Do you use Facebook? Obviously you do. We all do. Everyone is on Facebook. My mom has Facebook. My cousins on a farm in Europe have it as well. There’s no running away from Facebook.

I just read a fascinating article over at CNN Money about oversharing on Facebook.

I’ve been a victim of this many times on Facebook. I go out, have a good time, have a few drinks, and then the next day I get tagged in a bunch of photos by friends that love doing that sort of stuff (not sure why).

My experiment for today is to ensure that you’re not ruining your life on Facebook.

Before I go any further, I want to explain how you actually screw yourself over on social media. I’ll share a few possible scenarios that have occurred to far too many people:

• Saying something negative about a boss and then getting fired.
• Posting up drunk photos and then ruining job opportunities.
• Not getting hired because of a scandalous profile on social media.
• Embarrassing yourself.
• Annoying your friends and having them delete you with your serial updating.

Do any of these sounds familiar? It could happen to you. I want you to avoid this.

How can you avoid ruining your life on Facebook? Below are a few of my tips:

1. Don’t go on social media inebriated. Stay off when you’ve been drinking.
2. Stop updating everyone with every single mundane detail of your boring life. Nobody cares.
3. Send a text message or call a friend. Your comments don’t need to go to public. Call a buddy and vent. Get it out of your system.
4. Get social media off your smart phone. Delete those apps. All they do is kill productivity and make you look like you have no life. That’s just my opinion though.

I’m not a social media expert but I’ve been working on it. I want you to work on this as well. Social media is relatively new. You don’t want to get screwed out of a job offer just because you started ranting on Twitter after a few shots.

Don’t ruin your life on Facebook please.

Often, while running excel macros, especially ones that take a while to run, we turn off the screen updating function in excel. That is done quite simply by adding the following into a macro:

With Application
.ScreenUpdating = False
End With

Then, at the end, I simply re-activate the screen update feature by adding the following:

With Application
.ScreenUpdating = True
End With

The main benefit is that this simple line of code can make a major difference in the speed of the macro.

The downside however is that you no longer see what’s going on in the code. For macros that take some time to run, this can be a bit worrying. One way to get around this is having the macro give an update or message. There are two different ways this can be done.

#1-Message Box:

MsgBox “The macro has finished running”

#2-Status Bar Updates

One alternative is to have the message displayed in the status bar. The advantage is that no click is necessary to move to the next step, here is a sample code:

Application.ScreenUpdating = False
‘ turns off screen updating
Application.DisplayStatusBar = True
‘ makes sure that the statusbar is visible
Application.StatusBar = “Please wait while performing task 1…”
Application.StatusBar = False
‘ gives control of the statusbar back to the programme

This is what it would look like:

Both methods are generally good ways to get updates without needing to see every single step that the macro is doing.

As much as I support the idea of starting a business, I truly believe that you can save a business as well. You don’t have to always be behind every business. You can be apart of the team or be the person that helps improve another business.

This interview on Forbes with The Rock really opened my eyes. This is what really caught my attention:

In April The Rock fought John Cena in a Wrestlemania battle, the most-watched in the history of the 27-year event, which raked in $67 million, thanks to 1.3 million pay-per-view downloads in 105 countries.

The Rock has made a living from saving franchises and businesses (movies and WWE). He’s known for hoping on movie franchises and re-inventing them. The Rock has seen plenty of success from joining onto an existing franchise.

How can you save a business? What can you do to jump on board?

• Perform consulting services.
• Work as an employee.
• Change the vision.
• Do a joint venture.
• Create a partnership.
• Do freelance work.
• Jump on board and take over.
• Buy the business.

That’s how you can do something different and save a business from dying or allowing its returns to diminish.

Why’s it better to save a business?

1. You can move on easily.
2. You become more valuable.
3. You get paid exceptionally well for being a highly valuable resource.

What are you going to do?

Will you try to start a business or will your plan be to save one? I can’t answer this for you. I’ve personally done a bit of both. I’ve started my own business and made money on my own. I’ve also been responsible for helping others save their business. When someone is willing to listen and actually pay you for you time, you can help them do something cool. You both benefit from this.

Will you save a business from dying?