College is not for everyone, and often traditional college can do more harm than good depending on what your overall goals are. Think long and hard about why you want to go to college. Going to college straight out of high school is usually a good idea. The overall college experience can be a valuable one. But don’t feel that just because you’ve started college that you need to finish it. It really depends on what you want to do with your life. If you want to be a doctor, or a nurse, then you’ll probably have to go to college. But with just about any other profession you might want, there are other ways to gain the knowledge necessary. Even if you want to be an attorney, an architect, or an engineer, many states allow you to train with someone who’s already licensed in your state for a number of years and then take the exams necessary to become licensed yourself.

One of the main issues that I have with college is the level of debt that the majority of people need to assume in order to complete a four-year college degree. Most public colleges and universities now run around $20,000 per year for out of state students, and many private colleges are now approaching $40,000 per year. If you attend a private University and end up financing the whole thing, that’s $160,000 over the four years. Now, where I live, $160,000 will get you a pretty decent house. And pretty much anywhere you want to live it makes for a damn good downpayment.

Now, when I graduated from high school I was 16 years old. I went to a state college that was close to where my parents were living, but I lived on campus for the year. I wouldn’t trade that year of college for anything. But, I didn’t stay. I found that the level of education I was getting was not worth paying the money I was paying (or, more accurately, the money I was borrowing and eventually would have to pay back). With the exception of one or two professors, the people teaching me were simply reciting from the textbooks that others had written. The education that I was getting I could have received for $400 in textbooks and just read them myself. I was a business major, and I knew that real world experience was going to teach me a lot more than anything I could read in a book.

Four years after I left college, a girl that started the same year that I did, with the same major (we actually took at least one class together) started at the same job I had had for a year already. You know what happened? She didn’t make it. Couldn’t do the job and ended up getting done after about three months. Don’t get me wrong, this girl was intelligent and knew business, but she just didn’t have the real-world experience necessary to do the job. I had already had experience dealing with people (through my previous job as an insurance agent). She still lived with her parents, while I already owned a house; she struggled to make sales, while I had pretty much moved beyond selling and was doing graphics work, layout, web programming and computer tech support for the company. If I had stayed in college, at minimum I would have been three years behind where I am now (which means I wouldn’t be married yet and would just now be buying a house, I also wouldn’t have a job that I really like yet).

Sometimes learning on your own is the best way to go. I’m a big fan of unschooling right now. I learn what I want when I want to learn it (or when something I’m doing means that I need to know it). Doing this I feel that I’ve learned way more than I would have in four years of college. I wouldn’t trade the one year of college I did have for anything, as it’s where I met my husband, and it’s where I figured out that college (especially state college) wasn’t for me. I’m considering going back to college for a one-year program (through the Harvard Extension School) in Environmental Management, but haven’t decided yet. I’m not sure if I want to spend the time doing a formal education at this point, but it might help with some future projects I have in the works.

Taking a class or two is also a possibility for me. There are some things that I want to learn that are difficult to learn outside of the classroom. But, that doesn’t mean that I need to go and get a four-year degree. If one or two classes is all I need to learn something, then why should I take additional courses just for the sake of getting credits?

In the end, I do think that students straight out of high school should try college. You might decide that you want to do something where the quickest and easiest way is college. Or, you might meet someone that you spend the rest of your life with. You might make some lifelong friends. Or, you might decide that it’s not for you and leave after a year or two. You might decide that you love college and want to stay for 10 years (instead of the usual four for an undergraduate degree). Any of the above is perfectly fine. You just have to be willing to do what’s right for you, not what society, family and your classmates are telling you to do.

As an adult, it’s often better to do a one-year vocational-type program to get specific training if necessary for your job. Or, volunteer and get hands-on training in a field you’re interested in.

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The Noble Eight Fold Path is a Buddhist philosophy that aims to direct the lives of it’s followers. As implied, there are eight parts to the path, and each concept can be applied to how you do business.

1. Right speech.

Right speech means to only speak truth, and to speak in a nonharmful, unexagerated manner. This is a very important concept for business. Speaking truthfully to clients, colleagues, and prospects is important. When you exagerate things to a client or prospect, you lose credibility if they find out that you’re exagerating. This can be more harmful to your business than virtually anything else you might do. If a client doesn’t trust you, they won’t do business with you - simple as that. Lying or exagerating to colleages is just as bad. When you exagerate or lie about successes, at best you annoy people, and worst case scenario is that no one believes anything you say anymore. Either way, it’s bad news for you.

The second part of this is nonharmful speech. Make sure that any criticism that you give is constructive, and make sure that you’re not saying things to intentially be hurtful (no matter how tempting it might be).

2. Right actions.

Right action is not acting in a way that might harm someone else. This is directly related to right speech. If you tell someone that you’ll do something, then do it. If you told someone that you wouldn’t do something, then don’t do it. It’s really not much more complicated. Don’t cheat people or mislead them. Make sure that the actions to take don’t hurt anyone else. Make sure that if you’re doing something to benefit yourself that it’s not at the expense of someone else. Even though it can be tempting at times to do things that might not have the best effect on your competition, resist the temptation. Doing things that have a harmful effect on others will eventually come back to haunt you.

3. Right livelihood.

Make sure that the business that you are partaking in is not harmful to people. You have to use your own judgement in a lot of cases as to whether or not something is harmful (hint: when in doubt, you’re generally hurting at least one group of people, even if you’re helping others). Taking part in a business that is helpful to others is the ideal in this path, but at the very least you shouldn’t be overtly harming anyone.

4. Right effort/exercise.

Right effort basically means that you strive to improve yourself. You should constantly be working toward doing a better job than you’ve done previously. Continually improving your performance is a great way to increase business. If you’re constantly besting yourself, your clients will notice, and will bring you more business (both themselves and through referrals).

5. Right mindfulness/awareness.

Right mindfulness is all about having the mental clarity to see things as they are. Don’t get caught up in someone else’s fast-talking sales pitch. Make sure that you don’t get sidetracked by things that aren’t important. Have the ability to see a project or opportunity for what it is, not what you want it to be.

6. Right concentration.

Right concentration is a bit more difficult, especially for those of us striving for success. Right concentration means being aware of your present reality while not having any cravings or aversion to anything outside of the present moment. As I said, this can be very difficult for those who are striving to reach goals. The main thing to remember is that the task at hand is the most important one. If you don’t complete the task at hand, you won’t move on to the next task. And by concentrating just on the task at hand, you can complete it more quickly and to a higher level of quality than if you’re distracted by what you might be doing next week (or next year). This is especially true if you’re not looking forward to something. The distraction caused by something unpleasant that you’re really not looking forward to can have a much more negative impact on your work. If you’re dreading something, that will show in the quality of your current work. If you simply invest yourself fully in the task at hand, your work will reflect your concentration and dedication.

7. Right thoughts.

Right thoughts is really about the intention to change your pattern of thinking. Right thought is about making a commitment to being free of ill will. Being free of ill will is important in carrying out the rest of the concepts here. Without a freedom from ill will, you won’t be able to achieve peak results and productivity.

8. Right understanding.

Right understanding is, in part, realizing that things are not permanent. Once you realize that the things that you do aren’t permanent, that you yourself are not permanent, things become much clearer. The little things don’t matter as much. Things are in a constant state of change, and once you accept that, life goes a lot easier.

The Noble Eight-Fold Path is just one aspect of Buddhist philosophy (or eight aspects depending on how you look at it). There are many other parts of Buddhist philosophy that can be applied to business and life in general whether you’re a practicing Buddhist or not. More on the Noble Eight-Fold Path can be found on Wikipedia.

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I’m not one for Getting Things Done. The system is completely overkill for what I do, and pretty much any system that is that complicated (ie, you need to read an entire book about it) just isn’t worth the time to learn it unless you REALLY need it.

But, with all of the hype about it, I did read through a lot of blog and forum posts about the system, and devised my own very simplified version of GTD. After using that system for awhile, I revised again, and have now gotten to a system that works well for me (at least at work - my home & business productivity system is a bit different, and would pretty much only make sense to me). Here are both systems, which are suitable for different levels of chaos.

My Productivity System v1.0
This system pretty much consisted of post-it notes in front of my keyboard. My job, for the most part, consists of a few regular tasks, and then random things that people tell me to do (often in person or over the phone instead of electronically). I would make to-do lists on the notes (adding an additional post-it if I ran out of room on the first couple) and cross things off as I completed them. If I didn’t finish everything during the day, I would leave the post-its on my desk until the next morning. If I did finish everything, I would throw the post-its away. In the morning I would transfer anything off of post-its from the day before (and then throw the old ones away), as well as transfering anything from my email inbox and voicemail. As I said, this is a very basic productivity system, but if most of your to-do’s come in like mine did then it’s a good place to start.

My Productivity System v2.0
Then I moved on to a Moleskine, keeping to-do lists in the front of the book. I also started writing down additional ideas and things to bring up at meetings, etc. in the back of the book (I started on the last page and am working my way forward, this way I won’t end up wasting pages by finishing one section before the other). In the Moleskine I cross off things that I’ve completed (it’s more satisfying than a check mark or slash), use a squiggly line for any that I decide don’t need to be done, and draw an arrow in the check box next to any that I defer. When I’ve completed and/or moved all of the activities off of a certain day, I put an “x” at the top of the page. On the idea pages at the back, I put an “x” on the top of the pages (or next to ideas) when I’ve brought them up at meetings or otherwise done something about them (sometimes they end up getting moved to my to-do list). I also started a to-do folder in my inbox (so that I can move things into that folder if I don’t have time to write them down when they come in, as well as putting things in that folder for future actions that don’t need to go on my to-do list yet, and I put emails associated with things on my to do list in that folder also) and a projects folder on my desktop. I also have a physical inbox on my desktop for things that need to be dealt with or that are associated with things on my to-do list. I also have folders for filing that I do on a daily or weekly basis right on my desktop.

These two systems have worked quite well for my work duties. These are separate from the blogging and other activities that I do for my business (yes, I still have a regular 9-5 job in addition to the blogs that I run and my other business ventures).

Other productivity tools I use
I use Google Bookmarks for personal, work and business bookmarks. This is a rather new development within the past couple of months. The tagging works really well.

I also use Google Personalized Homepage (or iGoogle) to keep track of a few of my favorite blogs, as well as keeping track of my Feedburner stats and news. I have three different tabs going (one for blogs & bookmarks, one for news, and one for random widgets).

I use Zoho for just about everything now. I have a wiki for brainstorming and keeping lists of things. I use Zoho Writer for most of my word processing now (or Microsoft Word), and I’m slowly integrating their other services with my life.

The other productivity tool that I use, and probably the only one that I would say that I couldn’t live without is my collection of Moleskine notebooks. I’m currently using one for work (pocket ruled), one for personal ideas/goals/etc. (pocket ruled), one for personal & business projects (pocket quad ruled), one for Tarot readings (extra large cahier), one for my unschooling (extra large cahier), one for writing ideas and blogging stuff (large cahier), two that I use for random notes and ideas that aren’t things I necessarily want to keep forever (pocket cahiers) and I have three others (pocket address book, pocket ruled, and large cahier) that I haven’t decided what to do with yet.

The main thing with any productivity system is to use something that works for you. The above work for me very well, but are probably not for everyone. Anything more than what I’m currently doing would start to get too cumbersome, and the above is flexible enough so that I can change things on the fly if I need to without having to change my entire system.

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