They do pay for all this but get nothing out of the deal when it comes to income. So, how to coop with all these free-loading shoppers? How to stop their ineffective way of creating cost but no income?

A store in Australia came up with a solution. They take a fee for all that enters the store, $5. You pay to enter and the fee get payed back upon purchase in the store. It sounds quite easy but there is a major flaw with this solution.

Entry fee fend of the shoppers who are going through to browse and end up buying things they did not look for in the first place. It introduce a hurdle for your everyday shopper to get over and by that make the purchase more complicated then it was before. And what usually happen when you change something for a more complicated way? Consumers turn at the doorstep and direct their attention elsewhere.

A more delicate way of handling this would be to use the power of clubs and memberships. Why not present deals between the local stores and the price checking services online in a way so that they can share the profit between them? And byy sharing profit, empower both parties?

A scenario that would be simple to get up and running would be that the price running service introduce a membership and by checking in while your in the local store you get a token on you account which give you points and a discount on the actual store where you end up buying the product. If you log a product in the store it will be available in the online service that looks for best price and at the same time – the store that made you find the product gets a cut of the deal. The discount would be the incitement for the consumer to use the card for the online purchase and by doing so, the seller and the local store have a connection and they can set up an agreement on partly shared profits etc.

So, why would anyone want to share profit?

Well, both the local store and the online seller has provided an active role in the purchase of the product. The local store need to pay for staff and products but may keep a smaller stock since product get bought online instead. Their gain is the reduced stock. The online reseller on their end would get a clear view of their customers and they would give out a percentage of the profit to the store that got the consumer to choose a specific product. Their gain is to together with the local stores direct purchases and provide not planned selling for the ones who end up ordering products from them. All profit and the consumer get a product for a great price.

Everyone is happy. So there you have it. A free five minute idea for you to monetize on.

References
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/just-looking-fee-customers-showrooming/
http://www.techspot.com/news/52088-australian-store-implements-5-cover-charge-to-combat-showrooming.html

The clip isn’t new but I had never seen it before and really enjoyed the story aspect of it. The lesson within can be applied to many situations around us.

Steps

1. Create a notebook called ‘IOU’
2. If you loan something or someone else loan from you, create a post in IOU with information of what was loaned, from/to who etc. (If you want you can even snap a picture of it to be able to quickly find it later) 
3. Add a checkbox at the end of your newly created note. If the checkbox is not crossed, the IOU is still valid. If it is crossed, everything has been returned and all is good.

The checkbox we added in the end will be used in a Saved Search to quickly find a list of things that are still not returned. Just type ‘todo:false’ in the search field and we are all set! You can even save this search for later so that you do not have to type it again!

I hope this tip can help you keep track of loaned things just as it has for me!

The service might be good, it might even be better then Evernote. Evernote has been the leader of it’s kind for a long time now and is not without flaws. If there was a service presented which took these flaws into account I am sure that Evernote would loose a big chunk of its users.

But, in the light of what has happened to Google services in the past many of its users have been forced to learn how to coop without Google services as a tool in their every day life. Buzz, Wave and Reader is just three example of services that came to market, was loved by some but then pulled without mercy. With the events of Google Reader in close memory it makes it quite hard for me to trust a new service. I still will try it out (I did try to service was overloaded when I did) but I will not be quick to go all into the service.

And yes, I loved Google Wave. It was a bit ahead of its time but it was killed of much before it had time to shine.

The most frightening part of this is that one can only think of the day the Google executives start glancing at Gmail and if the service really is needed or if all mails could be send from within Google+ instead as Facebook has done. That would in fact be the last breath of the free Google service era.

More information
“Google Keep—Save what’s on your mind” by Google Official Blog
“Google Keep, an Overdue Answer to Evernote, Arrives” from WIRED
“Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself” from GIGAOM

• No TV. There is nothing else to this rule really, when you are working you are not to start a TV anywhere near where you are. The TV set is an evil device full of distractions and it will do everything it can to stop you from doing your work. If you are a person who can work and each TV without losing productivity I however do salute you.
• Take breaks. But breaks from work, not breaks to watch a movie a break should be kept to a few minutes even if you are not in the working place.
• Organize your time. Even though you do not have to you should setup which hours you are about to work. Since you most of the times have co-workers it is most optimal that they both know when they can reach you and you know when you can reach them.
• Use instant messages (IM) but read them when you have time for them. IM is a great tool for all remote workers but it can be just as intrusive and steal your flow. Often it can be better to turn off all types of notifications in your IM clients and instead setup five minutes each hour to check if there is any messages. If there are you have time to take care of them and then get back to work when they have been cleared.
• Minimize you mailbox intrusion. Turn off New Mail Notifications. Each time they pop up on your screen it pulls you away from what you are doing and steal time. Just as with IM, chose a few times each day when you go through them and handle what is there.
• Draw. To explain your ideas and work for someone you do not meet you need to make sure that everyone share understanding of what is needed and being done. A simple image drawn in paint is most of the times better then the lengths of specifications.
• Eat. Food is perhaps the most important part of the working day since without it you will be nothing but an empty shell once the energy levels get low. Just because you don’t have other people to share your meal does not mean that you can skip it.
• Make a clear distinction between work and personal chores and do not let them mix. If the both get mixed to much you might find yourself to not be able to calm down in your own home since it is connected to work chores.

For most of our lives it has been a custom that we all get up in the morning, get dressed, and go to the working place which often is a building somewhere away from home. Regardless what you do for a living, there is a place you are supposed to be each morning. Now as long as work is performed with tools that we can’t own ourselves we need to get somewhere to use them. But with the change in employment that is ongoing where ever more people work out of an office with a laptop the demand for a fixed workplace is reduced. The tools used is common ones that we all have at home, it’s nothing else then a software issue.

Working from home, from a coffee shop or even from the cart of a train might sound like a destructive way of handling time but let us investigate it further.

Why do we need to go to the office in the mornings?
There are numerous reasons that we go to the office. We have meetings to attend and also we need to… Well not that much else to be honest. Meetings are often called by managers (and I know this for a fact since I am a manager) that want to get a better understanding of a topic that is unclear. Another reason to call a meeting is to give information.

Let’s be honest, most meetings last to long and have to many participants. And do we actually need to be in the same place to start with to have a meeting? There are many tools on the market today to enable social interaction at a distance. There are digital whiteboards, text and audio but in most companies the spending to make this work is far from enough. Good webcams and even more important good microphones is required.

Remote work is harder to monitor
As a manager I agree that a remote worker is harder to monitor then a locally available one at a start. Both can show progress using what they deliver but how they get there is unknown. So, to work from remote demands that the responsible manager trust the employee. This must come as no surprise for anyone since it is the manager who will be held responsible for what the employee deliver. So for remote work to work it is just as important that the employee keep the manager updated on progress, problems and everything that comes in between to build on the trust needed.

How to start
The easiest to see if your workplace is open to the idea or remote work is simply to try it out. Still by trying it out one must remember that remote work is not a right or something that will work for all teams. Each team will need to show that it will not lose productivity and that all resources can handle the increase in personal responsibility needed. Each manager must in the same way show that the remote team still can be managed.

Experience
Have you worked remotely or are you thinking about trying it out? Write in the comments or send me a message with your experience!

I receive about a hundred mails a day. Most of these are newsletters, notifications and such things which I can throw away as soon as I read them. Between all these mails of white noise hide a few mails though which I need to do something with or reply to. These mails must be handled in a way which make it possible for me to organize the workload so that I don’t miss anything I need to do. For me this get down to a very simple approach, labels.

I use Gmail as my inbox. I have multiple mail accounts from different providers but they are all being pulled into one master account which is my account at Gmail. There are two reasons for me doing this. First and foremost the spam handling in Gmail is awesome.

Handle your spam
Out of thousand spam mails in my inbox I would guess that one or two would get through and actually reach my eyes while the others are being pulled away into the spam folder and out of my sight. One in a while I look through it briefly just so that there is nothing there I want to read and was marked as spam even though it wasn’t. Very few times I do find anything of value in that folder.

Labels
Here comes the real power of Gmail in my workflow. The automatic labeling of mails work just as my brain want it to work and this make it possible for my mailbox to get organized even before I enter it. There are a few labels that are the masters of my inbox and these are Notifications, Newsletters and Personal. Notifications are mails which can be interesting but at the same time mails I can throw away without missing out on anything. Examples, Twitter new follower notification, Facebook tagged in photos, Friends checks in on networks I am part of.

Secondly we have Newsletters. These are mails with offerings and news which I have found interesting in the past. These can also be thrown without any real loss but is good to go though if I am on the lookout for a specific deal or interested in the articles I get sent to my accounts.

Last there is Personal. This is the category where I will go though every single mail and handle it as it need to be handled. Actions needed will be sent to Remember the Milk which I use for todo and replies will get written directly if there is time.

Naturally I use many more labels then these but with only these three I have a way of getting a quick glance of the state of my inbox. If there is a big number of mails and I have a short time to get through them I can delete all mails in Notifications and Newsletters and go directly for the Personal mails. If I have a bit more time to spare I can go though also the Newsletters and so on.

There you have it, my simple three label rule for inbox management. Do you use a similar technique or a different all alike? Share in comments or contact me!

Where all the other months of the year hold a full thirty and a half days February does not. And even though it does not every year, we tend to miscalculate it every time we plan for it. All from personal finance to professional project handling. The second month of the year is a problem. Or the problem is that we still have not learnt how to calculate for it. There is generally speaking two ways of interpreting the month. Your choice of the two is often knit together with you title and profession.

How Managers see February
As a manager February is connected in the brain to the sentence “shorter month” which translate into a fact where things asked for in February will be delivered faster then if they were to be delivered in March.

How everyone else see February
February is the shorter month so of course, things promised in February can without any problems be pushed to March. Also, less working days for the same pay if you’re on monthly payroll.

So then, what to do?
With the knowledge at hand about the deceiver one can do what hurts it the most. Spread the word and inform people you make promises against how you see the second month. Let us making life easier for everyone and be frank on how we see the only month that is out of bounds.