The World is Flat is a great book and a MUST READ for any Geek Guru!
After my post yesterday, about the Geek Guru Book Club, of all the books I recently read about technology and the world, I forgot my favorite book. (mainly because I read it almost a year ago!) Anyway, you need to checkout the book, The World is flat by Thomas L. Friedman. This book will open your mind and make you think about globalization, the worlds economy, as well as how you SHOULD be maximizing your time and earnings.
Remembering this book hit me while I walked into a Barnes and Nobles and saw it there on the stand. This book also got me thinking of some advise I gave out today to my friend Amanda. Her and her dad have both read this book and we talk a lot about maximizing our time as well as our potential income. This morning flipping through all my RSS feeds I saw a post on unclutterer, Hire someone to run your errands. The book the World is Flat talks a lot about how to maximize your time and how companies need to rethink their business model and look at alternative potentials. Some of the interesting stories include how a McDonads outsourced its drive thru to India by having people in India talk to the customer and place his order which would get sent back to the store and show up as if a person was physically there. This book has more stories like that and makes you rethink how you NEED TO MAXIMIZE your time and understand that your time is actually worth money!
So this book brings up the point of the article by maximizing your time by hiring someone to run your errands that takes away from you making money or enjoying things that you value. This idea of outsourcing your errands is also interesting because of the potential of a entrepreneur to come along and make a lot of money. Just take a look at College Bellhop. Three Boston Area college graduates started a online company that offers laundry service to students. This saves time for the student and creates a market to make money. I know this idea of an assistant has been around for a while, but think about the average 20something or 30something with kids, why not stop spending your saturdays running around doing the same stuff every weekend and pay someone else to do it and spend that time more wisely. For example, if you can take on a freelance job like blogging or computer repair you can bring in even more money then it’s costing you to outsource your errands!
So with that being said, how are you maximizing your time? Do you outsource any of your work? What ways can the average student, 20something, etc exchange time for money and allow them to have a bigger chunk of the pie!
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Other must reads for self respecting geeks include Snow Crash (the metaverse is coming, just you wait and see), Ishmael (without man how will gorilla survive?)