The Economics Behind DIY

Winter is gone and with the spring sunny days are coming. I have a small garden in my house with some wooden furniture in it. As every one knows, wooden furniture needs a bit of maintenance from time to time and now is time for my garden furniture.

I can get two paths in order to have my garden furniture maintained. Do it myself or hire someone for doing it. I asked some budgets here and there and the cheapest I’ve found was about 800 USD. That’s a lot of money, so I decided to do it myself.

I’ve made a list of the materials I needed to sand and paint my furniture, and I went to the hardware. I bought sandpaper for my Bosch sander, wooden paint, and varnish. I spent less than 200 USD. I started this weekend doing it and I realized that not only I have saved about 600 USD, but I have something to do during this weekend and the next two or three. Probably, I save another 200 or 300 USD because I’ll stay home.

As you can see, because I decided to maintain my garden furniture myself I saved about 800 or 900 USD, and I have something funny to do at home, too. If we think deeply about this, we can realize that when we do something ourselves, rather than hire someone or buying it, we save a lot of money and we have something to do in our spare time. That is a great thing.

There are lots of things we can do ourselves and a great place to start learning it, is in the following two sites: wikiHow and Instructables. As an analog pseudo GTDer I love this how-to about how to make your own moleskine-like notebook.

Save 800USD today, 10 bucks tomorrow, 100 the next week, maybe at the end of the year you’ve saved thousands of dollars. Perhaps, in the meantime you have learned some new skills which you can use to make some extra money.

“There are two ways to increase your wealth. Increase your means or decrease your wants. The best is to do both at the same time.” – Benjamin Franklin

Mistakes Are Great Teachers

A few days ago, speaking with an English guy, I made him a question: “When he comes?” And the funny thing is that I repeated the same question two or three times. Then I realized that what I was trying to say was:”When does he comes?”. Truth be told, I don’t have many occasions to speak in English, and writing is a lot easier because I have time to think, read and re-read what I’m writing.

When I realized my mistake, I apologized for it. But more important is that since then, I always remember to use the do and does in my questions. Sometimes the brain is strange.

Normally, when we make mistakes, we tend to blame ourselves. A lot of people are very afraid of commit a mistake. But if we think deeply, we could realize that we learn a lot more from our mistakes than from our successes.

I’ve studied the auxiliary do a lot of times, and I always forgot to use it in questions, but now I always remember to use it. So, when you fail don’t blame yourself and learn the lesson. Blaming ourselves is a very negative thing, and we don’t need more negativity in this world.

A Change in the Future

As you probably noticed, I’m writing less in here. Why? Because I’m reading a lot and I’m a bit discouraged about my chosen subject. Let’s go through this.

In the last couple weeks my Feeds are increased dramatically. I have passed from 20 or 30 daily blog posts to about 250 daily blog posts, without counting the posts that come in my feed reader which I don’t read by a lack of interest.

Obviously I read lots of posts about the same subject I’ve written about here, and this is the very first thing that makes me unable to write more frequently. It seems that everybody has already written about everything, and in a better way that I’m capable of.

When many people have written about the same thing over and over again, I ask myself: “Why should I waste other people’s time writing once again about topic X?” The first thought that comes to mind is, because I’m going to share my very single point of view. But somebody else has shared his point of view which is very similar to mine. So, I don’t write about topic X.

I have seen a lot of blogs who share links to other people posts and videos, without any coherent opinion or comment from the blog author. When a blog in my feed reader is doing this one, two, three times, I simply unsubscribe. There are 2000 blogs who speak about the same single topic with the same point of view daily. I don’t want to be the number 2001.

Probably in the near future I’m going to write about some other topics. I hope you will enjoy them.

GTD Next Actions List Trap

GTD Next Actions List at primer seems a wonderful method. I have a list with all the actions I need/want to accomplish by context. I start working on those actions and I achieve a lot of things. This is true for a period of time, but after that period of time we start seeing how our next actions lists are going longer and longer, rather than shorter.

When we realize that our lists are going in crescendo, we start doing the easiest and shortest actions in an attempt to reduce the amount of actions. When we do this we are in the Next Action List Trap. Why? Because the easiest and shortest tasks normally are the less important for us.

This is undoubtedly the better way to stay in the urgent quadrant rather than the important one. As stated by Dr. Stephen Covey in First Things First and the 7 Habits, we spend our time in urgent things which are important to others, important things which are important to us, etcetera. When we are in this scenario we have transformed a system which tries to take us out of stress into a system that stress out us a lot. Living in the urgency quadrant is not a good deal.

What can we do? Well, when we are aware that we are in the next actions list trap, the best thing we can do is going back to square one. Writing a Mission Statement and setting up our goals is the very first step. When our goals are crystal clear, we can discern the next actions to accomplish them.

GTD is a great system which help us to accomplish things but it doesn’t help us to glimpse what things we really need/want to accomplish.

“Good plans shape good decisions. That’s why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true.” – Lester R. Bittel

Stop Feeling the Self-Help Shame

Some people feel embarrassed to say “I have bought a self-help book”, “I’m reading a self-help blog”, “I’m in therapy”, and so on. They think that others are going to think they are pathetic or, even worse, start to laugh.

I think that recognizing the problem is the very first step to improve. If you read a self-help blog or book or you are in therapy it is because you know or think that you have a problem which needs to be resolved.

A lot of times one is reticent to take the necessary steps to improve due the fact of what others are going to think. Stop thinking that way! It doesn’t matter what other people are going to think. The only thing that really matter is you are going to improve and feel better.

Anyway, what exactly does self-help mean? For instance, here in Spain you could find David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done”, in the self-help section in bookstores. How many people are going to deride the person who reads and implements GTD? Only an ignorant person would belittle someone for reading the book. I see how some of you are starting to say: “GTD is not self-help”. Are you sure? What is GTD? A system which helps me to get the things done ;-P.

This is valid for every self-help approach you are going to take. Usually, the person who derides you because you are reading a self-help book or blog, is a sort of insecure person who doesn’t have the courage to recognize their problems and they take refuge behind this attitude.

If you are on the self-help path stay on it until you have reached your goals, despite what others are going to think or say. On the other hand, if you are someone who enjoys pointing out the flaws in others because it makes you ~feel good~, then do yourself a favor and read some self-help writings.

“Ridicule is the first and last argument of fools.” – Charles Simmons

Stephen Covey Goes Social

Dr. Stephen Covey has launched a social network site named Stephen R. Covey The Community. This site is in beta status now, and as usual you can join it for free. You only have to provide a valid e-mail address and a password.

Currently you can enjoy a course named Reaching Your Goals. This course contains videos and audios. You can download the audios in mp3 format and load them into your iPOD as me. 😉

In this site you can create goals which you want to achieve and share them with your network of friends, or keep them private for you. You can participate in forums, make friends, and keeping a journal which allows you to track your progress.

It’s a sort of 43things with steroids plus the teachings of Dr. Stephen Covey and a better look and feel. The main benefit from my point of view is that if you share your goals with other people, you will be more willing to accomplish those goals. After all, nobody likes to publicly fail. If you have some spare time I encourage you to give it a try.

A Small Improvement Here

If you are already a visitor you could see I’ve made some changes in this blog look and feel. More widgets and a different theme. Why I did these changes? Because this theme makes the content more readable than the previous one. Fonts are bigger and I think this color is more enjoyable for your eyes.

Also, I added my top posts widget, this way if you are new you can read the writings most enjoyed by the people in here.

I hope everybody likes this changes.

Thoughts About Internet and Languages

These days I was thinking a lot about internet and social networks. I remember the early days when I was a kid who owned a ZX Spectrum 48k. Now is when some of you laugh, thinking that your pocket calculator has more than 48K. This was just twenty years ago. In just twenty years computers have changed everything.

Today most people are using the funny and useful social networks like flickr, del.icio.us, facebook and so on. Web 2.0 is a great way to communicate with people worldwide. People with our same interests, people who love the same things we love. However, this marvelous social network thing has a drawback. The language barrier.

Yes, we have the language barrier. The non native English speakers like me are noticing this barrier more than the ones who are native English speaker. We can find at least three versions of digg alike sites, two or more versions of linkedIN alike sites, and so on. The main difference between the copies and the original is the site language.

What all this means? Well, from a user point of view this means that we are loosing a lot of opportunities to meet lots of people who probably we will be happy to meet. Suppose the following, every German use his German flickr, digg, blog, etcetera, every Spanish do the same, every Italian, and so on. Spain and Italy together sums about 120 million people.

A lot of people like me are making a great effort in learn the “global language” because we want to be capable of communicate with everybody out there. Some people invest a lot of money, too.

What tick me off sometimes is seeing how some people are completely unaware of this fact. It seems that this “cool” people enjoy deriding others when they make some mistakes. Others are simply discouraging you saying wonderful things like: “If you are unable to write in perfect English, simply stop blogging.”

Well, if you are not a native English speaker like me, writing a blog is a great way to improve your language skills. After all, the only way to improve is practice.

If you are the native English speaker who thinks that non native English speakers are inferior human beings, ask your self the following question: “If the internet language of tomorrow is Chinese, how so “cool” I will be?”

In conclusion, social networks are great, blogging is awesome, some people are rude but as in real life when you find the rude simply ignore her.

“Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.” – Rollo May

Keep Track of Your Time

When we are beginners in time management and productivity, one of the very first things we should do is tracking our time. We need to know exactly how much time we spend doing what. Once we know where we are spending our time, we are capable of managing it.

Keeping track of our time can be more difficult than what we may think at first.
Nevertheless, if we do it in a progressive way it becomes a lot easier.

First of all, we should keeping track of a month. A month is long enough to include all the tasks which we usually do and the rate of our appointments. Some people might find that a period of a week or two is enough for them, this depends highly on one’s schedule. If our weeks are always the same, no business trips, few appointments, always same free days, etcetera, a week might be enough. Nevertheless, a longer slice of time means more trusted data.

Well, time to start collecting data ;-).

First Cycle: Keep it simple.

We start from the time we wake up. For instance,

• 7:55am wake up.
• Morning routine: 1 hour.
• Commute to workplace: 25 minutes
• Work: 8 hours.
• Commute home: 25 minutes
• Leisure: 1 hour
• Commute to gym: 20minutes
• Gym:1 hour 30 minutes
• ….

As we might see we are keeping it simple. We are just keeping track of big and generic slices of time. We are not keeping track of what we are doing every single minute, we are going to do that in the next cycle. In this cycle we are setting up the foundations for our detailed time tracking.

When we have collected a week of data we might use a color code to highlight our categories in this schedule. For instance, we can highlight in green our leisure time, in red our work time, in yellow our fitness time, orange for study and so on. Highlight in colors help us to see where we are spending our time at a glance, and noticing where we are spending the most part of our life. After a month we have a clear vision of where our time goes in general basis.

Second Cycle: Make it exact.

Once we have developed the habit of keeping track of our time due our previous month collecting, We are ready to refine our tracking and make it exact. In this second cycle we are going to keep track of every single period of time at home, at work, during a business trip, etcetera. For instance,

• 7:55am Wake up
• 8:15am Shower
• 8:30am Breakfast
• 8:55am Conmute to work
• 9:20am Work
• 9:30am Read e-mail
• 10:30am Sales Meeting
• …

To accomplish this second part of the exercise it would be very useful the Task Progress Tracker template from David Seah’s blog. This template turns out very useful to track our tasks at work and our tasks at home with a simple method. If we feel ourselves overwhelmed doing this we might divide this cycle adding a third cycle. In one of them we keep track of what we do at work and in the other we keep track of what we do at home. It is very important to know exactly where we spend our time.

After a month we have collected enough data to know what we are doing with our time at work, at home, etcetera. It might be very interesting and enlightening seeing how much time we spend procrastinating and even more interesting seeing how much time we spend doing things that are completely meaningless for us but we have not noticed until now.

Knowing where we are spending our time is the very first step to improve our time management and productivity. With this data at hand we are capable to begin balancing our life as Stephen Covey said in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey

How I Did Quit Smoking

Ten days ago I quit smoking. As you could noticed last week I didn’t write a lot, and the main reason was my lack of focus due my stop smoking odyssey. Today, I’m going to tell you how I did quit smoking.

An Old Story

This is not my first attempt to quit smoking, I’ve tried about three or four times before. The main reason I failed until now, it is because the other times, I really didn’t want to quit smoking. I tried it because my wife wanted it, my father wanted it, but I didn’t wanted it, so I failed. I guess this time I didn’t failed, because this time, I really wanted to quit smoking. First lesson, if you don’t want, you can’t.

Setting Up the Environment.

One of the primary objectives is setting up the ideal environment for quit smoking. The ideal environment for me was my house with no cigarettes in no place, no cigarettes in closet, no cigarettes in drawers,… Also very important, no money in my pocket. This avoids my temptation to go out and buy.

Choose a Partner Who Helps You.

Stop smoking using the radical way I used, requires someone who help in the worst moments. Obviously the one who helped me was my wife.

Do It During Holidays.

Another fact which prevented me to quit smoking until now was that I’m unable to quit smoking during my work days. I do it pretty well in the weekends, but Monday, when I start to work, I need nicotine. This time I have chosen a period of time where I didn’t had to work to avoid the necessity.

To Buy

We need some things for substitute our cigarettes. I recommend buying gum, candies, a lot of water and some isotonic drinks like aquarius. The last two items are needed because quitting smoking the second and third day makes you really thirsty. At least I was really thirsty.

Once we have our environment, our helper or helpers, our candies and drinks, we only have to don’t smoking. If we can’t go out for buying and we have no cigarettes at home it’s easy don’t smoking because we can’t. Second lesson, if you don’t have, you can’t. Now I’m going to tell you, in brief, my progress from day one.

Day One: Saturday.

I got up as always. At breakfast, I avoid drinking coffee. Coffee and cigarettes for me were always good partners. I decided to don’t drinking coffee. This was a great idea, the first two hours I didn’t felt the need of a cigarette. About two hours later I felt the need for a cigarette. I put a candy in my mouth and I started doing my weekly review. At night was the worst moment because I had finished to do everything and after dinner, I really felt the need of a cigarette. The candy trick didn’t work this time. I feel myself nervous and angry. Time to do zen meditation. Zen works well, after some minutes, I felt relaxed and I could go to bed.

Day Two: Sunday

I had woken up. I took my breakfast “without coffee” and I started doing my Sunday activities. After two or three hours, I was starting to feel myself tired, and this tiredness was increased at the point I had to go sleep. This second day I slept a lot, about fifteen hours. When I was not sleeping, I was very, very thirsty. This day, I drank a lot.

Day Three: Monday.

The third day was worse than the second. I slept a bit less than the day before but in change I felt lost, disoriented, unable to focus on anything. Thanks to god I already had written my post for this day so I simply clicked publish. As the previous day, I was very thirsty.

Day Four: Tuesday.

The tiredness was going, but I continued with my lack of focus and disorientation. I tried to write a post but I was unable to write more than two paragraphs.

Day Five: Thursday.

My lack of focus diminished a bit and I could write my blog post. As always, Deb helped me with her corrections. At night I felt better, my lack of focus had disappeared together with the feel of disorientation. I could sleep without any problems.

Day Six till Now.

Well, I already quit smoking. I don’t put another cigarette in my mouth. Some times during the day I have the impulse of smoking. All I do is eat a candy and ask myself: “Hey guy do you want to start the process again?”. No, I don’t want to start to quit smoking again, it’s a hard thing to do. This question helps me to stay on track and avoid the temptation.

Benefits

In just ten days I notice important benefits:

1. I’m sleeping better, at my hour I fall asleep as a baby ;-).

2. I’m feel with more energy. Now I procrastinate less and I’m achieving more things, it seems that my day now has thirty hours.

3. I’m eating better. Until now, I only ate at dinner because I wasn’t hungry. I was used to eat a bit for breakfast and spend the rest of the day smoking and drinking coffee until dinner. That was not a healthy habit.

4 . I’m breathing a lot better. Cough, what’s that? 😉

5. I have more taste than never. Now the food is more tasty than before.

6. My smell is better. It seems that my nose works better now. However, sometimes, this is not a benefit 😉

I already know at least one of my readers was awaiting this post. I hope you enjoy it.