We have moved!

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Manu

This is the las post of ‘I had a dream about this place’. You can now find me at In Space We Trust. Don’t forget to subscribe to the new rss or you can also decide to receive all the new posts by email.

Just to finish with ‘I had a dream about this place’, here is a short video (see the 2 links here: part1 part2) from Mulholland Drive that inspired me this name. Just wanted to share it with you. If you have never seen this movie, just see it. It is my favorite movie of all time. Bye! See you on In Space We Trust.

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Why you need solitude and how to reach it

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Manu

When traveling through life your main concern is interacting with others. Don’t deny it; even if you think you’re better than everyone else, you still want to share with others. You could be a hermit but in some ways you’d do that to prove to society that you can live alone. Not convinced ? Think about what clothes you choose to wear when you get dressed, do you do that for you or do you do that for the others? If you were really doing that for you, you could walk down the street in your pyjamas or your underwear.

Social interaction is key. You are living for others because they need you and you need them. And this requires a lot of energy, focus, patience. People are not predictable, they change, they don’t agree with you and that is normal. As important as interacting is, being alone is a powerful way to recharge your batteries. Being alone matters as much.

The Forest

Last weekend, I went hunting with my father in-law. He has some property out in upstate NY. It was the first time I did that and I must say that I was not 100% convinced that I was going like it. I actually liked it a lot, even if I probably won’t do it often. It was a great experience. I won’t discuss here the pros/cons of hunting, that is not the point.

What was the great revelation of this day was staying alone (well, I was not really alone because my father in law was a couple of meters from me, but he was definitely not moving and not talking!), without moving, in the middle of the forest. I am a city guy, so not hearing even a distant car or siren is kind of abnormal for me. But there, sitting on a branch and watching the trees… hearing the noises of the forest, the wind and the animals around me was priceless. I don’t even know how much time we spent at one particular spot… 5 , 10, 30 minutes ?

This sensation of solitude was not only solitude from humans it was also solitude from deliberation. My mind was not focused on solving a problem or remembering something or even regretting that I didn’t take my camera… it was just absorbing the now, with no other distracting thoughts. Is that real (I mean really real real) meditation?

Meditation

I’ve tried to meditate, every morning. I get up early so I have time to do that. But every time, my mind wanders. I can never have this complete “focus on the now” thing. Because even if I try, I think of “I have to focus on the now”.

I think it is because I am not really alone. I am almost always surrounded by something material. Even in the nearby parks, I still hear the noises of the cars. When I stay at home, I see things that remind me of tasks at hand, or I hear the noise of the neighbours- which is ok… I mean we chose to live in an apartment after all.

Solitude is risky

Real solitude is hard to obtain. Plus it is a bit scary too. When you are really alone, no one can help you, you can only count on yourself. Maybe that is a key to countering your mind wandering: counting only on yourself.

How to achieve that exactly? Reaching solitude is taking a risk. You only decide what happens, no conformity, no appearence. It is only observing yourself. I think provoking this risk is the way do it. It doesn’t mean you have to take huge risks, but when you think of it,  taking a risk is dangerous only because you are the only one to decide what is going on.

Eventually you will have to take a risk in your life. You better know how it feels. You will be alone at that time. You better learn to like yourself.

Take the risk now

What can you do to reach solitude and know yourself? Maybe listen to you… Some people are sad and they don’t even know it because they think it is normal. Because everyone around them tells them that everything is “normal”, that you are suppose to hate your job, that  “always being in a hurry” is the new “working”. It is not normal at all. You are supposed to be happy. Listen to yourself. What do you really want? Why do you want that big screen TV exactly? Are you passionate about cinema to the point that you need a big screen?

You need to be alone sometimes and think just about yourself. You should take time and appreciate the now, and not think about the rest. You need to take a risk and appreciate it. Take a risk, leave work earlier, smile at people in the street, do what you want even if it is not “normal”. Appreciate that your heart is beating, appreciate that you have a pretty decent life compared to the rest of the world (if you’re sitting at a computer reading this, you do). Don’t be scared to be a little selfish… everybody is anyway.

Think about you but not the you from yesterday, not the you of tomorrow, the you of now.

Now for some news and suggestions:

Watch the interview of Adam Baker by Sam Spurlin.

Everett Bogue is on something great : read his last post Superhumans vs. drones.

Watch this video by Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work <– every manager should watch this!

Other stuff:

I am working on a new project this week and will probably continue with that for a long time now. I can tell you right now it will be a new blog. This one was my first “real” blog but mainly a playground to learn a thing or two about blogging. More information in the future, I will keep you updated!!

Take care.

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What People Think About You Is None Of Your Business

Posted on November 24, 2010 by Manu

I have been working on this blog for a couple of weeks now. This is something totally new for me. A new experiment that is changing my life. If you are a blogger too, I think you understand, you were probably like me a couple months or years ago, experimenting with this new tool. If you are not a blogger I urge you to open a blog, you probably have more things to say than you think you have. Just put it this way : in the whole world there are at least a couple of people who are waiting for somebody like you to talk about something that rings true for them.

Since the beginning of I Had A Dream About This Place, I have been obsessed with stats. The first thing I did with this blog was to set up google analytics to track my readers. Every day I have been watching who reads my blog, where they come from, how long they stayed etc… This has been fairly disappointing. First I thought I just had to write some stuff and wait… – maybe somebody will magically land on my blog, who knows?? Ebooks like Cloud living by Glenn Allsopp or Minimalist Business by Everett Bogue proved me wrong. A blog will not grow on its own, you have to hustle if you want something to happen. People want to react to what you write. And you have to react to what they write if you want to be heard. I find the best way to share and communicate is

twitter. There you can be really direct and concise about what you want to say.

[Side note: when I say you can and have to be direct on twitter - and I think this is great - that doesn't mean you have to write like you write on twitter everywhere else. I am not really pleased when I receive emails that look like "Send me invoice. Mary (sent from my supa-dupa blackberry edge pearl whatever with a diamond on the top powered by thebestphonecompanyintheworld)". You have a nice screen and a keyboard on your blackberry so be a sport and say "Hi", "Please", "Thank you" and "Have a nice day".]

That being said you probably wonder why the title of this post is “What people think about you is none of your business”?

As much as you have to hustle and interact with other people you have to keep your integrity and stay true to what you think. How many times have you asked someone for advice and realized this someone really doesn’t get it? This has happened many times for me. This blog is a good example, some people really don’t get it.  This is discouraging. But when you’re deeply certain that what you’re doing is what you really want to do, do you need someone to tell you if it is right or wrong? You might ask to 100 people and 99 will tell you it is wrong, but you can still do it if you think this is right.

This is the thing: listen to your heart and do what is right. Don’ t listen to what people say, you are a grown-up. And even if you fail, does that really matter if you really loved doing it?

You probably have this feeling that you’d better refrain from what you want to do because of what the others might think. For example, sometimes you want to dance in the metro when you listen to your ipod. Do you think that if you look at everybody to check if you have their approval you will get to it? No. Just don’t care… but really deeply don’t care as long as you don’t annoy anybody and you are respecting people around you, you can do it!

Same thing applies online. As much as I think blogs and twitter and the whole social media thing are great ways of communication, I don’t think the primary thing is to worry about what people think about you. Really, I find it stressful and complicated to check if I have feedbacks on twitter, on facebook or by comments. I cannot ignore them completely, as I said before, you cannot expect people to come see your blog if you stay in your bubble, but I think it is good to limit the influence of others.

I want my message to be read, I want to be useful to people but honestly I don’t think leaving a comment on a blog (yours or mine) will necessarily change anything. Why? First of all when I leave a comment on somebody else’s blog, I feel like I am a big sucker saying “Great great great and stuff, come see my blog by the way…” Most of the time what I want to say can be said in a tweet. And if I want to say more I can write an email to the blog author I am interested in or even set up a skype chat. Plus I feel I am giving more to a blogger if I retweet her post and spread the information than if I just leave a comment. And this is what every blogger wants after all: having a larger audience and having his blog posts spread and that is OK.

To be consistent with what I have just said, I will close the comment section on this blog for now and stop commenting on others blogs to focus on Twitter (and by the way, if you don’t have a Twitter account: create one. Now. Twitter is awesome). I want to simplify the process and reduce the bias due to comments. Why? Because too many comments, point of views will just create an “average” me. And I don’t want to be average, I want to be me.

I know that I asked you to comment on my previous posts before.  You probably think I am not consistent and you probably think this is radical (you are right) and if you don’t agree with me you can unsubscribe or unfollow me. Really…

And anyway, I don’t have a lot of commenters (Hi ! Alyson, Rob, Jay, Peter, Etienne and Claudia! How are you guys?)  and I prefer making this decision while I have few commenters who I trust.

So does being more radical give you more autonomy? I think yes. Does it simplify? I think yes.

Do what you want and let the other people do what they want. There is plenty of space in the world so we can all enjoy ourselves without annoying our neighbours.

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By the way, I know most of you readers are Americans and you are on holiday for Thanksgiving. Tammy Strobel‘s last post is called the art of listening. Think about that when you will be with your family. This matters!

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How to become an early riser

Posted on November 21, 2010 by Manu

Sunrise from Camping Le Griffon in Gaspésie (click on the picture to get to their website)

Last week I talked about the 9 good reason to become an early riser. Today let’s get practical. I will give 9 ways to wake-up early (i.e 5 am, this is what I do). But first I have to tell you something.

I have always been a morning person. When I was a kid I was always getting up at 6am to play. When I was a teenager, I did all my homework on Sunday morning before 9am. Why? Because I want to take as much time as I want to do stuff that I like!

Another thing before we get started. I am not a doctor and have really limited knowledge on medical science. If for a reason, you feel that those methods have a negative impact on your health, you should take it easy, talk about it with your doctor or just stick your old habits (<– yes, this is a disclaimer. Please don’t sue my butt because you suffer from sleep deprivation or anything else after reading this post)

OK, now we are ready, here is the good stuff :

  1. Go to bed early. This may sound obvious, but if you go to bed at 2am, you will have a hard time to wake up at 5am. I have a minimum of 6 hours of sleep. That means that if I want to get up at 5am, I have to sleep at 11pm. So I usually go to bed between 10pm and 10.30 . Even if I am not really tired, a good amount of reading usually does the trick!
  2. Eat dinner before 8pm- this one is a very important one. When you sleep you don’t use a lot of energy, so you don’t need a lot of resources. Eating right before sleeping is meaningless and with all the energy you get from the food you ate, you are going to have a hard time sleeping.
  3. Forget about the snooze button. This button has been created by the devil to make you think you need more sleep than you actually do. A good way not to use it is to put your alarm clock far enough from your bed so you have to get up to stop it. Once you are up, you are up.
  4. Avoid stress before going to bed. Don’t try to answer to that stupid client right before you sleep. Try to relax. Internet or TV can really stress you out. You don’t want that.
  5. Have a nap during the day. I know it is not easy and our society sees napping like a waste of time. Please, don’t listen to what everybody tells you and have a nap. If you are in your own office, close the door and lay down on the floor, or just close your eyes for a couple minutes. Maybe you can use part of your lunch break on a nice day to grab a nap in nearby park. The best is having a 20 minutes nap. And don’t see it as a waste of time, but as an investment.
  6. Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables, every day. Yes, your mom is right and your health is important
  7. Do some sports. Move your body everyday, get in shape! Everyday, I do at least some push-ups, some abs and I walk 20 minutes or more. Sport will increase you endurance and you will feel better.
  8. Have something to do when you get up. If you get up at 5am and wait till 8am to do stuff, you will get bored. Take this time to read, relax, meditate, do some sports. The most important thing is to do something you like in the morning. For example I love listening to my ipod, I love music, so every morning I take 15 minutes to listen to music.
  9. Drink coffee. You guessed it, didn’t you? After all my twitter name is not coffeemanu for nothing. Don’t drink too much though. Use coffee as kick to start your day but not as constant fuel.

When you are starting to wake up early, your days are going to be a little longer. You are going to be tired at first.  You are going to think this is crazy and you will want to give up. Please don’t. It is just an adaptation phase. After a month of practice you are going to start to like it. Believe me seeing the sun rise everyday is priceless!

Do you want another point of view on the early rising thing? Leo Babauta from Zen Habits already made a post on that subject. Check it out!

If you start to get yourself up early, please leave me a comment. I’ll be curious to see how it goes for you.

Posted in start living | 2 Comments

Stars, city lights and internet

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Manu

Do you watch the stars at night ? Do you try to find constellations, connect stars to other stars? I find that interesting… I mean the whole constellation thing… It makes think of the way we connect each others…

Last week I went to the Montreal planetarium . The presentation that night was “a guided tour of the milky way”. As I have always been passionate about astronomy, this new presentation was really exciting for me. So we sat down, and let ourselves be transported to the deep night sky.

The guide was really great and had a engaging way of telling his story, introducing us to wonderful little details about our galaxy. What made me start to think about the blog post you are reading is when when the guy stopped his normal presentation to tell us that due to the glare of city lights we don’t see most of the stars we used to see a century ago. We all can attest to that. I’ve always lived in cities and when I go to the country I am amazed by all the stars I can see.

Humanity was always able to have a great view of the stars until recently. Different civilizations, different countries, different eras- we all used the sun, the moon and the stars as marks to calculate time, to navigate or to predict the future… Star gazing is part of us as much as we are influenced by sun light or the position of the moon. It may be not as strong as the light the sun gives us but I am pretty sure we wouldn’t have made such progress in geometry if it wasn’t motivated by understanding stars positions in the sky. Every civilization was connected by this practice. Our gods and maps were in the sky, all defined by the stars relative coordinates.

The filter

What is the necessecity of all those artificial lights, exactly? Ok, we need to see where we are going, we need a certain amount for pedestrian safety and lighting can be nice-looking. But a good portion of city lights don’t help us at all and I bet we don’t need to see as well as we do in daylight during the night. Are we scared of something? Do we want to filter the unknown, filter the imagination of what is at the corner of the street or what the sky could let us imagine?

So what are watching now ?

While shutting down city lights doesn’t seem like a reasoneable option. We definitely have to forget about the stars if we are living in cities, which is the case for the most of us. Milleniums of star gazing… we didn’t change as quickly as the city lights got massively used. Now that most of humanity lives in cities, what are we watching at?  Yes you know what… TV and the web. (I don’t even want to talk about TV in this post, so forget about it).

Ok that seems bad but as with any bad stuff we get some good stuff too

Yes, I am an optimistic guy…

The web and all its connections appears to be a new universe we are modeling. The essence of the web is to create connections. While two thousand years ago Mongolians and Mayans were dissecting the same universe without the possibility of communicating between nations, we are now communicating with the whole world about a new universe we are shaping. We are the new astronomers. We are the new explorers. We can travel through billions of ideas that connects us to each other.

The web is the universe 2.0

We are only at the beginning of it. They are our galaxies and stars and supernovas contained on hard drives and servers somewhere in a data center in India or Arizona. Our supernovas are AOL merging with Yahoo. Our shooting stars are all those blogs containing just one post still waiting for someone to read them. Yes, the web is stellar and we are travelling through it. Mars Dorian says that he his on a digital crusade and that is exactly that. We have a all new digital world to explore. Can we create as many ideas as there are stars in the sky? Will we shut down the light bulbs in our mind to discover the new patterns, the new connections in our digital universe?  Are we forging a digital Big Bang? Where might it stop, or will this universe expand to infinity?

We are populating this world. Step by step, we are creating new houses, new countries, new planets and new galaxies. No, this is not virtual reality, this is not virtual at all. This is here and we are living in this world, this blog is my city! We are the new digital tribes and we are the new leaders. Yes “we” like “you are included in that we”.  Build your country, build your planet and connect with people, create your constellations.

Note to self: continue to watch Star Trek… Yep, I don’t watch much TV but my wife has gotten me watching Star Trek TNG and I’m really getting a kick out of it!

If you liked this post and you want more of those, you can receive all my new posts by mail, subscribe to my RSS, follow me on twitter or on facebook.

Take care!

Posted in lifestyle, social relationships | 7 Comments

9 good reasons to become an early riser

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Manu

One of many beautiful sunrises we had to get up super early to see during a trip to Maine

When I tell people I wake up every day at 5am, most of the time I get some big eyes filled with disbelief, or questions on why the hell I would do that. So, first of all, I do that because I like it. Not only that, but I want to get more time during my day to accomplish what I like to do. I’ve realized that I don’t need to sleep 9 hours every night to feel good. Actually, when I did that I was feeling more tired than I do now.

Here are 9 reasons why getting up early is good according to me:

  1. You are in sync with sun light (mainly during the summer). I am not saying that we need to synchronize our sleep schedule to the sun all year long (because that would mean getting up pretty late in the winter!), but getting up with the sun early in the morning is a pretty natural thing to do. And as an added benefit to getting up at or before dawn, you will get just about as much daylight as you can within the year. (And if you can catch the sunrise from where you are: bonus!)
  2. You get  to do what you want at a time when you are not tired from a day’s work. Ok, you might be tired at first but after 10 or 15 minutes you can start doing something that requires more than 2 brain connections. The best example is doing sport. After a long day at work do you really feel up to  doing a set of push-ups? Yeah, me neither…
  3. You can take your time to get ready for your day. Getting up early lets you have some time to take care of yourself before you have to go to work. Believe me, it is really helping me not feel so stressed.
  4. If you commute, you get less people in public transportation or on the road.
  5. You can get to work early: when I arrive half an hour before anyone else at work, I get time to prepare and go through my to-do list before everybody arrives. After 9am, my phone keeps ringing, people want to talk to me, I have all those little emergencies to take care of. When I arrived at 9am like everyone else, I didn’t have time to sit down and open my laptop before being overwhelmed with all these tasks.
  6. You don’t look like a zombie when you get to work. Yes, when you get up at 8.20 to arrive at work at 8.59. You ran, you didn’t get time to take care of yourself and you look like a flipping zombie. Do you think your colleagues are going to respect you for that? But when you wake up at 5am and arrive at work before 8am (after having had more than 2 hours to get ready and get stuff done), you look actually alive and confident.
  7. You can have some time with your family before leaving home. And if you wake up before they do you can prepare some coffee or a smoothie to help them. They will like it, I can assure you. [Note from the "Editor" aka "The Wife": Yep, they will! :) ]
  8. You are the Golden Boy. (Or girl.) This is what my family-in-law has started calling me! By waking up early, you are going to impress many of your friends and family members and they might just tell you how awesome you are. And hey, it always feel good when somebody tells you that you are awesome.
  9. As I said in my first post ever : you will get more life. Having one more hour everyday is getting you 7 hours every week. Don’t you wish you had more time? Here is the answer!

I will make another post about how getting up early next Monday. Incidentally, don’t you think Monday is the best day to talk about that?

Meanwhile, you can try to get up a little earlier. If you have any question on how to get yourself to get up early if you’re not a “morning person“, do not hesitate to post them as comments, I will cover all that in my next Monday post.

Have a nice week everyone!

Posted in lifestyle | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

4 ways to happiness

Posted on November 13, 2010 by Manu

Hey! I haven’t been around the blog a lot this week, so here is a small post for the weekend.

Happiness… I think this is the word I read the most on blogs nowadays. So here I will talk about 4 ways to find happiness, but they are not the definitive ways to find happiness, I am not a genius and I haven’t found a recipe to save the entire universe from the Borg either. But applying these methods often helps me have a better day… and why just 4? Because 15 is to complicated to remember!… ok ready? let’s start!

  1. Innovate: For a long time I thought I had to invent something to enter in the “innovation” category. What I mean here is not innovate on a world scale, Innovate on your scale. Stop smoking is innovating, learn how to use a new software is innovating, writing a blog post is innovating, talking to a neighbour you never talked to is innovating. Try to do something new everyday. If you are scared to do it it is even better. Like Leo Babauta says in this post Innovation is “seeking out unconventional solutions to problems”.
  2. Laugh: that work especially if you know you’re not going to have an exciting day. Look at you in the mirror when you are brushing your teeth in the morning and just laugh! Dance , jump, tell stupid jokes! Oh…. I love stupid jokes!
  3. Friends and Family: Spend some time with them. After all, they are the most important thing in your life. What is better than having a good dinner, tasting some good wine with your friends ? Make them happy, make them laugh!
  4. Enjoy what you do: or even better, do something that you enjoy. Yes do a job that you like. It is so much fun. If your job doesn’t enthrall you, you can still apply rule #1 in your job to enjoy it a little more. You can create your business doing what you like as described in Minimalist Business* or Smalltopia**. You can be the hero of your own life as Alyson Earl*** explains to you.

So I for Innovate, L for Laugh, F for Friends and Family, E for enjoy… oh wait, let’s shuffle all that and we get “FILE”…. ok that is boring…huh… “Ielf”, the new elf from Apple… ?… ok, I get it “LIFE”, oh yes that is so easy to remember !

LIFE = Laugh+Innovate+Friends+Enjoy

You want more? check out these great links:

Sam Spurlin from The Simpler Life, wrote a post called 3 steps toward true and permanent happiness

Colin Wright from Exile Lifestyle as a nice post called Happiness and Dragonfruit.

* Everett Bogue from Far Beyond The Stars, talks about Simple ways to clear your mind . He also talks about creating your minimalist business and create the job that you enjoy in his ebook

** Tammy Strobel from Rowdy Kittens has 22 ways to Practice the Art of Relaxation <- she is awesome! Smalltopia is a must read!

*** Last but not least : Alyson Earl has just launched www.alysonearl.com !!

Ok that’s it everyone! Have a nice weekend!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Human after all

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Manu

And it starts with a video from Daft Punk’s Human after all (sebastian remix)

When I chose to become a computer engineer I did it for one reason : I wanted to know how to automate most of the simple work I had to do in order to take more time for the rest. This is one of the best feelings I can get : helping someone gain time by showing him how to automate his work.

What is robot work ?

“Robot work” is any work that you do that could be done by a machine or a computer. A good example is using Excel just as a sheet for recording numbers, without using the program’s formulas. I still see many people putting in numbers in a spreadsheet and then using a calculator to perform a sum. Well, if you do that you are doing robot work.

When is robot work wrong ?

Machines can produce things that can also be made by hand, like a piece of furniture for example. But if you create hand-made pieces of furniture or if you add something that a machine can’t do, that is not robot work. At least that is not the type of robot work that concerns me- the value of something created by hand is often much greater than anything a machine can put out.  Nor does completing repetitive tasks imply that you are acting as a robot.

That being said, there are some situations of robot work that worry me. A couple of days ago I made a bank transfer. I watched the bank agent authorize the transfer on his computer. But then he printed it on paper, sent this paper by fax to his headquarters and then finally called them to know if they received it and if everything was OK. This procedure is sad, just sad. This bank has their agents put a lot of time and brain power into these tasks. This guy could be using his brain to think up good products for his clients, not run back and forth to accomplish something that I could do at home in a couple of seconds via paypal.

What’s really wrong about this type of robot work is that you don’t question it. By accepting this system, you accept that your company treats you like machine. Just one more way in which big CEOs are totally disconnected from their employees. No wonder those CEOs fire thousands of their employees to replace them by machines or by other workers that they can pay cheaper. No wonder the quality of products companies deliver goes down.

Embrace technology

You are not a machine and you should use all your capacities to innovate and create wonderful things. Innovating can be finding a way to not have to fax a paper that is already in a database that your headquarters should be able to access.

Most technology is here to help you. Take as much as you can from it. You can learn  a lot from it and often it is not that complicated.

Still not motivated? Think of your parents’ or your grand-parents’ generation and how technology has made your job more efficient than it would have been for them. Think of all the people in the world who don’t have access to Internet or even electricity. As Seth Godin or Gary Vaynerchuck have said: “we should be ridiculously grateful”.

Add value

What differentiates us, humans, from machines ? We can add value, we can solve complex problems. Isn’t that what you really want to do ? Add value to your work. Try to think of all the aspects of your work and then eliminate all the aspects that could be automated (even if you don’t know how it could be). Here are 2 types of value you can add to your work:

  1. Accomplishing more of the tasks that a robot can’t do. Generally this is something that you like. I hope so…
  2. Finding tasks that you can automate. I’m sure that your boss will be really happy if you go see her and tell her that you found a way to do task X three times faster by automating it. That will make you have more time to work on #1.

Of course if you prefer spending time doing robot work because you are scared of adding value, you have a problem. You should really consider if you would be happier in another job or if your company has convinced you that you are a machine.

Remember, you are awesome, you can create and you can be a leader, so do something awesome, now !

Some resources on doing great work :

Robin Sharma : The Leader Who Had No Title. In this book, Robin Sharma explains why you don’t need to be director of whatever to be a leader.

Seth Godin has a strong message for you in Tribes : we need you to be a leader.

In Minimalist business, Everett Bogue explains how to do work that your passionate about.

Also check out this post from Mike Donghia about Jobs for humans

Feel free to share this post with your friends !

Posted in productivity | 5 Comments

Why you should keep your credit card in a drawer and not use it (well use it a little sometimes)

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Manu

I have been living in Quebec/Canada (pick the one you want) for almost 2 years now. I really like it here and I am applying to be a permanent resident.

By the way if you are government guy investigating me for my residency : “Hi! I love your country, I want to stay, it is great here! I want to make money here and pay a lot of taxes, please accept me! :) ”

My quick history with credit cards

When we arrived here the first real change for me was… winter… but also credit cards. In France we have what we call ‘credit cards’ but in fact they really are debit cards (i.e. you pay something with your ‘credit card’ and it is taken out of your checking account, but you are allowed to have a deficit for a certain time. So when we arrived, we opened an account and we quickly got credit cards because this is what everybody does here and we needed a credit history. I applied the rule that everyone told me : “spend as much as you can on your credit card and always pay before the end of the month, that will get you a nice credit score”. Easy! So I did that and never got into trouble.

A couple months ago, I read an article in Wired magazine (I can’t find the link, sorry guys) and learned how credit cards companies earn money and that really changed how I want to use my credit card now. So how do these companies earn money ?

  1. By subscription: this is the 30 or 50 $ you pay each year depending on what kind of credit you have
  2. By late payment fees: of course if you pay your credit card bill too late you have to pay interest
  3. By selling user profiles: if you use your credit card all the time, it is fairly easy for the credit card company to create profiles they can sell to insurance companies. And it is very interesting for insurance companies to know the stats of people buying a lot of red meat and cigarettes vs. vegans…
  4. By making 1% on each sale (!!!!) : I didn’t see that one coming !

I am just going to talk about the last one because I think this is the stupidest thing. So when I go to the grocery store and I buy 100$ of groceries and pay by credit card, the store has to give 1$ to the credit card company. That means the guy who runs the store knows about that and he adjusts his prices so this 1% he has to give to the credit card company is transparent for him. That’s normal, he doesn’t want to get screwed.

The issue :

But wait a minute… the price is the same if I pay cash, so actually, when I pay cash I still pay for this 1% that the stores has to pay. So who is getting screwed there ?

Of course I imagine the store doesn’t add 1% on everything, just because credit cards will take that 1%. There must be a big gang of statisticians adjusting the prices depending on the ratio of payment options (credit card vs debit card and cash).

But still, let’s say one third of purchases are paid by credit card (this is just a quick estimation, it can be more or less…). The statistician guys must add 0.33% on the prices(0.33% is one third of 1%). That means that even if I pay cash I still pay around 0.33% more than I should just because other people are going to pay by credit card. It may seem like not much but you spend 100$ cash at the grocery store per week on average, you still pay 17$ per year to let other people pay with their credit card. What would you say if a guy from the credit card company knocked at your door and told you to write him a check for 17$ so your neighbor can use his credit card?

And this is just for groceries!

What can we do about that ?

By not using your credit card all the time and being organised you can reduce the ratio of credit card payments vs cash and debit and reduce the price of what you buy. Really, you- yes, you there- can do it.

So why do I keep a credit card ?

Well I have a credit card because it pays for the insurance when I rent a car and buy plane tickets. And believe it or not renting cars is cheaper for me than owning a car (and yes I feel free even if I don’t own a car).

That being said, here are some good links if you feel concerned about saving money:

Get rich slowly : a really nice blog with tons of tips to save money

Everett Bogue from Far Beyond the Stars : this guy is awesome and he lives with less than 57 things but still is one of the best entrepreneur in the blog world.

Adam Baker for ManVsDebt : he has good advice for you to sell your crap and pay your debt.

Leo Babauta from Zen habits : a real leader of the minimalist world and living with less.

Mark Donghia from Art of minimalism and his really nice post about how businesses get their dirty hands inside your head.

If you like this post don’t hesitate to share it with your friends and your family, tweet about it, digg it or leave me a comment. And if you don’t like this post, please write a comment too, I really would like to hear your opinion!

Posted in money | 3 Comments

How to manage your to-do list

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Manu

If you are reading this, I presume you are already using a to-do list or you want to use one. Several times I started using a to-do list and each time it finished in a big chaos of random to-dos popping on my computer. I recently read the article Kill your to-do list by the awesome Leo Babauta. I must admit I agree with Leo : I see many people using their to-do lists and drowning in all the things they postpone or they never do. But now I am a fervent user of Things for Mac (this is not an affiliate link) and I consider it a useful tool for simplifying my life.

If you consider you are not a to-do list person or if you are scared it will stress, please close this page and go have a walk outside, enjoy nature, have a glass of wine…

Now, if you are still there, here are the rules, you should apply to have a efficient to-do list :

  1. A to-do list is not for what you want to do. You will remember what you want to do anyway. This what Leo Babauta calls the one thing system or what Sam from Simpler life calls Do what is weighing on you most. This is the point : you want to have time to do important stuff, so don’t let all the rest be in your way. Do those little things and to do them you have to…
  2. List all the little things like “send invoice to accountant”, “pay phone bill”, “make photocopy of passport” etc… Those are the ones that clutter your brain. By putting them in your to-do list, you don’t have to think of them now and you can start to focus on the important thing. For example if I receive an invoice from my internet provider by mail at 11pm  I quickly put it in my to-do list to deal with it later and put it out of my mind. Clearly, most of your to-do list should be things that you don’t want to-do. I know, it doesn’t sound really exciting.
  3. Don’t have pop-ups reminding you your to-dos on your laptop. Really this is annoying and you have more chance that it appears when you don’t want than when you want.
  4. Do things quickly and do them in one shot, use your watch and plan 30 minutes to an hour to go through your list. It should not take you more than that, remember your to-do list is for simple tasks. This is not something you want to have under your nose for the whole day.
  5. Don’t have more than 15 things to-do every day. It is your limit, you want to do them fast so if you have more than 15, you are not going to go through and you will procrastinate and you know you are not supposed to procrastinate. An easy way to do that is to have several categories of to-dos like “accounting”, “phone calls”… You can plan to make all your accounting on monday, all the phone calls on tuesday, etc… Usually I plan my week on monday to categorize all my to-dos.
  6. When you are finished, shut down your to-do list software or close your to-do list book and  enjoy the rest of your day and do important tasks like innovating or being awesome. This is the main thing : do what you really want to do!

The most important about your to-do list is that it should help you and not stress you. Don’t let it overwhelm you.

If you enjoyed this post, you can comment it, or share it with your friends.

Have a good day !!

Posted in productivity | 1 Comment