You know by now that I work for myself. Well, I work for my clients, but in the end, I’m the one who decides when work starts and stops at my home office.
To that end, I guess you could call me the CEO (and a few other titles), which is ironic because I happen to get Chief Executive magazine in my mailbox every month. It pays to be in charge, I suppose.
My favorite part of the magazine is INfact. It’s one page of facts assembled by business writer John Kador. Now one fact (or statistic) on its own is fairly useless. But John assembles upwards of 40 facts each month that, when placed in the context of the other facts, make eerie sense at times. Here’s an example from the March 2008 edition:
Number of work-hours it took a typical worker to buy a ticket for Super Bowl I in 1967: 3.5
Number of hours it took to buy a ticket for Super Bowl XLII (2008): 46.8
Ok, since I’m not a huge football fan, that’s not a fact that really hits home for me. Let’s try another:
Average salary increase for workers in India’s manufacturing and services sectors in 2006: 13.8%
For U.S. workers in the same sectors: 3.6%
Or how about this one:
Average percentage decrease in a home’s value for each foreclosure that occurs within a radius of one-eighth mile: 1
I love these facts – they’re quick and they shed a lot of light on things that can often be buried in a 300 word article.
Here’s one last one for you. It’s a good one.
Number of work hours it took a typical worker to buy a personal computer when it was introduced in 1984: 456
Number it takes today: 25
You don’t have to subscribe to the magazine to access these facts – you can read them online if you’re looking for some interesting statistics to make your day go faster.
