thoughts on economy of abundance/scarcity

On July 25th, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

Sometimes I catch myself thinking "oh crap - wrong time to start freelancing" when it comes to the coming recession in the world (which I believe will show up at our doorstep sooner or later). Most of the time I am thinking in a very Louise L. Hay way, that if the recession is coming then I won't be influenced by it.

If you look at what the economy of abundance has brought to society it is kind of a "have it all" feeling - everything you can possibly think of can be yours... Business models are starting to be formed around giving stuff away for free. Oh yeah sometimes I feel like a spoiled little brat...

Anyway, something tells me that economy of scarcity delivers more creativity and more eagerness than the economy of abundance, which is probably a result of the " I-could-have-it-all " kind of life. Why try harder when it is brought to us ?... why make excellent stuff when we can get by with mediocre ? I think a new economy of scarcity will make society work more creatively towards global problems than now where there is this "all is well" feeling to everything. If we need something we will just borrow the money for it in the bank - We are so wealthy it's incredible.

All is good for now - But my idea is that if the recession comes it's going to separate "crap" from "gold" and the more substantial people will make a better living than the ones that are in it for the money and the hype.

As Sanjay said in geekarmyknife # 6 " we are looking at a reversal of stereotypes" - good call, and an really genuine idea to ponder about.

[creativity, business, businessmodel, economy, geekarmyknife, scarcity, abundance, alliswell, recession] [14 comments]

Back-on-track and How do you make your workday most effective ?

On May 2nd, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

So - Im back in fulltime Toothless Tiger employment from june 1st. This is the right thing for me. This is the big dive into the open sea. I want to be more efficient evolving my workday - so my question is : what works for you ?

What I have found has worked for me:

- Skype and IM meetings late at night.
- drafting all my thoughts in the wordpress CMS on toothlesstiger.com
- using hiveminder and basecamp as a productivity tool
- getting energy by not reading emails more than at lunchtime and in the afternoon
- incubation on tech blogs instead of normal news sites - they don't teach me anything anyway


where I really need to improve is:

-keeping myself on track - as I said, hiveminder is cool for productivity but I think I need something else as well
-keeping focused and not being distracted by not-work-noise
-doing boring business stuff (economy etc) as well as fun stuff
-setting both short term as well as long term goals
-family/worklife balance - sharing a calendar with the rest of the fam and other stuff.
-more filters of data instead of just data =)


What I think I need to make things easier:

-Hiveminder as a CRM tool
- some other podcastgear so I can rekickstart GeekArmyKnife together with the amazing Duarte
. (Huge thanks to these awesome guys for inspiring me to start up again)

Please overload me with comments - I need as much inspiration as I can get =) ( especially to make productivity/effectivity easier)

[business, workday, effective, employment, efficiency, hiveminder, 37signals, productivity, emails, techblogs, newssites, focus, distraction, economy, shorttermgoals, longtermgoals, inspiration, familyworklifebalance, filtersofdata, CRM, geekarmyknife, dua] [2 comments]