Tag: goals

updating my financial goals, July 2008

Back in December, while participating in the Carnival of Financial Goals started by Patrick of CashMoneyLife.com, I gave my 2008 financial resolution. I’m pretty happy about where I’m at with it now.


Creative Commons License photo credit: Tigr

Here was my resolution and how I intended to accomplish it:
I will average $1000 per month in alternative income in 2008.

More specifically, these were the SMART measurements I came up with to measure this.

  • Specific - I’m going to expand my alternative income through this blog, through writing freelance articles, through my investments (although those will be reinvested) and through my other blogs.
  • Measurable - In December I will look back, take the total of my non-wage income for 2008, and divide by 12. That number will be higher than $1000.
  • Actionable - I’m already started on this goal - this blog is earning nearly $0.03 per day, I have some dividend-and-interest-producing investments, and I have started submitting a few freelance articles here and there. I just need to increase the intensity of all of these actions!
  • Realistic - If you’ve read this blog for a while you know I believe that just setting a goal down to (figurative) paper means that you can achieve it, but even without that belief I’m sure that if I work hard enough at 10 different income streams I can manage to generate that much, or more, if I make it a resolution.
  • Timely - I will have a good idea if I’m headed in the right direction by February 1, but even if I earn $10 in January it just means I have to average $1090 for the next 11 months. I’ll have a moving target each month, and I’ll know on December 31 if I hit my goal or not.

I followed it up a couple of months later, pointing out that I had come up far short of that goal. I interviewed myself (yes, I actually did - it’s a slightly disturbing one-person two-sided conversation). At that point, I had made far, far less than my original goal.

Well, as Jack Nicholson said in Wolf, “The worm has turned and it is now packing an Uzi, Mary.” I spent some time focusing on this goal and a surprising thing has happened. I am now close to halfway to my goal of earning $1000 a month on average. Considering how badly I did for the first month of the year you can imagine that things have really started picking up. I’m not even counting dividend or investment income at this point.

So how did this happen? I’ll attribute it to three specific actions:

  • My network, The Money Writers, has provided some help with obtaining revenue (namely advertisers) but far more importantly they’ve helped with ideas, tips and support. This is a perfect example of the mastermind concept in action. I wouldn’t be where I am without these guys (and gals).
  • I reengineered the blog and its advertising. Instead of my previous throw-everything-at-the-wall approach, I stuck to about four categories of ads and studied what worked. I tried to eliminate some of my in-your-face ads but put more ads on older posts. I deemphasized or removed ads that didn’t work, rather than hoping they would generate trickles of income; the purpose was to keep the overall experience of reading fun.
  • And I am sure this final point appeals to half of you and disgusts the other half, but I really concentrated on attracting success; not just for this alternative income but in my overall financial life. I decided that from being positive and writing more about what I feel needs to be said - from my gut - success would follow. I hope it has, in the sense that I hope what you read continues to deliver more value to you (in terms of ideas and maybe even just some fun reading it) than it takes from you (in terms of time). Only you would know that! Otherwise, you’d go read CNN Money.

So I’m halfway there, after an awfully slow start. Later in the year I’ll also pull in other alternative income: totally independent (rather than contracting) consulting in a slightly different field, my work-in-progress book, dividends, referral fees that I mentioned before (I have “headhunted” some former colleagues into positions this year - one 60-minute phone call netted me a $2000 fee for one of them, for example). I have a lot of plans, and the only constraint I have is time. Scratch that… I watched 45 minutes of Star Wars II: Attack of The Clowns, er, Clones last night, so I have time. The only constraint I have is myself, and I’m working hard on not constraining myself in anything!

And to quote again from my interview article update: “Well, the playoffs WERE good. 17-14, baby.” Anything is possible, even beating “The Greatest Team in History.” Nothing is impossible. Nothing.

David Tyree New York Giants Super Bowl XLII

happiness and links

I have a bit of cognitive dissonance when I hear that it’s still snowing in parts of these Americas. We’re already knee-deep in summer here, walking in shorts and t-shirts outside all the time. I know that climate isn’t the sole factor of happiness, but it does help greatly, in my opinion. On a related note, I’ve just finished reading The Happiness Project and it’s given me some good ideas on how to force happiness, rather than hoping it will come around. As someone who’s writing about the moody side of life – hence the name brip blap – I’d recommend this book as something that might be useful.

 

Links!

focus

I wonder if other writers/bloggers find themselves having any of these problems frequently:

  1. Coming up with lots of writing ideas and getting one or two paragraphs into each and then finding that the exploration of those topics wasn’t as interesting as it first might seem to be;
  2. Writing something, then thinking it is either too personal or too depressing or too silly or too whatever, even though it might be a good piece of writing;
  3. Becoming discouraged from writing because you’re distracted too often – i.e. simply being unable to concentrate. Incidentally, the book Focus that I mention below made me realize this might be more of a problem for me than I thought it was.

I have all three of those problems, but unfortunately #1 is the one that kills 90% of my writing. I have dozens and dozens of 1, 2, or 3 paragraph blog posts started, 3 eBooks with about 10-12 pages apiece, and 2 novels with one chapter apiece. I started two other blogs besides this one that did fairly well for a while, but I lost interest in the subject matter (one was family/child oriented and the other was focused on the accounting/audit industry).

I’ll have to reread the aforementioned Focus by Leo Babuta again – I read it quickly in two lunch breaks this week – because if you want to do anything well you have to focus on it. Leo’s written a nice little book with some practical tips, which were nice and helpful. The overall theme of focus, though, and why it’s not just an important thing but the MAIN thing in any endeavor really fired off a few of my own neurons. I realize I can focus, simply because I’ve spent a few weeks building an incredibly complex financial model for a client, and they’ve been very pleased with the result. So I know I’m capable of it. But I don’t do it nearly as often as I should, and in certain areas I’ve let my focus atrophy to the point it’s non-existent, which is a very, very bad thing.

Originally this was going to be part of my roundup post yesterday, but I decided it could stand on its own. But even that decision indicates I have a certain start-stop-start-stop mentality of not having a clear idea where I’m headed with something when I start it. I can be very good about focusing on my own habits, but that has to be coupled with a strong focus on goals, which unfortunately change too frequently for me. I’ll have to take my one-habit-per-month plan and start adding goals, not just habit changes. Because sometimes a nice long walk in the park can be pleasant, but if you don’t plan to end up in a certain location – i.e. back at your car, or your house or whatever – it’s not called a walk, it’s called “getting lost in the park.”

Jefferson on attitude, and roundup

Thought for the week:

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
- Thomas Jefferson

I had more exposition written here, originally, but I decided it was long enough to break out into a post of its own, so it will appear tomorrow as a standalone post. Until then, read the links:

6 Tips to Eat Less and Lose Weight: Volumetrics is the idea that you should simply eat larger volumes of less caloric food. That, combined with drinking a lot of water, would seem to be a pretty solid basis of a diet that ‘tricks’ you into feeling fuller. I just wonder if you can construct a varied diet using that trick. I think drinking seltzer also helps, personally – the gas in it is, of course, non-caloric, and having a lot of fizzy water in your stomach does make you feel quite full.

Finances of the Average American: I always find these kinds of stats staggering: 25% of Americans have NO savings. It’s either an indictment of our debt-ridden, consumerist society, or it’s a sad commentary on capitalism.

A Grocery-Shopping Hiatus: How Long Can You Eat from the Pantry?: I’ve often threatened to do this – not buy any new food until what we have is completely gone – but I’ve only ever done it once, when I was single. It’s too hard to get a whole family on board with this idea.

Do You Have to Pay Taxes on Unemployment?: It seems ridiculous to me that you pay into the unemployment system then get taxed on it when you are unemployed and start drawing “your” money back out, basically, but there it is. Good thing we tax that.

Tax Deadlines Spring 2011 and Tax Software Discounts: Hard to believe that tax time is creeping up on us. I wish my broker would hustle to get my forms to me so I could get started.

Are Credit Card Rewards Taxable?: This thought had honestly never occurred to me, but I suppose those rewards do represent income. It just never crossed my mind that I might need to pay taxes on them – read the article to find the answer to that question.

Simple Thank You Gifts For A Host: That’s not a bad idea.

Market Value Measures: P/E, PEG, Dividend Yield, Price to Book Ratio: Always useful to understand the basics.

A Collection of Free Kindle Resources: If you have a KindleKindle, this article can sum up the free resources – there are few alternatives, and rightly so. As Trent points out, writing a book is hard work and authors do want to be compensated. Crazy, right?

A Layoff Story: The Ant, the Grasshopper, the Honeybee & COBRA: I have a “magic number” for an emergency fund that lets me sleep well at night: $40,000. It’s fairly close to Len’s number.

Create Time to Change Your Life: You know, Leo’s blog was one of my inspirations for starting to blog myself. Then I got a little bit tired of the direction he headed with a lot of (what I perceived to be) breezy, non-helpful articles about “just look at the clouds and smile” types of subjects. But recently his blog has taken off again (for me, at least). I think removing comments helped. But I really liked this post, and his book Focus, while repetitive at times, had some very inspirational ideas in it.

Zen and the Art of Investment Banking: When Working Right is More Important than Finding the Right Work: A very good (and long) read. It is true that many of the people who ‘do what they love’ may be exceptions, rather than the rule. It may not be what you do for a living, it may just be your personality which makes it difficult for you to enjoy any type of work.

The Marshmallow Test for Retirement: I’ve heard of this study before, but if it’s true both I – and my family – are in trouble. I can’t even vaguely imagine either of my kids sitting and waiting to eat a marshmallow. Probably something I should work on correcting, except that Bubelah and I are probably the same, at the core.

the 5 o’clock test

You’ve probably heard the saying that “we’re all in business for ourselves.” This statement resonates with me. Everyone is, in effect, an entrepreneur. You may be an entrepreneur with a narrow set of expertise and only one client: an employee, in other words. Yet you are not a permanent part of your employer’s company. As you move on through life, you will be an entrepreneur of your own brand, seeking to move from one client at a time to another. You may become increasingly specialized in your services, but the brand - you - is still something you’ll attempt to promote and improve upon as you move from client/employer to client/employer.

Even if you buy into this mindset, though, it can be tough to think like an entrepreneur in a 9-to-5 job. An employee has a fundamentally different way of viewing the world than an entrepreneur does. One of the main ways you can tell if you’re an employee with an entrepreneurial mindset versus an employee with an employee mindset is this: do you worry about being at your desk at 5:00 PM (and also, 9:00 AM)?

If you have the employee mindset, you’ll want to make sure you’re a team player. You’ll have a contract specifying a minimum of 40 hours per week, and you’ll watch that clock to make sure you are in your seat 40 hours (at a minimum). The employee mindset says that the “where” (sitting at your desk) is more important than the “what” (getting results). The employee is banking on ‘face time’ being the critical measurement of success. If you have ten hours of work to do or two hours, the hours will be the same.

The entrepreneurial employee’s mindset is different. If you’re in at 10 and leave at 3, it doesn’t matter as long as you get the job done. If you need to be there at 5 (or 6, or 7), fine. If you can leave early, also fine. The employee with the entrepreneur’s approach knows that his or her “brand” is based on whether or not goals were met. Whether you sat in your desk an extra two hours after your work was done for the day, just so you were there at 5, doesn’t matter.

Has anyone in a professional career has ever bragged in an interview about how they could always be counted on to stay in the office until 5:00? Employers don’t care. Clients don’t care, either. Skills and results are the only thing that matters, right?

Unfortunately that’s not true. A lot of lip service is given in the corporate environment to work/life balance and the idea that only results matter, but anyone who spends more than a day or two in a cubicle knows this isn’t true. Whether or not you have butt firmly planted in chair at 5:00 matters nothing to your next job, true. But in office politics - the business of surviving in and flourishing in your current job - ‘face time’ is critical. Look around the office and see how many people are coasting, working at less than full potential, simply so they have their tired face visible when 5:00 rolls around. These people may understand, deep down, that there is no real reason to be adhering to a 9-to-5 schedule, but that’s the corporate culture and it seems unlikely to change.

If you feel the desire to be in your seat at 5:00, fine. Many people are more comfortable not rocking the boat. But if you feel that you NEED to be in your seat at 5:00 or you’re going to be disciplined, you’re not in an organization that values results. You’re being paid to fill a budgeted position so a manager can move up the corporate ladder by pointing to his management of a team of 20. And before you think you can just coast along showing up at 5:00, remember this: managers with that mindset weren’t born. They were sitting in your seat 20 years ago, waiting for the clock to move past 4:59…

low brow inspiration

I find inspiration in stupid places. Before you read further, let me say again: stupid places. Sure, I’ll quote Einstein and Emerson and Franklin from time to time. Even guys like Napoleon Hill have a little bit of non-dumb cred. But if you tell people you get inspiration from someone like Donald Trump or Adam Carolla, you’ll get a look or two. It took me years to realize that if I enjoy metal music and get inspiration from it, I don’t need to feel bad about hating opera.

I’d like to think I’m a cultured guy. I am, by many standards. I’ve studied four languages and still speak two of them. I have read philosophy, poetry and prose til I’m blue in the face. I play the flute and tuba, and back in the day could hold my own on the bass guitar. I knew BASIC and Pascal. I like country music (Hank Williams, Sr. era) and drink cheap beer. I love dumb sitcoms and heavy metal. I’m all over the place in terms of culture.

You may think of yourself as the kind of person who needs inspiration from wonderful sources, but you don’t. Warren Buffet is a good guy to listen to, but let’s face it - if you get inspiration from Trump, there are bits and pieces to admire about his life, too. People will tell you you’re a fool to draw inspiration from the dross - from Wayne Dyer or Kiyosaki - but there is something to be found in Seneca, and in the Secret; in Plato and in Oprah.

I spend more time than I should trying to find inspiration instead of acting on the inspiration I already have. It’s a failing of mine, and I imagine many people do the same. How many self-help books suffice? 1? 10? 100? I think if you read one and don’t act on it, two self-help books are too many, and by that standard I’m over the limit.

But find your inspiration where you can. I find it in movies and in books and even in music. The point is not where you find inspiration - the point is whether you act on the inspiration you DO find.

photo by LancerE

when things go right…

just drive
If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know I’m a believer in positive thinking a la The Secret. I’m not a “wish for a diamond-studded Porsche and The Universe will make it come to you” kind of guy, but I do believe that your mental state and focus on goals do cause things to happen (indirectly, sometimes). It may be that having a positive mental state and well-thought out goals simply means you’re more aware of opportunities as they flash by, or it may be that the Force is with us, always. I dunno - I’m not successful enough to give lectures on the amazing success you can achieve simply through a positive mindset or a white-hot intensity in your pursuit of your goals. Nor am I positive enough or intense enough.

Positive thinking is easier when things are going well, but also when you allow yourself to be distracted by external events from focusing on the negative. I have been busy enough with traveling (a quick family business trip), packing for our imminent move to Florida and some weekend family visits for Pumpkin’s first birthday that I haven’t had much time to read and ruminate on:

  • swine flu
  • the Chrysler bankruptcy
  • the awful state of the US economy, which simply seems to get worse and worse
  • torture memos and so on
  • the Taliban offensive in Pakistan
  • etc.

I’m aware of all of these things, but I haven’t been concentrating on them. Instead, I’ve been focused on getting boxes and organizing books, CDs; canceling and transferring services; and dealing with two stir-crazy kids kept inside for weeks by cold weather and rain (with one brief four-day respite). I’ve found that the very basic focus-on-one-or-two-(or-three)-things-per-day system I mentioned works well, after a bumpy start.

The COBRA reduction came through. Because it was retroactive, I don’t owe anything for health insurance for the rest of the summer, and after that it’s only $400 a month. That makes a huge difference in an unemployed person’s life. My search for work will shift - I can afford to look for the contracting work I prefer without a desperate need for benefits, for a while. I still think the original thoughts I had on the reduction hold true, and several of the comments are also (very) worthwhile reading. I know it’s a lot of money, but think what an effect that might have on the economy if reasonable “bridge” insurance was available to everyone who lost a job.

Other little things have gone right here and there - I fixed what seemed to be a major car problem myself, a refund for several hundred dollars we had been chasing for a while finally came through, and (at least for a few days) we had a taste of summer and what awaits us in Florida. The name of this blog is brip blap for a reason. I bounce back and forth a lot. But when things go right, focusing on the future becomes easier. The trick is to make it a habit, and again and again - for myself - I notice three things make a big difference:

  1. Working towards a definite goal (in this case, moving) and ignoring distractions,
  2. Being outdoors (in this case, we had a few hot days and we finally spent some sun-drenched time outside), and
  3. Staying connected with people (relevant now because of first visiting and then being visited by family and friends).

Moving to Florida will fix #2. #1 - for the time being - is a result of being focused on the gargantuan task of moving itself; once we relocate and get settled, it will be easy to slip back into frenetic activity without a specific goal. #3 will of course suffer for the most part. We’ll move much further away from our families and friends, but I know - having lived in Russia for years while everyone I knew remained in the States - family connections can be maintained and even strengthened sometimes. Relationships with friends can become weaker, but new places often mean new friends, too.

What I take away from positive moments is that our moods are more sensitive to minor triggers than we’d like to admit. I’m not a naturally outdoorsy person but I do much, much better when I get some sun. I’m not a focused person - my attention tends to wander from subject to subject - but when I have big projects I narrow my scope. And it’s easy to get out of the habit of making and keeping friends when you’ve been stuck in a rut or when you’re constantly occupied by small children - a change of pace might be for the best sometimes.

So when things go right, they go right. Learning how to keep throwing another few sticks of kindling on the fire once it’s started burning is the trick to achieving success - and more importantly, happiness.

photo credit: mugley

linklings, three things for Friday edition

Bonsai Moon


I have had some real trouble staying organized lately. I’d attribute some of that to the move, but I’d also continue to attribute some of it to lacking structure to my days. When you don’t have a 9-to-5 schedule it’s easy to think that you’ll get around to something “a bit later” - when in fact the day becomes filled up with a million mundane 30-second tasks. Take out the garbage, for example.

I’m going to try a new “to-do” list methodology, based in part on Zen To Done‘s “Most Important Things” concept: I’m going to pick out 3 things from my “to do” list each evening. Two will be things I need to get done in the short term, and 1 will be something related to long term goals. So for Friday I have “order more boxes from uline.com; clear email inbox; and get information for a Florida teaching certificate.” I won’t even think about doing anything else on my to-do list unless all 3 of these are done. Wish me luck. If I get organized enough I’ll put this all into GTDAgenda, which is a cool service I need to write about at some point soon.

I had a conference call with ING and a few other bloggers yesterday, and hopefully I’ll have a bit more information about that in the near future, as well as an interesting book I read and some other products (like GTDAgenda and a few others).

Links from the Money Writers and others:

One of the best articles I’ve read in a while: Ramit Sethi (of iwillteachyoutoberich.com) has a guest post on Free Money Finance titled “Trying to Earn More Money? Stop Wasting Your Time“. I need to print this and nail it somewhere I’ll see it all the time - like on my PC monitor.

A Wall Street Journal Subscription is Cheaper Than You Think - Get a Discount on the WSJ: Me, personally, I don’t subscribe to anything that I have to pay for anymore. I like the WSJ’s business news, but I dislike their politics.

Index Mutual Funds Are Still Not Popular, But: I’m surprised at this stat, but I shouldn’t be, I guess.

My Million Dollar Journey - Some Lessons Learned: Good points; if you set an ambitious goal and don’t meet it (or think you will) it’s important to learn from that experience.

Save Money on Moving: A few good tips, and so far I can attest that hiring a mover is a difficult (and nerve-wracking) experience.

And a few more links:

And yikes on this article: I hate David Dellifield. The one from Ada, Ohio. But I do have to say I agree with a lot of what she’s saying, although not the tone she’s saying it in.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

The Real Meaning of Risk

By Curmudgeon - Curmudgeon’s a long-time friend of brip blap and I always appreciate his contributions; here’s his latest:

free


I’m afraid that I mentally hit the ceiling earlier when I read a comment on one of Steve’s posts. The comment was:

In real estate, the quicker you can go into massive debt, the quicker you can become massively wealthy. (Link)

It’s true, but in a very misleading way. The operative word here is “can.” It is easy to miss, and many people will automatically interpret this as “will” or even worse, “probably will.” That is precisely incorrect.

If you go massively into debt, what you do is you take on a massive amount of risk. Risk isn’t necessarily a bad thing; we take risks many times every day – getting on the highway, crossing the street, eating that Big Mac (well, a bunch of Big Macs, over time).

But in general, the odds of us succeeding in getting on the highway without an accident are pretty good. Most of the day-to-day decisions we make regarding risk turn out just fine, because our chances of being successful are pretty good.

Going massively into debt, with the expectation of making a massive amount of money? Well, the odds there are not so good. It’s not strictly a crapshoot, because it depends on your timing. If you get in early, it has a better chance of paying off. If you get in later, your chances decrease significantly. Guess what? The timing part is the crapshoot. There is no timing the bubble.

If you take on more risk, you have a chance of making more money. But that chance is smaller. In fact, sometimes it’s downright nonexistent. How can you tell when it’s tiny or nonexistent? Well, you can’t. You have to assess it with incomplete information and no clear vision of the future, and that’s not the easiest thing in the world. But if you are taking a lot of risk, you need to understand that a big return, or even any return, is by no means a sure thing.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider leverage in your investments. Risk isn’t a bad thing. But you have to understand your tolerance for risk, and to understand how much risk you are taking. These are inexact concepts, and people assess them imperfectly. We make mistakes. If you bet the house, you may lose thehouse.

So yes, you can do real estate, or even any variety of other investments, and go massively into debt. But you might prefer to buy a lottery ticket instead. You’ll lose less, but you may be able to sleep at night.

photo credit: jonrawlinson

contracting, freelancing and linklings

Parker Jotter on the Sopranos


This gruesome economy…what fun we are all having. We started asking around about listing our house and moving, and we were horrified by the depreciation in our home value. In the New York City area, things have changed - drastically. Most of my neighbors worked in the financial services industry, like me, and the money has disappeared. Disappeared. It’s a scary time in this area, although we all recognize it’s a payback for the 80s and 90s. The timid are scurrying for new jobs at reduced pay rates; the tepid are settling for more work at the same salary, and the aggressive are thinking crazy. My neighbor (formerly a consultant) buckled under to his client and started working as an employee for less than he made as a consultant. Me - I’m sticking to my guns, aggresively pursuing a new contracting opportunity at the same time I’m hoping I’ll never need one as my “alternative income” takes off. So far, so bad - the economy is tough everywhere, including blogs.

I haven’t even decided yet for myself what the difference is between contract consulting and freelance consulting is - is it the length of time served? The terms? I guess so far I’ll assume that length of time served is the key. I’m aiming for shorter assignments that I can perform remotely rather than longer-term contracts on-site. It’s hard to find the short-term stuff; what I’m used to identifying is long-term (6 month plus) contracts. Brave new world…

Link it out:

Slow Economy Has More People Learning How to Cook: Count me in - I’m cooking a lot more at home than eating out, although I always knew this was the best way to eat.

The Best Money Blog You Aren’t Reading: A nice find - I’m always interested in new blogs and this one looks like it’s worth reading.

2008 Tax Law Changes: I can’t believe it’s time to start worrying about taxes again - but it is…

What Exactly is Moolanomy?: If you haven’t read Moolanomy yet, you should - Pinyo’s got a great site and is apparently involved with almost the entire internet 🙂

Rich Brother Rich Sister Book Review and Giveaway: I am a fan of Kiyosaki - there, I said it. This book is another book of his that I’d like to read; I didn’t even realize that he had a sister.

Have We Been Sold A Bunch Of Lies About Money?: Ugh. This post reflects a lot of the concerns I’ve had - have we been sold a false bill of goods? Should we have been more cautious? In hindsight, yes. Personally, I’ll get more conservative, because that’s my nature.

Amex Took Care of Me When My Card Number Was Stolen: I love Amex, too. If they aren’t your primary credit card, they should be - they are the best when it comes to customer service and problems with theft (physical or identity). Plus, they have two great reward programs (cash and points).

Our Investment Returns Show Stocks Down 50% YTD

ShareBuilder Review: My New Account: I have more Sharebuilder accounts than I can remember - at least five for my two kids, my nieces and nephews. It’s a great service for the infrequent trader; if I was beginning again today I’d probably start my brokerage there since I don’t trade frequently.

squawkfox ” 6 Words That Make Your Resume Suck: A few great tips from a sharp blog - don’t have a resume that sucks. I can’t see how that would help.

fritz haber: Unintended consequences are horrible - an amazing piece from a fascinating blog.

The Razor’s Edge: Lessons in True Wealth: Sad, in the way that any story about death would be sad, but a great point - life HAS to be about the journey, not about the score. Easy to say, almost impossible for many of us to achieve.

Should You Take a Low-Paying Job? and ” Should You Take A Low Paying Job?: Two good posts on something I’ve considered writing about: should you settle on rates/salaries? I think no… once you move backwards in what you’ll accept, you’re setting a standard for the rest of your life.

The Most Depressing Calculator You’ll See Today: I just added this because I want everyone to feel crappy. Don’t feel like feeling crappy? Don’t click.

Tip #25: Earn more money using your God-given skills\: This post describes where I’m headed - freelancing is tough new area for an ex-contractor (or an ex-employee) but I’m convinced it’s the way to go, short term…

photo credit: joebeone

looking through new eyes

Decide
I wrote an article more than a year ago in which I said:

…there are three types of music lovers. One loves
music in general, and their [sic] tastes evolve with the times. Another
loves a specific type of music, and sticks to that type of music over
time. The third starts out listening to popular music but drifts off
as they get older into calmer music (shifting from Public Enemy to
Kenny G would be an extreme example).

(continue reading shifting tastes)

I was speaking of music in that post, but today (as I struggled to write something) I started to wonder whether the idea that some people are able to evolve and change more easily than others is valid. Do people change, or do people’s beliefs stay the same and external events change? An example might be your attitude towards investing in the market. Has the bear market changed your attitude towards investing? Or did you change your attitude?

I know that I held certain truths to be self-evident when I was younger. Some I have discarded; some I have retained. We all have things we believe cannot be doubted by any sane person. Some are serious: “investing in the market is the way to long-term wealth for the middle class.” Some are not: “the Patriots are evil.”

Every day I try to challenge myself, but I have to admit from time to time that my attempts to challenge myself are actually attempts to reinforce beliefs I already hold. It’s not easy to find things that challenge our beliefs that we’re comfortable with. I don’t like to think that I’m attached to my own beliefs more than a rational amount, but I probably am. Whether that’s a good thing or not is hard to judge, objectively.

The only way to really know if you’re stuck in your views and beliefs is to engage other people to challenge them. I find reading to be once way to challenge my beliefs. My wife and my family and my friends are another. But I question whether I’m at a stage to question them myself. I’m not sure if I’ve been so set in my ways that I can’t challenge my own mindset; I’m not sure that I can push myself without external help. I turn to other people to answer that question, and the answer isn’t simple. I’m still seeking to answer this myself: can I change, or do I need others to change me? I don’t think I’ll answer it today, but I hope I can figure it out soon.

photo credit: piccadillywilson

free time does not translate to massive productivity

Time Spiral
If you’ve ever thought that you could accomplish a lot more with your life if only you had a little more free time, you’re not alone. I did, too, and now I have that free time. For years I blamed exhaustion, or the “necessary” errands that consumed what little free time I did have. I thought now, when I was no longer chained to a desk, would be my time to accomplish all those things I always dreamed I would do. Yet when I look back over the past three years, the peak moments of productivity - personally and professionally - have seldom been the moments when I had the most free time. I am not now at my most productive, and understanding why has become my primary goal.

Over the past three years (2006-2008) I’ve been (almost) continually employed. During that time I’ve had three clients. Client A was a very short commute (less than half an hour), and what I’d call an “early office” - I made it in around 8:00 am most days and usually left by 4 or 4:30. Client B was a long commute (almost two hours each way), and while I seldom worked more than 8 hours in a day I did stay late on occasion. It was a “late office” - most of the people in my department drifted in around 9:30 or 10:00, so it was hard to justify arriving at 8 and leaving at 4. Client C was a short commute (by New York standards) of one hour, and the client was very flexible about the hours, not really caring if I arrived at 8 or at 10. It was very much a ROWE office.

In between those clients I’ve had two major periods of “free time” - first, when my daughter was born earlier this year and now, when I’m unemployed. I took off five weeks when Pumpkin was born, and I’ve been laid off for about five weeks now. Saying that I had free time when Pumpkin was born is, well, untrue. I had none. Even though my wife heroically dealt with Pumpkin most of the time, I became Little Buddy’s full-time parent. Still not potty-trained at the time, he kept me busy. We’ll take that time period out of the discussion because having a newborn and a two-year old at home with no help can keep two parents busy, even though you might not think so.

So when was I most productive while working? Client A was a horrific environment, with a no-wall cubicle farm, frequent last-minute meetings and a lot of work taking place on a trading desk. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Boiler Room,” that’s the environment I was working in. Client B was the exact opposite. They gave me a quiet cubicle on the opposite side of the floor from the rest of the department. They never had meetings, and email was the preferred method of communication. Client C was back to the Client A world - a huge conference room shared by 45 consultants, all talking on mobile phones, yelling back and forth to each other and sitting two feet apart. Today I am sitting at my quiet writing desk on the third floor of our townhouse, looking out over the large green space in front of our home. The only noise is the hissing of the baby monitor while my daughter sleeps, and the distant shouts of my son playing with his babysitter, who comes for a couple of hours in the morning.

Am I the most productive I’ve ever been, now that I have “free time”? I have a writing area, a babysitter, and no commute. I am free to pursue whatever activity I want to, within the limits of child care and cost. And yet I find that I was far more productive while working at Client B with four hours of commuting time than I have yet to be at home. Why?

Having so little free time while at Client B forced me to be organized and disciplined with my time while at home. It also made me focused at work, knowing that whatever tasks I could accomplish there would free up time at home. So when I finished client work, I was focused on writing outlines for blog posts or taking care of administrative tasks related to my consulting. I did not spend endless hours reading Sports Illustrated or The New York Times. I made good use of my time on the train by reading, and as any writer can tell you reading is the best inspiration. Although we only had one child at the time, we didn’t have a babysitter and I seldom had any real free time until 9 or 10 pm.

Yet my busiest time was a time of tremendous productivity for me. Most of the “most popular” posts you see to the right were written during that time. I was tired, and I felt like I had no free time, but everything got done that needed to get done. While at Clients A and C almost nothing got done. The oppressive work environment meant that I was less productive professionally. The noise and lack of space made it hard to accomplish anything. Because I took longer to do my work, I came home and started writing, and it wasn’t good. Because the commutes were short, I quit reading books and started listening to morning shock jock bits (this was before I discovered podcasts). My personal and professional productivity took a beating.

Now, with nothing but free time, you might expect I would be productive. I am not. I find that in a non-structured environment I have difficulty focusing on even the simplest tasks, which is surprising to me. I have trouble reading. I spend more time than I should with my kids. I cannot get organized about my computer time - I check email again and again throughout the day, which is a terrible idea. I twitter. If not for Leechblock I would spend half the day reading about our collapsing economy.

Some of us, despite what we like to think, need the structure of a job to be productive. Sometimes getting up and leaving the house forces you to be more productive whether you like it or not. I am not anxious to return to 9-to-5 work, but I have had to confront a simple fact: everything I thought I knew about organizing my time has to be thrown out the window. I have never been good about organization and productivity, because I was only organized and productive when forced to be by circumstance! I have to relearn so much to be as organized as I need to be; but right now I have all the free time in the world to do nothing but learn, so I have no excuses now. No long commutes, no bad work environments, no boring work to blame for “crushing my creativity.”

Stephen King says in his masterpiece “On Writing” that the most important part of writing is learning to close the door. He’s a brilliant writer (if you think of him only as a hack horror writer, try picking up one of his books sometime - they are as well-written as anything you’ll ever read). His point is that if you fail to close the door when writing, both figuratively and literally, you’ll never have a chance to succeed. It is too easy to let the world distract. Although he is talking about writing, he could just as easily be talking about cooking or exercising or almost any productive venture. We have too much to distract us, and too little time to do anything well if we fail to concentrate on what we are doing at that moment. The challenge is to learn that focus, and that’s what I’ll be trying to do (and trying to write about) as I continue my experiment with living away from the 9-to-5.

photo credit: gadl

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