Changes To Lifestyle (Some Say “Lifestyle Design”)

So, I just finished another book:

  • The Four Hour Work Week
    By: Timothy Ferriss
    What I Gained From It (WIGFI): STOP DOING EVERYTHING YOURSELF! Pay somebody else (who’s probably going to do a better job on the project than you) to do it. Do what it is that you want to do!

And started another one too…

  • The World Is Flat
    By: Thomas L. Friedman

I never thought I would every be absorbing this MUCH information and THIS WELL. There’s was one day where my whole life just changed and I realized that it was possible to do whatever I wanted. Not to get all philosophical and self-help on you, but it’s true… It’s just a matter of FIGHTING COMPLACENCY OFF!!! Complacency is lurking around every single corner. It is the DEATH OF ALL THINGS! The easiest way (formula-wise) that I can say to combat this, is to:

  • DO JUST ONE THING EVERYDAY THAT MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE…

It could be as easy as:

  • Talking to someone that you’ve never talked to before…
  • Going some place that you’ve never been to…
  • Basically doing something that you’ve never done before…

At first, you’ll probably feel weird doing them. That is the sensation that you have been keeping yourself from. For me, it was both invigorating and scary at the same time. Once out of the closet though, nothing gets in your way. Once you start doing one thing a day, believe it or not, you’ll probably start to feel like you’re going to run out of stuff that you haven’t done. Trust me, there are plenty of things to do (just about all of them are free too).

Anyway, here’s what I’ve done recently:

  • Bought a Crackberry (Blackberry) Curve 8330 (Against Timothy Ferriss’ parameters)…
  • Updated the Blackberry’s Operating System To 4.5 from 4.3…
  • Calculated some tax rates for my company (overrated)…
  • Hired a Graphic Designer (first time for me)…
  • Hired an Assistant (first time for me)…
  • Found ‘Process Lasso’ and tested it out…
  • Asked about Sprint phone plans… (yes, it was a bit uncomfortable because I had no idea what I was talking about)
  • Tried updating the firmware on my router (Ended up frying the router, rendering it useless)…
  • Bought a variety of new routers to test out (ONE OF THE BEST DECISIONS I MADE THIS MONTH) and then updated the firmware successfully (EXTREMELY scary because I fried the last one)…
  • Laid down on the median of a high traffic street for a while…
  • And the list goes on…

The other thing is that generally, after the fact, nothing ends up being nearly as scary as anticipated. It’s usually all in your head.  Once you get the hang of it, you’ll understand.

Anyway, I’m also in the process of “getting rid of myself”. Making the system work for me. Every time I get an email, I set up a process for it so that next time I don’t get the email. If there’s something I want / need to know (regarding person email information), I can simply look it up in my email (Timothy Ferriss advocates this, believe it or not, that’s actually what I started doing just before I read the book).

Also see my net worth chart below (Yodlee.com)… This is just a progress report for archival purposes. As you can see, there is quite a bit of room for improvement. What you can’t quite see, however, is that just before the huge jumps in assets and liabilities (a result of simply adding my accounts), there was an improvement of about $10K. Needless to say, that is dwindled by the other HUGE amounts (grad school loans, mortgage on investment property, etc.).

Ag's Net Worth 05-18-2010

Anyway, I think that’s it for now, I think I’m forgetting something, but who knows…

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *