How to Automate Your Twenty-Something Life + $500 Giveaway!

As a twenty-something entrepreneur with an incredibly full workload, I far too often find myself falling behind in my personal life. I'm not talking about my social life, of course. I always find a way to grab dinner with my girlfriend, sneak in a round of golf, or go out for a night on the town. That's the fun stuff. I'm talking about the annoying daily tasks like going grocery shopping, cleaning my apartment, paying the bills, doing taxes and running out to the store to pick up essentials like trash bags, razors and toilet paper.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot get in the habit of doing these things in a timely way. So recently I've been figuring out how to automate as many of these tasks as possible.

The trend towards automating your life and relying on services is nothing new for twenty-something's. Websites that save you the extra trip to the store, like Netflix are a staple among my friends. And most people I know are living in apartments or condos, where you don't have to worry about stuff like mowing the lawn, raking the leaves, or shoveling snow.

With the emergence of Web 2.0, there are a new whole host of services that let you automate your life. My recent automation to-do has been automating my finances. I put all of my information into Mint.com so I can see my entire financial picture at a glance. Then I read Ramit's book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, and automated my bills as much as possible.

Now that my finances are taken care of, the next annoying task on my automation to-do list is to make sure I never have to run out to buy essentials again. Alice.com is launching in beta today, and if the site works out as advertised, my weekly trip to Walgreens will no longer be necessary.

Alice lets you set up reminders for when you need to reorder a product. At first you take a guess as to when you will next need a product. When the time comes, you get a reminder. But as you continue to use the site, Alice actually tracks how often you reorder each product and delivers automated reminders so you never have to run out to CVS at 6:30 in the morning because you threw your last razor out three days ago!

As busy as we all are between our careers, social lives, online networking, exercising etc. it's nice to have a handful of tools to automate the annoying tasks, and save us time and money. Alice definitely has the potential to become a welcome addition to my automation toolset.

The folks over at Alice were nice enough to offer a giveaway to the readers on Employee Evolution and Brazen Careerist. So I figured I would keep it simple. Leave a comment below listing one of the tools you use to automate your life or make your life easier. It can be anything from your Netflix subscription, products or services, your addiction to Mint, living in an apartment, or your monthly wine delivery. Get creative! We'll choose our 5 favorite comments and each will receive a $100 credit to use towards purchases on Alice.com. Good Luck!

(*Disclaimer, my girlfriend works at Alice, but the site is great regardless!)

8 On-The-Job Rules You Unfortunately Can't Learn in College

College is a great place to learn how to work hard, party hard, and make friends. College also teaches us how to live on our own and why debt sucks. But, college doesn't teach us as much about the business world because business in the real world is more about experience, confidence and the network you build. Here are 8 business rules you didn't learn in college.

1. You don't know how to manage yet.
College cannot teach you how to manage. As nice as it would be, managers learn to be great from experience, and that's it. Everyone is different, every situation is different and the only way to be a great manager is to have experiences in your back pocket that you can fall back on when you're faced with a difficult situation. Over the past few months I've learned this first hand by learning to manage on the fly. It's difficult, much harder than I ever expected, and I have a ton of respect for anyone who is great at it. You can take management courses and read management books, but you'll never learn to be a great manager without doing it.

2. Everything's a negotiation.
Negotiations happen nearly every day in business. It's amazing how many situations I've managed through that when I look back on them, I realize were actually a negotiation. Whether it's Business-to-Customer sales, Business-to-Business sales, salary, equity, ordirect report interactions, most of your conversations in the real world will involve some sort of give and take. College can teach you some basic principles, but you're better off getting practice by trying to buy a used car if you want to learn how to negotiate in the business world.

3. Networking has changed.
Unfortunately, colleges are behind the times. You would think with all the money they charge us, they would be ahead of the curve, but they're not. College professors cannot teach you how to create a "new" type of network. New networks are created online, with lots of loose connections, managed with social networking sites like Linked In and Brazen Careerist. You create your network by establishing expertise in your field and gaining visibility with the right people who share the same interests. College might teach you how to network in person, but the new networking is done online, and it's way more complicated and efficient.

4. You must create your own work.
College provides you with assignments, tests, quizzes and projects. Each of these things is handed down from a higher power (your professor) and you are told what's expected of you to earn a good grade. The business world is a whole different game. You will be handed assignments from a higher power (your boss) but there are also a million things you can do to go above and beyond. And if you want to advance in your company, join another company, or start your own, you need to learn how to create your own work, and that work you create must help the bottom line if you want to be considered successful.

5. Work is never done.
I've learned a lot of things since starting Brazen Careerist, but one of the most important lessons I've learned is that the work is never done. No matter how sure you are that you've done everything you can think of, there will always be something else to do when you wake up in the morning. If you're sitting around at 10 pm and you're bored with nothing to do, grab your computer and do a little work. Sure, you could put it off 'til the morning, but I guarantee that when you walk in the doors to the office, you'll have a full plate, no matter how much work you do the night before.

6. All work is not done sitting in front of a computer.
I often feel like I should be doing more work when my day consists of phone calls, meetings and random discussions around the office. And it's true, there is usually a lot of busy work I didn't get done at the end of a day like this, but when you start moving up that proverbial ladder, work becomes less and less sitting in front of a computer, and more and more talking, managing, and brainstorming. In fact, when you get to the point where work is hardly sitting in front of the computer at all, work starts to become a lot more fun.

7. Everyone looks out for themselves.
Some professors may be tough, but in general they all want you to succeed. Sometimes a curve will create a little competition, but for the most part your peers don't care one way or the other if you fail or succeed. The business world is much different. Everyone is looking out for themselves. If you fail, your peers have a better chance of being promoted. If you started a company, people justify their choice to not take the same type of risk by secretly wishing for you not to succeed. The best bosses are supportive, but when it comes down to it, people look out for themselves. In business, you can't trust everyone; it's all on you to succeed.

8. Straight A's will not make you a CEO, only a great entry level employee.
Students with 4.0 GPA's are recognized and honored at graduation and generally admired in school. But I do not want to work for anyone who got straight A's in school. But I would happily hire anyone who got straight A's. Why? Straight A's means you are great at doing the work you are assigned. You study hard, work hard and were rewarded because of that. But leading a company or starting a company requires much more. It requires social skills, vision, and creating work when there is nothing tangible there. It's no surprise that some of the world's top business leaders were college drop-outs-you've got to be a little nuts to believe you can lead a massive organization or create something from nothing. So be wary if your CEO was a straight A student, he's probably in the wrong position.

3 Ways to Plan for the Future Without Getting Overwhelmed

I'm a planner. In fact, some people might say I have a problem. I make lists for everything, I plan for everything, and recently, I even found myself making daily lists and plans for both Penelope and Ryan Paugh.

In some ways this can be a problem, like when I stress out about future events that I have no control over. But if you have a grip on it, planning for the future is extremely important and beneficial to your career and to your life. Since coming to terms with my excessive planning nature, I've figured out how to plan effectively for the future without stressing myself out too much. Here's how you can do it, too.

Know your goals and write them down

The first step is to have a basic idea of what you're planning for. What do you want to do? Where do you want to be? This does not mean you should write down your one, three and five year goals. Instead, just write down a few things that you would like to achieve in your lifetime. The other day I glanced at my short list of lifetime goals for the first time in at least six months. It was pretty cool to see that I achieved two of them (starting a company and conquering my fear of public speaking) without consciously thinking about it.

Glancing over the list made me remember some other goals I'm still after, like running a marathon and living in a foreign country. Hopefully in another year I'll be able to knock off another goal or two, but I'm not going to obsess over them anytime soon. If you don't write a few goals down, one of two things will happen. You will either completely forget about them, or, if you're like me, you will stress out about it at the wrong times and fail to accomplish the day-to-day tasks that will eventually get you where you really want to be.

Live in the moment

If you're always thinking about the future, you will never accomplish what needs to be done to achieve your goals. Because I'm such a future oriented person, I have to constantly remind myself to live in the moment, and to do things that keep me focused on that. My favorite thing to focus myself is to go for a run, and when I start getting ahead of myself I repeat the phrase, "Be here now." It's like my own personal mantra that keeps me in the present.

I just started reading the book, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. The book discusses how our attachment to our ego leads to anger and unhappiness. But the main lesson I've taken from the book is to simply be present and to live in the moment. It's not a great book—kind of boring, and a little too philosophical for me—but for whatever reason, every time I read a few pages, my entire body relaxes. I stop thinking about tomorrow's schedule and I stop stressing about hitting milestones.

Whether it's jogging, reading a book, or meditating— figure out what you need to do to relax and live in the moment and your future will fall into place.

Cut your to-do list in half and enjoy your accomplishments

Everyone needs a to-do list. If you don't have a list of what needs to be accomplished during the day it's way too easy to get sidetracked. But everyone should cut his to-do list in half.

It's easy to create a list, accomplish a few things, then add more and more until you become an obsessive, stressed out, productivity machine. But accomplishing task after task for the sake of getting things done does not lead to happiness, and if you really take a good look at your to-do list, I guarantee you can cut it in half and life will go on. In fact, you'll probably accomplish more if you don't sweat the details.

Happiness comes from enjoying whatever it is you are doing and enjoying the things that you accomplish. If you're not happy with what you're doing right now and you can't enjoy your small accomplishments, it's a good indication that when you reach those large goals, it will just be another thing to check off the list. And that's no way to lead a healthy life.

Henry Ford Didn't Need to Manage, But You Do

Seth Godin claims that Henry Ford's greatest achievement was not the assembly line, but rather that he understood (and exploited) the power of productivity. Godin argues that Ford understood that paying workers more than the average salary would make them work twice as hard, and pump out twice as many Model T's, each one making him wealthier and more powerful.

The strategy worked because people were dying to make more money in Ford's day, so any assembly line worker could be easily replaced. And when you're easily replaced, you work much harder.

But they didn't work harder because they wanted to, or because they had an inner drive to succeed. Instead, they worked harder because they were terrified of losing their jobs. Ford created the ultimate workplace culture of obedience and fear.

Which begs the question, "What happens when we start using our heads, not our hands, when our collars change from blue to white?"

The answer is that fear no longer works and hands-on-management is no longer optional. When we use our minds rather than hands, there are no widgets to produce; there are no cars to build, but there still must be results.

Fear worked in Henry Ford's day. People knew they would be fired if they didn't produce, so they worked harder. But fear does not work anymore because instead of working harder and pumping out more products, the fear of being let go for doing the wrong thing will cause people to sit back and do nothing.

Managers correctly expect employees to have initiative and get things done. But it's a two-way street. Employees should expect managers to take initiative to properly train and manage them. When I read articles bashing Generation Y for lacking in confidence and behaving like idiots, I can't help but question the manager's effectiveness at his job.

There will always be way too much "non managerial" work to do and important milestones to hit. But the good managers, the managers who don't complain about their employees, are the ones who manage first, and work second. These managers know that if people know what's expected of them, they won't be scared to take action. Fear used to drive results, but in today's workplace it's nothing but a productivity killer.

How to Run an Effective Meeting

Everyday of my college career seemed to conclude with a series of long meetings, each one more trivial and ineffective than the next. Water-cooler gossip delayed the start, while side-discussions and tangents drew us away from our goals. Everything eventually dissolved into free-for-all bashings of Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, or Lindsay Lohan. An hour would go by, and we'd have accomplished few, if any, of our objectives.

It got to the point where I purposely saved all my musing and day dreaming for those meetings. This way, at least I was unproductive and fantasizing Natalie Portman as my girlfriend at the same time (the latter helped numb the pain the former created.) I endured these mini-retirements to hell for most of college, because I thought meetings were supposed to suck your soul dry – see Brad H.'s example.

It wasn't until I started running consultations, project discussions, and editorial meetings did I see why those meetings were painful. It wasn't that they were intrinsically agonizing – humans, after all, are social beings. It was the disorganization, the lack of goals, and lack of actionable objectives that made things miserable. Once I identified these specific problems, and focused on eliminating them, I found solutions to running a more effective meeting. Here are five:

1. Create an agenda before the meeting. Cover topics in order from most important to least important. Send the agenda to your group members before the meeting. Ask them to prepare questions beforehand.
2. Have a maximum of 3 mission critical objectives every meeting. When you make a list of 20 objectives, the important items get lost in the noise.
3. Designate a start and end time (the shorter, the better) – and stick to them. Latecomers will quickly learn to arrive promptly, and people will appreciate your respect for their valuable time.
4. Explicitly ask everyone to keep side discussions until after the meeting. Tell your group you'd enjoy talking with them afterwards, but first you have important items to discuss.
5. Assign group members responsibility over meeting objectives. Give them a set amount of time (five to 10 minutes) to explain the problem, lead discussion, or offer solutions. Members will pay more attention if they're invested in the meeting, rather than being talked at. Afterwards, you or your group should make a decision based on their presentation.

In general, I'm not a fan of face-to-face, large group meetings. I believe there are faster, more effective ways of conveying information. But when they are necessary, hopefully you can keep them from consuming the enthusiasm of your group or organization.