Archives for May 2022

9/10

• D for Definition turns misguided common sense upside down and introduces the rules and objectives of the new game.
• E for Elimination kills the obsolete notion of time management once
• A for Automation puts cash flow on autopilot using geographic arbitrage, outsourcing, and rules of nondecision.
• L for Liberation is the concept of mini-retirements; it is about forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location.

• Step I: D is for Definition

Deferrers (D)	New Rich (NR)
To work for yourself.	To have others work for you.
To work when you want to.	To prevent work for work’s sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect (“minimum effective load”).
To retire early or young.	To distribute recovery periods and adventures (mini-retirements) throughout life on a regular basis and recognize that inactivity is not the goal. Doing that which excites you is.
To buy all the things you want to have.	To do all the things you want to do and be all the things you want to be. If this includes some tools and gadgets, so be it, but they are either means to an end or bonuses, not the focus.
To be the boss instead of the employee; to be in charge.	To be neither the boss nor the employee, but the owner. To own the trains and have someone else ensure they run on time.
To make a ton of money	To make a ton of money with specific reasons and defined dreams to chase, timelines and steps included.
To have more	To have more quality and less clutter. To have huge financial reserves but recognize that most material wants are justifications for spending time on the things that don’t really matter, including buying things and preparing to buy things.
To reach the big pay-off, whether IPO, acquisition, retirement, or other pot of gold.	To think big but ensure payday comes every day: cash flow first, big payday second
To have freedom from doing that which you dislike.	To have freedom from doing that which you dislike, but also the freedom and resolve to pursue your dreams without reverting to work for work’s sake (W4W).

• After years of repetitive work, you will often need to dig hard to find your passions, redefine your dreams, and revive hobbies that you let atrophy to near extinction. The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
  • Options — the ability to choose — is really power.

Chapter 2. Rules That Change the Rules: Everything Popular Is Wrong

• Different is better when it is more effective or more fun. If everyone is defining a problem or solving it one way and the results are subpar, this is the time to ask, what if I did the opposite?
• If the math (towards retirement) does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that’s the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you’ll be so damn bored that you’ll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes.
• The NR aims to distribute “mini-retirements” throughout life instead of hoarding the recovery and enjoyment for the fool’s gold of retirement. By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable.
• Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness.
• “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.
• Emphasize Strengths, Don’t Fix Weaknesses.
  • It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair.
• Relative Income Is More Important Than Absolute Income.
  • The top New Rich mavericks make at least $ 5,000 per hour.

Questions and Actions

1. How has being “realistic” or “responsible” kept you from the life you want?
2. How has doing what you “should” resulted in subpar experiences or regret for not having done something else?
3. Look at what you’re currently doing and ask yourself, “What would happen if I did the opposite of the people around me? What will I sacrifice if I continue on this track for 5, 10, or 20 years?”

3. Dodging Bullets: Fear-Setting and Escaping Paralysis

• “Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” BENJAMIN DISRAELI, former British Prime Minister

Questions and Actions

1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.
2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?
3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios?
4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?
5. What are you putting off out of fear? Usually, what we most fear doing is what we most need to do.
6. What is it costing you — financially, emotionally, and physically — to postpone action?

4. System Reset: Being Unreasonable and Unambiguous

• Doing the Unrealistic Is Easier Than Doing the Realistic – it’s as easy as believing it can be done.
• The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.
• Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase.
  • The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?”
• Death: “I’ll just work until I have X dollars and then do what I want.” If you don’t define the “what I want” alternate activities, the X figure will increase indefinitely to avoid the fear-inducing uncertainty of this void.
• Dreamlining:
  • The goals shift from ambiguous wants to defined steps.
  • The goals have to be unrealistic to be effective.
  • It focuses on activities that will fill the vacuum created when work is removed. Living like a millionaire requires doing interesting things and not just owning enviable things.
• Samuel Beckett: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’

Questions and Actions

1. What would you do if there were no way you could fail? If you were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world?
   • Create two timelines — 6 months and 12 months — and list up to five things you dream of having (including, but not limited to, material wants: house, car, clothing, etc.), being ( be a great cook, be fluent in Chinese, etc.), and doing (visiting Thailand, tracing your roots overseas, racing ostriches, etc. . ) in that order. If you have difficulty identifying what you want in some categories, as most will, consider what you hate or fear in each and write down the opposite. Do not limit yourself, and do not concern yourself with how these things will be accomplished. For now, it’s unimportant. This is an exercise in reversing repression.
2. Need more help?
   • What would you do, day to day, if you had $ 100 million in the bank?
   • What would make you most excited to wake up in the morning to another day?
   • Fill in the five “doing” spots with the following
     • one place to visit
     • one thing to do before you die (a memory of a lifetime)
     • one thing to do daily
     • one thing to do weekly
     • one thing you’ve always wanted to learn
3. What are the four dreams that would change it all?
4. Determine the cost of these dreams and calculate your Target Monthly Income (TMI) for both timelines.
   • Or, more generally: [ Monthly Goals + (One-Time Goals / Total Months)] × 1.3 monthly expenses = TMI.
5. Determine three steps for each of the four dreams in just the 6 – month timeline and take the first step now.

5. The End of Time Management: Illusions and Italians

Step II: E is for Elimination

• “Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.” — ANTOINE DE SAINT – EXUPÉRY
• Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible.

Here are two truisms to keep in mind:

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

Pareto’s Law can be summarized as follows: 80 % of the outputs result from 20 % of the inputs.

1. Which 20 % of sources are causing 80 % of my problems and unhappiness?
2. Which 20 % of sources are resulting in 80 % of my desired outcomes and happiness?

• Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
• Being selective — doing less — is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
• Remembering that lack of time is actually a lack of priorities.
• Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.
• The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

How to increase productivity:

1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80 / 20).
2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).
   • Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
   • Am I being productive or just active?
   • Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?

Questions and Actions

1. Define a to-do list and (2) define a not-to-do list. In general terms, there are but two questions:
   • What 20 % of sources are causing 80 % of my problems and unhappiness?
   • What 20 % of sources are resulting in 80 % of my desired outcome and happiness?
2. If you had a heart attack and had to work two hours per day, what would you do?
3. If you had a second heart attack and had to work two hours per week, what would you do?
4. If you had a gun to your head and had to stop doing 4 or 5 different time-consuming activities, what would you remove?
5. What are the top – three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I’ve been productive?
6. Who are the 20 % of people who produce 80 % of your enjoyment and propel you forward, and which 20 % cause 80 % of your depression, anger, and second-guessing?
7. Learn to ask, “If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?”
   • There should never be more than two mission-critical items to complete each day.
8. Put a Post-it on your computer screen or set an Outlook reminder to alert you at least three times daily with the question: Are you inventing things to do to avoid the important?
9. Use Parkinson’s Law on a Macro and Micro Level.
10. Learn to Propose (some asking for opinions and propose solutions):
    • “Can I make a suggestion?”
    •  “I propose …”
    • “I’d like to propose …”
    • “I suggest that … What do you think?”
    • “Let’s try … and then try something else if that doesn’t work.”

6. The Low-Information Diet: Cultivating Selective Ignorance

• Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.
• It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three.
• Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence.

Questions and Actions

1. Go on an immediate one-week media fast.
2. Develop the habit of asking yourself, “Will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important?”
   • It’s not enough to use the information for “something” — it needs to be immediate and important. If “no” on either count, don’t consume it. Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.
   • Focus on what digerati Kathy Sierra calls “just-in-time” information instead of “just-in-case” information.
3. Practice the art of non finishing.
   • Starting something doesn’t automatically justify finishing
   • More is not better and stopping something is often 10 times better than finishing it.

7. Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal

• Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
• First, limit e-mail consumption and production. This is the greatest single interruption in the modern world.
  • Turn off the audible alert if you have one on Outlook or a similar program and turn off automatic send/receive, which delivers email to your inbox as soon as someone sends them.
  • Check e-mail twice per day, once at 12: 00 noon or just prior to lunch, and again at 4: 00 P.M. 12: 00 P.M. and 4: 00 P.M. are times that ensure you will have the most responses from previously sent e-mail. Never check e-mail first thing in the morning. 12 Instead, complete your most important task before 11: 00 A.M. to avoid using lunch or reading e-mail as a postponement excuse.
• It is your job to train those around you to be effective and efficient.
  • Decide that, given the non-urgent nature of most issues, you will steer people toward the following means of communication, in order of preference: e-mail, phone, and in-person meetings. If someone proposes a meeting, request an email instead and then use the phone as your fallback offer if need be. Cite other immediately pending work tasks as the reason.
  • Respond to voicemail via email whenever possible. This trains people to be concise. Help them develop the habit.
    • This “if … then” structure becomes more important as you check email less often.
  • Meetings should only be held to make decisions about a predefined situation, not to define the problem.
    • If someone proposes that you meet with them or “set a time to talk on the phone,” ask that person to send you an email with an agenda to define the purpose:
  • The “thanks in advance” before a retort increases your chances of getting the email.
• Puppy Dog Close (“Let’s just try it once”) If someone likes a puppy but is hesitant to make the life-altering purchase, just offer to let them take the pup home and bring it back if they change their minds. Of course, the return seldom happens.
• The Puppy Dog Close is invaluable whenever you face resistance to permanent changes. Get your foot in the door with a “let’s just try it once” reversible trial.
  • “I’d really like to go to the meeting, but I’m totally overwhelmed and really need to get a few important things done. Can I sit out just for today? I’d be distracted in the meeting otherwise. I promise I’ll catch up afterward by reviewing the meeting with Colleague X. Is that, OK?”
  • Suggest a one-week trial and end with “I’d like to try it. Does that sound like something we could try for a week?” or my personal favorite, “Is that reasonable?” It’s hard for people to label things unreasonable.
• SET THE RULES in your favor: Limit access to your time, force people to define their requests before spending time with them, and batch routine menial tasks to prevent the postponement of more important projects. Do not let people interrupt you. Find your focus and you’ll find your lifestyle.

Questions and Actions

1. Create systems to limit your availability via email and phone and deflect inappropriate contact.
   • Replace the habit of “How are you?” with “How can I help you?”
2. Batch activities to limit setup cost and provide more time for Dreamline milestones.
3. Set or request autonomous rules and guidelines with occasional review of results.
4. Say no:
   • Potential questions to decline include the following: Do you have a minute? Want to see a movie tonight/tomorrow? Can you help me with X?

Step III: A is for Automation

8. Outsourcing Life: Off-loading the Rest and a Taste of Geoarbitrage

• Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.
• Eliminate before you delegate. Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined.
• Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-defined.
• First, the per-hour cost is not the ultimate determinant of cost. Look at the per-task cost.
• I recommend that you hire a VA firm or VAs with backup teams instead of sole operators.
  • Brickwork and YMII both exemplify this type of structure and provide a single point of contact, a personal account manager, who then farms out your tasks to the most – capable people in the group and across different shifts.
• Request someone who has “excellent” English and indicate that phone calls will be required (even if not). Be fast to request a replacement if there are repeated communication issues.
• Ask foreign VAs to rephrase tasks to confirm understanding before getting started.
• Request a status update after a few hours of work on a task to ensure that the task is both understood and achievable.
• Use Parkinson’s Law and assign tasks that are to be completed within no more than 72 hours.
• I advise sending one task at a time whenever possible and no more than two.

9. Income Autopilot I: Finding the Muse

• Step One: Pick an Affordably Reachable Niche Market
• It should Cost the Customer $50-$200.
  • Higher pricing means that we can sell fewer units — and thus manage fewer customers — and fulfill our dreamlines. It’s faster.
  • Higher pricing attracts lower-maintenance customers (better credit, fewer complaints/questions, fewer returns, etc.). It’s less headache. This is HUGE.
  • Higher pricing also creates higher profit margins. It’s safer.
  • I personally aim for an 8–10 × markup, which means a $100 product can’t cost me more than $10–12.50
• Information products are low-cost, fast to manufacture, and time-consuming for competitors to duplicate.

Step IV: L is for Liberation

12. Disappearing Act: How to Escape the Office

• The New Rich are defined by a more elusive power than simple cash — unrestricted mobility.
• Step 1: Increase Investment
  • Sherwood wants the company to invest as much as possible in him so that the loss is greater if he quits.
• Step 2: Prove Increased Output Offsite
  • He ensures that he doubles his work output on both days, leaves an email trail of some sort for his boss to notice, and keeps quantifiable records of what he accomplished for reference during later negotiations.
• Step 3: Prepare the Quantifiable Business Benefit
  • He realizes that he needs to present remote working as a good business decision and not a personal perk.

Alternative Approach: Hourglass Approach

1. Use a preplanned project or emergency (family issue, personal issue, relocation, home repairs, whatever) that requires you to take one or two weeks out of the office.
2. Say that you recognize you can’t just stop working and that you would prefer to work instead of taking vacation days.
3. Propose how you can work remotely and offer, if necessary, to take a pay cut for that period (and that period only) if performance isn’t up to par upon returning.
4. Allow the boss to collaborate on how to do it so that he or she is invested in the process.
5. Make the two weeks “off” the most productive period you’ve ever had at work.
6. Show your boss the quantifiable results upon returning and tell him or her that — without all the distractions, commute, etc. — you can get twice as much done. Suggest two or three days at home per week as a trial for two weeks.
7. Make those remote days ultra-productive.
8. Suggest only one or two days in the office per week.
9. Make those days the least productive of the week.
10. Suggest complete mobility — the boss will go for it.

Questions and Actions

• Practice the art of getting past “no” before proposing.
  • Go to farmers’ markets to negotiate prices, ask for free first-class upgrades, ask for compensation if you encounter poor service in restaurants, and otherwise ask for the world and practice using the following magic questions when people refuse to give it to you.
  • “What would I need to do to [desired outcome]?”
  • “Under what circumstances would you [desired outcome]?”
  • “Have you ever made an exception?”
  • “I’m sure you’ve made an exception before, haven’t you?”
  • (If no for either of the last two, ask, “Why not?” If yes, ask, “Why?”)

13. Beyond Repair: Killing Your Job

• Just because you are embarrassed to admit that you’re still living the consequences of bad decisions made 5, 10, or 20 years ago shouldn’t stop you from making good decisions now.

14. Mini-Retirements: Embracing the Mobile Lifestyle

• The alternative to binge travel — the mini-retirement — entails relocating to one place for one to six months before going home or moving to another locale.
• The mini-retirement is defined as recurring — it is a lifestyle.
• Traveling with children recommendations:
  • Before embarking on a long international trip with your children for the first time, take a trial run for a few weeks.
  • For each stop, arrange a week of language classes that begin upon arrival and take advantage of transportation from the airport if available. The school staff will often handle apartment rentals for you, and you will be able to make friends and learn the area before setting off on your own.
  • Several families interviewed for this book recommended the oldest persuasive tool known to man: bribery. Each child is given some amount of virtual cash, 25 – 50 cents, for each hour of good behavior. The same amount is subtracted from their accounts for breaking the rules. All purchases for fun — whether souvenirs, ice cream, or otherwise — come out of their own individual accounts. No balance, no goodies.

Questions and Actions

• Take an asset and cash-flow snapshot.
  • Set two sheets of paper on a table. Use one to record all assets and corresponding values, including bank accounts, retirement accounts, stocks, bonds, home, and so forth. On the second, draw a line down the middle and write down all incoming cash flow (salary, muse income, investment income, etc.) and outgoing expenses (mortgage, rent, car payments, etc.). What can you eliminate that is either seldom used or that creates stress or distraction without adding a lot of value?
• Choose a location for your actual mini-retirement.
  • Here are just a few of my favorite starting points. Feel free to choose other locations. The most lifestyle for the dollar is underlined: Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba ), China (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei), Japan (Tokyo, Osaka), England (London), Ireland (Galway), Thailand (Bangkok, Chiang Mai), Germany (Berlin, Munich), Norway (Oslo), Australia (Sydney), New Zealand (Queenstown), Italy (Rome, Milan, Florence), Spain (Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla), and Holland (Amsterdam).
• Family Travel Forum (www.familytravelforum.com) A comprehensive forum on, you guessed it, family travel. Want to sell your kids for top dollar in the Eastern Bloc? Or save a few dollars and cremate Grannie in Thailand? Then this isn’t the site. But if you have kids and are planning a big trip, this is the place.
• U.S. – Sponsored Overseas Schools (www.state.gov/m/a/os) If the idea of pulling your children out of school for a year or two isn’t appealing, stick them in one of more than 190 elementary and secondary schools sponsored by the U.S. Department of State in 135 countries. Kids love homework.

15. Filling the Void: Adding Life After Subtracting Work

• “What can I do with my time to enjoy life and feel good about myself?” I can’t offer a single answer that will fit all people, but, based on the dozens of fulfilled NR I’ve interviewed, there are two components that are fundamental: continual learning and service.
  • I tend to focus on language acquisition and one kinesthetic skill, sometimes finding the latter after landing overseas. The most successful serial vagabonds tend to blend the mental and the physical.
  • Service to me is simple: doing something that improves life besides your own.

Questions and Actions:

• Take a learning mini-retirement in combination with local volunteering
  • What makes you most angry about the state of the world?
  • What are you most afraid of for the next generation, whether you have children or not?
  • What makes you happiest in your life? How can you help others have the same?
• Revisit and reset dreamlines
  • What are you good at?
  • What could you be the best at?
  • What makes you happy?
  • What excites you?
  • What makes you feel accomplished and good about yourself?
  • What are you most proud of having accomplished in your life? Can you repeat this or further develop it?
  • What do you enjoy sharing or experiencing with other people?

Last but Not Least

• Be focused on work or focused on something else, never in – between.
• Time without attention is worthless, so value attention over time.

Questions to improve productivity

1. What is the one goal, if completed, that could change everything?
2. What is the most urgent thing right now that you feel you “must” or “should” do?
3. Can you let the urgent “fail” — even for a day — to get to the next milestone for your potential life-changing tasks?
4. What’s been on your to-do list the longest? Start it first thing in the morning and don’t allow interruptions or lunch until you finish.

• One of the most universal causes of self-doubt and depression: trying to impress people you don’t like.
• Have at least one 2 – to – 3 – hour dinner and/or drinks per week — yes, 2 – 3 hours — with those who make you smile and feel good.
• The more options you consider, the more buyer’s regret you’ll have.
• The more options you encounter, the less fulfilling your ultimate outcome will be.
• Don’t postpone decisions just to avoid uncomfortable conversations