Freedomizing

 If I were to write a book, in which the idea has always caught my attention, the title just maybe "The Lost Art of Life Maintenance" Chapters to include in no particular order: 1. Yoga Hot or Not     Mental maintenance 2. Bicycle Maintenence     Brake adjustments, derailer adjustments, tuning wheels 3. Vehicle Maintenence     Changing oil(s), changing spark plugs, timing and carborators 4. Home Maintenance     HVAC and Fluid dynamics, Water under pressure and not, seals sealants and insulation 5. How to survive outdoors     Glamping, processing wood, wood burning stoves, fishing, hunting 6. Overall life tinkering  

 I turn 40 this year, and I always said I wanted to do an Ironman in my 40s. Well, why not when I'm 40?! This has been inspired by my cousin sending a random text "I am doing an iron man ... Do you have any tips, recommend any training strategy, diet, anything that helped you? ... " Things happen for a reason, I think, divine sometimes. Therefore, I thought about it and deferred to a conversation we should have later. As this clearly was not on the front of my mind, but certainly should be!  I've been thinking about this for the last couple of weeks, and I've come to a conclusion, based on a study of one, me, that an iron man slides perfectly in line with the age-old 80/20 rule. 80% mental and 20% physical. Keep in mind I am a passive triathlete; in other words, I compete with no one but myself, and I consider it an absolute win if I finish and a super win if I enjoy it! Therefore my "recommendations" are for those individuals looking to "complete,...

 Management/coaching, a fantastic appreciation of failure. In the Epilogue of the book, Daniel Coyle references the Toyota management style, the example he gives in so many words a manager who came into a meeting bragging about all of the great things he'd accomplished. The response of the rest of the group was we hired you because you are a good manager; now, what's going wrong so we can fix it. In corporate America, schools in just about every aspect of life could learn from this. I specifically recall in my annual reviews that I didn't do a good enough job "tooting my horn." I struggled with these annual reviews, and I mean, I loathed them! Didn't matter what company or what job; even when I had a manager that I really respected, the annual reviews were a "check the box" made everyone feel uncomfortable, lie a little, shift a little, and everyone saw through it all, at least I did, and I assumed they did too! Granted, society has turned these annu...

 Reading the one thing currently, thus far, I really like the book, it is helping me get back to the basics, and it's reminding me of things I need to do. The 80/20 rule, which is essentially a physics fact on human behavior, is fascinating. Kaplan found out that it's 87/13 on behavioral effects of a portfolio; I bet if they got more data from a larger pool, they'd find it go closer to the vastly studied 80/20, that's splitting hairs, though.  Back to the point, the one thing, and I really pondered that statement, instead of trying to accomplish xy and or z by the end of the day/year/decade the point I believe of the entire book is what's the ONE thing you will accomplish. Before starting the book, I wrote yesterday about purpose and intention, and the book is just another way of stating (much more elegantly than I am capable of) the same thing. Funny how worlds collide.  Focus and intention have continued to follow me through the holidays, however, my focus was on ...

Why? Let's start with the obvious, financially, it's significant in a time where hyperinflation is rearing its ugly face. Have you been getting the same percentage raise as the handyman you must call to fix X Y or Z? Both materials and wages have skyrocketed in the last year, and the projection seems not to be slowing down. So what do you do? Bite the bullet, not go on that vacation you were hoping for, sell your car, move into a more affordable place (let me know when you find that deal!). No, what you do is you fix whatever it is, and I mean WHATEVER IT IS yourself!  I'm going to link a blog post from many a year ago, so I don't have to go into its finances because I want to go into the behavioral side of it on this post.  http://livethe.moneylife.us/2015/03/diy-and-why.html By the way, I did touch on the EGO and behavioral side even back then, 7 years ago.  So let's dive even further into it now that I have 7 years of DIY, and there really isn't a lot that I ...

 It's actually a pretty simple concept, yet, took so many discussions and arguments to fine-tune it. The premise is exactly as it's written; if you've earned it, it is a fully disclosed amount "paid" no questions, no grey. The Legally Stolen is in the minutia, in the back door deals, the distributor's kickbacks, the "all expenses paid" vacations ... I mean ... Trainings ... It's everywhere in every industry. Therefore it's legal and in so many aspects accepted and expected. That is until it isn't. In come the cowboy legal teams that are uncovering these legal crimes. And putting together compelling cases against the Legally Stolen money heist. All that has to happen is the legally stolen money outweighs the legal liability and boom industry innovation to figure out how to keep the golden goose on a laying! The cat and mouse game goes on, and I'm here to tell you the cats out of the bag. For years and years, retirement plans have been ...

I think that'll be the title of my book when I finally write one. The basis of the concept was brought to my attention as we were looking at a flowing grass landscape, beautiful, the occasional scrub oak with a horizon of snow-capped mountains. An artist friend pointed out the beautiful striations of color; being taller, I saw more of a giraffe coloring. The comment was, "imagine that was a 2 d picture". My response, "you can't compete with Nature" discussion then morphed into winning and losing, and therefore, you can compete with Nature, you just will always lose. However, to compete is to compete, and during competition, there is no winner or loser; there is just competition. Staying in context, did Michalango win when he took the stone and turned it into a masterpiece we now know as David? Or did Nature, because Nature supplied Michalango the image of David to make out of stone? Either way, I sure am glad that Michalango engaged in that competition.  Tha...