Erich Stauffer

Category: Self Development

  • The Dunning-Kruger Effect: 12 Cups of Goodness

    Dunning wondered whether it was possible to measure one’s self-assessed level of competence against something a little more objective — say, actual competence.  Within weeks, he and his graduate student, Justin Kruger, had organized a program of research.  Their paper, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments,” was published in 1999.

    Dunning and Kruger argued in their paper, “When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.  Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the erroneous impression they are doing just fine.” It became known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect — our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence.

  • The Candy Aisle

    In August of 2009 I wrote about how I couldn’t afford to let my child choose whatever candy they wanted from the gas station because I literally only had less than $2. All of our credit cards were maxed out and we could barely make the minimum payments. It forced us to become used to living within our means after living outside of them for so long, but our troubles were far from over. In fact they were only just beginning.

    “I went to bed [that] night thinking about my experience earlier in the day with my daughter at the gas station. We walked there to get my wife a coke, but had some ‘extra’ money to get her some candy. When we walked through the candy aisle, she started looking at the bags of candy on the left and I looked at the money I had. I had to bend down and tell her that she could only look on the other side of the aisle, in a section in which I could afford to buy her something. In bed that night I started thinking how much more awful it would be to do similar things in the future to clothes she’ll want to buy, trips she’ll want to go on with friends, etc..

    In 3 months I’d be living at a friend’s house in a spare bedroom, and I’d be a month away from losing my house. The tires on my car were so bad no one would change them unless I bought all four at once, which I couldn’t afford. Since they didn’t think my car was safe I didn’t feel comfortable picking my kids up to go anywhere. I ended up selling my wedding ring to fix my car because I didn’t know if my wife would give me any of my money from the paycheck deposited in the bank account she controlled. She blamed me for the state of our marriage, for the mortgage going unpaid, and for her inability to get a job. And she was right. A lot of it was my fault. I chose to go to college, incur huge amounts of debt, get married, have children, buy a car and home I couldn’t afford, and take whatever job came my way. I didn’t have a plan and I wasn’t being a leader. I was a loser and I had lost.

    James Altucher wrote in How to Have Great Ideas that, “I lost the first home I bought. I lost all my money. Fifteen million cash. I went to zero. I was literally crying on the floor while my baby was crawling over to me to get to her toys. I couldn’t get a loan of a few hundred dollars just to ensure I could provide diapers and food for the weekend. From my own parents! Nobody trusted me.” And in his book, I Was Blind But Now I See, he wrote, “I would pace at three in the morning. ‘I’m going to lose this house. My kids are going to switch schools. I have three months to live. I’m going to lose this house. I’m going to this and that and this/that.’ The chatter doesn’t stop and it’s nightmarish at three in the morning. And at four, and at five, and it doesn’t stop when the kids wake up and they don’t know anything is different but I cry then because everything is different.”

    Paper RouteIn Everything I Know About Cars I wrote, “Our first son was born the day Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 and soon after all of our credit cards were unusable. The banks decided to lower our credit limit to our current balance, rendering them useless. We had foolishly been relying on credit each month to pay our daily expenses, but suddenly we were forced to pay for everything with cash, check, or debit card. We didn’t make enough money at the time to pay our monthly expenses as we had been living outside of our means since before we were married. For the next year I did odd jobs on the side and we cut expenses, but the time came when we couldn’t reduce our expenses any more and we had to raise our income. In the fall of 2009 my wife decided to get a paper route. After running the paper route four months, another route opened up and I applied. I started running the paper route Feb 1 and ran it every morning until November 30. For ten months my wife and I would get up at 3 AM, be at ‘The Shed’ by 3:30 and be done delivering papers by 7:00 in order for me to be at work at my day job by 8:00. I’d get home, change my clothes, and jump back in the car.”

    In How to Work a Life of Purpose I reference this period in my life as one of only two times I’ve worked hard to overcome something, “[I] wanted to get caught up on back-mortgage to keep from losing the house so I got up every morning at 3AM for 10 months straight to raise the money. I went through 2 flat tires, 2 visits to the brake shop, and got stuck in the snow twice, but we kept our home,” but I also worked hard to repair our marriage, which has remained strong since.

    Working a day job was starting to wear on me and 2 years after writing about the candy aisle I quit my job to run my own business, which I had been building on the side for 4 years. I ran it successfully for another year and a half before calling it quits and going back to a day job. One of my biggest clients hired me on full-time to continue doing what I do best: IT consulting. We are still not using credit cards and I still drive the same car I drove in 2003. I now have four children and another one on the way. I have strong opinions on management and believe that there are big ideas “no one claim yet”. I’m continually looking to the future and am happy to report that even though I can now afford to let my children buy candy from either side of the aisle, that they still only get candy from the right side and the thing that always mattered most was the time we spent together and the love we had for each other.

  • How to Work a Life of Purpose

    What is my purpose in work? How can I find a career I love?

    I have been reading Hacker News for the last six months or so and a few days ago I stumbled upon a Jeff Haden piece called “Do What You Love? Screw That”. I admit, this title intrigued me. I had been a big fan of finding and doing what I loved ever since my dad turned me on to Richard Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute? back in high school. The book came out originally in 1970 and thus entire generations (including mine) have grown up thinking that there is always something better coming along that never does and why people quit their jobs. These are all part of the career myths espoused and made popular by lifestyle designers like Tim Ferriss and his 4-Hour Workweek. I drank the Kool-Aid. Who wouldn’t want to do what they love, follow their passion, and have full control of their working life and income? This is the dream, right?

    The Passion Mindset

    Haden’s article was talking about things I had never heard spoken before: “Telling someone to follow their passion–from an entrepreneur’s point of view–is disastrous,” says Cal Newport. Who’s Cal Newport? “Passion is not something you follow,” he adds. “Passion is something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world.” This struck a chord with me as it seemed to echo what Mark Cuban said back in March of 2012 in “Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort” where he says, “‘Follow Your Passion’ is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get. Had Cal read Mark Cuban’s blog or had Mark read Cal’s blog? Maybe it was an “adjacent possible” thing.

    The Adjacent Possible

    In Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, of which Haden’s article is about, Cal talks about the “adjacent possible”, which is:

    A term taken from the science writer Steven Johnson, who took it from Stuart Kauffman, that helps explain the origins of innovation. Johnson notes that the next big ides in any field are typically found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas. The key observation is that you have to get to the cutting edge of a field before its adjacent possible – and the innovations it contains – becomes visible.

    I felt this book was a good example of that for me because I was just about to write something similar. It seems this is possible because Cal and I both have similar reading habits and a desire to find out how to do what we love. This book builds on principals from Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Derek Sivers, Daniel Pink, and Reid Hoffman. I will admit that I was a believer in the “passion mindset” and although I thought I was a hard worker, I tended to avoid the mental strain Cal talks about that’s so important to deliberately practice in order to build career capital (these are two terms Cal introduces). This book really does a good job of turning the passion mindset on it’s head while giving you solid, practical advice about how to get the things you want in a job: control/autonomy. The bad news is that it takes a long time, will hurt, and requires a lot of work.

    The Law of Financial Viability

    Mark Cuban asks, “Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. Think about all those passions that you considered making a career out of or building a company around. How many were/are there? Why did you bounce from one to another? Why were you not able to make a career or business out of any of those passions?” Cal asked Derek Sivers this same question in the book, to which Sivers responded with what Cal calls the law of financial viability, “Do what people are willing to pay for…unless people are willing to pay you, it’s not an idea you’re ready to go after.”

    By Doing, We Understand

    How do you know what college major to pick or what job to go after? How do you know what will make you happy? You don’t, but key lesson here is that any path can make you happy. At Mount Sinai, the Jewish people accepted the Old Testament Torah with the words, “asah shamah” – we will do, then we will understand. Exodus 24:7 says, “Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do (asah), and we will be obedient (shamah)!” The Hebrew word asah means to do, accomplish, or observe. Shamah means to hear with understanding or intelligence. Asah Shamah means “by doing, we understand.” When you do good work, passion will follow. You don’t have to understand it before you begin.

    I recently had a kind of enlightenment before reading So Good They Can’t Ignore You:

    1. ME: I want to be great, but I don’t want to do anything that’s hard.or takes too long to accomplish.
    2. SUCCESFUL PEOPLE: Doing great stuff is hard and takes a while to accomplish.

    I feared that my excuses about being raised in America as a white male with two parents and a mother who did my laundry and cooked my meals may not hold water. I knew that there have been times in my life when I have worked hard and seen the rewards of it:

    1. Wanted to start a band, but had no money to buy equipment, no experience, and could not play an instrument. I used my experience as a writer and my leadership skills to recruit and then learned to play guitar by practicing every night after school.
    2. Wanted to get caught up on back-mortgage to keep from losing the house so I got up every morning at 3AM for 10 months straight to raise the money. I went through 2 flat tires, 2 visits to the brake shop, and got stuck in the snow twice, but we kept our home.

    But it kind of stopped there:

    1. Wanted to start a successful business, but instead ended up creating a job for myself that wasn’t that stable. I blame a constant search for self-discovery of ‘who I am’ that could have been avoided if the company was a business, not a person. Companies know who they are and just go.
    2. Wanted to write my own app, but after the online classes got hard or I encountered the first hardware obstacle, I immediately quit. I blamed not having a mentor. I will admit that mentors are nice and have helped me in the past learn guitar (a great uncle), business analysis (managers), and SEO (Pangburn). You can’t always buy a consultant or personal trainer though.

    Or can you? If that is what is stopping me, then why can’t I just pay someone to help me get over that initial hump of learning the initial pathways?

    Deliberate Practice

    In So Good They Can’t Ignore You Cal talks about the value of a mentor/trainer in deliberate practice, which is a term coined by Anders Ericson and defined as “difficult practice required to continue to improve at a task,” typically designed by a teacher, “for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual’s performance.” And this notion of deliberate practice is what takes a person above the performance plateau, which gives you the career capital to spend creating the work you love.

    Before reading the book it crippled me to even think of taking a hard, fast step towards something because I felt no pressure. My back was not against any wall. Although I had no problems ‘stepping out’ when I needed a car (get a loan!), wanted to buy a house (a mortgage!), or go to school (student loans!). Even though these are huge, life-changing, and decade-long commitments they are made in relative moments. It is only when faced with no deadline, with no urgency – that the endless wandering of thought leads to constant consternation. After reading the book I realized this eternal hand-wringing was the negative effect of the passion mindset.

    I was so afraid of choosing the wrong thing and making a mistake that I didn’t do any one thing well. I didn’t take the time to invest in my career capital to become the best I could at my job. Back to my earlier comment about “easy” vs. “hard”: it’s easy to read a book by Daniel Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, or Jim Collins, because they are good writers and they aren’t really asking you to think much. The things they point out are pretty easy to implement and so you feel good doing them, but there’s no meat there. I might as well be reading People magazine.

    The Craftsman Mindset

    There is a difference if what I am trying to be is the best writer, manager, leader, business analyst, marketer, or product developer I can be. I don’t read SEO tips because they can sometimes be hard to implement, but also because I don’t really care. I’m not passionate about SEO, people just are willing to pay me to do it (the law of financial viability). I know there is more to do with SEO than what I do, but I reached a performance plateau and felt what I was doing was ‘good enough’. To overcome this, Cal says to develop what he calls “the craftsman mindset”, which is working on developing the “value you are offering the world.” Because the things most people desire in a job (autonomy and control) are so rare, they are intrinsically valuable. And therefore in order to achieve them, you must have something equally as valuable, career capital. One of the ways to achieve career capital is through a craftsman mindset. In this way, you can see that it’s all about a change in how you think about work and how small changes (or Little Bets), can make a big difference.

    Personal Programming

    In the book A New Kind of Science by Stephan Wolfram, he explores how simple rules can lead to complex results. This is how much of the world and our universe works, but it can be applied to our daily lives as well. Call it habit formation or life hacking or whatever, but simple changes to your day to day life can have large, complex changes to your overall life and well being. Our minds control a lot of what we do, but the nice thing about them is that they can be programmed to do what we want. It’s hard to do though, so most people don’t.

    If I were to counsel someone like me I would simply say, “Erich, 95% of what you do is automatic behavior. You’ve got to start to take back that part of your life and start to live in the moment. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel what’s touching your skin. Stop and smell the roses. Now take a deep breath and let it all out. You are going to write a new story for your life. You’re going to live with a purpose. You’re going to ask God for help and you’re going to do one thing consciously today and for the next 21 days that you didn’t do before. If you forget one day, pick up again the next day. It’s going to be hard. That’s how you know it’s working.”

    On Obtaining Wisdom

    There are times when thoughts and ideas learned over years of study begin to coalesce around a central theme. This is where wisdom is born and it only comes with time. Proverbs 4:7 says, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” One thing I’ve learned is how fast I can learn.

    Here’s a typical example from my working life: someone has a problem they can’t solve or implement. They bring me in to review, recommend, and implement the change. I normally don’t know anything about the company, product, service, vendor, or technology being used, but I almost always figure it out. I read the manual, I contact the vendor, I ask questions. It hurts my brain. I’m straining, but it’s like deliberate practice. It makes me stronger and I gain career capital.

    Deliberate practice hurts my brain. It’s physically painful for me to learn. I’ve heard that the brain has no feeling of pain so I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but it does hurt, at least for a while. Cal says in his book that the feeling tends to last for about 10 minutes, then subsides. He gets over this pain through a mental exercise of setting a time limit on the study to no more than an hour. This seems to help, but it might not work for you.

    The conditions in which I can learn do seem to be limited, though. I tend to be better under pressure, when there’s a time limit, someone watching me, or the fear of not getting paid. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into a home or business and had zero idea on how to fix their issues, but by the time I leave I’ve learned and fixed the problem. The client is happy and I am relieved. What I can’t seem to do is learn the things I want to learn. Why? There is no pressure and the reward is dubious at best. Take programming for example. I’ve tried to learn programming several times over the years. I’ve done some BASIC as a child and some Visual Basic.NET and JavaScript in college, but so far all I have managed to learn is HTML and CSS. I’ve dabbled in Actionscript for Flash animation and Objective-C for iPhone apps, but not made much past “Hello World”. Why?

    The Value of a Mentor

    Beyond lack of pressure there was no real reason, no project, and no goal. But the biggest reason is the I had no mentor. The only reason I learned HTML and CSS is because I had a mentor to teach me and a reason to use it. I would make web pages on shared computers at school and at work to make static Intranet sites. I’d use them to publish newsletters. Eventually I started making web pages for friends and family and eventually started a web design company. NOTE: This is where the similarities to Cal Newport start to get coincidental. We both have an interest in computers and writing, and like Cal we both had bands in high school and started a web design company. We both studied the same topics in this book, but he wrote it first (of which I am thankful).

    I was drawn to web design because its roots are in publishing and I had been publishing my own signs, letters, and news for years before I ever made my first web page. CMS blogging platforms like WordPress kind of take the work out of publishing and tools like Twitter and email make it easy to share your ideas. Everything is just so easy. Everything but learning and doing that is (aka work). At the bank I used to laugh hysterically when my manager would talk about a new position being created, “because somebody has to do the work.”

    What I’ve Learned

    If you’ve read this far then you might be interested in what I’ve learned so that I can share it with you. While I was busy paying the bills providing IT services, web design, and business consulting services to clients and employers, I was seeking out the relationship between work, mind, body, and spirit. I wanted to know how to find purpose in life, how to align that purpose with work, how to do what you love, how to be happy, and how to have an impact on the world. This is what I’ve learned over the last five years:

    I learned from Amway and 30-Day Challenge resources like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich that all things begin with a thought. David Allen’s book Getting Things Done said you can’t manage your time, only your actions. Stephen Covey said to begin with the end in mind. Thoughts guide your actions and intention sets direction. Measure what matters and inspect what you expect. Dave Ramsey says a goal has to be written down and have a deadline (pressure). Mark Cuban says passion comes from effort. Rick Warren says in The Purpose Driven Life to have an attitude of gratitude. Be thankful for what you have and more will be given. Good things beget good things. Those who have much, more will be given. Ask and you shall receive. The world is full of abundance, not scarcity. It’s a big Blue Ocean. Choose your story. Change your thoughts, change your outcome. What you tell yourself matters. Smiling makes you happy. Standing tall makes you feel strong. Your body can influence how you feel just like your words am influence how you think. If you can change your thoughts, you can change your story, and you can change your life. Do the work and you can earn the value needed to have the life you want.

    What’s your Story?

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  • Pain

    In business, I’ve been able to maintain my bills so far, but this week has been the closest ever. It gets scary sometimes, but I do enjoy the freedom.

    Seth Godin wrote recently that we’ll always have pain, so we should stop thinking that the next gig will be pain-free. It helped me realize I have that mindset of thinking that “if I just get a better client, I won’t have the pain, or if I just get a better job, I won’t have the pain.” The pain comes from living in a fallen world I think and it’s going to be with us till we get to heaven.

    Personally, I’m struggling to get my weight down. All that eating to stay awake with the paper route hasn’t gone away. Part of the reason I left First Merchants was to eat better, eat less, and exercise more. I’ve done those things, but I’m still the same weight. I think the only thing left is to do some lifting or muscle building.

  • Good Guy Greg

    “It is entirely inconceivable to the world that Steve Jobs would have been given a resurrection body that is imperishable only for the purpose of being able to endure God’s wrath into eternity future. We Christians do a great unloving disservice to the world when we don’t affirm the theology of hell – the gospel without an unmerited escape from God’s wrath doesn’t make sense.”

    I read today that the gates of hell were locked from the inside. That didn’t make sense to me. Death is scary. Hell is scary. Both are pretty much unknowns as no one seems to come back (accept the one who did, but he left to sit and intercede and stuff).

    What does the world need? More hell? Earth’s pretty bad sometimes. I just wish people would realize they are being given every breath they take from God. I have to admit this conversation is somewhat biased by one of the top 10 albums of all time, just Don’t Let it Break Your Heart.

    People don’t care what you know. They just want to know you care. WE CARE A LOT. Be a good guy, Greg.

  • The End of the World

    As the lighting strikes and the thunder rolls this cold, wet, December morning the darkened skies are continually ripped open and slammed shut in eerie foreboding of today’s show. There will be dandelions blooming underfoot as helio-magnetic superstorms bloom above our heads. As the ground begins to shake, hold firm to your beliefs. The time has come for you to act.

    There are no more excuses. There is nothing left to wait for. Your body is going to fail you. You are going to die. How is your relationship with Jesus? How have you loved the ones you’re with? When you look back at your life, what have you accomplished? Have you left this world better than you found it?

    This world is full of mystery. Some mysteries are inherent while others are man-made. Some mysteries we cling on to long after the answer becomes clear. Raise your eyelids and drop the veil. Throw the devil off your back and stand up. Be a man and do the work. Get out on the street and bring something home. Build a legacy and a reminder that great thoughts lead to great actions. Be the man you want your children to be. And live.

  • The Employment Roller Coaster

    Mark Thiele recently wrote an article entitled, Get ready for the coming employment roller coaster, in which he describes his perceptions of a changing career landscape where jobs not only do not last a lifetime, but where skills do not last a lifetime. Theile gives anecdotal evidence of jobs that are completely disappearing in less than 10 years. As I have been in the workforce for just over 10 years, I would like to share my evidence to support this trend.

    In 2001 I began working in the Items Processing division of a regional bank. Checks would come in by courier throughout the day and my job was to pre-encode their amounts for scanning. Balancing at that point was still done by hand, but within 3 months, it had been replaced by a new, digital balancing system. On October 28, 2003 United States Congress and the President enacted the Check 21 Act which enabled banks and other financial institutions to send checks electronically instead of by presentment of paper. It went into effect in 2004 and by 2006 large, central paper check sorting machines and facilities started to disappear and be replaced by local, distributed desktop scanners. I graduated college and got Microsoft and A+ certified only to land back at another regional bank installing desktop scanners in all of their branches. By the end of that project, my old job balancing checks had completed been eliminated – outsourced to a room full of keyers in Brazil.

    In 2004 shortly after graduating college I helped a friend start a small IT repair company called Neighborhood Geeks. I was the primary computer technician and went into new people’s homes and businesses daily to help them with their computer, networking, and server needs. It was a time when hardware costs were still higher than the cost of repair and the margins on the service work were good. I sold quite a bit of hardware too. It was a time when people were still converting from Windows 98 and ME to XP and from dial-up to broadband. Some computers still did not have ethernet cards so I actually carried them in my car with me along with spare hard drives, power supplies, and other peripherals. Laptops still hadn’t taken over desktops at that point and smartphones were still clunky. In two years, the market for desktop PC repair was almost over, caused by reduced hardware expense, the initial setup of broadband across America was over, and Windows Vista had just been released making our jobs a lot more easier (and less needed).

    In 2007 I started my own web design business and I used my knowledge of HTML to write simple web pages. Soon I had to learn CSS, SEO, and this new thing called WordPress. By 2008 I was fully touting SEO-optimized WordPress websites for small businesses around the Greater Indianapolis area, but by 2009 something had changed. SEO wasn’t working as well and any guy and his brother could throw up a WordPress site and slap it with a pre-built theme that looked better than anything I could code by hand. What mattered more was the creation of content and the management of the website’s layout, configuration, and security. My business shifted away from SEO and web marketing (although still very important) and into content marketing, management, and analysis. Google is constantly changing it’s algorithm, but content will always remain king. The problem is that as content grows, it starts to need managed and I soon found myself ghost writing and re-writing, going back through huge archives of content and ensuring it met the standards of today.

    I see the writing on the wall. The future of my industry is in code. If I fail to adapt and learn programming languages right now I face being a generalist in a specialist’s world. So here’s what I’m doing about it:

    • Learning to program WordPress with PHP – I bought a book about programming plugins in WordPress. It’s helping me learn PHP and become a more advanced WordPress user all at once. I make a bulk of my income right now from WordPress support in Indianapolis so I am investing in the now and the later.
    • Learning to create an iPhone app – This is a skill I’ve tried to learn off and on for a couple of years, but felt I needed more basic programming knowledge, context, and skills before trying again. I also need a Mac.
    • Building a web app to become an iPhone app – I found it’s best to learn something when you have a project in mind so I’m initially using WordPress to create a web app that will eventually become an iPhone app.

    What are you doing about this ever-changing work environment we are in?

  • I want to learn something new. But what?

    I recently stumbled upon this on Reddit by rtheone, whom I give full credit. The only reason I’m posting this here in full is because of the fickle nature of Reddit (in that it could be deleted at any time), but I thought it should be saved for a while here. They talk about many of the same topics I cover and care about (music, programming, graphic design, art, writing, and self-development), which makes it particularly interesting to me.

    I’ll open frankly: the universe is bigger than you can even imagine and there are an infinite number of different answers to your question. In the post to follow, I’ll try to provide some answers. I will list out some of the more obvious things that you can do with little equipment, not that much money, and nobody else to do things with. But first, I want you to recognize this: this is, at most, an incomplete list. You will have different opportunities based on the environment you put yourself in. No matter what, your mileage will always vary. Regardless, there will always be new things to learn or do, you just have to get up and seek it. Let’s begin, shall we?

    First and foremost, you could learn to play an instrument. Knowing how to play at least one instrument can be one of the most rewarding hobbies a person can do. Not only will it teach you about music and music theory, but playing an instrument can be relaxing, fun, and intellectually stimulating. A secret: used instruments and garage sale equipment can be extremely inexpensive. Check your local listings. Another secret: a lot of people have unused instruments sitting in their attics or closets and are willing to lend them to prospective musicians. All you have to do is ask nicely.

    Ideally, you would want a music instructor who will guide you through the basics and outline what you should practice. Unfortunately, instruction can be expensive and in some places, unavailable. Thankfully, there’s plenty of resources online to self-teach yourself. On reddit, check out these posts from /r/piano, the FAQ from /r/guitarlessons, the sidebars and top posts on /r/clarinet, /r/saxophonics, /r/trumpet, and /r/drums. Not only that, but there are numerous of Youtube videos and online tutorials out there for learning how to play instruments. I highly recommend that everybody at least tries to learn an instrument at least once. Or learn many, like this guy. The music you learn to play and the experiences gained from musicality will stay with you for the rest of your life.

    Let’s switch to a less common hobby. You could pick up lockpicking. As strange as it may seem, lockpicking has plenty of legal real-life applications as well and is a fun, calming hobby that plenty of people enjoy. There are very few feelings better than opening up a multi-tumbler lock. Just be sure to read your local laws on what you can and can not do.

    Another great part about lockpicking: you can self-make your own equipment or buy it online for very little money. On reddit, there’s a fantastic lockpicking community on /r/lockpicking and here’s their beginner’s guide. There’s also plenty of tutorials and videos online. For example, here’s a fantastic online video series by the controversial competitive lock-picker Schuyler Towne on learning how to lockpick. If you want to cut directly to the lockpicking and skip all the videos about locks and pick making, start here.

    If you have access to a computer, you can learn programming. It’s a large, fun skill that has an incredible number of uses. This guy in /r/webdev turned his career completely around in 18 months and landed himself a web development job. There’s plenty of resources online for learning programming. Here’s the starting FAQ from /r/learnprogramming that a lot of redditors are referred to when they ask about learning to code.

    The FAQ can be kind of dry and demotivating, so try an interactive tutorial. They’re more exciting and helps you ease into the flow of things better. I gave you a link to a Javascript interactive tutorial. Don’t be afraid to consider different programming languages and don’t feel belittled. Learning a programming language is like learning a new spoken language, you have to start from the very basics, despite how simple they may seem. Self-plug: here’s a guide to learning how to go from knowing nothing about Java to making your own 3D renderer in Java I wrote a few months ago.

    You can also learn graphic design. With free tools like Paint.Net and GIMP, you can learn how to make visual products that look nice. You can teach yourself to make a well-designed logo, to choose a typeface accurate for any given situation, or design a handout for a public event. You can apply concepts like color theory and negative space to almost anything. There’s a million practical uses for design, but it’s also quite difficult to master. Like with drawing, skill and mastery comes with practice.

    Thankfully, you don’t have to do it by yourself. Like any other digital skill, there’s an incredible amount of resources online. Check out this guide from PSDTuts and read online resources like /r/design, /r/graphic_design, and /r/Design_Critiques. There’s also plenty of other websites out there that will offer free resources and tutorials. Look to them for inspiration. Don’t be afraid to mimic other people’s style as well, it’s how a lot of beginning designers learn. Just don’t directly copy them. Once you understand the basics of whatever tool you’re using, the best way to get better is to simply practice. Challenge yourself with new tasks every day and set the bar higher and higher each time.

    Similarly, you can pick up sketching and drawing. Frankly, learning to draw primarily comes from practice. Spend ten to twenty minutes every day sketching something new. Or better yet, try /r/sketchdaily. Similarly, don’t feel demotivated if you start off as a not-very-good artist. I assure you, with practice, you will definitely get better.

    Want proof? Check out this conceptart.org thread. Check the date. Over the next sixty pages and seven years of drawing, you’ll find the OP working a little bit every day and developing from a beginning hobby artist to an art teacher. Want to see some of his last posted works? Check here and here. That’s what passion and practice gives you.

    Let’s say that drawing is too easy for you and you want to pick up something slightly more challenging. Try 3D modelling. It may seem daunting at first, but through the development of habits, 3D modelling can be not that difficult. Here’s how: download Blender and follow this online book step-by-step. It’s the best book I’ve found that goes into extreme detail on learning how to pick up 3D modelling. It has an amazing pace and is incredibly easy and fun to learn. There’s obviously a million uses for 3D modelling, from making model architecture to product design to designing 3D assets for a game or film.

    You could also improve your penmanship. Every day, spend a little bit of time and develop a unique style of handwriting. Write out the alphabet a few times and add nuances to your lettering to make them stand out. Here’s a nice starter on practicing your abilities with a pen or pencil. Like with sketching and graphic design, don’t be afraid to look at or copy parts of other people’s styles. Seeing good handwriting and other people’s handwriting can be a great place to find inspiration and motivation.

    It’s not a talent per se, but you could do the awesome thing and read. No library? Look at this, it’s more books you can read in a lifetime all put in a single place for free. Try to at least spend a little bit of time reading every day and better yet, immerse yourself in the books you read. If you don’t know what to read, look up the exact same question on subreddits like /r/books and /r/printsf or visit /r/booksuggestions. Be sure to go back and read classics that you were forced to read in school at your own pace. You’ll might find the experience enlightening. Reading will help improve your openness to other ideas and are fantastic references and conversation makers. Reading will generate creativity, expand your knowledge and vocabulary, and improve your ability to write. Most importantly, it’s fun.

    Like reading, you could practice writing. Write more and with purpose. Expand your vocabulary by writing with a new, difficult word every single day and reusing it later on. Learn to convey ideas with short sentences but with beautiful prose. Learn to tell a story and learn to objectively state the facts. Check out /r/writing and try writing short little stories every day or every week and submitting them to /r/nosleep (for horror) or /r/shortstories. Maintain an unread blog. Keep a journal in your pocket all day. Write stupidly long posts on reddit. Write more! Try out/r/shutupandwrite if you’re having trouble staying motivated.

    I also highly recommend working out and getting fit. Not only is it physically beneficial in terms of losing (or gaining muscle) weight, but it’s also emotionally and mentally rewarding as you feel better from it. You’ll feel better, healthier, and more confident from it. Here’s a fantastic start-up guide from /r/fitness. There’s not much to say about this one. You should be doing this already! If you’re not, do whatever it takes to motivate yourself to get physically active. For example, try listening to music while working out. It’ll make the time pass much quicker and make you less self-conscious if you’re in a public place. Most importantly, don’t push this off.

    If you want some music to listen to, you could try to expand your music appreciation to the harder-to-pick-up genres. A lot of people say they like jazz or classical and can only cite pieces like Take Five by David Brubeck or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as examples. That’s all great and fantastic, but there’s a MASSIVE genre out there filled to the brim with fantastic music. Learning to love it will supply you with a near endless amount of music. All it takes is a little patience and a little know-how.

    The patience comes from you. Here’s some of the know-how: check out this post from this subreddit and check outthis post from /r/jazz and check out this post from /r/classicalmusic. Take some time and patience and learn to love the musical nuances that defined genres like classical and jazz. Soon enough you’ll be humming out motifs from Coltrane’s Giant Steps or a Mahler symphony like the rest of us.

    If you have some music theory knowledge, you can also try composing and making your own music. As it turns out, once you have the music theory basics covered (try this if you want to learn basic music theory and use this if you want to practice ear training to recognize pitches, keys, and chords), making “reasonable” electronic and pop music really isn’t that difficult, but hard to perfect. It’s also really fun and entertaining. /r/WeAreTheMusicMakershas a terrific guide for getting started at making your own music. This is a great starting point for the massive amount of resources like this also available online on learning how to make your own music (See a theme here? Lots of resources online. Just gotta learn to seek them out.)

    If you need a DAW (a digital audio workstation), LMMS is free and not that hard to use. It shares similar functionality to the ever popular Fruity Loops/FL Studio DAW (which costs money, is professionally used, and is professionally laughed at) but lacking in some advanced features.

    Let’s keep up with the music theme. You can also improve your singing. You could get a vocal coach, or you could do the hard work and practice. The best thing you can do is both. But if you don’t have the money, do the latter. Start here then practice. Practice! Belt it out to your favorite songs and don’t care. Sing in the shower, sing in the car, sing whenever and wherever you can afford to have the people around you listening (so no singing during business meetings). When you’re at home, sing while listening to a song and record yourself with a mic and a recording program like Audacity. Play it back with the original song and see how you do. Sure, you’ll think you sound terrible at the beginning, but like with all things, you get better over time.

    Another thing: you’re probably not going to enjoy listening to your own voice. Don’t. You’re just not used to hearing yourself in recording compared to the sound bouncing around through your head. First of all, it’s your own voice. It’s not going to change. Learn to love what you’ve got. Some people are short. Most of them learn to embrace it and take it in stride. With practice, you can make slight changes to your tone and voicings that will improve your ability to not only sing, but will improve your ability to talk with people and give speeches emotively. Plus, there will be that day when your friends force you to sing some karaoke against your will and you’ll have your months and years of practice ready to go. Show them what’s up.

    Another small thing you can learn is learning how to meditate. I’ll re-post this because it covers the gist of it extensively. You might not see or feel instantaneous ephemeral benefits, but spending 10-20 minutes meditating every morning will dramatically improve your lifestyle.

    You could do the obvious and pick up sports. Ask around in your local communities. There’s almost definitely people out there who gather in local parks and facilities to play sports together at different levels. If you’re not the interactive type, learn to swim. It’s cheap, easy, fun, and doesn’t require other people to enjoy. Learning to swim is one of the most important things you should do, even if you live in the middle of a desert. You simply don’t know when you might be in a position where knowing how to swim could mean life or death. Plus, swimming is relaxing and not that hard on the muscles.

    Here are some other physical activities you could pick up without relying on other people or a vast array of equipment: biking, hiking, rock climbing, martial arts, skating, surfing, skiing, and gymnastics. Having a good instructor could be extremely helpful though and is almost always preferable than not. I’ll put a little bit more emphasis on biking because it’s an incredibly useful skill to know how to do well. Biking is a cheap, ecologically friendly way of getting to local places quickly. Apply liberally.

    You already mentioned learning a language. I’ll be frank and tell you I’m terrible at learning languages. I’ll tell you what I’ve heard from other people. First of all, the number one most recommended method of learning another language is the following: surround yourself with people who will speak the desired language often. Better yet, travel to it. Within weeks, you’ll know the basics. Within months, you’ll be practically fluent. Dead serious.

    If you can’t move yourself around, try this website. I’ve heard good things about it. You could also try classes. Generally, they have mixed results, but it forces you to practice in a friendly environment which is better than practicing by yourself with little to no motivation. Most languages have a subreddit dedicated toward them:/r/chineselanguage, /r/korean, /r/spanish, /r/french. Check out their sidebars or top posts to find some guides on learning each language.

    Oh, and there’s dancing. I haven’t put much effort into learning how to dance… but check this out.

    There you have it, a not-so-short list on the things you can do in your free time. I might add a few things every now and then if it comes to memory. You now have no excuse to be bored and let your ennui catch up to you.You don’t have to master every single thing. If you enjoy it, pursue it. If you don’t, move on to the next thing. Life is too short to not do what you enjoy. Have at it and never give up- never surrender!

    Via original post on Reddit by rtheone. One final quote from rtheone from one of his other posts, “Some times, as other people mentioned, it’s just about persevering. You might simply have to push through your barriers and find the reward on the other side. Some times, though, it’s about finding a way that makes it work for you. Open up to new ideas.”

  • Online Career Tests and What I Found Out About Myself

    I recently filled out a career test from the Navy called Life Ops and another one at CareerFitter. This is what I found out.

    Careers

    The only similarities between the Navy and the CareerFitter test were these careers:

    • Musician
    • Artist
    • Writer

    I wouldn’t consider myself a musician now, but I was in choir through middle and high school and was in a band for four years in high school and college. I also continually made/make mix tapes/CDs/Spotify playlists for myself and others as well as original songs and raps.

    I wouldn’t consider myself an artist, but I do have to design flyers, brochures, and web sites regularly which falls in line with the “Graphic Design” job CareerFitter mentioned, but the Navy did not. I do enjoy going to art museums occasionally, but I find the people that I’m there with much more interesting than the art.

    I am starting to consider myself a writer, but like musician and artist, although I do write, enjoy writing, am published, and make money writing, it’s actually a very small part of what I “do”. An average day consists of people asking me to do things for them that include technical or procedural troubleshooting, but I do occasionally have to design something or write something. This morning I have to design schedules and schedule templates for job roles. That’s a mix of graphic design and writing I guess.

    The Navy says I like, “unstructured work situations and prefer to work in roles where creativity is valued.” That’s true. I like to say that, “I like to have a seat at the table,” which means that if my voice is not being heard, or if I don’t have input on the decisions going on around me, I don’t feel valued or needed. The value I feel I add is my creativity and problem solving, which is something the Navy calls the “Innovator”.

    Innovator

    While I appreciate the Navy calling me an innovator, I’ve never put “artist” together with that word. I do agree that I have some skill for using my, “imagination to invent or find unique ways of doing things”, and I do see myself as, “expressive, original and independent.” I do like to, “stand out from the crowd.” Like Mark Twain said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

    Here are the type of activities in a career the Navy thinks a person like me would enjoy:

    • Express yourself creatively
    • Think imaginatively or conceptually
    • Produce or review artistic works

    Reformer

    CareerFitter called me a “Reformer”, who others see you as easy-going, calm and pleasant, but on the inside prefer and enjoy personal structure. My calm demeanor can quickly become assertive if one of my personal values is violated.

    I like how they suggest I be an architect as I’ve always wanted to be an architect or city planner. I find it interesting that they mention “Holistic health practitioner” as a career as I have three of those as clients. I wonder if my personality attracts them.

    There are many things listed by CareerFitter that match up with me a little too eerily that it makes me wonder about the human condition. How much are we just a factor of our programming and are there really so few possibilities that we can all be categorized like this?

    Actions

    I took this information and immediately began acting on it. I let past recruiters know I was interested in technical writing or web content management jobs, I notified my employer of my “writing/artist as best-work-type”, and I applied for a web content coordinator job at HH Gregg. None of the recruiters responded to my email, HH Gregg said no thanks, and my current employer told me to blog more (which I did).

    Editors Note: I previously had no tag for “Career”. Interesting and telling.