Facebook
About two months ago, I was getting fed up with Facebook. I’ve been a member of Facebook ever since they released it at my university in 2004. We weren’t one of the first universities to get it, but we were close. I loved how it kept people connected and how many fun, time-wasting features were available. (I never said I have always been the most efficient person around…but I’m improving every day!)

Facebook was the ultimate in popular web applications among college students. Almost everyone I knew in college was on it. When they made the decision to open Facebook to the public, I was initially concerned that Facebook would lose its appeal by inviting the whole world in. It continued to be appealing until the advent of the creepiest feature I’ve ever seen: newsfeed.

For those of you unfamiliar with Facebook, newsfeed publishes stories about you and your friends on a custom home page. There are privacy settings available, of course, but Facebook moved from a system with creepy potential to a creepy system. Unless you go out of your way to protect what updates are given to the world, it’s out there. College students and 20-somethings all around the world are starting to lose touch of reality.

Gone are the days where you need to ask your friends what they’ve been up to, how their relationship is going (or even if it still exists), or what they’re doing this weekend. Knowing what is going on with all of your friends all of the time is the de facto standard for most people these days and it creeped me out. I locked down my Facebook profile, stopped posting about my personal life, and realized that if you aren’t stalking or being stalked, Facebook is pretty lame.

Enter Twitter.

Twitter
Twitter, for those unfamiliar with the website, is based on a concept they call microblogging. You get 140 characters to answer one simple question: what are you doing? The response to this simple concept has been incredible. Some use it to communicate with a small circle of friends, keeping it completely private. Others amass thousands of followers and become minor celebrities in their own right. Celebrities sometimes embrace it as a way to express themselves and keep their fans involved. Companies use it to attempt to expand their brand or market their products.

Using Twitter can be as private or public as you desire and it’s a completely individual experience. I use Twitter to follow friends and celebrities. For people whose microblogs, or “tweets,” inspire or inform me, I have their tweets sent to my phone. Everyone I follow defaults a text message to my phone unless their tweets are downright silly (“Dinnertime!” “It’s raining.” “Twitter sucks…”). If their tweets are more disruptive than entertaining/inspiring/useful, I simply catch up on them at the end of the day. That’s helpful for people who tweet OFTEN. I don’t want my phone constantly going off.

Even people such as Timothy Ferriss, author of “The Four-Hour Workweek,” embrace Twitter for its varying potential. Ferriss is famous for his concept of a “low-information diet,” the cure for the common Web, but Twitter is robust enough to allow him to get information when he wants it and ignore it otherwise. At this point, he’s even created a contest: for every person who follows him on Twitter, he will donate $3 to funding schools for underprivileged third-world children. You can find him under the username @tferriss.

And here I thought I was utilizing Twitter’s potential with my occasional Tweets.

Why I Love It
Twitter has become more and more of an obsession for me as I realize what can be done with it. Some people abuse it (see the aforementioned sentence on silly tweets). Some people are downright funny. Some people are informative, and I can select whose information is actually useful to me.

The reason I prefer it to Facebook is the fact that it isn’t such an information overload. You can spend mere minutes on Facebook and become gorged on information about everyone you know. People are extremely oblivious as to how public their information really is and recent changes to the Facebook Terms of Service have highlighted concerns about privacy. With Twitter, it’s small and silly enough to not have the same level of far-reaching implications. I can keep the fun, interesting part of Facebook alive.

My Tweets range from simple updates on what’s going on to inspirational quotes, humorous observations, links to fun parts of the internet, and information gathering. Unfortunately, the latter type of tweet isn’t useful with my 18 followers, but that’s okay. I’m happy with my small-time tweeting.

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Are you on Twitter? If so, let me know your username and I’ll come find you. I don’t want to post it to the whole internet.

We’re at approximately day 14 and I am officially ending the project. Unofficially, I have been off the ERP since Friday. I managed to complete one successful day of waking up at 6 a.m. (this past Thursday) and started to see a serious toll on my physical and mental well-being.

What happened?
Going into the project, I knew that my body required more sleep than many non-conformist experts claim to be able to get. I function best on an odd combination of 9-hour and 6-hour nights. 7-hour nights don’t work, 6-hour nights are taxing on me over time, and 8-hour nights leave me groggy at best. I know that I personally function best when I sleep a number of hours with some multiple of 3.

There were a variety of factors that possibly led to my downfall. This wasn’t a formal experiment by any means:

I encountered difficulty going to bed early due to the vast majority of my social circle being evening people. If I wanted to spend time with my friends or see my girlfriend more than half an hour a day, evenings were my only real option. Consequently, I wasn’t getting adequate sleep and it took a serious toll on my health.
I was still regularly consuming caffeine, which is well-known to have a serious effect on sleep patterns. If anything, my caffeine consumption increased during my experiment.
I seemed to have some sort of mental block towards going to sleep early. I’ve encountered this before but gotten over it. I was somewhat surprised to see it return.

A revelation
During the course of these last two weeks I have certainly been more productive than I had been, which was one of my goals for the 30-day trial. However, I discovered that my lack of productivity stemmed largely from some sort of mental block rather than a lack of hours in the day. I also found that I experienced a boost in energy after 9 p.m. and was most productive during those hours. If I were an early riser, that would be right around the time I went to bed.

Conventional wisdom regarding productivity says to pay attention to what your body tells you. I found I was at my most creative and productive later in the evening as long as I wasn’t distracted by external influences. I created feelings of guilt by ignoring that and rather than harnessing the boost, I tried to force myself to go to bed.

Lesson learned: pay close attention to what your body is telling you.

I don’t consider this experiment a total failure. I got some good results out of it, even though I didn’t finish. Once I recover from my exhaustion and get my health back, I will be updating this blog more regularly.

So far, this project has had a steep learning curve. I’ve been doing my best to wake up at 6 every day but I actually get up anywhere between 7 and 8. I’m noticing progress, but I’m still not there.

Leading into day one, I thought I would just continue with my normal sleeping pattern and go cold turkey to my 6 a.m. wakeup time. Unfortunately, my body had different ideas. While I’m not yet achieving my goal, I am seeing a marked difference in my productivity, even despite my extra sleepiness.

For anyone wondering, I’m still drinking caffeine and my bedtime is around midnight each night. I’m going to push for an earlier bedtime in the hopes that more rest will help me get up as necessary.

This has been a great week for catching up on back work that needed to be done, however, and I’m expecting huge gains in my time and productivity oer the next 26 days.

Just in case anyone was actually keeping track, I’ve postponed the start of my 30-day trial for this coming Monday.  After my trip this weekend I got ridiculously sick and I thought it would be best to sleep as much as possible and get better before throwing my body out of whack with a new sleep schedule.

Also, it’ll allow me to train to my alarm better.

Every once in a while, life throws you a curveball and your plans have to change. As much as I’d love to stick with my current plans and goals, I have a pressing issue that may come up: health insurance.

Getting Yourself Checked Out May Not Be In Your Best Interest
After college ended, I realized just how unhealthy I had been. I was eating fast food on a regular basis, hardly exercised, drank too much and too often, and did not sleep normal amounts by a long shot. I decided to start taking better care of myself, which included seeing the doctor. When I visited the doctor for something fairly routine and embarrassing (excessive gas), it led to a series of tests that uncovered something a little less common.

According to an ultrasound and an MRI, there is a lesion on my liver. It was cause for concern at first, but after getting it checked by a liver specialist he told me that it was likely benign. He said occasionally people just develop these lesions and they don’t turn into anything bad. It’s called focal nodular hyperplasia and, while not common, it is not cause for alarm. He said it would be prudent to have it checked in six months to make sure it wasn’t growing but otherwise I was in good health.

This wouldn’t have been an issue if I had not moved to California.

If You’ve Graduated College, You Probably Already Know This
My health insurance in Arizona covered the costs of getting myself checked out, but it only lasts as long as my residency in Arizona does. In order to maintain eligibility, I have to live at least six months out of the year there. I’m approaching that mark and that means I need new insurance.

When applying for new insurance, I could try for a conversion plan, but it would require getting underwritten again and the plans available for conversion weren’t good enough to justify it. I applied for Blue Cross and Kaiser Permanente, both of which turned me down due to my lesion.

The problem I have here is that if I hadn’t decided to try to take care of myself, this wouldn’t be an issue. I’m in great health and this benign problem is preventing me from obtaining good health insurance. It illustrates one important fact: health insurance companies exist for their benefit, not yours.

The Future
What this means for me is that I need to seek alternative health care plans. I clearly can’t get good insurance if there is an underwriting process, so my other options are less comprehensive coverage or a company’s group insurance policy. If you’ve read my blog, you understand why this is not a good thing for my goals and plans.

Part of me understands that you have to do what you have to do and if I need to get a full time job with benefits in order to get insurance coverage, I will. That’s not a simple feat in today’s economy, of course, so that complicates the matter. Another part of me, however, feels like this is admitting defeat.

I’ve been fortunate thus far to be able to devote most of my time and energy to creating alternatives to a traditional revenue stream (i.e. a job). This is working out slowly but surely, but if I have to get a full time job I’m concerned it will seriously prolong the positive effects of my work so far. I could be wrong and having limited time may inspire me to become more efficient, but I’m not really certain of that.

So, the current plan is to continue pushing forward with the different avenues I have open right now and explore some good revenue streams. This has helped me realize the flaws in some of my plans so far, which is good. If I can manage to meet my financial goal early enough then I don’t have to worry as much about potential health issues. I can pad out a good HSA, which provides tax benefits, and find alternative options that are viable enough for the time being.

If it appears as though nothing is going to pan out in the immediate future, I will throw my energy temporarily into finding a job with benefits. I know the President is planning to push universal health care, but I’m not entirely sure I’d like to take the risk of being uninsured. I’m healthy now, but what happens if I get hit by a car? What happens if I’m learning to sail and there’s some sort of accident? I’d feel safer knowing I have an insurance option.

I believe that I can still achieve my goal, but I may have to shift my attention temporarily. I’m not totally enamoured of being a full-time employee but if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it.

As I become more aligned with my goals, I’ve discovered that the demands on my time and the sheer number of balls I have in the air are starting to overwhelm me. I let myself get into the unfortunate rut of staying up late, sleeping late, and not managing my time effectively. While these habits suited me at the time, I believe they are no longer useful.

The Early Riser Project
Wake up at 6 a.m. every day (including weekends) for 30 days, from 2/17/09 to 3/19/09.

Background
This past summer, I embarked upon an extremely ambitious set of 30-day trials, most of which I did not follow to completion. One of those was an early riser goal that had me awake at 6 a.m. every weekday (not weekends). During that time, I felt more alert during the day, accomplished more in general even if my time was not always productive, and I was able to focus more on my goals.

At the time, I had a varied and scattered set of goals, which led to getting discouraged and letting some of them go. I believe I will have more success now because my two main goals are much more focused and are naturally creating more work. This work is requiring more time than I’ve been able to devote to it, so I have a strong incentive to apply more discipline to my life.

Preparation
Before Tuesday, I plan on reconditioning myself to my alarm clock. For many years now I’ve considered the “snooze” button to be the most useful tool on the entire clock and now it no longer serves its function. I sleep through my blaring alarm on a regular basis.

If I hope to make this adjustment quickly, I will need to recondition my response to the alarm. I’ll be using Steve Pavlina’s popular method for learning how to wake up refreshed and awake to your alarm the first time. I don’t really care how silly it might seem to practice waking up with an alarm. It’s a useful tool.

I’ve also checked over my calendar and I don’t have any extremely pressing events that will tempt me to stay up late and sleep late. This will help me boost my willpower over these 30 days and increase my chances of keeping this habit after 30 days end.

Expectations
The last time I was waking up consistently early, I felt amazing amounts of energy. I expect the same gain. I also had difficulty by the time the weekends arrived because I wasn’t sleeping enough. This coming week will probably mean many early bedtimes, but that’s okay. I’m ready for it.

I’ll be setting a morning routine for the moment my alarm clock goes off to get me in a good mindset for productivity, then hit the ground running around the same time most people are normally hitting their first snooze button.

Chronicling
I don’t expect to be writing about my progress daily unless I happen to have some sort of unexpected gains or problems. I’ll strive for a weekly update, if nothing else.

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Wish me luck! And no, “you’re crazy” is not luck.

What would happen if we all decided that every human being is part of a larger whole and that we were going to absolutely live by the ideal “love thy neighbor as thyself?” I can already hear the dissent piping in through the interwebs. “You’re crazy! That’s just an idealistic dream!” “No one can do that. What if your neighbor steals your lawnmower?” “What about child molesters?” “What about Hitler?”

Imagine this for a moment, though: every single person on Earth is greeted, loved, and feels validated by every person they meet. We are all accepting of the interests and ingenuities of everyone we meet. When we are hurt, we still love the person who hurt us because he or she is a part of us. We understand that pain is part of growth and forgive them for the pain they cause us, then thank them. When we are sad, we love the person who made us sad because they helped us to appreciate the happiness in life. When our possessions are stolen, we love the thief because we know they need the item or money received from the item for a cause imagined or real.

Think about this:

1) Have you ever made a mistake?
2) Have you ever lied?
3) Have you ever hurt someone?
4) Have you made someone sad?
5) Have you ignored someone in need?
6) Have you taken something that was not yours because you believed you needed it?

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone reading this can answer yes to the majority of the questions above. Does that make you any less deserving of love?

I believe that one of the first steps to loving everyone is to realize that you must love them unconditionally. At some point, everyone you meet may hurt you, make you sad, or lie to you, even if it’s a little white lie. They do it out of someone’s best interest, either yours or their own. Chances are your closest friends have done one of those things already and it has deepened your relationship. Do you love them less? Maybe at first, but not over time.

Let me be clear: I am NOT suggesting that you sit and roll over and accept that someone consistently hurts you. I heard it said once that you can love everyone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take out a restraining order against them. Some people are not at the same point in their life as you are and will do things that you do not consider acceptable. That’s okay. Love that person anyway, pray or hope that they will learn quickly and painlessly, and let them go.

It’s okay to be hurt by someone’s actions, but it doesn’t mean you have to hold on to it forever. Love that person and let them go. Someday, if they’re lucky, they will learn what they did and how to make it better. When that day comes, be ready for them to approach you and greet them with love.

To some of you, this may sound idealistic and touchy-feely. I’ll admit it that it is a little bit. Imagine the possibilities of that day, though. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to be a little idealistic?

I don’t think I’m at the point in my life where I can do this all the time, but I’m certainly trying to be more loving of people in general.

Dr. Perry Cox: Role Model???

“I’m afraid you have me confused with somebody who gives a crap. And it’s okay, you don’t need to be embarrassed, turns out it happens all the time. For instance, my father actually made the same mistake on his death bed.” – Dr. Perry Cox, Scrubs

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Anyone who has watched more than a single episode of the hit television series Scrubs knows Dr. Perry Cox, J.D.’s career-long (tor)mentor. Numerous blogs and websites have been devoted to his rants. He is a highly polarizing figure and generally described as someone you either love or hate. Dr. Cox is a self-described narcissistic, emotionally crippled alcoholic and, unfortunately, he was my role model for a period of about a year.

Partway through college, I decided that being nice wasn’t get me anywhere. Oh, I tried early on, but after being hurt in several relationships and friendships I decided that it was time for a change of attitude. Looking back, I realize that most of the problems with my relationships and friendships could have been worked out had I taken the time and found the courage to do so. Instead, I withdrew, became angry, and began seeking new role models. Dr. Cox became my top choice.

I reasoned that Dr. Cox, who was a complete jerk and not close to anyone, was strangely accepted and even somewhat loved by the people he worked with. He managed to find a strange kind of compromised love, the only kind I believed I deserved at the time. By becoming the guy everyone loved to hate, I thought I had found my a way to my own brand of social acceptance.

The unfortunate truth was that this strategy did work for quite some time. It took little effort and practice to slide into Dr. Cox’s persona. I began insulting people with a big, slightly-suffering smile on my face. I developed a small group of friends who generally bonded as a result of ostentatious insults. One of my best friends at the time used to exchange rancid, horribly inappropriate greetings with me. It was fun and I enjoyed the creative challenge of finding new insults at the time. I was able to ignore the fact that I was still pretty lonely.

While my friends and I traded good-natured insults, the people who annoyed me bore the brunt of my wrath. Rather than bottling up my emotions as I had been known to do before, I would simply lash out with a Cox-style rant. This kept new people from getting close to me while simultaneously keeping them intrigued and wanting to get to know me better. I even began to get more attention from women, probably because they saw me as a project, but my attitude ultimately kept them at bay.

Over time I started to feel the emptiness of this sort of connection with people. I no longer became close with people except the spare few I had known for years who I believed would not betray me. I kept a very busy schedule, however, which helped me ignore the problem or make excuses as to why I couldn’t fix it. Getting out of the rut I was in suddenly became a very daunting task. I had become Dr. Cox, but without a full commitment to his lifestyle. In general, I was unhappy.

It’s very likely I would have continued to act like this if it hadn’t been for a stronger upbringing and sense of morality. I knew that while I probably wasn’t doing serious harm, I was hurting people who innocently wanted to be my friend and connect with me on a deeper level. I was perpetuating my negative view of the world by teaching younger people that people were, as Dr. Cox once said, “bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.”

Ultimately, all it really took was a few people reaching out and letting me know that they appreciated who I had been and who I really was deep down. I finally decided to change. Dr. Cox’s persona wasn’t ever really a good match for me. I’ve always craved a deeper connection with people than that lifestyle can allow. When it was finally brought to my attention that I was moving away from ever being able to do that, I knew something had to give.

Are you living the life you want to live? Are you pushing people away because you’re afraid to get hurt again? It doesn’t have to be that way. While it takes courage to open up and be yourself, the rewards are more than worth the risk. Trust me, the people who don’t like you for who you are aren’t worth your time. You will find people who like you and your unique traits and everyone will be happier in the end.

Make the conscious effort to try to connect to people around you, despite the risks, or you too might become a victim of the Cox Effect.

“Money is the root of all evil.”

Unless you’ve been living under a very large rock for a very long time, you’ve heard that quote before. It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? There are certainly cases where it has proven to be true. Many people have been corrupted by the desire of and quest for money. They become consumed by this desire and ultimately push the people they love out of their lives.

Scary stuff, huh? I don’t want that to be me. My thinking is that it could end up being me as long as I believe that little quote: “Money is the root of all evil.” It’s often misinterpreted and, consequently, most people believe that money is evil in massive quantities.

I’ve already shared that I want to be earning $10,000 per month by the end of the year. That’s not a huge sum, probably not enough to be truly evil, but my ultimate aspirations are, well, positively sinful if the old adage is true. I don’t consider it to be evil, however, because I want to earn that amount for good reasons, including the following:

1. I want to earn enough to live comfortably in Southern California and be able to support a family.
2. I want to learn more about business and managing money.
3. I want to stretch myself far beyond any financial level I’ve ever been to.
4. I want to have the freedom to do anything I would like to do without being concerned about the cost.

Family
Family is extremely important to me. I was raised in a very loving and supportive family environment. My parents and grandmother have taken care of me without question and supported me without fail. I am deeply grateful for this and I fully intend to return the favor someday. In addition to the family I was born into, I intend on getting married and raising children of my own.

I know that I can achieve my goal of helping support my birth family and my future family, but I don’t want to have to worry about the cost of these goals. A $10,000 per month income will be a great start to finding that financial stability.

Education
The best way to earn a large sum of money is by running a business, whether your own or an enterprise belonging to someone else. I’ve already discovered I much prefer my own management to someone else’s, so knowing about business will enable me to follow my dreams much more easily.

Money doesn’t often stay in the hands of those who don’t know anything about managing it. I intend to have large sums of it and use it as a resource for enjoying life, which means knowing how to keep it and make it grow.

Personal Growth
There’s something inspiring to me about the challenge of tripling my highest earned income to date. What would it take for me to literally grow three times beyond the highest level I’ve ever know? What would I need to change in order to reach that level and still maintain my moral and ethical standards? What new knowledge will be necessary that I can’t know about until I get there? How far can I push myself? Is this dream even possible? (My answer to that is yes, by the way.)

Freedom
I’ve done enough reading and research to understand that money does not bring happiness. There have been many cases where someone is earning more than enough money for several lifetimes, yet they wake up miserable each day. The key to happiness is something far beyond simple money.

That being said, money can help provide freedom to fill my life with experiences that make me happy if I manage it correctly. It is not the key to happiness, but it can free me to pursue happiness.

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I also don’t want to just receive money for nothing or sucker people out of it. I want to earn it. I want to create enough value in the world that $10,000 entering my life each month is only a fraction of what I contributed. I want to help people, I want to provide them with entertainment, I want to move them emotionally, I want to help them do something to change their lives.

So, you tell me: Is that evil?

Lately I have been focusing much more on immersing myself in the things I want rather than writing about them, hence the lack of blog posts.  I would apologize but my stats tell me no one is visiting this blog, so I’ll save apologies for when I have an audience.

I feel very good about the progress I’ve been making.  Many of the contacts I’ve made lately as a result of getting out and networking have been helpful to me and extremely supportive.  Lately I’ve been attending a few networking opportunities that are not filled with the kind of people I’m looking to surround myself with.  They’re wonderful people, to be sure, but I want to fill my life with people who have either achieved their dreams of financial independence or are actively seeking to achieve them.

I’m passionate about achieving my goals this year because I have strong reasons for them.  I don’t want to make $10,000 each month by cheating people.  I don’t want to throw money around wantonly and buy status symbols that ultimately mean nothing to me.  Money has a very negative connotation for most people, so perhaps I should clarify why I want to earn so much of it.  I want to achieve financial abundance for the following reasons:

1. I believe we all deserve it. There is nothing inherently evil about having money.  Money is just something to trade for experiences or items.  I can be happy without it, but why not be happy with it?
2. I want to have a solid base for a family someday soon. I’m not saying that I want to be married and have kids in the next year or two.  I would like to achieve some degree of financial independence so that when I do reach that point, I don’t have to worry about money.  I can concern myself with the well-being of my family without outside stress.
3. Money is the natural result of doing great service to others, if you believe that it isn’t evil. I want to help others and I believe that being compensated for this is a good thing.  I want to make $10,000 per month by contributing more than $10,000 of worth to others.

I want to learn to be a more loving person because I want to connect with people around me in a more meaningful way.  It would be easy to misinterpret me by thinking that I have to spend all my time with everyone I meet in order to connect with them.  I believe you can actively love a person, and people in general, but not spend all your time with them.

I would prefer to surround myself with people who are actively committed to similar goals to my own.  I believe that you are who you spend most of your time with in addition to what you spend most of your time thinking about.  I don’t think that many people I know personally will read this any time soon.  In case someone does stumble across it, I want you to know that I am not avoiding people because I dislike them.  In fact, I wish them the best.  At this point in my life, however, I am pushing towards my goals and I want to surround myself with people who have achieved similar goals or are striving to achieve similar goals.

-Michael