When it comes to issues on productivity at work, everyone can learn a lesson or two. And what better teacher can we have than the second richest man on earth, Warren Buffet? The man is an exemplary character who built his considerable wealth with a keen eye for personal discipline and a healthy appreciation for good money management.

Fortunately for us, Buffet is not stingy with his numerous business and work insights. You don’t get to the top without picking up a nugget of wisdom or two, and that’s what Buffet shares with people who want to become successful in their own pursuits someday. In business or in the office, Buffet’s advice have always become a valuable tool to push people to put in more effort to bring about the results they want.

Here are ten points for better work productivity from the Oracle of Omaha himself:

1. Avoid debt. For an investor of his calibre and net worth, Buffet has a surprisingly sparse credit history. He believes that frugality goes hand in hand with success, that’s why he avoided debts all throughout his life. Being in debt makes you struggle to make ends meet, and it also stretches your finances to the breaking point.
2. Always be prepared for the future, but think positively. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow so you better prepare today. Disasters can strike any time, but so do opportunities. If you are prepared, you can turn a bad situation into your favour.
3. Love what you do and do what you love. Buffet may be filthy rich but he’s not in it for the money. His secret to success is simple enough—if you love what you’re doing, you won’t even count the hours and the efforts you put in for it. It’s not the money that should be your prime motivation but rather the satisfaction and sense of achievement you get from what you do.
4. Don’t be afraid to start something different. Instead of working in Wall Street, Buffet opened shop in his native Omaha. He wanted to follow his own path and make his own decisions, so he stayed away from the mainstream crowd and built his business on his own terms. The trick worked and he has become even wealthier than his Wall Street counterparts.
5. Money is not the ultimate goal of life. Despite the fact that Buffet is second only to Bill Gates in terms of net worth, Buffet has never been blinded by money. Cliché though it may seem, money is just a means to an end and not an end in itself. If you’re working just for the money, perhaps you should think about switching to a different career.
6. Be open to learning new things. Buffet had his own personal heroes in the likes of Benjamin Gaham, and he never stopped taking advice from anyone and everyone who wanted to. Every lesson he learned made him smarter and more careful at what he does. You begin losing when you stop learning, because then you will no longer listen to the useful things that other people have to say.
7. Believe in yourself. You can’t achieve success if you don’t invest in yourself and have faith in your own decisions. Buffet knew from when he was young that he will someday be rich, and everyday he worked towards that goal. That kind of sterling courage and vision is handy whatever career or enterprise you may be handling now.
8. Never lose money. Buffet disliked gambling his shareholder’s money, that’s why he always makes sure that every placement is a sure winner. This is the same simple rule that Buffet gives to the CEOs of the 63 companies under Berkshire Hathaway, Buffet’s flagship company.
9. Make friends with the right people. Your work ethic can be influenced to a certain extent by the people who you mingle with, so it’s important for you to choose your friends wisely. Go with people who are good influences and can help improve your knowledge and performance. This way, you rise above your limits and take a step closer to achieving success.
10. Always reinvest your money. Buffet’s enormous fortune built up over the years because he knew that you should always keep reinvesting your profits instead of taking them out. You can start with a little something today and end up with millions a few years down the road if you know how to make your money work for you.

Here on the Paymo blog we’ll be featuring guest posts from time to time written by our customers. We hope their tips will make your more productive and will help you reach your goals. If you wish to contribute please contact us.

About the author:

When not out building relationships with other bloggers, Krisca Te can be found reading blogs that cover topics about productivity. She is an avid fan of time tracking and personal finance, currently working with Australian Credit Cards, a personal finance blog based in Sydney, Australia.

Hindsight always brings wisdom.

When i was in college, I worked on a website that highlighted green issues. It was during the the dot-com boom and we, as in a bunch of college kids, thought we could combine social entrepreneurship with making money.

Easier said than done.

For a small business, our operating costs were pretty high. We were renting an office, bought expensive computer equipment, and deployed security (though, I still don’t have a clue what thieves would have found in our office!). Oh, and we also bought expensive proprietary licensed software such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and Access to improve productivity. Needless to add, we failed miserably (although, it was a great learning experience).

I am sure we would do things differently with today’s technology. I am sure we would be less concerned about investing in expensive enterprise software solutions. Instead, we would substitute expensive productivity applications with cheaper on-demand SaaS solutions. Or, even free ones.

Maybe, you are wondering about productivity applications and what the big deal about them is. The idea is pretty simple: technology has shortened average business cycles through instant communication (think chat software such as Yahoo and Skype) and information processing (think word processing software and excel sheets). However, a key drawback with most such software is that they are expensive and proprietary. In addition, until recently, collaboration was a limited affair.

Cloud-based software changed all that. In addition to providing standard word-processing capabilities, cloud-based software lends itself to collaborative capabilities.

There are enormous benefits to using cloud-productivity software.

For starters, such applications enable collaboration across geographies. This is because the actual application (or software) resides in the cloud. What this means is that you can access it from anywhere in the world. All you need is an internet connection. Think about it as a word document floating in a technology cloud. Great, isn’t it?

Then there is the other obvious benefit of cost-saving. This means that you don’t need to buy an exclusive license for each user. Instead, you can pay per use or per user or, even, in some cases for a specific time-period of use. Cumulatively, this works out much cheaper than paying a hefty amount for license fees. The cost-saving can also be indirect in some cases: you can cut down on real-estate costs by working from home!

The third tangible benefit to cloud-based software is that they could be bundled in a suite of applications that are Internet-enabled and work across multiple platforms including traditional software such as Microsoft Word and Excel. What this means is that you can pretty much shift your entire business to the cloud in a short time, without any loss of information and, ahem, productivity.

Cloud-based productivity applications come with a caveat, though. Although they are fairly feature-rich, they do not have the bells and whistles normally found in proprietary software. In addition, some organizations are not comfortable with the idea of their data being stored in a public cloud (though, of course, that organization can always opt for the more costly private clouds).

Regardless of their cons, I still think cloud-based productivity applications are great for small businesses.

Let’s go back to my example and see how things could have been different:

1.Investment in real estate: Not required

2.Investment in proprietary and expensive software: Not required

3.Investment in separate collaboration software: Not required

4. Collaborating on projects with green experts across geographies: Yes, please!

Now, you see how things could have been different.

Article by Rakesh Sharma – editor at Getapp.com

Rakesh studied computer engineering, worked as a technical writer, and recently graduated as a journalist. He is interested in the intersection between technology, business and journalism. He enjoys good food, wine, and travel. Rakesh can be contacted at editor@getapp.com