To meet that need, I created the Show User Level Content plugin. This plugin is quite simple. If you want to make a certain part of your content accessible only to users of a specific user level, enclose them with the tag [hide <level>] where <level> is the user level. End the section you want to hide with the tag [/hide]. For example, [hide 2]Only show this content to users of level 2 or higher[/hide] will show the encapsulated content to users of level 2 or higher.

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I’m going to start a new activity for this blog: brief synopses of books I’ve read or reading — some on topics relevant to the 4HWW and some on topics relevant to my MBA program. It will consist simply of the title of the book, a one paragraph summary of the main ideas, and three bullets of the most important take-aways. I figure more can be said and remembered about an important book that way than in any other lengthy discourse.

Book: Competing for the Future

Author: Gary Hamel, C.K. Prahalad

In a nutshell: A strategy for staying successful in highly competitive industries is to periodically reinvent yourself and continuously challenge your own time-proven successes (”you can’t intercept the future by repeating the past”). This books helps readers understand the full scope of evaluating the market and the company and strategies for reinventing while reducing risk.

Top Three Take-aways / Unique Insights:

• Definition of a “profit engine”:
  • Defining and understanding the served market
  • Defining and understanding the value proposition for that market
  • Determining the margin and value-added structure for services/products to the market
  • Configuration of skills and assets to yield the margins
  • Configuration of administrative and supporting systems to support continued yield

• Decomposing the Profit Engine into 4 parts, with 4 questions to be answered each
  • The Concept of the Served Market
    • What is the basic value proposition?
    • How is the market segmented?
    • What kind of customers are served?
    • Where are the customers?
    • (What customers and needs aren’t you serving?)
  • Revenue and Margin Structure Definition
    • Where in the business system do you take profit?
    • Where do the margins come from?
    • What determines the size of the margins?
    • What are the major cost and price drivers?
    • (Could profits be extracted at a different point in the supply chain?)
  • Configuration of Skills and Assets
    • What do you believe you know how to do well?
    • What physical infrastructure supports the business?
    • What kind of skills predominate in the company?
    • What is the trajectory of development spending?
    • (Might customer needs be served better by an alternate configuration of skills/assets?)
  • Flexibility and Adaptiveness
    • How alert are you to new value delivery models?
    • How easily can investment programs be reoriented?
    • How easily can infrastructure be reconfigured?
    • Which constituencies would most resist change (inside and outside the company)
    • (What is the vulnerability to market changing factors?)
• The best way to remain competitive is to be the first (or one of the first) to conceive of alternate value-delivery models, even if that means jeopardizing existing, legacy business models and profit engines. Be your own toughest competitor and challenge all your assumptions, even if in the short-term it adds more risk.

If you only had to read 10 pages: Pages 67-72

Click to Buy the Book

Like many of you, I struggle to get things done on time that I really need to get done. I get bogged down in the grunt work when I should be focusing on the bigger picture items. You know the drill, focus on the important but not urgent, but all the while the urgent things eat up your time. If you did a Time Audit, you’d find that much of the time is being taken up by short-term activities that can easily be reduced, eliminated, or outsourced. Yet they stay on your to-do list anyways.

Why is that? I believe it’s because of the psychology of delegation. Anyone who has been doing something for a while believes that they can do a task faster, better, and less expensively than a third party. And in many ways this is absolutely correct. I have found, through my own experience, that I can perform better in at least two out of the three criteria (faster, better, cheaper) than anyone else I can get to do the task. But that is NOT the point!

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Wow, I am deeply touched by the support by the readers of this blog. Well, onwards and forwards. I have put more thought into the outsourcing process and want to share more of my responsibilities and thoughts around Microsourcing as the approach to outsourcing.

In the meantime, I want to personally thank Billy Catherall for contributing to my Muse Fund. Any amount helps, and it provides the support needed to keep blogging for personal interest. If you’d like to ChipIn to help support this blog (and any amount is appreciated), please click on the ChipIn Widget (the nice-looking red one) on the right sidebar. Thanks!

Thanks, and let’s keep up the good work where Tim leaves off

When I first started blogging on the 4HWW topic, there were quite a few bloggers… but now it seems they have (mostly) all stopped blogging and their blogs are idle. What has happened? Has the bloom fell off the 4HWW flower? Have folks determined that the 4HWW is mostly hype, or have they had reasonable success and squeezed 50% of out of your schedule, as I have?

I don’t want to be a pessimist, but I want to reach out to the community, and especially to you 4HWW bloggers. What happened? Has anyone else seen any success with the concepts in the book? Do you want me to keep on journaling my experiences?

Comment and let me know if you’re alive!

Rather than summarize what I believe is an excellent post, I encourage you all to read it. And then think, how can this be applied to the 4HWW? Clearly, Tim Ferriss shares the opinion that nothing is truly urgent. And if it is, just outsource it.

I’ve gotten a number of harassing email messages and comments on this blog responding to my “eLance Sucks” post. My experiences are my experiences. I don’t have a bone to pick with eLance, but in my case, I simply am dissatisfied with the eLance experience and the way that eLance has treated me, a potential buyer.

Rude, obnoxious, and not appropriate comments on this blog are not appreciated if they can’t positively contribute to the discourse of trying to help folks make their 4HWW goals come true. If you are an eLancer and think my tiny little blog is impacting your business, then do the right thing and contact the eLance support department and have them reverse their ludicrous policies towards buyers.

eLance, if you are listening: if you want me back as a customer, turn on my account. I posted 5 jobs on your site. I got 2 responses. Both were incredibly under qualified. I found those job reqs on another site. But, now I can’t even return to your site because those 5 original job posts count against me. This is an insane policy.

Now, think before you respond. I am a real customer. These are real experiences. These are experiences shared by others. If you think I’m just a whiny person, then guess what, there are hundreds, maybe thousands more, like me. Think we are picky? Try looking for a job these days — the economy is tight. These aren’t the boom years anymore. Try listening to your customers and just maybe you’ll weather the storm.

I read a fantastic post by Jed @ the Newly Rich called “Our 4HWW Workflow, Part I“. Without stealing his thunder (and idea), I encourage you to take a look at the post that diagrams a ludicrously simple, but very effective way of looking at your tasks.

Here’s a quick thumbnail of the flow. Click on it to view it at the original post location:

Thanks, Jed!

Sorry for the pause in content. I’ve been working hard as well as I’ve embarked on my MADFUN exercises. Plus, I haven’t really had much to write about. Maybe I should write anyways?

In any case, thanks for the feedback I’ve gotten from you all on my eLance and Time Management posts. I hope they have helped. On the 4HWW front, I’m looking at writing and publicizing some eBooks as a passive income source. Has anyone else had any experience in successfully doing that? Ironically, if I come across some great techniques, I’ll publish them as an eBook so that you all can learn from me!

I often listen to NPR and other Public Radio stations. Do you? Doesn’t it annoy you when they have to interrupt their broadcasting to make an appeal to their audiences for donations and support?

Just like you, I find it annoying that those pledge drives interrupt the shows I like to listen to you, but at the same time, I understand why they do that. They have to somehow fund their activities, and since they don’t barrage you with advertisements, the pledge drive is the only way to make their financial ends meet. It’s actually good that they don’t rely heavily on advertisements as the non-public radio stations do, since that could also taint their independent perspective.

Like public radio stations, I write in this blog mostly for my amusement and for the information and pleasure of those who read it. While I do have many advertisements placed throughout the site, the truth is that they really don’t result in much, if any, revenue for me.

I posted a while back on the topic of blog revenue as a passive source of income, but until this blog reaches a significant traffic level, it’s pretty much all a pipe dream.

In that vein, I come to you, my faithful readers. Like NPR, I’d like to take this opportunity to pass the Tip Jar and ask for donations. I am working as hard as I can to turn this blog into a Muse and thus a Passive Income source. But until then, it’s hard for me to focus on the blog when there are other pressing financial concerns.

As such, I’d like to ask you to donate whatever you can to my cause. On the right side of the screen, you might notice a donation widget from a website called ChipIn that allows you to contribute to my Muse. If you can’t find it, I’ve also included it below:

Thank you so much and keep tuning into this station!