Sometimes It Is Not Fun

A better life - or a few more hours sleep?

You must decide for yourself.

The Immediate - is a deceptive taskmaster.

The Immediate - frequently offers one time distractions that feel much better than long term goals.

If you give in to all distractions you will not succeed.

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:

Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,

Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:

So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.

Proverbs 6: 6-11

Yet we also want a life - must we plan our life as carefully as our business so as to avoid distraction?

"Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain." - Mark Twain

Mark Twain just gave us directions, let's make it a rule set:

• wake up earlier

• talk to the person you want to avoid

• do the task you least want to do

This simple task set will help remove some self created obstacles.

Sometimes it is this simple.

Successful people consistently do those things that failures avoid.

Why should we spend our days subconsciously inventing ways to avoid that task set - and end up avoiding our success instead.

• Now we can get down to business.

• Now we can get down to life.

Allan R. Wallace

A murder Of Crows - And Other Delights

Have you noticed when a group of any type of animal gets together they seem to acquire a descriptive group name?

A float of crocodiles, a skulk of foxes, a shrewdness of apes, a murder of crows, all set the tone for the group they are describing.

I've had the flu for way too long - I'll drop some business gems latter - let's have some fun now.

In keeping our group names in theme with this page's normal content you could also have a profit of small businessmen, a learning of mentors, or perhaps a potential of customers.

Add what you wish to the comments, try to include it in a sentence, keep it clean and fun spirited.

As examples:

• I was walking down the beach today to check out the action, the waves were already crowded with a dude of surfers.

• I went to the annual stockholders meeting and at the front of the room was a clueless of senior management.

• I watched a political conference and scheduled to speak first was a corruption of senators to be followed by an arrogance of presidential hopefuls. There was even a shrewdness of ex-presidents attending.

With the small blather of bloggers that read this blog, we ought to come up with some doozies.

Avoid joining a naught of lurkers. (ok, I also appreciate the quiet of lurkers that read my sites.)

Add your descriptive to the contentiousness of commenters.

Allan

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Luring Traffic To Your Web Site - By Surfing

I have used a few traffic exchanges.


I) The best in the past was , a full featured site with lots of extras. The biggest draw back to blog explosion is speed, the load time for new screens frequently takes as long as the viewing time. The viewing time is often short as complex banners load first - delaying your seeing the object page. The big benefit to Blog Explosion is the number of members - you can surf a long time before you get a repeat.


2) The new kid on the block is BlogMad, a site still in Beta testing. Follow the Blog Mad link to get a beta invite, if you have any trouble send me a note - I'll get you an invite. Blog mad is fast, but has limited users so far, you will see a lot of the same blogs. I am using this beta time to bank some surfing credits - after a period of surfing I raise my minimum reserve. Once Blog Mad goes full public I expect to use these credits when there are more surfers - of course that may never happen. It does look good so far. Also folks are sneaking in some adult content even if you choose to have none - this may not be a work or family safe site yet.


3) A site that allows all pages - not just blogs - is:

.

That all types of sites advantage and the ease of building a large bank of credits are its main attributes. Traffic Swarm is clunky, and populated with way too many Ponzi schemes and get rich quick sites. You can choose what to look at - and there are some interesting sites there - such as mine - but they are not frequent choices. I have built up a store of credits and will probably replenish it when it declines. Just the fact you have a real site will make your links stand out and may make Traffic Swarm a good fit for you.



Overall these traffic exchange sites - Blog Explosion - Blog Mad - Traffic Swarm - are all free except for your time spent. Most of the traffic benefits may come in your first membership month as there is a core of users that you will reach during that time.


I have tried other traffic swap sites and they did not make the cut.


Of course in a short time you will have your own opinion of these traffic exchange tools.

You can then decide if you want to continue to surf for free traffic.

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Modern Motivation And Inspiration

Mankind always seems to have recognized the powers of motivation and inspiration in achieving goals.

Today we have CDs to play in the car and MP3s to carry on walks.

Sometimes rather than listening to a motivational and inspirational talk - we can benefit from thinking about a quote.

I got this quote from my free daily quote service, it came with my morning emails. The author I am sure would be amazed at our technology - but would recognize our very human condition.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day.

The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. -

Heraclitus 535-475 BC (approximately), Philosopher and Author

That is as fresh and as accurate as anything said within the last twenty years.

Allan

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Good Steel Does Not Fear the Furnace

In fact good steel seeks the furnace, anvil, and hammer.

I saw a sign while driving the freeway "a good anvil does not fear the hammer." It seemed to me that those are two tools used to form metal - they work together. Perhaps the analogy could apply to an educator and their education system, but it ignores their primary purpose.

The furnace, anvil, and hammer are all tools used to create a specific function from a promising lump of steel.

Once the steel is formed there are still choices to be made, of plowshare into swords or swords back into plowshares comes to mind.

extreme heat removes impurities and enhances ductility and malleability of the subject steel, repeated bending, pressing, pounding and re-heating shapes a tool to a specific purpose. A final baptismal quench serves to set the tools structure and hardness for the specific task.

Like most analogies this one will break down if pushed too far, and my knowledge of metal working is rudimentary at best. But I will make a pass at creating a useful guideline based on the old saw "when the student is ready - the teacher will appear."

When the steel is glowing red - the hammer and anvil will appear.

Good steel looks past the process to its final form. In the hands of a fine artist or an excellent smith a wonderful result is assured.

Select your smith well, rediscover the pleasures of self-directed learning.

Submission to well selected education will yield results - we have nothing to fear from the furnace.

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Start Your Own Business Today

You know what you love to do. You have an idea of how to make money doing it.

Start your own business today.

You will never have all the information necessary to eliminate all risk. If it is to be done, you may as well start now.

You do not have enough knowledge to handle everything that will come your way - but then you do not know everything that will come your way.

It is a lot like worrying, most of what you worry about will never happen. A surprise that you never even considered is waiting until you reach it.

So get started.

We all learn best when we have a need to learn. Necessity is not just the mother of invention - necessity is the required attractive force of education.

You know enough to start - but not enough to finish. Of course you will never know enough to finish unless you start.

Start your own business today.

Then learn how to make your business grow and prosper.

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Investment Information

Why have investment advice in a small business management journal?

I am sure many of you that read this journal do so for small business or start up business information.

For those of you that do invest in the stock market I would like to introduce you to Speculation Rules!

This site has good depth in investment information.

Always do your research - and buy the books - before you make the investment. It is amazing how many folks will risk very large sums of money but are too cheap to pay twenty dollars for a book.

Looking at Speculation Rules! may save you a bunch - and it costs you nothing.

What you might want to do is read one post, How Wall Street Works, and see if that short post inspires you to read more.

If you do invest I will provide the primary rule of speculation:

No one cares more about your money than you do - unless they plan on stealing your money.

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To Succeed -- Study Successful People

I have never really listened to Anthony Robbins.

The few times I have heard him in passing it was as if he was talking to someone else. I remember him saying something like "it is the things you do consistently that will determine your success."

I have never done anything consistently - the advice didn't fit me.

At Bastiat Free University we have a master's program aimed at studying what formed successful people. These courses are created by successful doers themselves.

I have a quote from Anthony Robbins that can give you some insight into his formation as a success. After reading this quote I may contact him about creating his own BFU master's course

Determination - particularly combined with personal goals - is part of almost every continually successful winner.

I subscribe to a free daily inspirational quote service and they provided the following Anthony Robbins quote:

"Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards.

When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thing was changing what I demanded of myself.

I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming." - Anthony Robbins

Now that is worth thinking about.

Allan