What does it mean to be successful? Well to answer this I think we need to define what success means.
Success is the result of achievement, therefore success is a state of being in that you can be successful one moment then fail the very next. Staying in a successful state is the key to "long term" success.
So let's look at how you get into a success state in the first place.
Success is a collection of Achievements.
Achievements are a result of Strategies.
Strategies are made as part of a Plan.
Plans are made to achieve a Goal.
And Goals are combined to create a Purpose.
This is therefore the best way to describe how one becomes successful in the long term.
- Define a Purpose - You really don't need to be all that specific, probably something that defines your general big picture. Who are you and what do you want to achieve with the 30,000 days you have in your life
- List a set of Goals that are aligned with your Purpose. - they don't necessarily have to be specifically targeted at achieving your Purpose but if they are aligned with your Purpose you'll have better congruence within yourself. Making Goals that are ridiculously different from your Purpose serves only to make you doubt yourself
- Make Plans - A plan simply is a set of tasks and achievements that you think you need to do in order to accomplish something (ie. your Goal). Plans don't have to be overly complicated as Plans are meant to be tweaked "in the field". A plan is a good plan if the steps you identify to achieve the Goal are actually achievable (ie. earn a million dollars this month may allow you to achieve your Goal but is not a realistic step).
- Build Strategies - A strategy is defined as a "plan of action". A Plan needs to consist of steps required to achieve your Goal but a Strategy needs to consist of actual details that you will try in order to achieve that step within the Plan. Like Plans, Strategies are meant to be tweaked in the field. A Strategy needs to be tweaked when the result of your actions are not the expected results you had planned on achieving
- Complete Strategies and Plans - The very act of doing this results in Achievements. These are the desired outcomes of your Plan and Strategic efforts. Though sometimes an Achievement may not be exactly what you desired, even after you tweaked your Plan and Strategy. Never the less an Achievement is an Outcome, whether this Outcome is positive or negative, it is an Outcome.
So if you follow this set of guidelines:
Purpose -> Goals -> Plans -> Strategies -> Achievements -> Desired Outcomes == Success
Success can be measured in very many ways but the problem with Success is that it's subjective. Someone's success could be your failure! As long as you are successful within yourself (ie. by achieving the goals you set out to achieve) then your internal state of Success will be long term!
Good luck! :)
Well it would seem that inspiration has followed me today and I'm feeling that business opportunities are abounding in my mind. I'm sitting here thinking, "I'm an inteligent and logical man, what the f*ck am I doing WORKING for someone?!?!?!"
With such FRUSTRATION I sit and think about my situation. Here it is:
I work 40 hours a week (ok, I'm AT work for 40 hours a week hehe), plus it takes approx. 40 mins to get in and get home from work. That's a total of 46 hours, 40 mins every week whereby I commit my TIME to my current employer (who by the way, totally doesn't deserve it! I'm looking at you Marlene!)
What if, and it's a big if, I could reduce the amount of time that I had to devote to work each week (I don't want to NOT work, far out, my wife would kill me if I didn't!), but SIGNIFICANTLY increase the amount of money I earned from that work?
Ok bullshit is the first thing that came to my mind, but why is that? Why did I think that it was bullshit? What is it in me that thinks, working LESS equals LESS money?
Probably because in the past I've experienced what happens when I worked less, it literally resulted in less money (der!). But I would like to hold back that der for a moment whilst I consider the following:
"I can invest money on the stock market, and in any given day, potentially make a HUGE return".
Ok, let's break that down for a moment and realise exactly what I'm saying here.
1) "I can invest money"
Yeah no shit, but does it look like I've got a spare $5k lying around? Hell no! But does that preclude me from actually getting $5k? I'll go into that in a moment.
2) "on the stock market"
Ok kewl, people make money every day (and BIG TIME lose it as well). Let's just accept that the "stock market" could be interchanged with any vehicle that allows you to leverage your time and money without a lot of effort (ie. reduced amount of time working on it).
3) "in any given day"
Ok we need to accept that unfortunately, I'm going to have to work, each and every day like normal. Yeah I can take weekends off and public holidays but I'm still going to have to work each and every day. Bummer, but this doesn't exclude the fact that my physical location could literally be just about anywhere. With telecommunications and wireless internet access, whatever I could do from an office or home could VERY easily be done from a chair on the beach in Florida!
4) "potentially make a HUGE return"
Well the posibility for this happening is ALWAYS a possibility heheheeh :)
Let's examine this closer.
"Potential" and "HUGE return" are the key points I'd like to focus upon.
What is the definition of potential? Well I get a lot of results from that one, but the one I think best describes it is, "capable of being or becoming". Awesome, so what?
Well think about it this way, a "potential huge return" is CAPABLE of being or becoming. What's the likely hood of it, well that's determined upon how well I market myself, manage my self and deliver what I say I'm going to. We all f*ck up let's face it, so my reputation will be forged by the amount of times that things go wrong. People rarely remember when you do well, but one stuff up and shit, you're in the history books!
Now for "HUGE return". This simply is an arbitrary amount of either physical money or something else that has value (ie. experience, mentoring, access to resources not available previously, anything!)
Ok I think I'm getting a bit lost in the definitions here, let's take a step back and actually see what I'm talking about.
My original question was, "What if I could reduce the amount of time that I had to devote to work each week but SIGNIFICANTLY increase the amount of money I earned from that work?"
Given that you probably work for someone, we all understand that simply by working less results in less money. That's the "rules" or "laws" that are applied to "working for someone".
So if these results bases upon these rules are not to your liking, what are you to do?
Well like me, I figured that I could start my own business and by my own boss. What a crock of shit! Seriously, what the hell do I know about running a business, tax, super, licensing, man there is stuff that I can't name simply because I don't know anything about it!
Starting your own business is VERY risky, and unfortunately a lot of people who do go bust within the first year (I think the stats show a HUGE amount, something like 80% or more, not sure, you can google it!).
So starting a business is out of the question until I get myself trained properly. So what's left?
Investing is always an option but you literally play with money and fire at the same time. What's earned today could be burned tomorrow, and yeah I know that there are successful methods you can employ to work the markets but in reality, people who are the BEST at their game with investing NEVER treat money with the disrespect of thinking it will take care of itself. It's like a parent leaving their child near a pool, you're just asking for trouble, and this trouble isn't the type you can go, "oh well, better luck next time", there is a potential of literally killing your family (not dead but financially dead!).
Playing the markets is good when you have the time and the money. If you can't afford to risk the money then you shouldn't! Simple as that!
So what the hell am I to do? Is there another option?
My personal axiom is, "Anything is Possible" and I believe that with all my heart. For someone to tell you that they believe something with all their heart means they stand by it to the death and that's how I feel about it.
But getting "Anything" to be "Possible" is never as easy as it sound. So many people tell me that within just one day you can start making money, blah blah bullshit. These people are skilled at what they do and I guarantee that they didn't start making money on their first or second days either!
So what's the alternative?
I need an edge. Something that will allow me to get people to hand over their money whilst automating the process as much as possible and ultimately leaving me to monitor and manage the system a few hours a day.
WHOA WTF?
Again, the bells of bullshit start ringing in my head, but WHY THE F*CK are they chiming like it's armagedon? Can't something to this statement by possible? Well, anything is possible, and fortunately I'm happy to say, it is possible!
Ok, the 64 million dollar question, "How?"
Good question :)
How can you reduce effort and make more? Well look at the scenario you're probably in right now. How do you earn money? What is it that you do that makes someone pay you each payday?
TIME equals MONEY
Nothing else!
The age old tenet that time is money is the absolute truth that every single employee is bound to, and we're bound to this thinking from a VERY early age. I'm unfortunately guilty of teaching my kids that you have to work for what you want. Yep, it's an admirable quality but I'm literally leading my children into a good 40 years of servitude for employers who would treat them the same way that I'm being treated here at my current employment.
What would I want to do this to my kids? Because it's the way of society. It's what they see on TV. What they hear their peers talking about. It's the socialogical method for earning money. The problem is, we never teach our kids any other ways to make money!
So, if TIME = MONEY then reduced TIME = reduced MONEY. Simple as that. Within your current paradigm this formula is exactly how to calculate how much money you can earn, and guess what, there is a MAXIMUM to this equation, a ceiling that can not be gone above, and that is, you can only work a maximum of 168 hours each week. That's the total amount of hours in a week and therefore you can not work more than that!
That means no sleeping, no eating, just working, every hour of every day of every week. Not gonna happen! You could max out at about 80 hours but you'll burn out, your morale will die and you won't know what you're putting all that effort in for.
Realistically 40-60 hours is a normal week for the majority of people, blue collar, white collar whatever. 40-60 hours at let's just say $100 per hour. That's a MAXIMUM of $4k - $6k a week. Now I'm pretty sure you're not on $100 per hour (not trying to offend you, just being realistic). So you're limited by the amount of hours you can/should work each week and the rate at which you're being paid for those hours.
So what we need to do is this:
1) 40-60 hours reduced to 10-20 hours (at $25/hour = $250/$500 per week)
2) Increase the hourly rate to $500-$1000 per hour (equals $5k/$10k per week)
*BULLSHIT*
Ok so it's not very likely you're going to get a raise to $1000 per hour. So how can you make a $1000 per hour, not just this hour but for 10-20 hours each week? We need a system.
So what's a system?
My definition of a system is, "A vehicle that allows you to make money by automating processes and reducing the overall human intervention required."
Let's examine what I've just defined in more detail:
1) "A vehicle"
Yep, like the stock market or working for an employer, a system is a vehicle that allows you to make money. How does it do it? Well each system depends upon an idea that is unique enough that people can run it without having a saturated market so that it doesn't make money, and targets something that people want/need and are willing to pay for.
Ok, so how do I make one? Well making a system is hard. In fact, most systems that are made generally fail (usually due to bad development, thought and research) but basically they fail on their asses!
So your choices are, make one yourself or invest in one that's already operational and has a track record of success.
Let's get something straight, if you're looking for a system, you're not going to be it's employee, you're going to be it's boss, it's maintainer, the one who's financially going to benefit from it when it works and by responsible for it if it fails. You are venturing close to the world of self-employment!
2) "allows you to make money"
The biggest problem with systems is that you either adopt a system that doesn't have a huge cash flow, or requires that you re-invest that money to further propogate your vehicle.
The system you adopt needs to clearly state, how much money needs to be re-invested (because let's face it, if you don't feed it with money, how the hell is it going to survive?) and how much money is coming to support you (because let's face it, running a system that doesn't provide, and I mean REALLY provide well for you is not worth doing in the first place!).
3) "automating processes"
Simply put, if your system has 20 steps from start to finish, you're going to have to devote time to all 20 steps. What if 18 of those steps could be automated via some mechanism which allowed you to step out of the process physically without compromising the system?
This means that to achieve your goal you could physically work less because the automated processes will do the work for you, freeing up your time to do, well, whatever!
Automating processes on the internet has become a PRIMARY method of choice for system developers over the last ten years, but with the acceptance of the general public with the internet, it's becoming easier and faster to create these systems.
Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's a rip off, it just means that the system has been optimised and now works better than before!
4) "reducing the overall human intervention required."
This is the key part, the original goal was, work less, earn more. The system becomes your method of working less by reducing the overall time you need to spend maintaining and managing the system which leaves that time for you to do whatever you wish.
With the internet becoming more and more ubiquitous (woohoo big word!) and with the ability to get online from your local beach, tavern, spa retreat, wherever, something that is available to almost everyone, maintaining and managing your systems is easier (it's not dead easy, but it's a shit load easier than what you're doing at work now!)
So I guess my point is this. In order to work less and earn more you're going to need a system. One which is unique enough that everyone is not doing it, but strong enough to have a niche market just waiting to be tapped.
So what do you do now? What is it that I'm going to do now to get myself out of this f*cked up situation of working?
Firstly I'm going to think about what is it that I know people want. It has to meet the following criteria:
1) People must need to use and re-use on a regular/constant basis
2) People should either buy it in quantities larger than one if possible
3) People need to see it as something they need rather than want
4) The target audience must be online at some point to assist in the automated processes
So, something that people use regularly, buy a lot of it, see it as a necessity and can purchase it online. That's the 64 million dollar question for me now isn't it!
System's aren't evil, but sometimes you'll get a bastard running one and you'll have a bad experience. I'm hoping that I'm going to look past my previous bad experiences and see the system for what it's worth, rather than the pricks running it.
Hopefully I'll get something soon and you could be my next customer!
Just a quick one this time...
The Large Hadron Collider(LHC) at CERN is about to go online to test for the supersymmetry particles to our regular photons, quarks, electrons and the neutron I believe, and they're able to get the particles up to 99% of the speed of light.
Fantastic feat of engineering, impressed me completely.
My issue is though, Einstein states that as you get closer and closer to the speed of light, the amount of energy required to keep you at that velocity get closer and closer to infinity.
This means that 99% of the speed of light requires a nearly infinite amount of energy, which is obviously not the amount of energy that the LHC will use/expend in getting these particles up to speed, so my question is, "If we can get that close, what happens when we develop a power source that can provide the amount of energy required to push these particles at or beyond the speed of light?"
Would this mean that General Relativity fails under certain conditions? <--- Possibly naive question, but a good question nonetheless!
If so, then the speed of light is just a value, that once a technology has been developed, can allow us to go beyond that at our desire.
Anyhow...I believe that this consitutes a good argument for FTL travel, in which case, I've been born a hundred years too early to actually benefit from it q:((((
Oh well, it's still a great time to be alive!
Well, I'm at Discover West at the moment contemplating starting my own business! Tarryn and I went through the figures and some fairly detailed thoughts and it looks like we're actually able to get things going.
The biggest problem is the initial funding. We need close to $500K for a safe start, but probably could manage on a little less if we needed to.
So look out world, I'm going to become a boss! q:)
Anyhow, I just hope that when I am the boss, that I remember all the shitty things that my previous bosses did which caused me to hate them an move on, so that I don't do them to my employees.
My business is going to focus on IT related products and services, but this time I'll have all my time to devote to it therefore we should stand a better chance of success. I know I can do it. I believe in myself, but as a normal human being, I'm scared of the potential failure.
In the end it's only potential to fail, whereas there is also the same potential to succeed. I'll be focusing on the later, trust me!
Oh my god! If this isn't the biggest case of sexual discrimination, I don't know what is.
Tonight I was ENRAGED to hear about a Bar in Melbourne has decided to ban Hetrosexuals simply because they are scared of us.
Ok, I really feel angry about this so I'll pause, then break down what I believe is the issue I have about this.
1. A government has allowed a law (whatever) to pass that allows someone (anyone, I don't care who) to discriminate against someone else based on their sexual preference.
2. Patrons of the bar (esp. the owner) felt that their security was SO badly at risk that they couldn't employ any other means other than apply for this whatever it is to be implemented.
3. The Equal Opportunities Board of Australia decided that being unequal is the solution that they wish to endorse.
I'm hetrosexual. I've never had gay tendencies or been tempted to "join the other side", and now because of this, I'm unable to go to their bar simply because this is the way I am?
What gives them the right to make me feel like I've done something wrong by being the person I am simply because they have a different sense of sexuality?
--- checked out a website ---
How funny...I've just been to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission website to enquire about how such a law could be passed when it so blatentley biased only to find 26, no shit, twenty six articles on how women's rights have to be protected and god knows more about women's rights than you can poke a stick at.
I then had a look to see what articles were posted about men's rights and shock horror, nothing. I did a search on men and guess what I found, "Gay men and lesbian rights".
At no point did I find a reference to what rights I have as a man. Even a search revealed that without a lot of digging, I'm probably not going to find a document called, basic_mens_rights.pdf or i_am_not_a_woman_aboriginal_torres_straight_islander_gay_lesbian_so_what_are_my_rights.pdf document either am I?
I feel so ashamed of the government, so very ashamed. The woman from the EEO commission on the news who so smugly promoted the "win" for gay people said that this is something that needs to be done if other gay people are to have a safe and secure social life.
The problem with that is, if I go to a bar, I'm just as likely going to get smashed in the face by a bunch of rowdy idiots as anyone else is, and I bet they're not going to ask me if I'm gay before I take a hit to the head, so where is my EEO commission person saying that rowdy people can't come into some bar so hetrosexuals can have a safe and secure social life. What a pathetic joke.
If I knew her name, I'd tell you to your face that you are a sad, sad woman who sees not five minutes in front of her own actions.
Next, we're going to have gay aboriginals bars, gay non-aboriginal bars and so on. Where does this stupidity end?
Having built my own web-based email client and experiencing how much effort goes into parsing the email message itself, and then moving on to building my own web-based Calendar, I appreciate when a company goes to all that trouble and releases a free version of a very good collaboration tool such as Zimbra.
Here is my experience with deploying Zimbra Collaboration Suite on Fedora Core 6 (minimal installation specifically designed to server as an "applicance" server and nothing more).
I downloaded zcs open edition and proceeded to jump right in. After un-taring the tarball I went straight into the directory and looked at what was in there. I checked out the README and saw that you need to run ./install.sh, so I did.
After agreeing to the License agreement (who reads these things anyhow?), it checked for the pre-req's, two of which I didn't meet.
I needed to install GPM and libstdc++. A simple yum install gpm was sufficient to have this installed. But I have to go to RPMFind and look for libstdc++ and find the compat-libstdc++ RPM manually.
After installing these two packages, all the requirements were met. It checked for any of the Zimbra packages that might be installed (none were found obviously) and moved on to asking whether or not it could install these packages.
After installing the packages, it went directly to the System Config script (/opt/zimbra/libexec/zmsetup.pl). After going through the "your server is not set up in the DNS correctly" and bypassing certain config issues simply because I had to, I got to the installation of LDAP.
The error that came back said something about su (or sudo) failing because I needed a TTY. A quick bit of research found that in the /etc/sudoers file (visudo) the DEFAULTS requiretty was enabled, literally killing the install scripts ability to execute what it needed to.
After commenting this out, re-running the zmsetup.pl script, LDAP installed correctly.
Other than this, there were no other issues with the install script.
Everything got to the end and the "Setup Completed - Press any Key" prompt graced my presence and I was happy.
I su - zimbra and issued the zmcontrol status command and found that tomcat wasn't running.
I checked the /var/log/zimbra.log and a few other log files and it turned out that something was not able to access the MySQL server that zimbra installed.
After at least three days of searching, a very simple solution presented itself to me.
The order of my /etc/hosts file was incorrect, which caused MySQL to use the incorrect "domain" as part of it's authentication process for the zimbra system which caused tomcat to fail to start.
I put my 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost entry as the first line in my /etc/hosts file and issued a zmcontrol stop; zmcontrol start; zmcontrol status command to find that bingo, everything started up and was running perfectly.
I've since created an account, auto-forwarded my email from my original mail server to the appliance server and so far so good. I'm in the process of training the SPAM and HAM filters (love the concept of HAM btw) and am about to convert my entire company to Zimbra.
As for the user interface on both the web client and admin console, I have worked with DHTML/AJAX applications for years and the easy of use combined with the beautiful/sexy interfaces is a triumph for Zimbra. They have done extremely well! Congratuations Zimbra Inc.
As far as the Network Edition (NE), if I felt that the Open Source (OS) version was incapable of performing the tasks that the NE version does then I'm more than happy to have my company pay for the licenses, but until then, the OS version is spot on perfect.
I'm in the middle of reading about how I can make a contribution to the ZCS but I'm afraid that my area's of expertise might not be where they would need it the most, but I am still going to try to contribute.
I very much do recommend Zimbra as a solution to your corporate email issues.
I have just found the best User Interface out! Gnome with Xgl+compiz support.
People who look at Vista and go, wow, I love the way it does 3D now (it only does one thing in 3D, nothing else) can now look at Linux and see a HUGE assortment of 3D funky visualisations and stick Vista up Microsoft's whoohah!
I had an issue with Xgl + compiz though, when I hit Shift+Backspace it would kill the X server. I found this site which gives you an xmodmap command to execute and it works perfectly (http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000095).
