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A concept borrowed from the field of economics, but equally applicable to personal productivity is the law of diminishing returns. The law of diminishing returns states that the more unbroken time you put into any optimization attempt, the lower your net return will be.

Having been a competitive gymnast at the international level during my college years, it was not uncommon for me to devote anywhere between five to six hours in the gym a day. My mindset back then was that if I put more hours into the gym training, that my skills would go up proportionately. What happened as a result of this type of training? Exactly the opposite-my performance took a downward plunge. I actually got worst and I also became plagued with injuries as a result of my dedication. I did not understand the law of diminishing returns back then.

Personal productivity for success is no different than sports training. Yes, it takes dedication and it requires a focused mind, but it also requires working smarter-not harder. If you work day and night without breaks then you and your work will suffer from the law of diminishing returns. The quality of work that you produce will start becoming poorer quality. Stress levels will go up. Your immune system will weaken, making you vulnerable to illness and disease. Frustration, irritability, and anger will affect both your personal and professional relationships. Concentration will diminish. Your goal will become farther and farther away from you as a result of this behavior and what do most people do in response to this? That’s right, they decide to work harder and for longer, believing that more time invested into the project will cure their problems. This self-depreciating behavior eventually leads to emotional breakdown.

Value is Greater than Quantity

In order to reach new heights in personal productivity, we have to steer ourselves away from this traditional model of “more is better.” I can remember having this line of “BS” fed to me during grade school. Often I had to put three hours of homework time a day before I could do anything fun for the rest of the day. It usually took me no more than 45 minutes to complete my homework, but what did I have to do afterwards? That’s right, I just sat there doodling in my notebook bored off my ass and waiting for those three hours to run down. I started to hate studying, not because I despised studying, but because I hated being bored. I was being conditioned to live the life of a typical corporate employee, not a successful person. Really if you analyze the habits of employees, you will find that the work that they do can be done in a minimal amount of time and the rest of the time, they are just waiting for the clock to “run out.” They have no incentive to get the work done quickly, so they let it linger on over the course of those eight hours and the law of diminishing returns kicks in and makes that quality of work of lesser value than what could have been achieve in less time. Not only that, but the 9-to-5 model of work produces a lot of job dissatisfaction because the law of diminishing returns also applies to the level of motivation a person has to get a task completed.

Whether it be our personal lives or our professional lives, productivity will always be an equation of value produced over time spent (P=v/t). Just based on this simple equation, we can see that it benefits us to increase the value quotient (v) and decrease the time quotient (t) in order to maximize the productivity result (P). This should always be our priority when setting out to do a task-create the highest amount of value possible, in the shortest amount of time. Therefore, it is pointless to continue wasting time on a task if the value being produced is very little. It is better to do something else and come back to that task when you are able to maximize the value you distill out of that time.

Tristan Loo is the Founder of the Synergy Institute, a Personal Development Firm based out of San Diego County. Tristan is a former police officer, personal development coach, mediator, conflict negotiator, and author. Visit the Synergy Institute website at www.synergyinstituteonline.com

Persistence is one of the most important characteristics of a Business Entrepreneur. Without it, failures will follows. This happens to every business entrepreneur including me.

When you start your own online business, you often get frustrated when you cannot get the desired results that you want. When you checked your web log, not enough website traffics is coming. You have try lots of promotion methods: banner impression, guarantee clicks, exchange links, search engines optimization and many others ways but traffics is not coming as quickly as you want.

That’s the problems many online entrepreneur is facing. Quick Results. They want to make money quickly and get frustrated and give up their online business when they cannot see the money coming in FAST. Many forgot how they managed to land into their FIRST job.

We forgot the vast amount of time and money our parents have invested on us on our education before we can eventually land on the desired job that we want. Try counting back in time the number of years you spend on education before ending up on your present job. Don’t forget to include those time you spend searching for your job, writing resume and attending interviews.

Likewise, every business take time to build and grow. Your persistence will bear results sooner or later if you continue to persist in the RIGHT WAY. You just have to keep moving FORWARD even if you cannot see the result now.

It is good to invest on a little paper notebook to record what you have done for your online business. Analyze your written log OFFLINE and think about what are the methods that are working and strike out those that are not. Many people never realize that it is better to analyze your problems away from your work desk to allow new ideas to pop out of your mind.

Go for a jog, a swim, a walk around the park, look at the fishes in the pond, visit the zoo just take a break from your normal routines. Have you ever encounter situation where your problems was immediately solved the next day after having a good night sleep.

Sometimes your online promotion might be working but it takes time for the search engine to rank your site, index your contents, count the number of incoming links to your site etc. Don’t forget that there are billions of website the search engine database is handling and it will take time before you can see any real results.

Therefore, never stop feeding your website with new contents. Your body need to eat daily so does your website. At least, try to feed your website weekly. Never stop exchanging links and provide a place for others to exchange links with you. Regularly, free a portions of your old articles and submit it to be published into other websites, ezines with your resource box at the bottom.

QUITTER never wins and WINNERS must Persist in order to WIN.

Wishing you success in your Persistence of becoming a Successful Business Entrepreneur.

www.online-internet-home-business- opportunity.com Most Financially Successful individuals Grow Rich by starting their own business. A great online business to start is an eBook Home Business that let you keep 100% of the profits.

Many choose self-employment and home business ventures as alternatives to the corporate grind. Some enjoy newfound freedoms and control that a successful home-based business delivers while others try and fail. A worse fate still is the many great small business ideas that are dreamed of yet never explored.

Several years ago, I realized I was in financial trouble and going downhill quickly. I was over my head in debt and unable to afford moving out of the severely depressed economic area where I lived. As a young, single mother, I soon realized it was costing me around $12 a day, after travel expenses and babysitting fees, to work the minimum wage jobs in the local area. I was headed deeper in debt doing what everyone had always told me was the “right” thing to do: get a job and work hard every day for someone else!

I sat at my kitchen table with my weekly paycheck, calculator and notebook and saw the numbers before me in black and white. The “right” thing wasn’t working; slaving at the local burger joint waiting for a better job to open up was not going to fix the problem. I decided to learn more about self-employment. It was a turning point that brought me down the path to where I am today.

I gave you a little about my background to demonstrate I know where many of you are coming from. Many others are experiencing the same financial dilemma of dead-end jobs and growing debt today that I experienced then.

Today, I’m a marketing consultant for a new online home-based business operating on a shoestring budget. I researched many online businesses before settling in on this one.

With all of that said, I encourage you to allow yourself to explore your home-based business dreams. I would, however, offer you some key elements to consider that I learned the hard way.

1. Don’t try to learn everything you need to know before you decide to begin. While research and knowledge are important to success, too much will overwhelm you and paralyze you with information overload.

2. Don’t think there is a magic program for sale out there that produces overnight wealth without putting in some serious effort.

3. Don’t think that you can figure it all out and manage it all on your own! BIG no no. A mentor and team are necessary for your learning process and long term business survival.

Number three is key. Had I understood that one and found a mentor early on, it would have saved me from learning the first two lessons the hard way. The hard way is almost always painful and expensive!

Finding a good mentor and a support team you trust is very challenging and time-consuming. Many with the “work at home” bug avoid dependence of a support system and struggle blindly through the dark days of their small business startups. This is an ego problem that must be overcome. It is okay to need a little help learning the ropes.

Another lesson I learned that doesn’t conform to what we are taught is that the best mentors are not friends and family, no matter how successful they may be. Nor will great mentors be free. A good mentor is not there to make you feel good about yourself, be your buddy or do the job for you. A true mentor assumes a great responsibility of delivering honesty and guidance through their own expertise. Friends, family and free mentoring are often misguided by emotion and personal motives.

When considering self-employment, factor in the costs of a good coach who will take a personal approach to understanding your resources and business development goals. This is the secret weapon of the most highly successful home-based business entrepreneurs. Follow this advice and you are one step closer to your own success.

About the Author: Dawn Wentworth has been actively engaged in the internet marketing community since 1996 and is currently helping internet marketing business owners establish teams and mentors at BigWealthBuilder.com

Few contractors know how to track job costs effectively. Very few.
The reasons for their struggle are plentiful, but they start with a simple misunderstanding. The term job costing implies the goal is to track dollars, but what you really need to track is man-hours. As long as a contractor focuses on tracking dollars, he will never collect the type of information he needs to:

Predict the cost of large projects accurately.

Achieve consistent on-time completion.

Persuade crews to work hard.

Accurately account for the impact of rapidly changing material costs.
Small pavement maintenance contractors’ job costing systems should be built to track labor productivity - the time it takes field workers to perform their construction tasks. Few pieces of information have greater value to you than knowing the speed at which your crews work. Having that knowledge is like money in the bank. And the only way you get that knowledge is by installing an effective job costing system.

KISS It

You need to use an easy-to-grasp approach . In other words, KISS it - Keep It Short and Simple.

Short means that you track the absolute minimum amount of information you need to make profitable decisions. Simple means that your employees must be able to learn how to collect the data. You need to install a job costing system that delivers the goods without being overbearing to your people. It’s difficult…but not impossible.

Cost Codes

When it comes to data collection, more is not better. More is destructive. Ask your field workers to track too much data and they will revolt against your request by recording useless data.

To keep the data collection manageable, go after the tasks that account for 80% or more of the crew’s time. You will discover that roughly 20% of the tasks account for 80% of the labor time. Those are the only tasks yours crews should be coding their time to. All time not associated with the 80% codes should be allocated to “Other”.

Rule of thumb: an employee should be able to record all of one day’s time on to no more than six codes.

Consider the tasks a patching crew performs.

Traffic control
Saw cutting or grinding
Removal
Placement
Rolling
Clean up
Mobilization

If your crew repairs three or four lots per day, then the workers should probably track their time by three tasks: cutting and removing, filling and rolling, and mobilization. If your crew tends to spend a day on one lot, then the workers should probably track their time by all of the tasks listed above. The right answer will differ by crew and project.
Once you’ve figured out which labor tasks to track, create a numbered list of the codes allowed for the job. Give the foremen a list of the codes complete with clear descriptions of what task are to be assigned to each code.

Tracking Work Output

In order to calculate labor productivity (i.e. the speed at which your crews work) you must know how much work the crew performed. Examples are:
Square feet of pavement sealed.
Pounds of crack filler used (or lineal feet of cracks filled).
Number of stalls marked.
Square feet of pavement patched.
Number of patches patched.
Tons of asphalt used.
Square feet of parking lot swept.
No of parking lots swept.
Much of this data will come from the original takeoff. Quantities such as pounds of crack filler will need to be recorded in the field. Do not have the field workers record data that can be captured in the office from existing documents.

Time Card Design

Redo your timesheets to make them user-friendly. The less writing the foremen need to do, the better. Consider printing out custom timesheets for each job that contain the project information and the material quantities required for the job. You will quickly discover that the easier the data recording, the better quality the data.
Critical Note: time cards must be turned filled out daily!
Data quality drops off rapidly when crews are allowed to fill out their cards a few days down the road. Give each worker a pocket sized spiral notebook to jot down their coded time throughout the day. Then they, or the foreman, can transfer their notes to the timesheet at the end of the day.

Crew Training

The final data collection step is teaching the field crews and foremen how to fill out the paperwork correctly. Give them examples. Have them fill out a couple of time cards together in your office. Provoke questions and answer them.
We all know how much the field workers HATE paperwork. If they liked paper work, they would have become desk jockeys. They didn’t and they don’t. You need to sell your employees on the value of the sending in accurate data.
Explain that the data is essential for setting realistic budgets and schedules. Explain that their personal financial security is tied to you knowing your costs. After you’ve answered the “What’s In It For Me?” question, hold your foremen accountable for submitting complete and accurate timesheets. Job costing is not as important as safety, but it runs a pretty close second.

Data Storage and Analysis

You will find that storing your labor productivity job cost data in a spreadsheet is by far the easiest way to analyze it. Accounting packages are not designed to let you analyze data across multiple projects. Export the data to Microsoft excel or enter it directly into Excel from the start. Group and sort the data. Throw it into charts and tables (have someone set up Pivot Tables for you, they’re the greatest for this task). Look for trends and averages. Update your estimating and schedule based on the conclusions the information reveals.

Conclusion

Job costing is a hot button with contractors - as well it should be. If a contractor can’t tell whether he is making money on his jobs, he is going to get into financial trouble. The risk of job costing is that you can waste a lot of employee time collecting information that turns out to be worthless. If you want to run a business that produces a predictable profit, you must accept the headaches associated with collecting and analyzing job cost data. Job costing systems are very, very difficult to get right. Unfortunately, they are essential to survival in the construction industry!

Lori Smith is a webmaster of www.truebluecontractors.com “>TrueBlueContractors.com allows www.truebluecontractors.com “>contractors to spend less money advertising, give fewer estimates, and get more work.

Are you wondering what brand of computer to get? Why not try getting that one with an apple on. I’m sure that all of us have seen that apple logo with a bite of its upper right side and I’m also sure that all of us know who it belongs to. That famous apple is the logo of none other than Apple, Inc. This company is well known for its Macintosh personal computers, the iPod and the much talked about iPhone.

Macintosh, or popularly called as Mac, is a brand name for a group of personal computers produced by Apple, Inc. This also refers to the operating system used by these computers. Apple first introduced Macintosh computers in 1984 but suffered a decline when a cheaper and more efficient Microsoft Windows was introduced in the 1990’s. Since then more people started using Windows instead of Mac. But Apple fought back with the introduction of the iMac in 1998 and started to rise again soon after that. Today, Mac is still widely used by a great majority of people around the world and has given Windows a run for its money.

Apple has produced both desktop and laptops computers. Unlike the Windows operating system which can be used for any computer brand, the Mac operating system is only used with Apple computers. They have produced desktops computers with some of more common and latest models being the Mac Pro, iMac and Mac mini. They have also produced the MacBook Pro, Powerbook Laptops and MacBook air for their portable computers.

The Mac Pro introduced in 2006 is a workstation desktop computer which uses Intel Xeon processors. The iMac introduced also in 2006 is a high-end desktop computer which is the first Macintosh with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The Mac mini introduced in 2005 is the smallest desktop computer to be released by Apple. This computer looks like a small box with a measurement of 6.5 by 6.5 by 2 inches. This also uses an Intel Core Solo or Intel Core Duo processor.

The MacBook Pro first introduced in 2006, is a 15 inch notebook pc with an aluminum casing. It uses Intel Core 2 Duo processors and has 4 GB of RAM. The MacBook also introduced in 2006 is a 13.3 inch notebook computer with a polycarbonate casing. It also uses Intel Core 2 Duo processors and has up to 4 GB of RAM. The MacBook Air introduced early this year is a 13.3 inch notebook computer which weighs only 1.36 kg and is 0.16 inches thick. This uses Intel Core 2 Duo processors and 2 GB of RAM.

Aside from these computers, Apple has also produced the iPod which is a digital media player and the iPhone which is a phone, an iPod and an internet device in one. The computers have the usual accessories but both the iPod and iPhone has accessories too. These accessories can serve to protect your iPod or iPod and enhance them too.

If you don’t have an Apple computer yet and would like to try one after what you have read, why not open an internet window and type in www.cheapshoppingcenter.com into your address bar now and check out Apple computers, components and accessories at the lowest prices. You can look for Apple computers; compare their specifications and their prices to get the most value for your money. Not only that, while on Cheap Shopping Center also take a look at other computer products. You might find something you like or need and you can get them at this site for the best prices.

Marshall has been running as a way to present various computer products. in a new way.

Ping Pong is a simple and fun game that is not as demanding as other types of sports. You can play indoors, in all weather and with minimal space, equipment and training. You do not need to be incredibly fast, strong and able to operate for hours on end to do neither, you just need a decent amount of stamina, good reflexes, and the speed of mind. These factors add to the appeal of ping-pong, and is one reason why a large number of personal gyms in the houses either have a ping-pong or pool table (billiards sharing many of the same Factors that the ping-pong).

The first thing you need to know about the ping-pong is the equipment. A table tennis net, one ball and two paddles are just what you need. Period. For keeping score, a simple notebook and pen will do, unless you want to buy a scoreboard chalk or something. In addition to those basic necessities, there is nothing else for you to invest in a first time.

The second thing to consider is clothing - almost anything will do as long as you can move freely within it. Most people wear simple sneakers, shorts and a T-shirt. Jogging pants will too. Unlike other active sports like basketball and running, where shoes are designed for high-impact with fancy shoes and other characteristics, simply shoes that are comfortable. The same with short / jogging pants and tee-shirt. No materials needed, no anti-torn extent of wear ultra-mesh fibre super-high-tech stuff. Choose something from your closet and you’re done!

Now we are approaching the physical basis. As long as you refresh a little time to time and can walk up and down several flights of stairs without being reduced to a wheezing bag of fat, you’ll be fine. The average person can quickly obtain a ping-pong. The most important physical factors ping-pong reflexes are quick, agile wrists, and good balance. Of course, if you have two left feet is another story … Otherwise, if your account balance and reflexes are decent make.

The main reason for the need of reflexes is clear - the fundamental objective of ping-pong is a thwack a ball repeatedly between you and your opponent until one of you lack fumbles and swatting the ball . Poor reflexes means you probably miss a shot. The need for quick wrists is because a majority of the action to hit the ball ping-pong is controlled by a paddle angle - which is, of course, adjusted your wrist. Regarding the factor of balance, you’ll need to be moderately fast on your feet to jump from one side of table tennis to another. It does not really need all run, just some minor changes to your position and the evolution of body weight to make you lean more on one side or the other.

Apart from the physical conditions, there is a simple requirement mental ping-pong - be calm, and be a planner. Like any good game fencing, table tennis requires a quick mind to go with the speed of reflexes. It is not enough to be able to block every shot makes your opponent, you must be able to plan the angles send you the ball, and plan a step or two forward all the time to know where your opponent the return fire is underway head. The mental factor is actually the reason why some people with slower reflexes can win against players physically superior - they can send a ball in a certain angle, the strength of their opponent in a certain physical position, when the ball heads their way, return it at an angle that their opponent can not arrive in time because they are out of position to counter.

These are all you need to get started with ping-pong. Simple equipment, clothing simple, quick reflexes and decently and humorous. Everything else follows as you practice and get more experience. Over all, just relax and have fun!

You’re trying too much aren’t you? Trying to accomplish too many projects and tasks at once; too many ideas and directions to go. You’re like the runner at the start line trying to run in all directions at once. It’s exhausting you mentally and physically and the frustration builds daily as you look at one more idea on the Internet, one more product that might be “the thing” you’re in need of.

You know what you need to do. In fact, you know hundreds of things you need to do. That’s not the problem. Deep down you know what you need to be doing and not doing in order to succeed, but somehow you are still sitting there going around in circles and feeling more and more frustrated by the day. Why is this? Why the lack of action and progress even when realizing full well that this type of behavior will not get you to where you want to be.

There are many reasons of course, and if you were to stop and think for a bit and were to type out your answers, you’d quickly uncover enough reasons to get you started back on the course of progress. Actually, I suggest you do take time out from your currently entrenched routine and consciously focus on this for a few minutes. If you prefer typing, you can do this while typing in your word processor, or if you prefer pen and paper, you could take a notebook out to somewhere where you could think and focus; perhaps somewhere where you don’t often go so that the experience will be refreshing.

Maintaining perspective is one of the most important things you can do to ensure overall long term progress toward the success goals you’ve set for yourself. This perspective is easily lost when we maintain the same routine and visit the same places, people, and things. Have you ever noticed how energized you feel after getting away for a few days from home? You come back perhaps tired from the trip, but you feel exhilarated and not bound by your typical surroundings. In fact, you probably feel like your typical environs are somewhat stagnant and stale and in need of a refresh.

This is a positive sign that your excursion was beneficial to your perspective and necessary to reenergize you and bring back your emotional “buy-in” to your long term goals. If you had merely sat in place in your usual spot doing the same thing, you probably would have spent many more hours there and not progressed much if at all. But having gotten away for a bit helped you to reset and reengage your end vision while temporarily forgetting the intermediate tasks; thereby letting you come back to the table fresh and able to immediately see the next steps you must take. This is what makes it possible for you to then make quick progress; quicker than if you had not taken that perspective break.

Once refreshed and having gained some perspective you can then begin consciously deciding on what you will focus on. You must come to a couple of mental decisions at this point:

1. You can only go as fast as YOU can go. E.g. you can only do so many things at once and in a finite period of time. If you try to exceed your personal capabilities you will only end up with a few predictable results. More than likely you’ll end up with many or all tasks being completed in a poor manner. You’ll be frustrated and tired. Or worst of all possible outcomes, you’ll be out of balance in life and burned out. These are not the desired end results you desire.

2. Decide now that trying to do too much is the recipe for substandard results and failure and that a conscious decision to select only those goals and activities that matter most and can be done best are what you will personally handle. If there are other necessary tasks required that you are not best at or that would burn you out trying to accomplish, that you will outsource them so you can focus on your core strengths.

Once you’ve narrowed down to these few tasks and set these decisions in your mind, reinforce the decision with the belief that “less is more”. E.g. quality of results is much more important than quantity of results. Focusing on a few key tasks and doing them well is much more rewarding and inspiring than spreading yourself thin and taking too many actions that bear results close to zero. Build deep as they say not wide.

Trying to do it all will ensure you have none.

Dave Marcotte runs www.fastresponsemarketing.com, a marketing company designed to uncover and share the most efficient and effective methods to market and profit online. He shares with you new and insightful strategies related to Internet and viral marketing. Results are what count!