Miscellaneous Briefs

Recharge

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If you want to work yourself out of a funk, exercise very hard or very gently, but forget about the middling stuff. It won’t help.

I notice that after I wrestle competitively or do a PACE workout for twenty or thirty minutes, I am both exhausted and exhilarated. More importantly, I get a surge of energy that lasts for hours.

When I jog or lift weights or do an aerobics class, I feel worse afterwards than I did before.

I’ve also noticed that I can recharge myself by meditating or napping for a half-hour. (I’m still not convinced that meditating is any better than napping, although everyone tells me it should be.)

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Miscellaneous Essays

10 Dumb Ways to Start a Business (and Waste a Ton of Money at the Same Time)

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Entrepreneurship is based on selling. You test the market with a product you think will sell well. If it does, you keep selling. If it doesn’t, you try something else.

This approach lent its name to my best-seller: Ready, Fire, Aim. The main idea is that to start and grow a small business you must develop a pragmatic, action-oriented mentality. Rather than spend too much time and money refining theoretical ideas, you develop a prototype quickly and then see if the market will buy it.

As I said in the book, for every business that fails because of poor planning there are a dozen that never get off the ground because of too much planning.

The Ready, Fire, Aim approach obviously doesn’t apply to surgical procedures and rocket science. But it will be very useful for 90 percent of the new-business ideas you are likely to come up with.

Want to start a business selling diamond-studded collars for kitty cats? Fine. There are two ways to go about that:

• You can spend most of your time and money manufacturing a line of such collars – and only after that is done, start to think about how you can sell it.

• You can make a single collar and go down to the local flea market or your neighborhood pet shop and see if you can find a customer for it.

Most people start businesses the first way. That’s why most businesses fail.

But with the Ready, Fire, Aim approach, you devote 80 percent of your initial resources to discovering an efficient way to sell the product. Once you have done that, you have found the key to successfully market it. With that key in your pocket, you don’t have to worry about all the other problems that will arise in the natural course of business. You won’t have to worry, because you will be able to create the one thing that can solve almost every business problem: cash flow.

Here, in a nutshell, is what I mean by Ready, Fire, Aim:

Ready: Get your product idea ready. Make it good enough to sell. Don’t worry about making it perfect. There will be time enough for that later.

Fire: Start selling it. Sell it every way you can. Test different offers. Test different ad copy. Test different media. Keep testing until you discover something that works. This is your Optimum Selling Strategy (OSS).

Aim: Expand your customer base by focusing on your OSS. As your customer base grows, develop business procedures to accommodate that growth. Hire the best people you can to manage your business. Discover, through “back-end” marketing tests, other products and services that your customers will buy. Use those discoveries to refine and perfect a fast-selling line. As this back-end business flushes cash into your company, invest a good deal of that cash into front-end marketing.

That is the cycle of a successful start-up venture.

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Miscellaneous Essays

Being Happy

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Most people, when confronted with an obstacle, suffer some degree of shock and dismay. Even if they don’t consciously acknowledge the problem, their bodies respond in ways that make them less capable of bouncing back.

You may find it interesting to know, for example, that scientists have found that testosterone – the hormone that drives us to work hard and win – actually drops measurably in people who run into unanticipated problems. This clues the body to move into a defensive mode. We feel the impulse to slow down or shut down or run away.

Sophisticated scans have shown similar responses in the brain. The pleasure center becomes less active, as do the parts of the brain that promote the will to act and take risks.

Our bodies are designed to be energized when things are going well. But when things turn against us, they are programmed to retreat.

These are deeply ingrained instincts. Evolutionists tell us that we developed them in order to survive life-threatening situations such as famine, extreme cold, and attacks by predators.

And though these retrenching responses are necessary for survival when the threats are mortal, they can work against us when the challenges are less serious.

That is why we so often feel defeated by soluble problems – the sort of problems we run into when we attempt to enhance our lives and build our careers.

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Miscellaneous Briefs

Reading is More Engrossing Than Watching TV or Videos

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Reading is more engrossing than watching movies, TV, or videos. It takes more energy. It demands more attention. It requires imagination. And all of that is both pleasurable and useful to the brain. One of the particular advantages of reading is that it is easy to pause and reflect. How often, when reading a book, do you put it down for a moment to ponder some thought suggested by what you just read? This doesn’t happen when you are at the movies. It doesn’t even happen at home when you have a remote control in your hands.

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Miscellaneous Essays

Making Our Lives Golden: The Choices We Have

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Now that our last child has left home, K and I are talking about getting television service. For about 20 years, we have been without it. The idea was that our children would become better readers without the distraction – and that objective was achieved. All three of our boys are voracious and skillful readers.

But now, as empty nesters, we are thinking that it would be kind of fun to watch some shows together – to spend an hour after dinner, sitting next to one another, laughing at the same things.

To test this hypothesis, we rigged an antenna connection for the set that we’ve been using to play DVDs.

The results of the experiment were mixed. There was something wonderful about watching those programs together – the double pleasure of the experience itself and knowing that your mate is “getting it” too. But when it was over, we found ourselves feeling like we used to when we watched television – a little sad and empty inside. As if we were mourning the time we’d lost.

That got me thinking about how people spend their recreational time – the things they do, and whether that time is spent wisely.

Broadly speaking, you fill your day with four kinds of activities: working, sleeping, eating, and relaxing. And it seems logical to assert that – up to the point of mental or physical exhaustion – the more hours you spend working, the more successful you’ll be.

That said, we must acknowledge that all work and no play makes Jack a dull… or cranky… boy.

You do need some recreation. The question is: How much?

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Miscellaneous Briefs

To-Do Lists

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The great thing about writing to-do lists is that the process itself is motivating. There is no doubt in my mind that I am three hundred percent more productive since I began doing it. But there is a problem. It takes time to write a good to-do list and it takes effort. Unless you are careful, the list making will drain vital energy from you. If you write your lists in the morning and they are extensive, you may not have the energy afterwards to launch into an important project. Thus, it is better to write to-do lists at night.

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