If you’ve been reading my weekly roundups for long, you know I’m a big fan of the Unclutterer blog and its chief writer and editor, Erin Doland.

I link to Unclutterer frequently because I believe there is a strong connection between clutter and financial problems, since clutter represents having more physical possessions than you can manage and all of those possessions cost money. Plus, dealing with clutter requires a time investment and in our busy lives, time has a very high value.

Unclutter Your Life in One Week essentially offers a “detox” plan for getting clutter out of your home, office, and life, ostensibly in one week. I should say right off the bat that I found actually accomplishing all of the ideas in this book in one week to be impossible. That doesn’t mean the book has value, but you should not expect that all clutter in your life will be gone in one week if you follow this plan. Although, I will say that there is some function of how cluttered your life is when you start and how thoroughly you’re going through your life with the plan.

That being said, the advice in this book is stellar, in my opinion. Let’s dig in and look at some of the specifics.

The Foundations
Most of us have lives that are overbooked, overworked, and overstuffed. We have more things that we want than we possibly have time for. I’m certainly in this boat myself – I’d trade all the material items I have for another four hours in my day.

In our rush to jam even more into our lives, our lives become inherently complicated. We accumulate more things than we can deal with and some things begin to slip simply because there aren’t enough hours in the day. Those “things that slip” often take the form of clutter – items in our lives that we simply don’t have the time to process. These tend to build up throughout our lives, filling up our homes and our day planners with a backlog of things that need to be taken care of and things we don’t have the time to actually enjoy or use.

Dealing with clutter is an intense process, because it not only requires dealing with this backlog of stuff, but it also requires dealing with the elements in your life that are causing clutter.

Monday
Monday is the best day of the week to begin establishing new routines. It’s also a good day to tackle the “firsts” – the elements of clutter you face first throughout your day.

For example, many of us face a cluttered closet in the morning when we wake up, so a good first step is to get your clothes in order. If you have more clothes than you can adequately fit in your dresser and closet, you need to eliminate some.

At work, the first thing we often see is our desk or workspace. Figure out a place for all of the stuff that you see – and don’t be surprised if the space for many of those things is the trash can.

Tuesday
Tuesday is the most stressful day of the week, so it’s the best time to tackle the areas of your life that cause you the most stress and require the most work to keep up.

At home, Erin encourages decluttering the bathroom (with the goal of being able to easily find all of the things you need but tossing the things you don’t actually use that tend to fill up your bathroom closet) and also streamlining your household chores. I find in my own life that when I have a household chore routine, things are more likely to work well.

At work, one should take a look at filing all of their papers so that the documents one needs can easily be found and the less-important things are out of the way. At my previous job, I found that having a filing cabinet split into two pieces worked for me – a single drawer for stuff I actually used sometimes and the rest for stuff I needed to retain but would rarely look at. 99% of the time, I’d just look in that one drawer and find what I needed.

Wednesday
Wednesday is “hump day” and a perfect day to focus on communications and processes in our day.

At home, take a look at your kitchen and your bedroom. For us, at least, the kitchen alone can be a major project for de-cluttering. One big tactic that works is simply reducing your kitchen implements, replacing fifteen low-quality single use items with one high quality item that simply does the job. You don’t need a butcher’s block, you just need one really good chef’s knife, a bread knife, and a paring knife. You don’t need tons of casseroles and Pyrex, you just need a few high-quality French ovens. A more streamlined shopping plan helps, too.

At work, re-evaluate your commute and your communication processes. How do you get to work? Does your trip fill you with unnecessary distractions and angst? Look for the least stressful way to get to work. When you’re there, look at how you communicate with others. Does it happen in an orderly fashion with appropriate emotions? I find that “communication sessions” work well for me, where I spend a period of time each day just handling communiques, then I turn off those communication channels to allow myself to focus on other areas.

Thursday
On Thursday, the focus should be on organizing your living spaces at home and focusing on your workflow and processes at work.

At home, look at the places you spend your time during the day. For us, that means our family room, and the obvious place to look there is our entertainment center, which is often a mess thanks to kids pulling out DVDs and playing with various items. Another spot to look is our book collection in the laundry room, which could sorely use some time.

At work, examine how you work on projects. Do you have difficulty completing them? Do you have too many projects? Start using the “five whys” and dig into the reasons for this. Quite often, there are some simple things blocking you from a much better workflow.

Friday
Friday’s focus is solely on uncluttering your schedule. Most of us have schedules that are so full to the brim with activities that we scarcely have time for important things in our lives. How many of you read the previous activities and thought, “That sounds awesome, but I don’t have time for it!”

The best way to do this is to simply prioritize the things you’re doing. Figure out what elements are truly of low priority and either treat them as such or find ways to completely eliminate them. Then, look at the higher priority things and look for ways to compress them – perhaps, instead of watching a show live on Tuesdays, you can record it and watch it commercial-free on Wednesdays. Perhaps instead of unwinding after work, you can spend a brief bit of time truly relaxing and then get on with the things you need to do.

The Weekend
The biggest benefit of unclutterinig is that it truly frees your weekend. If you have established routines for handling everything throughout the week – and you’ve uncluttered your time enough to allow for it – your weekends go from being “catch up” time to being big blocks of free time with which you can do whatever you want.

That’s really the reward, isn’t it?

Is Unclutter Your Life in One Week Worth Reading?
Absolutely. This is the single best book I’ve ever read on organizing your life. Much like my favorite book on time management, Getting Things Done (and, incidentally, Unclutter Your Life in One Week has a foreword by the author of GTD, David Allen), Unclutter Your Life in One Week shines because of the small implementable details, like the few pages devoted to how to organize your clothes and fold your shirts (seriously – I started using that method and it works really well).

If you were to do everything in this book, it would take much longer than a week, without a doubt. However, the modularity of it allows you to pull out pieces to tackle the most egregious parts of your life and then gradually move to other details as the “de-cluttering” advantages become clear.

This book has found a semi-permanent home on my bookshelf as I move towards decluttering some of my own life (like that nightmarish junk drawer and the train wreck that is my closet and, frankly, my time schedule).

Over the years, I’ve professed a ton of admiration for Thomas Stanley and William Danko’s excellent personal finance book The Millionaire Next Door. It was the first book I reviewed on The Simple Dollar and it’s still one I turn to regularly for ideas and inspiration.

One of the most interesting themes in The Millionaire Next Door is the idea that you really can’t judge a book by its cover when it comes to personal wealth. In fact, quite often, public displays of affluence disguise a debt-ridden underaccumulator of wealth, while many exceptional accumulators of wealth possess ordinary, often seemingly outdated things. The underaccumulators of wealth focused on appearance, while the exceptional accumulators of wealth focused on how things functioned.

Thomas Stanley expands upon that single idea here in Stop Acting Rich. The entire premise of the book is simple: lasting wealth and happiness is rarely found through buying expensive things. Throughout the book, Stanley relies on extensive research of people who have acquired financial security – much the same group as in The Millionaire Next Door – to illustrate and reinforce his points, painting a pretty convincing case of the actual buying habits one should adopt if one is seeking lasting personal wealth.

1 – The Difference Between Being Rich and Acting Rich
Stanley opens Stop Acting Rich by defining a group of people he calls “aspirationals” – people who choose to act like the super-rich, but don’t have the financial resources to truly back it up.

The “aspirationals” and the truly rich (people with truly exorbitant wealth) tend to spend a lot of money. Stanley reviews these spending habits in detail here – think yachts, country clubs, cases of vintage wines, private jets, BMWs and the like. To put it simply, “aspirationals” often have to sacrifice every dime they have to appear rich, leaving them incredibly vulnerable to losing everything.

What’s interesting is that this “aspirational” and “truly rich” phenomenon continues all the way down the money scale. In many neighborhood, there are “aspirationals” – people who are pushing themselves into financial ruin to keep up appearances – and people who can actually afford to live there.

The solution to financial success is pretty simple – stop being an “aspirational.”

2 – Everything You Think about Rich Is Wrong
When you step back and look at “aspirationals” from an outsider’s perspective, an interesting phenomenon occurs. Aspirationals are more common than the truly rich by far, so our “pop” idea of what it means to be rich actually comes from people who are financially poor and are making reckless decisions for their future.

Those aspirationals are seeking respect from the wrong group of people. In truth, it doesn’t matter at all what the random person on the street thinks of you, yet it’s the respect of the random person on the street that aspirationals desperately seek.

“But what about dressing for success and the like?” The only people who you should focus on impressing and winning the support of is your professional peer group and community. Their respect is what will actually impact your life. In many – if not most – professional communities, the watch you wear or the car you drive doesn’t matter one little iota.

3 – Do the Shoes Make the Man?
Many people argue that by doing things like dressing for success, they’re creating the groundwork for success. People will trust and respect them and money will flow their way. So they focus on the material elements – they focus on the perfect shoes, the perfect suit, the perfect handbag, the perfect car, and so on. After all, gotta look good, right?

Yet, while that person is focusing their energies and resources on appearing rich, others are focusing their energy on building the skills that will pay the bills. While one person is buying expensive shoes and keeping up appearances at the country club, the other person is practicing their speeches and coming up with a better business plan.

In the end, one of these two people will find lasting wealth. Will it be the glossy suit with nothing underneath, or the person who put in the time to prepare?

Don’t put the appearance of success before success, or else someone who is actually putting in the footwork will grab that brass ring away from you, leaving you with nothing but a mountain of debt. Focus on the skills that pay the bills, not on the bills that bring more bills.

4 – Brother, Do You Have the Time?
Want to know why you’ll often read articles or hear about people who wear expensive things getting extra attention? It’s because having high-end items makes you a target for people who want to drain even more of your money.

Think about it. If two people walk into a jewelry store, with one person dressed in normal clothes and another person dressed to the nines and wearing a $10,000 watch, which one do you think will get more attention from the salespeople – and thus more encouragement to buy a more expensive item than he or she intended to buy? Such “attention” is the type of attention that causes you to walk out of a store with an overpriced item.

If you value your money, you’re better off not appearing affluent in public.

5 – Keeping Up with Your Spirits
Here, Stanley focuses in specifically on one type of product – sspirits – to make a greater point about purchasing habits. People who buy high-end wines and spirits do so because they believe that having a particular brand – a brand that’s been built up with a lot of careful marketing – of liquor will somehow enhance their satisfaction with their lives.

In truth, an expensive brand is often of debatable quality as compared to the “bang for the buck” choice. The premium paid for a luxury brand may offer a bit more quality, but the minute increase in quality is rarely worth the extra price. What people pay for is the “cachet” – the idea that this particular brand will contribute more to the quality of their life than the other brand.

And that’s called marketing, my friends. Nothing more, nothing less.

6 – The Grapes of Wrath
Stanley discovered an interesting correlation between the net worth and the amount people spent on wines. Ignoring the outliers, the more a person spent on a bottle of wine, the lower their net worth was.

Why the focus on wine? More than almost anything else, wine is a prestige-oriented product. There are many, many wines with strong tasting scores well under the $10 threshold, yet many people who are “aspirationals” tend to seek out the prestige wines – vintages with exorbitant costs that are only marginally better than the $10 versions and, even worse, actively turn their noses up at the lower cost vintages.

Such snobbery has a dual effect. Not only does it sap you of your financial strength, it also can cause unwanted negative consequences. Stanley relates a tale in which a person thought they were showing off high class and sophistication by turning up their nose at the $12 wine offered to them and brandishing their own expensive vintage, but in the eyes of the wine offerer, the person was being downright rude and his actions cut off a potentially useful relationship. To put it simply, trying too hard to appear affluent can cut off relationships.

7 – The Road to Happiness
Among millionaires, what automobile manufacturer has the highest loyalty rate? The highest percentage of ownership? The most recent buys?

One might expect to hear names like Mercedes-Benz and BMW here, but in truth, the answers are Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota, respectively. In other words, millionaires aren’t the ones buying the expensive cars. Who is? The “aspirationals” – the broke people pretending to be their idea of what a millionaire is.

You can actually judge people by their cars. If you see a shiny new Mercedes rolling your way, it’s likely that the person inside isn’t rich, they’re just pretending to be rich.

8 – Geeting Out of the Poorhouse
The size of a home is a better predictor of the size of one’s mortgage than the size of one’s net worth.

Stanley actually draws this correlation statistically in this chapter, as well as relating that ratio of financial assets to home value to one’s state of happiness. Guess what? The lower that ratio is – meaning that you’ve got a mortgage so large that your net worth is significantly lower than the value of your home – the less happy you are with your life.

Instead of buying what you think you need, focus on buying what you actually need. We did this very thing at our home, where our two children share a bedroom (and soon the three of them will). They don’t need a bedroom to play in – that’s what the family room is for. Why have that unnecessary extra space? Just so we can store more stuff we don’t need?

9 – All that Glitters Is Not the Millionaire’s Goal
Accumulating wealth is an unhealthy goal in life. A person is much better off with other goals in their life.

Of course, the ability to enjoy all that life has to offer without the need to spend exorbitantly on stuff is a key part of being able to accumulate wealth. Wealth isn’t accumulated on an elaborate European vacation – it’s accumulated by spending a summer vacation camping and visiting museums. Wealth isn’t accumulated with a country club membership – it’s accumulated with a walk in the park with people that you want to be around. Wealth isn’t accumulated from rich mahogany and many leather-bound books – it’s accumulated from a home you feel comfortable in and books you actually read, probably checked out from the library.

Is Stop Acting Rich Worth Reading?
Stop Acting Rich is basically just a somewhat more action-oriented but perhaps slightly less rigorous and thought-provoking book than The Millionaire Next Door. They’re very comparable, as they cover many of the same topics.

From my perspective, it felt like The Millionaire Next Door was broader in scope, while Stop Acting Rich focused in on more specific behavioral issues. For some, that may make Stop Acting Rich more worthwhile; for others, perhaps not.

For me, I didn’t feel like Stop Acting Rich surpassed the original at all. Perhaps it was because the first book introduced the ideas, but this often felt like a re-hash in places, albeit of some excellent ideas. If you’ve never read The Millionaire Next Door, Stop Acting Rich would be an excellent read – if you have, it’s probably redundant.

The Simple Dollar has reviewed hundreds of personal finance, personal growth, and career books. Please check out the full list of Simple Dollar book reviews, alphabetized for your convenience.

Knowing how to be a leader – and using that skill from time to time – opens doors for you no matter what you’re doing in life. It helps your career. It helps your social standing. It creates a positive reputation for you, one that often precedes you. It can even help your family life and personal friendships. In short, leadership can be truly rewarding.

The problem with leadership, though, is that the vast majority of people don’t know how to actually be a leader. For a small number of us, leadership comes easy – a natural extension of who we are. For the rest, though, it’s not obvious at all. We’re held back by our own seeming desire for simplicity (though, sometimes, it’s simpler to lead) and our own lack of self-confidence or sense that we’re not leaders at all.

A long time ago, I was forced into a leadership position on a project that I felt completely unprepared for. A very kind friend in a high place mailed me a copy of this book – Warren Bennis’s On Becoming a Leader – and encouraged me to give it a read. The ideas in this book helped me to step up and actually make the most of the situation as it was handed to me and, since then, I’ve recommended it to several others (as I did in a recent Reader Mailbag, actually).

What makes this book so compelling? Let’s dig in and take a look.

Mastering the Context
Every situation in which one is called to be a leader has some sort of context. The people involved are part of the context, as are the specifics of the situation. Quite often, leaders become too tied to the context of the situation and, as a result, come up with pretty poor leadership decisions. Bennis offers several good and bad examples of how leadership can be destroyed by context. For me, the most potent example was the presidency of George W. Bush – in the context of his political ideology and of the disaster of 9/11, he made choices that were perhaps not the best leadership choices for the United States (I don’t think anyone would argue, whether they be liberal or conservative, that mistakes were made during the Bush years). A positive example of stepping outside of context is Norman Lear – the creator of the seminal sitcom All in the Family. He took the context – sitcoms of the 1960s – and looked not at a situation full of rules, but instead a situation where many of the rules could be broken. That’s what a leader does – he finds ways to break away some of the context, opening up new areas for success. (Incidentally, I think this is why great leaders also have a big dash of creativity.)

Understanding the Basics
Here, Bennis identifies a pretty large handful of traits one will find in a leader: a guiding vision, passion, self-knowledge, candor, maturity, trust, curiosity, and daring. Bennis argues that most of these traits are not ones people are simply born with – they’re usually self-made by a person who pushes themselves and wants to excel at leading others. He goes on to distinguish that there’s a big difference between merely being a manager and being a leader – in fact, he argues that, quite often, an MBA makes a person a good manager but a pretty poor leader. A manager manages and maintains the status quo – a leader leads people somewhere great.

Knowing Yourself
In order to lead, you must know yourself intimately. You have to know what you’re truly capable of and what you must ask others to help you with. Without such intimate self-knowledge, you can never effectively lead because you’re incapable of understanding how to select people to fill the roles you most need filled. Bennis points towards four key lessons one must learn in terms of knowing oneself:

You are your own best teacher. Pay attention to the things that work for you and don’t work for you. Don’t listen to what everyone else says – try things for yourself and see if they fly.

Accept responsibility. Blame no one. If something goes wrong under your watch, it’s your fault, period. Don’t blame others for it – step up and take responsibility. Yes, you can make moves to make sure that this doesn’t happen again, but the failure is your responsibility if you’re the leader.

You can learn anything you want to learn. Knowledge can be acquired by anyone if they’re persistent. Don’t use ignorance as a crutch. Instead, accept that you are ignorant about some things and step up to educate yourself.

True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience. Look back at what you’ve accomplished and try to figure out how you accomplished it. Similarly, look back on your failures and determine what you did wrong to cause that bad result.

Knowing the World
Almost all of the worthwhile learning that people do comes outside the classroom. It comes from losing yourself in an experience, reading books because you want to read them, trying new things because you want to try them, and reflecting on all of this stuff, adding it to your tool belt. People who choose not to do this are actively choosing not to be leaders – they’re happy being managers.

Read a book. Travel. Meet new people. Build a friendship. Find a mentor. Mess something up. You learn from these things, not from rote memorization in a classroom.

Operating on Instinct
Every decision we make in life is based on incomplete information. At some point, we have to decide that it’s good enough and go ahead with whatever decision we have at hand. Our ability to still make good decisions even with incomplete information relies on instinct – a sense of what the right decision is that comes from inside. Often, that voice inside of us is built out of a lot of learning about the world, a lot of experience of both success and failure. Learning trains our instincts so that we can make better decisions with less information.

A leader, in the end, is a person others rely on to make the difficult decisions and set the direction for everyone. A well-honed instinct is key to being that kind of leader, and a good leader relies on and trusts that voice inside of himself.

Deploying Yourself: Strike Hard, Try Everything
Every single one of us fails in life. The difference between leaders and others is whether or not they pick themselves up and try again. Do you face your fears? Do you again try the things you failed at in the past, or do you avoid them like the plague? If you try something and it goes badly, do you avoid it in the future or do you relish the challenge of improving in that area?

To put it simply, a leader does not back down from a challenge. They don’t allow fear to control what they do. Instead, if something is scary or deeply challenging, it’s something they focus even harder on achieving.

One particular quote at the end of this chapter really struck me.

The means of expression are the steps to leadership:

1. Reflection leading to resolution.
2. Resolution leading to perspective.
3. Perspective leading to point of view.
4. Point of view leading to tests and measures.
5. Tests and measures leading to desire.
6. Desire leading to mastery.
7. Mastery leading to strategic thinking.
8. Strategic thinking leading to full self-expression.
9. The synthesis of full self-expression = leadership.

In other words, it all begins with reflecting on your successes and failures and building from there.

Moving Through Chaos
It’s often thought that leaders don’t have the same crises that we do. We think they don’t have to deal with office politics, layoffs, demotions, fighting for promotions, and so on. We think they view the world as a set of chess pieces to play with as they wish, that “strategic vision” means playing games with people.

In truth, most leaders had to overcome a great deal of career adversity to get where they’re at today. The only difference is that, at every opportunity, they took the opportunity to try to grow as a person and improve their instincts instead of complaining and commiserating about their hard luck. A trial by fire can either burn you or forge you – leaders are forged.

Getting People on Your Side
The key to getting people on your side is to be trustworthy and to constantly show that their trust is well-founded. Bennis identifies four key elements of such trust.

1. Constancy. You stay the course for the people that rely on you. When problems come, you handle them, but through it all, you maintain a steady direction and don’t descend into chaotic behavior.

2. Congruity. If you say something, you mean it, and it shows in your actions. If you expect something of your followers, you expect it of yourself first and you follow through with it.

3. Reliability. When it really counts, you’re there for the people who need you.

4. Integrity. When you make a promise or a commitment to someone else, you follow through with it.

Organization Can Help – or Hinder
There are times in which the group you’re intending to lead simply will not be led. If the people involved don’t care or they have a completely different direction in mind than the one you’re providing or the bureaucracy in the system is so intense that no amount of bushwhacking will clear it, no leadership can help the situation.

Instead, a leader should attempt to learn from this situation. What can be done to end the situation as painlessly as possible? What can be done to avoid such situations in the future? Every failure is a lesson.

Is On Becoming a Leader Worth Reading?
On Becoming a Leader pretty much delivers what the title promises. It’s the best discussion I’ve ever read on things a person can tangibly do to improve their leadership skills. If you’re interested in improving them, this one’s pretty much a must-read.

The question comes down to whether or not you personally find it valuable to work on your leadership skills. My perspective is that most lives have avenues that can be improved through leadership – it helps you build better relationships with others in the workplace, in the community, and in one’s family if they’re able to step up and be a leader when the situation calls for it.

The Simple Dollar has reviewed hundreds of personal finance, personal growth, and career books. Please check out the full list of Simple Dollar book reviews, alphabetized for your convenience.

Ever since I first gave it a sincere read-through in late 2006, The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing has been my go-to guide for investment advice, the first place I turn when I have a question about investing. My paperback copy is now well-worn and thoroughly enjoyed.

Recently, a follow-up (of sorts) has appeared on the scene. This time around, however, the book is more of a collaborative effort, containing chapters written by different authors who focus in on specific topics. What they all have in common, however, is that they are all “Bogleheads,” referring to people who believe strongly in the investment philosophy of John Bogle, the chairman of the Vanguard Investment Group.

To put it simply, The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning focuses on a fairly conservative investment philosophy, one that doesn’t involve extremely risky investments or exposure to cataclysmic failure in the face of a market downturn. The Bogleheads’ philosophy instead mostly focuses on careful balancing of one’s portfolio (so that a sudden stock market swan dive won’t ruin your future) and investments designed to match the market at a low cost instead of gambling on a chance to beat the market that has a high cost attached to it.

Intrigued? Let’s dig in and see what the book has to say. I’ve broken this down into individual chapters and have labeled each chapter with the chapter’s author.

The Retirement Planning Process
Thomas L. Romens
THe book opens with a chapter that discusses the difference between saving for retirement – something every adult should be doing as soon as they enter the workforce – and planning for retirement. Saving merely means socking away money into something designed for long-term growth. Planning for retirement, on the other hand, involves knowing in great detail what one’s retirement will look like – standard of living, personal goals in retirement, and what assets are needed to get a person to that point. During the saving phase, a person should sock away as much as he or she can, so that the planning phase is much simpler and less prone to risk (since, without adequate savings all the way along, retirement planning will have to involve significant risk or a significant extension of one’s working life).

Understanding Taxes
Norman S. Janoff
Taxes are confusing (and I believe they’re unnecessarily so). Mostly, this chapter just highlights most of the areas of tax law that are really relevant to individual retirement planning. Since the amount one pays in taxes has a direct impact on how much money one needs to have in retirement (the more taxes you’ll have to pay, the more money you’ll need), understanding taxes is vital. This is mostly just a great little reference to the different taxes that most of us are subject to.

Individual Taxable Savings Accounts
Dan Kohn
The first retirement savings option that’s discussed in the book is the individual taxable savings account. These can vary in type from savings accounts at your local bank to investment accounts at a brokerage house. These all work in more or less the same way – you put in money you’ve earned from your career after taxes, pay taxes on any gains that you make with that money, but you have the freedom to withdraw it and do what you want with it without any additional penalty. Such taxable accounts have one very big advantage – flexibility.

Individual Retirement Arrangements
Jim Dahle
Another option for a person wanting to take ahold of their own financial destiny are individual retirement arrangements, like Roth IRAs. These are accounts you can set up with brokerage houses that take advantage of specific tax laws to either defer your tax payments on your earnings to retirement or, in the case of Roth IRAs, eliminate them entirely. Typically, such accounts are set up directly by you with a brokerage house. Usually, you set up an automatic investment schedule and you’re completely responsible for the account, from investment choices to withdrawals. Thus, such options tend to provide much more flexibility than employer-based accounts (like 401(k)s), but tend to require a bit more effort on your part.

Defined Benefit Employer Retirement Account
The Finance Buff
The title of this chapter refers to pension plans – and if you have one, you’re lucky. Your primary concern should be how these plans are insured against the health of your business. What happens to your pension plan if your business fails? Most modern plans have some sort of insurance against this – often, the plan is run by a third party that specializes in such plans. If you have this plan, it’s usually very easy to understand as it clearly outlines the exact benefits you’ll receive in retirement.

Defined Contribution Plans
Dan Kohn
For most of us, this means 401(k) or 403(b) plans. Such plans allow us to put in pre-tax money (meaning money is taken out of our paycheck before taxes and we only pay taxes on the remainder) and then pay taxes on it only when we withdraw it in retirement. Such plans usually also include some matching funds from our employer, which is essentially free money for retirement. If you can get that free money, get it now – start saving immediately if you have access to matching funds from your employer. If not, you may want to consider your 401(k) or 403(b) plan to be a backup and look at individual retirement arrangements, as they will minimize your tax burden in retirement.

Single-Premium Immediate Annuities
Dan Smith
Annuities are actually a form of insurance, in which you pay a premium regularly over a long period of time in order to ensure some specific amount of income in retirement. Annuities can be valuable tools, but they offer some risk in the form of insurer default (the insurance company going out of business). They also leave no legacy to your children. However, they do offer a solid return on investment provided the insurer is a stable company with a long history.

Basic Investing Principles
Bob Davis
You can’t control the stock market, nor can you consistently beat it over a long period of time (as a small-scale investor, anyway). However, there are many strategies you can use to ensure a stable and steady return on the money you save for retirement. One important part of investing is understanding how much risk you can tolerate, which involves how many years you are away from your goal as well as your personal psychology. Rebalancing (and knowing how to rebalance) your portfolio is also vital, especially as you approach retirement age. Costs are also important – if you can keep costs low, you keep more money for retirement in your own pocket.

Investing for Retirement
David Grabiner and Alex Frakt
In order to invest successfully for retirement, you need to have a plan. That involves calculating exactly how much money you’ll need in retirement, determining how much (realistically) you can safely earn each year in your investments, and then using that to figure out how much you need to be saving each year. Just having a plan isn’t enough, though – you need to implement it and then continue to follow through with it. Take the time to actually write out your investment plan in detail – putting it down in writing makes it concrete.

Funding Your Retirement Accounts
David Grabiner and Ian Forsythe
If the first step is to begin saving, where do I begin? Where do I start putting my money if all of these options are available? The first step is to start living within your means – spending less than you earn consistently – and putting your money towards repaying high interest debt. The only retirement savings you should be doing while doing this is in accounts where you receive an employer match. Once that’s done, move some of the money you were using for debt repayment into other plans. Use a Roth IRA if you’re in a low tax bracket – otherwise, use a tax deferred plan like a 401(k). The chapter goes into great detail about additional options as well.

Understanding Social Security
Dick Schreitmueller
Here, Schreitmueller gives a great overview of how Social Security works today in very readable terms – this can be really useful information for people near retirement age now. However, I find this advice is less and less useful the further you are from retirement, simply because I do not believe that Social Security will be a viable option for retirees in thirty years or so. I’m planning for a retirement without Social Security – if it happens to be there, I’ll look at it as icing on the cake.

Withdrawal Strategies
Carol Tomkovich
The amount you withdraw each year from your retirement accounts doesn’t have to be set in stone at all. It can vary greatly depending on your actual needs – they might be more or less than you expect – and whether or not you’ve found a new job or income stream. Many retirees find that, with so much idle time on their hands, they need to find something to do with their time and, for many of them, that means a second career or a new job. Also, some older folks will realize that if they conserve their retirement savings well, they may be able to pass on a legacy to their children and grandchildren – that legacy becomes very important to them.

Early Retirement
Jeff McComas
Everyone follows a different route to retirement. Few people simply walk out the door and into the waiting arms of Social Security on their 65th birthday. Quite a few people retire earlier than that (or at least jump into a second career). There are several tools people can use to handle an earlier-than-usual retirement: penalty-free withdrawals from a Roth IRA (since you can withdraw the balance at any time), self-employed pension programs, sapping your home equity, and so on. Each option has advantages and disadvantages and are worth exploring on their own.

Income Replacement
Lee E. Marshall
What about the unexpected? What if you are injured, acquire a long-term illness, or unexpectedly die? If your current financial state would cause such events to be completely disastrous, you need to look seriously at insurance solutions to protect you and your family against such outcomes. Long-term disability insurance and life insurance are all important to at least consider and evaluate.

Health Insurance
Lee E. Marshall
On the flip side of that coin is care for illnesses from which you may recover (at least partially) after a period, such as cancer. Again, if you can’t afford the costs for such incidences out of pocket (and most of us cannot), you need to evaluate insurance for such situations. Health insurance and long-term care insurance are both worth investigation to keep your family safe and secure.

Essentials of Estate Planning
Robert A. Stermer
Estate planning can be really complicated. Make sure that you, at the very least, know what durable powers of attorney, living wills, wills, and trusts are and which of those you need to have for your financial situation. It is never too early to do this kind of planning – even a simple will can aid the people who survive you in the event of something untimely occurring to you.

Estate and Gift Taxes
Robert A. Stermer
If you leave behind even a moderately-sized amount of money, there’s a good chance that a significant portion of that legacy will be eaten up by transfer taxes and estate taxes. Such taxes are confusing and often unclear to the layperson. If you are planning on leaving behind a significant amount of money to others, it’s well worth your while to study such taxes thoroughly – this chapter really only gives a brief overview of things and helps you identify whether or not you should dig into the topic.

Seeking Help from Professionals
Dale C. Maley and Lauren Vignec
There are many, many finance professionals out there who would love to have your business as you piece through these issues. Of course, muddying the water are individuals who are simply out to line their own pockets by collecting commissions on sub-par investments, as well as others who are quite happy to run up a big pile of fees. The first step is for you to learn as much as you possibly can without a professional so that you know exactly what you do need from a professional. Once you’ve reached that point, you should be able to formulate the exact questions you need answers for, which you can then take to a financial professional of your choosing. The chapter provides an excellent guide for finding one.

Divorce and Other Financial Disasters
David Rankine
Divorce sometimes happens and it can be a real financial burden. One option is to sign a prenuptial agreement to protect both parties and make the divorce process easier (if it happens). Without it, the best route of attack is to simply incorporate the realities of your divorce into your retirement savings – likely, it means that you’ll have to begin saving a larger portion of your income. Another important note from this chapter: most retirement savings are exempt from the claims of creditors, so if creditors are knocking at your door, don’t strip your retirement savings to appease them.

Is The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning Worth Reading?
If you’re of any age and a little worried about your retirement (especially in the light of the 2008 financial mess) and are willing to actually invest the time to learn about what retirement investment means and how it works, The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning is the book for you. It’s thoroughly well-written, has a consistent set of ideas behind it, does a great job of breaking down concepts into understandable pieces, and leads right into sensible action.

Admittedly, I’m partial to the book due to the philosophy. My own investing ideas are very similar to those of the Bogleheads – I believe in buying low cost index funds for pretty much any long term investment purpose. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning goes far beyond that, though, explaining why one would do that and how it works in terms of planning for a successful retirement.

Be aware, though – this book is fairly heavy. It’s quite readable, but it’s not breezy beach reading. It’ll take you some time to read through it. But if you give this book your time and attention for several evenings and think about what’s being said in terms of your own life – and then turn some of the ideas into action – you’ll find yourself in a much better place for retirement.

This may just be the newest addition to my bookshelf.

Much of the material up to this point in Never Eat Alone occurs offline, in face to face meetings.

But, as you sit there reading this article, the obvious is true. Many of our interactions today take place online. We’re hyperconnected.

Just fifteen years ago, when I was in high school, I would have to stay home waiting by the phone as people played phone tag to make plans. Conversations were infrequent and the vast majority of socialization happened face to face. Today, most teenagers are in constant contact with each other via texting. The vast majority of their socialization takes place through social networking and instant messaging protocols.

That’s a tremendous change, and it’s rippling throughout our world. Quite a lot of my communication with others happens via email and Skype. Thanks to sites like Facebook and Twitter, people can get to know others quite well without ever meeting face to face.

Ferrazzi digs into this a bit in the closing chapter of the book.

Community and Alliances
As communication becomes easier and easier, alliances and relationships will become ever more important. On page 291:

Rugged individualism may have ruled for much of the nineteenth and twentieth century. But community and alliances will rule in the twenty-first century. In the digital era, when the Internet has broken down geographical boundaries and connected hundreds of millions of people and computers around the world, there’s no reason to live and work in isolation. We’ve come to realize, again, that success is not contingent on cool technology or venture capital; it’s dependent on whom you know and how you work with them. We’ve rediscovered that the real key to profit is working well with other people.

The vast majority of my work is conversation.

My day is usually filled with reading tons of emails and comments. I’ll then take from those emails and comments some ideas on what people are thinking about, and those provide the seed for future articles.

I’ll spend the day working on articles that are seeded by readers. In essence, these are responses – continuations of the conversation. I’ll post them, and they themselves will receive comment.

The conversation continues.

At my previous job, I did a lot of individual work, but there was still a huge amount of collaboration and conversation involved. I would email other workers for assistance. I would communicate with our clients for feedback. I would communicate with my boss when formulating future directions.

Communication is the key to everything. Working well with others is the one skill, above all, that’s valuable today. Master your interpersonal skills and communication skills and you’ve become much, much more valuable, no matter what you’re doing.

The Rebirth of Unions
Ferrazzi forecasts an interesting development on page 293:

Old style labor unions and guilds are showing signs of revitalization. As the outsourcing of jobs outside the United States continues, and more and more of us become free agents, Americans are finding strength in membership to something larger than themselves. We’re giving our loyalty and trust not to our companies but to our peers.

I don’t believe that the idea of what a union was in the twentieth century will continue to hold. Those unions are dinosaurs, large, dying behemoths locked in a struggle of mutual assured destruction with other dying behemoth corporations.

Instead, the future of unions is in actually caring about your peers and helping them to succeed directly. It won’t be some collective bargainer that you pay to negotiate a slightly better wage or better conditions for you. It’ll be a good relationship with the guy in the other department who will help you out when you need it.

I’m about as “free agent” as one can get. Yet, I’m part of an organization much like this – LifeRemix. The handful of people in this small group are peers. We all write (in various media) materials that strive to help others succeed in life. Because of that, we often have similar experiences and utilize similar resources.

By sharing those experiences and resources with each other, all of us in that group benefit. I’ve established great interpersonal relationships with many of them virtually and I look forward to meeting many of those people in the future.

What Is Our Legacy?
After all of this, what are we leaving behind in this world? Ferrazzi digs into this a bit on page 293:

Certainly, some of us will tally success in terms of income and promotions. Others will cite their newfound celebrity or the exciting expertise that they’ve amassed. For others still, it will be the fabulous dinner parties they throw or the aspirational contacts they’ve befriended.

But will such success feel empty? Instead of being surrounded by a loving family and a trusted circle of friends, will you only have colleagues and clients?

Sooner or later, in one way or another, we all will ask ourselves these questions. Moreover, we’ll look back on our life and wonder, What is my legacy? What have I done that is meaningful?

I don’t like to think of my own mortality. Such thoughts make me uncomfortable.

However, I do wonder (quite often, really) what my mark on this world will be.

I’m lucky in that The Simple Dollar has reached a lot of people in a positive way. I’ve read tons of emails from people who have begun turning their financial life around. I also have a book in print and another on the way.

I also have the legacy of my children. I strive to raise them well and I think (or is it hope?) that they’re starting off in the right fashion.

But what beyond that? What can I do with my life that will help as many other lives as possible?

It’s something I puzzle over all the time, and it’s starting to guide me more and more.

Some Final Thoughts
Quite a few people were surprised when I chose to dig so deeply into Never Eat Alone here on The Simple Dollar. After all, this is a personal finance blog. Shouldn’t I be talking about investments or saving money on ketchup?

Here’s the truth. I believe that successful money management comes about as a result of success in a lot of different aspects of life – and one major part of that is the relationships you build with others. Do you have a lot of people you can call a friend, both in personal and professional circles? These people provide companionship, advice, encouragement, and opportunities, almost at every turn.

In short, they’re integral to your career. They’re integral to opening personal and professional doors for you. They’re integral in helping you through the hard times in life.

People without such relationships are often in a tough spot. They have no one to call if they lose their job. They can’t organize a party when they need help re-shingling their roof. They never have the opportunity to meet the leaders in their field because they’re never invited in the door.

That’s the whole point of Never Eat Alone. Successful relationships with other people often make or break the success you experience in your own life, not just professionally, but personally, too.

For those of us who aren’t naturally socially adept, Never Eat Alone is a powerful handbook for doing just that. Even if you don’t agree with all of the ideas and tactics presented, the book is always thought provoking and it’s always pushing in the direction of building more and better relationships with the people all around you.

That, my friends, is a recipe for success in life.

Other Entries
Here are the fifteen earlier entries in the Never Eat Alone book club series. Enjoy!

Don’t Keep Score (chapters 1 and 2)
Build It Before You Need It (chapters 3 and 4)
The Genius of Audacity (chapters 5 and 6)
Do Your Homework (chapters 7 and 8)
Managing the Gatekeeper (chapters 9 and 10)
Share Your Passions (chapters 11 and 12)
Follow Up or Fail (chapters 13 and 14)
Expanding Your Circle (chapters 15 and 16)
The Art of Small Talk (chapters 17 and 18)
Social Arbitrage (chapters 19 and 20)
Anchor Tenants (chapters 21 and 22)
Build and Broadcast (chapters 23 and 24)
The Write Stuff (chapters 25 and 26)
Build It and They Will Come (chapters 27 and 28)
Find Mentors, Find Mentees, Repeat (chapters 29 and 30)

Just over a year ago, I wrote an article entitled “How to Find and Utilize a Mentor, No Matter What You’re Doing.” In it, I discussed strategies for identifying a mentor in one’s community and adopting that person as your mentor.

What I didn’t discuss in detail was the value of a mentor. Why would you want to have one?

The most valuable reason to have a mentor, I’ve found, is that a great mentor is a boundless source of advice that actually works. If you manage to get a successful elder statesman as your mentor, they likely have forgotten more about your area of interest than you’ll ever know. That wisdom can be incredibly helpful to you as you start out and grow into your area of interest.

Beyond that, a mentor can be a great source for connections and other resources to help you grow. They can put the word out for your fledgling career or entrepreneurial endeavor.

I believe a mentor is one of the most valuable things a person can find in their career or entrepreneurial journey.

The Historical Nature of Mentoring
On page 274, Ferrazzi puts mentors in a historical context:

No process in history has done more to facilitate the exchange of information, skills, wisdom, and contacts than mentoring. Young men and women learned their trade by studying as apprentices under their respective craftsmen. Young artists developed their individual style only after years working under elder masters. New priests apprenticed for a decade or more with older priests to become wise religious men themselves. When finally these men and women embarked on their own, they had the knowledge and the connections to succeed in their chosen field.

My belief is that the world would be better off if we returned to this sort of apprenticeship in most career fields. There are very few career fields today that do not require a pretty large skillset and isn’t benefitted by quite a lot of additional knowledge. Incorporating some form of apprenticeship into a field means that new entrants learn all of these things under the careful eye of a person who has learned them.

Yes, in many cases, apprenticeship already exists informally. I had several strong mentors during my early years that taught me many, many things. Yet, even then, it was limited. They were mentors to me out of the goodness of their heart, taking time out of their busy schedules to teach me things. On the other hand, as a proper apprentice, one would actually be very strongly tied to one’s master, doing much of their grunt work but also fine-tuning one’s skills and knowledge base over a long period of time.

Mentoring alone is incredibly helpful and it has spawned many a successful professional. Apprenticeship offers even more, yet we seem to have abandoned it culturally due to our impatience and our drive for profits. Is that a good thing? For quarterly returns, yes it is. For long term growth of skill-based fields, it’s not at all.

Everyone Has Something to Offer
In some ways, almost everyone you meet in life can be a mentor. On page 276, Ferrazzi spells this idea out:

The fact is, from my father’s perspective, everyone had something to offer. When he’d go out for his weekly sit-down at a local diner with his friends, he took me along. He wanted me to be comfortable with older, more experienced people and to never fear seeking their help or asking them questions. When my dad would show up with me in tow on a Friday night, his buddies would say, “Here’s Pete [my father's nickname] and Re-Pete [my nickname to his buddies].”

This passage really struck me because it points to something really important about mentorship: you can learn valuable lessons from almost anyone.

Here’s an example. For several years, I lived in an apartment about three miles from my workplace. It was in a large town that had solid mass transit available, so I would go out of my apartment building each day, walk a little ways, and there would be a bus stop. I’d wait for the bus there and ride it to work.

Most mornings, the same small group of people would be there at the same time and, over time, I got to know them. Many of them were professionals in other departments at the same place of employment. From those people, I learned a lot. They taught me how to speak up. They taught me how to diminish my intimidation factor (I’m a very tall, broad shouldered guy and can inadvertently intimidate people on occasion) and how to seem more friendly. They taught me about the nuances of office politics and gave me lots of advice on how to deal with difficult situations I was facing.

And they were just people at the bus stop. Yet, still, they were useful mentors who taught me a lot.

When you keep your ears and eyes closed, you miss out on a lot of valuable lessons.

Getting a Mentor
How exactly do you build up a relationship with someone who might be a primary mentor of yours. On pages 281 and 282, Ferrazzi offers up some strong ideas:

The best way to approach utility is to give help first, and not ask for it. If there is someone whose knowledge you need, find a way to be of use to that person. Consider their needs and how you can assist them. If you can’t help them specifically, perhaps you can contribute to their charity, company, or community. You have to be prepared to give back to your mentors and have them know that from the outset. [...]

If, however, there are no immediate opportunities for help, you must be prudent and conscious of the imposition you’re placing on that person. Almost every day, some ambitions young man or woman sends me an email that states all too directly, “I want a job.” Or, “I think you can help me. Take me on as your mentee.” I shudder at how deeply these young folks misunderstand the process. If they’re going to get my help, and they haven’t even offered their help in return, then at minimum they should attempt to endear themselves to me. Tell me why you’re special. Tell me what we have in common. Express gratitude, excitement, and passion.

I get emails all the time from bloggers who have just started a blog. They have maybe two or three posts up and they write to me essentially demanding that I take the time to visit their site and give them thorough feedback on what they’ve done.

In essence, these people are asking me to be their mentor. They’re asking me to give my experience and careful advice to them. Often, it’s in exchange for nothing, and just as often, they’ve given me nothing in return for it, not even the basic start of a conversation.

Now, if they happen to be presenting a blog that might be interesting to me, I’ll check it out, but most of the time, I just delete these emails. The people making such requests do not want to establish any sort of relationship. They just want to be handed a recipe to get themselves a few more page views.

On the other hand, several much wiser bloggers have started out by emailing me questions and observations about The Simple Dollar. They’ve written long posts, linking back to my site and debating what I have written. After an extensive conversation, then they might ask for some specific help, and at that point, I’m very happy to oblige.

The role of the mentee isn’t just to take. Every relationship is an exchange, and if you’re not offering to exchange anything, the other person likely won’t offer anything, either.

The Myth of a Work-Life Balance
On page 287, Ferrazzi attacks the idea of a balance between professional and personal life:

When it became clear to me that the key to my life was the relationships in it, I found there was no longer a need to compartmentalize work from, say, family or friends. I could spend my birthday at a business conference and be surrounded with warm and wonderful friends, as I recently did, or I could be at home [...] with equally close friends to celebrate.

To put it simply, once you figure out what your true central values are in life, the boundary between “work” and “personal” becomes a non-issue. In every aspect of your life, you just seek those true central values and do whatever is most in line with them.

For me, my central values are my children and my personal and intellectual growth. Almost every activity I choose to do, whether it’s work related or personal, seeks to push me in one of those two directions. I try hard to grow intellectually due to my work, and I push through the drudgery to earn income so I can support my children. I’ll spend long afternoons playing with my children and taking them to intellectually-stretching events or playing mentally challenging games with them or engaging them in social situations. My favorite pastime with friends is to play a game with them that requires me to think. I’ll happily invite anyone over that’s interesting to me and makes me grow somehow as a person, whether I know them through my professional work or they’re a close personal friend.

In the end, what’s the boundary? My only boundary of any sort is that I’ll turn off my cell phone if I want to engage in a focused activity with my children. Aside from that, pretty much anything goes.

I know what’s important to me and everything balances on that. The details? I’ll figure them out as I go along if my central values are in the right place.

There Is No Equation
What if you have multiple central values and you try to balance them? Ferrazzi, on page 287, argues that there is no equation that can be balanced:

The kind of false idea of balance as some sort of an equation, that you could take this many hours from one side of your life and give it to this other side, flew out the window. And with it went all the stress of trying to achieve that perfect state of equilibrium we read and hear so much about.

In essence, what Ferrazzi discovered is that the best way to spend your time is the way that mixes your various core values and interests the best.

One of the key highlights in my life is inviting friends over. I love to socialize. I love preparing meals for guests. I also love conversation with intelligent people and engaging in thought-provoking activities with them. This balances several key values in my life all at once.

What I learned, though, is that I get even more value out of this if I simply disregard the professional-personal barrier in terms of who I invite. For instance, the thought of inviting J.D. and his wife to a dinner party with several of my own personal friends sounds like it’d be incredibly enjoyable for everyone. There is no line between personal and professional there at all – it’s just people I like that I find interesting. The only difference is in how I connected to them.

I spend my time looking for activities with synergy throughout the various core values and passions in my life. I love taking my children to the grocery store, for example. It provides countless teaching opportunities, a fair amount of playfulness, the ability to riff on my passion for cooking, plus countless opportunities to jot down ideas for posts for The Simple Dollar. Where’s the line between personal and professional there? To put it simply, there isn’t one.

There’s just me.

Who Are You Spending Time With?
Ferrazzi ties these points together in an interesting way on page 288:

If you buy into the myth of balance (the one that sees life as an equation), as I once did, the answers to such questions as “If I’m so ‘accomplished,’ why aren’t I having more fun?” or “If I’m so ‘organized,’ why do I feel so out of control?” is to “simplify,” “compartmentalize,” or “reduce” your life into its most essential components.

So we try to save time by eating our lunches at our desk. We have less serendipitous conversations with colleagues, strangers, and other “nonessentials” at the water cooler. We consolidate our schedules to include only the most important actions.

People tell us, “If you just get more organized, if you strike a balance between work and home, and limit yourself to the important people in your life, you’ll feel better.” That’s just totally misguided. What they should be saying is “I gotta get a life filled with people I love.” The problem, as I see it, isn’t what you’re working on, it’s whom you’re working with.

Think about it this way. How many of your coworkers would you choose to spend time with if you didn’t work with them? If that number is very low, then it’s likely you have a strong desire to separate work and personal life. If it’s high, it’s likely that you do fill your social calendar with these people and thus you have a naturally balanced life, balanced in the way you want.

Ferrazzi’s argument isn’t that you should devote your life to work – I know that’s what at least a few readers thought when they read this. Instead, he’s saying devote all of your time to what you enjoy doing and the people you enjoy doing it with. Boundaries aren’t all that important.

The more time you find yourself spending doing things you don’t like doing with people you don’t like spending time with, the lower your quality of life is. There’s no paycheck worth chasing that’s worth sacrificing so much of the happiness in your life.

On Saturday, we’ll tackle the final chapter – “Welcome to the Connected Age” – and I’ll share some final thoughts.

Since starting The Simple Dollar, I’ve gradually developed the belief that the reason many people get into financial trouble is that their lives become overwhelmingly complicated. Attempting to balance a career, a marriage, a family, relationships with friends, hobbies, community responsibilities, and so forth can pretty much drain a person, making them more susceptible to peer pressure and advertising’s influence. The end result is that they spend more than they should for a mix of reasons: emotional support, escapism, a desire to live the quality of life they think they deserve because of all of their hard work.

In truth, though, people in that type of high-pressure situation who seek some sort of quality improvement in their life are best served not by charging themselves into debt, but by dialing things back a little. Letting go of the little, unimportant things opens up the time and the emotional room for things that are really important – time with family, time with hobbies and personal passions, and time with loved ones and friends.

I know this from experience. My reaction to my early professional life – particularly immediately following the birth of my first child – was to spend with reckless abandon. I thought I should have a better life than I had because of my hard work and because of the lifestyle of my friends, so I spent money to chase that mirage. Along the way, though, I just became unhappier and eventually I found myself trapped in a ridiculously complicated life with more debt than I could handle.

The solution was simplifying my life, of which debt reduction and elimination was just one piece.

Recently, I picked up a copy of Janet Luhr’s Simple Living Guide, which basically has the same message: the best solution for the difficulties of modern life is to simplify things. It’s a pretty hefty book – nearly magazine-sized in height and width and almost 500 pages in length – but it’s loaded with countless ideas on simplifying one’s life, which often ties directly into a stronger personal finance situation. Let’s wade through the book a bit.

1 – Time
Luhrs’ argument here is that many of us have jammed our schedules so tight with stuff that on the rare occasions when we do have free time, we collapse in a heap of exhaustion and do something of little or no personal value to ourselves, like channel surfing. This arrangement devalues our time – most of the time, we’re so packed with stuff we barely enjoy it, and the rest of the time we do stuff that has very little personal value.

Luhrs suggests a different approach. Her first suggestion is to focus on one thing at a time, completing it well. Multitasking should be held to a minimum, because multitasking means that you’re only giving a slice of your attention and focus to things and are thus doing them at a low level of quality – not a standard that’s good for your sense of well-being. If this new approach means cutting some stuff out, so be it. The ramifications of this approach are pretty widespread – it leads to more pride and satisfaction in one’s work and free time and also leads to an elevated sense of quality in life. If you’re happy with what you’re doing, you have a much lower tendency to crumple and waste time at the end of the day – instead, you find ways to keep it up and spend that time on things personally important to you.

2 – Money
Debt is dangerous to a person’s spirit. It introduces living requirements into your life – you can’t lose your job, you can’t take challenging and rewarding risks with your career, and you move at a much slower pace towards the bigger goals you have in life. Debt is the enemy of simple living. Thus, in order to simplify your life, you have to boot the debt out.

How do you do that? The easiest recipe is to simply spend less than you earn and apply the difference to eliminating debt and building an emergency fund to keep crises at bay. Once that’s done, keep up the “spend less than you earn” mantra and apply that difference towards saving for the big dreams you have in life. Things are much simpler when you’ve got a fat bank account and no debt.

3 – Inner Simplicity
Mental exhaustion is another danger for many people. Jamming your mind full of complex thoughts and ideas and organizing lots of separate pieces of information constantly is a pure drain on your mental energy – and over time, you simply feel worn out by it, even though you weren’t exerting yourself physically.

Luhrs’ solution to this problem is to take time out without mental demands on yourself. She suggests meditation and/or prayer. I’ve found both to be a big help for me, particularly when it seems like I can least afford the spare time. Just stopping for a short period and clearing your mind of thought, of the mental debris of the day, goes a long ways towards making everything seem substantially more manageable.

4 – Work
For many of is, work is drudgery. It’s just a way to bring in the money to pay the bills. On a good day, it brings us a bit of joy – on the bad days, though, it’s awful, filled with politics and pettiness and other things we don’t enjoy. Yet we do it anyway.

Unsurprisingly, such an environment is a major obstacle to simple living. It drains our mental energy and saps our spirit. The best way to avoid it is to get out of debt (reducing the financial hold) and then seeking work that genuinely makes us happy. In other words, frugality becomes a gateway to the kind of happiness that we want to achieve.

5 – Simple Pleasures and Romance
Quite often, the joys in our life that bring us consistent happiness are the simple pleasures – breakfast in bed, a delicious cup of coffee, a glass of wine, an evening spent playing a game with your spouse. If we seek out these simple pleasures instead of investing tons of time and resources into enormous things that don’t generate nearly the enjoyment for the effort, we’re better off.

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, simple pleasures become less pleasureful if they’re allowed to become completely routine. The pleasure of the morning coffee, for example, becomes an ordinary routine if done over and over again. The way to keep pleasures pleasureful is to mix up that routine. Don’t have a morning coffee every day (or have cheap coffee every day and a really good cup on occasion). Alter your evening routines all the time. Take a warm bath once for every ten showers. Simple pleasures are enjoyable because they break routines, not because they establish them.

6 – Virtues
What essential values do you hold most dear in your life? What virtues do you consider to be the most important? Living your life with these values and virtues at the center brings a certain amount of simplicity and joy from every element of your life.

If you value truth, for example, a life filled with lots of little white lies makes your life unhappy and needlessly complex. Break through this by sticking close to your virtue. Eliminate those little white lies.

The same goes for any virtue you hold in high esteem in your life. Strive to actually act through that virtue as much as you possibly can. The psychic rewards are tremendous.

7 – Families
If you made the choice to have a family – get married and/or have children – one of the most powerful things you can do with your time and energy is to spend it on them or with them. Families mean responsibility and joy at the same time, and the only way to live up to that responsibility and gain that joy is to invest in it with your time and energy.

Plan family-oriented events where everyone spends time together – I’m a big fan of “family game night.” Plan dates with your partner. Do little things to remind the people in your family that you care. Eat meals at home together, all at the same table. The reward? Better relationships with the people at the center of your life.

8 – Holidays
Many people try to “make up” for a year of neglect by going massively over the top, planning the “perfect” holiday season. Of course, the holidays are rarely perfect and thus you end up feeling disappointed and disheartened with the whole thing.

That’s the wrong approach. If you spend consistent time and energy on and with your family, the holidays no longer have to be “perfect.” Scale back on the festivities and play it more loose. You’ll find that the real joy of it comes from spending time together – and not worrying about perfection is a lot less expensive and a lot less stressful.

Yes, have traditions – they’re wonderful. But don’t make those traditions incredibly elaborate. Stick with the simple – a Christmas Eve reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, for example. Don’t worry about spending all of the holidays in the kitchen preparing some sort of perfect, elaborate meal.

9 – Cooking and Nutrition
The healthier the materials you put in your body, the healthier you’ll feel overall, both mentally and physically. That’s not to say that you subscribe to some sort of idealized diet – that adds stress – but instead that you should subscribe to just a few simple principles to guide what you eat.

What sort of principles? Luhrs offers some suggestions. I’ve found a lot of power in just following what Michael Pollan suggests in his book In Defense of Food: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By “food,” Pollan means unprocessed food, as close as possible to raw ingredients like vegetables and meats.

10 – Health and Exercise
Want to make your health and exercise simple? Understand how your body works. Learn more about it by reading basic guides to human health. Pay attention to the feedback it gives you – if you feel tired and sluggish and overweight, you likely need to make changes. Gently push it to make it stronger – in other words, exercise without overdoing it. Take long walks. Do simple weight exercise.

Unless you want a stunning body, a gym membership and a personal trainer are complete overkill, adding complexity to your life. Most of us just need to move a little bit, and we can get that by just adding more motion to our lives through simple exercise and walking.

11 – Housing
The American ideal often seems to be the big, giant house. However, that big, giant house requires a lot of upkeep and maintenance, eating our time, physical energy, and mental energy. Instead, we should strive for just enough housing to meet our needs and not our dreams.

If you’ve got rooms that you don’t use in your home, you should consider downgrading. Why? Mostly, that extra room just means more maintenance costs and maintenance time while it’s just used to store more and more stuff.

12 – Clutter
This idea of “more housing means more room for stuff” leads right into the idea of clutter. Clutter is one of the biggest opponents of simple living, as clutter means more maintenance time, more maintenance effort, more maintenance cost, and the psychic cost of having more stuff than you can deal with.

What can you do? Focus on getting rid of stuff you don’t use. If you don’t use the item more often than once a year, get rid of it. Sell it, trade it, gift it, hand it to a neighbor. Also, keep mail and “junk” from building up in the junk collecting areas in your home.

13 – Gardening
Luhrs is a strong advocate of gardening as a significant part of a simple life. In her eyes, gardening gets a person in touch with the earth and the environment around them, requires them to work their body but allows the mind to rest (almost in a meditative fashion), and produces the freshest food possible.

My wife and I are fairly avid gardeners. We have a small garden in which we grow a variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers and, throughout the year, we’ve been able to enjoy the products of that garden. While I don’t really have a chance to get the “Zen” nature of gardening – trust me, with a two year old and a three year old trampling around, it can be hard to lose yourself in it – I do easily see how it can arrive.

14 – Travel
The book closes with a chapter on travel, which mostly argues that for most people, travel is overbooked with things and thus the travelers rarely get the time to truly enjoy the experience. I agree – the more wide open you can make your trip, the better. When we went on our honeymoon, our plan before we went was “spend a week in London, a few days in Edinburgh, and a few days in Inverness,” and it was tremendous.

Really, though, the value of traveling is that experiences, not things, are really the spice of life. Traveling with freedom opens the door to many, many experiences which will stick with you forever, adding true value to your life. It’s also much less expensive to loosely book your trips, since you’re not throwing money at activities that you don’t really have the time to fully enjoy.

Is The Simple Living Guide Worth Reading?
The Simple Living Guide is an excellent book to read if you feel as though your life is simply too complicated and that complexity is bringing you down. I tend to think that, in modern life, that’s a fairly common complaint. I know that, for me, I spent much of the early part of this decade feeling exactly that way.

However, if you already are living a fairly simple life, The Simple Living Guide probably won’t contribute much to your life. This is really just a great “food for thought/getting started” guide for a person whose life feels like it’s running off the rails.

I did enjoy the book, but in many places I thought to myself, “I’m already living this kind of a simple life.” I think that’s a good thing.

One major challenge for many people is how exactly to find people to connect to. Many of the typical social methods people use to meet each other are shots in the dark, hoping that you find someone compatible.

Ferrazzi is a big proponent of clubs and community organizations. If you dig around, there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of these in your local area, but many people never put in the footwork to find such organizations.

Over the years, I’ve been a member of many, many such groups, and I have to agree – they’re often useful in building relationships and providing a great way to spend time. In my experience, the best organizations are the ones that combine the camaraderie of a club with a natural passion that you already have.

Join a Club
Ferrazzi lays out the reasoning behind joining a club or organization on page 261:

All clubs are based on common interests. Members are united by a similar job, philosophy, hobby, neighborhood, or simply because they are the same race, religion, or generation. They are founded by a common proposition that is unique to them. They have, in other words, a reason to hang out together.

Take a look in the mirrow. Who are you? Where do you live? Where did you go to school? What do you believe in? The answers to these questions give you things that you have in common with other people, and this can often be the basis of participation in organizations.

Perhaps your school has an alumni association. Perhaps you’re a believer of a certain religion. Perhaps you engage in a particular hobby that others might share. Maybe you suffer from a certain medical condition, or have survived a certain social situation.

Whatever it is, there’s either an organization out there that will help you find people that you have something in common with or you can start such a group yourself. The people you meet will not only be easy to meet, but many will have social worlds that don’t overlap your own, giving you many opportunities to get to know people in different areas and stages and walks of life.

Bring Something Extra
On page 261, Ferrazzi talks about your unique selling proposition:

At a time like this, you have to figure out what is your U.S.P. – your “unique selling proposition,” for all you non-MBA types out there. What secret sauce can you bring to the table? Your proposition can be an expertise, a hobby, or even an interest or passion for a particular cause that will serve as the foundation from which an entire organization or club can be established.

When you join a club – or, especially, when you start your own – you need to bring something unique and interesting to the table or else you’ll just stand out. Perhaps it’s nothing more than a willingness to participate and take on the difficult tasks. Perhaps it’s a set of resources that you have that you can contribute to the group. Maybe it’s personal talent.

An example: when in college, I joined a computer group, where people would trade software and computer parts, build computers for people, and give each other advice. The group was somewhat anarchical, though, and the job of president – the person who had to interact with the college and arrange rooms for meetings and the like – was thankless, though people did appreciate that someone was willing to do it. For one (long) year, that was me. Because of that year, I built up several long-lasting friendships, resulting in two separate guests at my wedding a few years later.

Whatever it is, having that extra “something” will help you become an integral part of any group and make it possible for you to meet lots of people. Stand up, offer what you can, and good things will happen.

Clubs Aren’t for Rich White People
On page 263, Ferrazzi eschews the “rich white guys” notion of what a club is:

The days when clubs were only for wealthy white men to consort with people just like themselves are over. It doesn’t matter if it’s a group of carpet salespeople meeting weekly to discuss the trials and tribulations of their jobs; a roundtable of female Republicans who are dissatisfied with the stance of their state party; or a group who share a passion for great wines and who come together monthly to do tastings, hear vintners who are traveling through the area, and who plan an annual trip to Napa. Whatever it is and whoever you are doesn’t matter.

The idea that a “club” is just an exclusionary group of like-minded people who don’t want anyone else interfering in their ways died along with the pet rock. Sure, there are still a few such archaic groups around, but most groups simply aren’t like that, and if you use the fear of exclusion to keep you from dabbling your toes in the water, you’re making a big mistake.

The entire purpose of a group is to meet people that overlap in some demographic fashion, whether it be a hobby or a belief or a location or a political affiliation or something else. That overlap is the one thing that matters.

Yes, maybe some groups that seem like they would fit simply don’t fit, but it’s not because of exclusion. It’s usually because of personality clash.

The Value of a Club
The compelling reason for club membership is spelled out on page 264:

As long as it’s an association of people with shared interests meeting in a specified place (even if that place is cyberspace), you’ll benefit from belonging to something larger than yourself. You and your fellow members will be strengthened by a collective identity. And whereas with business, where boundaries of most relationships are clearly defined by a specific project or deal and end when that project or deal is done, membership in a club (preferably a club you’ve started) will lead to friendships that will last for years.

Being in a club means that you’re building a bond with other people that goes beyond the minutiae of the day. People come together in clubs because of common interests and beliefs and passions, not because they’re made to out of business or because it’s convenient.

That’s why clubs are often the best opportunity for building new friendships and connections in your area. The people in that room share something that transcends the ordinary. Often, they work together to build something even more interesting and exciting. That environment is the type of place where relationships and friendships thrive.

Take some time and find out what groups, clubs, and organizations are available in your area and give them a shot, whether it’s a book club at the library or a hunting club at the local range. Whatever it is, if it matches you, you’ll likely match it.

Momentum
Whenever people start building a lot of new relationships, these relationships often snowball. Friends will constantly introduce you to new friends, and so forth. Ferrazzi looks at this more deeply on page 268:

The pursuit of a powerful network of friends is not in and of itself a bad thing. But the closer you get to powerful people, the more powerful you tend to feel. There is a point where your reaching out to others will pick up momentum; one powerful contact will lead to another and then to the next. It can be a very fun and motivating and important ride.

At one point in my earlier career, I noticed that this very phenomenon happened to me. At one point, I completed a pretty substantial project and was able to share the results of that with a large number of people. Later, at a large conference (the first of its kind I had attended), I would meet up with these people and they were constantly introducing me to others. By the end of it, I knew many of the key people there, pushing one of my friends to comment that it sure didn’t seem like I was a first-timer.

If you provide something of value to others and make a sincere effort to befriend them, help them, and maintain a connection, they’ll remember you. When the time comes, they’ll introduce you to people they know and you’ll get to know new people. Eventually this will reach critical mass – people will talk positively about you when you’re not around, realizing that they have you in common, and this will often bolster your reputation strongly without any effort from you. You’ll get calls and messages out of the blue from people wanting to know you.

It’s awesome. It works. It really happens. But it requires being a sincere and helpful friend to a lot of people over a long period of time.

Vanity
Unfortunately, that kind of success can lead to vanity. On page 268:

Don’t let a little vanity seep into your actions or excite more expectations or create a deeper sense of entitlement. Don’t get your Ph. D. in master connecting, and then, for some reason, forget all the classes and values that were your foundation.

Everyone fails in life. What will you do when the phone calls that were once returned immediately no don’t even get a response?

It’s easy to think that you really are awesome and that a gravy train of success will keep on running. Inevitably, though, something happens. We all fail. We all do something we shouldn’t.

The end result of that is sometimes connections close right in your face, and often even a domino effect can occur as the story of your mistake spreads.

What happens then? You rely on your old friends, the ones who have been around for a long time. The only problem there is that if you’ve stopped being true to who you are, you’ve also stopped being true to them – and it’s likely they won’t be there for you.

If you begin to think you’re better than people you once thought of as a valuable equal, it will eventually backfire on your face. Remain humble, and remember who your truest friends are and the values that helped you to start opening the doors in the first place. If you stick to those values and beliefs, you’ll do all right.

On Wednesday, we’ll tackle the twenty-ninth and thirtieth chapters – “Find Mentors, Find Mentees, Repeat” and “Balance is B.S.”

When I was in high school, I had dreams of being a writer. I read prodigiously, wrote mediocre short stories, and imagined myself publishing a long line of novels when I was older.

My English teacher was surprisingly supportive of this, even though I never directly told him of my dreams. He constantly reinforced to me that I had some writing ability, but that I really needed to work at it to polish it. He would grade my papers with an extra sharp pen, taking off points for things that other students would have gotten away with.

My dream of being a writer went away for almost a decade, but I never stopped writing. I wrote something almost every day, not because I thought I was good, but because I thought it was fun. Little did I know that I was developing a personal trait that would serve me well throughout my professional life. I found myself writing reports and many other documents (things that I probably shouldn’t have been writing – they should have been the domain of my supervisor) while at my previous job, then my writing opened the door to The Simple Dollar as well.

I have little talent as a writer. Any ability I have comes from a lot of practice. However, that practice has built up a skill that’s marketable enough that I can use it to earn a living.

How to Use Writing to Build Relationships
Ferrazzi carries this idea forward on page 246:

If you have any writing skills at all – and yes, the good news is we all have some level of skill – you can get close to almost anywhere by doing a piece on them, or with them, even if it’s for your local newspaper.

Or even for your blog, provided you’re not trying to interview a mega-superstar.

Here’s how this works. Let’s say you’re trying to get to know someone. Get ahold of your local newspaper (or other media source) and suggest that you’d like to write a freelance article about this person. Explain why they’re interesting. Get permission, then call up the interesting person in question. The fact that you’re calling for a story about them will flatter them – unless, of course, they’re a major star of some sort, in which case more media requests might be annoying.

This gives you a great opportunity for a conversation with them. You can then relate to them the things you’re really working on – and you can even reveal to them that you’re only moonlighting as a journalist and your primary interests are elsewhere (if that’s the case).

Then, just translate what you know and what you learned in that conversation into a short piece and submit it. You’ll likely not get paid for it – or if you do, it’s a pittance – but that’s not the point. The reason to do it is to meet a person in the community you’ve always wanted to meet.

But I Can’t Write!
Many people believe that they can’t write. However, most people can – and they can even write well enough to be quite passable in a small newspaper. All it really takes is practice. On page 247, Ferrazzi offers some great advice on this:

First, get over all the romantic pretensions around writing. In business school, when I was dreaming about publishing an article in the Harvard Business Review, I had a wonderful encounter with a visiting professor who had written a number of high-profile articles and books. I asked her how I, too, could become a writer.

“Write,” she told me.

Brows furrowed, I nodded. When no more advice came from her esteemed mouth, I asked: “Anything else.”

“Write, then write some more. When you’re done – and here’s the kicker – keep writing.

“Look,” she said, “there is no secret. Writing is tough. But people of all talents, at all levels, do it. The onlything necessary to become a writer is a pen, some paper, and the will to express yourself.”

I have no writing talent at all. What skill I do have is built from a lot of practice. I can’t turn out much truly great prose, but I can turn out a lot of good prose fairly quickly. That’s how I can post two lengthy, meaty articles a day at The Simple Dollar.

Here’s the thing, though. Anyone can do this if they practice – perhaps not at the same volume, but anyone can write a good short article if they practice at it regularly. And the ability to write a good, short piece is endlessly useful in life, not only in the “getting to know you” method described here, but in any environment that relies on communication.

The better communicator you are – and written communication is a big part of this – the better your skill set is, no matter what you do. It doesn’t require talent. It just requires practice.

Field Mice and Antelope
Ferrazzi offers a good anecdote on page 249:

Newt Gingrich, the famous Republican politician and all-about-Washington gadfly, is known to tell a story about a lion and a field mouse. A lion, he says, can use his prodigious hunting skills to capture a field mouse with relative ease anytime he wants, but at the end of the day, no matter how many mice he’s ensnared, he’ll still be starving.

The moral of the story: Sometimes, despite the risk and work involved, it’s worth our time to go for the antelope.

It’s easy to make friends and connections with your peers and particularly with people at a level below you, but the real rewards come in building relationships with people who are above you in status at work and in society in general.

Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, it takes us out of our comfort zone. But connections to the people who have found success in their life often buoy us into success as well, both directly and indirectly.

They can help with success directly by giving advice that actually works. You bear witness to their success – you identify that success with them.

They also help indirectly through association. People recognize who you’re associating with and their opinion of you goes up and down depending on who that associate is.

Isn’t That Disingenuous?
Isn’t striving to meet well-known people just for the sake of connecting with well-known people disingenuous? On page 251, Ferrazzi addresses that very point:

There are no easy answers. But if you pursue these people in a sincere manner, with good intentions, you’re not being manipulative. And if you are emboldened by a mission and you’ve put in the time and hard work to establish a web of people that count on you, then the time will come when your growing influence will put you in a place where you’ll be face-to-face with someone who can convey a lot of sparkle.

In other words, if you take the initiative to become a leader among your peers, eventually you’ll be recognized as such and the more influential people around you will be perfectly happy to meet you.

As he says, it’s not easy. It takes a lot of consistent, hard work. You need to do your work well, produce great results, and build trust with the people around you.

Over time, doing that will slowly open doors for you. And then you’ll find yourself in the same room as a legend, and it’s up to you to go over there and introduce yourself. If you don’t, you’re choosing to slam the door in your own face.

Trust
There’s one big element here that presides over everything else. From page 252:

I’ve found that trust is the essential element of mixing with powerful and famous people – trust that you’ll be discreet; trust that you have no ulterior motives behind your approach; trust that you’ll deal with them as people and not as stars; and basically trust that you feel like a peer who deserves to be engaged as such. The first few moments of an encounter is the litmus test for such a person to size up whether or not he or she can trust you in these ways or not.

To put it simply, when you approach someone purely as a fan, they don’t recognize you as a peer. Going up to someone and gushing about how incredible they are won’t make them impressed with you. It’ll make them see you as someone far down the ladder, someone to appease and then move on.

If you actually wish to know someone as a potential peer, the worst thing you can do is accost them as a fan. Instead, act as if they’re an equal, even if you’re thoroughly impressed. Offer them whatever advice and suggestions you can to improve what they do. Bounce ideas off of them.

A compliment for good work is fine. Raw adulation is rarely a good move.

What Do You Do Instead?
How do you converse instead if you’re starstruck? Ferrazzi offers up some ideas on page 253:

To assure them that you’re interested in them for themselves, rather than what the public perceives them to be, stay away from their fame and focus, instead, on their interests. You can certainly let them know that you respect their work, but don’t dwell. Take them away from what they are normally barraged with.

Once upon a time, I was lucky enough to have a very casual breakfast with a Nobel Prize winner. I could have been completely starstruck by spending time with this individual, but instead we spent most of our conversation talking about chicken farming.

Seriously.

Why did we talk about chicken farming? He was raised on a farm and was very particular about his eggs. He didn’t particularly like the eggs that had been served – they were prepared fine, but he thought the eggs themselves were really awful. I spoke up for the first time and simply said that when I grew up, we fed the chicken table scraps and pieces of grit and they produced wonderful eggs. This got him going down a very nostalgic path about chicken farming in his childhood.

At the end of the meal, he slapped me on the back and suggested I tag along with him, something I would have loved to have done had I not had other responsibilities that day.

That one event got me over my fear of meeting famous people. People in that situation have already heard a lifetime’s worth of adulation and simply wish to have a normal conversation with people interested in the same things they are. If you do that, you can make friends at any strata of life.

On Saturday, we’ll tackle the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters – “Build It and They Will Come” and “Never Give in to Hubris.”

I’ve always been interested in the areas where spirituality and personal finance meet. Blogs like ChristianPF and people like Dave Ramsey who heavily tie their faith into their personal finance message bring a completely different flavor to the table, one tinged with a sense that personal fiance success is a method of getting more deeply in touch with one’s spiritual side and that there is a faith-based calling to better money management.

It’s Not About the Money by Brent Kessel takes another angle on the tension between money management and spirituality. Kessel is a Zen buddhist who practices yoga and spends much of his time seeking spiritual enlightenment. His argument is that in order to find spiritual abundance, one must be free as possible from the shackles of personal finance, and that requires good money behaviors and money management.

Throughout the book, Kessel ties together the principles of Zen buddhism and the principles of personal finance, making a great case for how the two walk hand in hand towards a life of true abundance.

Let’s dig in.

You Will Never Have Enough
Our nature, as humans, is to want more. We’re always looking ahead to the next journey, the next goal, the next desire. We always have a concern of some kind in our hearts and we’re always headed towards something. You’ll never have enough.

That seems to run contrary to most personal finance advice, which encourages you to figure out what “enough” is in your own life. Yet, on many levels, I think Kessel is quite accurate with this assessment. There’s always some new journey to take on, some hill to climb.

Our real challenge in life is not eliminating that desire for more, but figuring out what goals we have. What are we really striving for? What provides us with the most thorough joy? Those are the directions we should be striving for – it’s fine to strive for more in an area where you’re thoroughly and deeply passionate and engaged.

The Unconscious Wins Every Time
We all have a story about ourselves in our mind that determines what we think we deserve. That sense of what we think we deserve drives how we manage our money. If we believe we truly deserve more than we have, we tend to spend more to acquire it. Advertising and social cues often prey on that knowledge, doing everything they can to make us believe that we deserve more than we have and this product or this upgrade is what we deserve.

It’s challenging to rewrite that story. It requires a lot of careful introspection and thought about who we really are and what we want from life. From this perspective, it seems clear to me that part of the impetus for our financial turnaround was my impetus to change my story from “successful young professional” to “good parent.” That alteration shifted my goals and priorities significantly and enabled me to make some serious changes to how we spent money.

Throughout the middle third of the book, Kessel looks at eight different financial archetypes. These archetypes describe the positive and negative traits of a particular mindset. Kessel notes, of course, that every person has some combination of these archetypes, and some mix better for financial success than others. Whatever the story is we’ve written for ourselves in life, it requires that we adopt some combination of these archetypes to make that story happen.

The Guardian
The first archetype is the guardian. Kessel identifies the guardian as being alert and watchful, wishing to protect something. The guardian is often full of worry and anxiety, but is prudent and always aware of threats to whatever he or she is guarding.

I have a lot of the guardian within me. At one time, I zealously guarded my career. Now, I’m more focused on guarding my children – I now see my career as part of guarding my children. That shift in perspective of how I view my career was a big part of why I made the leap to being a full time writer. I made less money, but my time was much, much more flexible than before, which made it easier for me to be a better guardian for my children.

The Pleasure Seeker
The pleasure seeker puts a huge priority on pleasure in the here and now. They want to have fun and enjoy life now and not worry much at all about tomorrow. Pleasure seekers tend to be hedonistic and impulsive, but they also tend to have a high level of enjoyment of what they’re doing.

Over time, my sense of pleasure seeking has gone down a bit. I’m no longer as concerned with maximizing my enjoyment in the here and now. I’m much happier engaging in things that fulfill my other roles in life. For example, I used to go out almost every night and have fun with friends. Now, I rarely do that – I often have much more fun at home with the simpler pleasures in life.

The Idealist
The idealist believes heavily in creativity, compassion, social justice, and spiritual growth. They tend to believe that their efforts really can change the world – and for the better. Unfortunately, because of their idealism and the crooked nature of the world, idealists tend to often be very wary of others, particularly those they see as obstacles to a better world. Idealists tend to have a difficult time with trust and are often averse to the suggestions of others. However, they’re also often compassionate and have grand visions.

Over time, my idealism has gone up. After all, I went from working as a cog in a huge organization involved with projects that tangentially were helpful to the world to working solo on a website with the goal of helping others with their money problems. I believe that what I do does help a lot of people, but I sometimes fall into that “no compromise” trap that idealists tend to fall into.

The Saver
A saver is always looking for security and abundance. They believe this security and abundance can be found through the careful accumulation of financial assets. Quite often, this means that they forsake spending money at all in order to save more and more. They’re hoarders and penny-pinchers. However, they often are self-sufficient and they usually have more than enough to ride through any crises, which makes them very stable.

I’ve never been a saver unless I can clearly see how it matches a goal of mine. Right now, the heavy guardian in me forces me to see the benefit in saving, so my tendency to be a saver has definitely grown over the past few years.

The Star
A star’s self-worth is rooted in what others think of him or her. They’ll save if it’ll make others think more of them. They’ll spend if it’ll make others think more of them. They’ll give money away if it’ll improve how others think of them. A star strives to be seen as cool or hip or classy, and that often translates into pretentiousness and self-importance. At the same time, the star is often a natural leader – they often ooze leadership skills – and they often do a great job of setting the tone or style of an event.

I’m about as far away from a star as a person can possibly get. I really don’t care much at all what others think of me. I try to get along with others, but I don’t have any need to be a trendsetter or to be seen as cool. I’m just me.

The Innocent
The innocent tends to avoid thinking about money at all. Instead, they rely on good luck and the kindness of others. They just simply believe that over the long run, things will work out for the best. Innocents often are helpless and they tend to avoid financial situations, but they’re often very adaptable to whatever situation comes their way and they have a great deal of hope for the future.

I’m also not an innocent. I’ve never believed that things will just “work out” in the future.

The Caretaker
The caretaker gives and lends money to others. Often, if there’s a person in your family that’s always lending family members money, that person is a caretaker. They’ve got tons of compassion for others and lots of generosity. Unfortunately, they’re also enablers, meaning that their presence often enables the worst behavior in others.

I used to be more of a caretaker, but it was often in conflict with being a guardian, plus I often felt like I was being an enabler. Thus, I’ve pushed this mindset more and more to the background.

The Empire Builder
The empire builder is someone who thrives on power. They want to create something of enduring value, something that will last for a long time, and they’re quite happy to step on others to get there. They want power. Empire builders are usually greedy and seek to dominate others, but they’re also very innovative and decisive.

This is another mindset that I rarely see in myself. I don’t feel the need to build an empire of any kind.

The Middle Way with Money
Obviously, there are good and bad aspects of each of these money archetypes. They each exhibit both bad traits and good traits, and people often mix and match them within themselves.

Some mix poorly. An empire builder and a pleasure seeker together in the same person will throw a knife in your back and twist it without ever thinking twice, but they enjoy life from their perspective and they’ve often got power. These people can be very difficult for others to trust.

On the other hand, a guardian and a caretaker tend to mix well, as they seek to protect things but often choose to do it with prudence. People that others think of as being “steady as a rock” often mix a guardian and caretaker mindset inside themselves.

What’s the best thing you can do? Work to cultivate each of the mindsets a little, so that the good traits can be utilized and the bad traits can be counterbalanced by the good traits of other mindsets.

The Conscious Investor
I felt that this was easily the weakest chapter of the book. Kessel argues here that a successful investor utilizes all eight of the mindsets in various ways to improve their holdings and he makes a good case for each one as a tool to an investor.

The only problem is that the overall investing strategy talked about here is all over the place. It involves simultaneous long term investing and very short term market timing. It involves some “hands off” investing, but also talks about technical analysis.

Rather than presenting a cohesive investing plan, Kessel mostly just describes how the various archetypes can actually be useful for a certain type of investing. The only problem is that the mentalities that succeed at short term investing, if left alone, would result in disaster, as prudence isn’t involved.

As always, the best solution is a good mix of archetypes – that’s true in investing and in life.

The Yoga of Money
Kessel closes the book with a look at money’s role in a broader and more complete life. After all, money is merely a tool to allow you to do what you want to do.

In a nutshell, Kessel argues that no matter what your desires are, you’re served by having money in the bank because your options are much wider open. Of course, for some archetypes (like the pleasure seeker), it’s harder than it is with other archetypes. That’s why a balance is useful – it allows you to find happiness now but also seek happiness later.

Good money management allows you to have your cake and eat it, too.

Is It’s Not About the Money Worth Reading?
It’s Not About the Money is a very powerful book to read if you’re interested in the spiritual side of money, no matter what your faith. Kessel does a very powerful job of connecting the spiritual to the financial through the precepts of Zen buddhism – there’s a lot of thought-provoking material here, the kind of stuff that will leave you thinking deeply about what your role in the world is.

This isn’t a particularly strong book in terms of specific money advice. Instead, it works in the sense that it helps you get your bearings in terms of what you actually want out of life and how it relates to your money. If you’re looking for specific advice and tactics, look elsewhere.

It’s Not About the Money succeeds in making you think. That’s what the best books do.

What do others think of when they think of you? Do they have any sort of a consistent image? Is the image they come up with a positive one, one that you’re happy to be associated with? Is the image an interesting one?

In marketing-speak, this is your “brand.” In terms of your future – social relationships, career opportunities, and so forth – the better and more interesting your brand is, the better off you are.

It can seem like a strange way to look at things, but it really works. We constantly make snap decisions about who to invite to events, who to call, and so on, and those snap decisions are based on a very simple image of people that we have in our mind – their brand. Quite often, that “brand” is based on simple things, things that the person could easily alter if they so chose.

The question of course becomes what can we do to improve our own brand?

Figure Out What You Want
On page 229, Ferrazzi addresses the big question underneath all of this.

What do you want people to think when they hear or read your name? What product or service can you best provide? Take your skills, combine them with your passions, and find out where in the market, or within your own company, they can best be applied.

The beginning of this whole matter lies in what you want. What do you want other people to think of you? When they hear your name, what would you like to be the first thing or two that pops into their heads?

If you spend a bit of time defining this, the conclusions that you come to will often direct you immediately towards what you should be doing with your time. If you want to be known as good at something, then you better well be good at that thing – and you need to be willing to share what you’re good at. If you want to be known as having a particular character trait, then you’d better have that character trait – and you need to exhibit it clearly to others.

Similarly, if you recognize negative traits in yourself and you don’t want people to identify you for those traits, work on them. If you think people identify you as quiet – and you don’t like it – work on it!

Looking at yourself through the eyes of someone else is a great way to figure out how you really want to present yourself to the world – and brutal honesty when doing it exposes the areas of your life that need work (and there are areas of everyone’s life that need work).

Growing Yourself
Ferrazzi reinforces that ‘grow yourself’ message on page 228:

You can’t do meaningful work that makes a difference unless you’re devoted to learning, growing, and stretching your skills. If you want others to redefine what you do and who you are within organizational boundaries, then you have to be able to redefine yourself. That means going above and beyond what’s called for. That means seeing your resume as a dynamic, changing document every year.

In other words, if you want people to see you differently, you need to start taking real action right now to make that happen. Just wishing for it won’t make it so.

If there’s some aspect of yourself that you’d like others to really notice and identify with you, you need to work on it. You need to polish it. You need to focus on it. You can’t just wish that others would notice your raw talent.

One of my closest friends is a really gifted writer, but she rarely shares what she writes. She keeps it to herself. Thus, when others think of her – both personally and professionally – they don’t think of her as a writer at all. She doesn’t have that reputation.

What can she do to change that? Write. Practice writing. Take every opportunity to get published. Share her successes as a writer by sending links out to her friends showing off her work. Make her personal website all about her writing, and include a link to it in the signature of her email. But it all comes down to one thing – she’s got to practice that writing, improve at it, and start sharing it with the world. Without that, everything else is just a pipe dream.

Be Unique
People remember uniqueness. That’s how you’ll stick in people’s minds. On page 230, Ferrazzi gives an example:

When I was younger, I used to wear bow ties. I felt that it was a signature that people would not quickly forget, and it worked. “You were the guy who spoke at the conference last year wearing the bow tie,” I’d hear over and over again. Over time, I was able to give up that signature, as my message and delivery became my brand.

My unique feature is that I’m very tall and broad shouldered, almost in a “football linebacker” kind of way. People remember me for my size.

For others, it can be trickier. However, there’s usually some way to stand out a bit in a crowd. One of my friends who’s involved in businesses wears a fedora almost everywhere he goes in relation to his work. It makes him appear a bit taller and really stands out visually. Another friend of mine – a personal trainer – has his business card done on what appears to be a piece of an Ace bandage. People remember things like that – you stick in their mind.

When you stick in their mind, you become the person that they recall later on. When they need a personal trainer, they’ll remember the guy who had the business card made out of an Ace bandage. When they think back to the conference, they’ll remember the guy with the enormous hands who gave the talk about money. They’ll remember the guy with the fedora who was astonishingly quick at remembering a large set of names (a little parlor trick he’s mastered). They won’t remember the person that didn’t bother to stand out at all.

Talk to Journalists
One of the easiest ways to get your unique story known is to talk to journalists about it. It’s easier than you think, actually. On page 233:

Journalists do less sleuthing for their stories than you’d imagine. They get a majority of their stories from people that have sought them out, and not the other way around.

This is surprisingly true. I’ve been called out of the blue by reporters who merely went to Google, typed in search terms, and found The Simple Dollar because it matched a story they were interested in.

The reverse is also true. When my first book, 365 Ways to Live Cheap, was about to be released, I attempted to drum up some traditional media about the book. I just simply contacted lots of different publications directly, telling them about the book. I did NOT do a press release – those don’t seem to work when there are people out there issuing them by the hundreds of thousands. Instead, I contacted people directly myself.

It worked. I ended up with a small flood of stories about The Simple Dollar and my book last December. Yes, just because I’m some guy writing a blog about his inability to manage money and his struggle to find a career path.

Once you’ve figured out what you want your professional brand to be (probably a mix of your passions and your personality), look at journalists as one way to spread the message. Maybe you’re a stay at home mom trying to make money selling handmade Norwegian food on the internet (and if you live in central Iowa, let me know what your lefse prices are!). Maybe you’re a government employee who spends his spare time making exquisitely-finished wood flag cases for the parents of deceased soldiers. Maybe you’re wheelchair bound and you’re writing fiction by using transcription software. Whatever it is, you probably have a story that someone would want to share. So send it out there.

Go Small
But where? Many people swing too hard and strike out quickly. On page 242, Ferrazzi offers a clue:

Are you Bill Gates? No. Maybe you’ve developed the antidote for the common cold? No again. Well, the New York Times probably isn’t knocking on your door quite yet. Go local first. Start a database of newspapers and magazines in your area that might be interested in your content. Try college newspapers, the neighborhood newspaper, or the free industry digital newsletter you find in your inbox. You’ll get the fire started and learn how to deal with reporters in the process.

In my area, I’d start with the smaller papers and the free papers. I’d also talk to people running websites that cover issues in central Iowa. If I were running a local side business like the ones I mentioned above, I’d shoot for the independents, not for the Des Moines Register – at least not at first.

Once I was comfortable talking to reporters about what I was doing – and if you’re going to go through stages of nervousness and screw up, you’re way better doing that in front of a reporter from a tiny paper than a big one – then I would move up and try to contact bigger sources. View it as a mix of practice and of ultra-local marketing of your story.

Yes, you’re marketing yourself. For some people, that’s uncomfortable. But if you’re doing something that requires others to be interested, you have to start somewhere. Start telling your story if you want people to start finding you.

Don’t Be Annoying
On page 243, Ferrazzi makes another key point about all of this:

There’s a fine line between marketing yourself properly and becoming annoying. If a pitch of mine gets rejected, I’ll ask what else it needs to make it publishable. Sometimes it will never be right in the editor’s eyes, but other times, you can answer a few more questions or dig deeper.

Sometimes people won’t be interested in what you have to say. That’s fine – just let it drop, or else find a way to re-work it. If you just keep trying again and again to catch a fish with the same old rotten bait, you’re not only wasting your time but you’re learning a bad technique through repetition.

A rejection isn’t a bad thing. It just means that what you’re saying needs some additional work to make it compelling. Many people think that if they tell their story to someone and the person is not interesting, that person is rejecting them. Rarely is that the case – usually, it’s the story that’s being rejected.

Step back and ask yourself what’s interesting about what you’re trying to do. Why would other people care about this? If you were reading about what you’re doing, what would make you want to keep reading and find out more? The better you are at answering that question, the better you’ll be able to explain that very thing to a journalist and the more likely they’ll want to write about your story – and then you both win.

On Wednesday, we’ll tackle the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth chapters – “The Write Stuff” and “Getting Close to Power.”

I have a really good relationship with my pastor. She’s one of the most interesting people I know and I regularly have long conversations with her about any number of topics, from the struggle of organized Christian churches to define where they stand on social issues and the reliability of scripture as an accurate document to such things the prevalence of moose in northern Minnesota. She’s genuinely an interesting person and I’m truly glad to have had the opportunity to get to know her over the past several years.

That being said, she inhabits a completely different social circle than I do – and I inhabit a different social circle than she does. Through her, though, I’ve been able to at least make acquaintances with quite a few different people. Her encouragement to participate in different activities has made that possible.

In Ferrazzi’s terms, my pastor is an “anchor tenant.” She’s a person that gives me a foothold in a completely different world – that of pastors of Lutheran churches in Iowa and into many, many other Lutherans in our local community.

Defining Anchor Tenants
On page 192, Ferrazzi spells out the meaning of the “anchor tenant” concept:

Every individual within a particular peer set has a bridge to someone outside his or her own group of friends. We all have, to some degree or another, developed relationships with older, wiser, more experience people; they may be our mentors, our parents’ friends, our teachers, our rabbis and reverends, our bosses.

I call them anchor tenants; their value comes from the simple fact that they are, in relation to one’s core group of friends, different. They know different people, have experienced different things, and thus, have much to teach.

From this perspective, it’s easy to see that our lives are full of anchor tenants. They’re the people that we know reasonably well that simply don’t run in our usual social group.

These people are good to know, though, because they give you a foothold into a completely different world. They bring different experiences and thoughts to the table than your usual friends. They can help connect you to people that you would otherwise never know. They often have access to resources and information that you would have never conceived of.

Who are your anchor tenants? How can you connect with them a little bit better?

Inviting Anchor Tenants Over
One powerful way to build a relationship with an anchor tenant is to invite them over for a dinner party. This works very well for some anchor tenants – but which ones? Ferrazzi spells it out on page 193:

Frankly, anyone who can add a little electricity to your dinner party is an anchor tenant. Journalists, I’ve found, are terrific anchor guests. They aren’t particularly well paid (which makes them suckers for free meals), their profession has a good deal of intrigue, they are always on the lookout for good material and see such dinners as a potential avenue for new ideas, they’re generally good conversationalists, and many folks enjoy an opportunity to get their ideas heard by someone who might publicize them to a larger audiences. Artists and actors, famous or not, fall into that same category.

Ferrazzi basically outlines several traits of good anchor tenants here. Let’s walk through all of the traits.

They’re not rich. People who are well off generally attend dinner parties just purely for the socialization and conversation. People who make less income also appreciate the value of the meal itself. This means that less-well-off folks are more likely to attend dinner parties and the like, meaning they’re easier to include in your social gatherings.

Their work has a good deal of intrigue to a general audience. Journalists, artists, actors, writers, and the like usually do unusual and interesting things with their time. This means that they’ve usually got lots of interesting stories to tell and things to say – which makes them very nice to have around in a group situation.

They have an added interest in getting to know new people. People who particularly benefit from meeting new people – like journalists and politicians – tend to be good anchor tenants, since they’re always striving for new relationships and new connections.

They’re good conversationalists. People that sit there quietly generally don’t add much to dinner parties. On the other hand, people who are extroverts and willing to strike up a conversation are always good additions.

They’re doing something valuable and want to share it. Individuals who are working for something that they want others to know about usually make for good guests as well. People who work for charities or causes fall into this category.

If you start filtering people with this criteria – especially anchor tenants in your life – you’ll pretty quickly come up with a killer list for an enjoyable (and potentially very worthwhile) dinner party at your home.

Notes on Hosting a Dinner Party
Ferrazzi spends several pages on techniques for hosting a successful dinner party, which he views as being key to building a good social network. On page 198, he suggests how to handle the food, an aspect that many people balk at when thinking of trying on such an event:

There’s no sense in a party being all work. If you can’t hire a caterer, either cook all the food ahead of time or just use takeout. If the food is good and the presentation snazzy, your guests will be impressed.

These days, I usually opt for a caterer. But you can have a similarly elegant party for much less if you’re willing to get creative and spend some time preparing. The key to low-budget dinner parties is to keep it simple. Make one large dish, like a stew or chili that can be prepared a day or two ahead of time. Serve it with great bread and salad. That’s all you need.

That’s usually the plan I follow if we’re having a large number of guests. I’ll make a big pot of chili or something similar the day before. Early that morning, I’ll bake several baguettes – which are really, really easy to make – from scratch. In the afternoon, an hour or so before the meal or people begin to arrive, I’ll begin warming up the soup and slicing the baguettes, as well as preparing a tossed salad. When it’s time, I just serve everything buffet-style. This allows me to serve a very good meal without a ton of effort.

One point of advice, though: find out about dietary choices in advance. If someone’s coming that’s vegetarian or has a food allergy, be prepared for that with something else. It’s not that hard to have something additional on hand for such guests – and they usually really appreciate your thought and extra effort.

Be Interesting
Up to this point, the primary focus of the book has been on how to connect with people. However, it’s not very useful advice if you’re not interesting yourself. On page 204:

Be interesting! All that you’ve read thus far doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility of being someone worth talking to, and even better, worth talking about. Virtually everyone you meet in a situation is asking themselves a variation on one question: “Would I want to spend an hour eating lunch with this person?”

Ferrazzi’s question at the end is pretty key. Look at yourself and ask yourself honestly if you’d like to spend an hour eating lunch with that person. If the answer is no, then there’s a problem.

How can you be interesting, though? The best way to do it is usually to just express what’s on your mind. The more you hold back because you’re worried about what others might think of you, the less they think of you at all. That doesn’t mean you should be offensive or crude, but it does mean that you should share your ideas and thoughts in conversation with others as often as you can.

For many of us, this is scary. I know that, for a long time, it was scary for me to do this. I was helped greatly in getting over that fear by Dale Carnegie’s excellent How to Win Friends and Influence People. That book taught me little things that I could work on to feel more comfortable in social situations and some general guidelines on what exactly to say next when I didn’t naturally know what to say.

The Value of Being Interesting
How exactly can you be interesting to others? On page 206, Ferrazzi addresses that point:

Being interesting isn’t just abut learning how to become a good conversationalist. Don’t get me wrong, that is important, but you need a well-thought-out point of view. I honestly hop from now on you’ll be a newspaper-reading maniac ready to engage the topics of the day with anyone you meet. But being interesting and having content are very different. The former involves talking intelligently about politics, sports, travel, science, or whatever you’ll need as a ticket of admission to any conversation. Content involves a much more specialized form of knowledge. It’s knowing what you have that most others do not. It’s your differentiation. It’s your expertise.

When I read this passage, I immediately thought of academic conferences.

At a typical academic conference, most of the people there already have the content. They’re stuffed full of ideas and information related to the topic at hand. Yet many of them don’t talk to one another – they remain quiet, taking notes and sticking to their presentations.

Why is this? They have content, but they’re not interesting.

Instead, there’s usually a handful of people at these conferences that everyone knows. These people spend the whole conference carrying on conversations with others. At the end, they’ve met pretty much everyone of interest there and often have lots of people to follow up on.

Those are the interesting people. Yes, they have the content – but so does everyone else there. What sets them apart is that they also have a wide basis of general cultural knowledge, and that general knowledge helps them to connect to pretty much everyone they meet. They’ll understand the obscure joke on someone’s shirt and complement them on it. They’ll know enough about current events to strike up a chat with a guy who just sat down his newspaper. They’re culturally aware – and that makes all the difference.

A Unique Point of View
Every single person has a unique point of view. It’s only those that utilize that uniqueness that succeed in being interesting. Fron page 213:

A unique point of view is one of the only ways to ensure that today, tomorrow, and a year form now you’ll have a job.

What about you sets you apart from the rest of the world? Your family? Your personal story? Your experiences? Your particularly strange set of accomplishments? What can you break down about your story that makes you unique – or nearly so?

Mine’s simple. I grew up in an impoverished family in the Midwest and managed to make it out of that situation. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to manage that money and I fell into the debt trap that ensnares so many. As I struggled to free myself, I chose to tell the world all about my struggles. I’m also a parent.

Each element of that story is pretty common. Lots of people grow up poor. Some of them make it out. Many people grow up and live in the Midwest, which offers some distinct character traits. Lots of people wind up in severe debt trouble. Many people share their stories with the world. A few people are willing to talk openly about their money. Many, many people are parents.

But when you mix those elements together into a stew, you wind up with something that’s unique – or nearly so. That’s why The Simple Dollar works – readers know who I am and what my perspective is. They don’t have to guess at it and they can identify with some of it, but some elements are different enough that they keep reading.

On Saturday, we’ll tackle the twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters – “Build Your Brand” and “Broadcast Your Brand.”

For the first time ever, I’m reviewing a book as a result of an impassioned plea from one specific reader.

Susan, however, is one special reader. She started reading The Simple Dollar in early November 2006, right as the site launched. Since then, I’ve heard from her almost monthly and have used her story for inspiration for several posts over the years. She’s always been encouraging, has offered lots of suggestions, and been incredibly generous a few times (including giving me quite a few credits on PaperBackSwap when I first started).

When she first started writing, Susan was chasing her MBA. When she received her degree, she struggled for quite a while finding a job, then finally found a good place to call home – or at least to start out.

Recently, Susan wrote to me, glowing about how her career was going so far. In that email, she said that reading Basic Black was one of the best things she ever did. An older worker had loaned her the copy and encouraged her to read it and absorb it, so over one long weekend, that’s what Susan did.

She practically begged me to review this book, saying it had a huge impact on her life and her career starting out as a young woman in the business world, and after all the support Susan has given me over the years, I couldn’t help but give Basic Black a read.

Basic BlackCosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, and O. She was also involved in the incredibly successful launch of USA Today back in the 1980s. In short, she’s a great example of how a woman can succeed in business – and, at least in the case of Susan, Cathie’s a real role model and someone to look up to.

Does Basic Black offer any strong career advice or does it just faintly mimic other books already on the market? Let’s dig in.

Drive
If you want something, you have to be willing to go after it – or else someone else will pluck that ripe tomato right out of your hand.

Going after something is simple. It means taking care of every significant problem or conflict along the way. It means building lots of relationships with lots of people – get on the phone regularly! It means doing what it takes to come up with a tremendous end result for whatever projects are assigned to you.

It means being tireless and filling every moment you can with achieving your goal (without being unethical, of course). The best way to get ahead is to do the best you and build the most relationships for yourself, not by sabotaging or interfering with others (as that’s detrimental to the whole organization – and thus detrimental to you).

Risk
Many people are very risk-averse with their career. A small group of people are extremely risky with it, often taking enormous chances with themselves, their business, and their industry (hi, Lehman Brothers and Enron!).

The best solution is to be somewhere between the two. Be willing to take risks, but also spend some time carefully considering the downside to these risks. Don’t take risks that would severely damage the company unless you can control that outcome. Be willing to take risks that might set your career back a little, but not ones that can sink everything.

Calculated, moderate risk mixed with drive is a powerful medicine for career success.

People
The advice in this section neatly overlaps with the recent discussions on here about the book Never Eat Alone. To put it simply, you’re far better off giving what you know freely and accumulating connections that find you valuable than you are playing social games.

Instead, your goal should be to build valuable, long-standing relationships with people inside your organization as well as people outside your organization (both in the industry and in the community).

The more people you have a strong relationship with, the more strings you can pull when you actually need them to accomplish a project. You build those relationships by helping those people out when they need it – giving information, offering help, and so on.

Fear
Fear comes from intimidation – a person you don’t think you can handle or a situation you’re uncomfortable with. Quite often, the thing we fear just represents some other fear we have – our own mortality or our own failure.

In other words, most things in the outside world that we fear are instead just issues of self-confidence.

Whenever you’re put into a situation where you feel fear, think about what’s going on for a second. What are you really afraid of here? What’s the worst possible outcome? When you start thinking in those terms, fear begins to melt away. The worst thing that can happen is that the client walks out the door – and that’ll probably happen anyway – so why be afraid?

Power
Everyone has some degree of power just because of their presence. Others have earned more power over time because of their success or relationships.

However, one thing’s for certain: the more you use your power, the less powerful you are.

Power is not an infinite thing. Instead, it shouldn’t be used unless there’s a very good reason for it – and just getting your way is not a good reason. When you reserve your power for key moments, you become substantially more powerful. People pay attention and follow you because they know that you don’t exert your power unless it’s important.

Passion
Some people confuse passion and drive, but they’re different things. Drive makes sure you cover all your bases, while passion ensures that you enjoy the whole process.

Channeling your passions can be a real trick. It requires you to seek those things that you truly enjoy and find ways to channel that enjoyment into your work, creating things that no one else can create.

Drive fills your days. Passion fills your nights.

Attitude
Believing in a positive outcome of any situation is key to creating a positive outcome in any situation. If you go in the door under the belief that you’re going to fail, you probably are going to fail.

Make up your mind what result you want for the upcoming situation, then consider what you need to do to make that happen. Keep it front and center in your mind – the desired outcome of the event – and do everything you can to raise the overall tide of the room so that you can accomplish it.

After all, a rising tide lifts all boats, and if you bring a great positive perspective to a situation, it raises everyone’s boats.

Leadership
Leadership simply means being reliable. Whenever there’s a problem or a big decision, the leader is the person that everyone feels comfortable with making that decision or solving that problem. It’s not a title on a placard or anything else – it’s simply taking care of things.

Don’t worry about big long lists of traits that leaders provide. You make yourself a leader by solving problems and coming up with solutions to the big issues of the day. You are a leader when you help bring someone around and engage them in their work. You’re a leader when you volunteer for the tough tasks – and collect the input of others for that task.

You can be a leader every day, whether you have that title or not. The title will come if you’re a leader for long enough.

Is Basic Black Worth Reading?
For someone who is entering into a business career, particularly a young woman, Basic Black is loaded with strong advice and information, written from the perspective of someone who had to fight her way up to the top. In my writeup, I glossed over the specifics – over and over again throughout this book, Black does a great job of offering up very specific advice in the general areas covered, mixing anecdotes and straightforward suggestions in a very heady mix.

Unfortunately, the target audience for this book is pretty narrow. It really applies mostly to people starting out in the business world. Although many pieces of the advice apply elsewhere, readers outside of this situation are better served reading other books on personal growth and career development.

In the past, I’ve worked with three kinds of people: information broadcasters, information sharers, and information hoarders.

The broadcasters were annoying. They would simply share gossip to the exclusion of everything else and, often, the material they broadcasted was useless. It was hard for people to build good relationships with them because anything that was said was immediately blabbed anywhere and everywhere.

Other people were information hoarders. You could at least be secure in that when you told them something, it would not be shared. Yet, these people never shared anything in return. They held onto their knowledge, content to build an empire with what they knew.

The people that were always the best to work with were the information sharers. They worked hard to acquire new knowledge and new friendships and would be discretionary in what they shared, sticking to the genuinely useful things that didn’t hurt other people. If you had questions, you could go to these people and receive information without worrying that your requests would be used against you. You wanted to work with them because they were genuinely helpful.

In this part of the book, Ferrazzi argues that those information sharers hold the real power in the world.

Become Indispensable
On page 174, Ferrazzi makes the case for why you should strive to be indispensable to others:

Real power comes from being indispensable. Indispensability comes from being a switchboard, parceling out as much information, contacts, and goodwill to as many people – in as many different worlds – as possible.

Ferrazzi basically makes the argument here that real power resides in the hands of people who have a lot of friends and acquaintances who view them as invaluable, not in the hands of the people nominally in charge (necessarily).

In almost every experience I can think of in my life, this is true. People that have a lot of strong connections and give information, ideas, and other things as freely as they can quickly become indispensable – they’re the heart of whatever organization (whether a true organization or just a group of people) they’re involved with. The person who is friends with everybody usually winds up being the leader of the group, whether or not that’s their title on the door or not.

I’ve seen companies that are basically ran by the guy on the floor who has good relationships with everyone, while the nominal president spends his time in the office with the door shut. The president could leave and it wouldn’t affect a thing – the floor leader leaves and everything falls apart.

Which position would you rather be in? The disposable one that’s out of touch and friendless, or the person who has lots of friends and is completely indispensable? Who would you rather be friends with?

A System of Bureaucracies
On page 175, a quote from Ron Burt pops up that’s really thought provoking:

“People who have contacts in separate groups have a competitive advantage because we live in a system of bureaucracies, and bureaucracies create walls,” says Burt. “Individual managers with entrepreneurial networks move information faster, are highly mobile relative to bureaucracy, and create solutions better adapted to the needs of the organization.”

When you think of our world as a system of bureaucracies, it actually makes a lot of sense. Our families are bureaucracies. Our circles of friends are each bureaucracies. Our workplace is a bureaucracy. Virtually every group we’re a part of is a bureaucracy.

The more bureaucracies you have access to, the more you can accomplish and the more valuable you become to every single bureaucracy you’re involved with.

Let me use an example to show you what I’m talking about. A close personal friend of yours is fired. Let’s say you have good friends in several businesses in the area in which your friend works – he’s likely to call you, right? And you’re likely to be able to help him, right? Your access to many different bureaucracies enables you to better help a friend and thus you’re more valuable to him. Plus, if you direct a good worker to a new company, the bureaucracy at that company will value the person you’re connected to there even more than before, again, adding value to you.

On the other hand, if you don’t know anyone, you won’t be able to help. You won’t have value to that friend and he probably won’t turn to you in his time of need.

A network of good relationships is very strong and it often leads to even stronger connections.

Be Interested in Others
Ferrazzi uses a Dale Carnegie quote on page 177 to make a point:

To paraphrase Dale Carnegie: You can be more successful in two months by becoming really interested in other people’s success than you can in two years trying to get other people interested in your own success.

It all comes back to listening and then thinking about how you can genuinely help someone. The more times you’re able to do that, the more valuable you become and the more power you’ll subtly accumulate.

On the other hand, if you just try to promote yourself and grab every opportunity blindly, you won’t be building those valuable relationships. You might get off to a slightly brighter start, but over the long run, the person with the relationships is king.

The way to build them is to listen, to stay in touch, and to help whenever you can without worrying about what you might get in return. It’ll just gradually flow your way.

What Is “Pinging”?
On page 181, Ferrazzi introduces the idea of pinging:

I call it “pinging.” It’s a quick, casual greeting, and it can be done in any number of creative ways. Once you develop your own style, you’ll find it easier to stay in touch with more people than you ever dreamed of in less time than you ever imagined.

Yes, there’s grunt work involved. Pinging takes effort. That’s the tough part. You have to keep pinging and pinging and pinging and never stop. You have to feed the fire of your network or it will wither and die.

To put it simply, pinging simply means staying in regular touch with the people in your network and not letting them drift away. This might take the form of quick emails, messages on Facebook, text messages, cell phone calls, and so forth.

The reason for doing this is to simply keep up to date with how people are doing and also remind them that you’re listening and that you care. Some people broadcast what they’re up to on social services like Twitter and Facebook, but it’s still a good idea to ping them sometimes, just so they know you’re actually involved and paying attention to their statements.

Contact Lists
On page 184, Ferrazzi makes a great case for putting effort into organizing all of the people you’re connected to:

The third step, as I mentioned in the chapter on taking names, is segmenting your network into call lists. In time, your master list will become to unwieldy to work with directly. Your call lists will save you time and keep your efforts focused. They can be organized by your number ratings, by geography, by industry, and so on. It’s totally flexible. If I’m flying to New York, for example, I’ll print out a “New York list” and make a few calls [...]

This is one area of my life that I didn’t have much organization on until recently. There are a lot of people that I keep touch with on a regular basis, but it was on such an ad hoc basis that people kept falling through the cracks – I wouldn’t intend for them to fall through, but the sheer number would make it happen sometimes.

My solution was easy. I just started putting everything in Google Address Book. I made up quite a few groupings of people within that to help me keep everyone organized. One thing I did to help myself is assign them all to numbered groups, groups 1 through 25, pretty much randomly. Each day, I’d contact everyone within that group electronically. So, one day I might shoot an email to the twenty people in group “1.” The next day, I’d do the same with the people in group ‘2.”

This takes time, but it helps me maintain relationships with a LOT of people and contact them all at least once a month.

Making Pinging Normal
This needs to become part of your normal behavior or else it’ll be hard to maintain. On page 185, Ferrazzi explains it well:

The important thing is that you build the concept of pinging into your workflow. Some organizations go so far as to make pinging integral to their organizational processes.

In other words, for pinging to work, it needs to be a normal part of your day.

I’ve started taking a portion of my day – early in the day, usually – to simply ping people and respond to the replies I get (if needed). Yes, this sucks down some serious time – it usually adds up to 75 messages or so a day – but all of these messages are useful. They help me to maintain real relationships with a wide variety of people.

Then, when something of real importance comes up, I can contact any of these people. I’m fresh in their minds and when my request for help comes through, they’re usually glad to help me out. Similarly, they know I’m a person they can reach out to for help.

We make each other better, and this is maintained through pinging.

On Wednesday, we’ll tackle the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters – “Find Anchor Tenants and Feed Them” and “Be Interesting.”

I’m terrible at small talk.

Those little slivers of time right after you meet someone but before a real conversation starts is almost painful to me. I never know what to say and I usually just hope that it doesn’t last too long.

What I’ve come to do is to rely on a handful of standard icebreakers that tend to fill the gap quite well and often lead into some real conversation (which I actually enjoy). They’re just silly things – references to the top news story of the day, a comment on the weather, a compliment of the other person’s clothes or reading material, and so on. However, they get me over the “hump” of small talk nervousness and allow me to begin to get to know the other person.

Ferrazzi addresses the “small talk problem” in this section of the book. Let’s dig in.

Vulnerability
On page 146, Ferrazzi outlines the principle of vulnerability:

Being up front with people confers respect: it pays them the compliment of candor. The issues we all care about most are the issues we all want to talk about most. Of course, this isn’t a call to be confrontational or disrespectful. It’s a call to be honest, open, and vulnerable enough to genuinely allow other people into your life so that they can be vulnerable in return.

How many negotiations would have ended better if both parties involved were simply honest and forthright about their needs? Even when there is disagreement, I’ve found people will respect you more for putting your cards on the table.

In other words, if you’re nervous before a meeting, commenting on that nervousness is a win-win. It not only provides a great conversational icebreaker, but it opens yourself up a bit to others. It’s likely a feeling that they’re having as well and hearing that you’re feeling the same way builds a bond between the two of you.

I often do this. If a situation makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, I’ll say so. If I’m nervous about making small talk, I’ll say that I’m nervous about making small talk. Quite often, the other person feels the same way and is relieved to find that you do, too. It immediately gives you something in common and, at the same time, lowers the threshold for what you have to say next, since the need to impress isn’t as strong as it once was. You already have a rapport.

There may be some situations – such as a negotiation that is going to result with a clear “winner” and a clear “loser” – where vulnerability might not help, but in virtually every other situation, vulnerability is a great way to build rapport with people.

Focus on One Person
Ferrazzi addresses the tendency some people have to constantly “scan the room,” a practice I find pretty weaselly. On page 151, Ferrazzi hammers it hard:

Whether you spend five seconds or five hours with a new contact or acquaintance, make the time count. In Los Angeles, where I live, eye darters are a party staple. They’re constantly looking to and fro in an attempt to ferret out the most important person in the room. Frankly, it’s a disgusting habit, and one that’s sure to put off those around you.

The surest way to become special in others’ eyes is to make them feel special. The correlate, of course, is equally true: Make people feel insignificant and your significance to them shall certainly diminish.

The only person worth paying attention to is the person in front of you. Everyone else can wait – they don’t matter yet.

The counter-argument many people offer against this method is that you might miss something important if you just focus on one person. To those people, I make the point that in your need to find out what’s “going on” around the room, you’re actively alienating the person in front of you.

If I begin a conversation with someone, I make an effort to focus on nothing but that conversation until there’s a lull in that conversation. If the lull happens and I’m not interested in continuing it, then I’ll excuse myself (sometimes after making plans to meet the person later). Otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, the other person (or small group of people) are the only one(s) in the room.

How to Listen
Ferrazzi also argues on behalf of the art of listening. On page 155:

As William James pointed out, “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”

You should be governed by the idea that one should seek first to understand, then to be understood. We’re often so worried about what we’re going to say next that we don’t hear what’s being said to us now.

[...] Take the initiative and be the first person to say hello. This demonstrates confidence and immediately shows your interest in the other person. When the conversation starts, don’t interrupt. Show empathy and understanding by nodding your head and involving your whole body in engaging the person you’re talking with. Ask questions that demonstrate (sincerely) you believe the other person’s opinion is particularly worth seeking out. Focus on their triumphs. Laugh at their jokes. And always, always remember the other person’s name.

This should come naturally if you’re focused solely on one person. If you’re focusing your attention on the person – and that person alone – then following their words and asking appropriate questions is the natural response to a conversation. Not doing so is a sign that you’re not paying attention.

I don’t really worry about doing such specific things as nodding and so forth. Instead, I just concentrate on the words they’re saying and my honest reaction to them. My physical reactions and follow-up questions simply fall into place behind them.

Having said that, I’m pretty poor at reading people. Quite often, my only indication that others are interested in hearing what I have to say is whether or not they have follow up questions or conversation.

If All Else Fails, Five Words that Never Do
If you’re stuck as to what to say next when making small talk, Ferrazzi has a simple suggestion on page 155:

“You’re wonderful. Tell me more.”

In other words, encourage the other person to talk more about themselves. Why? In the end, everyone enjoys talking about themselves to people who they believe are interested in them.

Thus, encourage people to follow up when they talk about themselves. Dig in for more details (without prying). Tell them you’re interested and listen to their story. Even if you’re not fully interested, attempt to grab onto the threads where you are interested.

This has a double advantage for me – it allows me to get comfortable with the other person without talking too much. I often get self-conscious when speaking.

What’s Your Motivation?
On page 161, Ferrazzi looks broadly at the motivations of others:

In my initial conversation with someone I’m just getting to know, whether it’s a new mentee or simply a new business contact, I try to find out what motivations drive that person. It often comes down to one of three things: making money, finding love, or changing the world. You laugh – most people do when confronted with the reality of their deepest desires.

Get comfortable with that reality.

If you think about your deepest motivations, they really do fall into those three categories that Keith outlines here.

Take me, for example. My biggest motivation is my family – a mix of finding love with a bit of changing the world (by raising my kids to do great things). If I walk through every person I know very well, their motivations usually fall along these lines. My friend who’s in a Christian band hopes to change the world. My career-obsessed friend is all about making the money. Some people have motivations that mix these areas.

It goes even further. What if you simply aren’t motivated by one of these areas? If that’s the case, it’s likely that you’re not in a situation where actually conversing with others and making new friends holds much value for you. Why? If you’re actually interested in building relationships, then your motivation is finding love – not in the romantic sense, necessarily, but in the sense of camaraderie and friendship.

How to Motivate
So, how do you utilize that understanding of people? On page 163:

The only way to get people to do anything is to recognize their importance and thereby make them feel important. Every person’s deepest lifelong desire is to be significant and to be recognized.

In other words, recognize that people are motivated by something very important to them, even if it’s not something you share with them, and realize that the person wants to be seen as being important and significant.

My desires to be a great parent and to be a great writer are central to me. They’re very important to me. Knowing that, it’s easy to connect with me – ask me about my family and chase it with some follow-up questions, or ask me how my novel is going. Follow up. Before you know it, I’m talking up a storm – and you’ll find many avenues to build the conversation from there.

The trick is figuring out what’s central to people, but once you find it, it’s the key to connecting to them.

On Saturday, we’ll tackle the nineteenth and twentieth chapters – “Social Arbitrage” and “Pinging – All the Time.”

This is the eighth book in the “Little Books” series on investment topics, and I’ve reviewed all of the previous ones (… of Bull Moves in Bear Markets, … of Common Sense Investing, … of Value Investing, … That Beats the Market, … That Builds Wealth, … That Makes You Rich, and … That Saves Your Assets – all links to my earlier reviews of these titles). For the most part, each one provides solid coverage of a specific investment topic – I particularly liked the “Common Sense Investing” (which covered index funds) and “Value Investing” entries in the series.

This one, Main Street Money, may be my favorite of the lot.

Instead of looking deeply at a specific investment strategy, Jonathan Clements (the author, and long time Wall Street Journal columnist) instead looks at how real people actually invest. For almost all of us, carefully following an investment strategy isn’t the center of our lives. Investments aren’t our life, they’re a way to protect our money and build a little more without consuming our lives with research and worry.

Clements’ book offers twenty one simple truths for this type of real-world investing and personal finance in general, and he does it in a very engaging way. Let’s dig in.

Our Finances Are Bigger than a Brokerage Account
Many people (at least those on stable financial ground) often associate their personal finance success entirely with their investments. It’s really a much bigger picture than that. Are you free from debt? Are you spending excessively? Do you have an easily accessible emergency fund? There are countless issues that point toward (or away from) personal finance health that have nothing to do with your investments. This really speaks to me, since I view investing as just one of many, many topics worth talking about on The Simple Dollar.

We Can’t Have It All
There’s not enough money in the world or time in the day to have everything we can possibly want. You can’t be a great parent, have a strong career, maintain tons of friendships, and keep up your health – something will slack somewhere. The key is spending the time to figure out what you want the most.

Money Can Buy Happiness – If We Spend It Carefully
The real reason many people find that more money doesn’t bring happiness is that they tend to spend it in ways and on things that don’t reaffirm what their life is all about. Unless your life is intrinsically defined by your cell phone, spending more money on a cell phone won’t bring you any sort of lasting happiness. Instead, focus your spending on the things that truly matter to you. Maybe it’s the hobby you’re constantly drawn to. Maybe it’s your family. Maybe it’s your life’s work (if you’ve discovered it). Focusing your money and energy and time towards maximizing that if you want lasting happiness.

Even the Best Investors Need to Be Great Savers
If you don’t live well within your means, you’ll never be a great investor. A great investor improves returns by being able to invest more to begin with, and they come up with that additional capital by employing some restraint in their lives. They live frugally and don’t waste money on frivolous things that are fairly unimportant to them.

Time Is as Valuable as Money
Most of the things we’re really working for in life boil down not to money, but to time. We save for retirement so that we can have a longer and more secure life. We carefully juggle work responsibilities so that we have more time to spend with the people most important to us. Time management is just as vital as money management when it comes to building the future we want.

No Investment Is Risk-Free
There are no guarantees in life, and every investment has some form of risk (yes, even Treasury notes, which have the risk of the failure of the United States government to repay its debts). Investing in cash has the risk of inflation, for another. However, it’s always vital to recognize that some investments have far more risk than other ones. Riskier investments often offer far greater upside than less risky investments, so you need to consider how much risk you can tolerate before you even invest.

Portfolio Performance: It’s All in the Mix
The best way to earn a good, strong, consistent return on your investments is to diversify across many different investment types – domestic stocks, international stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, and so on. There is no perfect formula for the “best” portfolio because different markets go up and down at different times, often not in relation to one another at all. However (unless you’re an incredibly focused investor), your best route is to diversify widely.

Stocks Are Worth Something
Stocks left a bitter taste in many people’s mouths after the 2008 stock market fiasco. However, as long as businesses operate, offer their shares to the public, and pay dividends on those shares, stocks will always be worth something. Stocks do have intrinsic value in the form of their dividends (or potential future dividends) as well as a fraction of the asset value of the company. The only danger is when these shares get overinflated due to hype, which happened in 2000 and 2007, as well as many other times. That’s why it’s worthwhile to mix stocks with other investments, so you don’t lose a large chunk of what you have during a bubble popping.

To Add Wealth, We Need to Overcome the Subtractions
Minimize your costs. If you allow even an extra percent worth of fees on your investments, you drastically reduce the long term returns on that investment. Thus, it’s well worth your time to study different investment options available to you and choose the one that offers the lowest fees while still giving you the option that you want. That extra time invested up front in finding a brokerage that doesn’t nickel and dime you to death pays off tremendously over time.

Aiming for Average Is the Only Sure Way to Win
Given the constant fluctuation of investments and the impossibility of predicting the future, attempting to constantly “beat the market” is a fool’s game. You might do it over a very short period, but then dynamics change and you quickly lose what you gained (and often more). Instead, shoot for just trying to match the average of any market you invest in and ride the tide. This has a big advantage because it means you can invest in index funds, which are known for having very low costs while merely matching the average of the market – exactly what you want.

Wild Investments Can Tame Our Portfolios
Some portion of your portfolio should actually be in risky investments that are themselves diverse – areas that are greatly out of sync with what’s going on in “mainstream” investments. In other words, put some (relatively small portion) of your money in things like precious metals and emerging markets. Often, these do the opposite of what the bigger markets are doing (since that’s where many investors move their money when other markets are faltering), so if you’re already there, you can ride it the whole way up, offsetting the losses in other areas. Mix up your risks and diversify – it’s good for you.

Short-Term Results Matter to Long-Term Investors
You might be investing over the long term, but you may in fact wind up needing that money in the short term. In other words, short term results do matter to long term investors. Don’t put your money in investments that can have big short term losses if you can’t afford those short term losses.

A Long Life Is a Big Risk
Many people plan for a retirement that lasts fifteen or twenty years – that’s a good number to live by. But what if you live far longer than that? If you retire at sixty five and live to 105, that’s forty years of living. A long life is a serious risk to consider when planning for retirement, and one way to hedge against it is to simply invest more into your retirement. I talked about this very idea a bit earlier today, in fact.

Markets May Be Rational, but We Aren’t
We aren’t perfect. Human psychology often gives us strong impulses that are great to follow in the real world, but incredibly dangerous to follow when it comes to investments. The best way to overcome these is to carefully consider a plan and simply follow it, not allowing ourselves to change course because of a sudden gut feeling or a particular scare.

Our Homes Are a Fine Investment that Won’t Appreciate Much
Many people talk about their primary residence as a major investment. It is a great investment, but only in the sense that it keeps a roof over your head. Most of the time (excepting a housing bubble), houses aren’t a great return on an investment. Sure, you can own homes for the purpose of renting them, but those arrangements cost time as well as money – and if you choose to pay someone to management, the return (after all of the costs are paid) rarely makes it worth the risk.

Paying off Debts Could Be Our Best Bond Investment
If you just want a great steady return on your money, most investment experts will point you towards bonds. However, it’s just as effective to pay off a debt – and often more lucrative. If you’re buying bonds at 3% while you have debts at 6%, you’re not making a very good investment choice. Consider debts as being equal to bonds and put your money wherever the highest percentage is.

Saving Taxes Can Cost Us Dearly
If you’re buying a house just for the tax benefits, you’re making a huge mistake. Quite often, tax benefits just help a person recover a small fraction of the costs – and sometimes not even that much. The same goes for many other kinds of investments – tax benefits are often completely overemphasized compared to the actual gains the average person can expect from the tax benefits.

A Tax Deferred Is Extra Money Made
Deferred taxes – like those with a 401(k) – are more useful than they seem on the surface. Obviously, there’s the advantage of the smaller tax burden right now, but what that also means is that you can afford to invest more than you otherwise would. Moving your 401(k) contributions from 1% to 11% doesn’t mean that you’ll bring home 10% less each paycheck – it’ll actually have less impact on that. With tax deferment, you can invest more now.

Insurance Won’t Make Us Any Money – If We’re Lucky
Never consider insurance to be an investment. Insurance is nothing more than protection against the unthinkable. If investments are tied into the package, it’s like buying a Swiss army knife – you’re getting a mediocre screwdriver with your knife and paying a hefty extra cost for the “convenience.” Keep your investments and insurance separate and minimize the cost on each one – separately.

Even If We Have a Will, We May Not Get Our Way
If you’ve accumulated significant wealth, a will alone may not protect your financial assets and ensure that they’re distributed how you like. It may be worthwhile, late in your life, to set up a trust and sign your assets over to that trust. The trust then effectively “pays” you for the remainder of your years, then the trust follows whatever instructions you set upon your passing. It’s a great way to ensure your financial assets are handled in the way you wish after you’ve passed on.

Financial Success: It’s About More than Money
Financial success means having the time and the resources to enjoy the things in life that are most important to you, whether they be

Is The Little Book of Main Street Money Worth Reading?
In terms of advice that’s actually appropriate and useful for 99% of the public, The Little Book of Main Street Money is far and away the best of the “Little Books” series. The advice is truly approachable and actually useful, particularly for people who are in reasonably good financial shape and have a lot of years left ahead of them.

It’s not a be-all end-all of financial planning. Instead, it just provides – in Clements’ approachable writing tone – excellent basic advice and principles to follow. This advice is timeless and forms the foundation of whatever personal finance strategy you might choose to follow – this book is a great starter.

One of my old friends, Darwin, is a connector. He’s simply one of those people who knows lots of other people and often knows exactly who to call in any given situation. He’s also deeply in touch with what’s going on in the community.

In other words, Darwin is the type of person that’s infinitely useful to have as a friend – and because he’s so useful, he tends to attract lots of friends.

Naturally, this ties into his personality. He’s a gregarious extrovert who’s good with names and has a strong sense of tact. That goes a long way toward making the grade.

Still, in the end, there’s something else there – an innate desire to connect with others, perhaps. Even though Darwin and I have very little community overlap at this point, I can still call him up and ask for help if I need it – and if he can’t provide it, he probably knows someone who can.

That’s valuable, any way you slice it.

Weak Ties
On page 129, Ferrazzi cites a 1974 study by Mark Granovetter that explains how the small relationships we build with lots of people – acquaintances, distant friends, members of the same club – really help us:

As a result of the study, Granovetter immortalized the phrase “the strength of weak ties” by showing persuasively that when it comes to finding out about new jobs – or, for that matter, new information or new ideas – “weak ties” are generally more important than those you consider strong. Why is that? Think about it. Many of your closest friends generally do the same work and exist in roughly the same world as you do. That’s why they seldom know information that you don’t already know.

Your weak ties, on the other hand, generally occupy a very different world than you do. They’re hanging out with different people, often in different world, with access to a whole inventory of knowledge and information unavailable to you and your close friends.

I have a ton of weak ties in the blogging community. I send them emails every once in a while, read their blogs (and comment regularly), and link to them in my weekly roundups and on my sideboard. If they ever visit the mid-Iowa area (which simply isn’t a hotbed of blogging, other than a few moderately well-known very conservative political bloggers), I usually will go out and have a drink or a meal with them.

Yet, time and time again, when I’ve had a major project and I’ve needed help, I’ve been able to tap this community. I have dozens upon dozens of people I can write to for suggestions when I’m traveling, for ideas for an upcoming book, for a guest post in a pinch, and for getting the word out about anything big I’m doing (like a new book).

These weak ties are a big part of the success of The Simple Dollar. I’d call all of these people my friends – but they’re not close friends. We share passions, but are separated by distance and a lack of a long history with each other.

That doesn’t mean they’re not valuable – they are, and I’m quite happy to help them when they ask. They’re just simply “weak ties” – and I’ve found that, time and time again, a pile of “weak ties” can be more helpful than just a few strong ones.

I Don’t Want to Do This
On page 130, Ferrazzi makes a case as to why you probably shouldn’t want to be a “super connector”:

[...] what’s most important is developing deep and trusting relationships, not superficial contacts. Despite Granovetter’s research, I believe friendships are the foundation for a truly powerful network. For most of us, cultivating a lengthy list of mere acquaintances on top of the effort devoted to your circle of friends is just too draining. The thought of being obligated to another hundred or so people – sending birthday cards, dinner invites, and all that stuff that we do for those close to us – seems outlandishly taxing.

Only, for some, it’s not. These people are super connectors.

I’m not a super connector. I’ve probably got more connections in my address book than the average person, but I’m far from the level of many people I know. Nor do I really want to be – I’m simply not outgoing enough and the thought of adding hundreds more cards to my Christmas card list seems painful.

Instead, I’m happy with the set of close friends and the larger set of “weak ties” that I have. I don’t feel a strong need to focus on building stronger ties with all of those “weak tie” folks – not that I dislike them, but that there’s some factor (usually distance) that makes building a stronger tie more difficult.

So, for now, I’ll focus on just keeping those relationships healthy – and occasionally adding a few more weak ties or building a new deep relationship.

If You’re Not A Super Connector…
… then what should you do? Ferrazzi summarizes it clearly on page 137:

In one word: connect. In four better words: connect with the connectors.

As I mentioned at the start, one of my friends is clearly a “super connector” of sorts. I have a few other friends who are also very strong connectors, each with surprisingly little overlap with each other.

What I find is that these people tend to be particularly valuable friends. By default, if I need help with some fairly non-personal area of my life, they’re among the first ones I turn to, simply because I know they have access to answers.

It’s well worth your time to figure out the people around you who are exceptional connectors – and befriend them.

Finding a Partner
What if you don’t know any “super connectors” but want to meet lots of new and interesting people? One effective way to do it is to find a partner of sorts – someone who also wants to meet lots of new and interesting people. A peer in your workplace, perhaps. On page 139, Ferrazzi lays it out:

The most efficient way to enlarge and tap the full potential of your circle of friends is, quite simply, to connect your circle with someone else’s. I don’t think of a network of people as a “net,” into which you wrangle contacts like a school of struggling cod. Again, it’s like the internet, an interconnecting series of links in which each link works collaboratively to strengthen and expand the overall community.

Such collaboration means seeing each person in your network as a partner. Like a business in which cofounders take responsibility for different parts of the company, networking partners help each other, and by extension their respective networks, by taking responsibility for that part of the web that is theirs and providing access to it as needed. In other words, they exchange networks. The boundaries of any network are fluid and constantly open.

To put it simply, Ferrazzi is advocating meeting the friends of your friends.

This actually is a great way to meet new, interesting people and build new friendships. Accept invitations to events where you know some of the people – and those people know the rest of the people. Then, encourage the people you know to introduce you to the people you don’t.

You can facilitate the same thing yourself by hosting a party where you know all of the guests, but some of the guests may not know each other. This allows you to introduce them to each other and perhaps provide the foundation of a new, useful friendship between two people you’re concerned about.

A “Shared” Party
So how do you utilize such sharing? On page 140, Ferrazzi offers a great example of a dinner party:

“Lisa, let’s share a few months of dinner parties. You hold a dinner party at the Bel-Air and give me half the invite list. Then I’ll hold one of my dinner parties and give you half of the list. We’ll split the tab for each event, saving each of us a bundle of money., and together we’ll meet a lot of new, exciting people. By cohosting the events, we’ll make them that much more successful.”

Co-hosting parties almost always results in an interesting mix of people, as both hosts are drawing on their circle of friends which often have little overlap. This provides a great opportunity for you to meet these people, plus have the opportunity to build new relationships between the guests, many of whom won’t also know each other.

To some this seems uncomfortable, but in practice, it goes surprisingly well. All of the guests are in the same boat – they know one of the hosts. This provides a very nice conversation opener with people – you’re in the same situation, so you can talk about the gathering – and each other – from a similar perspective.

I’ve been to two gatherings like this and each time I wound up building a few new relationships out of the event. That’s worthwhile, if you ask me.

Never Forget…
A good point of advice comes on page 141, something that applies very well to all social situations:

Never forget the person that brought you to the dance. I once mistakenly invited a brand new friend to a party without inviting the person who introduced us. It was a terrible mistake, and an unfortunate lapse of judgment on my part.

This is an important key to remember for your own benefit, because the person that brought you is often the person who is most effective at introducing you around and facilitating your friendships. Until you’ve established a good relationship on your own, it’s always good to have the “person in the middle” available.

On the flip side, it’s very good to be that “person in the middle.” If you are, that means you’re adding value to both people’s lives by introducing them both to someone that they might value. If their friendship takes off, their impression of you will only grow.

Whenever I have a chance to introduce people who I think might hit it off, I always take that chance. I don’t try to set up dates or anything, but I do make an effort to make sure they know each other. If they click, everyone’s a winner.

On Wednesday, we’ll tackle the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters – “The Art of Small Talk” and “Health, Wealth, and Children.”

Since then, more than a year has passed. I’ve read somewhere around eighty more books on those topics and integrated tons of advice into my life. I’ve also found that I’ve “drifted away” from some of the books in my library, finding other ones that provided food for thought.

So what does my library look like now? Here are the eleven books I’ve reviewed on The Simple Dollar that I own a copy of and turn to regularly for inspiration and reference.

Yes, out of the nearly three hundred books I’ve reviewed (here’s the complete list – my book review index), I’ve only read eleven that have found a permanent place on my bookshelf. Here they are – the links go to detailed reviews and discussion of the books.

Getting Things Done is, hands down, the best book on time management I’ve ever read. The basic idea behind it – the piece that really stuck with me and changed how I managed my time and my information – was the idea that by writing down everything in your head instead of trying to remember it – and then reviewing what you wrote down very regularly – you can free up your mind to focus more intently on the task at hand. From this basic idea, David Allen builds a thorough time management system – though it’s very modular, meaning you can just pull out the pieces that work well for you.

Whenever I feel I have too much on my plate, I usually step back for a bit and take a serious look at Getting Things Done through a pair of fresh eyes – and it often provides just the answer (or the inspiration) I need to reorganize the way I’m doing things and find the time to take care of the things I need to take care of.

Your Money or Your Life singlehandedly inspired me to take control of my finances. More than any other book, this one convinced me to stop and really think about what I was doing with my money. It pushed me to reconsider my goals and choices in life and pushed me towards the realization that most of the material stuff that filled my life was largely unimportant.

I turn to Your Money or Your Life whenever I struggle with temptation. If I find myself feeling aimless and giving into short term desires too often, my long term goals begin to slip away, and Your Money or Your Life is a brilliant antidote for that very problem.

The Complete Tightwad Gazette is kind of a “nuts and bolts” guide to trimming your spending. It’s incredibly long and detailed, filled with countless specific ideas for trimming your spending. The book is actually organized much like a blog, as it consists of hundreds of articles extracted from the 1990s Tightwad Gazette print newsletter.

I often pick up this book, turn it to a random page, and look for new cost-cutting ideas to try out. Sometimes, the suggestion is a very simple one, saving me just a few cents – at other times, it makes a huge difference. Every time, though, I’m entertained by the experience I have with this book and, over the several years I’ve owned it, the book has saved me quite a lot of money.

Never Eat Alone, which I’m currently reviewing in detail, is a powerful discussion of the art of building friendships and value-based “weak ties” with other people. A network of friends in your life is incredibly valuable – it provides companionship, advice, and often material assistance in countless different ways.

My nature leaves me a bit ill at ease in social situations, so I’ll often turn to this book for insight, particularly when I’m facing an upcoming social situation where I want to build relationships with the people I’m meeting. Without fail, Never Eat Alone provides the advice I need to help me turn those events into a success.

Made to Stick focuses on how to present ideas in a way that makes them tangible to the people that receive them. Since I’m effectively in the business of sharing my ideas with others, the advice in this book is particularly relevant to me – but it’s invaluable to anyone who works in an information-heavy environment.

For me, this book provides constant help when I’m writing articles. I often know what I want to say, but at times I’ll struggle with a catchy way to present that idea so that it sticks in people’s minds. When that happens, I’m glad that Made to Stick is right at hand. It’s an invaluable tool for anyone who has to present ideas as part of their work.

The Wall Street Journal Complete Personal Finance Guidebook is my default money reference book – whenever I have a question about how a particular investment works or a general game plan for handling a particular financial situation, this is where I start. It’s definitely a reference book for me and, while there are books out there with more detail, I find that this one strikes the best balance of accessible writing and timeless material – instead of going into abundant detail (which would make the book dated quickly), the book often sticks with more general concepts, allowing me to use this book as a default starting point.

The Wall Street Journal Complete Personal Finance Guidebook is almost always the book I turn to when a reader writes to me with a fundamental personal finance question (like “how does a checking account work?”). Thus, it’s also my starting point for research when I begin to write a “personal finance 101″ article which explain basic money concepts. Whenever I need those answers for my own life, I start here.

Raising Financially Fit Kids was the most recent addition to this shelf, but it’s simply the most thorough and thought-provoking book I’ve yet read on how to teach money concepts to one’s children. The book is laid out and organized exquisitely well, making it quite easy to pick up and dig into whatever area of my child’s financial education that I want to focus on in a given moment, and the thorough nature of the book means that I rarely have a question that isn’t addressed in a thought-provoking way.

I have two kids at home and the oldest of the two is just beginning to become really aware of the role that money plays in his life. As he grows into new layers of responsibility – and his younger sister begins her journey as well – I feel pretty good being able to use Raising Financially Fit Kids as a guide to help me parent them through this process.

The Millionaire Next Door forces me to question my assumptions as I slowly move from a desperate financial situation to a more stable one. I picked it up again recently (via PaperBackSwap) after reading and enjoying the more recent books Rich Like Them and The Difference, which focus on similar topics.

The Millionaire Next Door works because it focuses on the specific things that financially successful people do to make themselves financially successful. By seeking out people who truly had achieved financial success, the authors found that many of the traits that these people had in common are far from what are typically seen as “rich” traits. Many financially successful people are quite frugal, in fact, and derive pleasure from non-material sources. Every time I dig into this book, I find a new insight that makes me reflect on the choices I make and whether or not they’re really in line with some of the bigger ideas I have for my life.

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing is simply my default book for all investment advice. When I have a question about specific investment options, which investment options to choose, and when I should choose them, this is the book I immediately turn to.

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing does a brilliant job of explaining the nuances of specific investments from a conservative perspective – excessive risk is bad, which is a philosophy I agree with (unless you recognize that you’re just gambling with the money). It’s a fairly dry book – it definitely functions better as a reference – but if you want strong advice from a conservative investing perspective, this is an extremely well-executed reference resource.

Mindset has caused me to question my thinking and perspectives over and over again over the past six months. Am I boxing myself in by thinking too small? What can I do to make choices that give me room to grow, both personally and professionally? Am I thinking of all of this in the right way – a way that leaves me open to the abundant possibilities of the future – or am I assuming that things will just stay the same? And am I teaching my kids appropriate lessons that will allow them to grab the world by the horns?

The big idea behind Mindset is that there are two distinct ways of looking at the world – a “fixed” mindset, in which you believe that you and the world will stay largely the same, and a “growth” mindset, in which you believe that you can change and grow as a person. People who subscribe to the “growth” mindset have a much stronger likelihood of achieving things because they’re willing to invest significant time and effort to improve themselves – because they believe it’s possible. Mindset digs deeply into this idea, and I find Dr. Dweck’s insights deeply engaging and worth returning to regularly.

The New Global Student is all about education, and it takes the fairly controversial stance that the typical SAT/ACT/extracurriculars/AP classes/college path that many students follow does not prepare students to succeed in the real world. Instead, you should encourage your child to initiate truly independent projects and encourage them to explore diverse situations, even going so far as to live in other countries. Why? Such experiences teach children to be highly self-reliant and resourceful, making the experience of college much easier (if they choose it), and given a set of such challenging activities on a college application, admission is often easier than you think.

As my children begin to approach school age, I’m constantly thinking about how I can teach them to be more self-reliant. Right now, independent play works, but what about when they’re in school? When they’re teenagers? I believe firmly that self-reliance and resourcefulness are the most valuable lessons one can teach their children – and a pretty sure route to your children’s future personal and financial success. The New Global Student is a challenging handbook for those ideas.

What about the other books? Many of the books I review are checked out from the library. The ones which I receive a review copy of often have those review copies sent on to readers who express a certain interest in the book. If this fails, I swap the copies I don’t want to keep via PaperBackSwap or find others in the community who may want them. A great library isn’t full of books you’ve already read and know – it’s full of books you haven’t mastered and haven’t yet read. These are the ones that continually challenge me and push me to grow.

As I began to get better at interacting with people, I found that I would often meet and have a good time getting to know people at conferences, but after the conference (and a flurry of emails in the week or so afterwards), I’d often find that I hadn’t really built any sort of longer relationships with most of these people.

And I’d feel like I wasted my time.

I began to realize that there were two problems. For one, I was often connecting with people who were just at the conference to goof off on someone else’s budget. That’s fine, but you’re rarely going to meet people who have a strong lifelong impact if you hang out with the pure partying crowd (having a good time is fine, but if you’re doing nothing but that… there might be a problem).

The second problem is that I just wasn’t good at following up – so why should I expect that the other folks would be?

In this portion of the book, Ferrazzi actually deals with both of these points in detail.

Following Up Is Key
Ferrazzi argues that the real key to making a good impression on someone is to follow up. On page 106:

Do you want to stand out from the crowd? Then you’ll be miles ahead by following up better and smarter than the hordes scrambling for the person’s attention. The fact is, most people don’t follow up very well, if at all. Good follow-up alone elevates you above 95 percent of your peers. The follow-up is the hammer and nails of your networking tool kit.

In fact, FOLLOWING UP IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS IN ANY FIELD.

You meet someone. Great. You have a good conversation and find out you have some things in common. Even better. You exchange contact information before you go your separate ways. Spectacular!

However, it’s all (nearly) for naught if you don’t take the next step and follow up. Great relationships aren’t built from one meeting – they require regular interactions and exchanges of value and ideas.

You have that contact information in hand. Use it.

How?
Ferrazzi follows this point with a quick set of principles on how to do it well. On page 106:

Give yourself between twelve and twenty-four hours after you meet someone to follow up. If you meet somebody on a plane, send them an email later that day. If you meet somebody over cocktails, again, send them an email the next morning. For random encounters and chance meetings, email is a fine tool for dropping a quick note to say, “It was a pleasure meeting you. We must keep in touch.” In such an e-mail, I like to cite something particular we talked about in the course of our conversation – whether a shared hobby or business interest – that serves as a mental reminder of who I am. When I leave the meeting, I put the name and email address of the new acquaintance in my database and program my PDA or BlackBerry to remind me in a month’s time to drop the person another email, just to keep in touch.

This is a great collection of little tips to make following up that much easier. Let’s break down a few of them.

First of all, follow up quickly. Do it within 48 hours of your meeting or else it’s likely the person will have forgotten about you. If you have an email address, it’s easy – just shoot off an email.

Second, include a reminder of who you are. When you follow up, you might be following up with someone who met a lot of people in a short timeframe and simply can’t recall everyone. Including a reminder can also facilitate continued conversation.

Third, plan for a second follow-up. If the person I’m writing to is really interesting or important to me, I’ll stick a note in Google Calendar to write them another email – or some other form of follow-up – within the next month. Sometimes, I’ll schedule two or three of them, using different media.

Go Handwritten
On page 108, Ferrazzi makes an astute point about the advantage of handwritten follow-up notes:

While e-mail is one perfectly acceptable way to follow up, there are other methods to consider. A handwritten thank-you note these days can particularly capture a person’s attention. When’s the last time you received a handwritten letter? When you get something addressed to you personally, you open it.

Yes, it’s a lot easier to send an email. But that’s exactly why a handwritten note stands out so much.

At my previous job, I was involved with a special project that took me into one of the rural regions of Mexico, where poverty is almost beyond imagining in our modern world. On this trip, I was assisting a researcher and over the course of the trip, I was able to help him with several problems.

He could have easily thanked me with a handshake (which he did) or with an email (which he also did), but what stuck with me was the card I received from him, a short handwritten note expressing appreciation for my efforts. It meant a lot to me and went quite far to facilitate a long term working relationship between us.

Since then, I’ve tried to send handwritten notes on as many occasions as it is reasonable and I’ve found that almost always it creates a very positive impression.

Why Go to a Conference?
Why attend conferences? I know that before I started really thinking about the value of conferences, I found them pretty pointless myself. Ferrazzi explains the reason for conference attendance on page 110:

Conferences are good for mainly one thing. [...] They provide a forum to meet the kind of like-minded people who can help you fulfill your mission and goals.

I used to hate attending conferences. Mostly, I’d get bored during the sessions and then completely check out once the day’s sessions were done simply because the day had been so long to that point.

A friend of mine told me later that I was doing it all wrong. He suggested picking out only the sessions I was deeply interested in, then resting and recharging during the other sessions, back at my room. The key time, according to him, was when the conference was in break or out of session.

Why? That’s when you can talk to people and meet them. Plus, with the extra rest, you can stay up late into the night and still be fresh the next morning.

I started doing this with the last few conferences I’ve attended and they’ve been completely different experiences.

A Great Way to Get Involved
On page 113, Ferrazzi offers a great recipe for getting involved with conferences, making it possible for you to meet a lot of likeminded people there:

First, review the event’s materials, visit its web site, and find out who the main contact is for putting together the conference. Put in a phone call. The person responsible for these kinds of events is generally overworked and stressed out. I like to call these people a few months ahead of the event and say, “I’m really looking forward to the conference you’re putting gotether. I’m interested in helping make this year be the best year ever, and I’m willing to devote a chunk of my resources – be it time, creativity, or connections – to make this year’s event a smash hit. How can I help?”

One of the conferences I regularly attended in the mid-2000s was often in desperate need of technical support. One of my close associates, who was somewhat skilled in such areas (but not strongly skilled), always volunteered for the duty.

I finally asked him why a few months before I left my last job. In his words, the reasons were obvious. He got invited to all of the organizer and keynote presenter meetings, where there were a lot of interesting and well-known people. He also got his name and contact information in the program and also had an “organizer” name tag, which helped him greatly with the “name recognition” factor during the conference. Plus, the other organizers would often listen to his input and consider his suggestions for who should present at various sessions, enabling him to support some of his own close connections.

Sure, it meant some extra work for him, but in the context of a longer career, the benefits of such work are incredibly obvious.

Take Advantage of Breaks
Ferrazzi makes the point, on page 124, that the real worthwhile part of conferences happens during the breaks:

Breaks are where the real work happens at a conference.

Make sure and stake out the right place. Have you ever noticed how guests gather in the kitchen or some other central place when you have gatherings at home? One warm and centrally located spot is often the center of any party. The same holds true at a business gathering. Determine where most people will gather, or at least pass, and station yourself there. This might be near the food table, the bar, or the reception area.

Along these same lines, I always suggest being comfortable over being perfectly dressed. Quite frankly, the more “perfectly” dressed I am, the more nervous I get. I tend to lock up if I’m in my nicest suit and attempt to make small talk with people. Thus, I’ll often go on the more casual side of appropriate dress – it makes me feel more comfortable and thus more talkative.

Also, when I’m making conversation, I find that a couple of social drinks helps lubricate me and make it much easier to talk. You’ll find that at conferences, the bar area is often filled with people who do the same thing – they have a drink simply because they’re a bit introverted and the drink helps them loosen up a bit. Right there, you have something in common.

Figure out the little things that work well for you. What makes you feel more comfortable? Doing those little things as part of your “conference routine” can make the whole thing go much more smoothly – and help you begin to build some great value-based relationships with people in your field.

On Saturday, we’ll tackle the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters – “Connecting with Connectors” and “Expanding Your Circle.”

The brightly-colored cover of this book caught my attention on the “New Releases” shelf at the library. I picked it up and read a bit of the first chapter – a story about a girl left alone in a room and watched by her mother. The radio was on and the girl couldn’t help herself – she jumped up and danced to the music. It’s just what she was drawn to do – in her words, “she needed to move to think.”

It was an idea that really stuck with me. Quite often, I need to write to think. I need to be able to take ideas in my head and put them down in word form – if I don’t do that, I tend to spin my wheels in life. Writing is an outlet – it’s my passion and it’s simply a part of me. Without it, i would feel empty.

Virtually everyone has a deep passion or two like this – an activity without which we wouldn’t feel whole. The Element by Ken Robinson digs into those passions – finding them, bringing them to the forefront, and evaluating the enormous impact that passions can bring to our lives. Once found and given room to breathe and grow, passions can transform our day-to-day activities, our careers, and our whole lives.

The Element
What do you do when you’re alone and have no responsibilities to follow up on (assuming, of course, that any supplies you need are available to you)? I tend to do one of two things: read or write. I love expressing myself in the written word and receiving the ideas of others through that same medium.

Other people might do different things. One person I know immediately starts drawing elaborate landscapes – I’ve seen his notepads after meetings. Another person heads immediately to his workshop and starts working on small pieces of furniture – miniature display cases and end tables. One woman I know heads straight to the piano and starts playing whatever song appears in their head.

Take someone with the initial passion like that and feed that passion. What do you think happens next? That passion compels them to get better at their chosen craft.

Think Differently
Self-definition can be a dangerous opponent. Many people already have a strict definition of who they are – and who they’re not. “I’m a good accountant, but I’m not a painter,” says the naturally artistic individual whose life path somehow led her into accounting. Yet she doodles magnificently during long, boring meetings. “I’m a researcher, not a writer,” I once told myself, but I couldn’t help but spend my spare time writing essays and short stories and the like.

You aren’t defined by what you’re doing right now or what you believe your limits to be. Nor are the people around you. Margie from accounting might actually be a great artist. Trent from R&D might actually be a great writer. But until they discover it, they’ll stay stuck in place.

Beyond Imagining
Perhaps you know what you’re passionate about, but actually following it seems like a daydream. The competition is too fierce. I don’t have time for it. I love doing it, but I’m not actually good at it. To put it simply, they can’t imagine themselves actually succeeding.

Sustained passion can overcome all of these obstacles, as long as you’re willing to step back and look at the big picture. The people who succeeded before you – they’re human, too. The biggest difference between where you are and where they are is perspective.

In the Zone
One sure sign that you’ve stumbled across the right mix of passion and personal skill is the so-called “zone.” The “zone” refers to an intense level of focus, to the point where a person completely loses track of time and other events going on around them. When you’re in “the zone,” you’re utilizing all of your cognitive effort and talent towards one specific endeavor, often with amazing results.

When I’m in the zone, I lose all track of time and all track of the world around me. I don’t hear my wife talking to me. I don’t hear the telephone ringing. I’m just absorbed in what I’m doing. At some point, I’ll snap out of it, glance at the clock, and pretty much believe whatever it says, whether fifteen minutes have passed or nine hours have passed. I’ll believe either one. Almost without exception, all of my best work is done when I’m in “the zone.”

What things do you do that put you into this kind of “zone”? Whatever it is, it’s probably an indication of what you’ll excel at in life.

Finding Your Tribe
When you begin to follow your passion, you need a group of people around you to support you and help you grow that passion. They can be mentors, advisors, friends, and peers.

For many, though, the trick is finding them. The internet is making this easier, of course, but meeting people face-to-face can sometimes be a real challenge. Robinson offers a great deal of advice on how to find peers that share your interests. One big key that’s worked for me – visit shops in the area that sell items related to your passion and ask around there for groups and interested folks. If there are no groups, get involved in starting one and cooperate with that store to promote the group (they’re usually happy to do this).

What Will They Think?
Many people worry about what their friends might think of them if they start following a new passion. Will my friends laugh at me if I start spending a lot of my time painting?

Here’s the scoop: your real friends will support you. If you have “friends” that laugh at you because of an interest you’re following, are they really friends?

Along those same philosophical lines, you’re likely to find new friends that share your passion if you put effort into finding your tribe. When some friends – the unsupportive ones who really aren’t there for you as you grow – exit stage left, new ones – ones who do support you and share your passions – enter stage right.

Do You Feel Lucky?
Here, Robinson riffs on the idea that fortune favors the prepared. If you put yourself in situations where luck at least has a chance to happen, you have a much higher chance for success than avoiding such situations.

The simplest way to do this is to get involved in community projects or activities related to your interest. The nexus where your passion meets a lot of people is the best way to have opportunity come knocking at your door.

Somebody Help Me
Robinson digs deep into the idea of finding and cultivating a mentor here, suggesting that anyone embarking on a new life journey can really be served by finding someone to guide them.

For some passions and experiences, simply finding someone else who is experienced and passionate can be enough – you can probably locate these folks through community groups or online forums. For others, you may need to find people who are deeply engaged in careers that involve your passions. Don’t look for people who would be in direct competition with you – that would present a big conflict of interest – but look for people who are doing similar, parallel things. Ask them questions – and if they need any help you can provide, offer it!

Is It Too Late?
Obviously, no, it’s not.

Robinson tells several anecdotes, but the one I like to think about is my great grandmother, who passed away in 1999. During the last decade of her life – when she was in her eighties – she took up painting. She painted landscapes and a few still lifes and a few of them (painted in the year or two before her age started to catch up with her) have a certain something to them that’s indescribable. I have one hanging in our dining room that depicts a late winter evening, snow heavy on the ground. In the distance there’s a cabin with lights on. Whenever I look at it, I have this strong sense of “going home after being away for a long time” – a feeling evoked by this painting that my great grandmother’s frail hands painted. That’s exactly what she was trying to communicate with her frail hands and her paintbrush and the message came through loud and clear. That’s talent – and a bit of passion, too.

If a woman can take up painting in her eighties and produce things that can take my breath away, it’s not too late for you.

For Love or Money
Many people focus on the question of making money with their passion. Can they turn it into a profit-making venture? If not, why invest the time?

Robinson’s suggestion essentially boils down to do what you’re drawn to do. If it feels right to you – if it sucks you into that “zone” – do it. That’s the kind of experience that makes life worth living. Quite often, with a lot of practice of the mechanics of what you’re doing, the “zone” can produce truly amazing things and others will notice and value those things.

But there are no guarantees with anything in life.

Instead, follow the passion because you love to do it. If your reason for not following it revolves around

Making the Grade
The best part of following your passion is that you get to define what success is on your own. Perhaps success is just simply getting started each day, or maybe it’s an enormous lofty goal. Whatever it is, you define it – you get to figure out what success is.

It’s your baby, and it’s beautiful.

Is The Element Worth Reading?
The Element really codifies some of the ideas I’ve been developing over the last few years about following your passions – it’s really worth it, but you have to overcome your fears and you can’t just expect the world to come knocking because you’re now doing something interesting. It requires interaction, networking, practice, and footwork to channel your passion into something that can put a roof over your head. But it’s worth it.

Robinson does a great job bringing these ideas together into a very readable book, packed with approachable stories and ideas. If you’ve ever had an inkling of a passion in your life but have kept yourself from chasing it for one reason or another, Ken’s book might just be the antidote.

As with many books of this type, you get out of this book what you put into it, so if the concept seems alien or uninteresting to you, you likely won’t get too much out of The Element. However, if you’re struggling to find your passions and direction in life, this can potentially be a life-changer.