Comments on: How Personal Productivity and Personal Development Are Connected To Personal Finance

By: joseph mithamo

joseph mithamo — Tue, 18 May 2010 07:37:33 +0000

am a new fun of the simple dollar en i tell you its bcoming such a life changing experience to me.Ihave been wondering ,what if you had listened to discouragements from pple;this information could not have reached us.congrats en keep on keeping on,…write,write,write…

By: anon

anon — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:35:20 +0000

There is a fundamental problem with this sort of work: survivor bias.

You have a distinct sample of the population, for which you identify traits pertaining to financial success.

The question is then: how many people with those same traits failed to succeed?

If there are few, you found the success criteria. If there are many, your traits have no distinctive value pertaining to financial success.

As far as I know, the book fails to address this point.

Guess which one of the two options is more probable?

This type of mistake happens often. See for example the review of the business bestseller “Good to Great” by businesspundit.com for the same type of analysis.

By: plonkee

plonkee — Mon, 14 May 2007 16:58:04 +0000

I don’t particularly thing that most of these traits are related to religion and/or personal belief system, for example being competitive or having the ability to sell.

I think if most of the millionaires surveyed are religious, thats probably more influenced by the high proportion of middle-class Americans in general who are religious than anything else.

By: Gal Josefsberg

Gal Josefsberg — Sun, 13 May 2007 20:45:45 +0000

Roger,
That’s partially right, but also partially wrong. If you look at many of the people on these surveys, you’ll see that most of them had a strong framework for their lives. However, religion is just one way to get this framework. Family, friends, social networks, professional organizations, personal belief systems and so on can all contribute to this, just like religions can.

By: Judith

Judith — Sun, 13 May 2007 18:08:12 +0000

How about it Trent? You DID leave out “honesty” as a mistake? Didn’t you?

By: Diomede

Diomede — Sun, 13 May 2007 13:15:34 +0000

Discipline, communication skills, social skills, passion.

Of course these are key factor for financial success. If you own the points above you’ll be succesful in every moment of your life.

These are trasversal abilities, nowadays I think they are decisive. Technical competencies are the minimum, to differentiate yourself and succeed you need more.

It is all about Emotional Intelligence, so called by the famous psycologist D. Goleman.

By: Roger Fisher

Roger Fisher — Sun, 13 May 2007 12:11:03 +0000

I believe if you go further into the study, you’ll will find that these people are typically religious as well. Without going too deep into religion, someone who is disciplined by going to church/synagog regularly will accumulate the traits listed.

By: Gal Josefsberg

Gal Josefsberg — Sun, 13 May 2007 01:20:53 +0000

If you look at a lot of books about managing personal and professional relationships, they basically sum down to “be nice and treat other people well.” It’s critical advice that we often forget. Just be nice to people, ask their opinions, include them in conversations and you’ll quickly find yourself making friends that will last a life time.

By: Ursula

Ursula — Sat, 12 May 2007 23:03:39 +0000

For your 8-item list, I think you meant to leave IN “being honest with all people” and leave OUT “loving my career/business”

:-)

By: Sally

Sally — Sat, 12 May 2007 22:38:08 +0000

Peter – I’m guessing that was a mistake and that the trait he meant eliminate instead of honesty was,

Loving my career/business

based on his commentary.

By: Tammy

Tammy — Sat, 12 May 2007 18:17:10 +0000

I haven’t read this book yet – I’ve seen it and thought of picking it up. These are exactly the sort of things that roll around in my own mind… what parts of me help me reach my goals and which aspects of my personality keep me stuck. I will get my own copy and get working on this myself. I’m a firm believer that we act according to how we think.
Tammy

P.S. You’ve been tagged on my own blog.

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 12 May 2007 17:48:26 +0000

I find it interesting that you eliminated the number one trait — “Being honest with all people” — to arrive at your list of eight. I would have thought that would be the most important element of personal development. I was quite pleased to see that it was ranked number one by the original 733 millionaires surveyed.

By: miguel

miguel — Sat, 12 May 2007 16:50:40 +0000

Interesting — I started reading this book a few days ago and still had that section fresh in my head. Good take on it, Trent.