Reality Upgrade

I have been trying to get my life organized for quite some time now, and some how I have never quite seemed to make it happen. The ultimate goal, of course, is to make my life a little more mobile. The last time I moved I filled an entire Uhaul, but when my roommate Lili moved to Kurdistan, she did it with only a few suitcases.

Jealous? Me? Noooo….

In any case, I have recently been inspired by this post over at Zenhabits.com, and I am going to be using the technique mentioned there of organizing by starting from a clean slate. I am putting (almost) everything I own into cardboard boxes, and taking things out of them as I use them. Sometime in December (to make sure I make it through a change of seasons) I will give away or throw out anything that is left in the box.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to come as close as I can to only having 100 things. 100 is a somewhat arbitrary number, but it seems like a good starting place.

In other news, here is some great advice on how to keep an organized office in a very, very small space, which is another goal of mine.

I’ll keep you posted here on the progress of my organizational quest, and feel free to share your comments!

If you have ever felt like you get all your best ideas while going for a run or a swim, it turns out you may be right. According to Newsweek magazine, small bursts of exercise can boost your creativity for hours afterward.

In fact, Newsweek says “Almost every dimension of cognition improves from 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, and creativity is no exception. The type of exercise doesn’t matter, and the boost lasts for at least two hours afterward.”

Of course, this only works if you are in good shape. Otherwise the exhaustion from unaccustomed exercise outweighs the benefits.

For more on this, and a bunch of other ideas for boosting creativity, check out the full article here.

This is a fascinating article from the Washington Post about hoarding. It is the story of a man (Michael S. Rosenwald) who’s extreme hoarding was beginning to ruin his marriage, so he went on a quest to understand why he feels compelled to hoard.

It is a rather long article, and is more of an autobiographical tale than a scientific study, but it is interesting to see the world from the point of view of someone who has a hard time getting rid of stuff. As he mentions in the article, we see people who are buried in their possessions on television, but it is rare to see it from the inside. Enjoy!

Jonas out.

Routines. They are easy to acquire, and hard to change.

Humans are creatures of habit, and there is nothing wrong with that. Habits make doing repetitive things easier, it makes complicated tasks easier to remember, and frees us up to think about other things while we take care of routine tasks.

But habits are only useful when they are good habits. This great article by Lifehacker suggests that you might want to review your habits, and think about whether or not they are serving you well. Could changing some of your routines make you happier?

Probably so.

Self control. We exhibit self control all the time, in all sorts of ways.

When I sit down to watch a movie, I really enjoy eating a bowl of ice cream while I watch, even though I know how bad it is for me. Sometimes I know I should go to bed and get some sleep, but I stay up watching TV instead. And sometimes, I just want some french fries.

What is interesting is when I am able to resist the temptation, and when I give in. When I have a long exhausting day at the office, chances are I am going to be busting out the ice cream scoop when I get home. On the other hand, if I have a nice easy day at work, I might cut up an apple instead, or skip the movie completely and go running.

As it turns out, the reason I fail to resist temptations sometimes is because I have used up my self control, or will power.

There have been many studies done on this subject, but in this particular study test subjects are given two plates, one with radishes and one with chocolate chip cookies. One group of subjects is told to eat only the radishes, and solve a complicated (and unsolvable) puzzle. Another group was told to eat the cookies, and solve the puzzle.

On average, it took the cookie-eaters 19 minutes to give up, and it took the radish eaters 8 minutes.

This is because the radish-eaters were using up their willpower on resisting the cookies, and therefor had less to spend on trying to solve the puzzle.

By remembering that willpower/self control is a limited commodity, it is possible to make decisions about where to spend it. If you have a big test tomorrow, maybe tonight you should let the house cleaning go. If you don’t want to drink too much at a party, maybe you should not go window shopping before hand. And whatever you do, don’t go car shopping if you have used up any of your willpower at all.

On the other hand, willpower can be trained, just like muscles.

The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another. In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

- NY Times

So start with small changes, something as small as brushing your teeth with your opposite hand, and slowly build up to bigger challenges, and your willpower will increase over all.

I have talked about this before, here, and mentioned another article about it from the NY Times.

Gmail recently added a feature called “Undo Send”, which actually holds your email for 5 seconds before it sends it. In the mean time, you can press the “Undo” button, and potentially save yourself some embarassment.

As it turns out, 5 seconds is just long enough for most people to realize that they made a mistake, and hit the Undo button.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a Undo Send button in real life?

Well, maybe we do. All you have to do is wait five seconds to respond to something, especially if you are upset. In the typical conversation, a five second pause is just that, a pause. It won’t seem strange to the person you’re talking to, and it might just prevent you from telling your boss where to shove it.

(continue reading…)

One of the biggest financial decisions in the lives of most Americans is their car. Other than a house, cars are likely the most expensive thing any of us will buy in our lives, and they are one of the few things still sold by salesmen, where haggling is not only accepted, but almost required. And the opportunity for savings by haggling properly is huge - by getting a good deal on a car, you can potentially save thousands of dollars.

There are a few tricks to haggling effectively. Mostly they come down to psycology, which all sucessful salesmen use whether they know it or not.

Get Prepared

Before you start to haggle, you must be prepared. A few minutes of research can mean the difference between sucessful haggling and paying too much.

• Know what you want. Know which car, and what features you want. It is fine to visit car lots before you have decided, just make sure not to let a salesman talk you into buying before you are ready. 
• Do not buy on the same day you shop. Shopping is fine, but go home and sleep on it before you go back and buy. Remember, you have pleanty of time, no matter how in demand the car you want may seem.
• Know how much you are willing to pay before you arrive. Use a website like TrueCar or Edmunds to find out how much the car you are buying is really worth. It is best if you can find out how much the dealership paid for the car, so you can use that as a starting point for your negotiation, and make them work for their profit.

Haggle Your Way to Savings

Here are a few haggling tips for the actual haggling:

• Never say yes to the first offer, even if it is what you are willing to pay. The salesman is expecting you to haggle, so probably has some hidden costs to throw on at the end. If you say yes right away, you will end up paying more than you want.
• Make sure to flinch. Always act like the first offer is much, much (oh my god, so much) more than you were expecting. Keeping a poker face may just make the salesman think you are really ok with the first offer.
• Invoke a higher authority. “I love the car, but my wife will kill me if I pay that much for it.” The the standard of this tactic that salesmen use is the “I have to talk to my manager.” If this is used on you, always return to your original offer.  The pitch goes like this: You offer 10,000, and the salesman says “10,500, but I have to talk to my manager.” Then the manager comes out and says “I understand you are offering 10,500.” Your response should be “No, your salesman is offering 10,500, I was offering 10,000.”
• Squeeze you opponent. Say something like “You’ll have to do better than that,” and shut up. Humans are socially programmed to dislike silence, so they will likely give you another offer.
• Never offer to split the difference. Always let your opponent do that: it gives them the feeling of winning, and gives you the opportunity to split the difference again later.
• Save a small concession for the end, whether in price or features (like lojack or something). It gives your opponent the feeling of winning.
• Bring snacks and water. A favorite tactic of salesmen is to have their customers wait in their office for hours, while they eat lunch, chat with their co-workers, or have coffee. After waiting for a long time, you will be tired, hungry, and ready to be done with the process, so you will be more pliable. To prevent this, be prepared to wait as long as you need to. Pack for an all day expedition, with drinks, food, and something to read, so that waiting will not be a problem.  Alternately, be prepared to walk away and come back another day - “Give me a call when you are actually ready to sell a car.”

It may seem like a lot of work, but going through this process can save thousands of dollars. If you are having a hard time getting motivated to do all this preparation, it might help to think about it this way. If someone was going to give you several thousand dollars to do a few hours of research about car prices, would you do it?

I thought so.

Here are some helpful links:

TRUECAR.com

Edumunds.com

HowToHaggle.com

Willpower is a wonderful thing, and unfortunately it is a limited commodity. But there are a few interesting ways to build up a little more willpower, including something as simple as brushing your teeth with your non-dominant had for a couple of weeks.  

This article in the New Your Times from last year makes some interesting points about willpower, about how it is used and used up, and how you can build up your willpower reserves.

I find it helpful to think of willpower as a sort of credit card. When I need to do something hard, like not eating that ice cream until after dinner, I have to take out a little willpower credit to do it. Then I have to make payments in the form of eating well, resting, brushing my teeth left-handed, and so on.

But on the other hand, when I do something tough, like going to the gym no matter how hard it might be to get motivated, my willpower credit limit goes up.

So go out there and increase your credit limit!