Showing posts with label Self Improvement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Self Improvement. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Take Five

Take Five is a concept, an idea.
It was born during my early college days and was partly inspired by a great jazz song of the same name. (Although, the version I listened to was original to a group of university students that went by the name, In One Ear.) Below is the hand written notes that I saved from that day.

I feel stressed a lot of the time to accomplish many things and feel bad that I do not complete those things of which I feel are also important to me. Some of those things include the following:
Piano, Trombone - Personal Talents
School
Scripture study, Institute classes - Spiritual
Roommates, Work, Friends, Dating - Social
Exercise - Physical

Now that I write them down, I see they incorporate all aspects of a well rounded life - and yet I find myself running first to accomplish first my homework. And it never ends, and I hardly have time for it - so how can adding more help? But will i have really reached my goal and feel satisfied if in the end my goals were left alone by the wayside?

I do not believe so.
So, if I can just "take five" maybe I can achieve my goals with faith and hope and trust in help from God. I believe if I "take five" and then work diligently I can produce results and pray that my intellect can be enlightened to work quicker, more efficiently.

Work. Be obedient. Be more like a missionary. Plan and then work towards that goal by properly scheduling your time and developing Christlike attributes.

I came back to this concept and revisited it again a few years later.

Today is Saturday and tomorrow is Sunday. I was just thinking how good it would be to wake up and study the scriptures and kind of fill this personal spiritual low when it occurred to me. I thought of how improbable it would be since I am home, family is home, I have commitments, etc. If only I had a few days without the world... but that is what made me realize that the one important principle is not to just strike it rich, get it all at once, but rather stay the course, little step after little step, mundane, boring, but always steady. What am I saying? If it be our level of spirituality, time spent with a certain activity - studying reading to kids, etc, or money and debt - these all need one principle to achieve success - A little everyday - constantly.
Winning the jackpot or sweepstakes  or receiving an inheritance or having that one day may seem nice but you cannot grow spiritually all in one day, you cannot read all the children's stories to your child on one day, you cannot practice for one day and become great, you cannot pay off your debt in one day - and believe to be happy.
It is that little five minutes so mundane and almost seemingly worthless that is applied each day after day after monotonous day that we stick with it and though it all that journals are written, debts are paid, time is cherished, and we grow. God sent us to live a life here on Earth - not just experience an instant.
I share this in the hopes that you, too, can find five minutes in your life and apply it to that goal that is almost forgotten, to striking out into a new area and trying something new, to sharpening the saw, to read to your kids, to do whatever it is you wished you could do more.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Moonwalking With Einstein

Moonwalking with Einstein is a very thought provoking book. It's the story of the author Joshua Foer, a journalist, and his journey from reporting on the US National Championship to winning the event the following year. The book chronicles how he set out to find an answer to the question, "How can I improve my memory?"


Personally, I was intrigued by the book and found the style of writing much to my liking. There is a lot of research and information that is presented and explained via story. It reminds me a lot about how JD Roth from GetRichSlowly was able to successfully blog about potentially dry topics in personal finance: he tells a story.

This book is not a book on technique and specific practice regimens, but a treatise on how our memories work, how memory usage has changed throughout time, and the exploration of how practice can indeed improve memory skills. Some of the skills employed in memorizing decks of playing cards, scores of random numbers, or other random trivia, in less than a minute involve the image association and storing those images in a 'memory palace'. While impressive, I wondered whether practicing this skill was ultimately useful. Surprisingly, even the author, shortly after winning the US National Championship, placing 13th overall in the World Championships, Joshua Foer conceded that in today's world of externalized memory storage, it's just easier to store that phone number in your cell phone than your brain.

US Hardcover, pg75
What follows are just my notes that I took while reading that I wanted to save for myself.
Without time, there would be no need for a memory. But without a memory, would there be such a thing as time? The more we provide our lives with chronological landmarks, the longer our lives will seem. Our perception of time is subjective. Sometimes time flies, other times the opposite is true. "Our lives are structured by our memories of events. Event X happened just before the big Paris vacation. I was doing Y in the first summer after I learned to drive." The denser the web of accumulated life experiences, the denser the experience of time. "Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it." "Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. Youth have a continuous stream of new experiences, but each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out...

US Hardcover, pg 138
Technological gadgets have made it unnecessary to remember phone numbers, friends birthdays, and even directions. They've changed the world, but they've also changed how we think and how we use our brains. Writing, for Socrates, was nothing more than a cue for memory.

And yet, for me, I've always held to the idea that I read in one of Tom Clancy's novels - if you didn't write it down, it never happened. For me, writing is the only reliable anchor that I can attach to my memories so they don't get lost in all that grey matter.

US Hardcover, pg 145
The history of books and the invention of alphabetical indexes, page numbers, and table of contents as a means to navigating the immense information stored therein. "As books became easier and easier to consult, the imperative to hold their contents in memory became less and less relevant, and the very notion of what it meant to be erudite began to evolve from possessing information internally to knowing where to find information in the labyrinthine world of external memory."

US Hardcover, pg169
Joshua Foer also became a subject of research to a Florida professor, Anders Ericsson. When Joshua hit a plateau on his speed times for memorizing a deck of cards, Ericsson helped him learn about skill acquisition. Phase one is the "cognitive stage", you're intellectualizing the task and discovering new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During the second "associative stage," you're concentrating less, making fewer major errors, and generally becoming more efficient. Finally you reach what Fitts called the "autonomous stage," when you figure that you've gotten as good as you need.." You're OK with your current skill and stop improving and were once thought the upper bounds of ability. The only way to break free is to engage in a very directed, highly focused routine, which Ericsson, who has studied the best in several fields, has labeled "deliberate practice." "They develop strategies for consciously keeping out of the autonomous stage while they practice by doing three things: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented, and getting constant and immediate feedback on their performance. In other words, they force themselves to stay in the "cognitive phase." "When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important that the amount of time you spend." "Indeed, the single best predictor of an individual's chess skill is not the amount of chess he's played against opponents, but rather the amount of time he's spent sitting alone working through old games." "You have to analyze what you're doing."

US Hardcover, pg 202
In these pages, Tony Buzan's Mind Map was explained, and it reminded me of when I was writing my research paper in my college English class. My professor explained to me that after reading my paper she felt like the opening scene in the Simpson's show when the cash register trys to scan Maggie at the checkout with the groceries, but the computer is confused and doesn't know what to do. Her advice to me was that I needed to go home and read each paragraph and color code it to it's theme and then cut up my paper and rearrange it so that it flowed better and made better sense. I took her advice - and it worked! This was essentially the groundwork of a mind map. "It's kind of an outline exploded radially across the page in a rainbow of colors, a web of associations..." Tony Buzan also said, "The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity
is, in a sense, future memory."

US Hardcover, pg 266
He had improved his ability to remember digits, playing cards, and yet could still forget where he parked his car. His memory was the same. He had new skills, but ultimately he "validated the old saw that practice makes perfect. But only if it's the right kind of concentrated, self-conscious, deliberate practice." "Remembering can only happen if you decide to take notice." "Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character... That's what Ed had been trying to impart to me from the beginning: that memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human."

Thursday, September 2, 2010

I Will Teach You To Be Rich Book Review

I Will Teach You To Be RichI recently picked up I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Ramit has a great website and his book on personal finance is one of the funner ones to read. This is the book to read if personal finance is still a new word for you - then this is the book for you. Ramit has a targeted audience of younger twenty somethings.  As with all knowledge - if you aren't too put off by simple examples that don't exactly mimic your situation and instead apply the principle being taught - you will definitely learn something and most likely benefit, too. 

Ramit has boasted that his $10 book has helped people save thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars. Boast might not be the right word, because some people have reported these savings on one of his videocasts. In fact, armed with the scripts in the book and a bit of extra confidence, I tackled the seemingly impossible task of negotiating the removal of some rather nefarious fees from one of my credit cards.

The real beauty of reading I Will Teach You To Be Rich is that Ramit remembers that there is a large psychological piece of the money puzzle that other personal finance authors and mathematics simply ignore. Ramit realizes that people are  lazy and want the easy way out. This is not to say that Ramit has uncovered the magic silver bullet. Quite the contrary, he is not fearful in telling people that they need to buck up and do the hard thing to get their finances initially under control. Yes, that might mean some work, but then he introduces what he terms your "Conscious Spending Plan". Ramit finds it ludicrous to cut out your daily latte - IF, that latte brings you significant happiness and pleasure to your day. Instead, cut mercilessly in areas that you do not care about so that you can splurge on the things that matter most to you. There is a HUGE difference between being cheap and being frugal.

Ramit dutifully covers the basics of checking accounts and savings accounts and preparing to invest for your future. One of the key messages of the book is the 85 percent solution. Don't worry about getting it 100 percent done, or even perfect. If you only get an 85 percent solution, that is still leaps and bounds ahead of doing nothing like the rest of the population. At least you'll have something to show for it.

Sprinkled throughout the book you will also find a short piece written by some of the most admired personal finance bloggers. Entries from Get Rich Slowly and The Five Cent Nickel and The Simple Dollar among others all contributed. I appreciated the additions from these bloggers because I was familiar with them and I thought it was a rather unique way to collaborate with them in this manner.

I Will Teach You To Be RichIn summary, if I was just starting out with personal finance and didn't want to fall asleep reading about asset allocation in my 401(k) or get lectured about cutting up my credit card - I'd think this was the best book out there. Understanding my current situation, having applied most of the principles, it was a good reminder of why I was doing things and in some instances, a call to further simplify them.  If you are at this stage of your own personal finance, then I'd suggest you visit Ramit's website I Will Teach You To Be Rich to learn how to advance you to the next stage of personal finance: Earning More Money. There is a definite focus on his blog and his products to help you earn more money. Inspiring as that all may be - it means nothing if you never take action. Decide today to take action!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Bad Motivation to Do Good


Does the type of motivation used matter if the end product is still good?


Coca Cola, 11.5 oz.My colleague and I often walk to the cafeteria for lunch. It is a half mile little jaunt that is a relaxing part of my day when the wind isn't too cold. On the way back to our office, I noticed a plastic coke bottle lying on the side of the road. Immediately, my mind focused on the cap and I envisioned three more points being added to MyCokeRewards balance. I reached down and picked up the bottle. My colleague noticed this and said, "That was good of you." I didn't know what to say. I wasn't being a responsible citizen trying to do his part to clean up – I was scoring points. Granted, I wasn't about to take the cap off and throw the bottle back to the ground. Once retrieved, I carried the bottle to a recycling bin set inside the building. 


The motivation to retrieve the bottle had been completely for my own personal gain. The thought of the extra points were an extrinsic reward and were an easy win if I just picked up the bottle. Does the type of motivation used matter if the end product is still good? I still recycled the bottle. 


Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates UsI think, while trying to score points may have helped me clean up some trash along the roadside, it would be a poor method to motivate other people to clean up trash. According to Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (my review), applying an extrinsic reward to the task would immediately label the task as unpleasant and not desirable. He used an example of paying your child as a means to motivate them to take out the trash. The payment conveys that the task is undesirable and furthermore, over time the reward will have to be increased to achieve the same result. 


The flip side is interesting as well. Fines for littering in California are horrendous and are posted on all the roadways, but people still litter. I do not litter because of the fear of paying a fine. I choose not to litter because I am intrinsically motivated to maintain a clean roadway. The State of Idaho has very clean roadways and many residents know that, "Idaho's to great a place to litter." The fine for littering is not widely posted either. Instead, signs for the volunteer Adopt-A-Highway program and their respective groups are posted every few miles. I was part of a group which, twice a year, cleaned up the trash on both sides of a two mile stretch of remote highway. Maybe I choose not to litter because I picked up so much of it.


Reflecting on my actions and the impulse to act as I carried the bottle to the recycling bin I began to wonder, What if it had been a Pepsi bottle instead? Would I have walked right on by? Maybe. But at least from now on I have decided that tomorrow it will not be the case.

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