Rule #1: Results, first and foremost

Do whatever it takes to get your employees and teams entirely focused on getting the job done.  That may mean throwing out old pay grades, promotional schedules, hiring and training programs.  Consider moving to a ROWE (results only work environment) model like Best Buy did nearly two years ago.  They’re not concerned with how long, or when, someone’s at the office – as long as they do the task. And Best Buy is thriving.

Rule # 2: Competition will only increase

That may be either obvious or “indirect” competition. With less money, many organizations are being forced to choose between non-similar purchases, for example, “Will it be office supplies – or shipping costs?” or  “Do we spend on executive bonuses – or furniture?”  Keep in mind that no economists are sure this fragile economy is going to stick, let alone grow.

Rule #3: Keep an eye on Elance. And the rest

I am constantly surprised by how few leaders in most industries, are aware of the impact of sites like Guru.com, Elance, or EGuru.   These networks match jobs, projects and tasks up with freelancers or people who are “daylighting” while still employed.  The “employer” gets her or his work completed quickly and at very competitive prices.  The established company is left wondering why revenues are still not picking up.

Rule #4: Those “sure things” may not be

Two years ago, who would have bet that Ford would sell the most cars in the US in February of 2009?  Or that Toyota, top ranked for quality for years, would be under pressure because of product deficiencies it couldn’t identify, let alone fix?  Make good plans, execute well, and always anticipate the downside.

Rule #5: Everyone is in the marketing game

For many executives, the whole concept of marketing is a bit distasteful. I’ve had clients tell me that marketing is simply “BS, smoke and mirrors, or boondoggles.”  Whether or not you agree, recognize that this new environment calls for new thinking.  Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon, believes only 13% of people who are trading down will go back to their old spending levels.  This applies equally to business purchases too. Act accordingly.

via Five rules for the new business environment | IT Leadership | TechRepublic.com.

                          

# Never leave a room empty handed. Look around you. Are there things that don’t belong? When you leave the room, for whatever reason, be sure to grab a glass and return it to the kitchen, or whatever the case may be.

# When you’re done with something, put it away. Right away. Clutter arises when we take something out, use it for awhile and neglect to return it to its proper home. Remember the Unclutterer’s gospel, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.”

# Hit the laundry basket. Every time. It may seem easier to simply let your clothes fall where they may, but this only creates clutter. Take 30 seconds to hang up your clothes or put them in the laundry basket. Erin recommends getting ready for bed an hour before you plan so you’re not exhausted when handling your clothes.

# Take out the garbage. Perhaps garbage day occurs only once a week, but emptying the garbage nightly, even if not entirely full, is a great habit start. Over-flowing bins are not attractive.

# Vacuum everyday. Vacuuming ensures everything is up off the floor. Essentially, you’re doing a nightly reset during the day making it even easier to keep on top of clutter.

# Clear out your e-mail inbox. Hundreds of e-mail messages in your inbox can be incredibly overwhelming. Take time at the end of each day to clear out your inbox. When you come back in the morning, it’ll be a lot less daunting.

# Cut out the non-essentials. Re-evaluate the necessity of your involvement in groups, clubs, committees or boards. Limit yourself to participating in things that are important to you and make you happy.

# Do just one thing each day. Pick a drawer, closet, or shelf that’s driving you nuts. Focus on doing one little thing to move yourself closer to the clutter free state you’re Seeking. Ask yourself: Is this really important? Can I get this again relatively easily?

# One thing out everyday. Walk through your home with a critical eye. Look for one thing you don’t need, use, or want. Keep a couple of boxes by the garage or front door for temporary storage.

via 10 more uncluttering things to do every day | Unclutterer.

                          

# Know where you’re going. Before taking to the road, make sure to know the travel conditions and best route possible for your destination. Getting lost or sitting in a widely-reported traffic jam is nothing but time clutter.

# Plan your perfect day. We’ve written quite a bit about this task, so I’ll simply direct you to our previous post.

# Clean out your desk’s inbox. File papers, enter items onto your to-do list or into your project management software, scan papers you don’t need in physical form, sign documents — just be sure that your inbox is clean by the time you leave work at the end of the day.

# Set your desk for tomorrow. Right before you head home from work, be sure to clear your desk and have it ready for tomorrow. If you have an early morning meeting with handouts, make sure that the handouts are easily accessible and ready to go. In case of an emergency, it should be simple for a co-worker to come into your office and quickly find the materials. Even if you don’t have an early meeting, your desk should be set so that when you arrive to work you can get right to work.

# Sort, open, and act on your mail. When you immediately walk into your home, sort through your mail. Recycle all junk mail that doesn’t include any identifying information. Shred all junk mail (like credit card applications) that someone could use to steal your identity. Open and act on all other mail. Your action may simply be to scan and then shred the information, file papers, or pay a bill — but doing it right when you come home keeps it from being clutter in your home.

# Load (and, if necessary, run) the dishwasher or hand-wash the dishes. Dirty dishes on the counter, sink, and anywhere else in your home are invitations to bugs, pests, and bacteria. Additionally, they clutter up your kitchen and make preparing meals a pain. You’re more likely to save a few bucks and eat at home if your kitchen is clean and ready to be used.

# Get ready for bed an hour before you plan to go to sleep. Doing this means that your dirty clothes are more likely to be returned to a hanger, dropped in the hamper, or put in a mesh bag for dry cleaning, hand washing, or repairing. Also, a set bedtime routine signals your brain that it’s time to relax and prepare for sleep.

via 10 uncluttering things to do every day | Unclutterer.

                          

2000: The Nasdaq hits 5,048.62, the high-water mark of the dot-com boom. It’s all downhill from here.

See also:

10 Years After: A Look Back at the Dot-com Boom and Bust

The boom is more accurately described as a bubble, since it rested largely on wild stock speculation and freewheeling venture-capital investment that resulted in the often ludicrous overvaluation of sketchy internet companies. Established business practices — for example, asking questions like “What do you guys actually do?” — were being ignored by investors and VCs hoping to cash in quick on new models that often were no models at all.

The frenzy was built on what seemed to be the limitless potential of the internet as a cash cow for those daring enough to take risks. In the end, e-commerce did become a big deal, but it has evolved pretty much along conventional business lines.

Big companies predominate and smaller entrepreneurs with a solid plan can thrive. The Jolt Cola kids, and their skateboards and Foosball tables, have largely passed from the scene.

On March 9, 2000, however, the sky was still the limit. But the euphoria, built as it was on smoke and mirrors, couldn’t last. And it didn’t.

On March 10, the Nasdaq Composite index peaked, more than doubling its value of a year before. But then the slide began, and it was a precipitous drop, which is why March 10 is generally considered the day the bubble burst.

Source: Various

Photo: Charles Molineaux delivers a live broadcast from the Nasdaq MarketSite on March 9, 2000, showing the Nasdaq composite index’s first — and so far, only — close above 5,000.
Stuart Ramson/AP

This article first appeared on Wired.com March 10, 2007.

See Also:

• 10 Years After: A Look Back at the Dot-com Boom and Bust
• March 10: Jefferson the Paleontologist, Lincoln the Inventor
• March 10, 1876: 'Mr. Watson, Come Here … '
• Jan. 6, 2000: Computer Glitch Fouls East Coast Air Traffic
• Feb. 7, 2000: Mafiaboy's Moment
• May 3, 2000: Geocaching Gets Geeks Into the Great Outdoors
• June 10, 2000: A London Bridge Is Swaying Hard
• June 24, 2000: President Goes Live on Net
• Aug. 17, 2000: Internet Crosses 50-Yard Line in U.S.
• Oct. 9, 2000: Ozone Hole Exposes Chilean City

1955: Computer pioneer Doug Ross demonstrates the Director tape for MIT’s Whirlwind machine. It’s a new idea: a permanent set of instructions on how the computer should operate.

Six years in the making, MIT’s Whirlwind computer was the first digital computer that could display real-time text and graphics on a video terminal, which was then just a large oscilloscope screen. Whirlwind used 4,500 vacuum tubes to process data.

The Whirlwind occupied 3,300 square feet and was the fastest digital computer of its time. It also pioneered a number of new technologies, including magnetic core memory for RAM.

Another one of its contributions was Director, a set of programming instructions on paper tape that is regarded as the predecessor of operating systems in computers. The Director was designed to issue commands to the 4-year-old Whirlwind machine.

The idea was to eliminate the need for manual intervention (.pdf) in reading the tapes for different problems during a computing session.

The Director tape would communicate with the computer through a separate input reader. That means different tapes with various problems to be computed would be recognized and appropriately processed. A Director tape would make a complete run possible by pushing a single button.

Programmers John Frankovich and Frank Helwig wrote the first Director tape program. The software concept was to connect a Flexowriter — a mechanical, heavy-duty tape reader — to a newer, faster photoelectric tape reader.

This allowed the team to feed the spliced-together paper tapes directly to Whirlwind, without having a separate human operator.

Lead programmer Doug Ross finally demonstrated it in 1955.

The Director tape was also probably the first example of a Job Control Language–driven operating system. JCL is a scripting language used on mainframe operating systems to instruct them how to run a batch job or start a subsystem.

The Whirlwind is credited with leading to development of the SAGE, or Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, system used by the U.S. Air Force. It’s also said to have influenced most of the computers of the 1960s.

Source: Wikipedia, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Photo: Stephen Dodd, Jay Forrester, Robert Everett and Ramona Ferenz test Whirlwind in 1950.
Courtesy Mitre Corp.

See Also:

• Gadget Lab: Operating Systems
• Nov. 10, 1983: Gates Opens Windows a Bit Early
• Aug. 24, 1995: Say Hello to Windows 95
• MIT Robot Rides Shotgun to Make Us Happier Drivers
• Video: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense
• March 8, 1918: The Killer Flu
• July 9, 1955: Scientists Speak Up to End the Madness
• Aug. 7, 1955: Tune In Tokyo!
• Nov. 5, 1955: A Flux of Genius
• 1955: The Segway of Helicopters

Just head to the Home of the Unofficial SXSW torrents to grab the first torrent, featuring 646 tracks and weighing in at 3.35 GB. These songs are all freely available on the official SXSW web site, but this handy site wraps them all up into a much more convenient torrent. A second torrent is on the way (with over 200 more free and legit tracks). The site also hosts every collection since SXSW 2005, so if you're in the mood for some new music or just free (and legitimate) music, head on over and get your download on.

Using Flame you can create a variety of shapes and patterns and the user interface is simple. You have a palette which is black by default, white is the only other option. You have an adjustable brush, customizable in size, softness, and other variables, and you can select your colors and the level of opacity and saturation.

One of the best ways to create really soft and flowing lines is to move the mouse quickly. The faster you move the mouse the "wider" the brush stretches and the softer and more diffuse the lines are. If you move the mouse slowly you get a laser-focused beam of intense color, move it quickly and you get a wide swath of gossamer-like color.

You can save your pictures to your computer, the default size is 1680px × 1050px with no ability to select other sizes—a feature we'd love to see implemented for creating crazy triple-screen wallpaper and other sizes. If you make a particularly awesome wallpaper, share it in the comments below. Have a neat tool for making your own wallpaper? We want to hear about that too.

Photo by gilesclement.

Last week my two year old drew all over my (brand new!) cream fabric sofa with a red ballpoint pen. I was horrified. However after some googling I discovered that you don't need expensive chemicals—good old-fashioned hairspray will do the trick PERFECTLY!

Just spray the hairspray directly onto the ink, wait 30 seconds and then simply wipe the ink away with a damp cloth. You can actually see the ink coming to the surface! My sofa now looks good as new. Apparently it works on all fabric for all types of ink, so next time your pen leaks in your shirt pocket, don't bin the shirt, just use hairspray to remove it. It doesn't even matter if the ink has dried, and you can use the cheapest of cheap hairsprays too.

Now all I need to discover is how to remove crayon from the TV screen... ideas anyone?

The fact is that yes, actual cleaning products will also do the trick, but sometimes you've got to use what you've got on hand. We did some checking around and it looks like alcohol-based hair spray is key, and the hairspray trick works better on polyester blends. (About.com offers a few more tips for using hairspray to remove stains.) If you've used hairspray as a quick stain remover in a pinch, let's hear how it worked for you in the comments. Thanks Shelley!

Managers have been known to tear their hair out in frustration of why employees can't change behaviors, and discard old habits. Recent brain research gives us more accurate reasons as to why and what managers need to do about it. The bottom line is that you can't force anyone to change. Any kind of pressure will produce more resistance and could end up being counterproductive.

Habits help us do everything, every day. Our unconscious mind eliminates the need for us to think consciously about each small step and action involved in everything from making a latte to operating the photocopier. Our mind wants to make a memory and make the thinking and behavior automatic so our conscious mind can deal with more immediate and complex things. That's the good news. The bad news is that habits can also have a negative grasp on our mind and behavior. Bad habits die hard, are easy to resume, even when we think we've stopped them, as many reformed smokers or alcoholics will attest to.

Brain science research explains why. The human brain processes four hundred billion bits of information every second but you are consciously aware of about two thousand. The unconscious brain stores the rest away. Most of our habitual thinking and behavior is unconscious and automatic. The brain wants it that way, so our conscious mind has to deal with only a few things in the present moment.

We've learned a lot about habit forming from the research on addictive behavior, in areas such as alcohol or drugs. In normal people, the brain drug, dopamine plays a major role in motivation and reward. Domainergic pathways connect the limbic system, responsible for emotion, with the hippocampus, etching rewarding behaviors into the brain by creating strong, salient memories. The problem arises when the memory and the craving to recapture it takes over a person's life. As the dopamine surge repeats, it gains speed, but the brakes, located in the brain's frontal lobes, and responsible for inhibitory control, begin to fail. So ultimately, a war goes on in our brain between the hijacked neural pathways that push a person to addictive behavior and the frontal lobes' attempt to inhibit.

Bad habits operate in much the same way as addictive behavior in that memories of how to think and behave have been well established in the brain and a reward is obtained by repeatedly revisiting those neural pathways.  Breaking the habit then is not only difficult; the brain sets up defense mechanisms to prevent you from changing what is automatic and unconscious. One study of heart patients who were heavy smokers or seriously overweight, showed that even after quadruple bi-pass surgery, a majority of the patients returned to old patterns of lifestyle behavior

The Quantum leap in neuroscience in the past decade can best be summed up in the word neuroplasticity, or simply put, our ability to make new brain cells and new neural connections. And this ability doesn't stop at adolescence, it continues until death. Every time you have a new thought, you are creating new pathways in your brain. And every time you have the same thought, or recall a memory, you make that pathway stronger and more dense A study by MIT's McGovern Institute, published in Nature magazine, described how important neural activity patterns in a specific regions of the brain change when new habits are formed, and change again when habits are broken but quickly re-emerge when something rekindles the memory of the old habit. The activity occurs in the region critical to habits, addiction and learning, the basal ganglia. The researchers concluded that the brain seems to retain a memory of the habit context, and this pattern can be triggered if the right cues occur.

No wonder bad habits are hard to break!  So what's the answer for people who want to change their thinking or behavior. Again the answer lies in brain science and new approaches to psychotherapy.

Part of the answer is a matter of perspective. University of California researchers conducted a series of studies that provide the first experimental evidence of the benefits of taking a detached perspective on your problems. Kross says, "reviewing our mistakes over and over, re-experiencing the same negative emotions we felt the first time, tends to keep us stuck in negativity." Their study, published in the July, 2008 issue of Personality and Social Psychology,

The other part of the answer is not focusing on the problematic habitual thinking or behaviors and trying to get rid of them, but rather replacing them with new thinking, creating new neural pathways.

Dr. Steven Hayes, a renowned psychotherapist, and author of Getting Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life. Hayes has been setting the world of psychotherapy on its ear by advocating a totally different approach. Hayes and researchers Marsha Linehan and Robert Kohlenberg at the University of Washington, and Zindel Segal at the University of Toronto, what we could call "Third Wave Psychologists" are focusing less on how to manipulate the content of our thoughts (a focus on cognitive psychotherapy) and more on how to change their context--to modify the way we see thoughts and feelings so they can't control our behavior. Whereas cognitive therapists speak of "cognitive errors" and "distorted interpretation," Hayes and his colleagues encourage mindfulness, the meditation-inspired practice of observing thoughts without getting entangled by them--imagine the thoughts being a leaf or canoe floating down the stream.

 Joseph Le Doux, in his book, Human Emotions: A Reader, describes new recent brain research that has shown that emotions are the driver for decision-making, which includes aspects of motivation. In a study by Hakwan Lau and Richard Passingham published in the Journal of Neuroscience demonstrated that the influences we are not aware of can hold greater sway than those we can consciously reject. We make countless decisions each day without conscious deliberation, a process called "biased competition," in which we decide among many options. The best kinds of biased decisions that are unconscious are habitual choices such as driving a car. Other unconscious influences are generally emotional or motivational, and take place continuously in our unconscious mind. In making complex decisions, legitimate factors sometimes make choices influenced by prejudice, so bias is hard to detect. Recent research by psychologist Eugene Caruso at the University of Chicago shows that people are willing to sacrifice quite a lot to fulfill their unconscious biases.

 How long does it take to form a new habit? If you Googled the question, most likely the answer would be 21 days, based on the work of plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Matlz in 1960. Recent research shows this is was not accurate. Research by Phillippa Lally and colleagues at the University College of London and published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, showed that repeated behavior for 66 days converted that day to an automatic or unconscious behavior status; but the range was 18 to 254 days. In other words, it could take you up to 2 months of daily repetition before a behavior becomes a habit.

So what does all this research mean for the practical manager who is trying to change the thinking or behavior, and bad habits of employees? Here are some conclusions that should inform managers about better approaches:

•  Habitual thinking and behavior are a result of powerful neural pathways in our brains, and memories that are automatically and unconsciously accessed; we get brain chemistry rewards every time we access those memories;
• Unconscious thought processes can predetermine, without an individual's awareness, decision-making bias and actual decision-making;
• Emotions are the key driver to decision-making, not logical, analytical thought; our logical processes are often only rational justifications for emotional decisions;
• Your brain will put up defensive mechanisms that will try to protect you from change;
• Because the brain operates in a quantum environment, our perceptions and self-talk alters the connections and pathways in our brains. Whatever we focus our "attention" on changes or creates new brain connections;
• Managers should focus on desired new patterns of thinking and behavior to help employees change, not analyzing and trying to fix the old patterns because the latter will only reinforce the problems.

 Managers would do well to become thoroughly acquainted with brain science research as it impacts the performance of their employees.