o-p)
35. PicPix : photo/video sharing/tag/organization application (o-p)
36. PiXPO : video sharing service (o-p)
37. poddater : video personals with tags (o-p)
38. Podesk : video podcast/blog software (o-p)
39. Pooxi : video search engine (french) (o-p)
40. Popcast : social video braodcasting (o-p)
41. Revver : social video sharing (q-r)
42. SelfCastTV : social video sharing (s-t)
43. SevenLoad : social video sharing (s-t)
44. Sharkle : social video sharing (s-t)
45. ShoZu : social photo / video / text mobile sharing (s-t)
46. Stickam : social media sharing (s-t)
47. Stridr / swapzies : social media storage (s-t)
48. Strmz : videos from TV channels (s-t)
49. Trueveo : video search engine (s-t)
50. TurnHere : film of the day (s-t)
51. VideoBomb : social video hosting / sharing (u-v)
52. VideoEgg : video publishing (u-v)
53. VideoSift : social video sharing (u-v)
54. VidiLife : social video sharing (u-v)
55. Vimeo : social video sharing (u-v)
56. vlogmap : video blogs on google maps (u-v)
57. vMix : social video sharing (u-v)
58. Vongo : high-quality full screen video plugin software (u-v)
59. vSocial : social video sharing (u-v)
60. woomu : social video sharing with user tags and votes (w-x)
61. YouTube : social video sharing (y-z)
62. Zippyvideos : social video sharing (y-z)

Written by Emre Sokullu and edited by Richard MacManus

There are now so many companies vying to be the next YouTube, it's easy to lose track of them all. So let's take a look at the entire online video industry and categorize the major players. Our thanks to Ali Dagli of Savvian, for providing us a lot of the useful data listed here. 

In this post we've summarized the latest video industry innovations under the following categories:

• Video Sharing
• Intermediaries
• Video Search
• Video eCommerce
• Video Editing & Creation
• Rich Media Advertising
• P2P (Peer To Peer)
• Video Streaming
• Vlogosphere

 

In that spirit, Business 2.0 magazine sent senior writer Paul Kaihla and a team of reporters on a quest to find some of the best "best practices" in business today. The companies they interviewed have stumbled upon their own unique methods for doing everything from running meetings and generating product ideas to troubleshooting M&A deals and keeping board directors on their toes.

Following are 25 ideas that are truly gems, broken down into five categories: finance, HR, management, marketing, and R&D.

They're methods that help keep some of the best-run companies, like Procter & Gamble (Research), Google (Research), Southwest Airlines (Research), Microsoft (Research), Intel (Research), and Coke (Research), at the top of their game. You've probably never heard of most of these practices — but you might want to start implementing them tomorrow. 

HEWLETT-PACKARD CEO Mark Hurd loves numbers–and insists that his managers learn to love them too. Since Hurd came onboard last March, one of the key tools he's used to keep pace with rivals is his extreme form of industry benchmarking. Instead of comparing HP's sales and profits with Dell's or IBM's, the company now tracks itself against rivals by every conceivable measure. "We want to make sure we break down every unit and business function," explains Marius Haas, senior strategy officer at HP, "so we can become best in class in each one."

Here's how it works: Imagine a matrix with various business units running down the side (printing, servers, storage, IT services, etc.) and business functions across the top (finance, HR, marketing, R&D, etc.). Now create benchmarks for each of the 72 resulting cells and you have a good idea of how Hurd is managing the $87 billion company. The benchmarks are the best guess of where HP's rivals are going to be in 2007, based on more than a dozen variables, from real estate cost per square foot to operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin.

Before Hurd took over, HP measured itself primarily against IBM, using one very blunt tool: costs as a percentage of revenues. That ignored IBM's higher gross margins and the fact that it has more gross profit to spread around. Hurd's new benchmarking method formed the basis of HP's reorganization effort announced last July, through which HP has promised to save $3 billion by 2008. Already there is key evidence of success: Operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin dropped 2 percent in 2005, helping to fatten profits by $385 million. — E.S.

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