FabriceCalando.com

Imperfect systems

Fabrice Calando — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:59:52 +0000

In economics there’s a concept called perfect market. Basically a perfect market is defined by several conditions called perfect competition. The conditions include:

Prefect market information
No participant can set prices
No barriers to entry or exit
Equal access to production technology
Infinite buyers and sellers

It’s a concept, a theory that doesn’t necessarily happen in real life. It describes what a perfect market would look like.

Markets, life and systems

A market is a system, much like your life is a system. But unlike the market, the programmable system that is your life is leaning towards perfect. It used to be that only a some could access and set access to information, could afford to start a business, could afford production technologies and afford reaching a broad range of customers. But along the way came the Internet. The Internet was built to facilitate communications and in the process has brought the system closer to perfect. It used to be that if you were born in one class or cast, it was incredibly hard to move up, now you can start a business for $100. It used to be that you could only sell to those in your neighbourhood, now you have access to the world. It used to be that only experts were in the know, now we all know…As Gary Vaynerchuk colourfully points out, the consumers bullshit radar is much better than we’ve ever thought, precisely because the Internet is creating a perfect system.

In other words, the resistance is growing.

Hack your life

An imperfect system benefits those who set the prices, those who have access to information and production technologies as well as those who can afford the barriers to entry and marketing to the broadest range of customers. A perfect system benefits, by definition, everyone.

It’s specifically because of this tendency towards perfection, not the fact that it’s imperfect, that your life’s system is programmable and, therefore, hackable. Especially when the system is created, as Steve Jobs as said, by people who are no smarter than you.

(Photo credit: Yusuke D.)

Discover the profound impact of managing your personal finances

Fabrice Calando — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:36:02 +0000

If we’ve spoken recently, you know I’ve developed a keen interest for Personal Finance. It started with Ramit Sethi’s book I Will Teach You To Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program that Works (Affiliate link) and a Hack Your Life Challenge. It’s always been in the back of my mind, I’m an avid reader of Get Rich Slowly and Mes Finances Perso (French blog), but now it’s so much more.

I wanted to start a feature on Personal Finance because I’ve come to realize that money is one of the biggest roadblocks in our lives. I’ve asked Mes Finances Perso to kick off the feature today. I asked him because we see eye-to-eye on many things and share a lot of common interests and he’s been writing about the topic for quite a while now. He’ll have a few more posts and then I’ll take over if things go well.

[NOTE: Please keep in mind that he's French-speaking and writing is first article in English. While I helped to edit, it's not my expertise.]

ENJOY! — Fabrice

Money.

We use it, spend it, give it, invest it, earn it and lose it.

There’s no denying the fact that we need AT LEAST enough money in life to cover our basic needs. We might as well accept this cold hard fact and get better at managing this powerful tool.

Don’t get me wrong though. I am not the kind of person that is obsessed with money. I’m not kidding myself, I love money, but I’d rather say that I see it as an awesome vessel to help me live a “rich” life. To me, a rich life means having money in great enough quantity that I never have to worry about it anymore in my day to day choices.

Being rich gives you the freedom of choice and the freedom of being able to do what you really want. Well, almost. More realistically, we could agree that it helps remove some of the barriers that you encounter in getting what you want in life. Think about it for a minute. If money was not an issue, would you still go to work? Would you travel more? Provide more for your family and its future? Practice exciting sports? Do crazy stuff?

Would you have more time?

How can we improve the way we manage our money so that we don’t have to work so hard for it all of our lives?

The answer is simple. One tiny bite at a time.

Do not try to save money on everything; do not try to indefinitely find the best investment vehicle before you start investing, do not try to become rich instantly…

Execute some good financial moves, one by one. What if you fail? Do another move to keep your momentum.

Where do we start? What good advice can we try to apply to see if it makes us better at managing our money?

Here are some things you probably already know, but haven’t taken action on because you procrastinate:

Pay off your debts

School and house debts are not too bad, but for the rest, you shouldn’t owe more than you have. Reimburse the money you owe and pay off your credit card debts. There are debt-reducing techniques out there that might help you. Don’t over-analyze though. Pick one and start paying it off fast.

Earn more money

There are multiple ways to earn more money. The fun part is that there is no limit to how much money you can make, whereas there’s a limit to how much money you can save. You can earn more money by working smarter at your job and asking for a bigger raise. Ask your boss what he wants you to do to exceed the expectations; then do it. If they don’t want to raise you accordingly next time; switch jobs!

Invest

There are 2 major types of investment. You can invest time and/or you can invest money. Whatever you do, you should remember that investing a lot of time & money, at a young age, is a great leverage to reach fantastic financial goals. Even if you’re not-so-young anymore, life expectancy has gone up so much lately that it’s not an excuse anymore. You should always try to have a portion of your money or your time invested in some way.

Save money

Most people don’t save! It is a very important habit to develop and you should always set at least a bit of money on the side when you get paid, even if it is $5.00. Saving up for the rainy days (emergency fund) is SO important and stress-reducing once it’s done!

You see, my point is that you should start taking action on one of these topics. Improve your life one bit at a time. Fail if you need to, and then do better next time. Pick ONE of these personal finance areas and try to implement a few good moves for a while and see how it goes.

It isn’t rocket science.

You probably all know that you should have done these things long ago, or that you should do something soon. Simply knowing what you should do is not enough though. You need to act, and soon. Remember that the resistance to act on important stuff comes from within. The enemy is within. Start small; start today. Commit to completing a small goal related to any of these topics in a short period of time.

Grab the bull by the horns. Grab life by the horns. Become better at this game called money, one step at a time, and see an interesting side effect appear: self-confidence that you will become rich one day. And the financial ease to prove it.

Small & quick gains will make you realize that it wasn’t so hard after all. You’ll also feel fantastic for completing something you KNOW was important to your progress.

Which one of these suggestions are you going to implement in the next month? I’d suggest you pick just one, write it down on paper and carry that paper with you. Make yourself a promise that you will do something important in the upcoming days/weeks to get better at managing your finances. Then start taking massive action on that one thing until you get it done.

For those who feel the need to learn a bit on these topics before jumping into the pool, I strongly suggest reading good Personal Finance books over anything else. Books like I Will Teach You To Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program that Works (Affiliate link) or Your Money: The Missing Manual (Affiliate link) will give you an outstanding understanding of how to get your personal finances back and track, and on the road to riches!

Don’t think too much — Just get started, will ya? What better time than now anyway?

(Photo credit: David Goehring)

Hack Your Life Project: Spice up your life

Fabrice Calando — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:34:14 +0000

Last week was all about…Random acts of kindness

It doesn’t take a lot to put a smile on a stranger’s face — holding a door, investing on Kiva or even a smile can do. There really isn’t a need to look further. Sure, donating time or goods is great, but don’t let the extra effort stop you when all that’s really needed is a simple gesture.

Next time you’re out and about or browsing online, give a compliment, hold a door, smile to a stranger…

#HYLP Challenge #20: Are you Bored?

This week will be about evaluating life’s activities to see where there’s something missing. If you want to join along, what you want to do is fill out a spreadsheet like this:

Activity	Time spent	Am I bored?	Am I anxious?
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-

In the Activity column you’ll want to list what you do during your day — Eating breakfast, getting ready for work, going to work, etc. How granular you want to go is up to you, but I recommend to keep it high-level enough (you can dig deeper when you know where to focus your attention). In the end, you want to see what you do that causes you stress or what you do that’s…well…boring you.

You’ll want to keep track of time spent as well so that you can see how much time you spend on stuff you shouldn’t be. If you only spend 1% of your time on boring stuff (like doing the dishes!), you’re in pretty good shape. To keep time you can use a good old stopwatch or an app like RescueTime.

From there, you’ll be able to see what needs to change…job, friends, workouts, diets, TV shows, whatever.

When am I bored?

It can be hard to determine if something bores you or stresses you. Sometimes our actions and behaviour hide feelings you might not be aware of. Some indications you’re bored include:

Low levels of energy
Always running late
Not giving it your best
Thinking of close to 1,000,000 better things to do with your time

Indications you’re anxious?

Responding to small set-back with anger
Getting sick a lot
Generally irritable even
Road rage

Why?

Are you dissatisfied with work? It seems you’re not the only one. More and more of us are sticking with events, activities and tasks that they shouldn’t be. At the risk of sounding cheesy, life’s too short. Do only great stuff!

We’re at our best when we’re somewhere in-between boredom and anxiety. That’s at work, but also at home, travelling, with friends, playing sports or whatever activity you find yourself in. What you want to aim for is that sweet middle where you’re challenged enough to not be bored, but not too challenged that you’re loosing sleep over it. It’s what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (affiliate link).

What’s next? Change the lows, keep the highs. Maybe we can do that next week.

Past challenges

If you’re new here, on the first week of January I started the Hack Your Life Project. Each week I challenge myself to explore the details of the programmable system that is my life and stretch its capabilities, as opposed to most of us, who only prefer to learn the minimum necessary. I no longer want to breeze through my life, but take control of it.

These are the past challenges:

Small learnings

Fabrice Calando — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:06:37 +0000

To put it simply, I love small learnings. Just this past week, I learnt a little more about defence mechanisms during an elevator ride and a whole lot more about negotiations during a conversation with my landlord (those learnings remain to be tested). Small learning often lead to broader — much broader — things. A child always learns to take her first steps before she can run.

Running before walking

I think it’s safe to say that learnings never come big, it always starts small and grows. Most people are looking for the big learning. “I’ll attend this seminar and learn about Marketing 2.0,” “I’ll take this one training session to become a LinkedIn expert,” “I’ll read this book and I’ll understand the ins and outs of content marketing.” That’s why self-help books, “10 easy ways to…”-style blog posts, seminars are so popular — they offer big learnings. Unfortunately they only work if you look for small learnings. Big learnings are impressive while small learnings unimportant so we close our mind to them and only look for big. But small things grow.

The true value when you read the self-help book or blog post and attend the conference looking for the small nuggets. The power of small learnings is that they grow into something much larger. Different people can hear the same information and build their own personal big learning out of it. Small learning are the fist step towards creativity.

Learn small grow into big lessons.

(Photo credit: Joost J. Bakker)

Why you?

Fabrice Calando — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:22:37 +0000

Why you? is probably the most asked question in business and in life. The thing is, it’s almost never vocalized. Every time you walk into a job interview, a meeting, a job review, a client meeting or a supplier meeting, the other person is asking herself, “Why you?” And don’t kid yourself, it’s not only bosses and clients, it’s also suppliers asking why they should sell you something (Hint: the answer there isn’t always “to make money”).

Why would I hire you?
Why should I buy your car?
Why should I give you a raise?
Why should I spend time with you?
Why should I sell you my financial services?
Why should I go out with you?
Why should I learn from your university?
Why should I help you?
Why should I choose you over him?
Why is your social media consulting better than her’s?

The real surprise, might be that, more often than not, the person being asked that question — you — has no idea how to answer. The answer is rarely, superficial like “Because I’m younger,” “Because I worked hard,” Because you’ll make money,” “Because I gave you something.” It’s much deeper than that.

The answer comes from your core and is absolutely unique to everyone. The real question then, is not Why you?, but What makes you distinct and remarkable?

(Photo credit: JD Hancock)

Hack Your Life Project: Random acts of kindness

Fabrice Calando — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:28:49 +0000

Last week was all about…Hacking your finances

On the surface it might not appear to be the sexiest #HYLP Challenge, but personal finances are one of the building blocks of hacking your life’s system. The less you control your money, the less you’re able to make your own choices and decide your own path. I’ve learnt that over the years.

Ramit Sethi recommends splitting up your finances into four buckets:

Fixed expenses (for all the regular bills and expenses)
Investments (the money you put into your 401(k) and Roth IRA or RRSPs and TSFAs if you’re Canadian)
Savings (the money you put aside for vacations, cars, weddings, etc.)
Spending money (the cash you can spend on anything you desire once all the important stuff has been taken care of)

Once that’s taken care of, you can start controlling your money and start calling the shots. In other words, the richer you are, the more choices you have and that’s what the Hack Your Life Project is about.

If you want to know more about personal finance (and you should), I recommend reading Ramit’s book I Will Teach You to be Rich (Affiliate link). It’s well worth it.

#HYLP Challenge #19: RAK

How much does it cost you to be kind to others? The more you give, the more you receive, right? This week I’ll be practicing random acts of kindness. It doesn’t have to be much, as long as it’s selfless and you don’t expect anything in return. Some ideas include:

Open the door for others
Donate unread books or clothes
Offer a couple hours of free babysitting
Clean-up your neighbourhood
Complain less

If ideas is what you want, you can find some here.

Why?

I’m not sure how much explanation this really need. The #HYLP is about hacking the programmable system that is your life. We’re often so self-involved, that we forget about others.

Open yourself to them and you’ll open yourself.

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Uncertainty and inertia

Fabrice Calando — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:24:54 +0000

Uncertainty is inertia’s biggest enemy. Inertia is the cruise control we try to achieve everyday — efficient enough to be experts at the small things that make up life and eventually the big stuff (“It’s always been done that way!”). Uncertainty comes in, by definition, uninvited and begging for change. Humans are creatures looking for safety and habit so uncertainty is rarely welcome. But it’s inevitable, no matter how hard you hide.

The choices

When faced with uncertainty, there are two choices you can make. Your first is to escape. Escape uncertainty to a new job, a new apartment, a new relationship that appears more certain. The problem with that is that uncertainty always ends up showing up. Strong industry today, recession tomorrow. That’s how it goes.

The second option is to embrace it. Uncertainty is rarely as scary as it looks from the outside. Learn, grow and figure out how to be bigger and better. The thing about uncertainty is that it forces you to rethink everything you thought was true, if you let it. It’s scary, you might fail, but you’ll grow. If you escape, you’re simply looking to ignore the situation and keep it all as is.

There’s actually a third option and that’s to do nothing — not to escape, but not to embrace it either. Bury your head and hope it blows over. The problem there is that even if you get through it, you’ll be weaker the next time uncertainty shows up.

So which will you choose?

(Photo credit: Mike Baird)

Hack Your Life Project: Hack Your Finances

Fabrice Calando — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:53:49 +0000

Last week was all about…Writing a life mission

Writing a mission statement

changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behaviour with your beliefs.
– Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Affiliate link)

I spent most of last week thinking mine through and wrote it out over the weekend. Thinking through your priorities forces you to think through your what’s important to you and what isn’t. I followed this basic outline:

What do I want to do?
Who do I want to help?
What is the result? What value will I create?

I then filed it for easy access. The way I see it, it’s a guide for each big decision (and some small ones).

Do you have a life mission?

#HYLP Challenge #18: Design your finances

This week (or what’s left of it), I will redesign my personal finances. If you’ve read Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program that Works (Affiliate link), you’ve done this before. You can skip this week’s challenge. I’m about half way through the book and one concept really stands out. Your personal financial structure. Personal finances should be made up of different buckets. Something like this:

Fixed costs
Investments
Savings
Do-whatever-you-want money

There are recommended percentages for each bucket and each one will allow you to live, save and enjoy life by letting you focus on what’s important without having to think about dollars and cents too much. If you want more details I recommend the book (Affiliate link).

Why?

Why am I doing this? Because personal finances are probably the #1 reason people don’t push the limits of their lives and let things happen. And that usually involves your job. I meet a lot of people that hate their jobs, but stay there because “it pays the bills.” If you haven’t heard the expression before, you’ve probably said it. Bills include paying the credit card’s minimum payments, internet bills, mortgages, car payments, cable, subscriptions, etc.

The reality is your job should provide freedom, not restrain you. And the only way to gain control is to dominate your personal finances. So this week…is all about hacking your finances.

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Free

Fabrice Calando — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:33:25 +0000

If you want anything to be free for any sustainable amount of time, the production cost has to be close to zero. Otherwise it’s simply a promotion. Take books for example, they used to be expensive to manufacture. You had to produce them, distribute them and market them. Now, all you have to do is write – distribution is $0.00 and so is marketing.

The great thing about free is that it allows ideas to be shared. It reduces the barrier of cost. If it’s free, I might as well read it, listen to it, watch it and then share it and tweet it.

The value question

One of the questions free raises is about value or perceived value. Is something free as valuable as something you have to pay for? It’s a tough question. Free means more waste. Because there are no barriers there is no reason not to get it (whatever it is). If Ferrari were to make a free car, it’s perceived value would surely go down. Everyone would have one — even if you don’t drive.

I think it all goes back to production costs. If you spend energy, effort and resources on building a great product or service (like Ferrari or Starbucks), the higher the price, the higher the perceived value. The digital age has brought some production costs close to zero. Then, the perceived value shifts to the content or the built-in quality. In other words if free is a price you can easily sustain, the value gets shifted to the quality of the product or service, not the price.

This means that thing like education, cars and lattes will can never be free because delivering quality costs more than nothing. Reducing the price to nothing means waste and making production cheaper. The perceived value lowers. Ideas, art and customer service can be free because delivering them is.

Then again, maybe free is simply the new cost of acquiring customers. What’s your take?

(Photo credit: D. Sharon Pruitt)

Hack Your Life Project: Life with a mission

Fabrice Calando — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:35:00 +0000

Last week was all about…breaking a routine

By definition, doing the same thing, the same way, over and over is striving to achieve inertia. Sure, you become better and more efficient. In fact, there’s nothing bad with that in and of itself. The issue arrises when, how you deal with a client, how you approach a problem at work, how you market your product is done routinely. You’ll become better at it, but it won’t be remarkable. Breaking a routine is the only way to escape inertia and be remarkable.

I decided to break my morning routine. I usually wake up at 6:30. Instead of waking up like clockwork at the exact same time, I decided to use the Sleep Cycle App. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an alarm clock that wakes you up within 30 minutes of your scheduled wake-up time (in my case any time between 6:00 and 6:30) at the time where you’re in the lightest sleep phase. It measure your movements in bed and determines whether you’re awake, asleep or in a deep sleep and determines when the best time to wake you is.

Each day is different, sometimes it’ll wake me at 6:30, other times at 6:08 and today at 6:17. It doesn’t make it easy to plan when I’ll write my posts, but that’s exactly the idea.

#HYLP Challenge #17: Write a life mission

This week, I’ll write out a life mission. Something to remind myself of my core values and guide my decisions and actions. Much like the company mission your a organization has.

Why?

Our lives are guided by the stories we tell ourselves. “I’m not good at sales,” “I don’t get this social media thing,” “I couldn’t deal with the stress of being a boss” are all types of stories we tell ourselves. Some are quite simple, others more complex and they shape the perception you have of yourself. If you tell yourself you’re not good in sales, you’ll never be good in sales. You’re starting at a disadvantage.

What if we rewrote our most basic story? The one that guides most other stories.

That’s what the Write a life mission challenge is. It’s about telling yourself, what you want, what guides you and what you aspire to — again, much like a company mission. Once you write it, reread it, adjust it and live by it:

It’s not whether you’re bad at sales, it’s if you want to build your business.
It’s not about getting the social media thing, it’s whether you want to build relationships.
It’s not whether you can’t deal with the stress of being a boss, it’s they type of career you really want.

What stories are you telling yourself?

FabriceCalando.com

Imperfect systems

Markets, life and systems

Hack your life

Related Posts:

Discover the profound impact of managing your personal finances

Money.

How can we improve the way we manage our money so that we don’t have to work so hard for it all of our lives?

Where do we start? What good advice can we try to apply to see if it makes us better at managing our money?

Pay off your debts

Earn more money

Invest

Save money

It isn’t rocket science.

Related Posts:

Hack Your Life Project: Spice up your life

Last week was all about…Random acts of kindness

#HYLP Challenge #20: Are you Bored?

When am I bored?

Why?

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Related Posts:

Small learnings

Running before walking

Related Posts:

Why you?

Related Posts:

Hack Your Life Project: Random acts of kindness

Last week was all about…Hacking your finances

#HYLP Challenge #19: RAK

Why?

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Related Posts:

Uncertainty and inertia

The choices

Related Posts:

Hack Your Life Project: Hack Your Finances

Last week was all about…Writing a life mission

#HYLP Challenge #18: Design your finances

Why?

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Related Posts:

Free

The value question

Related Posts:

Hack Your Life Project: Life with a mission

Last week was all about…breaking a routine

#HYLP Challenge #17: Write a life mission

Why?

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Related Posts: