Today, I asked my friend Cal Newport to illustrate how he completely dominates as a post-doc at MIT, author of multiple books, and popular blogger. How does he do it all?

Cal writes one of the best blogs on the Internet: Study Hacks. His guest post shows how you can take I Will Teach You To Be Rich principles — plus many others — and integrate them into a way to use your time effectively.

Below, you’ll learn:

• How to use fixed-schedule productivity — similar to the Think, Want, Do Technique — to consciously choose what you want to work on and ignore worthless busywork
• When to say no — and how to do it
• How a $60,000-a-speech professional manages his time
• Case study: How to use email for maximum time productivity

Read on.

From Cal:

I recently conducted a simple experiment: I recorded the timestamps of the last 50 e-mails in my sent messages folder. These timestamps covered one week of my e-mail behavior, starting on Thursday, October 22nd and ending Thursday, October 29th.

My interest was to measure when during the day I spent time on e-mail. Here’s what I found:

Notice that over this week-long period, I didn’t send any e-mail after 7:00 pm, and only one e-mail after 6:00 pm. There’s a good explanation for this discipline: I end all work around 5:30 every day. No Internet. No computer. No to-do lists. Once I shutdown my day, it’s time to relax.

I must emphasize that I’m not some laid-back lifestyle entrepreneur who monitors an automated business from a hammock in Aruba. I have a normal job (I’m a postdoc) and a lot on my plate.

This past summer, for example, I completed my PhD in computer science at MIT. Simultaneous with writing my dissertation I finished the manuscript for my third book, which was handed in a month after my PhD defense and will be published by Random House in the summer of 2010. During this past year, I also managed to maintain my blog, Study Hacks, which enjoys over 50,000 unique visitors a month, and publish over a half-dozen peer-reviewed academic papers.

Put another way: I’m no slacker. But with only a few exceptions, all of this work took place between 8:30 and 5:30, only on weekdays. (My exercise, which I do every day, is also included in this block, as is an hour of dog walking. I really like my post-5:30 free time to be completely free.)

I call this approach fixed-scheduled productivity, and it’s something I’ve been following and preaching since early 2008. The idea is simple:

• Fix your ideal schedule, then work backwards to make everything fit — ruthlessly culling obligations, turning people down, becoming hard to reach, and shedding marginally useful tasks along the way.

The beneficial effects of this strategy on your sense of control, stress levels, and amount of important work accomplished, is profound.

The notion is not new. Tim Ferriss famously recommend strict time constraints in The 4-Hour Work Week. He argued that much of the work we do is of questionable importance and conducted at low efficiency. (He made a popular — if not somewhat dubious — appeal to Parkinson’s Law to support the point that more time does not necessarily lead to more results.) If we instead identify only the most important tasks, he said, and tackle them under severe constraints, we’d be surprised by how little time we actually require.

In this article, I want to tell the stories of real people who successfully implemented this strategy – radically improving the quality of their lives without scuttling their professional success.

Jim Collins’ Whiteboard

(photo by Kevin Moloney for The New York Times)

Jim Collins has sold over seven million copies of his canonical business guides, Good to Great and Built to Last. He attributes the success of these books to his research discipline. As he revealed in a New York Times profile from last May, he leads teams of up to a dozen undergraduates in the process of information gathering. His books require, on average, a half-decade of time and a half-million dollars of expenses to get from their initial premise to the polished ideas. When he enters his “monk” mode to covert this research into a manuscript, he produces, at best, a page a day.

In other words, Collins is a hardworking guy. You would expect, therefore, that like many hard-charging business-world types he would be a blackberry-by-the-bedside workaholic.

But he’s not.

Scrawled on a whiteboard in the conference room of Collins’ Boulder, Colorado office is a simple formula:

Creative 53%
Teaching 28%
Other 19%

Collins decided years ago that a “big goal” in his life was to spend half of his working time on creative work — thinking, researching, and writing — a third of his time on teaching, and then cram everything else into the last 20%. The numbers on the whiteboard are a snapshot of his current distribution. (He tracks his time with a stop watch and monitors his progress in a spreadsheet.)

Collins is a pristine example of fixed-schedule productivity in action. An author with his level of success could easily fall into an overwork trap: long nights spent updating twitter, signing partnerships, building elaborate web sites and launching product lines, speaking at every possible venue. But he avoids this fate.

Even though Collins demands over $60,000 per speech, for example, he gives fewer than 18 per year, and a third of these are donated for free to non-profit groups. He doesn’t do book tours. His web site is mediocre. He keeps his living expenses in check so that he’s not dependent on drumming up income (he and his wife have lived in the same California bungalow for the past 14 years), and he keeps only a small staff, preferring to bring on volunteers as needed.

“Mr. Collins…is quite practiced at saying ‘no,’” is how The Times described him. (He once wrote an article for USA Today titled: “Best New Years Resolution? A ‘Stop-Doing’ list.”)

His fixed-schedule approach to life comes from his simple conviction “to produce a lasting and distinctive body of work,” and his “willingness…to focus on what not to do as much as what to do” has made that possible.

He’s not alone in reaping the benefits of the fixed-schedule approach…

Elizabeth’s Conversion

When Elizabeth Grace Saunders started her first business, a professional copy-writing service, her schedule has “hazardous.”

“I would answer e-mails after going out with friends,” she told me, “and stay up until 2 a.m. finishing projects.”

At some point, she snapped. “I’m not a secretary,” she declared. “I’m not required to jump to respond to everything that crosses my path.”

Saunders adopted a 40-hour a week schedule. This new structure had two immediate impacts. First, she found herself focusing only on the most important tasks. With only a few hours to spare on business development, for example, she couldn’t justify wasting time with the small, ineffectual website tweaks and exploratory e-mails that used to keep her up late into the night. Instead she focused on the core activities that produced results, such as sales calls or the development of new products. The focus generated by this constraint ended up generating more results than her previous schedule, which was more expansive, but also more scattered.

The second impact was her discovery that she could teach her clients how to treat her.

“I’ll answer your e-mail within 24 hours (not 24 minutes), I need notice before starting a project, I will say ‘no’ if my schedule for the near future is already full, and I might schedule meetings up to a month in advance.”

“Choosing how and when I respond to requests has had a dramatic impact,” Saunders notes.

Friends and clients were impressed enough with Saunders’ lifestyle that she eventually left copywriting to become a “time coach” that works with other women in business to achieve similar results. (Her flagship service is called a Schedule Makeover.)

Here’s a typical day in Saunders’ life:

• She’s up at 6 and by 8:30 she’s at the computer.
• The first 1 – 2 hours of her work day are spent doing what she calls “routine processing,” which includes checking calendars, clearing e-mail inboxes, and cementing a plan to follow for the rest of the day. As Saunders describes it, this morning routine prevents her from wasting time deciding how to start, and it frees her of the “compulsion” to be checking e-mail throughout the day.
• She continues with an hour of sales calls. This is often the most dreaded activity for the solo entrepreneur. But by having a regular place in her constrained schedule, she avoids pushing it aside.
• The rest of the day follows the schedule she fixed in the morning: usually a mix of client assignments and at least one business development activity.
• By 5:30 she’s done.

Most entrepreneurs work well past 5:30 (and claim that this is absolutely unavoidable), but Saunders’ business is thriving. The reason is clear: her fixed schedule forces her to do the work that produces results (sales calls, client assignments, major business development activities) and eliminates the hours of pseudowork that many use to fill their day in an effort to feel “busy” (tweaking websites, compulsive e-mail checking, chasing down small business development opportunities).

Saunders is not the only young entrepreneur I’ve met who was surprised to discover that doing less helped the bottom line…

The Baby Factor

Michael Simmons, a good friend of mine, reported a similar story. His company, the Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corporation, expanded quickly in the years following college graduation. Around the time I was reading The 4-Hour Work Week, I started to discuss the possibility that Simmons tone down the hours. It was his company, I argued, so why not take advantage of this fact to craft an awesome life.

Among the specific topics we discussed, I remember suggesting that Simmons cut down the time spent on e-mail and social networks.

“This isn’t optional for me,” he explained. “Any of these contacts could turn into a important partner or sale.”

But then Simmons’ daughter, Halle, was born.

Simmons’ work schedule reduced from 10 to 12 hours days to 3 to 5 hour days. He took care of the baby in the morning, then worked in the afternoon while his wife, and company co-founder, took over the childcare responsibilities. Evenings were family together time.

Halle forced Simmons into the type of constrained schedule that he had previously declared impossible. And yet the business didn’t flounder.

“The baby turns ’shoulds’ into ‘musts’,” Simmons explained to me. “In the past I used to put off key decisions, or saying ‘no’, because I didn’t want to deal with the discomfort. Now I have no choice. I have to make the decisions because my time has been slashed in half.”

“Since out daughter was born about a year ago, our business has more than doubled.”

The Fixed-Schedule Effect

Collins, Saunders, and Simmons all share a similar discovery. When they constrained their schedule to the point where non-essential work was eliminated and colleagues and clients had to retrain their expectations, they discovered two surprising results.

First, the essentials — be it making sales calls, or focusing on the core research behind a book — are what really matter, and the non-essentials — be it random e-mail conversations, or managing an overhaul to your blog template — are more disposable than many believe.

Second, by focusing only the essentials, they’ll receive more attention than when your schedule was unbounded. The paradoxic effect, as with Collins’ bestsellers, or Saunders and Simmons’ fast-growing businesses, you achieve more results.

Living the Fixed-Scheduled Lifestyle

The steps to adopting fixed-schedule productivity are straightforward:

1. Choose a work schedule that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation.
2. Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule.

This sounds simple. But of course it’s not. Satisfying rule 2 is non-trivial. If you took your current projects, obligations, and work habits, you’d probably fall well short of satisfying your ideal schedule.

Here’s a simple truth that you must confront when considering fixed-schedule productivity: sticking to your ideal schedule will require drastic actions. For example, you may have to:

• Dramatically cut back on the number of projects you are working on.
• Ruthlessly cull inefficient habits from your daily schedule.
• Risk mildly annoying or upsetting some people in exchange for large gains in time freedom.
• Stop procrastinating.

In the abstract, these are all hard goals to accomplish. But when you’re focused on a specific goal — “I refuse to work past 5:30 on weekdays!” — you’d be surprised by how much easier it becomes to deploy these strategies in your daily life.

Let’s look at one more example…

Case Study: My Schedule

My schedule from my time as a grad student provides a good case study. To reach my relatively small work hour limit, I had to be careful about how I approached my day. I saw enough bleary-eyed insomniacs around here to know how easy it is to slip into a noon to 3 a.m. routine (the infamous “MIT cycle.”)

Here are some of the techniques I regularly used to remain within the confines of my fixed schedule:

• I’m ruthlessly results oriented. What’s the ultimate goal of a graduate student? To produce good research that answers important questions. Nothing else really matters. For some of my peers, however, their answer to this metaphysical prompt was: “work really long hours to prove that you belong.” It was as if some future arbiter of their future was going to look back at their time clock punch card and declare whether they sufficiently paid their dues. Nonsense! I wanted to produce a few good papers a year. Anything that got in the way of this goal was treated with suspicion. This results-oriented vision made it easy to keep the middling crap from crowding my schedule.
• I’m ultra-clear about when to expect results from me. And it’s not always soon. If someone slips something onto my queue, I make an honest evaluation of when it will percolate to the top. I communicate this date. Then I make it happen when the time comes. You can get away with telling people to expect a result a long time in the future, if — and this is a big if — you actually deliver when promised. Long lead times allow to you to side step the pile-ups (which will bust a fixed-schedule) that accrue when you insist on an immature, “do things only when the deadline looms” attitude.
• I refuse. If my queue is too crowded for a potential project to get done in time, I turn it down.
• I drop projects and quit. If a project gets out of control and starts to sap too much time from my schedule, or strays from my results-oriented vision: I drop it. If something demonstrably more important comes along, and it conflicts with something else in my queue, I drop the less important project. Here’s a secret: no one really cares what you do on the small scale, or what things you quit. In the end you’re judged on your results. If something is hindering your production of the important results in your field, you have to ask why you’re keeping it around.
• I’m not available. I often work in hidden nooks of the various libraries on campus, or from my apartment. I check and respond to work e-mail only a couple times a day, and never at night or on weekends. People have to wait for responses from me. It’s often hard to find me. Sometimes people get upset when they send me something urgent on Friday night that need done by Saturday morning. But eventually they get over it. Just as important, I’m not a jerk about it. I don’t have sanctimonious auto-responders about my e-mail habits. I just do what I do, and people adapt.
• I batch and habitatize. Any regularly occurring work gets turned into a habit — something I do at a fixed time on a fixed date. For example, I work on my blog in the afternoon after lunch. I write first thing in the morning. When I was taking classes, I had reoccuring blocks set aside during the week for tackling their assignments. Habit-based schedules for regular work makes it easier to tackle the non-regular projects. It also prevents schedule-busting pile-ups.
• I start early. Sometimes real early. On certain projects that I know are important, I don’t tolerate procrastination. It doesn’t interest me. If I need to start something 2 or 3 weeks in advance so that my queue proceeds as needed, I do so.
• I don’t ask permission. I think it’s wrong to assume that you automatically have the right to work whatever schedule you want. It’s a valuable prize that most be earned. And results are the currency you must spend to buy it. So long as I’m actually accomplishing the big picture goals I’m paid to accomplish, I feel comfortable to handle my schedule my own way. If I was producing mediocre crap, people would have a right to demand more access.

Conclusion

You could fill any arbitrary number of hours with what feels to be productive work. Between e-mail, and crucial web surfing, and to-do lists that, in the age of David Allen, grow to lengths that rival the bible, there is always something you could be doing. At some point, however, you have to put a stake in the ground and say: I know I have a never-ending stream of work, but this is when I’m going to face it. If you don’t, you’ll let this work push you around like a bully. It will force you into tiring, inefficient schedules, and you’ll end up more stressed and no more accomplished.

Fix the schedule you want. Then make everything else fit around your needs. Be flexible. Be efficient. If you can’t make it fit: change your work. But in the end, don’t compromise.

Cal Newport is an MIT postdoc, author, and founder of Study Hacks, the Internet’s most popular student advice blog.

1. Get proven, tactical tips on saving money. Check out my premium program, Scrooge Strategy, and get detailed tips to save hundreds of dollars each month.

2. Get more in-depth productivity tips. Cal and I recorded a 1+ hour interview together where we cover extremely detailed optimization and productivity strategies.

To get access — as well as select time-management and productivity tips — sign up below.

Interesting things to note:

• Green rooms are the best places to meet people. I walked in and Maya Angelou was sitting there. In hair/makeup, Marissa Mayer and a bunch of other interesting people were there
• You enter NBC through a totally unmarked door, not the conspicuous 30 Rockefeller entrance you’d think
• They steam your shirt/coat, do your hair/makeup, and have lots of food available to eat before going on air. But nobody eats anything
• Camera operators came into our studio literally 15 seconds before going to air. It’s that close to the wire.
• Notice how Meredith asks me about “safe” investments, when young people should really be seeking out aggressive investments due to our age. Remember, it’s just as risky to run out of money as to lose it in a market crash.
• The producer spent at least 5 hours coordinating this 5-minute segment. Imagine how much time it takes to create each show, every day
• There are enormous time constraints to get your point across, so you have to have a crystal-clear message.

Invite me to speak at your organization.

Today’s entry is by a 25-year-old single mother. This woman’s spending is definitely troubling — she spends 8% of her take-home pay on self-described “bad habits,” including cigarettes and writing bad checks. But be careful: It’s easy to say, “Why don’t people just SPEND LESS??!” without understanding the full context of why they do what they do.

* * *

Day 1
6:45 a.m.: I call my bank to make sure that nothing unexpected has been withdrawn from my checking account. I breathe a sigh of relief. The balance is right where I left it: $2.24. I rouse my three-year-old, special needs daughter from sleep and take her to the bus stop.
8:26 a.m.: Am displeased to find I fell back asleep after taking my daughter down to catch her bus — I’m supposed to be at work at 9:00! I contemplate calling a cab, but know I can’t afford it, period. I get ready and run to the bus stop.
8:43 a.m.: Arrive at bus stop. I see the college kids waiting. I envy them, but there’s no time for expanding my mind when it’s imperative that I expand my bank account.
10 a.m.: Slam my hands on my keyboard when I realize I have forgotten my lunch.
12:15 p.m.: Spend $5.18 for a hefty serving of garlic chicken and rice on top of shredded cabbage. Yummy!
12:45 p.m.: Go to the convenience store and get a Coke and a pack of cigarettes ($0.85 for the Coke, $6.35 for the cheapest pack of cigarettes). Feeling guilty about spending money on cigarettes and Coke, I make a vow to quit both by payday. Unfortunately, this is about the thirtieth time I’ve made this vow.
6 p.m.: Get home and make the kiddo chicken nuggets and canned vegetables. Use the last of the milk, and hope that she’ll be okay drinking water for the following two nights.

Day 2
12 p.m.: Use the loose change in my purse to buy a Coke ($0.85). Sit outside my office on a gorgeous Honolulu afternoon to drink my soda and eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I’m broke, but at least I’m broke in paradise.
12:30 p.m.: Call MOHELA and beg for another deferment on my student loans. They comply.
7 p.m.: Begin to panic at the fact that I only have one cigarette left. Go into the living room and beg mom to loan me a pack until I get paid on Thursday. She reluctantly agrees.

Day 3
9 a.m.: Use one of the dollars to buy a Coke ($0.85).
12:15 p.m.: Use another bill to buy a Coke ($0.85).
5:07 p.m.: Grumble at the high price of food in Hawaii ($6.99 for a gallon of milk!). Write a bad check to cover the cost of food ($109.97). Wish I could go back to Missouri, where everything is cheaper. Also realize if I didn’t live with Mom, I’d starve.
7:45 p.m.: Beg Mom for another pack of smokes.

Day 4
8:15 a.m.: PAYDAY! Thank God! It’s the first of the month, and it’s the “big” pay day because I also get my daughter’s social security and my childcare assistance. In total, I receive $1,381 on the first of each month.
8:45 a.m.: Get to the office and use the internet to pay bills and buy my daughter’s birthday presents from Amazon. Birthday presents: $71.50 Phone bill: $82.50 Student loan: $60 (this loan I couldn’t defer because I am delinquent in payments). Miss K: $25 (Post-dated check to a friend for babysitting for me last week). Old Navy online: $28.52 (two shirts for kiddo, three shirts for me).
12 p.m.: Go to used bookstore by my office and buy four books to read over the next two weeks ($21.43).
5:15 p.m.: Pay my daughter’s sitter $325 for partial month payment (total/month = $650).
5:30 p.m.: I shove my way through the clogged aisles of Wal-Mart to buy two jumbo packs of diapers and one value pack of baby wipes. At the checkout stand, daughter has screaming meltdown complete with hair pulling and punches to my face. Total for Wal-Mart: $37.53.
6:45 p.m.: Realize I forgot to buy smokes at Wal-Mart while waiting for the bus. Take one look at my screaming, crying child and decide to suck it up and buy them at the corner store were the cheapest brand is $8.96! Also buy monthly bus pass ($50).
7:30 p.m.: Pay Mom $350 for what remains of my portion of this month’s rent (total/month = $600). Am glad I contributed some of last pay period’s earnings to the rent.
8:30 p.m.: Count what remains of payday: $212.83, after subtracting the money to cover my bad check for groceries. Feel pretty proud until I realize that I have to buy the kid’s Halloween costume! Damn!
9:15 p.m.: Go down to corner store and buy six pack of Coke ($4.96).

Day 5
12 p.m.: Take off work early to take kiddo to her neurology appointment. The half day off comes out of my pay because I have used all my vacation days for taking time off for various doctors’ appointments and illnesses.
1 p.m.: Am not pleased to learn that I did not pay for the last visit’s co-pay. Must shell out $28 to cover today’s visit and the visit we had six months ago.
2 p.m.: Frustrated that I have to take off work and pay co-pays only to hear doctors tell me they have no idea what’s causing my daughter’s delays.
3 p.m.: Stop for Jamba Juice ($4.37).
5:30 p.m.: Mom reminds me that I owe her two packs of cigarettes. Walk to Wal-Mart for three packs of cigarettes for me, one for Mom ($31.75).
8:15 p.m.: Bored. To entertain myself, I spend an hour texting my ex-boyfriend who moved to Louisiana a few months ago. I splurge for unlimited text messaging because it’s a fairly cheap form of entertainment. Wish I had the money to go visit friends on the mainland, especially this friend.

Day 6
11 a.m.: It’s the last day of my daughter’s swimming lessons! They were worth the $96.
12 p.m.: Take kiddo to McDonald’s to celebrate her swimming achievements ($9.60 for her meal and mine). Wonder if it’s sad that I consider McDonald’s a luxury. Decide yes, that is very sad.
1:45 p.m.: Mom watches kiddo while I pick up her Halloween costume. She’s going to be a ladybug ($34.97).
10 p.m.: Talk Mom into babysitting my daughter while she sleeps so I can go out. Go to my favorite bar and talk some guys into buying me drinks. Even talk one guy into buying me a hot dog from the vendor outside the bar. Sweet.
1:15 a.m.: Buy cigarettes from the bar ($7) because I smoked the ones I brought.
2:30 a.m.: Take a cab home ($10.80). Worth the money to stay safe.

Day 7
12 p.m.: Make my weekly calls to mainland friends (free minutes on the weekends!). Get irritated when a friend grumbles about her financial situation because she’s better off than I am. Try to remember that her problems seem just as big to her as mine do to me, but it doesn’t help.
7:15 p.m.: Congratulate myself on not spending any money today!
9 p.m.: Run down to the corner store for a six pack of Coke and a candy bar ($5.87).
10 p.m.: Feel bummed because I won’t have any money to spend on myself on my upcoming birthday. Hope kindly relatives send me cash in the mail this week!

In Sum
Money spent on bills: $845.50
Money spent on kiddo: $183.00
Money spent on food: $130.03
Money spent on bad habits: $67.38
Money spent on transportation: $60.80
Money spent on me: $35.95
Money left over: $61.08 (this is what I must survive on until next pay day, eleven days away… think I can make it?).

* * *

How would you try to help this person? Note from 10 years of doing this and learning about people’s money behaviors: “Helping” usually starts with (1) them wanting help, (2) you listening and understanding before rushing in with “solutions,” and (3) some way of sustaining the behavioral change.

So what would you do?

[Update]: Please read comment #8 before you leave a comment.

* * *

Read other Money Diaries. Or to be featured anonymously in a future Money Diary, click here.

I have literally never seen as much traffic as last night — not even when I was on the FRONT PAGE OF YAHOO.COM.

• At 6:50pm, I logged onto my webcam and finalized everything
• At 6:55pm, I logged into my blog to add a link to the webcast URL. By this point, my server had slowed to a crawl
• At 6:56pm, over 1 person/second was trying to access iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog
• At 7:01pm, we had my webhost on the phone attempting to resolve the issue
• It took until 7:21pm to completely fix the server problems, leaving me fuming and frustrated

If you’re interested, I recorded a video with more details of what happened.

Here are some pics from the carnage (look at the time stamps and note that this is OVER AN HOUR later past the webcast’s start)

When I first noticed the problem:

Couldn’t wait any longer…so I went live with what I had:

All right, so obviously this really sucked. Thousands and thousands of you were left out in the cold, and I feel terrible.

3 things:

• I’m getting someone to help out on the server side so this never happens again. Stay tuned
• I’ll do the webcast again as soon as that’s set up
• I wanted to tell you more about the Boot Camp (registration is closing today), but just know that whether you go with my program or something else, make a plan to automate your finances before the end of the year. There’s nothing like starting the year off fresh.

Tonight (Thursday, 11/5), I’m doing a live webcast to show you 5 psychological techniques to change your financial behavior. You’re learn how to trick yourself to save and earn more using powerful techniques I haven’t mentioned anywhere else.

After showing you the new psychological models, I’ll do a Lightning Talk to answer YOUR questions. I’ll also answer questions about the Boot Camp.

I want to pack this full of information in 30 minutes, so here’s what I’m covering…

7:00pm – 7:10pm: 5 Psychological Techniques to Trick Yourself:
Forced Constraints, Accountability Partners (used the RIGHT way), Subscription Snafus, Better Than Cash, and Mental Accounting. These have saved me thousands of dollars since I started my blog in 2004

7:10pm – 7:20pm: LIGHTNING Round:
10 minutes of questions — ask me ANYTHING — and I’ll spend a maximum of 30 seconds per question. It’s going to get nutty

7:20 – 7:30pm Boot Camp questions:
I’ll share the Country Club Effect, details of the Boot Camp, tell you more about the guest speakers, and share some of the surprising things that have already happened inside

How to attend:
Go to http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog and click refresh at 7pm Pacific TONIGHT (Thursday). A video feed will appear with me creepily staring at you and likely screaming at you. Greetings!

Q: Will this be recorded?
A: No

Q: Please, can you record it? I have to be in Guatemala building houses for poor quadriplegic children
A: No

Q: What if something is wrong and nothing is showing up at iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog at 7pm tonight?
A: (1) 7pm PACIFIC, and (2) if something goes wrong, check twitter.com/ramit for updates

One last thing — if you plan to make it, leave your name and a question so I can keep an eye out for you.

See you tonight.

• Negotiate an $8,000 salary increase + 50% more equity
• Save tens of thousands of dollars
• Learn more using entrepreneurship
• Travel around the world, and
• Automate their money so they don’t worry about day-to-day finances

Today I’m announcing the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp to take ACTION.

The Manifest Destiny Problem: “More is Better”
Have you noticed how lots of people always want more and more information, but rarely implement what they already have? A couple years ago, I started realizing how lots of personal-finance readers were constantly asking for more and more information — more blog posts, more book reviews, more financial magazines — but would often just READ, not take action.

To put it bluntly, I have lots of friends who read blog post after blog post, but have STILL not automated their money, started investing, or even put together an aggressive plan to pay off debt.

I’ve done the same with fitness books and SAT books, so I know that the solution isn’t “more,” but actually using what you have.

And it takes acknowledging that there are profound barriers between reading and DOING. The Boot Camp is designed to crush those barriers and force you to take action on your finances in just 6 weeks.

For example, I have a very successful friend who’s been overpaying for health insurance by a few hundred dollars for months. Why? Because he has to fax in one form….and he doesn’t have a fax machine. It’s a barrier that’s costed him thousands of unnecessary dollars. And while it’s easy to dismiss him as lazy — which he’s not — look inwards: There are things we “know” you need to do, but we still don’t do them.

Hit the gym? Clean the garage. Automate finances.

Instead, we look for more and more information as if that’ll solve it. This is the Manifest Destiny problem that we all have. “What’s the newest tip? Did that blog update? What are the 21 Ways I Should ____???”

The truth is that while the strategies and tactics matter, the point is not reading — it’s getting off our asses and implementing them.

About the Boot Camp
The I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp is a 6-week program that will help you automate your finances, pick the right accounts, begin investing, create a bulletproof plan to crush debt, and let you automate the day-to-day so you can focus on the things you REALLY care about:

• Traveling
• Spending money, guilt-free, on the things you love
• Hanging out with friends and family
• Earning more
• Focusing on getting out of the rat race

Each week, you’ll get material on credit cards, picking the right accounts, negotiation, investing, automation, and more. You’ll get lots of material from my book, so how is this Boot Camp different than simply reading my (or any) personal-finance book?

1. Live & personal Q&A from me each week. In addition to the weekly curriculum, I’ll be doing live webcasts each week, answering your SPECIFIC questions on money, debt, automation, and more.

2. Not just money — entrepreneurship and psychology. Each week, I’ll give a mini-talk on an entrepreneurial topic like “Managing Virtual Assistants” or “Productivity for Entrepreneurs.” I’ll cover psychological techniques and barriers and show how to apply them to YOUR situation.

3. Guest speakers on entrepreneurship. I’ve invited guest speakers like Charlie Hoehn (Recession Proof Graduate author), Pamela Slim, and Penelope Trunk to talk about topics like marketing, pricing, finding your dream job, and more. You’ll get 1 hour with each of them, live, on a webcast where you can ask questions and get specific answers.

4. A community of other people who are investing in themselves. We’ve put together a private community site where you’ll be able to exchange the best techniques you’ve used, which techniques to AVOID, and how you’ve paid off debt, earned more, automated, started side businesses, and more. Imagine a close-knit group of community members where you can ask personal questions and get meaningful answers. A group where everyone wants to be there — and support each other.

The most important difference in all of this is ACTION. Not only will you read, you’ll be surrounded by hundreds of other people who believe in paying for value and investing in themselves to automate their finances.

Here’s why the Boot Camp is worth it: Beyond forcing you to take action, if you optimize even one $20/month subscription, you’ll more than pay for the program. If you discover one leak in your financial system, you’ll probably get positive ROI that very day. And if you discover one psychological technique, automation tactic, or entrepreneurial idea to apply to your finances or life, it would be well worth it. Just ONE.

Now, obviously this isn’t right for everyone. If you’ve read my book, taken the advice, fully automated your finances, cut costs, began earning more, optimized spending, and handled day-to-day finances and relationship issues, then you can probably skip this. Or if you’ve done it on your own, that’s excellent — congratulations.

But if you could use some help to take action — to get a little nudge of help, to meet other people in your situation who have invested in themselves — then the Boot Camp will help you kickstart your finances in 6 weeks. If you think you could benefit from new psychological techniques and guest speakers on entrepreneurship, I’d love to have you.

That’s because this won’t be passive. It’s ACTIVE: I’ll email you each week with course material. I’ll be on your ass to get it done. And I’ll constantly show you how others are succeeding by taking strategic shortcuts, working smart, and leveraging others’ winning techniques.

6 weeks of work for a lifetime of automation.

Three questions to ask yourself

• We spend money on movies, going out, subscriptions…when was the last time you invested in yourself?
• If you knew you could try this out as a trial, would you? Good news: I offer a 30-day money-back guarantee
• It’s OK if this Boot Camp isn’t the right fit for you, but I encourage you to make a plan to meaningfully take your finances to the next level before the end of the year. Whether it’s this or something else, please get it done and start 2010 off fresh. And you can’t just put it off: No decision is a decision

I’ve written up details, along with the specific curriculum, guest speakers, price, and an easy way to sign up here:

Join the Boot Camp: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/bootcamp

Registration closes on Friday, November 6th, and since this price is for the pioneer class only, next time I run this, the price will at least double.

Below are 7 stories, straight from readers just like you, who have saved and earned thousands of dollars using I Will Teach You To Be Rich techniques. The stories include details on how they got out of debt, saved more, and earned more so they could travel, buy a house, and live a richer life.

Remember — tomorrow I launch the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Boot Camp (early details), where I’ll unveil a 6-week course and curriculum to force you to take ACTION and automate, invest, and start thinking about entrepreneurship.

Jason Demant saved $50,000 in 2 years and is now taking a 1-year vacation

“The reason I’m writing is to thank you for your help in automating my money, getting my 401K properly allocated, and pushing me to sell my crap to make some cash. Using your step-by-step instructions and advice, my girlfriend and I have been able to save over $50,000 the past couple of years and now, in a couple weeks, we will be quitting our Silicon Valley jobs and traveling around Asia on an extremely extended vacation (1-year minimum)! I’ve been reading your site for a few years now and I’ve never properly thanked you for the help, so I decided it was time. Thank you!”

Terry Martin got off his ass and paid off thousands in debt — and earned more

“I’m writing you to let you know how much your blog has helped my wife and I take charge of our finances. I’m actually embarrassed to say this, but we were some of the people you mentioned in tip #25 of the save $1000 in a month challenge. We would complain about our financial situation, but did nothing to change it.

After I realized this, I got to work. I read all your tips and made a game plan. I saved $100 a month on cable, $20 on our cell phone bill, created several ING savings accounts, my wife got serious about cutting coupons (she has a 3 ring binder!), I sold an old camcorder on craigslist, and cut off my Sirius account (but when I called to cancel it, they gave me 3 more months free with the option to cancel it for good afterwards—who would have thought?). We cut back on eating out except we each get twice a month at lunch time. My wife got overtime at work along with a raise, I started a side job, and I will start teaching night classes soon. Not only did we cut our spending drastically, we also have more money coming in. Our debt will be cut in half by the end of the year and eliminated by the end of the next!

Update: “Right now we are just over 18,500 in debt not counting my wife’s newly added student loan which would add about another $8000 . By the end of the year, we will have paid about $14,000 off while putting at least $500 a month in savings for a down payment on a house and 50 a month into another savings. This is, of course, things keep going as planned.

But not only are we saving money, we are increasing how much we make too! I have started a side business, while its not bringing in a lot of extra money now, things are starting to pick up. I also talked my company into paying for training classes for a certification that will greatly increase my value $15 to $20K a year in the workplace. Especially helpful during these tough times. My wife is also getting her company to pay for most of her classes to get her bachelor’s degree so she can move up to a new, higher paying position. During this whole process, we have been saving for a down payment on a house and I’m happy to say we are closing on our first home July 20th.

I would personally like to thank you for website and your book. The tips were inspiration to get up and do more than just complain about our financial situation. Although we are not rich money wise, we love where we are at and what the future holds. You have truly taught us how to be rich. Thank you.”

Christopher P. is saving hundreds of dollars and earning more

“I would say i have saved: $320 from cutting my cable bill by 40 dollars last 8 months (they raised it again 2 months ago. I just called right back and got it lowered . I put $30 a week into savings accounts (960 total saved 8/months)

8 months ago i decided that i would earn more money. First I asked for a 5% raise at work and got it. (This was scary because we had just had 3 rounds of firings.) Then i sat down and figured out what interested me and I could make money doing. I was in love with the iPhone but too poor to buy one. But I taught myself to program for the iPhone anyways and just 2 months ago finally purchased one. It was slow going at first and the amount i was putting away seemed pretty insignificant. But 8 months later looking back i am really seeing the transformation that took place.

Two weeks ago I finally finished and started selling my first app. It has been such a great experience and your website gave me the kick in the pants i needed. (Thank You) I haven’t done any advertising and on my first day i sold 17 copies! Not enough to quit my job but extra income. Since then the amount of units I have sold has been slowly but steadily increasing. (It’s been rated 5 stars)

People all over the wold have purchased my app now. (Japan, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Netherlands and United States so far) In the first two weeks after Apple’s cut i made $200. October looks like it will be a much better month!”

Brian Drolet is saving $2,880/year

“Big wins =

• Dropping cable $40/month
• $1 raise at work = $240/month extra
• Closed checkings account = $13/month extra
• Automated my cell phone bill = $7/month

I’m saving $720/year just from those 3 things and earning $2880/year extra.”

Misha has turned her savings around

“I wanted to write to you and say thank you. After reading your book I was able to get a good handle on my finances. I think the most helpful was the chart you use to show the movement of the money and the automation. Check out a snapshot of my my mint NET INCOME.”

Josh G has saved $14,000 in a few months

“I have saved 14k so far since I started May 2008 and I’m on track for 20k by the end of the year!
Fear kept me from automating my savings previously. I had bills and it seems that was all I thought about every month.

There was a blog post that you did which you mentioned using ING Direct to create sub accounts. It was in that post I decided to try the full automated savings because I could do sub accounts for future purposes.”

Michael Hagan saved hundreds from March to July of this year

“I’ve saved: $900 in savings since March, $700 towards Roth IRA since March. I started the whole thing around February/March

I would say that the things that held me back the most was a) not knowing what to do in the first place b) getting out of college saddled with massive credit card and student loan debt (working a full-time, unpaid internship in LA was expensive!) c) messing around in high school just enough to where I couldn’t qualify for scholarships and being just too middle class to get gov’t $$ for college, and finally d) trying to keep up with all my friends that had good jobs and nice things. A fool’s game!”

The difference between these people and others is they took ACTION. It’s easy to read blog post after blog post, but when you decide to take action — and you have a clear plan of which Big Wins to attack — the results can come quickly.

The Boot Camp will include a step-by-step plan to take action on your finances, automate, create a plan to pay off debt, and more. I’m including psychological techniques to use against yourself to lock the behavioral changes in. Plus, live video webcasts from me each week (where I’ll answer your questions), as well as guest speakers to cover entrepreneurship topics like marketing, pricing, and critical business mistakes to avoid.

Check back tomorrow, when I’ll open up Boot Camp registration.

First, I should acknowledge that the kids are not really dumb because of the psychological technique I’m going to describe below, but can’t we all agree that kids are pretty dumb in general? Come on. My parents just told me a story about how, when I was a kid, my Dad once cut a grapefruit for me and sprinkled sugar on it. I screamed and screamed for FIFTEEN MINUTES about how I didn’t want sugar on it. When my dad finally said, “Ok ok” and took the sugar off with a spoon, I still screamed because I didn’t want THAT grapefruit. I feel sorry for my dad, 24 years later, and I hope you see why I make fun of dumb kids now. So I’m delighted when I can trick them.

In 1979, researchers Beaman, Klentz, Diener, and Svanum wrote a terrific piece of research involving Cooley’s Looking Glass Self, which basically points out that we are not independent individuals as we like to think. Instead, we’re a product of our surroundings, including how we think others think of us, and we act accordingly. For example, if I believe other people think of me as an entrepreneur, I’m more likely to act entrepreneurially so I can continue developing that positive judgment.

They made this practical using an experiment with children and Halloween. Since I know many of you are illiterate and only read blogs for information, I took the trouble of going through the literature for you. Remember these from college?

The researchers decided to see how they could apply the looking-glass principle to change children’s behavior. To do that, they tested 349 children who were trick-or-treating by setting up a bowl full of candy and using the following manipulations:

1. They would ask the children their names and ages to evoke self-awareness, or “individuate” them (e.g., “I am Ramit Sethi” and the accompanying connotations of ‘I am a good person’).
2. In one condition, a woman told the children to only take one piece of candy.
3. In another condition, a mirror was placed conspicuously so children could see themselves as they reached into the candy bowl.
4. In a final condition, they combined the “warning” and “mirror” conditions.

There is a lot more to it, and while the methodology is interesting, I’ll just cut to the results.

What did they find?

Key results

• BASELINE: With no mirror and no warning to take only one piece of candy from the bowl, 75% of children took more than 1 piece of candy. Ok, makes sense. It’s sitting there in front of you.
• VERBAL WARNING ONLY: When the experimenters warned children to take only 1 candy, that number dropped to 34.2%. Good job kids, listen to your elders.
• COMBINED EFFECT: When the researchers (1) warned the children to only take one candy, plus (2) put a mirror in front of them, that number dropped to 11.7%. Astonishing.

Why would a mirror produce such a big change in behavior?

What are some of the other ways you can apply this to yourself?

I’ll be covering this — plus more principles of social psychology — in the I Will Teach You To Be Rich boot camp, launching November 3rd.

Learn more…

Get additional bonuses and an early-bird discount by signing up for the free pre-list here.

I taught my friend how to negotiate an $8,000 increase in salary and a 50% boost in equity in 4 hours. And this was after she’s committed the cardinal sin of negotiating: revealing what her salary expectations were.

This is the kind of thing we all know we “should” do…but we don’t do it. Even though we can get the information for “free” online. Hmm….

In this video, learn how to:

• Negotiate with an experienced recruiter
• Rebound after you undercut yourself
• Why reading a negotiation book is not enough
• Know when to be adversarial and when to be cooperative

This video is probably worth $3,000 – $10,000 for my average reader IF YOU IMPLEMENT IT AND IMPLEMENT IT CORRECTLY.

Oh yeah…I have more videos on negotiation (thanks to Chris Whitmore for filming/editing).

Get more negotiation videos: For detailed videos of EXACT phrases, situations, and tactics for dealing with tough recruiters and intimidating executives, join the Boot Camp pre-launch list. Do it today because I’m closing it down soon.

1. She learned about it from a guy whom she traveled to meet. She’s an entrepreneur, so she knows about investing in herself
2. “Sticking with it” is one of those things we all claim we know, but when it comes down to it, most people flake. Knowing vs. doing are two VERY separate things
3. Erica happens to have extra credibility with me. Beyond her selling a company for over $1m at age 26, she gave me some advice less than 12 months ago that has paid off in tens of thousands of dollars of revenue for me. But the key was DOING what she said, not just nodding and saying “thanks” or hanging up the phone and reading Reddit again.

Read on…

Erica: Do you know someone who’s given up?

“I was in a meeting with a multi-millionaire last week. He is a person who came from nothing; he grew up dirt-poor in the ghetto. Now he makes several million dollars a year. He runs his own business from a small office and has traveled around the world speaking to hundreds of thousands of people.

I paid him a significant amount of money to learn his story so I could replicate it. He is now one of my success coaches.

I spent a weekend with him and a small group at his second home on Lake Texoma (on the Texas/Oklahoma border.) Not only did I come out of the weekend understanding how to grow my next business to $1 million a year in sales by the time I am 30 (which has been one of my goals for years), I gained a massive amount of insight into why most people are not successful.

He used a story to illustrate: two people who set out with the same goal. Since he came from a direct sales background, he used that as an example, but the example works for any industry — including yours.

Two people set out with the same goal. Let’s call them Max and Min. And let’s say they both are selling the same product. Maybe they are both distributors for the same company, or they both run companies in the same industry.

Max and Min work together and set a goal. They are going to contact three people every day who expressed an interest in their product, and their goal is to get those people to start saying “yes”.

Max and Min both start out motivated. They each contact three people on the first day. Then they check in with each other. “How’d you do?” Min asks. Max replies, “Well, they all said no.” Min commisserates. “Mine did too.”

Neither one is ready to give up. They set out again the next day. They each contact three people, and then they check in. “Nope,” Min says. Max nods. “Same here.”

This pattern continues for weeks. They both start reading some books on how to close sales. Finally, around the same time, Min closes a sale, and so does Max. They go out to celebrate.

Then, crap happens. Min gets distracted. “I’m not really making any money with this,” he tells Max. “I’m only making about $50/month after all my expenses are paid. And my family still needs a roof over its head, so I’m going to go find a job.”

Max says, “Good luck, buddy.” He’s not really making any more money than Min, but he sees something that Min doesn’t. The person who said yes is now paying him $50/month in passive income. Surely, if he got one yes, he can get more.

Max spends more time. Each day, he contacts three people. And most of them are still saying no. But things are changing. He’s still reading success books and learning like mad, and he notices that more people are starting to say yes. He’s not making much money, but he senses that he’s about to break through.

18 Months Later…

18 months elapses. Min has found a job that pays pretty well, and his family is happy. He figures he’s doing pretty well for himself, and decides to call up his old buddy Max and invite him out to dinner.

Min arrives first. Then, he sees a brand new Mercedes pull up outside. And who hops out but Max, who tips the valet handsomely and comes in in a nice suit to meet Min.

Min is shocked. He can’t find words at first. He finally manages to gasp, “What happened to you?”

Max just grins. Then he says, “They said yes.”

Get the First Yes

Turns out, if you can get one person to say yes, you can get hundreds or thousands to say yes.

What do you want people to say yes to? Maybe you want them to subscribe to your blog or buy your product. It would be great if they signed up for your email list, or became your partner in some way. But it’s probably discouraging how many people are saying no.

Don’t give up. Get that first yes. From then, it’s just a matter of listening, learning, and continuing to ask.

I find it takes at least 18 months from when you start to when you really notice that people are saying yes. After 12 months of running my hosting company, I was making the grand total of a little over $400/month gross.

But nearly 6 years into it, we did over $76,000 in sales in one month.

I have friends who started web hosting companies when I did. But they all gave up and decided it wasn’t worth it before they “broke through”. Every single one of them had at least 5 people who said “yes.” If you can get 5, you can get 500. Once you get 500, you know how to get 5,000. It just takes time, a personal commitment to hustle every single day, and a willingness to listen and learn.

Do I believe that every single one of you can build a million-dollar business? I do. I just think most of you give up too quickly.”

About Erica: After selling her online business for $1,100,000.00 at age 26, Erica Douglass “temporarily retired.” She now shows you how to grow your own business to $1,000,000 via her online business blog. Quick link: Download her free Blog Success Manifesto — 30 tactical tips to grow your blog faster than you ever have before.

Get free, pre-release bonuses for my boot camp at iwillteachyoutoberich.com/bootcamp