Learn to control money but do not allow it to control you

Firewalker

Good morning Mac. Did you know that Denmark is the happiest country according to the latest 'hapiness study'? True it is self reported and as a Danish student of mine mentioned two things: 1) all people who commit suiside are not included in the survey for obvious reasons; and 2) the Danish might be happy but they really like !!!!ing everyone else off.

Otherwise nice, organised place. I still prefer Sweden and Norway though.

Firewalker

Firewalker

Good morning or probably better say good day. Sorry for not writing yesterday but as I promised myself I spent seriously lazy and relaxed day. I was planning to compose a post that kicks off a discussion and proposes actions for developing different income streams and generating additional income. But felt rather tired and poorly (I have this strange cold that is lasting a long time but has not got bad enough to keep me in bed) that I decided to spend the day mostly reading and cooking (only when necessary).

I do not regretting doing it - in fact I'm very pleased with myself for managing to spend a whole day relaxing and doing very little apart from reading a silly book. Have not managed to do this for long time and the benefits are very obvious; this morning I woke up refreshed and raring to go.

But first things first; today part of it, will be spend organising my working life along the lines proposed by Tim Ferriss in his book (The four hour working week). There are many, many recommendations in this book that are worth a second look. In fact, I don't mind sharing my experience here. What do you say? Also it might actually be useful if more people reading this tread read the book or at least look at his website so that we can start experimenting together and pushing some of the ideas to more practical applications (applications appropriate for life in the UK).

Also the lads are back - the guys who do the bathrooms this is. They are back to do our kitchen working surfaces. So today we simply will have to have lunch out but by tonight we will have a wonderful new kitchen; well at least it will appear almost new and improved about 80% - which is improvement enough.

Firewalker

InaPickle

I need to get that book.

BluebellWood

I've ordered the book Firewalker, thanks for the recommendation. I have been working on this area for a while, but I could do with fine tuning, and simplifying things further, so I am impatiently waiting for the book to arrive .....

Lara44

I've read the blog before and would love to hear your experiences with it Firewalker

Firewalker

Good day, peeps.

Today is Tuesday, March 8th. And yes we are all getting ready for the pencake race tonight. But it is also the International Day of Women. I propose to celebrate it - this is the way to acknowledge that we may be mothers, wives, part of the labour market (or some, or even neither of those).

But first and foremost we are women and the ones before us had to fight for women's rights - the right to to be recognised as human, the right to poses and inherit property, the right to vote, the right to chose our destiny. Much has been done but there is much to do - one of the problems with feminism is that the problems of women it represented (access to labour markets) are actually problems of only about 10-15% of women worldwide.

These are not the problems of the women and girls trafficked to brothels; not the problems of women who cannot feed their children, not problems of women who have no choice but to work (sometimes as human mules in gold mines).

So, here is to us women and the work we still have to do - to claim our rights without subjugating others; to ensure our future and the future of our children without threatening the future of others.

Happy International Women's Day

Firewalker

Karmacat

Lovely! Thank you for your inspiring posts, Firewalker - I had International Women's Day marked down this Saturday, as thats when the celebrations are held, I completely forgot about the actual day itself, thanks for reminding me.

I'd love to join in any discussion about the four hour working week, and Tim Ferriss's recommendations. I've looked at his website, and I'll check out what he's writing at the moment in his blog. For me, there's certainly a "lightening up" going on, and I think that includes not working so hard, but working smart.

Firewalker

We have a kitchen top – it has made so much difference to the kitchen that I am starting to think it is worth it. But last night, after coming back from the cinema, we noticed that the dishwasher has finished so decided to unload it – it had not drained. After puddles on the floor and loads of not nice words from OH it became apparent that this time it has broken irreparably. And although it is another expense and this month is turning out to be a spending nightmare (or this is how it feels like; we should not forget that it is an earning paradise as well) there was a great relief – finally the house is completely free of all Bosch rubbish; and we are never buying Bosch again.

Now we have a brilliant Beko dishwasher which is very quiet and washes well and fast.

Otherwise today was a productive day – to use Tim Farriss’ terminology I was productive rather than busy. I submitted and paper to a conference, an abstract and a proposal for session. Not bad...And I really wish to win the best paper award; Universe, are you listening?

Also today I did mind-map one part of Tim’s book – the one about elimination. But let me explain; according to Tim we can achieve much higher quality of life by DEAL – definition, elimination, automation and liberation. These are the four parts that can build to a very short work week which leaves time for doing other things. I decided to start with implementing the ‘elimination’ and to this effect did three things:

1) Followed the rules for to do lists which are: keep it short; have no more than two mission critical tasks; accomplish at least one important task a day. To keep it short I transferred my ‘to do’ list from a form I have designed (a long one that kept overflowing) to a one side of A4 sheet folded three times. I would recommend that you try – it is small and encourages you to keep it short; and it fits in a pocket.

2) Started practicing a challenge – ‘offer solutions not opinions’.

3) Made an effort to write e-mails in ‘if...then’ style so that the e-mail avalanche is interrupted.

It worked well today and I am going to persist and expand it.

Firewalker

Karmacat

Morning FW! I'm sampling Tim on Amazon as I'm writing.... the elimination to-do list is interesting - I've tried to do that this morning on my list - a set of accounts that really has to be done today, some checking of how much is in my current accounts so that direct debits are safe (they are), and preparing for client work this afternoon. There are a couple of optional things in there of lesser importance, but which still need to be done soon - sorting out ebay payments between my sister and myself, and paying my tv licence - actually, since that ran out last week, I guess thats fairly high priority

Hope your day is going well.

redsquirrel80

Popping in to say hi after Karma mentioned Tim Farriss and your thread. Love some of these ideas for more productive working.

It does seem that the Universe has been listening to you too, which is wonderful