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The Best Way to Reach Your Goals May Be Publicly Recording Your Progress

23 noiembrie 2015 de Olivian Breda

Our findings are of relevance to those interested in changing their behavior and achieving their goals, as well as to those who want to help them, like weight loss programs, money advice agencies or sport coaches. Prompting people to monitor their progress can help them to achieve their goals, but some methods of monitoring are better than others. Specifically, we would recommend that people be encouraged to record, report or make public what they find out as they assess their progress. (The Best Way to Reach Your Goals May Be Publicly Recording Your Progress) Personal note: I think there’s a difference between thinking short term and long term. Goals vs. Systems, if you prefer. In this case, making goals and putting them online sure helps. Yes, just thinking in term of goals is short-term focus, and making them public gives instant gratification. But there’s another view, that you should focus on long-term. For those kind of people, the help is less. Anyhow, all-in-all, I still think it’s a good idea to pursue goals (Goals (& more) – Olivian.ro – de Olivian Breda).

How to learn communication and manipulation? The answer: “Thanks for letting your light shine”

2 mai 202118 noiembrie 2015 de Olivian Breda

One friend recently asked me how should he/she learn communication and manipulation. What are the best opportunities to learn this in Romania? She plans to change the world for the better.

My first answer to this will be spiritual: Nicolae Steinhardt, a writer I admire, says that people these days are hungry for two things: love and life meaning. (“De ce îi este omului de astăzi foame? De iubire și de sens.”)

My dear friend, wanting to change the world for the better with communication / manipulation aims for both two things – you want to give life a meaning, and you do so by loving others.

Hold to with this thought, now we’ll leave spirituality and go down, down below. There’s darkness, don’t worry, at the end things will be fine. Hold tight, it’s a bumpy ride.

I’ll answer this question rationally by avoiding the question so much that when I’ll finally answer your mind will be influenced by the other stories I will tell you.

Note: the image above was with me on an online forum for years, many years ago.

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Rand Fishkin, Moz: Google cares more about people reading something, than about people sharing something

6 octombrie 2015 de Olivian Breda

From the latest WhiteBoard Friday: I think Google is honest when they tell us, “We don’t look at social shares to determine rankings.” I think what Google sees is something Chartbeat showed a few years ago. This was another excellent study that I encourage you to check out. Chartbeat basically analyzed engagement on socially shared content. What they saw was a plot that looks like this. Very, very few social articles have high read time. Even the ones that have lots of social sharing have very little read time. It turns out a ton of things that people share socially on the Web, they don’t read at all. They may click Retweet. They may even include the URL. They might share it on Facebook. But they, themselves, may never have even visited that content. Sounds crazy, but I bet you’ve done it. I bet I’ve done it. I bet I’ve been like well, you know, it was probably a good edition of Whiteboard Friday, I’ll go share it out, having not yet watched the video and seen whether I did a good job or not. That’s just the way of the Web. I think Google cares much more about the engagement than they do about the social share counts themselves. Source: Using Social Media as Your Primary (or Only) Link Building Tactic Probably Won’t Work – Whiteboard Friday – Moz

How to mass delete your backup photos from Google Plus (and why would you want to do that)?

7 octombrie 20156 octombrie 2015 de Olivian Breda

TL;DR: below, a solution on how to mass delete your backup photos from Google Plus (and why would you want to do that)? I recently got into the problem of having too much data in my Google Drive. You know the situation – you add some things in your Google account, and, at some point, you have so much data in there that you are required to pay for a premium account. I wouldn’t generally mind to do so, but I prefer to pay when I choose to, not when I’m forced to. The 2 USD / month for 100 GB / year is a tempting one, but there are alternatives which are free, and after one year of usage, it’s generally hard to switch. To understand my problem, see the below graph, which shows my current space usage on Gmail: I used to have around 2-3 GB more in my Gmail and 5 GB more on Google Drive. For Gmail, it was simple. Using some search parameters, I just searched for Google Calendar appointment emails, newsletters, and emails with attachments sent within some timeframe. I then mass deleted emails. Simple. For Google Photos, the main issue was that I have in there a few hundred albums and most of them should have photos stored at the “right” image size, which is, according to Google, 2048 x 2048 pixels. So, I tested, randomly, some folders in there, and couldn’t find the albums which, supposedly, had images with bigger resolution than these. Then, I’ve found a …

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Managing WordPress errors due to updates. How to do it?

1 octombrie 20151 octombrie 2015 de Olivian Breda

TL;DR: Let’s say you build a web site on WordPress. It works fine. Then, you start doing some updates, you add some plugins. After a while, you discover that the beautiful WordPress installation you once had, now has some real issues. How to solve them?

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How to save lots of money on big purchases?

30 septembrie 201526 septembrie 2015 de Olivian Breda

TL;DR: So, if you plan to buy something of high value: Have patience. Do price comparisons. Do research. Visit at least two places. Consider being aggressive in negotiations. Through surveying more than 1,400 car buyers, Silva-Risso and his co-authors, Fiona Scott Morton, of Yale University, and Florian Zettelmeyer, of Northwestern University, found buyers could save about $800 if they find out what a dealer pays for a car, visit two dealerships, like to bargain and like to do research and price comparisons before making a purchase. The research also found that a consumer who doesn’t like to bargain or do a lot of research can save $230 by doing just two things: finding out what the dealer pays for the car and visiting two dealerships. “This really shows that even the consumer who doesn’t like to bargain can get the price reduced if they are informed,” Silva-Risso said. “And, if they are aggressive, and like bargaining, they can save even more. Source & More details: How to save $800 on a new car | EurekAlert! Science News »

The best way to learn online marketing

20 iunie 201813 septembrie 2015 de Olivian Breda

TL;DR: As far as I suggest, you should learn online marketing by practicing, not by attending classes.

There are two ways of learning programming:

Studying for 4 years in a College and then practicing somewhere.
Learning by doing. You get a problem, you learn how to solve it, and you increase, step-by-step, the difficulty of programming.

If you’re 18, I think it’s a good idea to learn programming by going to a college. If you’re 30, and want to work full-time, though, I think the former option is the better one. You’ll not be as great a programmer in the beginning, but you’ll learn on the fly.

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The freemium model in selling information

19 august 2015 de Olivian Breda

If you want to provide information for a premium, using online tools, I suggest you use a freemium model. This means offering information: For free, until you establish yourself as a a brand: Publish things so good / long / impressive, they can’t ignore you & you become a brand with that content. Ask for money, once you are a brand: Now you can sell other things: Consultancy. Conferences. Books. The solution? Offer free until you become a brand & then charge for premium.