on Life and Livingness – by Tom

You can download a free white paper at this link: http://aj.600z.com/aj/88502/0/cc?z=1&b=88499&c=88500

EzineArticles is the premier article directory where you can submit your article to be picked up and republished by (hopefully) lots of others. http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2009/09/discover-the-value-of-ezinearticles.html

Some interesting stats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

The more you do it, the worse you get. http://www.itnews.com.au/News/154170,multitasking-doesnt-work-say-researchers.aspx

One man’s take on what it takes to sell a product. http://www.site-reference.com/articles/General/The-5-Selling-Magic-Secrets-of-Billy-Mays.html

I had an email discussion this week where somebody asked my take on the Global Warming Swindle. Here is a post one should read. A comment under the article is a first hand account of the motivation. http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/barbarians-at-turbine/
I have also posted to my site a pdf of a slide presentation showing some data on the minuscule effect on the total greenhouse gases made by man. We would be far better devoting our energies to eradicating genuine pollution, like the plastic soup in the Pacific Ocean, rather than a bogus threat conceived as a scam against the public. ACoolLookAtGlobalWarming.pdf

These documents will ensure that you can assist your parents in a medical or financial emergency and, at their deaths, ease the distribution of their estate. here

Learning how to negotiate effectively can help you achieve winning results while strengthening business relationships. here

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

The late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 – 2005.

I am pretty sure I have forwarded the text version of this before, at least I have seen it. But here is a slide show version here

YouTube has become a dominant force in on the web. YouTube videos are often showing up on Google natural search engine results surpassing the top spots. here

This is a video that will explain the reasons why and how a lot of what is going down is caused. here

A model for industry analysis here

Thanks to those who took the time and trouble to preview the article! I substantially modified, reviewed. revised, added to and renamed it in line with the feedback I received. It can now be viewed at target="_blank">How To Increase Production with Business Performance Measurement

An article explaining why all currencies in today’s financial world must ultimately collapse. more

If you look at the US Dollar Index – valuing the Dollar against a basket of six hard currencies you will see it has fallen from 83.88 to 72.46 in 12 months. That is an inflation rate of 15.75%, or very close to the increase in M3 of the same period. More… and even more

By Michael Masterson
“Don’t be a time manager, be a priority manager.” – - Denis Waitley
To Master Plan your new life, you must begin with long-term goals that correspond to your core values. From that good start, you must establish yearly and monthly objectives. Based on those objectives, you create weekly and daily task lists. Doing all that will help greatly. But if you want to really change your life, you have to learn how to prioritize.
I didn’t always know how to prioritize. For much of my business career, I relied on goal setting and task lists and was happy with the results. But when I turned 50 and started writing for Early to Rise, I began to read how other business leaders achieved their goals. And that’s when I discovered what a huge difference prioritizing can make.
The most important lesson I learned came from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. In that book, Covey presents a technique for prioritizing that impressed me greatly and soon became a central part of my planning process.
Divide your tasks, Covey says, into four categories:
* Not important and not urgent
* Not important but urgent
* Important but not urgent
* Important and urgent
In the “not important and not urgent” category, you would put such things as:
* Catching up on office gossip
* Shopping online for personal items
* Answering unimportant phone calls
* Responding to unimportant e-mails

In the “not important but urgent” category, you would include:

* Returning phone calls from pesky salespeople
* Making last-minute preparations for an office party
* Attending a required meeting that doesn’t help your career
* Planning for a meeting that doesn’t matter

In the “important and urgent” category, you might list:

* Making last-minute preparations for an important meeting with the boss
* Making last-minute sales calls to key clients
* Solving unexpected problems

And, finally, in the “important but not urgent” category, you might include:
* Learning how to write better
* Learning how to speak better
* Learning how to think better
* Working on your novel
* Getting down to a healthy weight

When you break up tasks into these four categories, it’s easy to see that you should give no priority at all to “not important and not urgent” tasks. In fact, these tasks should not be done at all. They are a waste of time. Yet many people spend lots of time on them because they tend to be easy to do and sometimes enjoyable in a mindless sort of way. Or because they are afraid to get to work on important tasks because they are afraid of failure.

Even worse than spending time on tasks that are not important and not urgent is spending time on those that are not important but urgent. They should have been dealt with long before they reached the crisis stage.

If you discover that you are spending a lot of time on unimportant tasks, you’ve got a serious problem. Unless you change your ways, you’re unlikely to achieve any of your important goals.

So which tasks should you give priority to?

In Seven Habits, Covey says that most people think they should give priority to important and urgent tasks. But this is a mistake. “It’s like the pounding surf,” he says. “A huge problem comes and knocks you down and you’re wiped out. You struggle back up only to face another one that knocks you down and slams you to the ground.” You are “literally beat up by problems all day every day.”

All urgent tasks – both unimportant and important – are problematic: They are urgent because you’ve neglected something or because they are important to other people (like your boss). In either case, you need to find a way to keep most of them from winding up on your daily to-do list. This means making some changes in your work habits – usually a combination of being more efficient and delegating more chores to other people.

Urgent tasks will burn you out. And turn you into an unhappy workaholic. If you want transformation in your life, you have to give priority to the important but not urgent tasks – because those are the ones that will help you achieve your major, long-term goals.

It’s not easy.

The important but not urgent tasks whisper, while the urgent tasks shout. But there is a way to get that critical but quiet stuff done in four simple steps:

Step 1. When planning your day, divide your tasks into Covey’s four categories: not important and not urgent, not important but urgent, important but not urgent, and important and urgent.

Step 2. You will, of course, have to do the urgent tasks – at least until you get better at taking charge of your schedule. And you will have to find a way to get rid of the tasks that are not important and not urgent. But make sure you include one important but not urgent task that, when completed, will move you closer to one of your long-term goals.

Step 3. Highlight that important but not urgent task on your to-do list. Make it your number one priority for the day.

Step 4. Do that task first – before you do anything else.

Initially, you will find it difficult to do an important but not urgent task first. There are reasons for that.

* Since it is not urgent, you don’t feel like it’s important. But it is.
* Since it supports a goal you’ve been putting off, you are in the habit of neglecting it.
* You are in the habit of neglecting it because you don’t think it’s important and because you might be afraid of doing it.
* You might be afraid of doing it because you know, deep down inside, that it will change your life. And change, even good change, is scary.

But once you start using this little four-step technique, you’ll notice something right away.

The first thing you’ll notice is how good you feel. Accomplishing something you’ve been putting off is energizing. It will erase some doubts you have about yourself – doubts caused by years of “never getting to” your long-term goals.

That extra energy and confidence will grow, and will fuel you throughout the day. This will make it easier for you to accomplish other important but not urgent tasks.

As the days go by, you will realize that you are making measurable progress toward your neglected goals. In just a few weeks, you will be amazed at how much you’ve already done. And in 52 weeks – a short year from now – you will be a brand-new, much more productive person.

That year is going to pass by anyway. You are going to spend the time somehow. Why not do it by taking charge of your schedule? Why not spend that time on yourself – on what’s really important to you?
[Ed. Note: Achieve all your personal, social, financial, and business goals with the help of ETR’s Total Success Achievement program. Learn more by clicking here....]
From the www.earlytorise.com newsletter
[Early to Rise Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007]
If you’d like to subscribe to Early to Rise or suggest it to a friend, please visit: here