2015’s Best Business Lessons….Are You The DRI ? (an antidote to DISTRACTION)….Social Insecurity….Econ Recon: A Pessimist’s Guide to 2016

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

T.S. Eliot

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“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year’s resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”

G.K. Chesterton

2015’s Best Business Lessons

It wouldn’t be the week after Christmas unless there were a plethora of articles looking back at 2015 and looking forward at 2016. This brief article from Fast Company offers its version of The Ten Best Business Lessons of 2015. (If a particular one resonates with you, Fast Company offers a link to another article that explores the lesson in greater depth).

Are You the “DRI”? (An Antidote to Distraction)

In a simpler age, if you were busy, you were productive. Work of some kind (farm work, assembly line, etc.) was being done and the output and value being created was obvious. Whether work, and value, is occurring in an information economy is increasingly problematic due in no small part to the distractions created by the nature of the work and the very nature of the new tools we use.

Steve Jobs understood this and in addition to creating simple, elegant products also had a management tool that created both clarity and responsibility. He made sure that distraction was kept to a minimum by insisting that every initiative had a “DRI.” Find out what a DRI is (it might be YOU)  and why it’s the one thing Jobs did at Apple that will instantly improve your productivity.  

Social Insecurity

The 2008 recession decimated many Boomers’ retirement accounts either through drop in market value, failure of the owners to continue to make contributions, and many either terminating them early or retiring as soon as possible. One major SSI provision that many couples had used as a wealth transfer strategy was just terminated (and many who may have been counting on this may not be aware). This short article  may help you manage what for many will be their primary source of retirement income.

While we’re on the topic of Social Security, many feel that this benefit is a windfall in that today’s recipients will receive far more than they contributed. Wharton Finance Professor Jeremy Siegel looks at his own Social Security Benefits and opines that, even so, it’s not such a great deal after all. This Chicago Tribune article summarizes the recent piece that Dr. Siegel wrote in the Wall Street Journal (the WSJ article requires a subscription to access), a remarkable analysis of why we might have been MUCH better off without SSI, assuming we had the discipline to save and invest.

Econ Recon: A Pessimist’s Guide to 2016

A recent financial planning company’s TV commercial asserts that most of us think our lives to date are about a 50/50 mix of fortune and misfortune; but that our future lives will be mostly good news! Clearly, we are optimists about the future even in light of personal experience the contrary!

What about the world in the year ahead beyond your personal life? To help you think about what might go wrong in the future in the larger scheme of things, check out    “A Pessimists Guide to the World in 2016  from Bloomberg . The magazine asked dozens of people who watch the world for a living for their takes on politics, economics and other areas. The responses had less than an optimistic tone. Like any forecast, this one is likely to be off, but knowing what COULD happen is often a good way to make sure it doesn’t happen to you, or if it does that you’ve taken precautions to mitigate the risk to yourself!