The bet I took

I took a bet with myself a few months ago.  I have this finance certificate that I wan to do.  I know that this will open doors for me on new jobs opportunity (in the mean time that my own business kicks off).

Because you see.  This certificate will provide me with a joker in my cards.  This will open doors on jobs I didn't have access before in my own firm.  And this also represent a wonderful employment insurance policy for I know that, having that certificate, I will be able to find a job in any financial company there is.

The problem is... I have absolutely no time to study.

But I have to do this course if I don't want to stand still.

This is a distance course.  So I can study on my own pace.  There is ten courses to take and as per the education center, it takes from three to six months each courses on average.  Now I don't want to take three to five years to complete the curriculum.  It would deceive my purpose of moving as fast as I can.

So here is the bet I took.  As per the education center, this course should take at least 45 hours study.  I took one week vacation.  My exam is scheduled for August 27 at 1h00 PM. This means that there is seven days remaining.  I made absolutely  no study so far except reading and high lighting the books.  If I put five yours a day study on this, I should pile up 35 hours study.  I will get short as per their proposed requirement.  But I am a fast learner and I count on it.

That is the bet I took: piling up study hours and trash the exam in one week.  If I succeed, I will do the same with all the other courses.  So I should be able to do something like one course each two months or so.  May be less (two weeks reading and highlighting, one week study then exam = course done in 3 weeks). I should finish the curriculum in one year and a half (may be less) instead of the three years minimum they suggest.  (This is still long by my standard for I would like to have the certificate like... yesterday.  But never the less, its better than five years).

That is a challenge I know.  But I'm in it now and there is no turning back (I already paid for the course).

I will report my advances and findings here.

The list

Do you have a list?  If you don`t then you should make it a priority to make one for yourself.

But what is the list?

Its all sort of dreams, realization that you would like to achieve for yourself.  Now there is one thing that is of prime importance when making the list!  It must be a list of EVERYTHING you would like to realize.  What to walk on the moon? Write it down.  Nothing is too stupid.  The first thing is to have a liste.  What we don with it we`ll see later.

Think it cannot be done?  Think again.  As an inspiration I strongly recommend you go visit John Goddard list on his web site.  It will open your eyes.

Here is my list in no particular order:

1. Make a world round trip
2. Make a world round trip by sailboat
3. Become a government deputy for at least one mandate
4. Have the body of a Greek god
5. Become a mPUA
6. Develop the FoS project (to be explained)
7. Learn bass guitar
8. Learn to sing
9. Become black belt in a martial art10. Practice Olympic shooting
11. Learn to program
12. Learn to speak 5 languages
13. Start my own micro-enterprise
14. Make 1 000 000$ aka. become financially independent
15. Do a PhD
16. Take part in a Triathlon17. Make a round America trip in a Winnebago
18. Go into space
19. Learn to fly a plane
20. Be a teacher for at least one semester
21. Own a personal library of 10 000 books
22. Own an office/laboratory
23. Be a wine connoisseur
24. Become good in mathematics
25. Publish a book
26. Participate to the Olympics
27. Become a very good cook
28. Take part to the Paris-Dakar race
29. Do parachute jumping at least once
30. Go kayaking
31. Get into the Arms forces reserve
32. Climb the Kilimanjaro
33. Climb mount Olympus
34. Climb mount Sinai35. Learn to dance Salsa
36. Run 10 km easily
37. Take part to the Sun Dance Festival
38. Get a custom motorcycle
39. Get a Cadillac
40. Meet the president of United-States at least once.
41. Participate to La Tomatina in Spain
42. Do scuba diving once more
43. Go to Antarctica
44. Do Planeur
45. Become an international specialist in something
46. Win the Peace Nobel Price47. Learn Karv Maga
48. Repay all my debts
49. Found and name a star
50. Become good at chess
51. Learn Hypnosis
52. Become a member of the Mensa
53. Stop completely to bite my nails
54. Make a consistent revenue on the side of my main source of revenue
55. Make the CFA certification
56. Pass a day in a nudist camp
57. Win the Solaris price
58. Host a seminar
59. Write a book
60. Take part to the desert race61. Do some Delta Plane
62. Do at least one show with a band
63. Make my own garden
64. Visit Nunavut
65. Meet the Queen (or the King) at least once
66. Become good at poker - Texas Hold'em
67. Become one of the richest man in my state
68. Break a Guinness record - One with the largest personal library in the world.
69. Patent some invention

70. Run the China Wall run

71. Climb Machu Picchu

72. Go to Burning Man

73. Participate to the SunDance festival
74. Make relatively close friends all around the world (want to be mine?  Click here)

Do more

As you know this blog is about strategy.

Do you want to know one very powerful way of getting an edge on anything that you want in life?  Either its loosing weight, getting this job you're looking for, taking over an opponent... just about anything...

... DO MORE!

That's it.  Do more.  Just when ever you think you're done, do one last think that will give you just this incremental advance.

If you work in sales and the others do 80 calls a day.  Do 81.  That will be about 260 more calls than average per year.  Who's going to get lucky sooner or later?

You swim, swim a little longer.  You run 5 Km.  Try 5.1 Km next time.  You list 100 pounds on the bench press?  Try 102 pounds next time... You get the idea.  Just incremental improvement and its amazing what difference this would make at the end of the year.

The Japaneses have a word for this: Kizen.  Which could be translated as "continuous incremental imporvement".

One last example.  Lets say you want to write a novel.  You always push its start to the next day.  Because I your head the task is so huge and there is so much amount of hours to commit, your brain gets over driven before you get started.  But what if you tell yourself that you'll do a page a day.  No more that a single page per day.  But no less than a page.  That's 365 pages at the end of the year.  You got yourself a book right there.

So start today.  Ask yourself, on each task that you are doing: "what is the little thing that I can do on this before I leave the task?"

I don't know who said it but someone said:"Work every hour of your day, and you will accomplish more that anyone".   This is so true.

Start today.  Do more.  And its amazing what you will accomplished at the same time next year.

Know thyself

The first step in my philosophy of living like a hero is to take control of my body.

I want to go from this:

 To this:



















And I want this resust by October 31st. 2012.


The game plan

How am I going to do this?

First I am going to follow this schedule of training:

Monday: Weight training
Tuesday: Running
Wednesday: Weight training.
Thursday: Running
Friday: Running
Saturday: Weight training.
Sunday: Off.  Relax.

This is until september.  Because in september I am going to join the Adult swim team of my town.  The reasons for that are a) I was a swimmer when I was young.  I love it.  b) swimming will be very good in training all my body parts and increasing my cardio capacity.

So from september to November I should juggle with swimming, running and weight training until the first snow falls.  Then for the winter I'll stick with swimming and weight training until spring.

My weight training:  I will follow the 300 Spartan Workout

Motivator:  In order to stay on track I already subscribed to my town marathon in September.  And I subscribed to the Spartan Race next May 2013.  And for the up coming Halloween, I want to dress like the spartan in the picture above.  So I need the body that goes with the suite. I also subscribed to a running course in my town.  And I will join the swimming team in September.  It's all about commitment!

Eating:  I eat like a pig and I eat anything that comes into my reach.  I need to change my entire view on eating.  I shall make an entire post on it. Coming soon.

And strategically speaking if you eat better than average, you should be healthier than average (all things being equals).  Which puts the odds on your side a little more compared to the average guy.

One last thing about eating.  I start training first and I will start my eating habit detoxification a little later.  When I reach that part.  I shall have a last meal.  Just like the death sentenced prisoners.  I will go and eat fat food and potatoes chips and all that for one last day.  Then.  The next morning, I start my new eating regiment.  Which will consist on decreasing the size of my meal and choosing a low fat regime.

Oh!  And one last thing about the Spartans.  Are you still looking for some moral and ethic axioms and maxims on which to run your life?  How about the spartan life motto:

• A Spartan pushes their mind and body to their limits.
• A Spartan masters their emotions.
• A Spartan learns continuously.
• A Spartan gives generously.
• A Spartan leads.
• A Spartan stands up for what they believe in, no matter the cost.
• A Spartan knows their flaws as well as they know their strengths.
• A Spartan proves themselves through actions, not words.
• A Spartan lives every day as if it were their last.

Pretty cool isn't it?

Link of the week: Make it count - Awesome Inspiration

Here!  Watch this!  Its awesome!

Make it count

Live your life like a hero

 "What we do in life, Echoes in Eternity"

What does it means to live you life like a hero?  What is a hero.  What can be considered as heroic?

This shall be the start of a new post time that I will add to this blog: live your life like a hero.

Whouldn't you like to wake up in the morning and be happy to be alive.  You have a purpose, you know exactly where you're going.  And you just can't wait for this day to start in order to accomplish what you are aimed to accomplish?

I shall come back in further post on the concept of hero, what is it, what it represents and all.  But in the mean time ask yourself this question:

"What does it means to me being a hero?"
"What would I consider hero to me?"

For someone this could me something as simple as loosing 10 pounds.  For another is being more at home and learn to say no at work in order to pass quality time with friends and family.  For someone else this could be running a marathon or climbing mount Kilimandjaro.  Or plainly taking care of a sick loved one.

What does it mean to you?  What is your definition?

In the mean time I am going to leave you with Ayn Rand's definition of a modern hero:

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Share it here in the comments if you want.

We shall develop on this concept more on the coming posts.

Asymmetry of information

There is a concept in economics that is facinating me for a while now and its the concept of asymmetry of information.  One must understand this concept if one wants to get a strategic edge on one’s world.

As per Wikipedia, the Asymmetry of information is defined as “the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power…”  lets not look further for now.  This creates a imbalance of power.  To whom?  Well in favor of the people who has either more or better information or both.  And this you can find it everywhere.  Those who make money on the stock market are the ones who gets the information before the others.  Those who gets the jobs are the ones who know the key hiring people in the company.  Those who get the girls are those who are good in flirting and closing.  Those who get the sales are those who are good in identifying the customer’s needs and hidden motivations… and I could go on like this for a very long time.

So seek to have more information and better information than the counter parties in the field you wish to apply your influence.  There is several questions that you must look for and define for yourself:

1. What information is good information?  Not anything is useful.
2. Where does the information comes from?  And can you have access or better access to it?
3. What channel does the information takes to spread?  Can you channel it?  Can you control it?  Or at least can you increase your speed in getting that information from those channels?
4. What can you do with that information?  How is it useful?
5. What are you willing to do with that information?

Don't get confused between 2. and 3.  In 2 this pertain to where does the information lies and you can get it.  Before anyone if you can.  In 3. this pertain to where does the information go and how if you cannot have direct access to its source, you may develop better ways to collect it once its out.

The last question is very important (number 5.).  You may get information that could be very useful, but using it would go against your values or life principles.  For example the information in question could either hurt someone or put someone in trouble.  And you have to assess if it’s the kind of information that you do want to use in order to further your cause.  Just as long as it stays legal, the important is to like the person you see in the mirror every morning.

The asymmetry of information can be caused by the followings:

-         Geographical location
-         Lack of means to access it

-         Lack of skills

-         Lack of adequate time

-         Lack of adequate capital

-         Status and influence asymmetry

One must be aware of these sources and adress each of them in their own sphere of influence to maximize what one can make of it.  If one don’t, then the door is open for one’s opponent to get ahead in one of those field and get an edge on one.