Joining the 8%….What we can learn from the Sony Hack….Read “Harry Potter” in 3 hours….Econ Recon: Three Out of Four Ain’t Bad.

“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

“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 resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”

G.K. Chesterton

Joining the 8%

According to one study, only 8% of New Year’s Resolutions are kept. Maybe the 92% needed better directions.   If you fear you’re not in the 8%, print out this map…it may help you find your way to a resolved resolution!

New Year’s Resolution #1 – What We Can Learn From the Sony Hack

It’s just another in a long list of data and security breaches that demonstrate that the more connected we are, the more vulnerable we become. As NBC News reports, the Sony Hack is Bad, But the Real Cyberwar is All Around You. Although Sony, like most big companies that have been hacked, will almost certainly survive this embarrassment, small businesses don’t do so well. The National Cyber Security Alliance estimates that 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of a cyber-attack. A good new year’s resolution might be to challenge your IT department or managed services provider to assess your risk and then take action to 1) train your people (your number one risk is a careless employee opening an attachment or clicking on a link to a malevolent site), 2) secure your network and 3) BACK UP YOUR DATA  so you can get back on line quickly after a hardware failure or a software attack. How many days could your business survive if you lost access to your data?

Read a Harry Potter Book in Three Hours

A really good app either lets you do something you couldn’t do before or do it more effectively. Check out a new app that promises to increase your reading speed by a factor of FOUR (average college educated person reads at about 250 words per minute). If your New Year’s Resolution is to read more books in 2015 this app may get you off to a good start per this review that says  “Yes, You Too Can Read at 1000 Words Per Minute.”  If it performs as advertised, you could read one of the Harry Potter Books in less than 3 hours!

Econ Recon

Three out of four ain’t bad…The economy has more than made up for its negative first quarter performance (due mostly to weather) with a real (inflation adjusted) GDP Growth of 5.0% for the  third quarter. This is the strongest quarterly growth rate since 2003.  Economist Brian Wesbury looks ahead at what this means for the economy, stock market and interest rates in a one page analysis. We are all hopeful Q4 will continue the trend.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!