I just happened to know that O’Reilly is running a new year program that will rock book lover in this new year. In this program any member compose a wishlist of book under 500$ have a chance to get the whole list for free. So I just guess if there is any luck

Here is my Wishlist:

1. Programming Amazon EC2
2. jQuery Cookbook
3. JavaScript the Definitive Guide
4. jQuery: Novice to Ninja
5. Programming Python, Fourth Edition
6. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
7. Host Your Web Site In The Cloud: Amazon Web Services Made Easy
8. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, 2nd Edition, Second Edition

So, please wish me for my luck

Photo by jaxxon

I always received emails from people inviting me to a page or group created online. The 1st introduction I was told that the products they are selling are what best for me. Or the stuffs are 50% off and I should buy the product if I don’t want to risk my life. Same as people who invite me to be their Facebook friend then they endlessly tag me with their junk products. I eventually leave the page, remove them out of my friendly or mark as spam.

The biggest mistake of sales people is trying to sales products without building relationship with the customers. Even worse, the customer doesn’t know how could the products benefit them (they’re confused, they doubt it). It not selling, it’s forcing, it’s an obvious dumb endeavor.

Photo by the_brownhorse

These people either bring you hope or frustration, but they end up crumple your business:

1. Technical Nerd: he will propose tons of solution just to solve a single chore. And the funny thing is none of them works.

2. The 2nd Elbert Einstein: Of course he is not but he thinks he is. He doesn’t care about your knowledge or experience and expects a genius recognition from the around.

3. The Book Inamorato: These type of people read a lot of books and bringing the pages into life. They just never understand the reality.

4. The Perspective Absence: With him either black or white are fine. He is afraid of sharing his view and involving with problem solving. You tell him what to do, don’t ask him how should he do it.

5. The Flatter: He loves you and admires your achievements. He tell you that he is your closest friend and be able to overcome obstacles with you. Then one day you tell him that you need a hand and he just giving excuse.

6. The Knife Keeper: This person tells your boss about your mistake just a day before she had lunch with you.

7. The Money-Grubbing: He is nothing bad except doesn’t want to share the cost with you. And when it comes to financial troubles he would rather leave you in chaos.

8. The Undeliverable: Those who attend the meetings, join the discussions and share the to do list but when the deadline knocks the doors, everything keeps the same shapes.

9. The Chicken: He refuse taking risk or doing anything that never happened to him before. When there is a need of change, he will show you the thousand of reason to resist the change. He just does not dare to give a decision.

I have met those type of people in my life, they were my school mates, friends and colleagues. You may ask “how can I recognize those? They just never show their back.” Well, you don’t unless they show it to you. People are good at keeping their back but not their tail.

I don’t want to bring any disappointments or demotivations in this article. I hope you be conscious but don’t be over sensitive. The better portion of life still keep the mastery, I still have many good friends and so do you.

How about you? Have you ever met one of those above? Do you think that there are other types that not on the list? I’d love to see your comments.

Photo by lady_ishmael24

There were times when you are were excited about a brilliant idea. You thought that it is something that could make tons of money, help thousand of people overcome a particular problem. When you close your eyes and see a big, very big picture that you are the hero, your family and friends would be proud of having a person like you in their life. Then you collected all the available information about the idea, written down a plan, make appointments with your friends to see if anyone share the same idea with you. After all of your endeavor, your project come to an end and faded into the past. Why?

1. Your project is not practical
You may hate this, but it is true. You can yell at me “Duy, there are people making billion of dollar out there, all come with a simple idea”. Well, it is true but what you know is just a few successful stories but not the whole list. If there is a statistic on how many projects get successful out of the total number, I can guarantee that it’s a very small number. And I tell you, it is natural, don’t let this upset you.

How do I know if my project is practical or not? And if an idea is too simple or not worth doing. Yes, those questions are common but I’m not talking that you should do simple things, just keep trying and don’t be disappointed if it is not successful. The most persistent person Thomas Edition has failed 10,000 times before he found away to make the light bulb. We just don’t know unless we try, and keep trying until you find a way, but if it is too hard and you found out that it is not worth trying, then quit.

2. Not enough hard work

“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration” – Thomas Edition

Your project was great, but it was just an idea. You may have 1000 ideas popped out of your head for a day, but ideas alone are useless. You need to convert them into reality, and that’s the hardest part. You have to put endless efforts into that single idea,overcome people trying to demotivate you, ones don’t believe you just to make your ideas become reality.

We never seen a business become successful overnight, so keep putting all of your sweating into it as you are watering a tree, chances that you will see the flourish.

3. It’s either not planed enough or planed to much.
Over-planned or under-planned projects would have the same sad endings. Everything changes so fast make which is right today become wrong tomorrow. A pessimistic person tends to make the simple seems complicated while optimistic mind tends to overlook at the details and they are both fail.

A project consists of several action steps, don’t try to draw out to many things that unnecessary but also don’t be afraid of failure. Try to tackle one problem at a time and you will see further while keep moving. If it is not as expected, we could make a change.

To people who care about productivity, they all know what GTD is. There are plenty of books and tools out there just to help “getting” GTD works. We all tested and used all the available systems, both free and commercial. We also read all the productivity books, join the community of people who love GTD. We did with a hope to learn GTD, maximize it so it can help us achieve our goals. But we failed to achieve what have been set. Why?

Most of us think that getting to know GTD and using some tools would is enough. GTD is just a tool, and how the tool is used is much more important.

There are 3 highlighted factors that collapse the GTD system, making it just a myth to everyone.

1. Lack of discipline:
This is the number one reason why GTD doesn’t work. GTD needs discipline from people using it. If we don’t stick with what have been planned and consequently everything get passed by. The assigned tasks were extended, the projects didn’t meet its deadline and people ended up getting stressed.

2. Lack of commitment:
How many times you have been put a lot passion into an idea, and when the time going by you lost that passion and stop doing what you have planned? When we put too much hope into an idea but not enough commitment, it just never happens.

3. Loosing focus
In these busy days, there a lot of distraction that keeping from reaching our goals. Projects coming from other departments, incident tasks assigned to you from your boss, your family issues etc. It’s just so easy to get distracted than finding a quite place where you can just focus on what is important to you.

To me, GTD is good but not required to get your job done. The 1st thing is you have to make “yourself” work before using any support tools or systems. From the past before GTD people did a lot of achievements, without using a single system. All they need were just being disciplined, committed and focused.

How about you? What keeping you from achieving your goals?

REFERENCE:

* GTD is a shortened form of Getting Things Done by David Allen

* Popular tools employ GTD: Moleskine, Things, Evernote, Remember the milk

picture by chelsea chen. (flickr)

What is your 1st habit you’d like to do every morning after you wake up? If it is checking email so you are in the same situation with mine few months ago. And let me tell you that it is a waste of time, loosing of focus and producing procrastination.

I have been through this for years and one day I just realized it shouldn’t be that way. I have burned a lot of time checking emails sent to my inbox instead of focusing on what is important to me today.

Everyday you wake up at 7am, checking emails till 8, then stop doing that by 12. Why? After reading all emails you actually forgot what is in your to do list. You continue checking Facebook, Twitter and reading the magazines. The ads that come with the emails pulled you to websites, product new features, promotions etc and you keep reading it until your morning is gone, it sucks your creativity and productivity. How to stop it?

1. Stop newsletter subscriptions

Newsletters are the 1st common source that mess up your inbox. Normally after you’ve purchased a product or service, the seller want email from you so they will contact you for future sells. The newsletters list increased day by day and it sucks your time and productivity. Cleaning it up is the 1st thing you should do.

2. Mark ads as spams

Advertisements are similar to newsletters, they are multiplied as time goes by. Most of them are crap and you don’t have a reason to keep them unless you want to burn your time. Mark ones that come from unknown sources as spam, and unsubscribe to what are not important. The definition of what is important is that you should ask yourself: what happen if you’re not receiving these? Will it ruin your life? The answer probably is no.

3. Archive important emails

For any emails that you want to keep so you may look back to it in future, just archive it. Archiving is a great way to backup emails without deleting them. Emails like your purchasing records, transaction reference and account info are examples.

4. Using rules

Filters or email rules are powerful tools to keep your emails organized. All the common email services today support filters. It set rules for the inbox to place coming emails in folders. For example your colleague Bob is one of the people who you used to communicate with, you create a rule that named “Bob” and every time he sends you an email it is placed in that folder and highlighted so you know that Bob has sent you one. You may have “Work”, “Family”, “Personal” or whatever. The key here is to get your emails organized.

5. Keep practicing

New emails are coming and the rules above need to be updated. Keep doing that is a good habit. Once you wake up and your inbox is empty, you could believe that you have increased your productivity and saved a lot of time. People say time is gold, to me it is more than gold because it one of the things that cannot be traded.

Summary of how to win friends and influence people – the book by Dale Carnegie in only one page

You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want – Zig Ziglar