productivity

I spent a better part of last night thinking about the analogy between chess and life. It turned out to be a very interesting exercise. As always, images get formed in my head before I can gather the words. So, here is how it appeared to me after some elementary thinking:

Now, it’s time for some words.
Here are seven powerful parallels that you can draw between a game of chess and life.

• Planning for the future: Think long term - that’s the key to survival in this game. Don’t aimlessly push your pawns without a plan. Before you decide to make a move, think a few steps ahead. Ask “what if …?” and try to anticipate the possible outcomes of your actions. Work out a backup plan and decide on an exit strategy. In life, this is the foundation of all financial planning exercises.

• A great lesson in adaptation: Your opponent doesn’t follow a given sequence of moves. Hence, whatever your plans may be, you should always be ready to adapt to the changing situation caused by the monkey wrenches that your opponent will throw at you. At times, when dealing with unconventional opponents, you may require a paradigm shift in your thinking. This requires an open mind and the willingness to adapt to changes.

• The value of sacrifices: Sometimes you need to give up some of your smaller assets to achieve bigger milestones later in the game. A great many chess games have been won with brilliant sacrifices at the right time. This essentially requires some forethought.

• The dangers of temptation: Your opponent (the dark side) will occasionally tempt you with small pawns and trivial positions on the board. These small offers will act as baits to draw you into vulnerable positions and to expose your weaknesses. Do not fall for these - they have the potential to ruin the game for you. Always be focussed on your long term objectives and resist the distractions of these momentary temptations.

• The pitfalls of a passive approach: When you play the game passively, you play to just survive and stick around - to avoid a checkmate. You accept all the tricks that your opponent sends your way, and do not question anything. Your actions will be shaped by how your opponent (uncertainties, habits, etc) chooses to play the game. If you are lucky, you may somehow manage to hold your fort till the end but you will be miles away from a “victory”.

• The rewards of an active approach: In this case, you play the game with a positive frame of mind. You play to win. You play to conquer the dark side. You define the pace of the game and you will probably control the outcome. Victory will have it’s own sweet taste. By the way, don’t confuse an “active” approach with an “overconfident” approach - overconfidence is generally not guarded by caution, thought, or adaptation.

• The importance of consistency: Like chess, life is a game of mental tenacity. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are; if you don’t hang in there with consistent positive efforts, your opponent will eventually start eating into your defenses. If you do exceedingly dumb things, you will be eaten alive.

Finally, if you think life is like this:

You really need to wake up and stop dreaming!

First, the big picture with a time frame:

Obviously, my relationship with television hasn’t been very rosy. Here is a brief description of how things have unfolded over the years.

The Prehistoric Days

It started long long ago with a 14″ Philips black and white television. It didn’t have any *buttons* or remote or any fancy stuff; just a couple of ear-like knobs, 8 channels (of which only two used to work) and some scary tube diodes.

It was probably the smallest (and most featureless) model in the market, but that’s all my parents could afford at the time.

With just two channels available, there was not much scope to waste time on watching anything. In fact, most of the TV watching occurred on Saturdays and Sundays when it was cartoon time for better part of the day.

The TV-free Zone

Then one day, the inevitable happened. The TV stopped working. I remember my dad taking it to a TV repair shop (in those times and in the place where we lived, repairing broken electronic items was the norm - as opposed to getting new ones as replacement). But, it didn’t get any better after the *repairs* - just refused to come back to life. My parent’s never bothered to look for a new one [I now thank them for doing that].

If my memory serves me right, the initial few weekends without the dose of my favorite cartoons were absolutely painful (I was probably already addicted to it). However, as I grew older, I started filling the void left by the broken TV with other activities (there is not enough space to mention all of them here). The TV addiction didn’t take much time to wear off and once it was gone, it was gone for good.

I have to admit that the TV-free zone was the most productive time in my life. Achievements flowed in - academic and athletic. My social presence was on the rise and generally life was pretty good (well, except the occasional taunt of a TV addict friend). Never ever felt the “want” for a TV. There was an information void, but that was quickly filled with newspapers, magazines, and radio.

The Evil Comes Back

I don’t know how the evil thing came back, but it did. It was probably because I became less busier than before - in spite of joining grad school. This time it came back in the form of a 24″ flat screen color TV. Shows like The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond, That 70s Show, etc., became regular (almost daily) features and it didn’t take much for my TV-time to go from 0 to about 2.5 hours each day. Think about it ~ 2.5 hours a day! that’s like 912.5 hours a year! Productivity was certainly on a decline, but I was either blissfully unaware of it or the addiction side of my brain simply refused to accept the fact.

Blogging vs. TV

Fortunately, I recently got hooked on to blogging and the busy lifestyle started coming back to me. TV-time has been compromised in favor of blogging and things are getting better now. Every time I switch ON the TV, a nagging thought bothers me - “dude, you could probably be doing something constructive with your blogging instead of wasting your time watching TV“.

I start thinking of wasting 912.5 hours per year (that probably sounds like thousands of dollars in blogging income) and that quickly makes me very uncomfortable. Such nagging thoughts keep reminding me of the value of the unproductive time lost in watching television and have been largely responsible for the recent decrease of my attention towards the idiot box. I am hoping that the trend continues in future and eventually tends towards 0 hours per day.

Here is some more trivia about my relationship with TV.

• I have never watched a single episode of The Sopranos, The O.C., Lost, 24, Law & Order, Oprah, and many other popular TV shows. I don’t think my life has lost any value because I didn’t watch those.

• Part of the reason why I haven’t ever watched a lot of TV shows is because I have never had a cable connection ever. We have always used an indoor TV antenna and that catches a few channels with sufficient clarity (already enough reception to cause a 2.5 hours/day wastage). Plus, honestly, I have seen my friends who have cable - generally, they are simply wasting their time flipping channels and watching nothing.

• I have never owned a video game console. I have tried my hands on my friends’ XBox and PS 2 (played Halo and God of War, respectively), but the total time spent on playing those games till now must have been less than 4 hours.

So, that’s my TV story.

Before I end this post, here is just one tip (from my personal experience) for those who are looking to reduce their time spent on watching television - just get busy and keep yourself busy (with something other than watching television) !

For children who are too young to decide anything for themselves, the tip goes to their parents - just keep your children busy, distract them away from the television. Later in their life, they are going to thank you for doing that.

Yesterday, Pete @ My Financial Awareness posted an excellent article titled “Reasons Not to Set Your Goal to Become a Millionaire“. I have been brooding over similar (complementary) thoughts for some time, and now, in light of Pete’s article, I would like to share them with you. Instead of talking about just the “millionaire” goal, I will try to generalize the thinking to our tendency of setting goals of the type: “I want to save $ XYZ in the next 5 years“.

Before we start talking about money, let’s brush up some basics.

Milestones vs. Goals: In a very few words, a goal defines your purpose and milestones measure your progress towards that purpose. Although it’s a very straightforward concept, it can be a bit tricky to understand. To make it easy, let’s discuss some American football. In the football field, yard lines are analogous to milestones - they are not goals, they just measure your progress towards your goal - which in this case could be the end zone. Really? Is the end zone really the goal for a football team? No, it’s again just a milestone towards a greater purpose - winning the game. If you treat the yard lines as your “goals”, you run the risk of loosing focus of your real end goal - your aim is to win the game, not just cross yard lines.

Similarly, (in my opinion) dollar amounts are just milestones towards some greater, more profound goal. Your financial planning cannot stop at “I want to save $ XYZ in the next 5 years”, there has to be some purpose beyond that. You need to ask yourself some questions like - why do I want to save that amount of money? what do I intend to do with that money? how will saving that much money add value to my life? etc. This will help you understand what your real goal (or real purpose) is and it will put your monetary milestone into perspective with respect to that purpose. It’s this real purpose beyond the dollar amount that differentiates between “hoarding” and “saving”.

Let’s look at some specific examples to understand this better.

• Happy retirement is a goal, and a million dollar target is just a milestone: This exactly what Pete has conveyed in his article that I linked to at the beginning of this post. You cannot ensure a “happy” retirement just by saving a million dollars - there are a lot more ingredients to your post-retirement happiness than just money. Here is a schematic that will save me a thousand words towards explaining this thought:

Similarly, we can try and understand a couple of other relevant aspects of life which are sometimes (unfortunately) tied to dollar amount “goals”.

• Good education for your kids is a goal, saving for their college fees is a milestone: Just saving a few hundred thousand dollars for you kid’s educational expenses is not going to ensure good education for him/her. Go ahead and work hard at those 529 plans, but don’t think that your work is done as far as “good education” for your kids is concerned. Motivating your kid to study, making good educational decisions for him/her early on, encouraging good study habits, etc. are some of the issues you will need to handle beyond the money part towards that goal.

• Being (and staying) debt free is a goal, saving a dollar amount to wipe out your credit card debt is just a milestone: If you saved enough money to pay off thousands of dollars on your credit card - congratulations, that’s commendable… but that’s just a milestone towards your debt free goal. Staying out of debt requires a proper mindset - no amount of money can do that for you. So while you are working towards reaching your dollar amount milestone, it is also important to work towards your bigger goal of staying debt free. This will include addressing your spending habits, addictions, consumerist tendencies, etc.

In summary, it is not enough to make a goal that says “earn $2 million by age 50″ - that $2 million is not your goal, that’s just a milestone. There is no problem with pursuing dollar amount milestones; in fact, they are essential measures of your progress. However, beware of the tendency to assign too much importance to these milestones - once you start doing that, you run the risk of losing focus of your real goals. Don’t let that happen - don’t let your dollar amount milestones distract you from your real end goals.

This is a guest post by Leo @ Zen Habits. More information about Leo and his blog is available towards the end of this post.

Life has a tendency to get complicated. We have more to do, more to keep track of, more possessions, more places to go, more paperwork, more incoming information, more to remember. Over a number of years, all of that can get overwhelming — and expensive.

For myself, simplifying my life in various ways has allowed me to reduce my expenses and increase my savings. With math like that, it won’t be long before simplifying will lead to prosperity.

Now, simplifying doesn’t just apply to finances — although it definitely can do a lot for your finances. But it can be applied to all areas of your life, and by doing so, in most cases, I’ve reduced my spending and increased my happiness and overall wealth.

Before we get into the details, imagine a simplified life for a minute. For me, it has meant reducing the clutter in my home, leaving my house free of visual distractions, free of messes (for the most part), and more visually appealing. It has reduced my stress and made me more calm. But a simplified life is more than just reducing clutter — it is reducing your commitments, so you are not so busy. It’s simplifying your work life, your finances, your routines and systems. Imagine a life where you have less to do during the day, time to spend on yourself and your loved ones, time to focus on what’s really important instead of distractions, to focus on the work that’s truly essential.

This is the type of life I’ve been striving for, and it has reduced my stress, increased my productivity, and improved my overall happiness. But let’s take a look at one of the best side effects of simplifying: how it has improved my finances.

Here are just 10 ways:

• Less maintenance. By reducing your possessions, you reduce the amount of maintenance you need to do on those possessions, saving you both time and money. And if you have a drastically reduced number of possessions, you could simplify even further by moving to a smaller home, as you no longer need all that storage space. A smaller home means lower maintenance costs as well.

• Less wasted time. In your work life, you often have way too much to do. But if you focus on what’s really essential in your professional life — those tasks that really make you money in the long run — you can eliminate much of the non-essential stuff, and use your time more wisely. You can now do more of these money-making tasks (and thus increase your income), or work less. You can apply this principle to the rest of your time as well. Less waste can lead to increased income — it has for me.

• Fewer fees. You can simplify your financial life by reducing the number of bank accounts and credit cards you have, thus reducing the number of fees you potentially have to pay. You can also simplify your bill paying by doing them online, by making them automatic, or by paying your bills as soon as they come in — any of these methods can reduce your late fees as well, if you’ve been having trouble paying bills on time.

• Sell your crap. I save money on books (one of my biggest expenses in the past) by selling my used books or getting credit to buy more used books. Many people make a good side income by selling their stuff on eBay.

• Lower transportation costs. If you simplify the things you need to do — reduce your commitments — and thus reduce the number of places you need to go, you have less driving to do. That’s less gas. In fact, simplify enough, and you can get rid of your car! I haven’t done this yet (though many people have), but I have reduced my transportation costs by commuting in to work from time to time (I’m trying to increase the number of times I do this to 4-5 per week). Or simplify even more, and work from home! Another way to simplify transportation is to have one errands day, instead of doing them throughout the week, and plan out the most efficient route so that you minimize driving.

• Less impulse spending. One thing I’ve found is that as I reduce my possessions (and it’s an ongoing process), I also reduce my needs. I know what’s important to me (and again, this too is a learning process), and I know that much of the junk I used to want to buy is actually junk. I still get the urge to buy on impulse, but that’s reduced. A great way to do that is to monitor your urges, and to keep a 30-day list — whenever you want to buy something, put it on your list, and don’t allow yourself to buy it until 30 days have lapsed. Most times you don’t want to buy it after 30 days.

• Less eating out. I used to eat out a lot. Every day. Spent a ton. Now, by cooking at home, and reducing my need to eat out, I’ve simplified my life and drastically reduced one of my biggest expenses. Cha-ching.

• Cheaper fun. Another big expense was going to the movies (twice a week), going to the mall to hang out (inevitable money drain), or spending on other types of “fun” stuff. Now, I have even more fun, with simplified entertainment. The family and I go to the park, to the beach, play sports outside, play boardgames at home, make up a million fun things to do that don’t cost a ton.

• Keeping up with the Joneses - nixed. This is one of the biggest wastes of money, but so many people do it. They want to have a car as nice as their co-workers, or an outfit just as cool, or a computer just as new, or a television with just as many inches. By simplifying, I’ve gotten over that little game, and now I can make things last longer simply because I don’t upgrade every time something new and cool comes out, or every time there’s a new trend. Forget having a luxury car — they’re a huge waste of money and gas guzzlers. The Joneses are idiots anyway (Well, some of them).

• Simple fitness. I used to waste hundreds of dollars a year on a gym, and buy lots of fancy workout gear. Now, I run and bike on the road (who needs exercise machines?) and enjoy nature, for free. I do pushups and crunches at home, and lift a barbell. I also used to spend money on diet food, like Slim Fast or Weight Watchers or Atkins products. Now, I just eat vegetarian, and save a lot of money on meat products as well.

These are just a few ways, but simplifying can reduce your expenses and increase your income — thus fattening your pocketbook — in so many ways. And you don’t need to do it the way I’ve done it — simplifying is an intensely personal thing, and is achieved at different levels and in different areas for every person. But for me, it has not only increased my financial position, but increased my satisfaction with life overall.

About the author: Leo is a father of six kids, a husband, a worker, and a free-lance writer. He currently writes about simple productivity (and related topics) @ Zen Habits. Check out his inspirational post titled “How I Save Money“. To subscribe to Zen Habits, click here.