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Improvement by Immersion

Saturday, July 17, 2010

How long did it take you to learn how to walk?

You probably can’t answer that question, but surely you didn’t learn overnight. This most basic skill likely took at least a month to acquire; a month full of trying and failing, of progressing literally inch by inch, until you finally managed to go the length of an entire room without tripping over your own two feet.

Fast-forward to adulthood, and with all the cares and responsibilities of your world it’s easy to overlook that that learning and improving a skill takes time, relentless effort, and typically more than a handful of failures. But like learning to walk, learning to talk, and any of the other basic skills you learned in your earliest years, the best way to move towards success is to immerse yourself in the thing you want to learn. When you were a child, you learned to talk because everyone around you was talking; you learned to walk because you were surround by people walking. Similarly, as an adult the best way to learn something new or to improve an existing skill is to bring that topic of study into your world entirely – to fully surround yourself with it. I’m going to call this the “immersion technique” of learning and developing.

The essential components of immersion-based learning are:

  1. Read everything you can on the subject

    2. We read thousands of words each day. A large part of that effort is wasted, reading things we’ll quickly forget, often because they didn’t really matter in the first place. Why lose that time when you can put it to good use reading about your interests?
    Instead of wasting time reading the latest Hollywood gossip, read things that help you improve yourself. Find blogs that are useful and educational, and subscribe to them in a feed reader or by email. Check your local library for books about your subjects of interest, and spend at least 15 minutes each day studying them. Chances are, many people have already learned the lessons you’re learning, and that they’ve written about it extensively; learn from them.

  2. Keep track of your progress

    3. Nothing is a more powerful motivator than looking back and seeing how far you’ve come. The day-by-day struggle to improve yourself can be overwhelming because improvements tend to come in small steps, sometimes even unnoticeable. Keep a record of your progress so you can measure your improvements over greater periods of time than just one or two days. Keeping this journal also helps to motivate you to do better. You’ll be eager to brag to your notebook about just how well you’re doing, so you’ll put in extra effort to be able to record it.

  3. Have a scheduled practice time

    4. Consistently give a portion of your day to practicing and improving your skill. If it’s important enough for your to learn, then it’s important enough for you to schedule it on your calendar. Dedicate a specific period time to work on your goals, and make it a regular part of your schedule. Don’t let things interfere with your practice time; consider it a prior commitment. If you paid for lessons at a given time of day, you wouldn’t let something trivial replace them; why should you be so flexible just because you haven’t paid for it? You’ve paid for it with your own time and effort, and you mustn’t let the world take you off course.

  4. Improve related skills

    5. No skill stands by itself. Whatever your primary goal, there are undoubtedly related skills you should practice. If you want to lose weight, not only do you need to spend time watching what you eat and exercising, but you’ll likely want to learn how to be a better cook so you can prepare meals that are both nutritious and healthy. You’ll probably want to learn about and understand nutrition, and to learn more about what kind of exercise is best for your overall goals. Branching out into related areas helps you see the big picture of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how to do it better.

  5. Find and communicate with others doing the same thing

    6. Whatever you’re working on, there’s sure to be others working on the same things. The world is full of people that share your interest; all you need to do is seek them out. Online, you can look for websites, forums, mailing lists, and discussion groups that discuss your niche of interest. You can learn from others passively by reading their comments, but it’s more useful to actively participate in the discussion. If you live in an urban area, see if there are groups or meetups in your area with people that share similar interests.

  6. Remind yourself why

    7. Maybe you want to lose weight so you can be more active with your family. Perhaps you’re trying to learn web design so you can get a promotion at your job. Whatever the reason, place a reminder of it somewhere that you’ll see it on a regular basis; it’s even better if it’s where you’ll be working on your goal. If you’re running on a treadmill so you can spend more time at the park with your kids, it doesn’t hurt to have a picture of your family around while you do it.

If you follow these rules and completely surround yourself with things that help to advance you towards your goals, you’ll find that you are able to achieve much more and get there much quicker.

Did I miss anything? Have you tried these techniques, and if so what were the results? Leave your opinions in the comment section below.

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Keeping Track of your Spending

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

“If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.” – J. Paul Getty

How well are you monitoring your finances?

The odds are you aren’t doing a very good job at all. But if you have an income and expenses, you need to be keeping track of your cash flow. You should know every penny coming in and going out, and you should be conscious of how your financial decisions are affecting your bottom line.

With the proliferation of debit cards, many people have come to rely on banks to track their transactions for them. They spend freely, with only a mental estimate of what their balance should be. But depending on your bank to record your transactions is not the same as keeping your own records. Letting someone else track your balance is just a cheat to avoid taking responsibility for financial decisions. If you don’t see the money leaving your account, you don’t actually feel the ramifications of that expense.

The solution is to keep a ledger of all your accounts. By recording every dollar that you earn and every dollar that you spend, you will:

  1. Become fully conscious of your personal financial state

    2. Personally recording every transaction is a powerful mental trick that keeps you aware of your money.

  2. Reduce your frivolous purchases

    3. When you know you’ll be forced to relive a poor decision in the future (by the act of recording it in a ledger), you’re less likely to make that poor decision in the first place.

  3. Have real data about your finances that you can analyze at any time

    4. You can’t figure out where your money is going unless you have a record of every transaction. You can’t know if you are making or losing money unless there’s a written history.

I’ve developed a system that works well for me, which consists of the following:

  • I keep a set of notebooks together with a calculator in a commonly-used desk drawer.  This forces me to acknowledge its existence on a regular basis.
  • Whenever I make a purchase, I keep the receipt and put it in my wallet.  If a receipt isn’t offered, I ask for one, or make a note on a scrap of paper including the amount spent and the item(s) purchased.
  • Several times a week (almost every other day) I go through my receipts and enter them into my notebooks.
  • On average, I sign in to my online banking account once a week to make sure all my numbers are in order, and to verify and record any automated bill payments.
  • Once every month or two, I tally up all my accounts and record current balances.  If I include all assets and liabilities, this essentially gives me my net worth.  By doing this occasionally, I can see if I am being “profitable” or if I am losing money.

Although certainly not the only way to track your finances, there are a few key observations to make about the method I use that are applicable and required in any system:

  1. Every transaction is recorded

    2. If money goes in or out, it winds up in the books.  This keeps me accountable to myself.

  2. It scales well

    3. From daily transactions at the deli to monthly bills, to changes in my brokerage account balance, all my accounts can be managed following the same basic rules.

  3. It requires regular maintenance, but it isn’t overwhelming paperwork

    4. If the system didn’t require frequent attention it wouldn’t function as a tool for financial accountability.  On the other hand, I don’t have the time to dedicate to a system that requires constant maintenance.  My system strikes a balance that fits my needs.

  4. It works for me

    5. Having a system that doesn’t work for you is worse than having no system at all, since you will have the illusion of control without the benefits.  My system works well for me because most of my transactions involve receipts; if I functioned primarily using cash, I would have to adjust the system accordingly.

After recording all my transactions for several weeks, the process of going through receipts and entering them into the ledger becomes second nature; in fact, it is such a normal part of my routine that I actually feel uncomfortable if I go too long without “working the books.” It’s become awkward to walk around without having a reasonable idea of my account balances, which bills are coming up, and what debts are outstanding.

Most importantly, I’ve forced myself to acknowledge each and every expense.  Whenever I find myself making an unnecessary purchase there is always a voice in my head saying “you’re going to kick yourself for this later!”  And if I go ahead any buy the item anyway, I dowind up scolding myself down the line, when I see the balance in my ledger being decremented.

How do you keep track of your finances? Do you rely on your bank, or are you actively engaged in monitoring your cash flow?  Do you feel you’re doing a good job of maintaining your personal finances?  Leave your thoughts and opinions in the comment section below!

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Overcoming Anger

Monday, June 21, 2010

“Trouble is bound to come, so cultivating the right attitude is crucial. Anger diminishes our power to distinguish right from wrong, and this ability is one of the highest human attributes. If it is lost, we are lost. Sometimes it is necessary to respond strongly, but this can be done without anger. Anger is not necessary, it has no value.” — The Dalai Lama, How To Practice

“…anger only serves to torment ourselves, to divert others, and alienate their esteem.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 1787 (The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson)

It is easy to let the world bring you to your boiling point. Every day we face challenges ranging from the mundane to the catastrophic. They’re seemingly designed to foil our best intentions and to cause us pain. Sometimes we believe these occurrences to be the result of other people, whether it be motivated by malice or as the result of what we perceive as ignorance; other times our difficulties are entirely our own creation, and we feel an urge to redirect our anger inward, toward ourselves.

It is an absolute necessity in these situations to remind ourselves that anger serves no useful purpose. As the Dalai Lama puts it, anger only “diminishes our power to distinguish right from wrong, and this ability is one of the highest human attributes.” Allowing any emotion to control our thoughts, especially one as overwhelming as anger, reduces us to mere animals without the capacity to apply reason or logic to our world. The inevitable consequence of allowing anger to take hold of our mind in a given situation is that we lose the ability to think clearly, and losing this key human function only strengthens whatever it is that is irritating us.

When you feel anger beginning to take hold of your mind, try these techniques to regain control over your faculties and allow yourself to apply your reason and consciousness to the problem at hand.

  1. Step back

    2. There aren’t too many situations that demand our immediate attention. Often times when we say something needs to be addressed “immediately,” what we really mean is that we need to switch our focus to this new task; but that’s no reason why we can’t take a minute or two to collect our thoughts and allow ourselves to wrap our heads around the problem.

    Many times, anger arises simply because we are thrown into a new, potentially hostile situation, without warning or a chance to prepare. Don’t let this happen — step back, and enter only when you are fully conscious that you are in control of your mind. If it’s a particularly frustrating problem, stop; remove yourself from the situation for a moment, clear your head, and return knowing that you will not allow your frustration to control your thoughts.

  2. Don’t absorb the anger of others

    3. This can be a daunting task. As social animals, we tend to act like emotional sponges to the people around us, especially when dealing with strong emotions like anger. Unfortunately, it’s rare that we can simply walk away from these groups; if your coworkers are growing heated trying to deal with a problem, you can’t always leave the group to avoid being contaminated with these negative emotions.

    If walking away isn’t an option, try to drive the conversation in a more productive route. Angry people like being angry, but don’t be fooled — anger is an irritant, and if you offer someone a remedy they will gladly take it. Instead of joining in on the negativity, offer solutions. Ask questions that will lead the discussion towards identifying a resolution to the problem, and don’t allow group members to head back down the path towards unproductive anger.

  3. Identify the root cause

    4. When we become angry, it’s easy for us to jump to conclusions about the situation. Why are we angry? Because a customer made a mistake, and now we must fix the situation. But why did the customer make the mistake? Were the instructions wrong, or was the documentation insufficient? Identify the root cause of your anger by asking why the situation has come about. Doing this will allow you to rectify the situation at its core, which can prevent similar situations from arising in the future.

  4. Accept what the world gives you

    5. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people imply that, because of some event in their day they believe the world — or better yet, the entire universe — is “out to get them;” as if all the forces of the cosmos were aligned in such a way as to irritate a single individual. The world is not conspiring against you; it’s simply progressing in the only way it can. It’s up to you to accept what the world gives you; frustration will always arise if you try to fight the inevitable.

  5. Ask for help

    6. Anger is sometimes the result of being overwhelmed. If you have more tasks to complete than you can handle, things are bound to go off-track; and since your resources are already stretched too thin, it’s unlikely that you’ll take the additional inconvenience in stride. If you see this about to occur, it’s best to ask for help.

    Is there someone that is better suited to handle a specific task than you? Perhaps you can combine assignments with a coworker, reducing both of your overall workloads. Asking for help when you need it is okay (just don’t abuse the kindness of others) and can prevent irritating situations from arising in the first place.

What do you do when you feel yourself getting angry? What are your techniques for regaining control of your emotions and putting yourself back in control of your mind and the situation? Put your thoughts in the comments below!

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“Habit is overcome by habit.”

Monday, June 7, 2010

A hand-written journal entry“Habit is overcome by habit.” — Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book 1.21

Self-improvement is, essentially, the development of good habits and the purging of bad ones. While bad habits are often easy to develop, positive habits need constant reinforcement to make sure that they take hold and root out the negative practices you are trying to eliminate. As Benjamnin Franklin puts it in his autobiography,

…the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.

What Franklin was saying is that you cannot simply intend to improve yourself, but you have to be persistant in establishing your improvements. There are many things you can do to help yourself along; Franklin recorded his activities each day, and built a chart of what he felt were his vices and virtues. Ultimately, he found that this system did not work perfectly, but the clear purpose is to reflect upon and track each day’s improvements. A few lessons to be learned:

  1. Keeping a journal

    2. Taking five to ten minutes each day to reflect on your words and actions will force you to acknowledge your faults, and you’ll find yourself aiming to do better in the future. The key is that you have to be honest with yourself; a journal is a way of holding yourself accountable.

  2. Have patience; be persistant

    3. The whole point of this lesson is that it takes time to develop positive habits. Have patience with yourself; when you see that you are faultering, don’t give up; instead, acknowledge your shortcomings and aim to improve yourself in the future. Be persistant: there is no sense in giving yourself a break from improvement, and letting your guard down will just let the bad habits sneak back into your life.

  3. Start small; grow big

    4. This may work for some, but it may not work for others. Some people find it easier to take baby steps — to start with the low-hanging fruit and work their way up the tree. Others find it works best for them to do things cold-turkey — to make an all-or-nothing commitment and see it through. Identify which is best for you, and use it.

  4. Look back and see how far you’ve come

    5. Since everything is day-to-day, it is easy to feel like we haven’t progressed at all until we look back into the past and
    see just how much improvement has been made (this is easier if there is a written record, like a journal). Occasionally, especially in times of hightened adversity, look back and mark how far you’ve come; you might surprise yourself.

Today’s quotes are from “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis and “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” by Benjamin Franklin. Image credit goes to craigemorsels.

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“Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he busies himself.”

Saturday, June 5, 2010

"Time" by John Morgan“Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he busies himself.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VII.3

This quote captures, in a single line, what may be the most important principle of time management. It’s the realization that a person is the sum of the actions of his life; that you are what you have done and what you will do. The way you spend your life is entirely your own choice, and the consequence of that choice is your worth — “worth” meaning everything from your monetary worth to your intellectual capacity, from your general happiness in life to the amount of social capital you possess.

We often find ourselves at a place or involved in an activity simply as a matter of chance; we are “going with the flow” and we wind up watching a sitcom on television, or idling on the internet watching some video on YouTube. But if you take this advice to heart, you have to ask yourself, is this how I ought to be spending my time? How does what I am doing right now, or what I plan to be doing next, increase my value as a person, enhance me as a human being, or make me any happier in life?

If you spend a moment in reflection, perhaps you’ll find that you are not making the best use of your time, that it might be better spent learning a new skill, or doing something memorable with family; and ultimately, I think that is the point: we must consciously consider our time as an investment, and we will take more care of how and where we spend it.

Today’s quote is from “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius.  Image credit goes to John Morgan.

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