Challenge 10 Archives - 30 Days To X

How this challenge solved itself

October 31, 2013 By Robert 3 Comments

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

– Albert Einstein

At the start of the month I had no idea how I’d be able to do all my Fiverr orders.

Then something magical happened.

Amazon shut down my reviewing accounts and I was forced to close up shop. I paid back all the money I’d earned, and went back to the drawing board.

After a brief interlude doing some less lucrative gigs, I decided to restart my review business. I completely redesigned it and took steps to make sure that I wouldn’t get overburdened. What’s more, I stopped procrastinating.

As it turned out, putting orders off until the last minute had been the biggest time drain imaginable. By completing them, usually, on the same day they’re ordered, I can get my work done early without having to constantly worry about meeting deadlines.

By changing my approach and mentality towards work, I was able to increase my productivity. I stopped measuring “work” by the number of hours my business was taking, and started judging it by how many products I could put out within an hour.

This simple shift in thinking has benefited me greatly.

Naps

October 30, 2013 By Robert 3 Comments

“When the going gets tough, the tough take a nap.”

– Tom Hodgkinson

When I was a kid I read an article claiming that Thomas Edison never slept a full eight hours. Instead he’d take a series of strategic naps throughout the day. I couldn’t believe that any human could do that.

It’s one in the morning and I’m writing this post. When I finish, I’ll sleep four hours and take a couple half hour naps throughout the day. Usually I’ll set some benchmarks for myself. Once I hit them I celebrate by napping.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve functioned best during the dead of night. When I was five or so, I used to claim I was nocturnal. If it were up to me, I’d wake up at night at night and go to bed sometime around noon.

Unfortunately I don’t have that luxury. To compromise, I take strategic naps.

On days I work I like to get six hours of uninterrupted sleep. During lunch I’ll take a half hour nap. When I get home I’ll take another. Surprisingly, it gives me a lot of extra energy. In the Polyphasic sleep community this is called the Everyman.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, I like to sleep four hours and take three or four half hour naps throughout the day. This is just a slight variation of the Everyman.

When Sunday rolls around, I usually don’t do anything. At most, I’ll knock out a few Fiverr gigs and go jogging. Otherwise I basically spend the whole day sleeping and reading.

Since I started napping, I’ve discovered that I no longer need to rely on caffeine to keep me active. Every time I get up, I feel fully recharged and ready to take on the world. If you get a chance, I recommend that you experiment around with taking power naps.

If you want to learn more about Polyphasic sleep and it’s benefits, I recommend checking out this article on the evolution of sleep.

Economic survivalism

October 29, 2013 By Robert 3 Comments

“When things go badly, individuals look for scapegoats. I just do not believe that barbed-wire fences or guns on our border will solve any of our problems.”

– Ron Paul

Well this is embarrassing. I was supposed to have a busy day. It’s my second to last week of gainful employment. I was warned that, with the holidays fast approaching, I would probably have to work overtime today.

I was home before noon.

Apparently someone goofed on their predictions. The holiday sales don’t seem to be meeting what was projected. That’s never a good sign.

Most of my coworkers were freaking out about not having any work. I went home and did some Fiverr.

While my current job is blue collar work, I suspect that current sociological and technological changes will probably put the vast majority of employees in danger. As robots, outsourcing, computers, and political correctness grow; the number of jobs will continue to shrink.

According to an article I read, only a third of all early twenties adults even have a full-time job. That’s scary.

For those that have a job, there’s infinite competition. Come in late to work or screw up and two thirds of your age group will claw down the door to take your position.

Your left with two options: sitting at home and griping about Mexicans and “leftoids,” or making your own work.

Go make a Fiverr account and sell a service. There’s some kid from Sri Lanka who’s made a killing off a Fiverr gig where he videotapes himself singing Happy Birthday while standing in the jungle. According to his profile, he’s sold almost 1,000 orders since joining the site five months ago. That’s not great money, but it’s better than whatever McDonalds is paying.

Go use some of your free time to start a side hustle. It doesn’t have to be anything major, just enough to help you get through a rough patch.

The 4-Hour Workweek: a retrospective

October 28, 2013 By Robert 3 Comments

“Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.”

– Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

Not A Morning Person — If you own a sassy Garfield poster you’ll love Tim Ferriss.

I was eighteen when I first read The 4-Hour Workweek. It blew my mind. I remember thinking about how awesome Tim Ferriss was, and how he got to spend all day jetting around the globe while his bank account piled up. He had all the privileges of a hard worker, without actually having to work hard. I wanted to be just like him.

After a few months of Ferriss super fandom, I decided the book was stupid and renounced it. For a short while I was a militant aferrissist (definition: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in Tim Ferriss), denouncing him at every opportunity I could.

Since then I have become pretty neutral with my opinion of Ferriss’ books or blog. While I think his advice should be taken with a grain of salt. However, I also think he has some good stuff to teach. If you can get past all the brags, there’s value to be found.

To test my hypothesis, I decided to spend Saturday afternoon skimming my old copy of The 4-Hour Workweek. Here’s what I found:

I actually use Pareto Principle.

For the unfamiliar, Pareto Principle is a concept where 20% of the input yields 80% of the output. If you sell ten flavors of ice cream, only two will really be popular. In The 4-Hour Workweek Ferriss advocates cutting down to that crucial 20%. Following his advice, your ice cream shop would only end up serving the two popular flavors.

While Pareto Principle works, it only works once you’ve reached a certain size. For example: I used to offer a slew of Fiverr gigs. It took up too much time, and a lot of them rarely saw any use. To streamline things, I deleted all the gigs that didn’t make me money. Sacrificing the rare client who wanted my underused services allowed me to build up my already successful review business.

Had I started out with the goal of only running 20% of the gigs I had made, I’d actually have never launched my review writing business. Instead I’d have been stuck with a less than lucrative content writing service, and an unused job where I would hyperlink and embed content on websites.

I sometimes outsource.

Within The 4-Hour Workweek there’s a massive section on the benefits of outsourcing work. The way this idea is presented makes it sound exciting and new. When I first read about it, I thought it was the most novel concept ever. A year or two later I realized that the mystical concept of outsourcing wasn’t even remotely new. Everyone who has a job is basically just doing tasks that their boss has outsourced to them.

Personally, I’ll occasionally outsource when I need something done that’s too complex for me. I can’t draw. When I need an eBook cover, I “outsource” the task to someone else. It’s not nearly as impressive as it sounds.

I have a location independent job.

Having a location independent job was the selling point for The 4-Hour Workweek. Location independence was talked up as being the greatest thing ever. You could spend the day racing speedboats and traveling the world, all because you worked off a laptop.

As long as there’s Internet reception, I can work wherever I want. On paper this sounds really cool, but most of the time I just end up typing away from my bedroom/office. If I try and work outside the house I get distracted. While my current situation is infinity better than having to spend all day at a job I hate, it’s still work.

The information with The 4-Hour Workweek isn’t bad. However, I do think that it gets exaggerated. All the various “hacks” and little tips to avoid actually having to put in an effort are stupid. They’re meant to attract lazy people and rope the into spending twenty-five dollars. The book appealed to me when I was younger, because I wanted shortcuts. My brain couldn’t process the concept that you “get out what you put in.”

Nowadays I actually like working. It’s fun to hustle. Like lifting weights, it’s a gradual process. You don’t notice the change until you look back on yourself and see how far you’ve come. The thrill is subtle.

While I’m sure Tim Ferriss is a cool guy and his books do have some useful content, I’m still not a big fan. I’ll read them for the information, but I won’t drool over them and treat every word like gospel. To me, The 4-Hour Workweek feels like it was written for someone who owns an “I Hate Mondays” coffee mug and who tries to coast through work.

Good information, just not my cup of tea.

How to spend your lunch money

October 22, 2013 By Robert 5 Comments

“There’s a sucker born every minute.”

– David Hannum

I was standing in line at Walgreens, patiently waiting to purchase some trail mix. There were half a dozen old people in front of me. One was arguing with the cashier about a coupon or something. The line wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

In an attempt to kill time, I decided to mentally calculate how much it would cost me to buy a bag of trail mix every day for one year. Usually I’ll buy a package of store brand trail mix on days when I don’t have any leftovers to eat for lunch. However, I decided to calculate my problem as if I bought it 365 days out of the year.

The trail mix cost something like four dollars a bag. Buying it every day would have cost me $1,460. That’s serious money.

In my home state of Iowa minimum wage is $7.25. You’d have to spend slightly over a month’s worth of income just to afford your daily lunch.

According to a quick Orbitz search, a round trip flight to Mexico and sixteen night stay in a nice hotel room would only cost $1,636. That’s a mere $176 difference.

For $1,460 you could easily launch a side business. For that kind of money you could even outsource the entire process. To provide an example, I could easily find an inexpensive web designer to build me an affiliate site. I could then go on Fiverr and pay someone $5 a pop to write posts for me. SEO would cost nothing either.

For $1,460 I could hire ghost writers to put out a slew of eBooks for me. It’s possible to have a brief eBook written, edited, and formatted for less than $100. There’s your passive income stream.

Investments, vacations, and robust savings accounts aren’t hard to obtain. The funds are often right under your nose.