Mobile lifestyle

Mobility is always the way of my lifestyle. As a consultant, my job is to educate and provide relevant information to my clients at on-demand basis. A part from serving clients, the guy who sign my pay cheque is also expecting me to feed him with business update information as and when it is needed. 

Hence, to fulfil the on-demand requirements from the clients and bosses, many of my peers are opting to standby in the office with all the office facilities ready and materials in hand. But, this is not a productive way of work because times will be wasted if there is no urgent enquiries and adhoc business reports. Being idle at the office standby for such adhoc tasks is just not productive.

Leverage mobile technologies will be the answer to improve productivity. Below are some key devices that are essential for people on the move.

1. Mobile phone

2. Laptop with mobile broadband

3. Personal or company website that serve the FAQs. (I used blogspot for this purpose, visit my blog)

4. External storages- working documents in digital formats.

It is time for me to enhance the item 3 & 4 to improve the productivity yield while being mobile.

Nobody owes you a living!

"You got to be responsible to yourself. Nobody owes you a living!"

The above statement was my advise to my sub-ordinates when I was still running the industrial inkjet printer business in Malaysia. At that period of time, I wanted all the sales engineers under my leadership to be productive and professional. I wanted them to be on par with me in time to come. And I believe by awakening their sub-conscious mind is one of the ways that give them the ultimate motivation to strive for greater achievements.

I left the less glamor industry and joined a European based Fortune 500 company to pursue my dream to work in a corporate world.  As a principle man, I do not agree with the marketing direction of this European company because I found it is misleading.

I have then joined another Asia based Fortune 500 company. After about 2-year working in this corporate, I have started to settle down, built my comfort zone. But, I still constantly remind myself that I shall not take things for granted, things might change in the not too distant future.

The corporate exercises such as change of immediate superior, change of corporate structure, change of work environment or place of work, change of pay scheme and etc that may disfavor or shortchange you. While we are doing well now, it is important for us to live a prudent and frugal lifestyle to ensure the household expenses are taken care off when things do not work out as you thought.

Better still if we are able to generate steady passive income that enables us to maintain current lifestyle even thought we decided to quit the job or being retrenched.

Last but not least, never leave your fate to the corporate or someone else as they do not owes you a living. Be responsible to yourself and your family!

Heading for another recession

The world is possibly heading for another recession due to sluggish growth, euro-zone dysfunction, and financial market volatility.

 

"You may not get a negative type of contraction in the US, but you may get growth like that in 1Q2011, when the US economy grew only 0.3%. When I talk about a sharp economic slowdown, it could be a recession or very slow growth. The dividing line between negative and positive growth is very fine and is actually not critical. More importantly, instead of 3% to 4% growth, we could see 0% to 0.5% growth in the US. We will have a very severe slowdown in the US that will feel like a recession," Tan Teng Boo, founder and managing director of Capital Dynamics warns during an recent interview with The Edge Singapore.

To weather the recession or major economy slowdown, we will need to plan for the worst scenario that could happen to us. During economy slowdown, corporates will tend to lay-off employees to ensure the company balance sheet is positive. Retrenchment will be one of the most common tools used by corporates during bad times.

Hence, the worst scenario would be losing job. Ask yourself, can you afford to lose your monthly pay check? Your savings can last your family for how many months as getting a job during recession is even tougher?

It is vital to save at least 6-month of your family expenses, and if possible, expand the amounts to be able to survive your household expenses for 12-month. Cutting down unnecessary expenses is the only way to build up your savings fast. 

In my view, the 2008-2009 recession was just a teaser as world governments spent trillions in stimulus packages. To me, it was just an action to buy time and hope. Now, the US and the Euro-zone governments probably have already running out of tools to stop the recession from happening.

We can't estimate the future, but it is wise to get prepared for another recession.