I don't care what people say but being optimistic at all times is the worst thing you can be. If you are optimistic at all times then you are in a state of fully daydreaming. In your mind the underdog always wins; web site traffic pours like thunderstorm; money grows on trees; and stock market always goes up and so on...

At the same time being Pessimistic at all times is equally worse. In your mind you have the worst luck; you can never win; there are too many other people better than you; everything you try to do the opposite happens. People who are pessimistic at all times tend to not do anything at all because they say to themselves "if i'm going to fail then why bother trying!" and my answer is always "but if you don't try, you never know!".

Here is where the balance comes in, both optimists and pessimists are only right about half of the things and in the real business world they fully compliment one another. since examples are the best way to convey a message here are a few of them:
 

1)

OPTIMIST would say:
"We have a web 2.0 idea and when we make it and launch it, within 1 year we'll be like google"

PESSIMIST Would say
"We can never beat or match google so why bother"

BALANCE of the two results:
"It's hard to beat google, but we still have a chance to make good grounds, and what if we never get the traffic we need to make decent money so what do we have to do? lets plan this to the smallest detail"
 

2)

OPTIMIST would say:
"We have an idea and millions of people would want it"

PESSIMIST Would say
"it's a stupid idea because nobody would want it"

BALANCE of the two results:
"What would make a million people want it? and what do we need to consider if nobody wants it? Either way lets put our target getting a 1,000 customers first then we can worry about the next 10,000 and the next 100,000 and eventual million target"

What is the BALANCE?

Balance allows you to see things in perspective, like seeing both sides of the coin, it helps you plan for the best and the worst. Knowing about the worst things allows you to be prepared in case they happen, also knowing there even worse things that could happen also gives you enough motivation to be optimistic about even the little gains. Balance allows you appreciate you gains, your efforts and your life. It's helps you avoid pitfalls and makes every mistake a step closer the ultimate success.
 

So go ahead and be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. It's only good for you!

Ever wonder what this world would be like if it was all peaceful, and perfect. No wars, no chaos, no tension and no racism. I personally would never want to live in that world. It's boring, it's static, nothing interesting ever happens.

To me any type of chaos is an opportunity where we can exceed the beyond traditions and challenge the status quo. With chaos comes innovation, solutions and different wants and needs. People are no longer in the same level, they each live for a different purpose with a different perspective on life. In business and commerce there is an entire philosophy around Chaos Theory where financiers leverage off other's misfortune. Now i ask you "can you feel the chaos? are you going to do something about it?

Every meeting i go to, every pitch i hear, and every person i meet talking about their dreams of making it big online, i constantly ask myself, there are so many opportunities out there yet why are people stuck on the same type of ideas? why is it that they cannot see the silver lining with chaos? that's where the gold is!!

Internet is a big mess, nobody can organize it; it's not user friendly; we're still stuck on the stone age HTML output; as soon as one site becomes a little popular all of a sudden 100 others just like it pop out of every corner you can imagine; we read tons of news sites yet don't know who is telling the truth or what side they are on; trendy ideas come and go but the ones that make it mainstream are probably the crappiest of them all; and last but not least we've given the power of influence to a bunch of people who can't decide what clothes to wear ( Arrington, Scoble, Zukerberg, Rose,...) let alone tell us what we should follow or do on Internet. How we got here doesn't really matter, where are we going next is the question you should be asking your self.

The opportunities are all around you, find a chaotic space and make it even more chaotic this seems to be the secret to making a very popular website.

But seriously, find a problem and give it your 2 cents trying to fix it. Do NOT go after ideas that everybody else is also thinking about, no, just find a simple and easy idea and develop it, launch it and promote it. If one idea didn't work then try another one, you might go through 10, 15, 50 or 100 ideas before one really blows up, so keep trying to solve problems. Don't try to make money, money should always be just a side effect.

Solve people's problems first and they will happily give you all the money you can fit into your pockets!

This week was a crazy one to say the leat. I found out that i've been black listed on twitter because i have too many friends and following even more people which is not ok by a small group of unknown geeks. What's even crazier is the fact that i've become even more popular because i disliked the spam label the black listing people gave me so i went on a ranting. I've been receiving twitter messages, private messages, emails and etc... reacting to my "rantings"

So here i am at a cross road. till now i've been writing about some intelligent and informative articles in which a lot thinking and research goes into and while the readership is growing at a slow pace but the reaction is simply none existent. On the other hand i start talking my heart out by rating about a silly twitter issue and i get not only a lot readership but also a great deal conversation and reaction.

My dilema is i wanted to turn this site into a very smart and resourceful site, but i also wanted to grow the traffic to beyond 100k hits per month by end of July.

I'm going to do some deep thinking this weekend. I have to figure out a way to do both. I simply do not want to lose the respect of the people who have been following me to date and would like to keep them around for many years to come.

You know the Cliche "Time is Money", now a days seconds are even more money. Regardless of who you are or where live there is only 24 hours per day. The art of time is about putting every hour, minute and second into productive work. So lets do it...

Due to Health lets give our bodies a 5 hour sleep period. That's right 5 hours, you are young and can do this, unless you're not then you can sleep for 6-7 hours max. The point here is that sleep is a good thing, it refreshes your body and with no activity your brain power can rest. It is important to have a great sleep while you sleep because of have i have in store for you.

So we are left with only 19 hours now, so much for 24 hours of productivity! Lets make this 19 hours really work for you. Before you jump into filling up you daily schedule with lots of tasks lets take a step backwards. Look back to the past week or so, what are the most important things you need to for the FUTURE. If you have immediate tasks and responsibilities coming up then they take the higher priority so make a list of them. Now, try to come up with a LONG list of everything you think you should be doing for today. A long list is a very detailed list in case you didn't know. Divide each task into smaller elements, for example, if you are going to write a blog post then dividing it into little tasks mean counting research, inspiration, draft write up, image creation, factualization, link baiting, to finalizing draft and publishing it. Knowing the little details allow you to dedicate a certain amount of time to each task this way if you thought writing a post would only take an hour would not end costing you 2 hours on researching alone. Keep doing this for all the tasks you have to do for the day.

Listing all the stuff in your time sheet is not enough, you have to actually stick to it and perform each of them to the second, so if you assigned yourself with 20 minutes of research as soon as your 20 minutes are up stop the research and move on to the next task. Don't worry if your research sucks, you don't expect to become extremely efficient in just one day did you???

Practice makes perfect! The first a few days are going to be rough but after that your brain and positive energy adjust themselves to your new routine. The trick is not to go back to the old you, it's like quitting smoking for 2 days but picking it up again, you won't live cancer free because of those 2 days.

When your level of efficiency picks up you'll realize that before you were spending 2 hours on research like tasks that were getting you no where to now that you can do resulting research in just 15 minutes. Now just imagine with your new level of efficiency if you had 2 hours to do tasks you normally do in 15 minutes, imagine the glorious results. This is actually how quality and innovation happens. You can apply this to almost any task you can imagine. I personally even analyze my driving, shopping, online surfing, books and magazine readings and everything else you can imagine.

I only started to really care about my time since mid last year and it has done wonders for me in terms of my performance at work, my side projects and running multiple sites and managing couple of web projects. Without managing my time i would have never been able to take care of 2 projects let alone the things i do now!

Time Management is one of those important elements that contribute to any type of success. Manage your time effectively and efficiently and you'll be managing a huge bank account!!!

here are some great resources for managing time that would help you get going:

BOOK - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

BOOK - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

BOOK - Time Management for the Creative Person

SITE - Mind Tools - Time Management

ESSAY - First Things First  < Very important Essay

SITE -  Time Scheduling and Time Management for dyslexic students

Software - ToDoList  or something similar

It is obvious that business is about managing money. You'd be surprised to know that majority of Online Businesses, web developers, designers, advertisers and bloggers cannot manage money. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why web 2.0 sites go after funding the VC firms look into management and want to see a manager with at least MBA running things.

Managing money is about what you can, cannot and should not buy. Just because you have money doesn't mean that you should spend right away. Sometimes the biggest mistake a starup makes revolves around spending money at the wrong time towards the wrong thing.

Managing Money is about being smart and thoughtful with money, here are a few ways to be smarter with money

Expenses

No matter who you are or what you do you've got expenses whether you like it or not. Being smart with money would allow you to analyze your expenses, take out the unnecessary ones or bargain for better deals. For example, there are hundreds of options for having a cell phone plan, but researching a little about you talking habits allows you select the most appropriate plan that over time saves you money. You can apply this to cars payments, office lease, Internet and tv bills, computers equipment, starbucks coffee, lunch and dinner.

Employees

If you are working on your own then you are your own employee and not your own boss. If you are in the online business and you're making money then the chances are that there multiple employees working in that company. Most startups, as soon as they come in contact with money they go crazy with hiring thinking that the same money they're making this is going to continue to next year and year after that. Not so fast, in the online work you can be on top one months and at the bottom by years end. Never estimate or speculate when it comes to online. Keep you team small, and hold on tight to your money.

Hosting

Hosting can be very cheap or very expensive, but did you know that it doesn't matter what kind of hosting you start with for as long as it is flexible enough to grow as you grow. If you have a blog, or thinking of starting one, think for a second what is your blog going to be, if it's a hobby blog then a cheap shared hosting with $5-10/month hosting is good enough, but if you intend to really promote the site and make a bit of income on the side while holding your day job then stay away from shared hosting and go with a small Virtual Server for $30-50/month and as the traffic to your site grow so can your server resources this way you don't have to spend more that you need.

I know a few startups that before they even had a decent application on their hand they were going around shopping for servers and co-location options. As a startup stick with small, go with a small Virtual Server, this way if you hit big you can easily upgrade to fully dedicated servers and multi server with load balancing options but don't blow the money you don't have right from the get go, what if you're doesn't pick up at all, all that money wasted!!!

Marketing

Every business, website or blogs needs to be marketed otherwise how would people find out about it. But did you know that in this day and age the most effective marketing doesn't actually cost a penny? all it costs it time! in the next article i will be talking a great deal about this.