Alpha TM: Build your assets

Personal Finance: Focus on Planning

alphatool — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:14:57 +0000

I DO NOT use Mint and I probably will never use it. It is probably just me that hates sweating myself on dollars and cents. I simply don’t care where I spend on things as long as I know I am right on track with my financial goals.

The 2 major reasons are as follows:

1. Personal Finance should focus on Planning and not micro-managment.

Saving every nickel is not going to make you retire early or live a comfortable living. Thinking for the future will. Knowing where you stand financially 10 years from now will. Why do you want to sweat your precious time tracking your expenses on a daily basis?

2. There is an individual “utility” with money.

If buying shoes makes you happy, why do you have to limit yourself to the “expert recommended” monthly expenses?

Coming to the conclusion, I would rather spend serious time planning out my life and getting to know what should I do to achieve those goals other than balancing my checkbooks and tracking where my money went. Time is money. Focus on what is important in life and stop micro-managing.

Even if one day I have to cut cost to make ends meet, it will very obvious to know where I should start. Just take a look around you and you will know what to do.

Do you REALLY need something like Mint to do that ?

5 things you must do for self-promotion

alphatool — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:06:12 +0000

No matter what you do, you have to be good at and most importantly. Let other people know about your great work. I have compiled a list of 10 things you must do for self-promotion: let others know what you do, share your thoughts and expand your network.

1. LinkedIn Page:

Every professional should have a well written LinkedIn Pgae. Be sure to highlight what you do and what you want. I am not sure how many people use LinkedIn for communication but I do believe LinkedIn is a great way to follow up contacts you made at network sessions.

2. Twitter:

Twitter is probably the best channel to promote your progress and start a dialog. Bloggers use Twitter to promote their new posts. Designers use Twitter to promote their new designs. Friends use Twitter to share thoughts and links they like. However, make sure you have a clear purpose for twitter as nobody wants to be flooded with your twitter status.

3. Join Professional Network:

Make sure you are in one of your professional networks. If you are a Marketer, join AMA or other related organization. If you are a researcher, join a research community or participate in the forums,etc.

4. Join Local government agencies, be it commercial bureau,etc:

In one of my friend, Junde’s post about “9 tips for the China Expat Go-gette r“, he mentioned about volunteering for your government’s efforts. It proved to be very effective in getting recognized and it sure is the shortcut in getting to know people influential .

5. Do community work and help out your friends/family:

Make sure you can contribute skills in one way or another to the community you are living in. It feels great of being able to help people around you and they, in turn, will be grateful and love you in return.

I will stop at here and you can add your tips/thoughts below.

email_A2: the power of “+”

alphatool — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:54:09 +0000

Are you tired of getting spam emails about deals,etc? Most of the times you probably have no idea how they got your email address. Even if you unsubscribed through the link, sometimes those annoying emails still pop up.

Is there a way to end the madness? ABSOLUTELY YES.

The trick is simple: Create a filter in your system for emails like “user+spam@gmail.com”.

The magic of “+”

When you use “user+spam@gmail.com”, it will send to “user@gmail.com” regardless of what is after the “+”. As a result, you can filter all the emails according to categories and customize those with actions you want: ” Archive”, “Lable”, ” Delete”,etc

This is a great way to organize things and customize what you want to receive and how you want to deal with it.

Ideas for Personal Usage:

In the future, you can sign up for different service using emails like “user+banking@gmail.com”,”user+Travel@gmail.com”. All the emails that comes from those channels will be categorized by the rules you specified.

Ideas for Organizations: A great way to save money and be productive

Managers can create emails for different projects such as “user+Project1@gmail.com” and let your colleagues send emails to that address when it is regarding “Project1″. Once the filter is set up, all the emails sent to “user+Project1@gmail.com” will be labelled .

Email_A1: Best Manager’s Inbox

alphatool — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:40:44 +0000

While I was at Philadelphia, our Speaker Eric Smith introduced us to David Allen’s Book,” Getting things done.” After reading the book, I started implementing the “Inbox Zero” method. It has been EXTREMELY useful for me and it has saved me so much time in keeping track of things. Below is a simple tutorial that will guide you in setting it up and using it.

How to set up your Gmail inbox properly: (if you are a Gmail user, you will use the “label” and “star”. For Outlook and other email services, please use the respective “Folder” or “Alert” settings instead)

1. Use “Labels” to represent “Project” Names: for example, if you are an Conference Organizer, you can use the “labels” to represent each event you are organizing, such as “Social Media Summit 2009″.

2. Use “Stars” to represent “Actions Needed”: In gmail, you can use the “starred” colors to indicate the actions. I share mine below and you can choose yours. ( you can turn on the “starred” messages from “Lab” on the top right)

1) Blue Star: ” Important Information” : I use it to indicate import files/conversation like client contract,etc

2) Green Ticker: “Milestone Completed or problem solved”: this marks receivables being accomplished so that I know what has being done over the timeline and problems that have been settled

3) Red Alert: “Problems need to be fixed”: This highlights the problems to be solved or important things to keep in mind.

4) Yellow Star: “Action Items”: this indicates stuff that I have to do myself later

5) Blue Information: “Delegate Items”: Needs to follow up and check in

The advantage of this system is as follows:

1. it provides a clear overview. Just by looking at the inbox, I know exactly what projects I am working on, what are the status of each project (milestone being completed, problems incurred and actions items)

2. It highlights the important things a user cares about. Important files will remain highlighted even in the “Archive” , things left to be done, things that have been done,etc

The disadvantage of the system is mainly the time you took to get used to it. So far, by using only four stars, it is very manageable and I highlight recommend my system.

After the system being set-up, you will treat each email you received as the David Allen suggested. Here I provide a simple decision tree as an example (suppose I work as an Account Manager for XYZ, a marketing firm)

P.S. If you have some to share, please feel free to drop me an email or comment below with your suggestions / questions. :-)

Happy “Getting things done”.