I had the pleasure of attending SXSW this year and witnessed what I think is the next BIG thing in technology. We’ve all talked about Google’s Project Glass and its potential to change the way we view and interact with our environment. We’ve also all seen the crazy shit that cell phones are now capable of doing, but after watching/reading up on what the guys at MakerBot are working on, I can’t help but think that once 3D printing technology becomes main stream, it will be a real game changer.

You walk out of your superday feeling pretty good about your performance. You start recounting all of the questions you were asked and your amazing responses to said questions. “I nailed this one”, you tell yourself. You reward yourself with a latte from the neighborhood Starbucks and think to yourself, “I’ll probably be stopping here a lot more”.

Monkeys, I admit it. The topic title is a bit misleading. But now that I’ve got your attention, I wanted to talk to you guys today about an article that I read in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago that discussed the benefits of sleep and how some teams in the NFL are using it to gain an advantage. Since a lot of us are football fans who suffer from not getting enough sleep, I thought I’d share the article in case some of you missed it.

Fellow monkeys, in my last blog post, I discussed my inability to negotiate things for myself and how I went on to rectify this short coming by reading some books (mainly Negotiation Genius) on the topic.

Many of you said that the advice that Professors Malhotra and Bazerman give on negotiating was very academic and too complex to be properly utilized in the real world. While I agree with you guys on that point, I think there is still some value to be had when one looks at negotiations from a theoretical standpoint and has some framework to go by when involved in a negotiation.

A couple of months ago, I had an epiphany. I absolutely sucked at negotiating things for myself. It seemed like every time I was involved in a negotiation, I always came out as the loser. To make matters worse, I discovered that when I was involved in a negotiation with an incredibly hot girl, I would doubly screw the pooch.

To remedy this problem I began reading books on negotiating during my free time. That’s when I came across Negotiation Genius by Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman. What I discovered was that a lot of my misfortunes were due to a lack of real preparation. According to the authors, most people make their costliest mistakes before the parties’ even get together to talk. They go on to say that if one considers the negotiating process as an art form rather than a science, they will not properly prepare and be ill equipped when they try to strike a good deal for themselves.

To help people prepare for a negotiation, the authors present a five step frame work that I want to share with you guys today and get your opinions on.

Step 1: Assessing your best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA)