I was playing around on a new social news site to scope out what the hubbub was about bub! <beavisVoice>hmhmhmhm</beavisVoice>. I notices a pretty impressive influencer answered one of the others users question on how to go from one to 100k.
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You may be noticing all the GTD stuff I am posting. I have been a convert for years. Like any other great religion, those that practice backslide from time to time. I tend to start the year off right and slowly slip into an unorganized mess. So I always refresh by reading the book in January. I refresh twice a year to just get back on the program.
If you have not read the book Getting Things Done, just do it. If you hate books buy the audio book. I think the book though is a must. It really does reduce stress when implemented. If you are a busy professional, especially if you work as a knowledge worker. Your brain is always churning, juggling just so you don’t drop that idea or thing to do. This book helps you build a trusted system to store information. Then gives you a process to handle the information. Once your brain knows the system is trusted you tend to not fret or think about the items you are not actively needing in this moment.
I have been reading Chris’s site for about a year now. I found his book on living a life of non-conformity while researching write a personal manifesto. His 29 page book on world domination got me wanting more.
His book on living a life of non-conformity is one of the few books I have purchased due to reading a free ebook. Once I started reading it, much of what he said is what I tell many of my clients when I coach or mentor them. Here it is in a nutshell;
I have started telling clients to read it and execute on the steps within the pages of his fine book The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World
Take some time this week and read the free book or buy and read the life of non-conformity. It isn’t filled with a bunch of garbage, it has real nuggets of simple wisdom formulated in an intriguing easy to read manner.
I have an account with First Premier. Today when I was trying to make a payment on one of my accounts I started getting horrible error exception messages.
Here is an example.
System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a receive. —> System.IO.IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host. —> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host
at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.Receive(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size, SocketFlags socketFlags)
at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
— End of inner exception stack trace —
at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
at System.Net.PooledStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
at System.Net.Connection.SyncRead(HttpWebRequest request, Boolean userRetrievedStream, Boolean probeRead)
— End of inner exception stack trace —
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.WebClientProtocol.GetWebResponse(WebRequest request)
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.HttpWebClientProtocol.GetWebResponse(WebRequest request)
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters)
at _app.cardinfoservicesProxy.GetNextPostingDateWithDate(BaseInputPacket oInputPacket) in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\FirstPremierOnlineServiceFactory\BridgeAndProxyCode.VB:line 582
at _app.cardinfoservicesBridge.GetNextPostingDateWithDate(BaseInputPacket oInputPacket) in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\FirstPremierOnlineServiceFactory\BridgeAndProxyCode.VB:line 1379
Since I currently manage and have worked in web application security in the past, i know this is not good. LOL I now know their directory structure. I know they are calling a webservice when I click to make a payment and when I try to access additional functionality that I got a similar message with. I know since they have not set their machine.config attribute to retail=true there is at least one exploit their server is vulnerable to. That with the fact I have a direct path for their directory structure….
Now I wanted to send an email to First Premier, but guess what? They only have phone numbers in their help section. I know that is a 20 minute wait. I just wanted to send a quick note saying I was attempting to do “y” and I got these errors, something is not right here. I am assuming I am one of a few hundred customers today with this issue. This issue puts their company at risk, my identity at risk and they may not know they have this exposure?
Yes if you make it easy for me to connect with you, which means your customer WILL connect with you.
Why would you not want that? Why would you not want to leverage me as someone that will say, hey you are having an issue. Thanks I love your service, help I am having this problem.
If you do not make it easy to interact with me, then that means I will ONLY interact with you when my patience has hit a boiling point. It also means I will probably as in the place of First Premier, just move on down the road. You then have lost a customer, you don’t know why. You can keep on churnings as you always have, yet wonder why your customer is growing while you are receding. maybe they have an email address on their website, listen to tweets, and engage in social media to interact with their customers.
Maybe they have a clue. Content is no longer king in a Web 2.0 world. Interaction is king. Engage me where I am at, and may it easy for me to engage you anyway I choose. This will allow you to leverage customers as assets beyond paying their bills, but making them a part of your organization looking out for you in the mean streets of the internet. LOL
Create a folder named @actions You use the “@” character so your GTD folders will always show at the top of your folders list.
Then create a mail rule with these settings
Then when you need to record an action to do, just send yourself an email from any computer or device with the subject starting with @action. This will place that item in your folder. In the class for GTD that was when I learned the idea of creating a “@” folder for each GTD tickler folder type. If you want to get your inbox to zero (clear) you should at least create a @reference folder too. This is where you will store emails that you want to save. It is also a good idea to create a folder for each team member on your team and each project you are working on in your @reference folder. This way you can easier filter if you want to read team or project reference items. You can also delete the folder when you are no longer needed on that project.
