ROBOTS

I heard recently that japan has the lowest birthrate of any country, in the next 50 years the population of japan will be 1/4 of what it is now. But the japanese are looking for a new workforce to keep their bustling economy alive... Robots. 

In fact Japan has some of the most cutting edge technology devoted to robots, robots that can tell the difference between a coke and water and know how to bring it to you in bed without spilling it. 

While the idea of living with robots may be frightening for some, the japanese tend to have a higher level of comfortability with the machines. In fact in Japanese culture inanimate objects are believed to still posses souls. 

See more on the futuristic, 2nd largest economy in the world, and one of the most renowned cultural mecca's, Japan, at current.com

http://current.com/items/89610631/japan_robot_nation.htm

GDC

The Game Developers Conference brings the best the game industry has to offer to San Francisco.

And Every year people come from around the planet to experience the mind blowing games and technology that are just on the cutting edge. 

An all access pass goes for $2200, for 5 days of conference.

YOUCH! 

Luckily I go For Free, and You Can too! 

As a CA, or Conference Associate, I work the entire week helping 

gaming executives and other high profile people get to their seminars and events,

meanwhile in my free time I get to go to the most exclusive gaming sessions on the planet.

I love it! : ) 

The first year I was put on the waiting list, and recieved an email a week or two before the conference saying they had a spot, but I had to respond before 12:00AM in order to secure the spot... The Kicker, the email was in my inbox at 11:00 PM, and I just "happened" to check my email at 11:50PM.... WOW so lucky... and the rest is a blissful gaming history.

Hope to See you at GDC 2009

and if not

Hope to see you at GDC 2010!

The Sweetest Sound a Person Can Hear.

What's something you could say to someone that could immediately make them open up?

Something that would make them happy, and feel better their whole day?

Is it I love you? Is it Your an important person?

It's even simpler than that, and yet it elludes so many of us...

The Sweetest Sound a Person Can Hear is their Name.

Thats right, and then if you need to give a bit extra work to this, It's

going to be worth its weight in gold. 

Here are some tricks to remembering names

-Say their name 2-3 times during your conversation

-Write their name on a piece of paper after talking to them

-Take a moment to mentally connect their face with their name

I'm going to challenge you to remember the name of everyone you meet for 1 week.

and if that's too easy, then try and remember 3 things about their personality, hobbies, political beliefs or anything else they are interested in.

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go and make yourself important

Never Criticize Again, and make 2x the Friends

Al Capone, one of the most cutthroat drug dealers throughout history

said he was only doing society a service... what can we learn from this?

People will rarely ever blame themselves for anything...

Therefore your best bet is going to be through encouragement...

The more you can go with the grain the better results your going to get.

So instead of criticizing someone for smoking, encourage them to quit so they could save money

or have better skin; this is the mentality that will skyrocket you towards success with people.

And can you think of something of importance in your life that doesn't involve people?

I can't think of many... Many great things that is. 

: )

Would you like Fries with that?

In today's consumer oriented society

a company with poor customer service wont last very long.

Yet, there is so much of it out there.

Take for instance AT&T, after my fifth attempt at closing my

account with them, I was redirected through 8 countries

and sent through nearly 10 different people... It was like

playing where in the world is Carmen Sandiego, except for 

my prize was being able to talk to Zed and Jane and plenty of

other clueless and incapable employees. 

What's going on here? Is AT&T trying to make their customer

service extremely unintelligible and god awful?

Notice I was calling to cancel... not renew or upgrade my services.

But Alas, companies like this should be cast into the fiery pits of 

mount doom, and geuss what that translates to in the year 2009?

Blogging... yes yes, it's true, now you know how bad their service is, 

and it can only spread further. 

The internet is the best way to get back at a poor company,

next time your making a company

consider the attitude... Would you like fries with that?

It's also just a funny thing to say when someone asks you to do something

try it!

Mark Your Territory! OR ELSE

What's your territory>? Is it your house? Is it your room? 

Essentially Your territory is going to be the space you feel most comfortable in. 

Now let's get on to marking it, 

Start by placing things of value in your space, it could be comfortable pillows, cool art

anything that lifts you up and re-affirms the parts of you that you want to keep. 

OK, then PROTECT YOUR SPACE

this is the biggest one, if someone comes into your space and does something you

do not vibe with, try this, "wait, why don't you stop... I think its best if you leave now, You see I just don't like it when people do _____ (negative behavior) in my space, Just leave and we can pick this up at another time."

Done and done, 

Nurture the inner Creature

SETH GODIN

If you go check out Seth Godin's blog right now, you're going to see a bit about parallel processing and serial processing. (link below)

What Seth is riffing on is that if you want to increase productivity make it possible for many people to be working on a project at the same time. Rather than needing the oversight of one person, which would cause A Bottleneck> 

Bottlenecks happen in your daily life when you're waiting in line for the one coffeehouse bathroom,

Thank the wonders of parallel processing,

....for the invention of Bathroom Stalls. 

Next time your waiting in line at a stadium, just be glad there's 20 stalls, not 1.

But if this is such a great idea, why don't we apply it to our daily life... 

Could it be possible, Process more than one task at a time...? ie: Multitask>

Sadly, the answer is NO. 

Unfortunately for us, the human brain can only function efficiently on one task at a time... If your a doubter, please let me know why at my Facebook (link below)

But every time you start a task and then get interrupted or multitask, it can take anywhere from 20-40 minutes to just regain your focus....

That means every single interruption you get... costs you 20-40 minutes to regain focus. 

average that with 10 interuptions a day at 20 min, thats 2 hours frustratingly spent trying to regain focus. Thats over 700 hours wasted a year. Now how much is your time worth? some people work for $10, some for $5000, let's say your time is worth a good $50, thats $35,000, you lost because of myspace this year.... Ouch!

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More on focus to come

:)