I've got a good buddy in Leeds, Dave Shillito, and he Skyped me a few days ago with an idea. Now Dave and I go back a few years and like me, he makes an excellent living by selling stuff online. He fired straight from the hip, "Dave, he says, I'm surprised you haven't thought about passing on what you know about creating a financially independent lifestyle onto your fellow ex-pats"

We yarned away for over an hour with me getting more and more excited about the prospect of helping folks just like me, who could use a few extra grand each month without ever needing to leave their villa!

So I ask you, what if I showed you how to build a £50K/year on-line business - how much would this be worth to you? And it doesn't matter which country you live in. You can earn by your poolside working a couple of hours each day. It's scalable, so if just a few hundred Euros extra every month is all you want, then that's okay too... 

Would you be really interested in finding out how?

Imagine launching your own product, and waking up each morning knowing that you had been making money while you sleep? I get this buzz EVERY DAY.

Now, I knew what to do because I designed a formula and taught myself all I needed to know - so what if I put all my "how-to" knowledge together and SENT IT TO YOU in an easy step-by-step system? Call it an Internet Business In A Box if you will...

And in addition to teaching you how to do this, I give to you 5 or more already made successfully selling on-line products so that you can start immediately and keep 100% of the profits? All for the price of a local restaurant meal for two.

Imagine. Being able to treat and help your children and grandchildren, easily pay for trips and holidays, effortlessly pay your way in life. Eat well and live well. And get to pass on a valuable business as an inheritance.

Now, you'll need a PC of course and some form of connection to the internet, but that's about all, apart from putting a bit of your time and effort up-front to follow my precise instructions...

I'm several weeks away from putting this together, and can only invite around 100 folks to join me, but drop me a one line email to say you're interested, and I'll put you 'front of queue' and send you a link to the full details when I'm ready: dave@davelitten.com

Because I've been on the tail-end of a summer cold my thoughts have been somewhat introvert - always a dangerous thing! I got to thinking about my earliest recollections - around 5 years old when my whole life revolved around Mum and Dad. They were my authorities and they had the power. No problem there then.

Later, I got sent to school, now teachers shared the power and authority with Mum and Dad. They shouted at me, screamed at me, threw things at me.... and I jumped. 

They beat the heck out of me, they made sure I knew my place. They made sure I was punished. I was smacked, canned, whacked, slippered, rulered, ear-twisted, clipped, punched...and I haven't got to the bullies yet...

At least the headmaster was a local magistrate (he gave me 6 strokes with the cane for drinking milk without a straw)

Phew! justice at last Eh?

Little boys should be seen and not heard. Those who ask don't get. Patience is a virtue. Oh yes, and in between, they taught me to read, write, and add up. They were LAW. 

Then I went out to work. My bosses were now The Law, and I jumped and danced to their tune. Around the same time I became aware of the Government and it's Laws. These had to be obeyed or some form of punishment was coming my way. So I kowtowed. 

These facts I give you shaped my thinking, and I blindly followed these sources of power and authority.

My Mum and Dad did okay by me, they were good parents, but they instilled my deference to authority. I was polite to policemen for example - by instinct.

Fast-forward to 2010. 

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that my schoolteachers for the most part were post-war and mediocre, they were just doing the minimum possible. And much later, my bosses were no better than me - they just got there before me. 

And with the benefit of 60-plus years behind me, I can see that the UK has been governed by a bunch of career politicians being led by their balls by greedy and controlling bankers. Civil Servants are Self-Servants to their Masters - not to us...

All the wars in my lifetime have been encouraged by money, the banks play monopoly (= stocks and shares) with our livelihoods, and my pension will now only pay for my basic food... When complaining, I was told "sorry, your contributions were used to pay for those retiring at that time, but now affordability is an issue"...So much for entrusted Power and Authority.

By the way, I'm still polite to policemen...I just can't help myself. I'll need therapy.

So Thank God For My Internet Life. At least I'm finally my own boss.

I'm sure I'll feel better and more balanced after a few more paracetamol...

It's no secret I used to be a hot guitarist, well, in my head anyway! But truth be told I used to be okay, and played in the earliest 'pop bands' in the 1960's through to around 1985, when I 'retired'. I still play of course, but only for my own amusement, well, my wife Jude laughs every time I pick up the guitar...

If I had to pass on one tip to younger guitarists picked up from my 20 years on the road, it would not be related to actually playing the guitar, it would be the money I've saved throughout my years of regular gigging - by boiling my guitar strings.

For those of a nervous nature - look away now...

For Project Managers only: I took great interest in the launch of Earned Value Management qualification by the APM Group in June this year. At last, a step toward 'growing up' and thinking about using EV as a control tool rather than just a reporting tool (" I'm only using it because management/customer insists").

If projects were your personal investment fund, wouldn't you want to know the answer to the question "what did we get for the money we spent?" Of course you would. If you hired a handyman to fix something in your home, and their response to your question "why is this so expensive" was, "well mate, it took me over 4 hours", you might feel sympathy, but you really want to know if they completed the job so you get value for money!

So you know that for a particular duration within your project that you planned to spend, say, £5000, and let's suppose you had actually spent £5,500, you're not sure whether you're ahead of schedule (we spend more because we did more work), or that you're overspending (it cost us more than we thought to do the work).

The third variable is Earned Value of course, which is the planned cost of an activity multiplied by the percentage complete. So a £1000 activity that is 50% complete means you've 'earned' £500.

The easiest way to determine your progress is to base all your interpretation from the standpoint of the Earned Value amount. If the planned cost amount is more than your EV amount - then you're behind schedule (and vice-versa).

If your Actual cost is more than your EV, then you're overspending (and vice versa).

Okay, so this is not a tutorial on EV - but I hope I've whetted your appetite to make better friends with this invaluable project management control tool.

Hmmmm, I think I'll put this on my Project To-Do list to create an EV Primer at some point in the future.....

Late last night, as an awesome Thunder and Lightening storm swept through the Pego valley I was sitting out watching it bang and crash while trying to chart my new digital life.

It's been a week since Nick relaunched this Website and the concept of blogging, vlogging and just plain being active on-line is a new one. My mind is definitely working overtime with all the new ideas that Nick spent pressing home.

It's also something that is sometimes hard to focus on with so many other things to work on. 

I've given way, and created a brand new PRINCE2 Sample Practitioner Paper and included the answers!

So I woke up this morning and decided to talk to my cdn Nick (of projex fame) and try to prioritize all my website ideas. He suggested (well threatened, coerced and forced is more accurate) that I list all my brainload of ideas so we can have a plan of attack and a schedule for implementation over the next couple of weeks.

Here are my achievements to date:

1. update PRINCE2 Primer website to include new free Practitioner exam paper

2. Launch special price of my Project Management Primer as a partner to PRINCE2

3. Create and launch my brand-new How To Create Website Videos Using PowerPoint site

4. Launch my brand new APM Introductory Certificate Primer

HOT OFF THE PRESS: I'm working on my PMP Primer set against the PMI syllabus to fully prepare folks who want to take the PMP exam.

There's an old saying, "necessity is the mother of invention" and it proved itself to me again over the past few days. See, I needed to learn to do two new things, one was help a buddy by explaining how to set up PowerPoint slides, and the other, how to use a screen capture application. Well that was straightforward enough, but it got me to thinking that just maybe there were other folks out there who wanted to learn how to create Website sales videos.

So to cut to the chase, I created three 'how-to' videos of me doing just that. And if that wasn't enough, I decided to include a "done for you" set of Power Point Templates. They are already set up with headlines, animated bullets and footers. All you need to do is edit them to generate whatever your video topic will be.

You can see the finished result of my efforts HERE

Boy do I feel good! I've just completed my brand new APM Introductory Certificate Primer, and I'm really stoked about how it has turned out. I was teaching this 2-day course earlier this year in South Africa, and it occurred to me that since it must follow the APM official syllabus, producing a set of slides and videoing them in a handful of modules would be a great idea.

I reasoned that folks who wanted to move into accredited project management would already be busy people, and a downloadable Primer would let them study and prepare when it suited. I also figured they'd like the price too!

You can check out exactly what I'm talking about at my brand new APM IC PRIMER Video Training Site.

I knew it all along - get yer vitamins by laying in the sun. At last something positive to do with the suns rays. And exercise has been found to grow thousands of brain cells after only a few days leading to better recollection of memories, plus older folks get nimbler brains and prevents dementia. Here in Spain, the afternoon siesta is quite natural, and now scientists say that boosts brain power too.