James has a provocative post at OrganizeIT on how “conventional wisdom” is wrong on some is wrong on some important issues. Since Time is pretty important to me right now, I thought I’d riff on this part:

Modern Life Sucks: 4 Ways The Status Quo Is Wrong – Work smart, play smart

There’s never enough time
Time management. It seems everybody is at it nowadays trying to squeeze more out of their time and constantly looking for ways to add a few extra minutes into their day. We want more time to do stuff, more time to be able to get things done, more time to be able to do a good job, be with our family, enjoy ourselves and indulge in hobbies and interests. But every time we make more time we always seem to fill it with the same old stuff. It’s like trying to dig a hole in the sand when the tide is coming in (read my post on time wasting for a better understanding).

According to Parkinson’s law we’re coming at it the wrong way. Work expands to fill the time available to it. When time is tight or you have a short deadline, you’re focused to focus on the essentials. When you’ve given a week to do a job that should take a day, it suddenly becomes a BIG DEAL!!! We can’t make more time for ourselves – there will always be only 24 hours in the day. However we can do our work in much less time than we often think.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, especially since my job is taking 80% of my time and contributing nearly 90% of my income. I need to change that ratio, but that will require making a serious change. Do I back off from my responsibilities at work, thereby reducing my income considerably (in the short term)? Or do I hunker down for a while and invest more time in some other revenue streams first?

The first choice means losing income right away and living with some serious uncertainty for a while. The second choice means much more work and much less play for a while, until things ramp up. This means a serious cost/benefit analysis.

But it is something that I have to do, because I just can’t go on like this – spending so much time at work and away from my passion. the internal satisfaction just isn’t there. In addition, the potential income is limited: no matter how much time I put in, or how successful I am, my income doesn’t change. That’s salary for you.

More on this soon.

In this video clip (below the jump) from 1979 you can witness an exchange between a brilliant man with a grasp of history and a wishful dreamer who believes in ‘virtue’ rather than productivity, as they discuss economics.

If you would prefer not to see it, scroll on down.

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The Economics Behind What You Offer

Here are the important lessons from Brian Tracy’s principles of economics for entrepreneurs.

I. People prefer more to less. If you were offered $10 thousand or $100 thousand dollars to the same job (all things being equal), which would you choose? People aren’t greedy, they just prefer more to less.

II. People prefer sooner to later. If you could receive this money on the 1st of January or the 31st of December, when would you choose receive it? Few people choose the annuity payout lottery winnings. People aren’t impatient. They just prefer to receive a benefit sooner rather than later.

III. People prefer easier to harder. If you could earn the money doing an easy job or a harder job, which would you choose? People aren’t lazy. They just want things to be easier.

IV. People prefer certainty to uncertainty. If you could be absolutely certain you were receiving this money or you could choose a degree of uncertainty, which would you choose? People aren’t afraid, they just prefer certainty over uncertainty.

Don’t Lower Your Price, Raise Your Value
Your goal is to sell free products to purchasers. That means the benefit the customer receives is perceived to be greater than the price they pay. All customers want to know “What’s in it for me?” Sometimes your customers leave for a competitor charging a lower price. Are they leaving because of price? No, they are leaving because the cost/benefit ratio is better somewhere else. They are saying that the price difference between your product and your competitors does not outweigh the benefit value you offer. What can you do about it?

From The Atlantic Online – How the Crash Will Reshape America | Richard Florida

A business truism holds that when your competitors are retrenching, it’s a great time to grow your market share. Deborah Strumsky, an economist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told me she believes that in the end, both Charlotte’s banking industry and Charlotte itself will emerge from the crisis all the stronger: “The Wells Fargo deal has saved thousands of jobs by keeping Wachovia afloat. More importantly, Bank of America has taken to the banking crisis like a shopaholic with a new credit card; it has been bargain-hunting and cutting some astonishing deals. Bank of America will come out the other side far better than in any fantasy it might have entertained previously.”

In recent years, Charlotte’s leaders have made some smart decisions about how to attract businesses and professionals, enabling the city to grow into the nation’s second-largest traditional banking center; in the lottery of business failure and consolidation, it was well positioned to win. But it was also lucky, and last fall, it escaped losing, big-time, by no more than a hair’s breadth. Overall, the roster of places that benefit from the failure of their champions’ rivals will probably be pretty short, and the names on the roster somewhat unpredictable. Especially among cities built around declining industries, more places will be weakened than strengthened; as with all lotteries, most players will lose.