English
Arabic
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
Hi, here’s a talk I did about the benefits to the community that can come from most people working from home!
This talk is about working from home, part 4, benefits for the community. This is a very important perspective on working from home.
Firstly, the biggest benefit to the community of people working from home is a huge reduction of the greenhouse gases that are creating climate change! Our analysis and modeling would show that if everybody in the world worked from home and we could potentially reach our greenhouse gas reductions targets virtually overnight, very quickly. That’s a big statement, and most people would say that that’s ridiculous! They would point out that everybody can’t work from home..ambulance drivers can’t work from home, police officers can’t work from home. And you can probably think of a whole list of occupations that we assume can’t work from home. And to a degree that’s true. But firstly, aside from that list, most people could work from home today. The technology is there. And I won’t talk about other innovative technologies that could mean even those other jobs could be done from home. And will be in the future. But for now, we know the majority of people can work from home. but most people could work from home.
So that is a huge benefit for the community. Even if only 75% of people work from home, we would probably achieve our greenhouse gas reduction targets pretty quickly. And that’s not to say that we should stop all the other measures we are taking to reduce greenhouse gases We should definitely continue to develop clean energy and everything else. But working from home could be a massive step in the right direction, and probably the biggest single step that we could make in reducing greenhouse gases. So that’s something to think about.
Another benefit of course is that recently they’ve been there’s been a spread of disease which is becoming more common, and even when the current one has gone there’ll be another one in the future so there will always be some benefit to working from home in terms of avoiding disease. I know that even just common colds and small illnesses are hugely reduced when you work from home. Because you’re not spending hours every week with people in your face. Coughing on your etc. So reduction in illness is a huge benefit of from working from home.
And another big benefit for the community is around reducing congestion. Congestion in most major cities is now a major problem. What has caused that? Simply the fact that in most countries, most jobs are in the city. And most people start work around the same time. So everyone gets in their car or train and heads to work at the same time, into the same area. and that causes massive congestion. It that just basically very stressful chaos. Everybody’s from rushing to try to get there at the same time causes gridlock on the road systems, and huge problems with rail as well. So that’s not good and that’s creating a lot of problems for the community. So if a large percentage, say 50% of people, work from home, most of those congestion problems could be solved – almost overnight!
And there is one other big benefit to the community which is cost-saving. All of these things are costing the community. Climate change is hugely costly. Not just in monetary terms, which are huge, but in terms of the future of the planet, and our children’s children’s futures. In monetary terms, congestion is very costly because our community spends a lot of money trying to solve congestion problem – building extra rail lines and extra roads that may not really be required if people were working from home. So there’s a lot of benefits for the community. And as I said, I think the major one is a reduction of greenhouse gases. If we could get a large enough proportion of people working from home. But there’s those other benefits too.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, my contact details and video links are below. Have a great day!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter1carr/
Tel: +61 (0)491350732
www.maximumm.com
peter@maximumm.com
www.maximummtech.com
The related videos include:
Work from home Part 4, the benefits for the community
Hi, here’s a talk I did about the benefits for you – for individuals – from working from home!
The first main benefit of working from home for individuals is saving hours. How many hours ? Well we calculate most people on average spend about 13 hours a day dedicated to work on a working day. How is that made up? Firstly nine hours in the middle, which is spent at the workplace. That includes your breaks at lunch, because that’s not really your personal time that’s just time that you’ll recharging your batteries to go back to work. You wouldn’t be sitting in some food court near the office on your day off! Before that you get up and you get ready for work which might mean putting on your makeup having a shower having a shave whatever it is that you do in the morning so that you look appropriate for work, and then at the end of the day reversing all of that and getting back into your casual and home clothing so on and taking off your makeup if you do that. So it’s a couple of hours spent in preparation and so on. And then a couple of hours a day spent commuting. I know some people lucky enough to take a bus right to work, which only takes half an hour each way…but other people they’re flying from Boston to New York every morning and back again , or they’re taking the train from Paris to London and back again. So they’re spending much more than a couple of hours a day commuting. I know they’re not really common as scenarios but many people spend over two hours each way..so on average let’s calculate two hours to and from work. For a total of 13 hours.
So how much of that time is actually work time? Probably not more than six and a half hours. A lot of research indicates four to five hours. So what happens if you work from home? Some people answer “hey, I’ll do no work if I work from home!”. I say, “well that’s just not realistic! If you don’t do the work, your boss won’t let you do it for very long!”
So what would you aim to do? I would say aim for six and a half hours of work, which is the same as you would have done if you had gone to the office. Now that’s six and a half hours instead of thirteen hours per working day dedicated to work. So that’s about half the time spent which is a huge saving. What can you do with that extra time? You can have a life! You can have work-life balance! And I’ve got other videos to talk about that in great detail. But I think most people would agree that that is a big saving of hours.
The next major benefit is saving stress. Stress is a huge problem in today’s world, for just about everybody. And that’s not only stress related to achieving your work results, but it’s stress that could be affecting your health and your relationships, and so on. Where does the stress come from? Most people you get up in the morning and rush around like crazy so they can leave in time to get the correct bus or train or for driving into work. You’re cramped up in the train…or people shouting at you on the freeway! It’s very stressful. Commuting is very stressful. And then you get to work and that’s stressful of course, as we know, because you’re probably in a very stressful open plan office where you are constantly having to get dragged into office politics and all of the stress around that. Then of course the way that your boss might be stressing you out by over managing you because you’re there right in front of them. So a huge amount of stress and of course the same commuting back from work in the evening. It’s not the work that’s necessarily stressing you! It’s probably all those other factors – getting ready, commuting, the intensity of the face-to-face interpersonal relationships in an open plan office.
So the third benefit of course is saving money! Some people would say that’s the biggest benefit! I don’t think it is, but it is a big benefit. So how does that break down?
1. Some people they might spend just say 5,000 thousand dollars or euros a year commuting – taking a bus or train to work. Other people feel they need a brand new $50,000 or fifty thousand euro car, so that they’re not embarrassed driving into the car park with an old wreck! And that’s costing them probably fifteen thousand dollars a year with depreciation, insurance and the rest of the costs.
2. Food costs. We all know that if you’re going into work somewhere, you end up buying a lot of stuff that you don’t need; doughnuts, extra coffees, chocolate, snacks, whatever it is. Not to mention your actual lunch! That’s going to add up to at least five thousand dollars or euro’s a year.
3. Clothing is another big cost if you’re working somewhere where you’re expected to look the part, which most people are. Especially women working offices. Then you’re spending quite a lot of money on that.
4. The biggest cost for a lot of people though is actually housing! And some ask how housing cost is a cost of going to work? The answer is that ever since the Industrial Revolution, people have tried to work try to live close to where they work, to avoid commuting for too long. And because of that the prices of properties near workplaces are very, very high. So most people would probably buy a nice house or nice apartment for over a million dollars or euro’s, which is costing them probably 50 thousand a year in interest payments. And you may respond, “well I have to live somewhere”. Yes, but if you’re working from home, then that ‘somewhere’ could be somewhere great! You could be living on beach looking out over the ocean, you could be living on a farm looking out over the animals and fields…you could be living in a lighthouse if you liked that! Whatever it is you could be living somewhere you enjoy living, but in terms of the money saved, saving a huge amount of money! It’s probably costing a quarter as much as that inner city property you’re living in. So that could be saving you fifteen thousand euros or dollars a year or even more than that.
I won’t try to come up with a global average figure for all of these costs but some people will be saving twenty five thousand dollars a year! Other people that’ll be two or three times that amount of money depending on the different factors!
And that’s a huge proportion of your income, even if it was just twenty five thousand dollars a year. Over a decade that’s a quarter of a million dollars. That could be in your bank account and if you’re a couple that’s half a million dollars that could be in your bank account per decade. That’s a lot of money. And if you’ve been working for ten years and you’re looking at your bank account now and thinking where’s all the money, this could be where all the money has gone!
So just something to think about in terms of the benefits from working from home for you as an individual.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, my contact details and video links are below. Have a great day!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter1carr/
Tel: +61 (0)491350732
www.maximumm.com
peter@maximumm.com
www.maximummtech.com
The related videos include:
Work from home Part 3, the benefits for individuals
Hello, my name is Peter Carr and this talk is about about working from home.
I have divided this talk up into a number of parts so that you can just watch the parts that you’re interested in and not the other bits. The parts cover things like the benefits of working from home for you, for your employer, and for the community, as well as the downsides. And very importantly, how to do it really well! You can find the links to the other parts here…enjoy.
Part 1 – the benefit to businesses of staff working from home.
Today I am talking about the benefit to business of employees working from home. What have been my experiences? Well firstly about 10 years ago I had a number of team members working for me in another country in an office. Some issues came up with the landlord and it became complicated and I thought “oh I just don’t need this headache”, so I thought I’ll try getting them to work from home. So I said to each team member “pick up your computer and your mobile phone and work from home from now on. They were pretty happy to do that!
So what was the effect on on my business? Well firstly I saved a lot of money! I didn’t have to pay extortionate rent any more for this office! But you know what about getting the work done? Well the interesting thing was that productivity actually increased! And that did surprise me at the time. But now it’s pretty clear to me the reasons for that. And let’s think about the reasons for that. Most people if they work in an office, what is their day like? They get up at the crack of dawn they have to get ready. They shower, some people put on their makeup or shave and dress up. And then fight their way through some horrible public transport into work, or drive, in horrible weather and basically get to work having wasted a couple of hours of their day, And they are already pretty stressed out. And they sit down, they need a coffee. Pretty soon they’re stressed out from the office politics. they go to lunch and come back, and they do some work and then they spend a couple of hours fighting their way home again so that in total it’s been about 13 hours of the day working for you.. in one way or another. They’re exhausted they have a bit of time for themselves if they’re lucky and then they go to bed and they get up tired the next day, and do it again.
So because of these situations, 13 hours with a lot of horrible travelling time, getting up very early, they’re tired they’re not very productive, and a bit less motivated. And it’s more difficult for them to focus. Research indicate well that they’re probably doing four or five hours of productive work of day! So you’re paying them for full-time job but they’re only doing four or five hours of productive work! Now I am not pointing a finger at anyone! This is just a typical scenario for many people. So what happens if they’re working from home? Firstly, instead of having to get up at the crack of dawn, they can get up at a more comfortable hour, because they don’t have to waste hours getting ready and traveling in to work. They can get up in a relaxed manner. They can do their job in a relaxed environment where they’re comfortable. With their family nearby, so they can chat to them they don’t have to spend a lot of time on Facebook or LinkedIn trying to work out what their family is doing, because they’re there! If they’ve got kids they can drop them at school and then be much more productive. So they’ll get more work done, and the work will be of a higher standard than if they’re working in the office in the middle of the city.
Now some people say to me “well those people working from home are not going to do any work!” Really? Are you going to pay them if they do no work? Of course not. Most people have KPI’s or targets that they have to meet in their job. Most of the time you won’t be watching them anyway in the office, you’ll just be giving them jobs to do and then waiting for that job to be completed, and you’ll get an email from them telling you that they’ve finished that job. So it’s the same if they’re working from home. They’ve got KPI’s. They’ve got targets. They’ve got assigned work that they need to get the work done. Then it’s up to them when they do the work. In most cases, as long as the work is done, it doesn’t matter to you.
So what’s the outcome? Firstly, you’ve saved a lot of money because you haven’t had to pay rent for office space for these people. You didn’t have to buy the furniture that goes with that, and the upkeep, cleaning and so on and so forth. You don’t need so many managers to walk around making sure that they’re doing their job. So you will probably save on a few high salaries there. You still need to ensure that the work is being done, but it’s probably less management time than the scenario in the office. So basically you’re saving a lot of money. And the work that’s being done is probably of a higher standard because the staff members are less stressed, less exhausted, and more motivated! They will be much happier, so staff retention will be much easier, and you’ll have a lot less staff turnover, and save a lot of money in constantly re hiring people.
So that’s just something to think about, the next time you’re trying to think about how to make the business more efficient and how to cut costs…think about telling all of your staff to go home! And work from home. I am confident you will be satisfied because you’ll have a much more productive team.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, my contact details and video links are below. Have a great day!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter1carr/
Tel: +61 (0)491350732
www.maximumm.com
peter@maximumm.com
www.maximummtech.com
The related videos include:
Work from home – Part 1
Work from home – Part 2 – benefits for your business
People often ask me – “Which Graphics card should I buy for $200?”
And interestingly, right now, the answer is incredibly simple. And you probably think I am exaggerating! You probably think that there are so many different graphics cards, that it would be very difficult to choose one! Well normally that is the case. Normally, the different manufacturers have many competitive GPU products for gamers. But right now, two cards completely blow away all the rest for value for money.
And which are they?
NVIDIA GTX 1050 TI and AMD Radeon RX 570
Why?
Well these two cards are about 50% better than other cards at this price point. In the case of NVIDIA, its about en par with their flagship GTX 1650, which costs closer to $300. (Some tests rate the 1650 as faster, others rate the 1050 TI as faster).
So if you are an NVIDIA fan, the only card to get for $200 is the GTX 1050 TI. And if you love Radeon cards, for $200 get yourself an RX 570.
Is there any point paying twice as much to get a card with 50% more performance again? For most people – probably not. If you have plenty of money to spend, sure. Otherwise, get one of these two cards and invest that extra money in an SSD. Or buy something nice for your mother for Christmas!
Thanks
Max Tech
Many people ask what components are important in gaming computers, because a lot of shops try to dazzle them by telling them to focus on the CPU, or the RAM Speed, or the motherboard, or to make sure you get a brand new one because “second hand computers are a nightmare”.
The reality is that those are not the most important things to focus on when looking at buying a gaming computer. And before we start, please note – there is nothing wrong with buying one second hand! Computers don’t fail much, and they are easy to fix and easy to upgrade.
So what is important?
The single most important item is the graphics card, also called the video car, or ‘Graphics Processing Unit’, aka GPU! yes, those items are all exactly the same thing! Just with different words. The reason is that any decent computer, any i7 or a more recent i5, has a fast enough “CPU”, or main processing unit, to handle just about any game. And any computer with an i7 or recent i5 will have a good enough motherboard to run those games. And a good enough PSU (Power supply unit!). if you want some advice on which GPU to get, read our post which advises on which graphics card to buy; here:
The Central Processing Unit, or CPU – are you getting the jargon yet – is also important. But its easy, just make sure you get an i7 and you should be OK. And really there is no point getting the absolute fastest CPU, because most games are designed for people with good but not the absolute best CPU. The difference in performance between the slowest i7 and the fastest one is actually not that great. Probably the fastest CPU available is only about twice as fat as the slowest i7 from 10 years ago, and most i’7s of any generation fall roughly half way between those two extremes.
If you ten to do a lot of multitasking and open other apps while you are gaming, for chatting, video, or even for work! Then the next most important factor is having an SSD instead of a SATA Hard Drive. SSD hard drives typically run about 5 times as fast as SATA drives, but often run ten times faster if they are m.2, or if the SATA is in a SATA II system. Not THAT IS a big difference. SSD’s are the main determining factor in how fast your apps load and how quickly you can switch between apps and multi task. So make sure you have an SSD. The good news is that the real world performance difference between the best and worst SSD is pretty small, due to SATA III limitations, so as long as you have ANY SSD, you should be OK.
Next up is RAM. Make sure you have at least 8 GB. Less than 8 GB will slow down your gaming considerably. Increasing to 16 will have a minimal effect on your gaming, but once again will help a lot with multi-tasking, like having 20 chrome explorer tabs open at once. As long as you have 8 GB you should be good enough. 16 is better if you can get it, but don;t stress because it is the easiest thing to upgrade later if you decide you want more.
Finally, ‘the rest”. As mentioned above, ANY i7 PC system you buy should come with a decent motherboard and a decent PSU, and even a decent fan! Avoid i3’s, Pentiums, and dual core computers, because aside from having a very slow CPU, you can’t be sure they have decent motherboards, power supplies, and other components! And i5’s are also a risk, depending on the manufacturer.
If you’d like to read more about the best brands to buy in PC’s, read our article here:
If you’d like advice about how to choose a gaming computer system from a retailer, read our article here:
A lot of people ask me how to choose a gaming computer. Because there is a lot of misinformation out there from bad retailers! They will tell you to focus on the CPU, or size of the hard drive, or the speed of the RAM, the size of the power supply…or even the fan!
But the reality is that like most things, it comes down firstly to how much you want to spend. For example, if you want to spend over $2,000, then follow the advice of those dodgy retailers, and you will probably end up with a pretty good computer! But if you want to spend $1,000, you are in the worst position, because one of those dodgy retailers will probably sell you a computer for that price that WILL NOT deliver what you need.
The really good news is that for around half of that price you can get a very good ‘part-new’ computer from a lot of good retailers. These retailers focus on what is really important, to deliver you a gaming computer that is not too far from the $2,000 one from the Dodgy Bros, and probably way better than Dodgy Bros will sell you for $1,000. It’s a lot like buying a car. New computers are very expensive, and they depreciate in value VERY quickly once you have bought them. But the difference between computers and cars, is that computers don’t fail much, and even if they do, they can usually be fixed very cheaply. Whereas cars cost thousands to fix. So you can ‘take the risk’ of buying a second hand computer, without having to worry the way you might if you bought a 5 year old car.
In summary, if you have a big budget of over $2,000 for your computer, go to a respected gaming PC dealer, and make sure you get a warranty, and you should be OK.
If your budget is lower, probably stick to getting a ‘part-new’ or a refurbished or second hand PC, that’s a few years old. Around $500- $800 will get you a terrific gaming computer, and you can always ‘upgrade’ some components later!
If you would like to know more about which components are important in a second hand or part new gaming computer, read our article here:
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic...
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic...
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic...