From the Web

How to Negotiate Like an Indian: How to Get an $8000 Salary Raise – Ramit is one of my favorite personal finance writers on the net. He epitomizes my belief of focusing on big wins, where you can take actions in precise areas of your life to have a huge impact. A couple hours carefully invested in the right area (such as salary negotiation) can make up for thousands of smaller wins.

From the Archives

Financial Freedom – One of my life goals is to earn/save enough money that I don’t need to work for money. Does that mean I don’t want to work? Of course not. I just want to decouple the money I need to live from the meaning I draw from my work. Material success can enable the pursuit of higher values.

Reader Question: What are Your Biggest Financial Concerns/Obstacles?

I have a special announcement coming out Tuesday related to finances/entrepreneurship/money. If you only check out the blog infrequently, I definitely suggest dropping by that day because the announcement will be time sensitive.

Before that, I’m curious to know what the readers here think about their personal finance situation? What do you feel are the biggest challenges you face with your financial success?

1. Saving more money.
2. Figuring out where to put the money once you’ve saved it. (Especially in economic times where many otherwise intelligent people are recommending cash-in-a-pillowcase as an investment strategy)
3. Earning more money. (either through part-time entrepreneurship or getting more from your job)
4. Avoiding student loans/debt.
5. Automating your finances so you don’t need to worry about them.
6. Entering (or re-entering) the job market, worrying about finding a position.

Please write your thoughts in the comments. I often only tackle monetary issues at an indirect angle (productivity, goal-setting, entrepreneurship) but I believe the important point is to be in control of your financial life so your energies can be devoted onto the things you care about.

Persistence is important to achieve success, but giving up is also important. I’ve written about persistence before, so here I want to look at giving up.

Why is it essential? Why is it necessary to give up? Because it allows you to focus your energy on the few things that are truly important. By giving up, you:

1. Stop unfruitful effort. What’s the point of spending your time and energy on something that doesn’t work? The more you spend your time and energy there, the more you waste your resources.
2. Avoid spreading yourself too thin. There are probably many things that you want to achieve. But you can’t achieve everything you want. Your resources are limited so you need to choose and prioritize. If you try to do too many things at once you will end up achieving nothing.
3. Reduce your stress. Pursuing too many things means giving yourself unnecessary pressure. Don’t let your ambition stop you from enjoying your life.
4. Free up time for your loved ones. Don’t be so busy that you don’t have time for your loved ones. By giving up, you ease your burden and free up time to build meaningful relationships.

In essence, here is what you need to do:

Give up the less important things so that you can focus and persist on the few important ones.

Here are several tips to help you apply it:

1. Find what matters to you

You need a way to know whether or not something is important. That’s why you need to find what matters to you. What makes you feel fulfilled? What gives you inner satisfaction? Be persistent on things that matter to you and give up the others.

2. Assess your life every now and then

Even if you already find what matters to you, the busyness of life can obscure it. As a result, you might get distracted by superficial things. So find time to reflect on your life every now and then. Look at how your life is going. Are you staying true to what your heart is saying?

3. Learn to let go

You may know that you need to give up something, but it might not be easy to let it go. This is especially true if you already spend a lot of resources on it.

This is where the concept of sunk costs is helpful. Don’t get caught in sunk cost bias. The fact that you’ve spent your resources on the wrong thing doesn’t justify spending even more resources on it. Those resources are already spent. Now you need to find the best way to spend the resources that are left.

The concept of opportunity costs may also be helpful. Holding on the wrong thing means losing better opportunities. The more resources you spend on it, the more opportunities you lose.

4. Refocus your effort

Once you’ve given up the less important things, renew your focus and effort on the few important ones. Now that you are focused, you have a chance to make a real difference.

Photo by Japokskee

I’m halfway through reading The Progress Paradox, by Gregg Easterbrook. The paradox is simply this: why do people feel worse, when life is actually getting better.

Easterbrook spends a long chapter arguing how, in almost every dimension, life for Western countries is not (as many exclaim) diving into an abyss, but getting better. And, it has been getting better for decades.

Some Benchmarks of Improvement

I won’t exhaust the plentiful research Easterbrook has done on global trends. If you’re interested in seeing the full scope of the argument, I suggest reading the book. However, I’ll highlight some of the most important benchmarks he uses as a case for optimism:

1. Income. The middle class today are wealthier (in terms of real dollars’ buying power) than the rich only a century ago.
2. Environment. Aside for greenhouse gases, Easterbrook shows that virtually all forms of pollution and environmental damage are in decline in the west. CFCs, industrial pollutants, lead in gasoline, just to name a few.
3. Crime. After peaking in the 1980s, violent crime is down significantly in the United States.
4. Class Divide. The richest may have more money, but the lifestyle they can buy (travel, home ownership, air conditioning, etc.) are no longer restricted to a minority of the population.
5. World Poverty. Although some pockets of the world continue to stagnate, the overall reduction in global poverty should be celebrated.
6. Education. More people are going to school than ever before, Easterbrook argues. And college degrees are now open to more people, rather than just the elite class.
7. Health Care. Sure, there may be flaws in any system, however people are living longer and healthier lives than before. Easterbrook claims that most diseases worldwide (AIDS is a notable exception) are in decline, and have been for years.
8. Prejudice. The leader of the United States is black. Even if prejudice still exists, keep in mind that over half a century ago, men like Obama hadn’t even secured voting rights. Gay marriage may be a hot political topic now, but if you compare that to a few decades earlier where homosexuality was illegal, and it is easier to see the march of progress.

Even if you disagree with a few of Easterbrook’s claims, or argue that a few of his his perceived improvements are actually regressions, it’s hard to deny the overall picture: the world is getting better.

“Won’t Optimism Create Complacency?”

I think a part of the rampant pessimism in society is because people worry that claiming everything is fine creates complacency. Even if the world has been improving, complacency won’t eliminate world poverty or prevent a potentially devastating greenhouse effect. We need action, the pundits claim, and the vehicle for getting action is often fear.

I agree that we need to focus on the problems of the world if we want to solve them. However, I believe that the way to do that isn’t by denying all of the progress we’ve made so far. We should congratulate ourselves for the previously intractable problems society has overcome, and act on these new problems knowing with confidence that we have overcome bigger obstacles before us.

“Even if We Have More Money, We’re Spiritually Poor”

I’m calling bullshit on this doomsayer’s argument. The idea that the past was a simpler time with truer ethical values just doesn’t bear scrutiny. Can we really uphold that a century ago were more ethical times when World Wars were being fought, minorities couldn’t vote, and women couldn’t work?

Money can’t buy happiness. And it definitely can’t buy meaning for life. But that doesn’t mean money itself is the enemy. Global prosperity means less people performing menial labor, starving and more access to education and new experiences.

“What About the Non-Western World?”

Global poverty, AIDS and the fates of those born into countries without the privileges of the west are concerning issues. Western society should be concerned that our global neighbors are suffering. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t be optimistic about the future, nor that we need to ignore the successes already achieved.

Poverty exists today. It also existed a century ago, however in far greater volumes. However instead of celebrating the raising of GDP in countries like China, it becomes a global threat to world democracy and western jobs. Even victories are spun into defeats.

The World is Getting Better

Life is improving. We still have problems around the world. But we have the opportunity to solve those problems, as we have with the problems of preceding generations. The case for optimism doesn’t argue that we should become complacent, and stop fighting for a better life. Just the opposite, we should keep fighting because we have a track record for winning those fights.

Note: This is a guest post from Douglas Cartwright of Living Words

Recently, I was watching a television show about Dean Potter, an American ‘slack line walker’ who strings one-inch thick nylon ropes between high mountainous places and walks across them.

Whilst that’s impressive, you might think “I’ve seen tightrope walkers before.”

But Dean is different. He does it without a balancing pole, or a safety harness, and the line is, literally, slack unlike the traditional high-wire walker. So it moves in the wind as he walks on it.

That’s amazing – but what is more interesting is what he says about why he does it:

“When I’m on a slack-line the feeling that if I slip, I die, totally overwhelms me…I’m after a feeling of total control of my life…that’s what I’m after in all of my life…I’m drawn towards these obsessive goals…”

What Dean has got (whether he realizes it or not) are outrageously powerful reasons driving him for doing what he does. He fully admits he knows that his addiction could lead to his death – but he does it anyway.

What drives a man to do such things?

This is the power of intention, driven by reasons, created by values: things that are so significant and important to him that he can focus his entire mind into what needs to be done to get across that line.

What I am writing about here is focus – and one significant way to improve it using the power of intention.

Some people seem to be able to focus on their priorities at will; and some people seem not to be able to. When these latter people do – they can’t seem to maintain it for long.

Why?

We’re going to look at this and explore some of what we can do about it. But first, please settle yourself down and reacquaint yourself with some familiar (and maybe not so familiar) feelings.

Please picture this….

It’s Friday afternoon. You’re tired, winding down, and ready to chill out at the weekend. You lean lethargically over to your PC and check your email in the hope someone has sent you a decent joke.

Suddenly your boss appears by the desk and tells you he needs your sales figures (or substitute any other time-consuming report-type activity) by Monday morning, and it’s non-negotiable.

You must do it.

You hear your mouth agreeing, and your head nodding, but inwardly you hear your voice groaning and whining: “Darn! It takes ages to do these figures and I’m not in the mood – How on earth am I going to summon the energy or the focus to do this stupid thing?” You alternate quickly between flashes of anger, despair and frustration as you imagine the time it’s going to waste of your weekend putting this together.

If you work for someone else (and if you are a middle manager!) this is probably not unfamiliar to you – and if not so at work, then you can probably remember something like it happening when you were relaxing at home -someone has come to you with an urgent (to them) thing they need you to do; and you can remember the dragging resistance you felt to doing it even as you agreed.

Listen to the griping in your head. What kind of things do you say to yourself about it?

Now, clear your mind and think what your reaction would be if completing that one report (or other task) meant:

• Significant promotion or major career boost.
• An extra 20K per annum tax free. Or any amount you want.
• A new house anywhere in the world you desired.
• Health and long life.
• Being with the partner of your dreams.
• Understanding what it meant to be close to God.

What if it meant all your dreams come true just because you got it done that evening?

Ok, I know. Now, just go along with me for a minute. I know that no one’s report is likely to mean any of those things.

But what if it did?

What if all you had to do was that one lousy report and all your problems would be solved?

How would that feel? What would your motivation be to do it then? Imagine.

Pause for a moment and clear your head. Ask yourself this: “Why would I do the report in the second case and not the first?”

Isn’t it obvious?

In the first instance the only thing motivating you is probably the fear of getting bawled out or fired.

But in the second you’ve got better or more powerful reasons to do the report.

Many or all of those things listed are what people value, what they work their lives for, what they give up their time and money for.

It is the reasons that we have for doing things that make all the difference. It is the meanings we give to the events in our lives that determine how favourably we respond to them – and how strongly we feel about doing or not doing them.

The reason (!) I told you about Dean Potter was to demonstrate that if a man can find reasons to do something that goes against almost every instinct most of us had (walking across a bendy rope 500 feet up in the air with no safety harness!) then does that not inspire you that you could find some powerful reasons to do what you need to do in order to achieve your goals?

There are some things in life that you have to do if you want to be successful and in some cases even remain solvent. There are things you have to focus on, things you have to give “regular focused sufficient attention” to – whether you like it or not.

You probably do know (some of) what you should be doing in order to ensure your success.

So why don’t you?

Could it be because your reasons for not doing it are stronger than your reasons for doing it? Could it be that although it should be, it’s just not registering on your gut-level importance meter? That you just don’t feel like doing it???

What we need is a method of producing strong and lasting motivation that will see us through our good and ‘other’ days. What we need to do is to find a way to generate feelings strong enough to overcome our resistance AND access those feelings on a regular basis so that we can do what we need to. This pattern is based on the Intentions pattern which was created by Professor Michael Hall Ph.D, creator and trainer of Neurosemantics.

THE TECHNIQUE:

You will need at least 20 minutes and a paper and pencil/pen to do this properly. It would also be good if you are somewhere you cannot be seen as you may want to stand up during the final part of the exercise.

1) First, pick an activity you know you ‘should’ be doing in order to increase or turbo-boost your progress towards your success. Pick something that in your heart of hearts you know you are resisting. Got it?

Turn your paper to portrait format.

Write the activity in the middle of the top of the page.

We will now use this activity as a reference point to explore and create your higher and more powerful mental motivations.

2) Answer the questions about ‘How is this activity important to me?’

I take it that activity is significant, right?

How is it significant?

How is it valuable?

How is it meaningful?

What else is important about that?

How many other answers can you identify about this activity?

Write your answers from left to right of the page about an inch below the activity. Basically write what looks like a paragraph of answers.

3) Take a mental step back. Well done. You’ve started to explore your mind set and ask questions about your motivations which is more than many people do.

Now, look at the answers you have just written. Your activity is important to you because of these things, right?

Now ask the following questions about your answers.

And how are these answers important to me?

What is important about having this?

And if you got these feelings and senses of value exactly as you wanted them, what’s even more important than that?

Write down the answers in a paragraph an inch or two below your previous answers.

[Please go with the question and consider your answers even if it seems a little strange to do so.]

Keep doing steps 2 and 3 until you find yourself just repeating the same sort of answers as you did in the previous paragraph.

4) When you can’t list any more answers, look at your final paragraphs and let yourself feel your response to them. It will probably be powerful. Now, (and this is important) think about your activity whilst feeling these feelings. Imagine DOING the activity whilst feeling these powerful feelings.

Doesn’t this begin to totally transform your perceptions of that?

How does this work?

The cut and dried version comes from paraphrasing the German philosopher Nietzchie (the one who supposedly said ‘God is dead’) : “A man can endure how if he has a strong enough WHY” [my italics]

Dean Potter’s why drives him to do extreme things. For the rest of us, making those business calls, building that shed, and booking that training seminar might be enough to start with!

Douglas Cartwright is a personal breakthrough and effectiveness coach and trainer. He helps self-motivated people who are ‘stuck’ get moving and start taking action. You can start to untie your psychological ‘knots’ at www.livingwords.net and pick up an outrageously powerful implementation technique for free at www.overcomingprocrastination.co.uk

Photo by John Loo

I started learning French in April, roughly seven months ago. For the people interested in learning a second language, I thought I would share my progress and some tips I’ve learned.

Am I Fluent?

I remember reading months ago that fluency was a myth. You can’t have fluency. You just have situations where you can communicate and those where you cannot. Fluency is impossibly vague because it works on a sliding scale. I’ve found it’s much better to focus on tangible goals in language learning than trying to become “fluent”.

For example, some of the milestones I’ve achieved:

• Understanding and speaking French in conversations.
• Self-reliance using French to deal with stores, requests and the bank.
• The ability to express myself with most things, albeit perhaps with more effort and less linguistic artfulness than many.

The point I’m at right now is at the understand/being understood level of fluency. The next level obviously is to be understood correctly, in more situations, with fewer mistakes.

Some Lessons Learned

As many of my readers are already bilingual (or even tri- and quadrilingual) the lessons from someone who can speak 1.5 languages may not seem terribly profound. However, I’ve always found it’s more important to share the journey than the destination when writing.

Speaking is Essential

This one definitely isn’t universal. Fellow Canadian, Steve Kaufmann who runs The Linguist speaks at least 11 languages. His method of learning is based highly on listening to the native language to passively absorb many of the words, phrases and sounds of a language.

While this method may work for Steve and others, I’ve personally noticed that speaking (especially with native speakers) is an essential step in improving my fluency. Something about speaking a word allows me to use it and remember it better than hearing it alone. Admittedly, hearing is still crucially important, but I don’t believe I would be able to develop my skills as rapidly if I relied on passive listening.

Accept Being Misunderstood

When I first started speaking, my goal was perfection. I recounted the words in my head multiple times before uttering them. I wanted to say what I was going to say without any errors, being completely understood. As someone who is proficient with English and grew up in an all-English environment, the possibility of being misunderstood was alien to me.

Now I realize that this approach doesn’t work. I succeed in communicating far more often when I just blurt out what I want to say, without the internal mental refinements. If I missed the mark and didn’t say it correctly, I’ll get some confusion. I’ve accepted that. But getting out and speaking is the best way to refine your skills.

Classroom Learning Helps

I think the mistake is made when people assume classroom learning is enough. It’s not. The improvements I’ve made with the language have all come from interacting with native speakers. Listening to them and responding in conversation.

However, that doesn’t mean classroom learning is useless. In a social environment, I don’t usually want a French lesson. I want to buy the baguette or make small talk with the person at a party, not discover the hidden truths of verb conjugation. Classroom environments can help because they provide a place where you can learn the subtleties of a language that nobody would correct you on in daily conversation.

Is classroom learning necessary? I don’t believe so. My sister became fluent in Danish and relied mostly on speaking with Danish friends. But I think it can help, if you put it in the right context.

Don’t Try to Remember Everything

When I first started learning, I’d try to remember every word and phrase I encountered. Now I realize this is almost impossible. Ask people what the words are for things, but accept that you may need to encounter a word 2-3 times before it sinks into memory. Considering the abundance of new vocabulary in any language, investing tons of energy into memorizing one word is a waste.

Once again, I’ve found usage helps solidify vocabulary. When I use a word, I’m more likely to remember it.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

The biggest skill I’ve found in learning a new language is to always ask what new words are. If you encounter something unfamiliar, ask a person what the word is. If you hit a gap in a conversation, ask the person to help you find the word you’re looking for.

Set Reasonably Expectations

Learning French has greatly increased my appreciation of anyone learning English as a second language. The biggest learning point from this experience has been the realization of the sheer amount of learning effort that goes into learning words in a different language. It means remembering the translation for tens of thousands of words in your native vocabulary, along with different grammatical syntax and different connotations.

If I repeat this experiment in the future, I’d make sure to give myself at least 10-12 months to become good at a new language. I’m sure intermediate goals can be reached before then, but I’d say that’s a good estimate of how long it takes to become good with the language, assuming you’re spending a bulk of that time with native speakers.

What Next?

I’m still in France for at least another 8 months, that means plenty more time to practice my French. My current goal is to be understood in a wider range of situations, improve my usage of the language and soften my accent. Hopefully in several months I can offer another update.

From the Web

It’s only life or death – Chris Guillebeau does a fantastic interview with John Unger about pulling yourself out from a personal crisis. Here’s the interview-inspiring article. Some of the best parts:

“The best thing that ever happened to [John] was nearly being killed in a diner by a crazed taxi driver who held a gun to his head. (It taught him perspective, he says.)

“See if there is some way to leverage the force of the disaster itself to provide a solution. I regard this as a form of Tai Chi. … the core concept of [Tai Chi] is redirecting an external force rather than meeting it with an attack. … Any real disaster has some momentum, and if you can find a way to leverage that force, or turn it to your benefit, you may be able to accomplish a solution more quickly or easily.

“Almost nothing is impossible but many things are less than obvious.

“Mere optimism doesn’t pay the rent. When you come to the point of desperation, you do more than just hope for something.

“Disasters suck. No one thinks the recession is good. But sometimes the best things arrive in disaster form, and it’s up to you to decide how to respond.”

Beast Skills: taking fitness to the next level – Recently I posted about my desire to be able to do a handstand pushup. (Update: I’m able to do 2-3 against a wall, but my balance is a long way from doing them freestanding.) This website goes a step further, with detailed tutorials to do such amazing physical feats as one-arm chin ups, handstand clap push-ups and flag levers.

From the Archives

Stop Checking Your Web Stats Every Day! – I’m on Day 2 of another 30-day internet diet, so this piece from the archives is especially timely for me.

Information addiction is a disease in the blogging community, and unfortunately I know a lot of good people who are users. I can imagine the mental rationale goes a bit like this:

1. Measuring is good.
2. Therefore, more measuring is better.
3. Therefore, I should check my Digg ranking, AdSense earnings and web traffic every five minutes!

Do you want to live a happy life? I’ve written before about being happy, but here I want to take a different angle and look at one important cause of unhappiness: loving stuff. Many people try to fill the void within them by buying more and more things they don’t need. When new gadgets come out, they buy them. When their friend has a new car, they want it too.

But why does it happen? Why do people love stuff? The reason is they believe it will make them happy. They believe the more stuff they have, the happier they will be. Is that true?

The answer is no. Perhaps they think they are happy, but they can actually be much happier if they do it differently. This isn’t just my opinion; scientific research supports it. I will discuss it more thoroughly below, but first let’s see some disadvantages of loving stuff:

1. It makes your life cluttered. Each thing you have consumes not only your physical space but also your mental space. Acquiring one more thing means having one more thing to worry about.
2. It creates wasteful spending. Buying stuff you don’t need means spending your money unnecessarily. Wouldn’t it be better if you spend it on something that’s truly useful and meaningful?
3. It promotes materialistic point of view. The more you love stuff, the more you send the wrong message to the world. The message you’re sending is that stuff can give you happiness. As a result, more and more people around you will fall into it.
4. It isn’t a good way to make you happy. There are better ways for that. More about it below.

So what should we do? Here are some tips on how not to love stuff:

1. Realize the negative side of stuff

When you realize the negative side of stuff (as discussed above), you will think twice before introducing more clutter into your life.

2. Realize that experiences – not stuff – contribute more to happiness

Instead of buying stuff, use your money to buy experiences. Research shows that experiences contribute more to happiness:

Another theme that has emerged in similar research is that money spent on experiences – vacations or theater tickets or meals out – makes you happier than money spent on material goods… “We generally found very consistent evidence that experiences made people happier than material possessions they had invested in,” says Van Boven.

3. Avoid impulse buying

Impulse buying is one of the main causes of acquiring too much stuff. This is something I learn firsthand. Since I love reading, I used to buy a lot of books. And guess what? Many of them end up unread. Realizing this, in recent years I become more careful when it comes to buying books. I only buy books that I’m sure I will read.

The way I avoid impulse buying is by first putting the item I want to buy into a wish list. I then wait for at least one month and see if I still want to buy it. In many cases, an item could stay in my wish list for months before I buy it.

4. Think ROI

ROI (return on investment) is a useful concept to help you minimize the number of stuff in your life. When you buy something, think of it as an investment. The question is: can you get good return on your investment? The return here isn’t financial. It’s the overall value you get from the stuff. Will it make your life considerably better? Will it give you long-term happiness? Invest your money only on things that give you good ROI.

5. Give

Giving is the ultimate way to both avoid loving stuff and make you happier. Research clearly shows the power of giving:

First, they surveyed 632 Americans on their general happiness, along with what they spent their money on, and found that higher “prosocial spending” – gifts for others and donations to charity – was indeed correlated with higher self-reported happiness. They followed this up with a more detailed look at 16 workers before and after they received a profit-sharing bonus from their company. They found that the only factor that reliably predicted which workers would be happy six to eight weeks after the bonus was their prosocial spending – the more money people spent on charity and gifts for others, the happier they were.

The conclusion of the research is clear:

Money makes you most happy if you don’t spend it on yourself.

Photo by striatic

Most of the time, quitting your job to start a new venture is a bad idea. Unfortunately, there’s a bad rumor going around that says the first step to entrepreneurship is crafting your letter of resignation. It’s not.

I started this business part-time. In fact, I still run it part-time along with university. And, I’m incredibly glad I didn’t drop out of school to pursue it full time.

It took me over a year before I was able to earn a respectable part-time income. And even after that, I’ve had major income fluctuations. That’s fine for a part-time business. But if I had expected full-time money, I’d probably have quit. Failed, broke and with unnecessary bitterness in my mouth about entrepreneurship.

Let’s Celebrate Part-Time Entrepreneurship

But don’t take my word for it. Most entrepreneurs I know didn’t start by spontaneously announcing their departure from regular employment. Leo Babauta continued writing at stable freelancing and full-time jobs long after Zen Habits kicked off. Same with J.D. Roth and Hugh MacLeod.

Even outside blogging, most of the entrepreneurs I know launched with one foot resting firmly on a stable paycheck.

We like to celebrate people who quit their jobs. I think, instead, we need to celebrate all the people who manage to launch a venture using just a few hours of their spare time every day. They are the better role-models, not only because they demonstrate dedication, work-ethic and patience. But also because they are often more successful.

Why Quitting Your Job is a Stupid Idea

In my opinion, there are only three reasons you should be quitting your job to start a business:

1. You inherited vast sums of wealth, and don’t need to support yourself financially.
2. You’re a serial entrepreneur with a Richard Bransonesque savvy for quickly launching profitable ventures.
3. You’re business, in it’s current stage, can support your financial needs.

For most people they can eliminate reasons #1 and #2. Which leaves reason #3: their business can actually support them.

Quitting your job to start a venture is stupid for two reasons:

First, quitting scares the hell out of most people. As a result, many people never start their dream venture because they feel resigning is a prerequisite. I think many great entrepreneurs are stuck in soul-sucking cubicle positions because they don’t have the guts to get started. But the truth is: they don’t need to be gutsy.

Second, quitting is scary as hell for a good reason. Most ventures are not immediately profitable. Hugh writes that 24 months is a good estimate for how long it takes a business to figure out its business model. If you add to that, the pressure of figuring out how you’re going to pay for rent and food, most people will buckle.

Entrepreneurship isn’t fundamentally about risk-taking. It’s about providing a product or service people will value enough to pay for.

Where to Find the Time for a New Venture

Starting a new business takes a lot of time. I imagine that I’ll get one or two snarky comments from people claiming that this advice is all great for single, childless university students who have tons of spare time, but what about the people who don’t have the free time to start a new business.

First, this is why I believe the best time to start a business is in your twenties. Not always the case, but finding time to start something is a lot easier when you’re used to living off microwave food and your biggest scheduling decision is picking which party to go to.

Second, yes, starting a new business takes a lot of time. Most people don’t have the drive or willpower to start a business. And those people probably shouldn’t.

A new venture is like having a new baby, you have to want to lose sleep over it, raise it and spend your waking moments thinking about it. If you don’t love it enough to do that, you won’t be able to see it grow up. That’s just reality.

Transition from Part-Time to Full-Time

As I mentioned in the introduction, I’m still part-time. So, I’m not going to hand down perfect advice for transitioning your part-time venture to full-time. But after watching many people eventually make the leap, I think there are a few tips you can use to make it easier:

Wait until you’re earning more than you need. Your paychecks won’t always be stable. Over one year ago, I was making several thousand dollars per month only to watch it crash down to several hundred, 6 months later. So, I believe the best time to quit is not when you’re hovering above the financial solvency line, but earning more than you spend, consistently.

Freelancing is often a good intermediate step. Freelance work can often fill in the gaps when you’re trying to get a more passive business going. I use freelancing gigs to help pick up my income during lower phases when I need more short-term income. I know Leo Babauta wrote freelance articles for multiple columns before going solo.

Have some savings prepared, just in case. If the business wobbles a bit the first time trying to stand on its own, make sure there’s a cushion to break its fall. A few months’ worth of income can give you flexibility if you face a sudden downturn.

Many of the entrepreneurs I’ve talked to after their transition wish they had done it sooner. But I think this attitude is a luxury of all the successful steps they made previously. Honestly, I’d rather be employed for an extra six months, unsure of whether I should break free, than struggling to pay rent because my business holy-grail was actually made of dust.

For 5% of People, Quitting is the Right Choice

For a small minority of people, quitting their job and going face-first into a new venture is the only way for them to succeed. But, I feel this is a minority. For most people, they will be more successful and avoid the feelings of being completely overwhelmed by starting part-time. Let your baby learn how to crawl before you force it to run.

In The Medici Effect (here is my review), there’s a term I’m interested in: the Intersection. It’s a place where ideas and experiences from different fields meet and form new ideas. It’s a fascinating place to be because excitement from different fields come together at one place. Even more, you can get a lot of fresh ideas that make your and other people’s lives better.

Living in the Intersection has always been a dream of mine. The question, of course, is how. One good way to answer it is by learning from those who are already there. Specifically, there is a certain kind of people with Intersection experience I want to discuss here. They are the polymaths.

Polymaths are people who are extraordinarily intelligent in multiple fields. They live and thrive in the Intersection. Perhaps the most famous one is Leonardo da Vinci but there are still many others. Two examples of modern polymaths are Nathan Myhrvold and Jared Diamond.

I’m not saying that we should be polymaths but I believe we can learn from them about how to live in the Intersection. Here are several lessons I learn:

1. Be curious

Curiosity is perhaps the most obvious characteristic of a polymath. It’s their deep curiosity that fuels them to explore many different fields. They want to know about the world from different perspectives. They want to experience new adventures.

So build your curiosity. Don’t take things for granted. Keep an open mind and be on the lookout of interesting things.

2. Be enthusiastic

One thing I notice when watching polymaths speak is their level of energy and enthusiasm. Often their energy and enthusiasm are so contagious you can feel a fire ignited within you. They don’t do something because they have to. They do something because they love it.

So find things that make you excited. Find things you are passionate about and follow them.

3. Focus on one field before moving to a new one

I especially notice this with modern polymaths. Nathan Myhrvold got his doctoral degree in quantum physics and worked on cosmology. Later he moved to information technology until he became Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer. Jared Diamond, whose book Guns, Germs and Steel requires deep understanding of multiple disciplines to write, has similar story:

After graduating from Cambridge, he returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became Professor of Physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties, he also developed a second, parallel, career in the ornithology of New Guinea, and has since undertaken numerous research projects in New Guinea and nearby islands. In his fifties, Diamond gradually developed a third career in environmental history, and become a Professor of Geography at UCLA, his current position.

A polymath is like a serial entrepreneur who focuses on one business and makes it successful before creating a new business. By doing it this way, he doesn’t spread his effort too thin. He has the focus necessary to gain deep understanding of the field.

So dig deep into a field before moving to a new one. This will later help you connect the different fields better.

4. Connect different fields

This a big advantage the polymaths have over many other people. While specialists usually just see from the perspective of their field, polymaths can connect one field with another. When they approach a field, they bring their knowledge and experiences in other fields with them. This enables them to see things with fresh eyes. They can see things that other people can’t.

You should do the same. When you are dealing with a field, bring your experiences and ideas in other fields with you and find connections. This is how you get fresh ideas.

Photo by OliBac

image by WWarby

Becoming good at anything takes hard work. A lot of it. The people who are willing to sweat out their craft for years will win. The people who want quick money and fame after six months will not.

However, while success may require a lot of hard work, that doesn’t necessarily mean that work is hard to do. A book may contain 80,000 words of carefully edited content, that’s a lot of hard work. But writing 800 words almost every day for four months isn’t hard to do.

Lots of hard work, but on a daily level it isn’t too difficult.

Disclaimer: The distinction between hard work and hard to do work isn’t mine. I stole it ruthlessly from fantastic writer and friend Cal Newport. But, I simply love the idea so much that I had to spread the word.

The Marathon Myth

Some people believe mastery and self-improvement require marathons of work. Huge, epic sessions of writing, studying and learning. Massive goals that push their endurance and sanity to the breaking point.

After a few weeks of such grueling effort, they give up. The marathon can’t last forever, and they are too exhausted to run the next day.

This problem arises because the people confused hard work with hard to do work. They confused the thousands of hours of practice mastery requires over years and decades, with the dozens of hours of concentrated practice that exhausts most people. They had the right motivation, just the wrong timescale.

Patience and Showing Up

I believe patience in any self-improvement pursuit is worth more than motivation. Yes, you do need motivation to get your ass out of the couch. But, getting up is only the first step. There are a thousand more that follow it.

Patience allows you to show up every day. Patience allows you to ignore temporary setbacks, not because setbacks aren’t disappointing, but because you aren’t operating on a daily timescale. You’re thinking about the big picture of how your investment is going to pay itself back in 10 years, not 10 weeks.

Creating Skyscrapers Means Digging Down Before Building Up

Erecting a massive building requires creating a huge foundation first. Without the foundation, any added height will be unstable. I think this metaphor applies to any pursuit.

If a friend told me they were going to start exercising three hours daily, I would only look at one factor to estimate their chance of success: how much they exercise now. If the person doesn’t have the exercise habit at all, they are trying to build a skyscraper on quicksand.

However, if I know the person has exercised seriously for years and keeps a consistent schedule, the odds of success go way up. There is concrete under the new plan. Habits and attitude are the foundation, and if you don’t put any thought into how these will fit, you may collapse.

How to Channel Enthusiasm

Many people get very enthusiastic when starting something new. The idea of putting in a minimal, but still respectable, amount of effort in every day is boring. When I started blogging, I wrote at least once per day, and I probably spent another hour or two every day reading everything I could on how to be successful as a blogger. I wanted to do everything, not the minimum.

The problem with a blind enthusiasm approach is that you fail to build that foundation. As a result, when the enthusiasm goes from a raging boil down to a simmer, you don’t have anything to fall back on.

I’ve found there are two ways you can channel that early enthusiasm so it doesn’t scald you later:

First, invest some of your enthusiasm in forming habits. When you start exercising, for example, commit to doing some minimum daily amount. If you feel like doing a bit more, investing time in research or buying fancy equipment, go ahead. Just make sure you get your 30 minutes of running or 100 sit-ups in every day.

Second, start with a long-term attitude. When I started blogging, I set my sights on my first steps of success in two years. With a long-term attitude it is easier to stick to the pursuit after the honeymoon phase is over.

Work Hard. Not All at Once.

One hour of writing, every day, is hard work. Eight hours of writing, in one day, is hard, even grueling, to do. But if you repeat one hour of writing, every day, for a month, you have over 30 hours of writing. Five years and you have almost 2000 hours. The power of the one hour per day is that it can be multiplied. Try repeating the eight hour day beyond even a week or more and it fizzles out.

Work hard at levels that multiply. Other people may have more talent, connections or outwit you. But don’t let them outlast you.