Written by Joshua Ritchie

(Andrew Feinberg)

Tech geeks and Facebook enthusiasts are filling America’s theaters to see The Social Network, a film about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of the now ubiquitous social networking site. We won’t spoil the plot for you, except to say that it does not paint Zuckerberg in an especially flattering light. Facebook’s founder (though wildly successful) is portrayed as being selfish, stuck-up and disloyal to his closest friends. (Not surprisingly, Facebook far from endorses the movie: Zuckerberg, according to the New York Times, has called the movie “fiction.”)

But while the movie is hardly a sterling example of etiquette, it does offer some outstanding big-picture lessons about personal finance and money management.

Be Decisive

For all Zuckerberg’s unsavory traits (and the movie portrays plenty) there is no denying his decisiveness. When the idea of allowing Facebook users to list their relationship status on their pages sprang to mind, he didn’t scribble it down in a notebook and tell himself he’d do it later: he ran to his dorm across a snowy field in flip-flops to code it right away. When he decided to expand Facebook, he immediately dispatched marching orders to his team about infiltrating other Ivy League schools.

When it comes to our financial affairs, many of us are not nearly as decisive. We’ll skim through articles about investing or retirement planning, but how many of us would immediately invest into an index fund or set up an IRA? If you already have, great! If not, resolve to be more decisive about your money. As soon as it becomes clear that you ought to be doing something, get down to doing it.

Take The Long-Term View

(deneyterrio)

For all his good intentions, Eduardo Saverin (Mark’s then business partner and best friend) failed to see the big picture of what Facebook was becoming. Like any good businessperson, he looked at Facebook’s exploding user-base and saw something to be monetized. Thus, he constantly pressured Zuckerberg to start hooking up with advertisers and capitalizing on the popularity of the website. But Zuckerberg staunchly resisted. After all, he said: thousands of people were falling all over themselves to join Facebook every day, just the way it was. Cluttering up the site with ads could have destroyed Facebook’s growth for a relatively pitiful amount of money.

A similar lesson applies to you and your financial life. Like most people, you probably have long-term goals: maybe it’s home ownership, a new car, or the dream of some day starting a business. The only way to reach these goals is by making sacrifices in the short-term. Sure, you could theoretically spend your latest raise on a $5,000 wardrobe, but how long will that delay your dream of owning a home?

Keep Costs Low

(Robert Scoble)

One aspect of The Social Network that isn’t getting much attention is how little money Facebook spent early on. Facebook (today worth over $25 billion) required just $19,000 in startup capital before getting VC funding. $19,000 is no small sum in most situations, but in light of what Facebook ultimately became, it’s barely a drop in the bucket.

The way Facebook stretched that money so far is by using it only for what mattered most: servers, good ones and lots of them. This concept is one we can all follow. In his New York Times best-seller I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi tells readers to “spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.” If you can live with bargain brand toilet paper or peanut butter or taco shells, for instance, there will be more money to spend on the entertainment, clothes or hobby that you truly love.

Do Your Homework

(SimonDoggett)

In The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg is often seen bragging about how smart he is. If Harvard’s network security team really knew what they were doing, it wouldn’t have taken them four hours to shut Facemash (Zuckerberg’s first website) down. If the Winklevoss brothers were truly Mark’s intellectual peers, they would’ve built Facebook instead of just thinking of something similar. It’s easy to dismiss all of this as arrogance, but that arrogance was well backed by intelligence.

In personal finance as in business, it really does pay to be knowledgeable. Your financial life is important. While money isn’t everything, the decisions you make about mortgages, savings and investments play a major role in shaping what kind of lifestyle you have. Luckily, you don’t need to be a Harvard-educated genius to make smart financial decisions. Just do your homework. Educate yourself on key financial topics by reading books and articles. Be open to constructive criticism and continuously examine whether you’re on the right track.

Bonus:Uphands

source

Written by joePA

The success of “The Social Network” at the box office this past weekend has many mid-20-somethings nostalgically reminiscing back to the days of “The Facebook” (circa 2004), long before the advent of so-called “privacy settings.” It was a carefree time when users needed a .edu e-mail address from a select network of schools and coeds openly posted party pics without any sort of inclination that their drunken, underage photos would seen by a prospective employer or, worse, a curious aunt or parent. Six years, hundreds of millions of users, and billions of theoretical dollars later, Mark Zuckerberg’s online Frankenstein continues to be the most culturally relevant social network on the Internet.

It also continues to be the ultimate online depository for women to upload photos of themselves. In turn, every warm-blooded man with a pulse and an Internet connection has squandered countless hours gawking at pictures of hot female friends — and friends of friends — on Facebook. After hours of our own thorough analysis, we’ve compiled the 15 most common photo tricks girls use to heighten their sex appeal and inflate their hottness in their Facebook photos. Check them out after the jump.

15. Posing for Group Photos with the Infamous “Angled-Knee Trick”

Facebook must have entire servers dedicated to storing photos that are a mirror image of the example above. When a group of girls huddle up to take a photo, the posture is almost universally the same: shoulders back, one knee slightly bent, and a foot forward at an angle. Points on the hotness scale skyrocket for showing some skin.

14. Posing for Group Photos with the Infamous “Strong-Arm Trick”

The so-called “Strong-Arm Trick” is pretty much a bastard cousin of the knee-out trick, as demonstrated above in the lake vacation photos of Oregon’s Cheerleading squad. It’s traditionally an optical illusion for tough girls (think rowers and field hockey players) to lose camera pounds in their arms. The basic protocol is a three-step process. First, the girl angles her body toward the camera. Second, she places her hands on her hip. Third, she pushes her funny bone back toward their shoulder so either (a) the muscle doesn’t bulge out or (b) flab on the front and back of her arm doesn’t jiggle when the photographer snaps the picture.

13. The Bend-Over Trick

Chicks love to show off how well they can do the ChaCha slide on Facebook by posing for pictures with their hands on their knees and their asses extended in full grind position. This is also a precursor to common way #9, below.

12.  The Bend-Over, Squeeze-the-Boobs Trick

Yes ladies, we’re staring at your ones-and-twos. Unlike the traditional bend-over pose, the purpose of this classic Facebook photo is to highlight the subject’s glorious rack, thus taking the attention off of the girl’s face. It’s a blissful optical illusion for a butterface, and especially effective when the boobs are squeezed together.

11. The Girl-on-Girl Hug Trick

It’s a common pose for girls who wish to show their warm affection for each other.

10. The Cheek-to-Cheek Kiss Trick

This pose takes the affection one level forward. Also, note the boob-grab. It’s another common motif in many-a girl’s scandalous Facebook photos.

9. The Sex-Position-with-Another-Girl Trick

Even if it’s just a little innocent grinding, girl-on-girl doggystyle pics push the evenlope one step close to straight-up girl-on-girl lesbian action.

8. The Bathroom Mirror Self-Portrait Trick

This is without a doubt the most narcissistic type of Facebook photo. More often than not, the type of women who pose in the mirror aren’t even attractive. It’s a surefire sign of an attention whore who is usually so desperate for online gratication that she’s willing to turn the camera on herself in a bathroom mirror before blasting it out to the Internet. Unless it’s a photo of your buddy blacked out and hurling cheap vodka and Domino’s pizza at 3 in the morning, there’s nothing more disgusting than a Facebook photo taken in the same room dedicated to taking a shit.

7. The Bag-Over-the-Stomach Trick

Beware of the girl who has an enormous, over-sized purse over her abdominal region in every Facebook photo. The dining hall and all those empty beer calories were not kind to her freshman year. There’s an 85% chance she’s concealing a Roseanne-esque sumo stomach behind that expensive Italian Christmas present from Daddy. Or else she’s pregnant.

6. The Headshot Trick

Blah. Maybe in real life you’re a smoke show, but the world will never know. In fact, you’ve already sent the general public a message: “Pet rocks, cottage cheese, and aluminum siding have more personality than me.” It also screams: Don’t forget to tip your struggling-actress/model waitress.

5. The Profile Pic with an Hotter/Uglier Friend Trick

Some smokeshows go to bitchy extremes in order to look better, even when it involves falling on the proverbial grenade.

4. The Never-Smiling-in-a-Photo Trick

Ugh. These are almost as bad as the girl who posts a head shot as a photo. Seriously, just look at the camera already and stop pouting. This girl is quick to untag herself from any and every album. No matter how loaded this girl gets, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell she’ll smile.

3. The Black and White Profile Pic Trick

Terrible acne? Paler than Tilda Swinton? No problem! All too often chicks resort to black-and-white profile pics as a nifty solution for fixing all those f-ugly blemishes without make up.

2. The Ass Shot Trick

Hey, if you got it, flaunt it. The ass-toward-the-camera, face-over-the-shoulder pose is a perennial favorite in BroBible’s office. There’s nothing like a great ass to take attention away from a girl’s other features. Unlike the example above, very few women have the hot, USDA-certifed rump roast to justify a decent ass shot.

1. The Duck Face Photo Trick

” />

Want to look like a skanky female D-bag? Channel your inner-Scrooge McDuck in a Facebook photo.

Bonus: What my Bioengineering Professor gave us today

Written by Karen Burns

Yes, yes, yes, you are very busy. That’s why you meet deadlines at the last minute. Or after. That’s why you cruise into meetings 15 minutes late. It’s why you forget details or schedule two tasks for the same time or have 500 unanswered emails in your inbox. It’s why you can never take a vacation, or even a full weekend off.

Or is it? Maybe poor time management is simply a bad habit. Maybe you can learn to organize and control your time better. Because let’s face it, time management is really self management.

[See 21 Secrets to Getting the Job.]

Consider taking a look at these classic time management tips. One, or two, or three, may work for you:

1. Obvious tip one: Make a to-do list (electronic or paper). Put the most important item first and work down from there.

2. Obvious tip two: At the end of your day, review what you’ve done and make a new list for the next day. In order of importance.

3. Be ruthless about setting priorities. Make sure that what you think is important is really important.

4. Learn to differentiate between the important and the urgent. What’s important is not always urgent. What’s urgent is not always important.

5. Carry your to-do list with you at all times.

6. All things being equal, do the hardest, least fun thing first. Just get it over with!

7. If a task takes less than five minutes, do it right away. If it takes longer, put it on the list.

8. Deal with E-mail at set times each day, if possible. If you need to check messages as they arrive, limit your sessions to less than five minutes.

9. Schedule some uninterrupted time each day when you can concentrate on important tasks, even if you have to take refuge in a conference room or at the library.

10. Another approach: Before you check your E-mail or voicemail or get involved in the minutiae of the day, devote a solid hour to your most important project.

[See 50 Tips for Surviving Your Worst Work Days.]

11. For a couple of days, take an inventory of how you spend your time to find out where and how you’re wasting it.

12. Eliminate the time wasters (e.g., if personal phone calls are taking up too much space in your workday, turn off your cell).

13. Cut big jobs into small chunks. Order the chunks by importance. Work on one chunk at a time.

14. For big, complex tasks, schedule wiggle room. Projects tend to take longer than you think/hope. Give yourself a buffer.

15. If part of your day involves routine repetitive tasks, keep records of how long they take and then try to do them faster.

16. Go one step further and set specific time limits for routine tasks. Work tends to fill whatever amount of time you happen to have.

17. Establish smart efficient systems for all your tasks, big and small, and stick to them.

18. Value your time. People who wander into your workspace to chat do not respect you or your schedule. Set boundaries.

19. When and where you can, say no. Trying to do everything everyone asks you to do is a recipe for failure.

20. In general, guard against overscheduling yourself.

[See 39 Ways to Annoy Your Coworkers.]

21. Bottom line to items 19 and 20: Learn to delegate, wherever and whenever you can.

22. Aim to handle pieces of paper only once. Same for E-mails. Read ‘em and deal with ‘em.

23. Reward yourself for completing tasks on time. No fun stuff until the work stuff is done.

24. Organize and declutter your workspace so you don’t waste time looking for things.

25. Schedule demanding tasks for that part of your day when you’re at your peak.

26. Group related tasks (e.g., sort papers on your desk and then file them). It’s more efficient.

27. Use down time (e.g., waiting for meetings to begin) to, for example, update your to-do list or answer E-mails.

28. This advice applies to life outside work, too. It’s better to be excellent at a few things than average at many.

29. Don’t be afraid to get projects done early. It takes them off your mind, and it doesn’t mean you’ll just be given more to do.

30. Create the business environment that works for you. Adjust the lighting, turn off your E-mail pinger, get that cup of tea. Set the stage and get to work.

Karen Burns is the author of the illustrated career advice book The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use, recently released by Running Press. She blogs at www.karenburnsworkinggirl.com.

Bonus: Math Teacher Fail.

source