Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a non-personal finance book of interest to Simple Dollar readers.

One of the biggest underlying themes of The Simple Dollar is that personal finance is merely a tool to improve the quality of your life. Of course, it’s an unwieldy and dangerous tool, one that, if used without care and forethought, can add quite a lot of difficulty and pain to your life. Take credit cards, for example.

In connection with that theme, I often read intriguing books about personal happiness – take my reviews of Stumbling on Happiness and Happier, for example, both of which were excellent reads.

Perhaps the most enjoyable book on happiness I’ve yet read, though, is The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. A quick note: I know Gretchen professionally, have exchanged several messages with her over the years, and enjoy reading her excellent blog on happiness topics. Of course, if I didn’t like her writing already, I might never have read the book – which I suppose means I already knew I would like the book before I opened the cover. But enough with that…

The Happiness Project largely focuses on Gretchen’s own experience applying mountains of classic advice on happiness (from Thoreau to Epicurus to the Dalai Lama to Oprah) to see what actually worked – and what didn’t. It’s mostly written in a memoir form covering a single year in which she applied these ideas, which works really well for the material covered (and makes it engaging to read).

Although I’ve had this book for a while, I decided to save this review until the start of the new year because it relates so well to the resolutions that people make for themselves.

January – Boost Energy
It’s often hard to tackle all the things we want to do in life if we don’t have a high level of energy. If your energy is sapped, it becomes all that much easier to simply take the path of least resistance and simply not work on the important things in life, which of course contributes greatly to a sense of unhappiness. Thus, there’s a great deal of sense in beginning a happiness journey by lifting one’s energy.

The two techniques that really stood out in this chapter – and in my own life – were to get more sleep and to simply move around more and get a bit of exercise. I’ll speak for myself in saying that when I don’t get adequate sleep for a few nights in a row, I feel tired and lethargic and unable to do much of anything productive. Similarly, when I fall off the “exercise wagon,” my energy level drops like a rock after about a week.

February – Remember Love
Marriages aren’t easy. Add kids and they become even more difficult. At times, marriages can seem like an emotional negative on the whole. What works? First, don’t expect appreciation for the things you do – and don’t feel a need to point them out and lord them over your partner. It does nothing more than instigate fighting and resentment over something you chose to do. If you want something done, do it and don’t use it as a psychological weapon.

Second, don’t just use your partner as someone to dump your problems on. Don’t blame them for problems. Don’t nag them over things left undone – if it’s undone, it must not occupy a high level of importance for them. Instead, focus on ways to accentuate your partner’s positives. What do they do well? Encourage that in a positive way instead of browbeating over the things they don’t do well. You’ll both wind up happier.

March – Aim Higher
There are few things that feel better than success, particularly when that success occurs at something you never expected to be successful at. When you think to yourself, “I could never do that,” then after investing work you find that you can do that, you’ll find yourself at a big emotional peak.

The best way to aim higher and go beyond what you think you’re capable of is to simply give it a shot. You should expect to fail at first. The first ten times. The first fifty times. That’s fine – you’re learning what it takes to succeed each time you fail. The key is to not give up, to not beat yourself up over the failure, and to get up and try again. Eventually, you will succeed – and that success will lift you high.

April – Lighten Up
People are often happiest when they’re doing something. Gretchen refers to this as “fog happiness” – a sense of happiness, or at least contentment, that comes from working towards a goal. Often, that happiness is borne of a sense that what you’re doing will make others happy.

Another big piece of the puzzle is to simply act happy. Act lighthearted. One effective way to do that is to simply sing on a regular basis – Gretchen suggests doing it in the morning. Play some simple pranks on other people. Do things that make you laugh. It’ll lift everything else.

May – Be Serious About Play
Happiness is often found when you seek out sources of happiness – things you do that bring you joy, no matter what they are. Those things are different for each of us, but when you find those things, devote some serious time to them. Block out time for fishing or for playing the piano. Those times will become powerful personal refreshers for you.

If you don’t have a hobby or activity that brings you such joy, find one. Set aside time to explore potential new interests – and block that time off. Make time for it. When you find something that brings joy into your life, it often works like a “happiness battery,” charging your entire day.

June – Make Time for Friends
Friendship is an easy thing to neglect in our busy lives. We often think to ourselves that our friends will always be around, but when we look again, we find that the friendship has drifted away. Even more importantly, we get joy from time spent with friends, but because we define such interactions as “important but not urgent,” we often replace them with the “urgent but not important” things in our lives.

One powerful way to maintain friendships is to schedule regular events with them. Start a weekly potluck dinner at your house and invite several friends (something we’re in the process of setting up). Another effective tool is to avoid gossip – don’t talk negatively about people behind their backs.

July – Buy Some Happiness
This chapter more or less focuses on one of the major themes of The Simple Dollar – the connection between money and happiness. Without directly touching on it, Gretchen touches on the idea of the fulfillment curve – that everyone has some point that maximizes the enjoyment they get from their spending. Spend too much and you’re not happy. Spend too little and you’re not happy, either.

How do you find that balance? Focus on just buying things you know will bring value into your life, but don’t chide yourself constantly for doing so. Look at your true passions and focus on things that complement those passions and don’t spend as much on the rest.

August – Contemplate the Heavens
Spirituality is another interesting beast in the stable of happiness. For many, there is a lot of solace in contemplating the mysteries of life. If you find peace in seeking these answers, seek them. Gretchen suggests reading about the lives – and beliefs – of spiritual leaders of all stripes (like the Dalai Lama or the Pope or any of a huge number of historical figures).

I find a lot of power in keeping a gratitude notebook. Simply by writing down five things I’m grateful for each day, I keep in mind how many gifts and blessings have found their way into my life. It also often opens a window into religious exploration for me as well.

September – Pursue a Passion
In a way, pursuing a passion builds upon many of the themes already in this book. If you discover you’re passionate about something, chase it. Dig in deep.

For me (and for many others), one great way to build upon a passion is to embark on a big, ambitious project that requires us to dig deep. Write a novel. Build a new deck. Master a particular technology. Start an ambitious blog. To do these things, you have to set aside time – but the projects themselves provide a lot of spiritual happiness and personal reward.

October – Pay Attention
Quite often in life, it’s easy to feel as though we’re swept along by currents largely out of our control. Yet, just as often, if we study our lives, those currents make sense. We have a surprising amount of control over them as well. Most importantly, that awareness can be a real source of happiness.

One effective way to do this is to meditate a bit each day. Spend some time doing nothing more than emptying your mind of all of the mental junk you’ve picked up and clear out that space. Looking at the world with fresher eyes makes all the difference.

November – Keep a Contented Heart
If you’re finding more happiness in your life, how do you maintain it? To put it simply, just pass it on.

It’s very easy to do this. Laugh when others are around. Help others out. Use good manners and be polite. Be positive when you talk about things. Surround yourself with people who do the same thing. This will all add up to a lot of reflected happiness in your life.

December – Boot Camp Perfect
If all of these changes seem overwhelming or impossible, remember one thing: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Take small steps and do them when you think of them or when you can do them. Put these ideas into your calendar and mark off some boundaries for your happiness – but don’t despair if something happens to take one of them out.

The key is to put little positive steps into your life and let the aggregate of those steps help you reach a higher level of personal joy.

Is The Happiness Project Worth Reading?
Regardless of any value you might get out of the advice, I think The Happiness Project is worth reading for the pure entertainment factor. I was sucked into the narrative and wound up reading it much more like a novel than like the nonfiction books I typically read for The Simple Dollar. In fact, this book has found its way into my “to-be-read” pile for purely personal re-reading, a rarity for the books I review for The Simple Dollar.

The advice itself throughout the book overlaps well with many of the books I’ve read on happiness. I think the real key comes through here: listen to yourself carefully and act on what you hear. Your mind is often telling you what you need to be happy, but we often overrule it because of what we’ve consciously decided makes us happy. We buy stuff when we don’t need it and get ourselves into financial pinches. We hang onto relationships too long. We stick with old tired patterns. Quite often, we know these are choices that will make us unhappy, but we don’t listen.

The Happiness Project is a very enjoyable read. It takes a topic – personal happiness – and runs with it, making it personally engaging and entertaining. Drier books fail to entertain at times and fictional narratives often fail to inform – this balances the two quite well. If you’re seeking your own happiness, read this one. You’ll enjoy it.

One of the biggest personal and professional frustrations that I have (and that a lot of others seem to share) is that there’s never enough time to get to the important things we want to do.

We want to do things like…
+ visit an old relative
+ create a master information document
+ work on a big project
+ make out a will
+ get involved in a community organization
+ get our masters degree in the evenings and weekends

Instead, we fill our time…
+ catching that can’t-miss show on television
+ surfing the web for some obscure piece of trivia
+ answering the phone and chatting with whoever answers
+ dealing with email
+ doing dishes
+ stopping at the grocery store for the third time this week

The first group of tasks are things that I would call “important but not urgent.” These are things that don’t have to be addressed immediately, but still have serious importance and value in our lives.

The second group of tasks are things that I would call “urgent but not important.” These are things that try to grab our attention and focus now but have no real impact on our long-term lives.

It’s easy to let our lives be run by the things that are “urgent but not important.” Most large bureaucracies function in this way. I know that my previous job certainly did at times. We often manage our lives this way – we’ll look around, ask ourselves what needs to be addressed right now, and then focus on dealing with that task just because it’s due today, even if it’s trivial compared to a much more important thing.

We’ll answer the phone several times in an hour even though it means constantly stepping away from a big project.
We’ll watch the big game tonight and call our elderly mother in a few days.
We’ll surf the web for trivia but let our dreams of a masters degree sit idle.

I do this myself, more often than I would like. Since I have two articles “due” on a given day for The Simple Dollar, it’s often easiest to focus wholly on the task that needs to be done today (those two articles) instead of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of writing really long-lasting useful information. It’s easier to look around the house, see a big mess, and tackle it, even though my kids are quietly clamoring for more attention.

I find that four little things help me keep the “important but not urgent” in the forefront and let the “urgent but not important” things slide.

I’m unafraid to turn off my phone and email. Closing off channels through which the “urgent but not important” tasks can interrupt the “important but not urgent” tasks goes a long way towards maintaining my focus in the right areas. If it’s not important, it can wait. If it truly is important, I’ll know about it as soon as I’m available since I’ll check my messages.

I block off time for long-term projects. I spend part of every day focused on projects with a long-term payoff. For example, for much of July, August, September, and October, I focused heavily on the manuscript of my book. This didn’t help me at all in my day-to-day work, but it did build something with much greater long-term value. (Yes, I’m working on a long-term project now related to The Simple Dollar – no, I’m not ready to announce it.)

I sometimes will utterly drop the unimportant but urgent things if they’re getting in the way. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with little requests. If I focused on nothing but those requests, I’d never get anything done. So, sometimes, I just have to drop those requests. I’ll put off responding to an email – or not even respond at all if there’s not an obvious answer needed. I’ll skip watching the “big game” and catch the highlights later. I’ll actively choose to put my communications devices away.

I’m acutely aware of what’s truly important to me – and what isn’t. One final trick is understanding what’s actually important to me – and how relatively important various things are. Quite often, it’s easy to substitute urgency for importance – but that often leaves you putting out fires and not really accomplishing anything. Sometimes, it’s best to ignore the fires and focus on the important things.

As I often say to my wife, “Don’t worry about it. I’d rather have dirty floors and well-adjusted children than a spotless house and sullen kids.”

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal development, or career book.

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).

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal development, career, or entrepreneurship book.

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.

Melinda writes in:

You constantly write about how having a notebook in your pocket all the time helps you in life and saves you money. I get that you can write down your ideas in it all the time, but I’m not a creative type. I don’t see how having a notebook on me at all times can save me money at all.

Aside from the fact that I’m able to use the notebook to write down my ideas – my career’s bread and butter – a pocket notebook constantly comes in handy for many other financial reasons as well. (FYI, I usually just keep a simple small Mead reporter’s notebook in my pocket, along with a good pen that doesn’t run out of ink.) Here are fourteen ways I use that notebook to directly save money.

1. Write down sale prices. If you spy an item on sale but you’re not really sure how good of a sale it is, jot down the item and the sale price. Later, you can research that price and find out if it really is a great bargain. This is particularly useful when shopping for gifts or for specific expensive purchases.

2. Make ongoing grocery lists. During a given week, I’ll make efforts to prepare several meals at home. As I’m doing this, I’ll often come across items that we need to replenish in our pantry – for example, last night I discovered we were nearly out of extra virgin olive oil. Similarly, I was down in the basement over the weekend and noticed that we were out of furnace filters – something that was very easy to immediately note. If I have a notepad with me at all times, I can add that item easily no matter where I’m at. Then, since my shopping list is complete, I don’t have to do any “wandering” at the store, helping me save time and drastically reduce impulse buys.

3. Do warehouse club price comparisons. My family often shops at Sam’s Club for many household staples, like toilet paper. Whenever we’re considering making a purchase in bulk, we’ll jot down the Sam’s Club price, then compare it to the normal price we pay at our usual grocery store. Quite often, Sam’s Club is less expensive, but not always. Checking the price lets us know whether or not this item should be purchased at the warehouse club or not.

4. Record great gift ideas. When I’m interacting with a friend or a family member, they’ll often drop a hint of some kind indicating a Christmas or birthday gift they’d like to receive. If I note that idea immediately, I can often give myself plenty of time to bargain-hunt for that specific item, enabling me to get that person a gift they’d really like for the lowest possible price for me.

5. Record contact info for potential clients or new acquaintances. Whenever I’m at a community event, I almost always meet someone interesting who wants to see my website, has a website of their own to share, or wants to keep in touch for some reason. Having a handy notebook makes this easy – I can either jot down my own information and share it (if I don’t have a business card, of course) or jot down their information and keep it.

6. Write down recipes or other food ideas. My parents and in-laws subscribe to tons of magazines and also have extensive cookbook collections. Sometimes, I’ll be browsing through them and see something really intriguing that I might want to prepare in my own kitchen. With my notebook at the ready, I can jot down this recipe, often giving me a great idea for a low-cost meal to prepare at home.

7. Leave a note for someone. Ever stopped by someone’s house when they’re not home and wanted to leave a reminder for them? If you have a notebook in hand, it’s easy to just slip a note under the door, turning a useless trip into a useful one and often helping you salvage a poor situation.

8. Make a simple price book. If you’re trying out a new store, record the prices of some of the items you buy most frequently – milk, eggs, bread, vegetables, fruit, and so on. Then, use that information to compare the prices of this new store to the one you regularly shop at. Is this new store offering better value for the things you buy? Finding the store that offers the best prices on your staples can make a huge difference in your routine food spending.

9. Exchange insurance information. In a fender bender, it’s often vital to exchange insurance information with the other person in an accident. I’ve been in accidents before where the other person was attempting to get off the hook because they didn’t have paper with which to exchange such information. With a notebook right in hand, such excuses won’t matter – information can easily be exchanged and repairs can commence as quickly as possible.

10. Write down a phone number on a “for sale” item. Perhaps you see someone selling their car (or some other large item) themselves with a phone number in the window. If you’ve got a notebook, it’s really easy to jot down the necessary information so you can call the person up later when you have appropriate additional research in hand to ensure that you’re getting a good deal.

11. Keep a “master list” of preferred brands. Consumer Reports often ranks the quality of various household items – toothpaste, shampoo, trash bags, paper towels, etc. – as well as the “best buys” for each one. Having this information in hand can help you easily get the best bang for your buck when you’re standing in the store trying to decide which item to buy.

12. Write down things you want instead of buying them, as per the “thirty day rule.” The “thirty day rule” is pretty simple. Whenever you’re tempted to make a major purchase, instead of buying, just remember the item, put it back on the shelf, and walk out of the store. Give yourself full permission to buy the item in thirty days if you’re still actively wanting it or thinking about it. I actually suggest jotting down the item if you want. Later, you can research the item a bit, figure out if it’s what you really want, and if the thirty days go by and you still want it, you can carefully comparison shop and get the best bargain you can find for it.

13. Keep a detailed errand list. There are always errands that need to be run, ones that are often important to good financial health. By keeping an ongoing errand list in your notebook, you can kill two birds with one stone – for one, you don’t forget them, and for two, you have access to that list all the time, particularly when you’re actually out and about.

14. Make an omnipresent “big goal” reminder. Since I use my pocket notebook all the time, one great technique I’ve found for keeping my mind in the right place is to start off the notebook by writing my big goal on every single page of the notebook. At the bottom, I write “Are you helping yourself get the country house today?” Writing it on every page of the notebook takes a while, but that action alone pounds the message into my head. Then, whenever I look at the notebook, I see that reminder in my own handwriting and it keeps me on a better path.

To put it simply, I couldn’t live without that pocket notebook. It’s an essential part of my personal and financial life.

Three years ago, one of my mentors was debating internally about how to handle a personnel situation. There were enough funds to employ one person. The performance of one worker was better overall, but the other worker often showed flashes of brilliance and was trusted more by his coworker.

In the end, the decision was made to keep the one with flashes of brilliance. After all, in my mentor’s words, “followers are easily replaceable, leaders are not.”

Ever since that day, I’ve thought a lot about what makes a leader. The person with flashes of brilliance clearly wasn’t a leader in the traditional sense – he was at the bottom of the pecking order. Yet he clearly was a leader in the more important sense. Other people trusted him and often turned to him when they needed help. He also was able to step up his game when it was needed the most.

Thus, he became much more vital to the organization than the steady, quiet employee who kept to himself.

What does it mean to really be a leader? It doesn’t mean having a title – that’s often just the result of already being a leader. It means being the person people rely on in a tough situation. It means being the person that steps up when it’s needed. It means being the person that gets people going on the things they need to do. It means getting the things done that you need to get done as well.

A leader with strong skills to back it up is indispensable to any organization. Here are fifteen ways you can start to become a leader in your own organization and make yourself more valuable there – even if you’re a quiet person who’d prefer to just get his or her work done.

Speak up at meetings.
If you have a genuine concern or a good idea in a meeting, speak up and voice it. Why? Quite often, your very concern or idea is in the mind of a lot of others around the room, only they’re afraid to speak up. By speaking up, you’re essentially giving their thoughts a voice without that risk. You’re being a leader for that group of people with that idea.

I’ve found that time and time again, when I do this, people will come up to me afterwards and say, “Thanks for saying that!” Right there, our relationship is stronger and they now look to me a little more than they did before. In at least one case I can think of, it led to a surprisingly strong working relationship.

Cut out the negative talk.
Talking negatively about others behind their backs does very little to help you. You might get the quick rush of feeling good from the ability to make yourself feel superior to the other person, but over the long run, you’ll have a very negative reputation outside of your tightest associates. If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it – it will damage the amount that people trust you. Plus, do you think people are saying similar things about you behind your back? How do you think that affects your reputation? A good tactic is a simple one – don’t run away from negative talk and don’t repeat it at all, but don’t contribute to it. Just ignore it and see it for what it is – usually jealousy on some level.

Offer up some positive talk, instead.
My tactic is to usually be quiet when people are being disparaged, but speak up quite a bit when the conversation is more positive. Making positive statements about others (and doing it consistently) does nothing but improve your reputation. Keep it to the realistic things, though – don’t just blindly compliment people.

Volunteer for the tasks everyone’s afraid to volunteer for.
Whenever a major task comes up that bears some serious responsibility and others are afraid to step up, step up. As with speaking up, by doing so, you effectively become the leader of the people who are interested but are too timid to volunteer themselves. You can take these people and channel them into being a part of the project.

Look for people who are struggling – and ask them what’s wrong.
In a workplace where people meet regularly and collaborate on projects, it’s often quickly clear if certain people are struggling or having problems. Quite often, these people are left to flounder by others who are too “busy” to deal with it, but by spending some time to find out what the real problem is, you’re often throwing this person a life raft which, if they climb aboard, can make them eternally respectful and supportive of you. When people are in trouble, that’s the time to approach them, find out what’s wrong, and find out if you can help without greatly upsetting your own boat.

Directly compliment impressive work.
If someone does good work, tell them right to their face that it’s good work, preferably in front of others. Everyone loves recognition and compliments and usually retain positive feelings towards the people who give recognition and deserved compliments. That positive feeling can often be utilized later on when you’re in charge of a team they’re on.

Tell supervisors when their subordinates are doing well.
This is a more indirect – but often more effective – method of the idea above. If someone does outstanding work, contact their supervisor and tell them. Face to face is often good, but even an email works for this purpose. Tell their supervisor exactly what the person did to go above and beyond the usual standard. This often results in an improvement in the workplace status for that person and, quite often, they end up realizing who offered up such compliments and recommendations.

Be willing and enthusiastic about team-based work.
I used to be a workplace loner and avoid team-based work. Eventually, though, I learned that team-based work is the absolute best opportunity you ever have in the workplace to build strong relationships with the people around you. The more you participate in teams – and come through with your part of the puzzle while helping in little ways with the parts of others – the more others begin to see you as reliable and trustworthy.

When you’re part of a team, take charge of it – but don’t be dictatorial.
My approach is pretty simple. If I’m a part of a newly-formed team, I’ll step up immediately and brainstorm a plan, then send it to the others for consideration. Unless someone rips it to shreds, it usually more or less becomes the plan and I’m the de facto leader of the group. It’s for the same reason as above – you’re usually speaking for people who are too timid to speak up or offer a plan and they’re happy for you doing that if you’re not pushy about it. I would usually do something like send out a rough plan and say, “Here’s my idea for how we should tackle this. What do you all think?”

Make a point to remember – and celebrate – your coworker’s life milestones and accomplishments.
One person I used to work with had a calendar he kept with everyone’s birthday in it along with their favorite two items from the vending machine. On their birthday, he’d go up to the vending machine, pop in $2, get their favorite soda and favorite snack, affix a bow (that he’d brought along with him) to the can, then stop by their desk and put them there, saying “Happy birthday!” with a big grin. It was small, but it came across as incredibly thoughtful – unsurprisingly, he was very well liked within the group and was often listened to and respected whenever he had any ideas or plans to share. Also unsurprisingly, he’s doing very well in life now.

Take two minutes to recognize the milestones and highlights in other’s lives. Keep track of them if you can. Find little ways to make everyone smile. Do these things and you’ll always win.

If there’s a problem you can easily solve, solve it.
Don’t worry about the political connotations or anything like that. If someone comes to you with a problem that you can completely solve or help solve without too much effort, just solve it. The more problems you solve, the more people look to you as a problem solver and the more they listen to your advice and what you have to say.

Ask for help when you need it.
Sometimes, you’ll need help. Some people are afraid to show weakness and avoid asking for help unless it’s absolutely vital. That’s nonsensical and inefficient. If there are particular elements that others can do much easier than you can, ask them for help (unless, of course, it’s a lot of additional work for them). This is the flip side of the coin from helping others whenever you can – if you’ve consistently helped others, they’re likely to help you.

Suggest events that involve your coworkers.
Be the person that rounds up a group to eat lunch together. Be involved in the planning of office parties – and even be the ringleader. Plan parties for people who are leaving. That doesn’t mean you have to do all the footwork, but develop the plan yourself. People will see you as a person who takes charge – and such events are simple to pull together if you just take a few minutes to do it.

Offer useful, detailed feedback.
In a busy world, it’s easy to just go “Looks good!” when someone wants feedback on something. Instead, take ten minutes and try to come up with three things that could be improved with the document. Preface it with a compliment on how good the project already is, put the three suggestions down as clearly and positively as possible, and finish up by saying something along the lines of wanting to turn something very good into something truly great. If the feedback is really worthwhile, they’ll again see you as someone to turn to when the chips are down.

When asked for your opinion, be honest but don’t be cutting.
Your honest feedback is much more valuable than being positive – but even if things are bad, you don’t have to be hurtful. I usually make an effort to compliment where I can, but if there are serious problems with what I’ve seen, I say so. Not saying so hurts them (since they present a poor product) and then, by association, hurts you (since you told them this poor product was good when it wound up dumping egg on their face).

These small things, done every day, make you simultaneously indispensable in your workplace as well as a person people look to as a leader. Who do you think will have their name come up the next time promotions are discussed?

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal productivity, personal growth, career, or entrepreneurship book.

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.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

In response to my recent article, Are Poor People Lazy?, where I concluded that laziness doesn’t always equate to poverty and vice versa, Pamela left this comment:

There are many factors that lead a person to the life they are living. I am quite shy. No matter how much I socialize no matter how many times I try to assert myself I remain shy. Because of this I do not take classes or do many of the things suggested for me to do to get ahead in life. So according to you I am lazy. NOT SO. If allowed I would work 12 hour days at my job.
I also agree with many of the comments that being in the right place at the right time can have a more positive outcome on you life than anything.

For most of my life, I’ve been very shy. Sometimes, I’ve been able to cover it up by essentially adopting another persona – simply pretending to be someone else who was outgoing – but that would only work for short stretches. Usually, I would just maintain that level of false outgoingness until I could get out of the situation.

I told myself that it was impossible to be any different than that. It was a convenient excuse, as are all excuses that take us away from great opportunities in life.

In truth, adopting that “outgoing” persona, escaping social situations, and believing I was just shy and nothing could be done about it was merely taking the path of least resistance in life. In other words, it was the easiest path available to me. Being more social and extroverted was far outside my comfort zone – it was a lot easier to just put on a mask, get through the situation, and remain introverted.

It has taken me a very long time to grow beyond that level of introversion and shyness. I’ve had a lot of painful social interactions along the way, and I’ve practiced in ways that would have seemed ludicrous to me years ago.

Now, though, I feel completely fine starting up conversations with people I’ve just met. I can lead conversations with others, as well as follow their lead, and I actually enjoy it because of the human interaction as well as learning a lot of things along the way.

Being more social has opened up a lot of avenues for me. I’ve met interesting people, gained some public speaking opportunities, and built a lot of friendships in the community.

If I had just continued to follow the path of least resistance, I would have never had these opportunities.

Is the path of least resistance laziness? Some might argue that it is – I don’t. People can work quite hard on the tasks that they’re most comfortable with.

However, opportunity rewards people who step outside their comfort zone. The Einstein quote that starts this article really sums it up: if you just keep doing things the same way over and over again, you’ll keep getting the same results. If you don’t like the results you’re getting in some aspect of your life – your economic situation, your personal situation, your health, and so on – it’s time to take a new path, one that’s not easy.

Find it hard to be social? Read Never Eat Alone and How to Win Friends and Influence People and start acting on what you read.

Find it hard to lose weight? Start exercising every day, even if it’s hard, and throw out most of the junk food. Try drinking water instead of soda – it’ll be hard at first, but fighting through that resistance is what will make change happen.

Find it hard to learn and grow your knowledge? Turn off the television and read books on subjects that you don’t know much about. If they’re over your head, back off and read simpler ones first.

Find it hard to execute some particular skill? Use your spare time and practice it, even if practice seems difficult and you’d rather be doing something else. Play the guitar until your fingers hurt. Cook every meal for a month from scratch.

Find it hard to get out of debt? Cut up all of your credit cards and erase those numbers from all of your online accounts and learn how to live on what you have.

Once you’ve broken through some personal barriers, you’ll find that opportunity knocks more often than before. You’ll understand the world around you better – and people will interact with you in a more positive fashion.

It’s hard to change course, but if you keep doing what you’re doing now, you’re going to keep getting the same results. Now’s the time to get off that path of least resistance and try the hard way.