We explored the merits of changing advisors when you move to another city. Let’s look at something more extreme: buying life insurance from an advisor in another province. That’s possible since licencing is province.
Why Would An Advisor Bother?
The advisor might live in a place where the opportunities seem limited. Acres of Diamonds (speech or book) tells us about a traveller seeking riches who finds them after returning home. Why would an advisor who knows the story look for clients far away?
The advisor might be marketing across provincial borders. For instance, an advisor who targets prospects at national conferences meets people from across the country. When a prospect shows interest, it’s difficult to turn away. Getting licenced where the prospect lives is an easy solution.
Mystique
Distance intrigues us. I got invited to a local event with a cross-border speaker — even though experts live locally.
An advisor from afar may have different perspectives and make suggestions that look more innovative. This assumes there aren’t making blunders because they aren’t familiar with valid reasons for differences (e.g., in tax laws).
Moving
You might have moved to another province. If you’re a big client, your insurance advisor might get licenced where you now live to sell additional coverage to you and your new connections.
If your advisor visits, expect them to see other people to spread the costs over more opportunities.
Limited Selection
The more experienced advisors tend to live in larger cities. If you live in a small place, you might not get the optimal advice or service. If you’re forced to look outside, an advisor from another province may seem like a reasonable choice.
The Costs
When dealing with a distant advisor, will you get the same level of service you get locally? It’s tough to know. Technology makes staying in touch easier and you probably don’t have many in person meetings with a local advisor either.
An advisor who does business elsewhere incurs higher costs (airfare, food accommodation). What do they do to compensate?
sell products with higher margins?
sell larger amounts of coverage?
place more implied pressure on you to buy now?
There’s also the personal costs. When you travel on business, are you more productive than at your normal office? What about the advisor’s family? They pay a high price too since they aren’t together as much. The extra revenue helps offset the pain and missed school performances. That revenue comes from you.
Foreman says these jobs are going, boys
and they ain’t coming back
--- Bruce Springsteen, My Hometown
While a US engineer earns $70,000, similar talent costs $7,000 in India and $5,000 in China. That’s too big a differential to ignore in today’s ultracompetitive world. IBM alone hires some 3,000 engineers per month in India. This cheaper labour saves companies in countries like Canada about 20% of their IT costs and earns nice returns for the integrators. You won’t be quite as happy if you’re a displaced engineer.
Sir Terence Matthews gave sobering messages at CALU 2010 today in his presentation ACT or Be Acted Upon. Terry is a low-key Canadian billionaire who does business around the world. He doesn’t golf but is hosting the 2010 Ryder Cup. Of his 80 ventures, he has 75 successes.
He gave a simple prescription for the conundrum of low cost foreign labour.
A Solution
Terry does not advocate anti-competitive measures. With businesses around the globe, he and his clients benefit from lower costs.
Google uses US engineers but remains competitive. How? Because of innovation and being first. Other companies can do the same.
Terry hires entrepreneurial graduates for start-up companies. Since they don’t have spouses or children, they can and do work long hours seven days a week for $25,000 a year. Why? The graduates learn valuable business skills and get partial ownership in the new venture in a year.
Since new companies have trouble getting clients, Terry pairs them with his established companies like Mitel for instant credibility. The clients are approached before the work starts. Rather than using the build-it-and-they-will-come model, Terry prefers to sell first and build second.
There’s hope for the innovative and swift. There’s also hope if you do work that must be done locally. How would you outsource a haircut?
You can't risk forgetting tasks. Maybe you’re a student back in school or a business wrapping up your fiscal year. Either way, you need a system to remember.
RTM feels friendly. You almost feel like organizing. The clean interface deceives you with its hidden power but never feels intimidating. You can even use RTM offline with Google Gears and synchronize when you’re back online. You can add tasks by email, voice (using Jott or Dial2Do), or your iGoogle homepage. You have access via your mobile phone. Some features are available only in the Pro version which costs a modest $25 US/year --- peanuts for you but bananas for mascot Bob T Monkey.
So why switch?
Subtasks In real life, a task may have several steps or subtasks.
Say you want to brush your teeth but can't. You ran out of toothpaste because you didn't use an organizer before. You first need to buy toothpaste. Maybe you floss before brushing. Here's your task list
Brush teeth
a. buy toothpaste
b. floss
Get the idea? A simple sequential hierarchy helps.
RTM users have asked for subtasks since 2005. Nothing has been done and there's no workaround. Other organizers have subtasks, which puts RTM at a competitive disadvantage, but nothing was done last year.
If you’ve ever managed a project, you know there are tasks within tasks within tasks. For a big project, you might use Microsoft Project, but that’s excessive for most of us.
Enter Toodledo What a weird name. It’s easy to say but hard to read and type toodledo.com. Your eye sees “too”, “led” and “do” but tooledo isn’t the name. Maybe the creators were being clever and converted “to do” into “toodle do”?
Get past the name and you’re confronted with a cluttered, ugly interface. It looks like the work of engineers rather than designers. Yet there isn’t a handy search box to help you find tasks easily. Functionality over elegance.
But what functionality! Toodledo has subtasks if you upgrade to Pro for just $14.95 US/year. Here's their comparison of To Do lists.
Toodledo has a timer which helps you track time painlessly. You may have allocated 30 minutes for something and find that your estimate was grossly off. This sytem lets you see how much time you really spent. You can't access tasks offline, but there's a workaround: you can print your tasks as a booklet by folding a normal page in a clever way. You can create goal chains, a technique Jerry Seinfield uses to keep writing jokes.
Which Suits You?
You can use most features of web-based task managers for free. This helps you pick the right one for you. Do you prefer Remember The Milk, Toodledo or something else?
There's more to life than increasing its speed. --- Mahatma Gandhi
We don't notice slow change until we step back. Who has time for that? James Gleick, author of Faster: The Acceleration Of Just About Everything. Example after example, shows how our lives have been speeding up.
eating (fast food on the run or home delivery)
home cooking (pre-shredded cheese, pre-sliced mushrooms)
video (faster edits, digital editing)
mail (letters to couriers to email)
Internet (from dialup to always-on high speed)
search (from libraries to realtime with Twitter)
coffee (from brewing a cup to buying a cup from a drive-thru)
Quicker often means more expensive. We spend time to earn money. Then we spend money to save time. To save more time, we work more hours to earn more money. Circular. Earlier, we looked at how much we really earn, when we consider how much of our lives we pay. Maybe we got the coffee for the caffeine that keeps us going when our bodies shout STOP!
What Time Matters?
We look at time in different ways. Think of the airport. You can arrive early to reduce the risk of missing your flight. Or you can minimize wasted time at the airport by rushing to get on the plane mere moments before the doors close. What if you're an early bird travelling with a last minuter?
Too Fast Already
Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac. --- George Carlin
Some things are already faster than they need to be. You can drive many vehicles well above the speed limits. Most times, traffic and road conditions limit your speed. The Porsche goes at the same pace as a Yaris. Adding more horsepower has little practical benefit (though a larger vehicle is generally safer)
Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.
--- Starman (1984), observing how we drive
So many factors affect travel time. I've decided to enjoy the journey, which is pleasant because I listen to audiobooks. Delays mean more time to enjoy. Pedestrian walking signals now have countdown timers. When a few seconds remain, rather than racing through the yellow, I slow down to stop.
Computers used to be compared by chip speed. As netbooks show, weight matters more than waiting. We can be happy with slower but lighter. Design also matters.
Faster = More Wastage
WWW? Nice toy, but what a waste of time --- Bill Gates
Do you remember the days of dot matrix printers? Speed was measured in characters per second. Now we look at pages per minute. I laser printed 48 pages (four 12-page proposals) and accidentally dropped them on the floor. They scattered. I should have re-sorted them but time was limited. I tossed the jumble into the recycling bin and reprinted. The time saved vanished in traffic on the way home.
Multitasking
We're capable of doing more than one thing at a time. So we do. For example:
eating and talking
watching a movie and snacking
listening to a teacher and taking notes
driving and listening to the radio
walking and talking on the phone
jogging and listening to your iPod
cycling on an exercise bike while reading a magazine or watching tv
Sometimes we do too much: driving + listening to the radio + talking on the phone + reading billboards + watching people.
Slowing Down
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. --- William Penn
We kill the time we struggle to save.
You'll see lines at Tim Hortons and Starbucks. Video games consume oodles of time. So does email, instant messaging, talking on your phone, web surfing, gardening, golfing, playing bridge, reading, ...
Lily Tomlin says that if even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat. Lovely. The book Faster makes you much more aware of time. At first, the audiobook (who has time to read?) seems too slow. This leaves too much time to ponder. Hurry up! You soon realize that time spent reflecting isn't time wasted --- a valuable lesson as the rats race around us.
I used to like to go to work, but they shut it down. I got a right to go to work, but there's no work here to be found. Yes and they say were gonna have to pay what's owed. We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed. --- Dire Straits, Telegraph Road
This month, four acquaintances lost their jobs. Each worked at a different company. Two found better positions. The other two are looking and I wish them well.
We visited a popcorn farm last week. Frankly, there's not much to see, but we did stock up on our favourite snack. We learned three lessons that help nonfarmers. Even nongardeners.
you can't control the weather
work while you wait
show you care
You Can't Control the Weather
There will be a rain dance Friday night, weather permitting. --- George Carlin
Many factors affect farmers: rainfall, sunshine, temperature, pests, the price of seed, the availability of fertilizer, the skills of labour, equipment breakdowns, injuries, market demand, competition.
While weather is certainly a concern, there is little the farmer can do about it. However, the farmer can take steps like having an irrigation system to deal with years of lower-than-expected rainfall. Or build a greenhouse, depending on the crop.
In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about our large circle of concern and our smaller circle of influence. We may worry about the economy, the environment, corporate governance, and terrorism. We probably can't do much about those concerns. Instead, we must focus on what we can change --- including ourselves.
Work While You Wait
Too often, man handles life as he does the bad weather. He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop. --- Alfred Polgar
Crops grow at their own pace. Growth takes time and a favorable environment. We work now but must wait to see the results and hope for the right outcome. There's no point playing the blame game (" If only management had/hadn't done that ..."). There's no point cramming either. You can't reap tomorrow what you sow today.
There's no point sitting idly either. While waiting for the crops, we can take care of the weeds. We can work on the weaknesses in our strengths. Seth Godin suggests we use slack time to
become an expert by learning something (can include charitable work)
earn a following and reputation through social networks (e.g., I use LinkedIn and now Twitter)
Show You Care
Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. --- Theodore Roosevelt
You'll quit farming if your heart isn't in your work. Negative sentiments show in poor crops. We've all known people who see work as a burden, who spread their discontent like weeds, who cut corners. Who don't care. Who lighten the atmosphere when they leave.
Even if we work in the virtual world or in tall climate-controlled office towers on what was once farmland, nature reminds us that much lies beyond our control. Yet we persevere. We survive. We change. We thrive. Life finds a way. We find a way.
If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.--- George Carlin
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?--- Stephen Wright
In the digital world, we can collect more and more without taking up much physical space.
We collect so much stuff we can digitize. Where do we put it? On ever-larger hard disks. How do we find items? With desktop search tools like Google Desktop Search. Here's the big question: how do we organize the data in ways with meaning to us.
Example Say you saw or read The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by Irish writer John Boyne and want to store these related items
Where do you put them on your computer? Under the author? Under categories (book review under Books, movie links under Movie)? Whatever you decide, will you remember? Will you be consistent?
Suppose you see a connection between Striped Pyjamas and
The Diary of Anne Frank (film or book), since both show a child's perspective from World War II
You'll probably find other interesting items along the way. The film Australia can connect to Rabbit-Proof Fence (also deals with children forcibly taken away in that country), which connects to Peter Gabriel, who composed the soundtrack. In turn, Peter can be connected to the musical group Genesis to which he belonged or to Witness which targets human rights violations.
You quickly end up with an messy, scattered collection.
We see different connections. We want to find items we saw earlier, but can't easily find again. What can we do?
PersonalBrain 5 Imagine searching for years for something that might not exist. Then finding it. That's PersonalBrain, a hierarchy-free database. You put data (called "thoughts") anywhere you want and create links to show the relationships with other thoughts. You can add or change links later. You can search too. Your collection (called a "brain") can include photos and other attachments.
I started testing version 4.5, then became a beta tester for v5 which has now been released. Version 5 is definitely better. I especially like the easier way items can be tagged.
Benefits You get peace of mind when you know you can find what you want when you want. I like the following
fast and easy to use (after watching an online tutorial)
copying web pages (besides saving the link, I paste the page content and then highlight selected lines for easy future reference even if the source webpage disappears)
portable: my files were on a memory stick but are now on an encrypted external hard drive which I move among computers (you install PersonalBrain on the portable device)
you can move files into your "brain"
uses the same file structure as your operating system, which allows you to use other search tools like Google Desktop Search
ongoing updates (every few weeks)
excellent online tutorials and live webinars
multiple uses: file organization, brainstorming or mindmapping, capturing web snippets, client relationship management
There's lots more that I've yet to explore. I've got several "brains": general, contacts, projects and writing. PersonalBrain makes a great repository for quotations but I put mine online at Spark Insight so you can use them too.
The Main Drawback These days, you can find many powerful applications that are free or low cost. PersonalBrain comes in three editions
Free ($0): may work well for simple needs
Core ($150 US): the version most users would likely want
Pro ($250 US): even lets you publish your "brains" online
You can only buy online from the company and they don't have sales. Luckily, you can test-drive the Pro version for free. After 30 days, you're downgraded to the Free level. You don't lose anything you've done, but are restricted in what you can do. I got hooked fast and bought Pro.
Alternatives I experimented with other tools
Evernote: interesting online tool but raises concerns about confidentiality, speed and access through corporate firewalls
Clipmarks: online tool captures web snippets (too limited)
storing files in Windows folders and locating items with desktop searches (too hierarchical)
Summary PersonalBrain is a weird name. Try using it in a sentence and see if anyone can understand you. Visual Brain or Virtual Brain are more descriptive. There's plenty more to explore. You know how most computer-based presentations follow a linear pattern? Well, PersonalBrain lets you select relevant material instantly. Think of the impact.
What a way to organize data into information. As you add more and create links, you'll see patterns you missed before and gain wisdom. Highly recommended.
We explored the merits of changing advisors when you move to another city. Let’s look at something more extreme: buying life insurance from an advisor in another province. That’s possible since licencing is province.
(amazon.ca)
