The meaning of life
Shana Tova (good year) dear readers,
In the past few days I have come to an understanding that the most important factor about how I relate to my work is if I feel wheather my work has a meaning…
I have come to this thought after an understanding that if working for money is prioritized as the main reason that gets you to work in the morning – you will be mentally worn down.
We can always gain more money and ask for more from ourselves.
Working for a purpose or an achievement that is meaningful, will keep strong winds in one’s sails and might prevent work boredom.
This can be achieved this by taking on projects that involve your habits or topics that you care about, then try to think about the actions you can take in this project that have more then just a revenue outcome.
I’m currently looking at projects that involve helping stray cats find a home, mainly because of my love for cats – Working on this really makes me feel great and even boosts my workload on other projects.
This is a short post, but to me it has great importance – I have now gained an understanding that for long range projects that generate revenue, having a personal feeling of meaning in relation to your projects has to be the most important factor in your mission to create a happy work life.
Tags: happy lifestyle, loving your work, meaningful life, meaningful work, meaningfull life, meaningfull work, nine to five, shana tova, work boredom, working for money, working lifestyle
So, something is troubling you ?
Everyone has something troubling them all the time, you might come across some people who might seem like every thing’s working for them, but eventually something almost always goes wrong.
Troubles are waiting for us in each step of our lifes, even when you’ll be really rich, healthy and have a girlfriend – Something will trouble you.
From my experience with self help, I have found that the following tips greatly help in dealing with trouble-sum issues:
1. Learn about it, think about it – try to learn what’s really the root of your problem / issue and when or where does it most trouble you!
For example: For months I had pain in my right eye – I went to more then 4 doctors and an advanced eye mapping procedure to try to find out what’s wrong with my right eye.
After thinking about the problem through and looking at when and where the troubling occurrences happen (and not wasting time complaining and looking at the 100th result page on google for “eye pain”) I have found out that most of the the time, the pain starts when I’m sitting in my office in the afternoon (which is when the air conditioning begins working). I then found out that all this time the air conditioner was directly pointing (from a distance) to my right eye, I modified it’s position – Problem / Trouble Eliminated.
2. Act on it, make actions -
After looking into the roots of the problem try to build a new daily schedule that helps you deal with the problem, this might mean taking time off from work every couple of monthes to reduce jon pressure from your lifestyle or even take a bath everyday at night if you feel like it helps you sleep better.
Example: 5 years ago I had a job which involved a lot of running and sports, and it was really painfull – after a while everyone who worked with me knew that when this job is done, they will never run again. When I finished the job I found that it’s so much fun not to run and do sports all the time, I actually stopped doing sports for 2 years…
5 Weeks ago, after visiting my doctor, I have found out that keeping my lifestyle as it is – isn’t going to leave me a lot of lifestyle time. I had an extreme level of triglycerides and a really low level of good HDL cholesterol while a huge amount of bad ones, this might have been caused by the huge amount of fast food I consumed in the past 2 years, and the fact that I didn’t do sports at all.
Now? I had to completely change my way of life, but this time it’s not like I’m going to have a stressful job that requires me to run all the time – I’m going to try doing it in a way which I like:
- In the past month I have been going for 2 hours sport sessions twice / 3 times per week, and went from a phase where I could only run 600 meters to running 2300 meters (without falling on my face).
- I take extra care of what I eat, a lot less junk, less saturated fat, a whole lot of nothing of Trans fat – which I used to eat a bunch – these stuff really kill you, and it’s everywhere!
- I take daily dosage of Omega 3 capsules and multi vitamin with at least 75 MG of each of the B vitamins.
- Healthy and yummy meals, fish, tuna, Salmon, eggs – 3 vegetables or fruits every day.
- Sleep at least 9 hours a day (Well… OK I have done that before too).
- And it’s great! I still haven’t done a new set of testing at my doctor but i really think things will look better – I’ll be sure to update the results here.
These 2 issues have been the highlight of my troubles in the past month, there are many more but I am dealing with each one at a time – and it feels great. I sure hope you enjoyed reading this and that my exprience might have helped you in dealing with the troubling issues in your life.
Tags: better lifestyle, dealing with troubles, helpful actions, jogging, lifestyle control, lifestyle problems, lifestyle tips, multi vitamins, saturated fat, self help, trans fat, Troubling Issues
Creating content for the web
Most of the time I find myself doing things which were not planned or thought of in advance and that do not create general value for me or others.
As one whose main occupation is the creation process – I must define and understand the word “value” and it’s meaning to me, what gets left by me to this world – what is my creation?
I have found that there are 3 main patterns or levels of creating value which represents the overall usefulness of my creations to either my clients or to me – but more importantly – my clients.
The first level -
Value extraction:
In this level you mainly focus on procedures being made within your projects to create better resource usage on your systems or procedures.
This might involve creating computer algorithms that use less of the resources or even fire unskilful employees to reduce the company’s spend.
The second level -
Value copying / duplicating:
You have visited a competitor and noticed he has introduces a new feature or a service you do not offer, you then recreate and copy it to your company – this is value duplication.
The third level -
Value creation:
You focus on your clients requests and demands and create new features or services based on your clients. The value originated in this process is usually original.
Each level of value creation mentioned above creates value for your company or service but it has been shown that the amount of value created by the third level is the most useful and because it has direct client orientation – it will help you to disconnect from the never ending competition and create new features your competitors haven’t even started thinking of.
Tags: content creating tips, content creation, content creator, content creators, content duplication, value creation, value creators, Value extraction, web development tips, writing tips
Personal news crises
Sometimes we watch the news a lot, maybe every day and maybe all day in times when something big has gone bad with the world. In these times, sadly, most news channels show you what they need in order to get more revenue from their commercial break or create more feelings in you for the pictures you see, you might don’t mind or even detect this – But this has effects your mood and sometimes even your personality.
It has been shown that the most successful people in the world, control whatever they see, and almost never watch the news. It’s not that they are ignorant to other people problems – it’s that in most channels / newspapers the news displays itself in an ignorant way which is really unhelpful for anyone, not for you and especially not for the one which the news report is based on.
This can mainly be seen in featured news shows when you get a one hour show which tells you the story of people who really need help, and the goverment doesn’t do a thing about it because thats how the goverment does things these days (they claim). wheater if thats true or not, the news staff was there and never helped these people and they didn’t even give them hints that might help them get out of the situation. They won’t even post a call number from which their millions of viewers can contribute money to solve these problems.
News channels have so much power at these moments and what do they do ? they shoot you off to commercials, that were very well planned before to grab on these feelings of yours and concentrate on the ice cream commercial which is now displayed.
Because of this, I stopped watching TV channels and News commercials, bought a TV on damand box, and only watch the programs I like (without commercials) – I urge you to try it, one you do, you’ll notice that things just look a lot brighter for the world and for you.
Tags: happiness, helping others, negetive news, news, positive news, positive thinking, public news, staying positive, tivo
creativity & ideas
creativity & ideas
Creativity and Ideas
sometimes we have an idea, in most cases we either forget it or write it on some piece of paper and then forget where we put it.
It’s a good practice to have a system for writing down your ideas and not loosing these peaks of creativity, everyone has ideas sometimes no matter how old you are or how creative you find yourself. I know of people who are buried under the same work for over 20 years and still have great ideas.
Manifesting an idea
While many of our ideas get lost, some do become a reality – in a times of crises we might find our selves with more free time and even have time to act on ideas we never thought we’ll have time to do. Making room and time for trying to make an idea to a reality is not that hard when you are truly organized and can define a time frame in which you are free to act upon your thoughts.
Ideas on the Internet
Because these days we’re spending a lot of time on the web, many ideas might be related to a website currently unavailable and you just thought of, or an Internet service you think you can really use – but it doesn’t exist.
these cases are truly happening nowadays with many web surfers who build new Internet solutions and services everyday – Even though existing for over 10 years the Internet has been the main item in a new age, the information age. It’s most likely that because everything is still new, your idea has yet to be published on the Internet, or has yet to be published on the Internet your way.
Building projects on the Internet
As a web application developer myself, there are four main paths to creating a solution (or a web application / site) on the Internet:
- Downloading a CMS, or a pre written script available for download freely – these includes free blog systems based on word press, drupal, php-nuke and more.
- Paying for a complete commercial CMS or web site building system in which the source is not freely available and you might even pay enough to make the seller end it’s sales of the specified code / system.
- Outsourcing and having a complete human written solution / web application to yourself – there are many forums and websites on this issue on the net, you can go there and find that many people are outsourcing huge projects at cost of well over 10 thousand dollars.
- Build it yourself – start from scratch, learn the basics and start day by day until you get all things done your way.
Choosing your way
Well, start by looking at the four item list above and think (while knowing yourself best) what is the path in which you find yourself more attracted to, I personally chose the forth way for my projects even though I chose the first one for this blog. having to build your own project by yourself might take a lot of time, and if your not in the mood for creation, commitment and development work – you might not find yourself choosing this path.
Thanks for reading, tune in for more information about these paths in future posts.
Tags: acting uppon ideas, Building projects on the Internet, Commercial CMS, creative ideas, free scripts, internet ideas, internet serivces, Internet solutions, Outsourcing, pre written scripts, web ideas, web site building system
Cracked Wall
Getting informed about risks :
(The cracked wall)
You might have built a steady and growing business now, maybe you’ve reached the break even point or maybe you are generating a revenue of over 30,000 dollars per month – and you surely have some free time for your self.
After being in some positions in my life when a hard work pays off and you can enjoy your earned free time – I found my self eventually not aware to some of the risks that might arise if too much of that free time is not used to manage business risks.
Most of the times this happens because we want to award ourselves for succeeding and accomplishing the goals which were set and after we accomplish them, we usually forget to set the necessary conditions for our work to last.
I call this “the cracked wall” phenomenon, once building such a wall – without maintenance, it will eventually break. Some walls do last thousands of years, some of these solid walls are still standing. You want your solutions and business to be as strong as these walls, to do that you must be aware of the risks that might crack your wall – or end your business.
Easy steps to accomplish this mission :
1. List them – Try all ends of your business as a customer and think of all the possible ways one can stop your success, now put your thoughts on a list, ask other people for known risks they might think of regarding your business.
2. Prioritize – Grant a score from 1 to 3 to each risk, 3 being the biggest threat to your success.
3. Think of solutions – Go over the items you have listed from the most risky to the least and write possible solutions as if this risk has just happened, try thinking about it and imaging as if this is the current situation and you need to deal with it. after you’ll gather lists of solutions to each of the risks you’ll have a complete risk management solution you can use, if any risk does ever come true in the future.
Tags: business risks, cracked wall, dealing with risks, office risks, risk awareness, risk awarness, risk list, risk listing, risk lists, risk management, risk managment, risk prevention, risk prioritizing
Piles of paper
Many times I feel overstressed in the morning while sitting on my work computer, I seem to have found the no’ 1 reason why this happens, and how to solve it.
Sometimes I come to my office and the first thing I see in the morning are 5-6 piles of papers and billing notices waiting to be handled.
One of the piles has been left this way for over 3 months! This happens when we don’t have a mechanism or a procedure to handle new action items correctly in our office.
If you know what I’m talking about, you also know that sometimes this piled up work just makes you feel like you’re overloaded - and if the piles stay there for longer periods they even make you feel overstressed.
Recently I have done extreme efforts to handle this issue before it really gets out of control, the first thing I did was to take all the piles of paper and create one big pile of papers / tasks, then I went to the local office supplies store and bought about 10 folders. now what I did was to actually break these papers / tasks into folders – 1 paper at a time. This actually took me more than 1 week. but seeing everything placed neatly together really helps me now, because my desk is clean and empty with a lot of desk space I can use to work on the actual item which is currently being worked on.
This might sound too simple but now, you’ll have to put all these folders into a closet you can reach and do not put them into some back closet 20 feet away from you! I went and bought a small 2 drawer closet which sits on the floor on my right side and it takes 2 seconds to get a folder from it. This closet is closed most of the time so I don’t actually get to see all the 1000 items which i have already managed – This really takes the used to be visible stress away from the office.
Tags: clean workspace, clutter control, office clutter, office desk, overloaded workspace, overstress, piles of work, stressfull workspace, unordered desk, work delay, work stress, workspace order
Hello,
I find myself these days with a weak creative mind and generally with less activity power – That mindset makes me delay many tasks, some of which are of high importance. This has happened for me before and after looking for a solution to these hard times which many of us just don’t have the will or power to act or do anything – I have built a simple list which once act upon can get you back into your work, fast.
Guidelines to preventing the delay of tasks or work:
1. Put easy listening music that you like now, in the background – Mine are beutifull 80’s / 90’s ballads like sting, lionel richie etc…
2. Write about it in your blog, if you don’t have a blog - open one, I’m just doing it in this post.
3. Instead of thinking about getting things “done” / “finished” think about getting things “started” – Sometimes we have too much work and actually thinking about finishing the work makes us feel exuasted – Think about starting the work, maybe the first task out of a big project - just start doing something related to it, most of the time it’s ok not to finish the work on the same day.
Tags: choose to work, delayd tasks, getting things done, lack of motivation, social life, sports, starting and not finishing, tasks, time administration, time frame, Time Management
tagging
Introducing the TAG world:
In the past 3 years we have seen a dramatic change in many websites, almost every big website now incorporates a tagging system in which each piece of content is related to a couple or more “tags”.
Tags are more like a way of defining the scope of the written information in a which one can read these tags and understand most of the content’s (video/written) topic.
Because tagging has became so widespread we can see it nowadays in every social or content based site, if you own a website and have content in it – you may want to insert the related tags to that page.
In fact Tagging content is so important you can even see it take part in the world of SEO, under the header of HTML meta data – a great SEO tip is to add the meta data which defines the tagging for your website. I must say – that many CMS like the one which I’m using in my blog (word press), don’t really require you to define tags to a post you publish, but the option to do that exists and you can gain great SEO value out of spending a minute or two and defining the tags for the content you just spent your time writing.
Bad Tags, Good Tags:
Because tags have became so widely spread, they have been also misunderstood and misused. you might wander up many sites these days who either define more than 30 tags per page or define a lot of tags who do not relate to the content’s subject in any matter. this mainly happens because of two reasons:
1. People want to get traffic from certain search engine used keywords, therefor they are used and defined as tags in many content websites – even if the content barely related to these tags.
2. Over Tagging – the content just relates to too much information and to scroll down the content page or to watch that video takes about an hour, this makes it hard for only defining the content in a couple of words and makes many websites post huge lists of keywords about a related content page.
The Solution(s) – The right way to implement tagging on the web:
1. Even if it took you 2 hours to write / build your content – use only 5-10 keywords to define it.
2. Check now that all your web resources use the <Meta> keyword when displaying web pages with the right keywords intact, also check the syntax and spelling whithin the code you write.
Tags: content keywords, content tagging, hot keywords, keyword, keyword meta data, keyword tips, keywords, seo, tag, tagging, tags
Empty blog pages?
Hi,
I know some people just want to boost the page count of their websites just to get listed more on google or other search engines.
This has become a more widespread action where in fact as a company which lists and promotes over 10000 websites on the web, on many cases we get a long human description and title for a really empty page.
My tip is, whenever creating a new page – try to take the visitors point of view, if your page title and description says you are going giving information on how to purchase an item – then give the information to the user, or the bounce rate of your sites will be more than 60% (bounce rate means that people are getting to your page – but leaving either fast or without entering any other pages or making new requests to the server – the definition depends on your analytics software)
Usually you’ll want to keep up your bounce rate bellow 40%, if your site needs revenue you might want to try out new layouts with extra banners, but keep an eye on the bounce rate in a daily basis (this can be done in a program such as google analytics – which is totally free to use and install).
Creating multiple and tons of empty pages for the sole purpose of spreading keywords and different URLs through the web – will get you into even more trouble. Lately I have seen after tracking a big site which probably out of a development bugs created about 500 pages for every 1 real page the administrator composed that this site was actually thrown out of the biggest search engine in the world in a metter of weeks, after the site has more than a million pages listed in search engines.
After checking out with the admin who tried to do modifications to the site, it seems like it was unfixable and basically made the site loose most of it’s search traffic.
What can you do?
Writing content isn’t that hard, try writing about the things you like doing or spending you time on. For me web development, games and movies are the things I really like to write about.
Tags: article writing, bounce rates, composing, empty pages, pay per article, url overflowing
