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Helpful Self-Help Books

I recently asked myself a question: If self-help books actually help people then why are there so many of them? I believe that there are two main reasons why there is a never ending stream of self-help books dealing with finance, fitness, relationships, spirituality and so on. The first reason is that what these books actually are is one person's personal experience with something that worked for them and depending on the reader's circumstances and/or personality the advice given might not produce any favorable results. The authors of these books of course claim that anyone can be successful in exactly the same way they were.

The second reason I think that self-help books are often ineffectual is that the reader simply does not follow through with the good advice being given. Self-help books are often littered with various simple exercises to try and get the reader to put into practice the things that are being discussed. I know for myself personally I tend to read non-fiction books in the same way that I would read fiction books, straight through. I often make mental notes along the way and tell myself that I will go back to that exercise later and then never do.

So I encourage you to slow down when reading self-help books and actually do the things that they advocate. You may be surprised at the results. What if that book you're reading actually changed your life for the better? What if you put into practice everything that the book you are reading is advocating? Supposing that the book you are reading is of any value then your life would be richer because of it and you could stop spending all that money on self-help books and actually get out and live life. Now that I've preached at you it's time that I go practice it myself.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

I can't count the number of times that I've had customers ask me to give them my employee discount. I find this request to be quite rude for a number of reasons. One being that it implies that there is some level of kinship between myself and the customer when in fact their request has pretty much ensured that there will be no such thing. The second reason is that for me to take my employee discount and give it to whomever I please would be completely unethical. It's called an employee discount for a reason. At my previous job where I slaved away for more than five years they didn't give us employee discounts so the response to this request was a simple one, "Sorry, I don't get a discount.'" I guess there are a few good things about working for a company that doesn't value their employees at all.

But there are times in life when simply asking to get something cheaper or for free can be quite beneficial and easy to obtain. Before I go any further I should quantify this by saying that I am not advocating haggling or berating business owners or employees to try and get something for nothing. People who do that are generally lowlifes and not to be associated with. But what is possible is to simply ask for something for free. Try it out and see what happens. You might very well get turned down but the results might also surprise you. Ninety percent of this blog is written on a bluetooth keyboard that is paired with my Motorola q9m phone from Verizon. Verizon wanted me to pay $200 for the phone even with a two year contract. I simply asked to get it for free because at the time Amazon.com was giving it away for free. They put me on hold for 15 minutes but in the end readily agreed to give it to me for free, no hassle at all. Recently my wife decided that she wanted to try and get into the business of breeding fish. The only really way to test the market is to actually have fish to sell and not wanting to spend a fortune on an untested business idea, we went on craigslist and simply asked for free aquariums and equipment. We said that that they could be dirty and not even hold water. Two days later we had everything we needed to start our little business (minus the fish) and it didn't cost us anything.

I have no problem paying a fair price for things but I also have no problem getting things for free. Don't be afraid to ask but don't be rude to the people you are asking either. That won't get you anywhere.

Spring Planting

Well the time has finally come for us to do our spring planting and it's not a moment too soon. I think we started our plants indoors a week or two earlier than we should have. They've gotten quite large in their little peat pellets. The picture I'm posting below is to show that our lasagna gardening that I had mentioned in a previous post doesn't appear to be working quite as planned. We've got weeds poking up in several places. I think that this is mostly due to us not doing it properly more than a problem with the basic premise of the idea. It appears that most of the weeds are simply poking up through gaps in the cardboard. We probably should have overlapped it a bit.


On a better note our peach tree appears to be poised to give us a quite a few peaches this years. Sadly our raspberry crop looks like it will be a bit smaller due to recent construction around the house. Here's a tip for expanding your yield of raspberries exponentially: If you've ever made raspberry jelly then you know that after you are done you have thousands of seeds leftover. Raspberries have a knack for growing pretty easily wherever birds normally deposit the seeds. You however can easily take your seeds and cast them wherever you please.

Playing with Time Optimization

Something that I keep running into in financial books and self-help books and also on a few websites is the idea of limiting the amount of time you spend checking email each day. Specifically the book I'm reading at this moment suggests limiting time spent on email to twice a day and then cut back to once a day if possible. So this morning at work I decided I was going to give it a shot. I don't know if I've ever specifically stated on here what industry I work in but I work as a logistics manager in retail. Lately I've been finding that the amount of work expected from me is piling up and I lose the first couple of hours each morning just dealing with the "have-to" items of each day.

So this morning when I went into work I didn't even check the store email at all. Recently the district manager has been chastising store managers for spending too much time in the office reading emails (that she sends out) and my boss typically relays anything specifically pertinent to my job by printing out the emails and putting it in my inbox. So I decided that I won't waste my time anymore. I also decided to eliminate some extra work I was putting on my self each morning. They were small programs that I had started running that I felt helped the store out but were ultimately not my responsibility to be tackling.

By eliminating just these two areas I was able to cut about 20 minutes out of my morning workload. Ultimately I want to be getting my work done as efficiently as possible so I can then devote more of my brain power to thinking about things that I actually care about. And no, retail is definitely not something I care about. It's just a job, a way of providing for my family until I can find some other means. It doesn't matter that I'm actually pretty good at what I do and at most aspects of retail, that's just further evidence that I'm smart enough to be doing something more worthwhile with my life.

So today I've seen some early successes of this plan at work. Now the real trick will be applying these principals at home. It's one thing to willingly ignore corporate emails but I actually care about the content of my personal emails. It's going to require more discipline I'm sure but I'm hopeful for positive results.

Evildoers of the Internet

I've written a post on this topic once before but apparently it needs reiterating because someone most of America missed the message. Last year Internet scammers took in more than $247 million dollars.

I want to be self-employed, I want to work at home, I want to have more time to spend with my family but these scam companies that promise you the world will never give you anything and in almost every case take something from you. Several months ago I decided to research the "work from home" arena on the Internet. I spent about 5 hours one day browsing and digging and trying discern something legitimate in this industry. After all of my searching the best that I could come up with was that 99% are harmful and the other 1% are a waste of your time at best. The most insidious of these websites are the ones that claim to be debunkers of the fraudulent sites and then they usually recommend "the one trustworthy site they've found", which in the end is just another scam site.

It probably doesn't need to be said but if something is too good to be true it almost always is. The part about the Internet fraud industry that angers me the most I think is that the people who are most susceptible to this kind of thing are generally those who are down on their luck or feel desperately stuck in a soul crushing job and by losing money to these scammers they have only tied themselves to their current job a little more.

Surely, I thought to myself of all these opportunities a couple of them must actually be legitimate. Lies, all lies.

If you truly want to be financially sound, if you truly want to work from home then please stay away from these "opportunities" at all costs.

Bowing to the Oil gods

As I become increasingly interested in the idea of self-sufficiency I am taking an ever closer look at where my money goes. I came to a startling realization today when I realized just how much of my money ends up in the hands of the oil companies.

Between what it costs me to heat my house and what I spend on gas throughout the year I am probably spending about 20% of my yearly income on oil! And that is just what I spend directly on it, that's not even beginning to scratch the surface of indirect costs from other goods and services.

Like millions of others I am definitely feeling the need to begin to look elsewhere for energy. Nevermind the fact that the US has more than enough of its own oil but we can't have it because the politicians are afraid of the environmentalists.

There are a few other options out there that I am researching. I'll let you know what I find out.

PRODUCTIVITY UPDATE: Well this week I ended with 19 points out of 33 on my Productivity Points System. That's not in the 20s like I had hoped but 19 is still my best score yet. Perhaps this week I will finally break that 20 mark?

Finding Your Inner-MacGyver

I admit it, I'm a big fan of MacGyver. I grew up watching the reruns on cable and recently purchased the first two seasons on dvd. I always appreciated his resourcefulness in the face of danger. Well when it comes to self-sufficiency hopefully you can find a little bit of MacGyver inside yourself. Sure you may not be outwitting East Germans or "state of the art" computer systems from the mid-eighties but I'm sure there are plenty of things in your daily life that you could be tackling yourself if you tried.

Just this morning my the metal frame around one of the lenses on my glasses broke. I went to the store and ordered new glasses but I won't have them for a week. So I decided to try sodering them back together. I've never sodered anything in my life but for some reason had a cheap soder gun and some electrical soder. I was able to successfully put my glasses together with what is at least a temporary fix. This little MacGyverism didn't save me any money but it did save me some inconvenience.

The Housing "Crisis"

Okay so a whole bunch of homeowners signed mortgages without really looking at the details and now they are finding out that they really can't afford the payments and they are all losing their houses...I feel bad for their kids and maybe a little bit for them too but really it's their own fault for not spending within their means.

Thank goodness big government is here to rescue us. The democratic candidates in this presidential election are making all sorts of financial promises pledging billions to this and billions to that and there are millions of people sitting there saying "yeah, that's great give us lots of money." Well where is that money coming from?? Obama has pledged $30 billion in aid to homeowners, and people are so dumb not to think about the fact that that money is just coming out of their pockets in the form of taxes anyway. And what about those of us aren't in this situation? Why are we paying for their financial mistakes? The democrats have already promised to raise taxes and they are gonna need to if they are going to deliver on all of financial promises. They are essentially buying votes if you think about it.

I don't normally stray into politics on here but it seemed appropriate.