Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
According to a childhood friend, Schubert “used to sit down at his writing desk every morning at 6 o’clock and compose straight through until 1 o’clock in the afternoon. Meanwhile many a pipe was smoked.” The Austrian composer’s afternoons were less rigorous; his friend noted, “Schubert never composed in the afternoon; after the midday meal he went to a coffee-house, drank a small portion of black coffee, smoked for an hour or two and read the newspapers at the same time.” On summer afternoons, he often went for long walks in the countryside surrounding Vienna, then enjoyed a glass of beer or wine with friends. He avoided giving piano lessons, even though he always needed the money and frequently had to rely on friends for financial support. As one member of his circle remembered, “Schubert was extraordinarily fertile and industrious in composing. For everything else that goes by the name of work he had no use.” Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey Trollope managed to produce forty-seven novels and sixteen other books by dint of an unvarying early-morning writing session. In his Autobiography, Trollope described his composition methods at Waltham Cross, England, where he lived for twelve years. For most of that time he was also employed as a civil servant at the General Post Office, a career he began in 1834 and did not resign until thirty-three years later, when he had already published more than two dozen books.
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey Trollope's daily ritual was; It was my practice to be at my table every morning at 5.30 A.M.; and it was also my practice to allow myself no mercy. An old groom, whose business it was to call me, and to whom I paid £5 a year extra for the duty, allowed himself no mercy. During all those years at Waltham Cross he never was once late with the coffee which it was his duty to bring me. I do not know that I ought not to feel that I owe more to him than to any one else for the success I have had. By beginning at that hour I could complete my literary work before I dressed for breakfast. All those I think who have lived as literary men,—working daily as literary labourers,—will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. But then, he should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously during those three hours,—so have tutored his mind that it shall not be necessary for him to sit nibbling his pen, and gazing at the wall before him, till he shall have found the words with which he wants to express his ideas. It had at this time become my custom,—and is still my custom, though of late I have become a little lenient of myself,—to write with my watch before me, and to require of myself 250 words every quarter of an hour. I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went. But my three hours were not devoted entirely to writing. I always began my task by reading the work of the day before, an operation which would take me half an hour, and which consisted chiefly in weighing with my ear the sound of the words and phrases.… This division of time allowed me to produce over ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day, and if kept up through ten months, would have given as its results three novels of three volumes each in the year;—the precise amount which so greatly acerbated the publisher in Paternoster Row, and which must at any rate be felt to be quite as much as the novel-readers of the world can want from the hands of one man. If he completed a novel before his three hours were up, Trollope would take out a fresh sheet of paper and immediately begin the next one. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey The Lean Startup asks people to start measuring their productivity differently.
The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build—the thing customers want and will pay for—as quickly as possible. In other words, the Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time. The first feedback loop in startups is like that in a car's engine and I call it the engine of growth. Every new version of a product, every new feature, and every new marketing program is an attempt to improve this engine of growth. New product development happens in fits and starts. Much of the time in a startup’s life is spent tuning the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, or operations. The second important feedback loop is similar to what is in an automobile and is between the driver and the steering wheel. This feedback is so immediate and automatic that we often don’t think about it., The choreography of driving is incredibly complex when one slows down to think about it. By contrast, a rocket ship requires just this kind of in-advance calibration. It must be launched with the most precise instructions on what to do: every thrust, every firing of a booster, and every change in direction. The tiniest error at the point of launch could yield catastrophic results thousands of miles later. Unfortunately, too many startup business plans look more like they are planning to launch a rocket ship than drive a car. They prescribe the steps to take and the results to expect in excruciating detail, and as in planning to launch a rocket, they are set up in such a way that even tiny errors in assumptions can lead to catastrophic outcomes. The Lean Startup method, in contrast, is designed to teach you how to drive a startup. Instead of making complex plans that are based on a lot of assumptions, you can make constant adjustments with a steering wheel called the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. Through this process of steering, we can learn when and if it’s time to make a sharp turn called a pivot or whether we should persevere along our current path. Once we have an engine that’s revved up, the Lean Startup offers methods to scale and grow the business with maximum acceleration. Startups also have a true north, a destination in mind: creating a thriving and world-changing business. I call that a startup’s vision. To achieve that vision, startups employ a strategy, which includes a business model, a product road map, a point of view about partners and competitors, and ideas about who the customer will be. The product is the end result of this strategy. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries I believe that entrepreneurship requires a managerial discipline to harness the entrepreneurial opportunity we have been given.
There are more entrepreneurs operating today than at any previous time in history. This has been made possible by dramatic changes in the global economy. To cite but one example, one often hears commentators lament the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States over the previous two decades, but one rarely hears about a corresponding loss of manufacturing capability. That’s because total manufacturing output in the United States is increasing (by 15 percent in the last decade) even as jobs continue to be lost (see the charts below). In effect, the huge productivity increases made possible by modern management and technology have created more productive capacity than firms know what to do with. We are living through an unprecedented worldwide entrepreneurial renaissance, but this opportunity is laced with peril. Because we lack a coherent management paradigm for new innovative ventures, we’re throwing our excess capacity around with wild abandon. Despite this lack of rigor, we are finding some ways to make money, but for every success there are far too many failures: products pulled from shelves mere weeks after being launched, high-profile startups lauded in the press and forgotten a few months later, and new products that wind up being used by nobody. What makes these failures particularly painful is not just the economic damage done to individual employees, companies, and investors; they are also a colossal waste of our civilization’s most precious resource: the time, passion, and skill of its people. The Lean Startup movement is dedicated to preventing these failures. Lean thinking is radically altering the way supply chains and production systems are run. Among its tenets are drawing on the knowledge and creativity of individual workers, the shrinking of batch sizes, just-in-time production and inventory control, and an acceleration of cycle times. It taught the world the difference between value-creating activities and waste and showed how to build quality into products from the inside out. Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high-quality physical goods....the Lean Startup uses a different unit of progress, called validated learning. With scientific learning as our yardstick, we can discover and eliminate the sources of waste that are plaguing entrepreneurship. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Here is a sneak preview of full automation.
I woke up this morning, and given that it’s Monday, I checked my e-mail for one hour after an exquisite Buenos Aires breakfast. Sowmya from India had found a long-lost high school classmate of mine, and Anakool from YMII had put together Excel research reports for retiree happiness and the average annual hours worked in different fields. Interviews for this week had been set by a third Indian virtual assistant, who had also found contact information for the best Kendo schools in Japan and the top salsa teachers in Cuba. In the next e-mail folder, I was pleased to see that my fulfillment account manager in Tennessee, Beth, had resolved nearly two dozen problems in the last week—keeping our largest clients in China and South Africa smiling—and had also coordinated California sales tax filing with my accountants in Michigan. The taxes had been paid via my credit card on file, and a quick glance at my bank accounts confirmed that Shane and the rest of the team at my credit card processor were depositing more cash than last month. All was right in the world of automation. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I closed my laptop with a smile. For an all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast with coffee and orange juice, I paid $4 U.S. The Indian outsourcers cost between $4–10 U.S. per hour. My domestic outsourcers are paid on performance or when product ships. This creates a curious business phenomenon: Negative cash flow is impossible. Fun things happen when you earn dollars, live on pesos, and compensate in rupees, but that’s just the beginning. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Expanded and Updated). by Timothy Ferriss Early on, Mike did everything in his power to build wealth while freeing up time to enjoy it. He developed a powerful mantra upon which he bases his career and lifestyle choices. In a word, his philosophy can be summed up as F.A.S.T.:
• F = Fun: Without fun and excitement, work quickly becomes stale. People tend to spend more time at work than anywhere else. Mike insists on creating not only profitable endeavors, but also an environment where both he and his employees relish working because it gives them satisfaction, fulfillment, contentment, and happiness. • A = Automation: Technology has made it much easier to create products and deliver them to customers. Mike is a huge proponent of taking full advantage of available tools, ranging from automated webinars and teleseminars to pre-loaded social media messages and press releases. If your business isn’t structured to churn cash while you sleep, you’re doing yourself and your company a disservice. • S = Scalability: You want to create products and services that have the ability to serve the masses without needing to engage in customization. Mike develops each new offer with this in mind. Doing so enables him to sell the same item to thousands of people. This is one of the key tenets the successful use to create wealth. • T = Time-Freeing Ability: One of the tremendous strengths of the Internet is its ability to make things happen in the blink of an eye. If a product is downloadable, it can be provided within seconds of a customer ordering it. And if the product is physical, the confirmation and details of the order can be delivered to the customer within moments…and the automated process of fulfilling an order may begin just as quickly. Luck is the byproduct of preparedness, execution, and fruitful timing: History has repeatedly shown that initiative combined with incentive begets undeniable results and driving traffic requires significant creativity. Look to create your own mechanism when necessary. Leverage, and apply, available technology to your business. Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher Do one thing, do it better than anyone else, and get paid extraordinarily well for your talent.4/4/2013
Do one thing, do it better than anyone else, and get paid extraordinarily well for your talent.
Choose a niche (e.g., 1960’s Mustangs) and then create a simple site and post related products and services. The easiest way to do this is to contact existing sellers (e.g., car dealers, parts manufacturers/distributors, etc.), negotiate a percentage of each sale consummated to be paid to you as a commission, and utilize their existing content. The riches are in the niches. Do one thing, do it better than anyone else, and get paid extraordinarily well for your specific talent. Test the waters to determine if there’s a market for a particular idea. Offer a meaningful discount or perk to generate initial interest (in this case, a free report). Wait until you have an order. Create the product. Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher 6 Rules of Thumb for Doing Great Business
Nothing's Changed But My Change Join our mailing list and we will send you one to two emails a week for 12 weeks teaching you the basic body weight exercises, nutrition guidelines, and mindset tools you need to be Indestructible. . . . just as a matter of interest, tell me something: how long do you sleep each night?
The proverbial eight hours. Ask anyone and they say automatically ‘eight hours’. As a matter of fact you sleep about ten and a half hours, like the majority of people. I’ve timed you on a number of occasions. I myself sleep eleven. Yet thirty years ago people did indeed sleep eight hours, and a century before that they slept six or seven. In Vasari’s Lives one reads of Michelangelo sleeping for only four or five hours, painting all day at the age of eighty and then working through the night over his anatomy table with a candle strapped to his forehead. Now he’s regarded as a prodigy, but it was unremarkable then. How do you think the ancients, from Plato to Shakespeare, Aristotle to Aquinas, were able to cram so much work into their lives? Simply because they had an extra six or seven hours every day. The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard by J. G. Ballard ‘Actually, last night was easier. I think I’m entering a new zone. Everything’s beginning to stabilize, I’m not looking over my shoulder all the time. I’ve left the inside doors open, and before I enter a room I deliberately anticipate it, try to extrapolate its depth and dimensions so that it doesn’t surprise me – before I used to open a door and just dive through like a man stepping into an empty lift shaft.'
Racing the clock was exactly what he had been doing. As he stood up and said goodbye to Anderson he suddenly decided to throw away his alarm clock, escape from his futile obsession with time. To remind himself he unfastened his wristwatch and scrambled the setting, then slipped it into his pocket. Making his way out to the car park he reflected on the freedom this simple act gave him. He would explore the lateral byways now, the side doors, as it were, in the corridors of time. Three months could be an eternity. The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard by J. G. Ballard |
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