Category Archives: Current Events
Ten Resolutions The Most Successful People Make And Then Keep By Mike Maddock
MOST OF US KNOW HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO READ, LISTEN AND ASSOCIATE. AFTER READING MIKE MADDOCK’S ARTICLE ON FORBES.COM EARLIER THIS WEEK, I RESOLVE TO FOLLOW MIKE’S SUGGESTIONS IN 2014. IT MAKES MORE SENSE TO FOCUS ON MIKE’S TOP FAVORITE RESOLUTIONS THAN TAKING TIME TO CREATE MY OWN LIST. AGREE?
HAPPY NEW YEAR MY FRIENDS. YOU CAN BE THE JUDGE on HOW EFFECTIVE THEY ARE.
LORY
Ten Resolutions The Most Successful People Make And Then Keep
Well, it’s that time again—time to start rolling out the New Year’s resolutions. Some of us will vow to eat less, exercise more, live in the moment, be more grateful. You may even decide to bury the hatchet with the family member who makes you so crazy.
But what about your New Year’s business resolutions?
This time of year is a great time to start making—and keeping—business resolutions, too. But sadly, like our personal goals, we often make them (year after year) with sincere intent only to see them quickly fall by the wayside, as we revert to (bad) habits that we have vowed to break.
But what about the most successful people and their resolutions?
Have you noticed how the most accomplished people just seem to identify important things and consistently get them done? Study successful people long enough and you start to pick up on the resolutions they seem to consistently make.
Here are Mike’s top favorites:
#1 – Spend more time on the not-to-do list.
Strategy is the art of sacrifice. That’s why you may consider creating a larger clearing for what really matters by first identifying, and then avoiding, what matters the least. Your time is a treasure to be invested. Creating a list of things that you are not going to do, allows you to invest more of your treasured time on the few things that matter the most.
#2 – Essential first, email second.
What’s the first thing you do in the morning? For many of us, it is looking at email. We wake up with a renewed mind and spirit, ready to take on the world, and then we immediately allow ourselves to be distracted by an insignificant email. Instead, wake up, take on the most important task of the day, and then (and only then) hit the email.
#3- Resolve to think about “Who” instead of “What.”
Do you work for a “What” business or for a “Who” business? Successful companies run the risk of focusing too much on their current products and distributors thus—the “What”—losing sight of the constant and dramatically changing needs of their customer base.
(The “Who.”) Insurance, pharmacy, health care, higher education often listen too much to their agents, doctors and professors. The real innovation starts with the end consumer.
#4 Resolve to find your purpose.
As my friend Simon Sinek will tell you: People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Starting a career, a company or any kind of journey that is based firmly on your purpose is foundational to success and happiness. If you don’t know your company’s purpose or even your own, finding one is the worthiest of resolutions.
#5 – Resolve to support a cause.
If you’re reading this, chances are you are one of the rare people who know how to start things. Fortunately, there are people like you who have already started causes that make the world better—they feed the hungry; they save the rain forest; they fight cancer; they do good things. There is virtually a cause for everyone, and contributing will make your year happier. Promise.
#6 – Resolve to invent more choices.
Here’s a secret that happy people know that I learned from my friend Dr. Dan Baker: You can’t feel grateful and fearful at the same time. And one certain way to become afraid is to feel trapped by any situation. The remedy is choice. The more choices you feel you have, the less trapped—and happier—you will feel. So this year, resolve to do a bit of brainstorming every time you feel unhappy.
#7 – Resolve to find a Yin for your Yang.
Walt Disney had Roy Disney, Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak and Orville Wright had Wilbur Wright. Wherever there is great innovation, there is a Dreamer and an Operator; an Idea Monkey and a (Ring) leader. First, determine where your passions lie, then go find an equally passionate partner, then go change the world.
#8 – Resolve to get outside your jar.
You can’t read the label when you are sitting inside the jar. The sad irony of being an expert is that it keeps you from seeing possibility. After all, you know what works, what doesn’t, what you can afford, what’s been tried in the past. Instead of relying only on your expertise, learn how to find other experts solving similar challenges to the ones you are facing. Go ask them what you may be missing.
#9 –Resolve to be the creator.
What is the outcome you want? What stands in your way? How do you overcome these obstacles? These three simple questions will keep you from being victimized by any situation. Creators change the world. Victims just bitch about stuff.
#10 – Plan vacations. (now)
You have probably heard the saying, “Life is what happens when you are not paying attention.” Unfortunately for many of us, we let this become true. Do yourself a favor and plan your vacations for the next year today. I promise you that the days around your vacation will fill in nicely. I also promise you that you’ll have something to look forward to and the life that happens during your vacations will be precious.
Hugs and Peace out to Mike Maddock
Learn more about Mike @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemaddock/
Barclays Libor Scandal: Who Knew? Seven And A Half Things To Know | The Huffington Post
Thing One: The Fed’s True Libors: It’s a good thing no one on earth cares about this Libor scandal, because otherwise the Fed would be in so much trouble right now.
The United States central bank straight-up confesses to Reuters that, oh yeah, sure, it knew all about Libor shenanigans waaaay back in 2007, even before the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. It seems the New York Fed got a tip from some bank called, let us check here, Bar-Clays? Does that sound right? Bar-Clays? It seems this bank told the Fed about problems with the setting of Libor, an interest rate that is so pervasive in our daily lives that you were probably drinking a little Libor in your coffee just now. Not only that, but the Fed talked to Barclays about Libor approximately eleventy gazillion times after the initial tip. Not only that, but it also drew up a list of suggestions for Barclays and UK banking authorities about how to fix the Libor market. Which list of suggestions were promptly crumpled up into a ball and tossed in the coal oven for warmth because it’s dismal in the UK in the winter, guvnah.
So, fast forward to today, and the Libor market never got fixed, despite everybody knowing about its problems. That bank, Barclays, is paying about $450 million in fines over Libor, its chairman and CEO have resigned (chairman Marcus Agius testified this morning before a parliamentary committee), and a whole mess of other banks are under investigation, too. And attention is finally turning, as it should, to why the regulators had their heads firmly implanted in their own behinds for so long, The New York Times writes (I’m paraphrasing). Bank of England deputy guvnah Paul Tucker yesterday denied giving a nudge-wink to Barclays to cheat on Libor, but that’s certainly some faint self-praise, isn’t it? And it certainly won’t end the scrutiny of the regulators.
Thing Two: Euro Crisis Solved Yet Again: Remember that time, when the umpteenthousandth solution to the euro zone debt crisis seemed insufficient, and markets were punishing European sovereign debt? Yesterday, I mean? Well, pop some champagne, my friends, because that day is over. Because this is today. And today, euro-zone officials are giving Spain a whole extra year to get its budgetary act together and promising to pump more cash into its banks. And then very soon, maybe, they’ll get around to adding some details to that umpteenthousandth solution they hammered out a couple of weeks ago. That’s just barely good enough for European stocks, which are higher this morning.
Thing Three: Another Brokerage Firm Enters Bermuda Triangle: Mere months after the collapse of brokerage firm MF Global magically made more than $1 billion of client money disappear into thin air, another brokerage firm — with the eerily similar name of PFGBest — has also collapsed, making $200 million of client money vanish. Neat trick. Regulators, which had promised after MFGlobal to tighten up their brokerage-firm-watching skills, are once again perplexed, The New York Times writes.
Thing Four: Laying Down The Mortgage Law: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which hates your freedom to lose tons of money in the housing market, has proposed new rules designed to give borrowers more information about the mortgages they’re taking out, because of socialism. The New York Times writes: “The proposed rules have two central elements — the loan estimate and the closing disclosure — that would provide would-be homebuyers with a simple accounting of likely payments and fees to prevent costly surprises.”
Thing Five: No Jobs Anywhere Forever: Quick, take a mental snapshot of how awful the job market is. Now imagine that lasting for at least another two years. Voila, you’ve got the gist of a new OECD report on the global economy: “Unemployment in advanced economies will remain high until at least the end of 2013, with young people and the low-skilled bearing the brunt of what is by far the weakest economic recovery in the past four decades, the OECD said on Tuesday.”
Thing Six: Enjoy Those Corn Flakes: Because it hasn’t rained in America since February, and because it has been 112 degrees since March, growing corn has been just a little on the difficult side. And that has pushed corn prices to the moon, writes the Wall Street Journal: “Corn futures for July delivery jumped 4% to $7.7525 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, extending gains to 29% in the past three weeks, as intense heat and a dearth of rainfall punish parts of big corn-growing states like Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio.”
Thing Seven: Google’s Private Eyes, They’re Watching You: Google is about to pay $22.5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it skirted Apple users’ privacy settings, the Wall Street Journal reports: “The fine is expected to be the largest penalty ever levied on a single company by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. It offers the latest sign of the FTC’s stepped-up approach to policing online privacy violations, coming just six months after the WSJ reported on Google’s practices.” Ah, yes, but how much do you want to bet that Google made much, much more than $22.5 million skirting your privacy settings?
Thing Seven And One Half: Cape Fear: Batman needs to go back to the Bat-Lab and design a better Bat-Cape, apparently. Wired reports that physicists at the University of Leicester, who obviously have nothing better to do now that the Higgs boson has been discovered, have calculated that a leap from a 500-foot-tall building using Batman’s cape would result in a 50-mph collision with the ground, which would likely result in a Bat-Death.
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Calendar Du Jour:
Economic Data:
Nada.
Corporate Earnings:
Nothing major.
Heard On The Tweets:
@ezraklein: Today we’re talking about tax cuts for the rich rather than the Friday jobs #s. Mission accomplished for the White House.
@conorsen: How is “Romney fundraisers” not a reality TV show yet?
@mattyglesias: If you make $250,000 a year and think you’re not “really” rich, ask yourself how the 97% of population that makes less than that feel.