How to Snap Out of a Major Rut

For the past week I've been coasting by, completing just the bare minimum amount of work I could get away with. That leaves me today with a mountain of tasks that seems impossible to finish by their deadlines. All of my usual techniques have failed me, I've been avoiding my calendar that lists the dates I would like to have each task completed by, my laziness has led to many failed attempts to work from home instead of trying to get things done in the lab, and of course the huge mistake of telling my future self that I can just do it tomorrow. I could go on and on with the excuses, but if I'm going to get through this without getting fired, or failing a class, I need to get back to the basics fast. So what am I going to do?

Set Goals! - The first thing I should start with is writing down my goals. As stated in Trent's book, “The Simple Dollar,” - “Simply writing down the goals resulted in a 42% increase in achieved goals, and written progress reports resulted in a 78% increase in achieved goals.” But writing down what I need to get done isn't enough. I need to break down each task into smaller specific tasks that I can start on right now. “finish my masters project by monday” is not a good goal. It is too vague, and will just lead to me getting frustrated and overwhelmed as soon as I sit down and think about everything involved in completing that project. “customize view templates for 2 hours” is much better. I know exactly what to get started on when I sit down, and I know I can complete this task today. I am going to write down the top 3 tasks I want to complete today, ordered by priority, and then get started.

Eliminate Distractions! – My biggest weakness is that I'm easily distracted. A single call from a friend can lead to hours of time spent chatting on the phone, checking my email leads to clicking through to my Hulu, or YouTube subscriptions wasting an entire day. My favorite place to buckle down and get work done is the Engineering lab on my school's campus. They have tons of other students there doing homework and setting a good example for me, the computers have all the tools I need to get my work done, without any of the junk that can easily get me off track, and I can easily step outside for a quick break. No Television, no bed, no guitar, no junk food to lure me away from getting back to work. I can just take a little walk around, stretch out my legs, get a little sun, and my mind is clear and ready for the next task.

Make it a Habit – During the school year, I have a great routine and can usually stick to it. The summer however, is a different story. I've been slowly falling off track, almost without even knowing it, until I've lost almost every good work habit that carried me through the school year. I need to transform myself back into the well oiled task completing machine of Fall and Spring semester. I'm a strong believer that the best way to do this is to ease back into it. If I make too many drastic changes at once, I'll quickly burn out and take another step backwards. The key is to focus on one or two small changes I can make today, repeat it until it becomes the norm, and then go on to the next change. So I am going to focus on setting my 3 goals everyday, and going to the lab to eliminate distractions and complete them. If I can string a few weeks of doing this everyday and make it a habit, I can focus on my next step towards a more productive day.

Computer Science Job Search Tips

I currently have a little over a month left of school before I graduate, and move to Washington. Although my job search is in full motion, I've had little luck. I feel that I'm a decent candidate for any entry level position in my field (computer science), so I recently paid a visit to the School of Engineering and Computer Science director of recruitment to see if she had any insight to why this may be. I came away with a lot of little pointers I thought might be helpful for other students out there in my position so I will pass them on to you here:

Where to look – I've been using popular job search sites like monster.com or careerbuilder.com, but I've found that these sites don't have a lot of entry level listings. Other sites you may want to try out are indeed.com or cybercoders.com. Both are aimed more towards the tech industry with a bit more entry level positions. Another good place to start are large companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Intel, or many others. These companies usually have a specific place for new graduates to apply to, and may be a better bet for someone like me with little real world experience.

Get your resume seen – It is important to include the job title and ID number in the objective statement of your resume. The common hiring process includes large bulletin boards for each open position at a company. The hiring committee will post resumes on the board with the matching job title and ID. For a company that receives hundreds of resumes for each position, your resume may not even make it to the board if they can't quickly identify which opening you're applying to. Don't forget to bold applicable skills and languages so they are easily spotted when hiring teams are glancing over their boards.

Applying through official channels gives you a 20 percent chance of getting hired. This number jumps to 40 percent when you can find a way to get your resume in the direct hands of the hiring manager, and jumps to over 50 percent when you can get it to him from someone he knows. use your family, friends, professors, and career resource center to get your resume in the right hands through both official and unofficial paths.

Got an interview? Study! Study! Study! - your grades, diplomas, awards, and certificates don't mean much in the interview. They will find out if you know your stuff. Use a book like, “Programming Interviews Exposed,” to aid in studying for the technical portion of the interview. You won't be able to memorize solutions to the hundreds of different exercise problems, but the important lesson is to build a good process for breaking problems down, solving them, and explaining them in a clear way. You can search for company specific questions on a site like glassdoor.com. These types of sites are in message board form with users posting questions and topics they covered categorized by company and job listing. Sometimes users will post there solutions, just be aware that you can probably come up with a more efficient one yourself if you put in the time.

Are extended warranties / insurance worth the price?

Deciding whether or not I should recommend purchasing an extended warranty on a new tech toy is something I've struggled with in the past. I've never payed for one myself, but my reason for doing so is less of a concrete logical reason, and more of a vague belief that I'll be able to handle whatever disaster comes my way for the best price possible.

In his book, “The 1-2-3 Money Plan,” Gregory Karp transforms my cloudy thoughts on this subject into a clear road to reason. “Keep things simple and don’t outsmart yourself. There’s a lot of junk insurance out there that is way too expensive for the risk it covers. Does anybody really think a $40 extended warranty on a $200 camera is a good deal?”

“but it paid off for Bob when his camera broke!” - Sure, there are many examples of the extra protection paying off. There are also plenty of examples of people winning the lottery, or hitting it big in Vegas. These examples are just not as common as you would think, and there are far better ways to spend your hard earned money.

“what should I do instead?” - Self insure! Take that money you would have spent on the extended warranty, and put it away in a savings account. You'll find this savings account quickly outgrowing the cost of any repairs you might need in the long run, and soon able to pay for a complete replacement item.

“don't forget common sense” - This is less of a hard and fast rule, and more of a rule of thumb. It's a good starting point if you're unsure, and works for most products, but don't blindly follow this advice. Make sure you do your research, take care of your new products, and don't forget to use common sense!

New to The Thrifty Techie?

The Thrifty Techie is a place for me to share my thoughts on topics too geeky to discuss in my day to day life.  As a result, the random content I do share on this blog covers such a wide range of topics that it can be hard for new visitors to pinpoint exactly what they can expect to find here in the future.  I'm not 100% sure of what to expect either, but I created this little guide for newcomers to help users ease into the current direction of the blog.  Even if you're a regular reader, it may be worth a quick check as I'll try to update it with links to my favorite posts as often as I can.

I've also made couple other small changes you may not have noticed.  I have a link to the RSS feed you can use to subscribe to this blog at the bottom of the page.  And I've also started tagging my posts by category such as tutorial, book review, or editorial.  You can view and sort posts by these tags by using the labels on the right hand side of this page.  That's it for all the new changes. Hope you enjoy!

Why Nobody Wants My Advice

Not too long ago, I asked my parents for my first keyboard as a graduation present. I've always wanted to learn the piano but don't know anything about shopping for a keyboard. I had been trying to research this topic online the night before but was quickly overwhelmed with all the online advice I found. This incident quickly reminded me of how my own advice giving technique has evolved over the years.

When people come to me for tech advice, the answer I have in my head is usually a combination of complex algorithms and calculations. This is because my advice is usually about something I'm very enthusiastic about. For example, people in my family often come to me for advice when looking for a new computer. The problem is that I'm aware of so many different brands, models, pros and cons of different spec combinations, special features, advantages offered from all the different distributors, return policies and protection plans, or even options for upgrading current hardware. I could write an entire Thesis about all the available options. But no one wants to hear any of this, they would be overwhelmed and frustrated just like I was when shopping around for my keyboard.

Today my approach is much simpler. I still have the same thoughts swirling around in my head, but I now try to limit myself to only two questions. What is the budget, and what will it be used for. I make assumptions about all the rest and give only one or two choices for them to choose from.

Lesson Learned: Some people, including myself, just don't want to hear all the options. They would much rather have a clear specific action that they can take. Even now, I remember how relieved I felt when I got to the first local music shop and told the salesman that I was just a beginner looking for a first keyboard to learn on. He new exactly what to recommend and it made everything much easier than I had made it out to be. Lesson learned!

Travel Spending Do's and Don'ts

This nice gadget shopping guide over at The Technium inspired these rules of thumb for household purchases at The Simple Dollar. Since I'm still fresh off my trip, here is my list of vacation spending tips:

Do pay for location – One of our best decisions of the entire trip was deciding to pay a little extra to stay in downtown during our time in Chicago. We had originally planned to stay outside the city and just catch the bus into downtown until one of our friends who lived in the area convinced us that it was worth the extra cash to stay downtown. Being in the middle of all the action allowed us to easily catch a little breather back at the hotel between our day activities and night life. We didn't have to worry about catching the last bus out of town, and it was nice to be able to walk outside and find something to eat at any time of the day or night.

Don't pay for tours – This doesn't include specialty tours like say a tour of a baseball park where they bring you on the field, in the press and luxury boxes, and even in the club house. When I say don't pay for tours, I mean don't pay for someone to take you around to see the Empire State Building, Central Park, and Statue of Liberty while you're in New York. You can research all the hotspots of your destination before hand and check it out yourself. You will find time and time again that you're spending unexpected amounts of time at places you wouldn't have thought were that interesting. Something you don't have the freedom to do on a scheduled tour. One of my experiences with this was an impromptu rock skipping contest a friend sucked me into while checking out the Mississippi River (I won two orange juices).

Don't pay for a travel guide – We ended up throwing out the travel guide when we followed some bad advice it gave us in Harlem. Instead we relied on yelp for our dining choices, which has a much wider range of places to choose from anyway, and we relied on our previous research of the city to find things to do during the day. For the second time in this post, the value of great planning and researching your destinations is priceless.

Do bring plenty of cash – The most annoying repeating charge I ran into was ATM fees. I brought about $150 in cash thinking that would be plenty for a three week road trip. Many of the restaurants we stopped by during long driving stretches were in the middle of nowhere and accepted cash only. The restaurants that did accept credit card would often put our entire table on one tab, forcing us to split it using cash. Add in the public transportation cost, parking, and hotel tips in the bigger cities and we were all out of cash within the first week

Do risk it all – risking it all became our motto on this trip. It didn't always work. We ended up wasting money and time trying to get into the Jimmy Fallon Show, and ball park tour in D.C. But most times it was well worth it. In Boston we risked buying front row seats for a Red Sox game that had an extremely high chance of raining out again just like the night before. It turned out to be a great game, we got a ball from one of the home team players, and it turned out to be one of the best experiences of the trip. As a rule of thumb, I would say if you have a chance at a lifetime experience, it's worth the small risk of some wasted time or money.   

Vacation

First off, sorry for the lack of preparation leading to the long hiatus of this blog, but here are some pictures from my nice long vacation!

Fenway Park

casting our shadows on the Lincoln Memorial

the Mississippi River

our road trip route

Times Square

The Bean

St. Louis Arch

pit stop in the snow

largest complete T-Rex fossil in the world

How to Handle Tech Lust

It starts with rumors, Sony’s new PS3 was going to be latest and greatest gaming console ending any doubt about who's going to own the gaming industry.  

“Wow, this sounds interesting, I wonder when it's coming out"

Specs start to slowly trickle out to the public, 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based processor, full 1080p HD, NVIDIA RSX 'Reality Synthesizer' graphics, wifi, support, blue tooth, and Blue-ray on models ranging from 20 to 80 Gigs of storage.  A few citings in the wild are being reported and blogged about, along with an official announcement of the release date.

“What the f*&%, that is crazy! I have to have this!” (at the time, those specs really were crazy)

After countless leaked screen shots, demos, big announcements, reviews, press releases, and commercials, I had no chance.

On the week of the launch I found myself along with three other friends taking 6-12 hour shifts for 3 days, camping outside the local Best Buy hoping to grab one of the thirty tickets identifying who will be walking home with a brand new PS3.

Hopefully my little story illustrates some of the dangers of tech lust.  With access to so much information, it’s so easy to build up a product in your mind to an obsession, leading you to throw away big time money on something you may not even need in the first place.  So how can you prevent yourself from falling into the same trap I’ve been falling into for years?  Here are some tips that have helped me greatly reduce the unwanted side effects of tech envy.

Banish the Advertising!

Most people don’t believe that advertising has any major effect on them.  I believed this myself until I came across an article at SebastionMarshall.com explaining why advertising works on you.  The point of the article is that just because you don’t get hungry for a Big Mac after a McDonalds commercial, it doesn't mean the commercial hasn’t affected you.  Exposing you to the product has a large enough effect on its own.

A friend of mine recently bought a used Chevy Cobalt.  I'm not a huge car enthusiast so I had never heard of or seen this car until she got a chance to show it off to me.  After I got a chance to admire it, I feel like I see this particular model everywhere I go.  It just stands out a little bit more to me now.

For  me, banishing advertisements means deleting blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget from my google reader.  I still get my tech fix (something I really enjoy) from podcasts (buzz out loud, the engadget show) and other blogs.  But at least I don’t get the daily barrage of gadget rumors that the engadget blog provides.  For others, banishing advertising might mean less television, taking the long route home to avoid window shopping, or taking advantage of more on demand content with services such as Netflix, Hulu, TiVo, Pandora,or Slacker Radio.  These types of services deliver the content you enjoy with much less advertising.  

30 Day rule

The 30 day rule is something I picked up from Trent over at the Simple Dollar.  The 30 day rule states that you can’t buy any big ticket item without waiting for at least 30 days.  This small and simple rule has an enormous amount of benefits.  The most obvious advantage of following a rule like this is that it eliminates impulse buys.  Most times, when I see something I really want, I’ll hold off and tell myself to revisit the decision in 30 days, only to completely forget about the item when time is up anyway. 

Another advantage that most people don’t think of when they first hear about this rule is the extended enjoyment of the buying process.  Similar to how planning a vacation can be as fun as actually going on the vacation, researching the best products and prices can extend the joy of making the actual purchase.  If you’re looking for a phone, go out and find out about all the operating systems available, which carrier has the best coverage in your area, which data and voice plans will match your use, who has the best apps.   You might even research phone manufactures release schedules so you can find the best time to buy your phone at the cheapest price.  Sometimes, you'll find out that the new gadget you were dreaming about isn't so hot after all.  One last note, don't be afraid to extend the waiting period for larger purchases.  A good rule of thumb is to wait as long as it takes to save up the money to make the purchase without any impact on your normal budget.

Don’t Torture Yourself

So you’ve waited and waited and you still feel that your life just isn’t complete without that new iPad 2.  But of course you don’t want to waste all this work you’ve done to hold off from buying another expensive toy for so long.  Others might disagree with me, but my best advice to you at this point is to just buy it.  You’ve already done the research to know it’s the best product for the best price that will meet your needs.  You’ve had enough time to think about whether it’s just more tech lust, or something that you honestly need.  And you’ve already saved the money needed to buy it without affecting your budget. 

Not many gadgets have made it past this rigorous test for me (just my iPod Touch, and Kindle come to mind), so at this point, I no longer have any fear of buyer’s remorse, and I feel confident in making the purchase.  I still have a hard time giving myself permission to put a large amount of money toward a non-life essential.  I just try to have faith in my system and trust that all my work led to the best decision, and now it’s just a matter of being confident in myself and my decision.  

This process isn’t limited to gadgets for me.  I try to apply it to any big time purchase I’m thinking about.  Right now I’m in the process of planning a month long vacation I’ve needed for a while now.  Hopefully I can post some pictures soon!

leave a comment: how do you handle tech lust?

#uknoyoughettowhen

As a frugal techie, I'm always on the lookout for new frugal tips/practices.  So when I spotted the "#uknoyoughettowhen" trending topic on twitter, I couldn't resist taking a quick peak.  Here are some of my favorites from today:

NscuRubii (@NscuRubii)
3/30/11 3:19 PM
RT@lmostfamous

:#uknoyoughettowhen

YOU FILL YO SHAMPOO BOTTLE WITH WATER AND SHAKE IT WHEN IT GET LOW

kandi1508 (@kandi1508)
3/30/11 3:21 PM
RT@MyBabyyyLovesMe

:#uknoyoughettowhen

you eat cereal with a fork to save milk...

Pretty_MxedBtch (@Pretty_MxedBtch)
3/30/11 10:22 PM
Damn lol RT@SRB_tattedCURT

:#uknoyoughettowhen

U only put lotion on the part of your body thats showin

JanelleeeO (@JanelleeeO)
3/30/11 3:11 PM
RT@Ryanpatrieco

:#uknoyoughettowhen

you can read your haircut.

Some of the techniques twitter users admit to using gave me a good laugh, especially the ones I do myself. Just so they know I'm laughing with them, rather than at them, I'd thought I could share some of the frugal practices I use that may seem a little silly:

1. When it gets really cold in the winter, The only heat source I allow myself is the heat from my laptop.  One of the benefits of having an ancient laptop is the absurd amount of extra heat it produces.  So I just grab my snuggie and curl up in my chair as I work at my desk.  This also has the added bonus of forcing me to do more work than I normally would.

2. I put all the new clothes I get as Birthday or Christmas gifts in a special suitcase. I started doing this a few years ago, when I was still an undergraduate. Most of the clothes I get are too nice to be worn to school, so the clothes put into this suitcase are not to be used until I graduate into the real world. This way, when I finally do graduate, I'll have a whole new wardrobe without having to do any shopping, and my friends will think I got a great paying job!

3. Last silly tip of the day, this one probably doesn't even save me money, but I feel much better when I do it. I bring all my portable electronic devices to campus so I can re-charge them with the school electricity. This includes, cell phone, ipod, developer phones, and kindle.  I just charge them In the lab while I'm doing my work.

What are some of your best ghetto money saving tips?

Google Presents: Lady Gaga

I got a chance to watch the Google interview of Lady Gaga this past week, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I've never been a huge Gaga fan, but I'd probably rank this interview second in the “Google Presents” series on You Tube, right behind the Conen O'Brien interview.  If you haven't seen the Conen interview, I'd recommend watching that one first.  If you're all caught up in the Google Presents series, then here is Lady Gaga.  I've jotted down a few notes you can check out below before you decide to commit to this hour+ long video.

Gaga's Thoughts on Regrets – Lady Gaga got to share a little about how her experience with being bullied throughout high school, stays with her even today. She remembers that when she was young, her natural response was to just be the bigger person, or just kind of shy away from it. Her newest single, “Born This Way” serves as an anthem for anyone going through a similar experience, with the goal of giving them the courage to come out and say “This is who I am, this is who the fuck I am,” rather than hiding.

Despite these memories, Lady Gaga explains that she doesn't hold anything against the people who used to bully her. In fact, she'd rather not obsess over any regrets or negativity from her past.

“If you don't cast any shadows, then you're not standing in the light.”

Lady Gaga shared this quote as the best piece of advice she'd ever received. She goes on to explain that she understands that she's not a squeaky clean person, and neither are most of her fans. Nobody can live mistake free if you're putting yourself out there, trying new things, learning your own lessons, and discovering life for yourself.

Gaga's Thoughts on Fashion – Many of her fans had questions revolving around her unique fashion and creativity, asking about what she looks like when shes at home, to how some of her strange music video ideas are born. One of the interesting stories she shares about her fashion choices is that all of her tattoos are on the left side of her body. This was done at the request of her dad, asking her to keep at least half of her body somewhat normal.

Gaga's Thoughts on Fame – Sometimes I think about what it's like to be famous. I wonder about what it's like to be recognized wherever you go, and if it's really as tough on a person as some celebrities make it out to be. Lady Gaga doesn't seem to have any trouble with it. “Anyone who can't get away from paparazzi is full of shit.” And her favorite thing about being famous, “theres always a really good looking guy in my bed.”

So these are some little tidbits from her interview with Google. She is surprisingly down to earth, insightful, has a slightly quirky but great sense of humor. I tried not to spoil too much of the surprises from the interview, so you can check it out for yourself.

Problems With a Frugal Lifestyle

I've now been a student for six years at the University I'm attending. That's right, six years! Most of my friends have already graduated and moved on to great jobs, and I can't wait to do the same. I can already feel the anxiety just thinking about all the resume building, job searching, interview preparation, and social activities standing between me and my dream job. I actually look forward to knocking these things out of the park, but until then I have a much more urgent problem on my hands.

Now that a lot of my friends have money, I feel like I'm holding them back from a lot of the things they want to do, because I can't afford to keep up.

The guilt from this problem gives me one of the most horrible feelings I've had in recent memory. I feel cheap, I feel like I'm letting my friends down, and I fear they will eventually get fed up and resent me.

Although it feels like this little problem has grown larger than something I can handle, I thought I'd share some of the tricks I've picked up that have helped me cope with this problem up until now.

Journal – The first part of the problem is the most important. When this little issue gets me down, I'm in no state to get back up and make things better for myself. That's what my journal is for. I keep two journals, my “Thankful” Journal is where I jot down any little item during my happiest moments. The Journal I turn to during this crisis however, is my “Pride” journal. This journal has all the little compliments or positive comments friends might through my way during the day. Here are some examples of my most recent entries:

-”Your reverse layup is unstoppable dude” - baller friend

-”That color looks really nice on you” - dorm mate friend

- “You're off to a really great start” - web camp partner

These little pick me ups remind me that I have at least some things to offer, and now I'm motivated and ready to show my friends I care.

Take Charge – Instead of having to shoot down a friends invite to expensive dinners and movies, I try to step up and invite others to my own events. My recent favorite is inviting a few friends over for board game night (extra fun with alcohol). Cranium, Taboo, and Poker have been fun lately. Note* please no monopoly, that game will only lead to disaster.

Common hobbies create another easy opportunity for inexpensive but fun hangout time. A bunch of buddies and I play basketball about twice a week, and another friend and I have guitar jamming sessions every once in a while.

If you have some serious organization chops, setting up a house dinner rotation could be tons of fun, and a huge money saver. Maybe two people take care of the cooking per rotation, and everyone else takes care of entertainment, maybe a movie, or game. It's all up to you.

Don't forget to check out your local library and University for event listings. They often have great opportunities at reduced rates.

Don't Worry – My last advice is more of a “do as I say, not what as do,” kind of tip. Just try not to worry, you're still fun even if you turn down a few outings here or there. Just invite them over to hang out at your place next time. If they are the kind of friends worth keeping, they'll gladly come over and watch free Hulu documentaries on your 13” laptop screen in the room you rent out of a house with no furniture.

Ideas of March

Chris Shiflett, one of the bloggers over at Planet PHP, has been observing that many of the interesting conversations that used to take place on blogs, has been moving to more “quick hit” type outlets such as Twitter and the Stack Overflow. While these sites can offer participation at higher levels in conversations that happen much closer to real time, it's much harder to match the deepness of thought that can be expressed in a blog.

So where have all the bloggers gone!?

Ideas of March is the initiative started by Chris Schiflett, and supported by many of the other bloggers at Planet PHP, to revive blogging. The idea is simple. Create a blog post called Ideas of March that lists some of things you like about blogs. Pledge to blog more in 2011 than you did in 2010. Then spread the word!

There are two main reasons why I personally love blogs. I first became hooked on blogs when I discovered The Simple Dollar back in 2007. I instantly connected with Trent's personal message and conversational writing style. The intimate stories from his own personal experience drive home important lessons I would otherwise fail to take seriously. I also enjoying knowing that there are thousands of other readers out there sharing the same silly passions that I have. Since then I've discovered many more blogs covering my wide range of interests including personal growth, productivity, coding, gadgets, music, and of course sports.

The second reason I believe in the blog, I've only discovered very recently. I've often felt that I have a lot of interesting things to say about certain topics, but no way to express it. I've never been a very good public speaker, I could never capture an audience, In some cases I can barely speak off the top of my head in one on one situations. I'm the kind of person who has to focus so intensely on what to say next, that I can go through an entire conversation without remembering a single sentence that was said. Blogging gives me the perfect outlet for my ideas. The uninterrupted time, and stress free environment of blogging, allows me to formalize my thoughts and write it down in a semi-coherent form. Many times, writing a blog post can make me realize I don't understand a topic nearly as well as I thought I did, and force me to go out and refine my thoughts. Even though I've only been doing this for a few months, I really do enjoy being a content creator in addition to my main role as content consumer.

Now for the pledge, it wouldn't be very impressive to say that I'll blog more this year than last, so instead I will pledge to put in the time and effort to contribute to the revival of the blog cause. Your turn!

How to Handle Failure

As you know, I've been trying to get my first Windows Phone 7 app in the marketplace for some time now. The app I've been working on converts a number from one unit to another. It's a very simple idea as a first attempt, but I've put a lot of effort into it, and I'm proud to announce that it's finally made its way into the marketplace. Now for the bad news, this short lived high came crashing down on me when I decided to check out my download stats and found that not one person has downloaded my app. Now, you can imagine how disappointed I was, we are often our own harshest critic and a lot of different thoughts can start creeping into your head, I'm not good enough, it was silly to even think I could do this, I don't deserve to succeed at something like this, why bother?

The thing is, my experience has taught me that this cycle of highs and lows are just a part of life (at least for me it is). You think you're making progress with a girl you like only to have her tell you what a great “friend” you are, you think you're starting to get really good at playing the guitar until you watch a youtube clip of some kid playing at a skill level you can only dream of, or you knock off all the items on your to-do list one day only to fall into the trap of doing absolutely nothing the rest of the week.

I hate disappointment just as much as anyone, and I used to let that fear of failure paralyze me from doing a lot of normal things like speaking in public, or talking to girls. This latest failure has been particularly disappointing, but has reminded me of some of the things I've picked up over the years that help me deal with disappointment and overcome my fear of failure.

Failure means you're brave – There are very few things in my life that I consider completely within my comfort zone. For everything else, there is some amount of anxiety to overcome. When I fail, I congratulate myself for having the courage to act despite that fear. So what if I told a girl I like her, only to have her laugh in my face, at least I tried. If I do this 100 more times I'm bound to stumble into success at some point right?

“You miss 100% of the shots you don't take” - Wayne Gretzky.

Failure means you've learned something – There isn't one thing in my life that I've done perfectly the first time I tried. It took interviews with 11 different companies before I could land my first internship, I've been rejected by girls more times than I'd like to admit, and I've spent countless hours re-explaining concepts I've poorly described the first few tries (I work as a tutor). The point is, that I feel confident in these areas now because of the numerous failures I've had with each. It's not very hard to identify what went wrong, and avoid the same mistake the next time. Use each failure as a stepping stone towards the final outcome of success. Each time you make a class presentation, keep what worked, throw out what didn't work, and repeat until you're the greatest public speaker on earth!

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” - Tomas Edison on the first 10,000 materials he tried to create a light bulb out of.

Failure means you're on the way up – No matter how many reasons I give to make failure look like a good thing, I know that it's still tough to take. It' so easy get really down on yourself when things don't go the way we envisioned. Don't be tempted into believing that it ends here. In fact, failure is only just the beginning. As the failures and disappointments keep piling up, I've come to understand that failure isn't really a big deal, it's just part of the process. At this point, we've already established that you have the courage to keep going. You'll have to trust me on this one, it feels great to keep working at something that's hard, especially once you start seeing progress.

“Never let the defeat of the past rob you of the success of your future.” - Ray Comfort

Finding More Time For Your Passions

Everybody has interests and hobbies outside of work or school they wish they had more time for. For example, I wish I had more time to learn the guitar, create cool mobile apps, and read about personal finance. Here are my best tips for getting the most out of the time spent at work, so you have more time to spend on the the things you love.

Start as early as possible – The biggest reason for this is momentum. Completing that first task off your to-do list, and then the next task, and then the next, creates momentum for you to keep knocking things off your list throughout your day. On the other hand, procrastinating in the morning creates momentum that pushes you to keep checking facebook or watching youtube, while your work just sits on your desk all day. Even if you feel you work much better during evenings, try getting a jump start for a week, and not allow yourself an email or facebook break until you knock those first few items off your list. You may be surprised by the results.

Get enough rest – Do not underestimate the power of sleep! When I was an undergraduate student, I remember how most people (including myself) would compare how many hours we spent studying for a test, only to find that some of us just couldn't break past that B+ barrier no matter how many hours we spent studying. After a couple years I finally figured it out, Instead of forcing myself to stay up all night studying, I could get a good night of sleep and spend about a third the amount of time studying in the morning. Studying with a well rested mind means no spacing out while reading, only to find that you just read an entire paragraph without remembering a single line. It means staying awake and alert during class, not needing to waste time re-learning material outside of class, and it means having more energy to focus on your work, instead of focusing on staying awake or wishing you could go to sleep. Working with a well rested mind has allowed me to finish in one hour, what it would take me to finish in three hours with in a tired state.

Capture everything before you start – Have you ever been happily chugging along, working on a project when suddenly you remember you need to stop by the bank, or call your mom back later that day. These little distractions can turn into major setbacks if they can break you out of your zone. To prevent this, keep a to-do list with you at all times and dump everything you may need to remember onto your list before you start any kind of major work. Everything from emails you need to send out later, to what you need to pick up from the grocery store on the way back from work. Keeping all these items written down will free up any brain power being used to keep these little items from being forgotten, and stop any brain pop-ups from throwing off your focus.

Force yourself to do the worst thing first – This one may be debatable. Some people prefer to start on the hardest items on their list first, while others prefer to do the easiest tasks first just to get going. Here is my case for starting with the worst thing first. It's much harder to stay focused on an intensive task after a long hard day. Instead, using all your energy on high focus items in the beginning of the day leaves the mindless tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, or other repetitive tasks, for you in the evenings, prolonging the amount of productivity in your day.

Force yourself to do it at least 15 min – We all have days when our motivation tanks seem to be on empty, and we reluctantly give in to what will probably be another lost day of production. I'm going to give you my best tip for battling against these times of low motivation. Force yourself to work on a task for just 15 min. Do whatever it takes to get to you desk, turn off your TV, turn off your cell phone, don't even open up your laptop until you can to your desk. If you can open up that project, and keep it open for just 15 min, I can't tell you how many times I look up, and what was supposed to be just 15 min had already turned into an hour. At that point I've got some momentum and I just keep going.

Make it a routine – Trying any of these previously mentioned tips the first two or three times can be the hardest part. Making it a routine will make it much easier without even thinking about it. Try this: pick one or two of these tips to start off with. Making too many changes at once makes it too easy to throw away progress with all the positive changes you've made after slipping up with only one of them. Grab a marker of your favorite color, and make a mark on your calendar every day that you follow through with the two tips you've chosen. Studies have shown that it takes around 28 days to forge a new habit. If you can put together a string of 28 days on your calendar, then you're done and you can move on to the next tips you would like to implement. The key here is to keep the calendar in a place where you can see it up at ALL TIMES. Your gmail calendar is not good enough, even if you open it everyday. And remember to only attempt one or two changes at a time.

Lessons in Manliness: My Little Brother

      There's a little writing project going on over at, “The Art of Manliness” blog, where readers are able to submit a blog entry about someone they believe embodies what it means to be a man. Some of the early entries have inspired me to write about someone I'm beginning to look up to more and more, as he continues to grow into this awesome young man, my little brother.

      Nolan, is the second child (after me), with two younger sisters right behind him. He is a big time gym rat, participating in football, wrestling, and soccer through high school, and continuing into college with rugby and judo as he makes his way through the physical therapy program at Creighton University.

      As kids, Nolan was the kind of brother who always wanted to follow me around, hang out with me and my friends, and do whatever else he could, to be just like me. Somewhere along the line though, he started to figure out his own thing, and today, it's me who looks up to him. Here are a few lessons in manliness my younger brother has taught me.

Don't worry about what others think: I love my brother, but that doesn't stop me from pretending I don't know who he is when he embarrasses me on a daily basis. My brother takes longer than my sisters getting ready to go out, and can't walk past a mirror or reflective surface without looking at himself. The thing is, Nolan cares about his physical appearance, and when he cares about something, it doesn't really matter when others tell him it's dumb, or that he looks stupid when he's staring at his reflection in the car window. Don't get me wrong, I really do think he should get help with the whole checking himself out thing. But then I'll watch him bring our little sister to his judo practice because she wanted to try it out. Nolan cares about our sister just as much as he cares about his reflection, and he didn't even have to think twice about it, even when all his buddies were snickering at the sight of him hanging out with his little sister the entire day. Now that is definitely pretty cool.

Speak what's on your mind: Every holiday season, a bunch of long time friends and I get together for our annual Christmas dinner. This past winter, as I was getting dressed for this dinner, Nolan came up to me and basically told me I wasn't going out dressed like that. When he was done giving me a hard time, he took me to his closet and helped me pick something out that was a bit more reasonable to him. When Nolan thinks something is wrong, he's not afraid to speak up. Once he speaks his mind though, he lets it go, he's not really there to judge. The thing that separates him from most criticizing assholes is his ability to easily empathize with almost anyone. He's experienced countless struggles with others (including me) laughing at something he cared about or thought was really cool. So in turn, he understands he shouldn't be judging anyone else when they may seem a little different or odd as well.

No one is perfect, but try your best: After a long first semester away from home at college, my brother decided to come home for Christmas break and party with his friends. I don't usually really care what Nolan and his friends do when they go out, but I can remember his reaction when my dad found a bunch of empty alcohol bottles littered on the family car floor the next morning. I've never seen anyone so scared for his life before. Even though I have plenty of nice things to say about my brother, he is far from perfect and has done some incredibly stupid things in the past. The thing is, he's not afraid to admit it. Instead of trying to hide it or allowing it to linger, he's eager to accept it, learn from it, and move on.

      All these traits are what make up this very confident young man my brother has grown into. I feel very proud when I see him out there not desperate to please anyone other than himself, and the people he loves. His many quirks and screw ups are what makes it easy to feel he's not there to judge any of yours. I hope to one day learn to live with his great understanding that your friends and family don't want you to be perfect, and that your faults are what make you endearing. I think everyone can live a little happier when they can embrace any mistakes, instead of being afraid to make them.

Resolution Update

It's been about three weeks since I'd shared my resolutions for this year so I thought I'd give a quick update on my progress.

Graduate Project

This is the goal I've probably had the most success with so far. I hope to soon have a review up on Javascript the Good Parts, by Douglas Crockford, as well as Beginning Javascript and CSS Development with jQuery, by Richard York, the two books I read through as preparation for this project. I also want to post a few jQuery tricks I've found most useful so far, along with a screen shot or two of my progress.

Windows Phone 7 App

I would say I'm having medium success with this one so far. I already have a review of .NET Book Zero, by Charles Petzold posted, with another one on Programming Windows Phone 7 by the same Arthur coming soon. The disappointment comes with having jumped into the programming without a full understanding of the code I was writing first. After reading through .NET Book Zero and most of Programming Windows Phone 7, I can already spot several critical flaws in my first app including window navigation, tombstoning, and data passing, bringing me right back to where I started. I will definitely do my part in trying to prevent others from repeating my mistakes by posting the previously mentioned flaws, and how to properly correct them (until I find out that my new fixes are not the most efficient methods either of course).

Guitar Performance

I've had the least luck with this one so far as I can start to see my dreams of becoming a rock star slowly melting away. I've been practicing the most challenging piece I've tried to date, an arrangement Joan Osborne's “One of Us” by Ulli Bogershausen. However I'm beginning to think that I'm not going to be able to impress any strangers with it, and I may need to step up to an even more advanced version, or drop the song all together.

So that's what I've been up to so far this year. Hopefully I can keep the momentum up through another month, and come back with better results next time. Its felt great to get through all of the reading material while getting most of the design docs out of the way, but I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't worried about the lack of code I have down so far. Alright, here's to round two!

My Favorite Free Resources - Part 5: Education

Books

Music

Video

Software

Education

This is the fifth of a 5 part series exploring my favorite sources for free online resources.  Yes, it's been almost a year since part 1 was posted, And yes I'm posting part 5 out of order.  I just thought that the start of a new semester was the perfect time to write about free education sources. Enjoy!

Open Courseware Consortium  - Many Universities offer free online materials for many of it's classes, including recorded video of lectures, class assignments, tests, notes, and text.  MIT Open Coursware is probably the most popular University found in the OCC catalog.  

P2PU - Peer to Peer University takes a more traditional approach to open education.  Each semester offers a wide range of classes taught by peers.  Each class requires a hands on attitude and participation with assignments and small projects assigned throughout the semester. 

iTunesU - iTunes offers much more than music and television shows.  The podcast and University sections of the iTunes Store offer lecture recordings and power points from many of the same Universities that participate in OCC.  Including the very popular annual iOS development for beginners class.

Open Learning Initiative - I haven't tried the Open Learning Initiative myself yet. However it does seem very similar to OCC.  A great collection of online materials for the independent learner.  The Open Learning Initiative, as well as all previously mentioned educational resources mentioned in this post, offer college level course materials free of charge for no credit.