Author: danmolgan

Did you know that the majority of the global workforce are disengaged at work? The statistics in this regard are quite alarming and that is precisely why most of us need to take a good hard look at our careers given that we all tend to spend the majority of our lives at work. In the newly published book Designing Your Work Life coauthored by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans the concept of life design originally made popular by the two academicians at Stanford university has now been applied to our jobs and careers.

Feeling stuck at a job that you don’t like could be one of the least desired emotional states that one could ever wish for and the majority of the people who feel stuck do so because they cannot just leave their work and look for something new due to financial constraints. That is why the concept of reframing as put forth by the book is such a marvelous mental tool that we can use to temporarily deal with the agony of feeling stuck at work. Reframing your current work as good enough would surely imply passivity and lack of drive; however, once you add two magical words then the entire notion changes and those two words are: “for now”.

Good enough for now has such a strong psychological impact that the person literally moves from utterly disengaged at work to at least curious if not downright interested! An average person will have multiple jobs and careers in his or her lifetime and once the myopic perspective of seeing the drudgery of going to a work that you don’t like day after day and week after week is replaced with a long term perspective of all the careers or gigs that you will have in the future then the hustle and bustle of the present moment seems like a training ground for what is yet to come and you no longer live for the weekends and holidays! That attitude alone can make anyone more engaged at work because progress equals happiness and seeing your current job as a temporary means of making that progress towards your ideals will certainly make you happier and more interested at work.

“Good enough for now” doesn’t mean that you deny the facts, it doesn’t mean that you will give up your search for new jobs, careers, projects, or clients, and it definitely doesn’t mean that a bad job can all of a sudden become good, it simply means that it is good enough for now while you simultaneously keep looking for new opportunities or go out of your way to expand your abilities. The truth of the matter is that almost any job can be reframed by thinking of it as good enough for now because any job can teach you something new and as you gain experience and ideally build up your contacts you can then expand your horizon and look for the next big thing. To find out more about the aforementioned cognitive toolkit and many other ways to improve your level of job satisfaction checkout the book Designing Your Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

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The coronavirus outbreak has managed to grind the wheels of the global economy into a halt, lock down cities, and place a great portion of the world’s population under quarantine stuck between four walls. Such a situation is sure to breed distress among most of us and in the process we could succumb to negativity and stop pursuing our goals that now seem out of reach far more than ever before.

However, the good news is that while being under a quarantine substantially limits your freedom, it can open up new doors of opportunity that help you get ahead in your life and career. My name is Daniel Molgan and in this blog post, I will show you how to make the most of the time while under quarantine by offering you ten tips on how to do just that:

1- Take a good look at your life and come up with short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals for your life and career

The modern world has compelled most of us to rush through life without ever finding sufficient time to sit quietly and reflect on our lives. The coronavirus pandemic and the quarantines set in place as a result of it can be used to finally take the time and think about your life until today. Your likes and dislikes, the things you want to achieve in life that you had postponed to a later date, and the quality of your relationships with other people are but a few of the issues that you can think about while stuck at home under quarantine. The answers to such questions can then help you come up with goals assigned with short-term deadlines of a few days to a few weeks, medium-term deadlines of a few months to a few years, and long-term deadlines that are five or more years down the line.

2- Plan each day, set a to do list, and create a daily schedule

Your daily routine is now taken away from you as work places, schools, universities, and stores have been closed. Most of us rely on these routines to go through our days but without them we fall pray to boredom, irritability, and negativity. By taking the time to plan each day and designing a schedule, ideally using the calendar of your phone, you can give each day a sense of order. Also writing a daily to do list can help you stay focused on the tasks that need to be done and avoid unnecessary distractions.

3- Reduce exposure to the news media as much as possible

As most industries are hit hard by the pandemic, the news media find themselves in an ideal situation that makes them quite the exception. As far as the news media is concerned this is their moment to cash in advertisement money and the best way to do so is by scaring their viewers so that they cannot help but to keep following up with the news to see when it all ends. The fact of the matter is that you will be aware of the end of this crisis once it happens without ever following the news because people around you are already doing that for you. Additionally, being under quarantine means you cannot do much about the events that are unfolding anyways so why bother getting upset by the headlines announcing the latest number of deaths or the other problems that arise in a pandemic? You can instead briefly go through the headlines every now and then instead of being glued to the TV or live streams of the news on your phone and keep abreast of the latest without constantly stressing over the latest headlines!

4- Avoid time wasters

Randomly surfing on social media, binge watching on Netflix, playing mindless online games, over drinking, doing drugs of any kind legal or illegal as a means of dealing with boredom, being down and negative, trolling on the internet, starting fights with the people around you, making useless TikTok videos, sharing irrelevant content with your contacts online, and even holding your phone in your hand without a purpose are but a few of the examples of time wasters that you need to replace with productive and constructive goals so that this crisis does not waste your precious life.

5- Take care of your body and diet

Being at home all the time can make anyone lazy and could lead to abandoning physical activities, obesity, and poor nutritional intake. That is why you need to make sure that you get enough exercise be it yoga, stretching, lifting weight, or simply walking around in your home as you listen to music or podcasts. Also be cautious of your calorie intake as overeating as a means of dealing with boredom is unfortunately quite common in times of quarantine.

6- Take care of your mind and emotional state

Happiness is defined as the state of mind dubbed flow, the feeling of being absorbed in the moment and fully engaged with what we do. The state of flow is the sweet spot in between stress and boredom and in times of social isolation spent within the confines of one’s home it is so much easier to get more of the boredom and stress but no so much of the flow! That is precisely why you need to be aware of your emotional state and try to remain as positive and engaged with tasks that are meaningful to you as possible.

7- Take your career online

The majority of work that we do can be done online, almost all communication based professions such as consultants, lawyers, advisers, managers, salespeople, educators, and journalists can continue working remotely. Small business owners can take their business online and offer their products via home delivery. Students can take part in sessions via Zoom or Skype, even photographers can use FaceTime to take excellent photos from their clients. Turn your home into an office and go to work online. This is the one advantage that people did not have in previous centuries when they had to deal with their own plagues so be grateful for the technology and make good use of it.

8- Go on intense learning

While learning in groups is proven to be more effective than learning alone that by no means reduces the efficiency, if not necessity of learning and studying alone. Hence, social distancing does not hinder your ability to begin intensive study in your field of activity and develop your skills and abilities. Many online resources offer free courses to anyone wishing to become more knowledgeable. After all, to earn more you need to learn more!

9- Create alone time for all members of your family

Did you know that divorce, domestic violence, and fights all dramatically increase during mandatory quarantines? One of the biggest reasons for this phenomenon is that couples and families don’t arrange for alone times so that they could be away from each other for a few hours each day and mimic time away at work during normal days. Simply assign different rooms or parts of the house to different members of the family and give each alone time to substantially reduce the likelihood of arguments or fights.

10- See this as a once in a life time opportunity to get ahead of the competition

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said: “the heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.” Understand that the coronavirus pandemic and the quarantines associated with it have put billions of people into sleep marked by degradation, laziness, and loss of motivation. That means that it does not matter what your field might be, the majority of your competitors have dropped the towel and given up, this is your moment to get ahead of the competition by outworking them. For the achievers, this is the moment of the truth, the once in a life time opportunity to get so much ahead of the competition that they can never catch up with you long after the crisis is over!

The coronavirus pandemic will be over but the time that it takes until we get there will never be returned back to you which is why it is my sincere hope that reading this post acts as the first step to help you get ahead in life and career under quarantine! Feel free to reach me here or on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter in case you had any questions or if I could be of assistance in any way. Live with no inner limits or outer borders!

When it comes to making critical decisions in business and politics, leaders have the option to make two types of decisions, they can opt to get the most rewards in the short term and judge their success by arbitrary metrics or they can instead make plans based not solely on profit or political victory but rather for advancing a just cause.

The former approach to leadership is dubbed playing the game of life with a finite mindset while the latter is l the very definition of having an infinite mindset. Extensive research in the lives of top leaders in all facets of the global communities prove that almost all of them operate and make decisions with an infinite mindset and prioritize longterm prosperity of their vision and furthering of a cause over short term wins and losses.

Ultimately leaders are not responsible for the results, rather they are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results and for this exact reason they need to be concerned with their people first and doing so will allow them to make more ethical decisions. Also thinking long term ironically leads to better overall metrics, be it the revenue or the votes, and being concerned with a big cause and committed to advancing a cause is what also bring about the best results since it brings the best in the people that a leader is responsible for.

Having read the book the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek I not only recommend it to all leaders and entrepreneurs but also encourage you to start making more decisions with an infinite mindset so that we all can enjoy living in a better world tasked with advancing a cause for the greater good and building a magnificent future!

In the book Talking to Strangers: What we Should Know about the People We Don’t Know, Malcolm Gladwell conducts extensive research in the lives of police officers who misinterpret the intentions of motorists, experienced judges who allow dangerous criminals to roam free, intelligence officers who fail to recognize that their colleagues might be double agents, parents who cannot even assume that their daughter’s coach is a pedophile, and teenagers who don’t know what the opposite gender would do and how they would reveal their true intention while intoxicated. 

All the evidence proves that we are poor at understanding strangers even though we think we are good and that we are only 51% good at knowing whether someone is telling the truth or not, better to flip a coin! The reason for this is two fold: the first is dubbed the Truth Default Theory and the second is called Transparency. 

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The Truth Default Theory states that we all have a bias to believe other people more than we have a bias not to believe them and that has been necessary throughout the history of humanity so as to make living and functioning in group settings and societies possible but defaulting to truth means that in order for us to feel secure and have normal lives devoid of constant mistrust and fear we end up trusting and cooperating with those we should not. 

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The error of transparency is another serious issue when it comes to misunderstanding strangers, we assume that what people show on the outside is what they actually feel on the inside. There is a false myth that all facial expressions are universal but research done by anthropologists proves that facial expressions are tied to the location and the culture of the individual as well as his or her unique temperament. This means relying solely on facial expressions is flawed and unreliable when dealing with strangers who might come from a different  background. 

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Additionally people can fake facial expressions or even emotions which make them mismatched, that is how they seem on the outside is not how they feel on the inside. When people are mismatched and they go unnoticed because of transparency fallacy then people like Bernie Madoff can run Ponzi schemes and dangerous criminals can be let go by experienced judges! 

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The last main issue covered in the book is coupling and that by solely looking at the person and making judgments right then and there, we fail to take into consideration the cultural and environmental factors that play a major role in how they act and what attitudes they have. This means that we won’t be able to understand the context in which the stranger is operating. 

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Ultimately, by becoming aware of our inherent incompetence at understanding strangers and being cognizant of the three errors of defaulting to truth, transparency, and coupling we become far more careful when it comes to judging the characters and intentions of others if not more adept. 

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Dan’s Action Plans: 

– Know that your brain is wired for defaulting to truth, this evolutionary and social programming is good for the most part since it allows you to make good relationships with those around you but be aware of this bias and do not assume that everything people say is true about themselves. The business partners or clients who tell you how eager they are to work with you but suddenly have major health problems right before the meeting or have to cancel their appointments twice or more in a row for seemingly reasonable reasons are not necessarily telling the truth but hiding their true intention which is a lack of desire to work with you. Do them a favor and leave first yourself! 

– What people show on the outside including their facial expressions and emotions is not always how they feel on the inside. While analyzing the body language of the other person is very important you must be more aware of facts attributed to that person. A business partner whose tone of voice seems friendly and promises to get the job done with enthusiasm but does nothing is simply mismatched, that is, the emotional state that he represents is fake, so do yourself a favor and next time he or she enthusiastically tells you how he or she is glad to do the job, just smile, remember his or her history of being mismatched, and go do the job yourself or delegate to someone who is matched. 

– People ought not to be judged without simultaneously taking into consideration their background, origin, culture, and overall context. A person is not just a person but mixture of his or her culture, age, profession, background, place of origin, socioeconomic status, and a myriad of other factors so think more about those elements before jumping into conclusion. 

Solo entrepreneurs a.k.a solopreneurs are by no means something new nor are they rarities, in the United States alone there are 33,000 businesses registered as a one person company. The good news is that many such businesses are actually scalable and  can reach 7 figure revenues exceeding a million dollars. Whether you are currently working at a job or a university student you can start a one person businesses without quitting your job or your college knowing that you can scale the business in the years to come. 

The biggest element of running a one person business is passion and liking the business since working on your own means having to do many things all by yourself and dealing with many problems that you might not like so if you lack interest in the field and are concerned solely with profitability then you might give up before succeeding. With that being said passion is of no use if no one else cares about it so between what you are really passionate about that has no significant market and something that you are a bit less passionate about but has a clear demand in the market then you are better off choosing the latter since monetizing your effort must be a goal from the get go! 

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The most common types of one man businesses are e-commerce, manufacturing products, informational content creation, professional services, personal services, and real estate and the following are the most important tips to succeed at each one of them:

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E-commerce: Selling your products online by fist testing the market on a small scale to determine whether the products are sold well. An example is selling your products by Amazon and using Fulfillment by Amazon to deliver the products to the customers. In essence you can become a seller for someone else’s product or better yet tap into arbitrage via buying the products at a cheaper price in one market and selling those very products at a higher price in another market. 

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Manufacturing products: You can think of any product that you can manufacture by yourself but you are better off using a co-packer since the packaging of a product is indeed very important in addition to its pricing. Selling your own products will inevitably require much more marketing and advertisement than e-commerce and using paid ads along with social media activity will be essential to generate demand for your products.

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Informational content creation: Whichever area that you are an expert at can be monetized by creating informational content and sharing it on social media such as YouTube or as a podcast that can then generate revenue from advertising for other people and use your content as an advertising platform that attracts a lot of attention and thus can convince other businesses to pay to advertise on your platform. 

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Professional and personal services: The key to generating a revenue exceeding a million dollars is having a strong personal brand and social media have proven to be the best tools in developing your personal brand and making it more known. Being able to generate content on social media in a way that is consistent to give people the incentive to follow you and simultaneously reaching other users directly by following them or sending them messages can get your personal brand more known. Ultimately the strength of your personal brand depends on your credibility and how well you know your stuff or get the job done. The biggest issue with these two categories is that scalability often requires you to hire new people or at least use freelance help but regardless, tapping into the power of the internet can give you a huge boost and by having more demand for your professional and personal services you can scale by increasing your fees. 

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Real estate: The key to success in making money in real estate is to do solid research to find a good property that is rent worthy and work on one property at a time, especially if you have limited access to cash or credit. The formula is simple, you buy or mortgage a property and generate cash flow from rent and once your savings or credits allow it then you move on to purchasing the next good property to increase your cash flow and you can scale the business by gradually and overtime increasing the number of your properties that generate cash flow while appreciating in price overtime. 

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The good news is that it does not take a lot of capital to start a one person business and in the majority of cases most one person businesses were started with $1000 to $5000 in initial investment. It does not take full time hours to start a business which is why having a job on the side is actually a good thing which gives you stability and time to start the business on the side and without any sense of urgency since not only it won’t be stressful but actually turns the whole process into a fun pursuit. 

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Dan’s Action Plans: 
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– Running a one person business is something that almost anyone can do primarily through sweat equity and effort while still keeping a job or academic pursuit on the side. Creativity, dedication, and passion are what make starting a side business with very little starting capital possible.

-Social media, social media, social media! Your consistent and disciplined online activities on social media are essential to success in running any one person business. All entrepreneurs have tapped into the power of social media and if you are serious about entrepreneurship you should officially treat activity on social media as an essential and regular part of your work because people stare more at their phones and particularly social media than they ever do at TV, billboards, or brochures. 

– As an entrepreneur you must always be thinking about scaling your business, which is a fancy term that means generating more profit in the same amount of time dedicated to your business since doing so is not only essential for success, but in fact it is required for its very survival. Always think about scaling and use your effort and creativity along with the help of others to do so.