I have a lot of weaknesses that I need to work on but self-confidence is one of my greatest strengths. It wasn’t always the case that I was a confident person on the exterior but I have always maintained an undying belief in myself even if in my interactions I was shy and timid. In all my years on this planet I have had the opportunity to meet some really great people and I’ve noticed that some of the smartest and most interesting had zero self-confidence. Confidence isn't something you’re born with rather it is something that can be honed and strengthened over time and have a profound impact on how you live your life. For me it was a challenge to break out of my shyness and transform that inner belief into outward confidence but I have successfully done it. Hell, five or six years ago I was all but petrified to talk to a girl and nowadays the past few girls I have dated remarked that one of the main reasons they fell for me was due to my confidence. So if it is something that can be developed in a person what are some steps you can take to make yourself into the confident person you want to be? It’s not always an easy journey but developing self-confidence is a must if you ever want to be successful.

1. Figure Out What You Can and Can’t Do

Strengths and weaknesses, we all have them but do most of us really take advantage of them? Confidence in yourself stems from how well you can react in a given situation and if you are particularly strong in one area then you should use that as a place to start building your self-confidence. Suppose you had to give a speech in front a classroom full of people. What topic could you speak in a detailed and interesting manner and have the least amount of doubt or anxiety within while speaking? As I have mentioned before, I am terrible at math so if someone asked me to get in front of a room and speak on mathematics in detail I wouldn’t be able to pull it off and the whole situation would go badly. However, if I were allowed to choose a topic I knew very well even if I didn’t have any prep time I could still confidently work my way through it.

The point of all that was to show that your strengths can be a source of confidence just by focusing on what you do well. On the opposite end of the spectrum you should clearly define your weaknesses and decide how you’re going to begin to turn them into strengths. It is important to recognize that some weaknesses are actually limits that you cannot personally go beyond. I could study for years and never be a brilliant mathematician and that’s okay I don’t feel down on myself because of it. I have tried many different things in my life to discover what I was good at and what I would fail miserably at. You shouldn’t limit your dreams but you do need to realize that you cannot do everything at a high enough level to be great at it.

2. You Know Your Strengths, Get Ready to Reach Your Potential

Remember the speech example? What would my confidence level have been if I would have had a week or two to prepare and practice? Pretty damned high. Being the best you can be at something isn’t just a matter of having natural talents but cultivating them as well. Putting the work into making yourself even better will naturally give you a shot of confidence that you never had before. You will feel accomplished and well prepared to react to any changes that present themselves in your life. Working towards being the best that you can be gives you a type of focus that very few people in this world have and when you start seeing all of the positive changes and others take notice of them it is a recipe for a strong self-confidence.

3. Learn From Your Failures, Don’t Let Them Ruin You

Getting knocked on your ass by life is a total confidence killer IF you let it be. Trial and error is always a step on the path to accomplishing your goals and you will undoubtedly have more failures than you will ever have triumphs. That’s okay. That is how it is supposed to be. Life is a learning experience and if you want to live a good life you have to get beaten down sometimes and figure out how to keep on going. Failure makes your victories all the more sweet because of all the time, energy, and thought you put into your goal. Confidence can be had through education, learning what does and doesn’t work and channeling that into your future ventures. Have you failed with the opposite sex before? I have and it didn’t feel too good. Was that a reason to just give up and live an unhappy life all alone? Hell no. I took my lumps, licked my wounds, and gave the dating world another shot and you know what I’ve been succeeding in ways I couldn’t imagine a few years ago. Failure is not the end of the world; it is the start of something new.

4. Surround Yourself with More Positive People

One huge hindrance in many people’s lives is the social identity that they have developed for themselves and it being hard to get away from. Your friends and family have certain perceptions of who you are and they aren’t always the most accurate picture. If you want to make a dramatic change in your life these same people can often react negatively to your new found ambitions. The environment that surrounds you can have a positive or negative effect on how you live your life and if you’re not careful it can cause you to stagnate for years at a time. Think about it like this, say you wanted to go on a diet and you and all of you’re friends get together on a regular basis and eat foods that aren’t in your diet. Would these friends be supportive or would they judge you and act negatively towards your change? Sometimes the best of friends can be more of a weight holding you down than a positive influence that raises you up. Misery loves company and two people can trick themselves into thinking they are happy with their current life if everyone they surround themselves with is also going nowhere. Confidence comes from within but it can also be bolstered by those around you that shower you with love and encouragement. Take stock of who is and who isn’t a positive person and strongly consider distancing yourself who only want to keep you down with them.

5. Learn to take Criticism in Stride

Looking at number four you see that sometimes friends have negative reactions to what you want to do and the changes you make to get there. Other times their criticisms are valid and you should learn to accept these constructive criticisms. The difference is fairly easy to spot, constructive criticism doesn’t present itself in the form of personal attacks and provides insight that you might not have recognized yourself. If you want to increase your self-confidence you cannot take constructive criticism to heart because it will only serve to help you grow as a person. Whoever is criticizing you isn’t trying to bring you down or belittle your work but rather give advice on how you can get better. On the other hand you have to be able to take negative personal attacks in stride and easily forget them. There will always be some small number of people that will lob hollow critiques of you and your life that are designed to simply cause damaged to your self-esteem. Don’t fall into the trap of embarrassment or fear of trying because of these people, they are just bitter and if you take them seriously you’ll go nowhere.

The main thing when trying to build up your self-confidence is to really get in touch with who you truly are and where you want to be in the future. You cannot always escape negativity and in all honesty you shouldn’t try to because failure and pain are sometimes the only paths to success. Figure out what it is you are good at and then use that as a place to build off of not only your self-confidence but your life in general. It takes time and it takes effort but being self-confident is attainable for anyone who is willing to put in the work.

We all have lazy days where we don’t really get anything done nor do we even much feel like it. Of course it is fine to have an occasional day of relaxation to help get your mind off the stresses of your life and recharge your batteries but when it becomes a daily occurrence and your productivity becomes non existent it is time to get back in gear. Perhaps you aren’t stuck in a rut but you would still like to increase your productivity so you can get more done and have more lazy days. Being consistently productive is one of my weaker areas and still needs improvement but I have come a long way from where I used to be by sticking to some simple principles.

1. Identify the Tasks to Accomplish

The very first thing you should do before you begin working on something is to take the time and identify what it is you are exactly trying to accomplish. I can sit down and say I want to write an article and then sit there not getting anything done. The problem is my goal is too vague, what topic am I writing about? What kind of research needs to go into it? How much time should I set aside to finish it? Define what you are doing or you will spend your time in idle distraction.

Once you have figured out what you are doing decide how you’re going to get it done. Are there anyways that you can improve your efficiency? Can something be cut totally from the list? Is there a smarter way to get to the end? Knowing what needs to be done will allow for better fluidity and because you have a clear goal you can adapt to any problems that arise with ease. Keep a detailed planner of what you need to do that day and work your way down the list.

2. What is the Highest Priority?

Most days I’ll write down more tasks than I can reasonably expect to get done which is fine because not all of them have that day as a deadline. If I have an assignment that is due in a week I will write it down earlier to serve as a reminder and as something to get done early if I happen to work quickly. The tasks that I do get done are always the highest priority ones first, the ones that have a definite due date on that day or tasks that create the most value for the time I spend. Value needs to always be taken into account when deciding what to tackle first. You may need to buy a new pair of shoes but is your time better spent searching online for an hour or taking that hour to really get a good way’s into an assignment that will provide income? Buying the shoes may be easier to do and it may take less time but jump into the difficult task first because it will be more beneficial to you.

3. Check Your Preconceptions

What do you think you’re going to get out of completing a task beforehand? Is your answer an accurate result to expect or are you deluding yourself into thinking it’s more valuable than it actually is? For example, at the beginning of the year I wrote a bunch of World Cup team previews thinking that they would be more popular than they actually ended up being. I wasted so many hours in research and then the writing of these articles that I just became bogged down in my own self-belief of their value. If I would have been honest with myself and questioned whether or not I could make these series of articles a success or not, I would have gone about things much differently. I shouldn’t have gotten caught up in completing such a useless task when there were so many other options that would provide me with higher value. Don’t blindly follow your preconceptions about something or you could be wasting your precious time doing something that doesn’t actually work for you.

4. Work From Your Strengths

Since I am in school, I really have to manage my time wisely otherwise nothing gets done and everything starts falling apart. To correct my course when I am feeling overwhelmed I try to work from my strengths. I may be faced with a choice between writing a new article or completing some math homework. Neither of these may be urgent in the time they need to get done and both have similar values in that they must both get done so I will have to make a decision on which on to start first. One of my biggest weaknesses has always been in math. It is really hard for me to consistently learn how to do a type of problem and because of this it requires greater time spent on it than other things. Writing is something that I am much more comfortable with and can just type out all of my ideas without much time being spent on the first draft and is thus my first task in this situation. By working on what I am best at first I get something done quickly and get the ego boost that comes with getting something done. However, it still applies that if the math assignment were more urgent I would of course do that first.

5. Group Your Tasks

Some tasks are small enough to be grouped together with other tasks to get things done more quickly. Think about it like running errands, you can hit the grocery store, pick up the kids, and get the dry cleaning all in one trip and save yourself the trouble of driving back and forth. Certain things like emails, phone calls, and shopping can be grouped together to increase your productivity or maybe more detailed assignments that are interrelated. Take stock of your daily list and see what you can combine and knock out in one fell swoop.

6. Cut the Distractions and Work Harder

Technology is wonderful and it is the reason I can communicate with people all around the world at tremendous speeds. It can also be very distracting and eat up your whole day without you noticing. If you want to increase your productivity set aside some time during the day when you are alone and without your phone, television, radio, and of course not surfing the web aimlessly. Texting your friend usually only takes a few seconds if you’re a quick at typing but having a conversation adds up to even more time plus the distraction of thinking about something besides the task at hand. It will take your mind elsewhere and then it often becomes bye bye focus making it exceedingly difficult to jump back into it with the same energy. Furthermore, it can help to clean up your workspace and remove all the clutter that will either distract you or make for an unpleasant environment to work in.

I have written in the past on this blog that failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing, that it can be beneficial to you as a learning experience. Even with that being true it is still something that must be ultimately overcome to reach our defined goal and be able to say we successfully accomplished it. But what are the root causes of failure? Why do some plans work while others flop? Why are some people good at accomplishing what they want while others crash and burn each and every time? Avoiding the most prevalent causes of failure allows for your chances of success to skyrocket. Now the following five causes of failure are by no means the only suspects for something to go wrong but they all usually play some role in the demise of our goals.

1. Fear of Past Failures

The past always has a profound effect psychologically on your present and future whether your experiences have been positive or negative. Letting a negative experience, in this case a failure, linger in your mind will work against you to sabotage accomplishing your new goals. This is where learning from your mistakes can be a very helpful thing as long as you don’t dwell on what went wrong and what you would go back and do differently. You must accept the fact that the past is the past and it can not inhibit you from taking the necessary steps to get what you want out of your life or your business. Fear can make you second guess your plans and even your ability to get those plans done and that second guessing isn’t the productive kind you need to be more efficient

2. Not Having a Clear Goal

Sometimes when you start on your journey you haven’t specified what it is exactly you want to do. You may wake up one morning with a positive attitude and the ambition to change your life and maybe do some things temporarily that do improve how you live. But unless you focus on a specific goal that you would like to accomplish the chance that you will fail is very large. Instead of saying I want to change my life say I want to change my social life for the better. Then go even more specific, I want more friends or I want to successfully set up this many dates within a certain time frame. Not having a clear goal is almost as detrimental as not having a goal at all in that neither one is going to take you where you want to ultimately be. Also, it is important to really reflect on things and decide if you have chosen the right goal. You could be expending lots of your precious time and energy into pursuing something that won’t help you or that you really don’t have a true passion for.

3. Blame Game

Failure leads to frustration which leads to short tempers and someone to point the finger at as the reason why you didn’t succeed. By trying to pin the blame on someone else you’re avoiding looking deeper into the real reasons you failed which probably had more to do with poor planning and/or execution. You need to condition yourself to act like a leader in that you should accept responsibility for what went wrong and be able to praise others for the help they have give you. This doesn’t mean that you should blame yourself totally and wallow in your own self pity. No, you need to realize your faults and mistakes and improve upon them, this helps to stamp out the first cause of reliving past mistakes.

4. Expecting Positive Returns with Short Cuts

Rarely is the easy way going to be the road you should take. If it were we would all be living or dream lives and working our dream jobs. You have to be willing to make a choice of going after what you want and giving up what is comfortable for you to do. Once you have decided to make a run at your goal you have to stick with it no matter how difficult it may be and not cut corners. If you see a better way to do something then of course you would try to implement it and make things happen quicker but you won’t get anything of value by doing a half-assed job. Maximize your time and try to get as much done as possible without busying yourself with things that won’t matter in the long run.

5. Quitting Too Early

Quitting to early can apply to two situations, the first is where you give up before you accomplish your goal and the second is when you get comfortable with your successes. Obviously if you quit before you’re done you are going to experience failure but the roots of you quitting stem due more to frustrations than any real barricade that cannot be overcome. Starting a goal is always the easy part, it’s the middle where things go awry and doubts about whether you can actually do it start to creep in. It can be extremely difficult to maintain your focus over long periods of time and we all get burned out. It is during these dark moments of despair that you must reevaluate. Step back from everything and take a look at what you’re doing wrong and what could be done without putting as much energy into it. Think of it as running a marathon, if you try sprint the only result will be complete failure to do the full 26.2 miles. Slow things down and focus on accomplishing smaller parts of a larger goal and let them all add up for you. When you do this you mustn’t get caught up in your own victories and believe that you can either cruise to the top or your work is done entirely. Changes to your life are never done and that’s what makes it all so exciting there is always something for you to work on to make you happy, healthier, and an overall better you.

Complacency can be the murderer of success. When we get into a comfortable position in life we tend to stop working, stop growing, and just not have the hunger we once did. Unfortunately for us the world around us doesn't stop changing and while we are standing still it is moving forward. We keep doing the same things that once worked well for us hoping to replicate earlier success and it doesn't work anymore because we failed to adapt all of life's little changes. This isn't to say that persistence and consistency aren't keys to success in life they are but when you allow your growth to be a rigid dogma of ideas you stop growing. How do we avoid this complacency and experience a lifetime of being on top of our game instead of just a few good years? By opening ourselves up to new ideas.

Any given year you can find a musician that has a great run of success and then won't ever be heard in a meaningful way ever again. It may be because they got lucky with a hit song and not really have much talent but there are plenty of others who are damn good musicians that fail to maintain their stardom mostly because they fail to adapt to changing tastes. It's like the disco craze, how many artists' careers did that claim? You see when you have success in one field or method you tend to get associated with that and that may be fine for awhile but it isn't very good for growth. This boxing yourself in forces you into stagnation and makes your life very predictable and without challenges.

The thing is that our educational system usually does the job for us by program specialization. Too many people choose a major and then ride it out for their entire careers without making a change even when they are experiencing diminishing returns. About a year ago before I had any concrete idea of how I was going to get to where I wanted to go I went to my student advisory meeting to see what kind of schedule I could put together. I hadn't declared a major yet and when the councilor asked me what I was looking into I said History and Biology. You would have thought that I had told a joke because he actually kind of laughed at the idea. Sure the two subjects aren't very similar and it would have required lots of work on my part but the idea of pairing two distant things was comical to him. To me the idea was just a way of exploring different concepts and finding a way to weave them together like I had read about with Benjamin Franklin, Cicero, da Vinci,Goethe, etc. These men weren't great because they narrowed their field of study but precisely because they never stopped expanding it.

Each new thing that you try can keep pushing you into a new direction and open up further doors for you. You let your ideas become fluid and less tightly controlled. Of course you must maintain some semblance of control and focus to master the new ideas but new methods and ideas shouldn't threaten you they should excite you. If you've ever watched what passes for political discussion in this country you know exactly what I mean, the other side has no good ideas and everybody is too stubborn to be proven wrong or think in another way. It's no wonder that nothing really ever gets done and the things that do are often watered down and ineffective. Without experimentation it becomes very difficult to solve problems and chokes any type of growth you may have experienced, remember Success is Made Out of Lots of Failure.

Experimentation and learning moves us forward and allows for us to adapt to a changing world. By casting your net wide you never allow for complacency to set in because as soon as you meet your goal in one area you are immediately drawn to something else that you're passionate about, hence you never rest on your laurels. You could say that you would never be the best at anything if you spread out your interests and that very well may be true but the king of the mountain can only go down or stay on top. If you knowledge or skill set is very specialized and you're the best at it what happens to your growth? You must now spend all of your time defending your spot at the top and in the process may very well become obsolete due to changing times. The security you feel in your position is in all likelihood just an illusion and if you aren't prepared for a rapid change you can often just get left in the cold. Think about all of the people who spent years working one job and becoming damn good at it only to be fired one day and not be able to move on to something else. They lost their mobility and became too rigid and comfortable seemingly unaware of how precarious their lives had been the whole time.

Always keep in mind that if you're not improving you're ultimately declining. So shake off the idea that your livelihood is guaranteed if you just show up and go through the motions, the world doesn't stop and neither should you. Take the time to examine yourself and what you want to have happen in your life then go out and pursue it without fear. Complacency can set in slowly but it is always a real threat to everything that you worked to build before it. Don't let it get you.

Each afternoon when I go to the gym for my workout I see the same faces that I saw there during the summer and earlier on this year. While all of these people have dedicated themselves to showing up everyday they still tend to fall into two groups, those who work hard and those who work some. You can tell which group someone is apart of the hard workers all look noticeably better than they did when they first started and the ones who don't look like they have their same old body. The hard workers are efficient with their workouts, keeping their rests light and conversations with other people to an almost non existent level. The other group tends to take over an hour to do work that in all honesty should take about half the time. You can spot these people very easily because they are the ones sitting on an exercise bike reading a magazine and after doing a set in the weight room either walk around listlessly or carry on five minute conversations with anybody willing to talk in a ten foot radius. We know that persistence is the key to success but persistence is made up of hard work over a long period of time, day after day, month after month of success and achievement.

I recognized that I was doing the same in my workouts the first week back. No I wasn't talking or reading a magazine but I certainly could push myself harder. Take for instance the mile I run as part of my cardio, the time in which I finished on Friday was 30 seconds slower than the one I ran today, this while feeling sluggish this afternoon. Thirty seconds is not a long time when compared to our lives but 30 seconds on a mile run is a pretty significant chunk (especially since I'm still pretty slow). All it took to increase my output was to keep reminding myself of what I want to accomplish and that I won't get to reach my if I don't push myself harder each time I step foot in the gym. When you come in to a goal with this mindset you stop cutting corners and take it to the limit. Thinking about this today made me push to a new level of fatigue while lifting weights by making sure that every rep was executed perfectly, every chin up with full range of motion, and every rest break shortened to force my muscles to adapt or fail.

Every great obstacle and goal you set for yourself will never be easy it takes hours of repetition and gutting it out through the hard time, there are no short cuts to meeting your full potential. How many athletes have been successful off of sheer athleticism alone? If you have ever looked at the prep basketball player rankings for each year that all have talent but what separates one who never makes it to the NBA to one who does is through sheer hard work and perseverance. Don't believe me? Take a look at one of those lists from ten years or so ago and you'll see many guys that you have never heard of ranked higher than current NBA stars. Was there other factors besides work ethic that could have played a role? Sure but don't underestimate the role of getting too cocky and trying to coast off of pure talent, which many of them learned the hard way has ever diminishing returns without more dedication.

Hard work however is not random there must be a purpose to it. If you were building a house, it would be hard work to carry all of the supplies around and build a house just using your mind. Some home builders might be able to build a house from scratch without blueprints but they probably wouldn't be as focused than if they had a specific purpose. This is true for all hard work that your practice must have a method to it. Going back to another basketball example if I want to become a better shooter would I improve more if I just shot around for an hour or if I used that hour to focus on a detail like shooting threes? The latter of course because it is zeroed in on one thing.

One of my favorite quotes is from the book Good to Great which said, "The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency." Committing to something is all well and good but is doing it half assed much better than not doing it at all? By not putting in hard work on what you want day after day you are setting yourself up for disappointment and mediocrity. If you want to separate yourself from the pack and taste greatness you must be willing to go full throttle otherwise you're just like everybody else, stuck in the same spot.

Since I've started this blog back in July I have been finding inspiration in a lot of different places. It's as if just knowing that I need to write each day makes me see clearly all of the motivational and inspirational things in the world around me. Today for example I received a book in the mail that I had ordered last week, How to Write a Movie in 21 Days and only a few minutes after tearing open the packaging I got hit with a source of inspiration. It wasn't anything the author wrote because I haven't even read a page, the inspiration came from the previous owner. Normally when I get a book with underlines and notes scrawled all over the pages I am less than pleased. However, these notes were different because these were the notes of a man writing a screenplay something that I want to achieve myself. What I love about the notes is the mystery of it all. He only writes bits and pieces of his idea for a story in short notations and from what I gather it is the story of a man trying to keep his sanity in an insane world. On the last page of the book it is signed and dated as 'finished' on 9/25/88 which both gives me inspiration as an end goal but also because it reminds me that this book has been around for almost as long as I have and may have gone through so many others hands. It makes me wonder if this screenplay was ever developed and the owner actually saw his idea through to the end even if it wasn't a major movie. This all got me thinking about inspiration and how to find it which in turn sparked this post and I wanted to express some thoughts on the process.


1. Find what drives you.

I wrote about this in my post The Drive of Success and the Creativity Flood that also relates to inspiration and the main idea is that when you find that thing in life that drives you to reach for it , the ideas and inspiration just bombard you. I've concluded that my drive in life comes from wanting to learn and create. For a long while I thought it was simply to become a writer but after some more thought it occurred to me that I really love to use my mind and create. For example I learned how to use the music making program FL Studio and love to create my own remixes that usually only I get to hear. There wasn't any real motivation to use these songs beyond that (not like I could they're copyrighted) but I made them simply so I could enjoy listening to music I liked on my mp3 player. It's this kind of creative feeling that makes it a breeze to spend hours on various projects which is why my old jobs could never hold a candle to my own interests.

2. Doing new things.

By breaking the repetitiveness of your everyday life you get exposed to new things, places, people, and ideas that if you're paying attention can pay you back many times over in the inspiration these experiences create. Sometimes I just like to go somewhere different whether it be the mall or a movie to get little bits of inspiration by watching people or seeing interesting products. But for this method to work the best you should try and go places that you have never been to or join a group of people by taking a class in something you've always been interested in but never have acted upon. This upcoming week I am planning on going to study sessions for a few of my classes whether I need the extra help or not just to be around some different people. I'm not sure if I will get any new ideas or motivation from this but who knows, I'll just have to find out for myself.

3. Digest your day.

When you get a moment of downtime think about your day or week and what happened that is particular interest to you. Maybe you saw a movie preview that interested you. What about it grabbed your attention? Perhaps the theme of the movie hit close to home and you should explore these feelings deeper. Did you meet someone special? It doesn't have to be romantic but if you met someone interesting what was it that made them cross your mind? I often do this kind of reflection before I fall asleep because it usually take me awhile to drift off and it has netted me a ton of new ideas that I write down and expand on later.


4. Look to what others produced with their inspiration.

This is actually a really fun way of finding inspiration because you get to explore artistic expression. Pick up a favorite book, movie, or go to an art museum (or look through paintings on your computer) and try to imagine what was going through the creator's mind when they were making this work. If you're someone who enjoys architecture take a walk through your town and just let your mind absorb interesting structures. Pick out something you like about the building and really just let your mind go off on tangents. Bring a notepad and copy down feelings, questions, or ideas you have from your wanderings. I'm sure you can find at least one thing that will inspire you forward.

5. Just let it flow.

Don't second guess your ideas at first just get them out there. Sometimes I'll just sit down and write without the vaguest notion of what exactly I want to say but this stream of consciousness method does provide good results. Often I won't get out what I wanted to say the first time but after a few readings it conjures up even more points and then other times it changes the idea into something else that is better. Not every new idea is going to work out, like the other day I was in the middle of writing about realism in your life but I didn't like it anymore, it had ceased to inspire me. That post is now in the graveyard of ideas but it is still written down in my notes and maybe next week I'll resurrect it with a whole new batch of points to make.

Inspiration is easier for some people than others but we all have the capacity to make it happen. The key is to tune into the world around you and let your curiosity loose without second guessing what you find interesting until your brainstorming is over with. I hoped this helped you with seeking out your own inspiration because I had to get these thoughts out of my head.

Every once in a while I read books on business and investing just to give me a solid foundation to build on should I decide to go into business for myself. One of my favorite books on investments is The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing by Pat Dorsey and Morningstar because it gives thorough explanations and isn't a get rich quick type of investment strategy. As you can tell from the title the book lays out in the first chapter five rules that every successful investor should follow and while looking over them late last night I noticed that these rules could also be applicable to self-improvement and goal setting. Yes, it turns out that investing in stocks is much like investing in yourself and done right both can pay off handsomely, only self-improvement the results are a lot less volatile.

1. Do Your Homework

Obviously before starting any goal the most important thing to do is to research how you can accomplish it successfully. Right now one of my goals is to learn everything I can about writing a screenplay as a part of my larger goal of learning all I can about making movies. It would be easy for me to rush into this and just commit a bunch of words into a word processor with some semblance of a story and call it a screenplay but that wouldn't be a good screenplay now would it? The time that you put into before setting off on your goals should allow you to have a plan of action and be more prepared for any setbacks that you will inevitably face while seeking your goal.

2. Find Economic Moats

In the book this section is referring to the competitive advantage firms have within their market but for our purposes we'll be using it to refer to your personal competition. Now not all goals will have you competing against other but some will. For instance, if your goal is to attain a certain position within a company or get into a certain school then you are going to have to separate yourself from the rest of the pack by being able to do something better than anyone else can. Even if we go beyond specific goals we can apply this rule to life in general, consistently growing and improving creates a moat that can protect you in tough times. Economic moats allow companies to be more profitable just as growth allows your life to be more profitable. If you read and engage your interests and develop new skills are you not better off in a terrible economic climate than someone who does nothing to better themselves? Of course you are because whether it's having a better resume for a job or taking the reins yourself you always know that you have value to offer. So create moats for yourself by learning new things and separate yourself from the competition. Becoming World Class at Something.


3. Have a Margin of Safety

In the book this section deals with valuation of stocks and making sure that the price you pay isn't too high. In life sometimes the price you pay for something may also be too much and leaves you high and dry when things don't work out. Just like stocks you can overvalue people too. If you are in a relationship with someone and it's not going the way you want it to then you may be paying too high of a price to be with that person. This extra cost can be physical, emotional, or just your partner holding you back from being the person you want to be. You have to be honest and evaluate the person realistically to see if they are the right match for you or just someone who was nice for awhile and has since declined in their personal value. If you come to the conclusion that the price you're paying to stay with them exceeds what you actually want then it is time to move on.

4.Hold for the Long Haul

In investments constantly trading racks up fees and taxes which will usually hurt long term growth. With goals if you constantly shift from one to the next without putting the proper amount of time into it you're also hurting yourself in the long term. Jumping around with your goals leaves your original goals done hastily or you never complete them at all. Sometimes moving on is required but often it is simply due to a lack of commitment on your part. I often had this problem when reading books. I would buy one long book and be absorbed in it for a few days and then I would hear about a topic that seemed interesting and buy a book on that. I eventually found myself with a ton of books but only a shallow understanding of each because I lacked the commitment to keep going with the book or subject. I finally decided to do something about this by selling those books I had started but weren't on a topic that I was interested in on a regular basis and then made myself get through the ones I did have a consistent interest in. Sticking with your goal allows you to reap all of the benefits that you originally set out to acquire while bowing out early is like a paying tax (time and energy invested) and not receiving much profit.

5. Know When to Sell

Ah so now we get to when it is appropriate to shift away from one goal to another. First ask yourself is it worth it to you to keep continuing your pursuit of the goal? If the answer is no then it is probably time to reevaluate things. Obviously if you have achieved what you set out to do then of course it is time to move on to something new. But if your goal was something like weight loss then you will need to maintain a healthy lifestyle otherwise the result of your goal was temporary. The book goes into asking whether your money could be invested better somewhere else and if you have too much money in one stock. This translates well to what we are trying to do with this article. Replace money with time. Could your time produce better results if it were spent another way? There are only 24 hours in a day and each of them must be scheduled accordingly and if one pursuit isn't paying you back it's fair share based on the amount of time invested then it may be time to let it go. Also, while focusing on one goal in the short term can be very beneficial, if you put all of your eggs in one basket it will hinder the rest of your growth if you dedicate too much time to it over the long haul. Eventually you will see diminishing returns in its value to your growth and can be disastrous if one thing goes wrong. If all your doing is pursuing one thing and that doesn't work out you're not left with much to cling to.

This is just a few short ideas that I was exploring based off of these rules and I believe that if you do some thinking on them of your own you can find a way to apply them to your life. Personally I like to look for advice and inspiration in lots of different ways so maybe I'll make a trip to the business section of the used book store and find other thought provoking ideas, after I finish my current reading list of course.

I have a lot of bookmarks that I have saved on Firefox and last night I was going through the list and deleting the ones I no longer needed. While cleaning up my bookmarks I noticed where I had saved information about a certain video camera and different lenses, stands, and microphones that could be attached to it. It gave me a sense of motivation not because I simply wanted the camera but it represented a goal that I have in mind which is to write my own screenplay and then film it as a low budget movie. This goal is preceded by my current goal of turning this site into a success and garnering enough traffic to earn a passive income and in fact rests on me doing so because I can’t very well have the freedom to film a movie working some crummy job everyday. This motivation I have been feeling for the past few months has been incredible and everyday something new inspires me again it’s like a perpetual kick in the ass that won’t let me give up. It’s a feeling of knowing that something is going to happen because you’re just so tuned into making it so that it is a foregone conclusion.

I remember for the past two years or so of my life sitting at work talking with my friend about how great it would be not to have a job and it always ended with the feeling that yes it would be great but it’s not realistic. It wasn’t until I sat down and made it my intention to find a way off the usual path that I really believed that it was possible for me not to work a crappy job and then graduate and get another job. My self belief has gotten to the point where I don’t even think about getting a job after I finish my degree because it’s not a part of who I am or who I want to become. Those fears of being forced into a life I don’t want have been replaced by goals both big and small, long term and short term. The change is in fact to stop thinking about what will happen to you and to rather think about how I am going to get where I want to go.

Once you open your mind up in this way things just start coming to you like ideas to write about or even new ways to make money. Last week while I was surfing the web a bit I was on a site and saw an ad for their ebook which was available for download. Now I’ve seen these ads probably thousands of times in all of the years I’ve been on the internet but it wasn’t until that instance that I thought about writing one myself. It never occurred to me that I could write and publish my own book online for a profit (and here I am publishing on the internet with this blog) perhaps I’m just stupid and overlooked an opportunity that was staring me right in the face or maybe it was the mindset I’ve developed for constantly looking for new opportunities. That one small image advertisement altered the course of work I plan on doing in the next few months and inspired me to begin planning my own ebook(s).

We human beings have a huge capacity for problem solving and when we’re motivated to do something you can better believe that a solution will be found. Too often our thoughts are attached to some responsibility or work instead of being free flowing and meditative which is usually where we come up with our most brilliant ideas that seem to be plucked from thin air. The desire that gives us our will to succeed brings forth all of these ideas and makes them easy to dream up, you start understanding more, connecting dots you didn’t know existed, and seeing angles that had previously escaped you. I don’t seem to ever worry about what to write anymore and now only focus on which idea I am going to develop for the blog today. Coming up with new ideas isn’t something I sit down and do, I just let them trickle in to my brain and then scribble down the idea however vague into my notebook. When I went to bed at around 3 AM this morning I had just finished listening to one of my audio books and wasn’t really focused on anything then this blog crossed my mind. Suddenly I had an idea and I got up out of bed to write it down. Then another one not more than 15 seconds after I had laid back down. This happened a total of four times before I finally fell asleep. As you can see, writer’s block should present much of a problem with inspiration like that.

So what is it that drives you in life? For me it seems to be having the freedom to create and express myself in a variety of ways. Think about what it is in your life that gives you that feeling of motivation like no other. Once you have that and start working towards getting there you will see the paths opening up even if it’s a roundabout way like mine. In order for me to manifest my desire to make a screenplay and film I chose to take this path of blogging to help raise the capital to finance my endeavors which still allows me to be creative and express myself. In a way I’m doing something that I enjoy to make a living to pursue something else I enjoy and I’m sure that will open up further opportunities for me. This drive should make you excited about waking up each day because at least half of the fun of setting a goal is the journey you take to get there and the knowledge that you will get there one day fuels your work ethic and creativity. Ponder your own life and find what it is that you want and the motivation will rise from there, mine all seems to be encapsulated on a single camera I don’t own (yet).

This afternoon I went to the library at my university for a bit of research on movie making and screenwriting to help continue my development of a screenplay. The library features 10 full floors of books and even though the film section is relegated to a single row on a single floor it still features more material than I could reasonably read even with years at my disposal. When I thought about this fact while making my way from shelf to shelf I realized that while I read every single day I probably have only read 20-30 entire books so far this year. It dawned on me that most of my information comes through articles and reading the parts of books that interest me and that actually may be a good thing.

Today for instance I pulled books off of the shelf on Woody Allen films,a book on Ridley Scott's films, a book of essays on Blade Runner, and three separate books on writing and selling screenplays. Now unless I had mounds of time that I wanted to dedicate to reading these books let's say it could take a month or so of my life to sit down and read each page. Sure it would be an accomplishment of sorts but would the time invested be worth it? No. I knew exactly what I wanted to read about going into the day, developing a screenplay. So as a result upon opening each books I scanned the table of contents to pick out the sections that would be most beneficial for me. I read about the characters and their relationships in Manhattan, I read about interpretations of Blade Runner and the production of that Los Angeles cityscape , and then I focused specifically on writing scenes and took notes from each of the three books on their specific advice.

In three hours I managed to gather all the information I wanted today and read some nice tid bits about two movies I enjoy that made me feel creative. Now I'm not saying that I want to start doing this with every single book I pick up but let's face it many books especially non-fiction that don't require you to follow in a linear fashion because up to half of it can be fluff. When I looked through these books on screenplays entire chapters were devoted to why would you want to write one? This may be well and good if you lack motivation to do something but I'm in a library on a day I could have done anything I wanted but instead I wanted to learn further about crafting scenes, I think I can safely skip those types of chapters.

It's just like the textbooks you buy for a class have any of your professors covered every chapter that's in those mammoth back breakers? None of mine have but did it stop you from feeling like you didn't learn? Would you have learned more if the professor tried to squeeze 50-60 chapters into 4 months of the semester? No you have to be efficient with your learning and break things down into further sections just like you have separate classes for a major. If i were to sit down and read one giant book that covered every topic of screenwriting I highly doubt that I could write a better script than if I had taken the same time and read only about creating scenes from several sources. The first option would give me shallow understanding of everything instead of a great deal of knowledge in one area and the movie maybe crap and other areas but it might have enough memorable scenes to carry it to decency.

I still want to read complete books every month and I'm doing so especially with classics on audio book which just listening to at the gym could net me and extra 5-10 per month but I also need to ramp up my intensity for going after specific knowledge in books. I need to stop feeling like it was somehow a failure that I checked out a book and didn't finish the whole thing and cut through the fluff. It's like I mentioned in this post: Become World Class at Something about utilizing short bursts of intense focus on one aspect of a subject and becoming great at one thing instead of trying to learn a whole broad topic at once and I think I may have just found it's application in crafting a screenplay. I'll have to think on this some more and I'll let you know in future posts what my course of action will be. Keep reading.

If you've ever watched any cable news channels you might have noticed the amount of so-called experts they present to discuss whatever topic they are hammering away on that particular day. But how many of them are what could be called world class? Malcolm Gladwell stated that it takes 10,000 hours of practice/learning to become world class at something which got me thinking what have I spent 10,000 doing in my life that I could claim some type of mastery in?

Basketball came to mind as something I may have spent that many hours of my life doing but I am certainly not world class, if I were I would be playing in the NBA making a nice bit of change. But besides being proficient at playing the game I would also need world class athleticism (I don't have that but I'm certainly above average). Nonetheless I do have a certain ability to play the game that is now ingrained in me for life. For example I recently started to play in pick up games regularly again after playing maybe 15 times in the past 5 years but what is great is that besides a little rust and fatigue I am still competitive with or better than the other guys on the court. Do I have what it takes to be world class if I were to devote my life to the game and physical training? I don't know, probably not but I don't ever like to tell myself that I cannot accomplish something.

Is there anything else that comes close to the 10,000 mark? Reading perhaps? But that is too broad to be world class at. For the past few days I have started to immerse myself in the history of the Roman Republic for the course I am taking this upcoming semester. Putting in these hours isn't going to give me the doctoral knowledge equivalence within a few months but it should certainly give me mastery over the topics covered in class (maybe not as much depth). But what if I were to pick a specific topic and in one 6 month burst studied everything that I could on that topic? (182.5 days x 8 hours per day = 1460 hours) If it were a specific enough subject I could definitely climb to the top 1% of the population in regards to knowledge. Then by further expanding into related topics you could become a master in a much broader field.

There isn't really anything that I want to be world champion at or have any recognition as being the best there is but there are things that for financial or other reasons that I would like to have great understanding of. Unless you have that burning desire to be the best at one thing it might make better sense to be great at multiple things as long as you don't spread your knowledge to thin across too many interests. For me I believe the best option is intense short term focus on one thing then maintaining and enhancing my performance through repetition. I like lots of different topics so having a single passion in life isn't for me but I definitely have related interests.

Obviously what separates average from the best is the extra commitment of time, learning, and execution which begs the question what have you done today to help propel you forward?

In my last post before I left on vacation I mentioned that one of my goals for the upcoming months was to make straight A's in my classes. Since I've returned home I've signed up for two more classes to bring my total up to the maximum six allowed and also learned that school actually starts in almost two weeks not this upcoming week like I thought. While it's nice to declare intentions, having goals is pretty useless without an actionable plan attached to them. So how will I go about accomplishing this feat of academic success?

1. Starting Now

Thanks to the internet, I already have access to course schedules for most classes and book lists for all of my classes. I have twelve days until my first class and it's time to put my goals into action. One of the classes I just signed up for is History of the Roman Republic which I don't technically need to graduate but it is a topic I find interesting. Two of the required texts are ancient accounts so I have found them for free online and I checked out the actual book for one of them so I didn't have to stare at the screen for hours.

Using Librivox.org I found the audio readings for The Catiline Conspiracy and the Jugurthine War by Sallust and listened to the first two sections twice during my cardio this afternoon. Since I will be working out during this semester five times a week for about two hours per day I could easily listen to this book four times in the next month, although I will probably move on to another work instead. Beyond just reading the books that I have to read I am going to (after writing this)start exploring online the topics presented in the syllabus. With this twelve day cushion I should have an effective knowledge base to get ahead in all of my classes and in essence already be in review mode for my first exams.

2.Scheduling time

Having class everyday starting at 11 am will allow me to fall into a routine where I can still stay up til 1 or 2 am like I enjoy and still have plenty of time before class to eat and get some extra work done. Now beyond just a sleeping schedule I will further map out my day with the assistance of my planner to include short reviews of the material that I have learned that day and readings that still need to be taken care of. There is time everyday to go over each class and lock into memory what I need to know but I also have already scheduled that Wednesday and Thursday afternoons will serve as library time. On these two days I will devote more time to study and demonstrating to myself that I know how to apply what I have learned for instance explaining of solving economics principles and problems.

3. Going to class

I've never been great about going to class but I will attend more this semester to help reinforce concepts and spark my interest again in the topic. I've noticed that early morning classes are the ones I skip the most because I like being up late night so I've scheduled classes around lunch time giving me ample time to be awake, go to the gym in the early afternoon when it's not packed and be able to come home and write new posts and study.

Last year not going to class really brought down my grades. For example in Biology II, while I had an A average on exams because I rarely went to class I missed out on tons of participation points and had to always force myself to be interested in biology just to save my grade. I never knew exactly what to study so I ended up reading whole chapters that weren't even covered because she had changed the syllabus a month into the semester. If I want to get straight A's I must know what's going on in all my classes and let myself hear someone teach the class a few hours per week to peak my curiosity.

4. Embracing new learning techniques

I've always been a read the book over and over kind of student(maybe take some notes)and it has worked well in some classes but it gets very boring doing it for all of the classes. Not to say that rereading is a bad thing like I said earlier I'm going to listen to that audio book more than once during my workouts but it shouldn't be the only method I embrace. I haven't explored to deeply into other methods that are more efficient but I have bookmarked various sites I have found to help me start using other learning techniques. I hate the flash card method of learning so I know that I won't be using it but I'm open to using other ways of improving my comprehension. Also, I plan on making more friends in my classes and will perhaps start going to group study sessions for further help or evidence that I can teach others meaning that I've actually learned something.

This like just about every other goal is going to come down to planning and efficient time management. I am definitely not going to spend all of my life for the next few months obsessing over a letter grade because there is so much that I want to accomplish during the same time frame socially, physically, and financially that it would be stupid for me to become one dimensional. However, it is a goal that I want to stick with because it serves as notice that I worked, learned, and reached my full potential as a student. I won't get to my 10,000 hour expertise threshold on any of these topics during this semester but hopefully it will help grow my interest in learning about all of them. Here's to getting straight A's.