The Economy Blows Chunks

Bless you business guys on business trips. (DOT COM!)

Companies are certainly imploding right, left, and center. The big guys going down hard are taking out quite a few little guys. People who don’t deserve to get taken out are getting taken out, and the guys who caused this are not. Such is economic justice.

Productivity per hour should be going up though.

I’m making a few changes.

For one, I’m changing the way that I do email. Hamel rightly pointed out that it takes a knowledge worker 45 minutes to get back up to speed after having their attention broken, so, I’m only checking email twice a day going forward.

We’ll see how far I get with that, but I certainly want to get more work done during my morning golden hours.

Secondly, I’m reducing meeting time. I used to be 40% more efficient pre-February. Shaina was right – being in the same office as people you’re working with simply results in more weeds. Time for some weed whacking.

Thirdly, I’m reducing the bulkiness of my presentations. Thursday’s 55 slide presentation had 10 more ideas than it really needed to have, and could have been done in point form. I’m returning back to my roots where a powerpoint presentation was 20 slides, and, an actual presentation. Something visual for people to look at.

Gonna be spending a lot more time on insights.

Editorials:

This talk of a ‘lost decade’, I find, is a massive hyperbole. The Japanese collapse was prolongued because banks couldn’t call one another on the bad debt because of face. The North American environment, as we’ve seen in the past week, is certainly not about face. It would appear as though the government is choosing winners as well as losers, which is more than what the Japanese government ever did.

The Porter flight from Toronto Island to Newark was very light – perhaps 25 people out of a capacity of 75. The flight back Saturday was also light – perhaps 40 people out of 75. Mind you, I was flying mid-day and on a Wednesday and Saturday, but still. Light.

The median price of a home in Toronto should fall back to the median household income of a homebuyer. 30% of gross household income per month yields a housing price of 270k. Prices are now 350k. Some say that Toronto is immune because of housing price due to immigration. I’ll go ahead and reject that thesis. I’m not buying a loft until the prices come down to something I can afford – like, say, 30% of gross household income!