I picked this up from the library. I thought I could learn a few things from the abundant tips.

1. I came to appreciate how much trouble people in the extreme cold weather have to deal with, like frozen pipes, heating, ice dams and etc. Also, I’ve seen all the potential water/moisture issues associated with a basement. Not a good idea to buy a house with basement.

2. Concrete payment repair: Need to shape the concrete crack so that it’s wider at its base than its top to help the patch stay in place.

3. Reminding me to drain the hot water heater regularly (recommended monthly) to lengthen the life of the water heater. I just did this and it created such as mess!

4. The “healthy house” chapter gave a few tips on reducing allergy triggers like replacing air filter frequently, maintain good ventilation. Watch out for the VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) associated with new furniture purchases or constructions – off-gassing.

5. Clean up moisture quickly to avoid mold build up – maintain relative humidity of 30~50%. Use 1 part bleach and 4-part water to make a mold removal solution.

6. Use of graphite powder or talc to lubricate squeaky hardwood floor sounds like a good idea. I might give it a try.

7. For replacing mesh on a screen door – it’s a good idea to use 1 clamp at each corner to keep the mesh in place. I tried to do this once without the clamps and it wasn’t easy. Good tip.

Not bad to pick up a few tips after spending just a couple of hours on the book.

I listened to this audio CD from Dan Kennedy: “Motivation Marketing: How to effectively motivate your prospects to buy now, buy more and tell their friends too.”

These are the five buttons to push to motivate people to buy:

1. To be connected and loved. We all want to be connected and be part of community. Like the “Cheers” song, “we will want to be go where people know our name.”

2. Get something for free or at a bargain price. “Free” always catches people’s eyes. “Sale” is the next best thing.

3. Magic bullet/potion/formula to get rich or solve our complex problem. Certain “diet” can help us lose weight and solve our weight problem.

4. Make our dream come true. (Aspiration marketing). We need to elevate beyond ordinary reason for buying. For example, the dream house or dream vacation on the beach.

5. Fear or security. We’re afraid of missing an opportunity – “sales ends by xxx day.” It could be the fear of negative consequences like a fire for buying hazard insurance.

Robert touched on some of the on-line marketing method like using Google adword as small classified. I’ll probably read the book of the same title sometime later. It seems interesting enough.

The title of the book was very appealing; it’s been in the top 20 list for a while. I read this book while on vacation for three weeks while traveling in Taiwan. The message strikes a chord. At first, the author sounds like a spoiled brat advocating people to become the new rich (NR), re-thinking what you’re doing and to use the time to travel around the world. I am still skeptical but I did learn a few things from the book about re-thinking what I’m doing day in and day out and perhaps apply some of his elimination/automation techniques to free up some time to re-align my own career and to achieve to the best of my capability. I’m not sure I want to pack up my bag and start “vagabonding” but I certainly should slip in more vacation time to “see” the world.

The author offers the DEAL method: D (definition), E (Elimination), A (Automation) and L (Liberation).
For the “Definition,” the author threw away the standard time management techniques and went into something more fundamental on why we even spent the time to do the tasks. Some of the suggestions are standard: like 80/20 rules, Parkinson Law (tasks are expanded to fill the time: keep a time limit on any task, especially delegated tasks), and batching (group all similar tasks together for higher efficiency). But the other suggestions are a little uncommon, like “do not multi-task” (not efficient), “selective ignorance” (this may sound irresponsible and is sure less stressful) , “non-finishing” (don’t feel obligate to finish things if it doesn’t serve your goal), “selective meetings” (keep the sharp focus of meetings to reach agreement, anything else can be done on emails. Use the “puppy-dog close” (reversible) to get away with anything).

In the Elimination category, the author offers ways to delegate tasks to “virtual assistants” taking advantage of the global outsources from India and China. Evidently, there are quite a few things you can offload to the your virtual assistants like shopping for gifts, basic researches and etc. When working with your delegates, use the “criticism sandwich” – sandwich the criticism between complements.

On Automation, the author offers a few ideas on how to put on income autopilot. 1) Pick a niche market, 2) Brainstorm product ideas (able to put benefits in one sentence, costs $50~$200, takes 3~4 weeks to manufacture, explain in FAQ’s, 3) Resell, license or create. He suggests one becomes an expert in order to sell ideas by 1) joining trade org, 2) read 2 ~3 top allies boards, 3) give free seminar, 4) write article and join profnet.
Of course, the hardest part is to come up with some profitable ideas that meet the above criteria. Putting them in autopilot should be easier once the market has been identified.

On Liberation, the author debates about the meanings of life, which I wholeheartedly agree, i.e. to love, to be loved and continued learning. He also offers ideas how to maximize your dollars while traveling.

Overall, the income ideas seems interesting and plausible. I’ll probably give it a try. But my main take aways are around the “elimination” and delegation of tasks. Reading this book while vacationing for 3 weeks in Taiwan really gives me different perspectives. It allows me to step back and see how deep I have been in this rat race. Shouldn’t we all step out once in while and smell flower and see all the beauty in the world? After all, we only get to live once. It would be so good to travel, explore and soak in all the cultures. I probably cannot handle the lifestyle of vagabonding but doing this once a while is rather refreshing.

Most of the book contents are similar to other time management tools. My main take-aways:

1. Your time is more valuable to you than you imagine if we go by the author’s calculation method that the time wasted may be our “productive” time. And our productive time is a relative small percentage of our working hours. The author has a formula to calculate the actual productive time. It’s probably in order of 20~30% of our working hours.

2. Lots of traveling tips, like having people to travel to your site, as most of time wasted for a professional like Dan Kennedy’s are the wasted time in the airport, plane and the sick time after the travel. Be selective on your decision to travel and make the best of the travel time.

3. The book seems to be a hodge podge of notes from his “productive” writing or talk shows. It is not as organized as it should be.

4. Do the important stuff that drive toward your goals. Packing a nice boxes, as in his example, may not the important work to drive you toward your goals.

5. His advocate of using FAXes seems to be out-dated but he’s very careful not to have people rob him of his productive time, especially office time. He recommends to stay out of office and work from home but I don’t think this works for a manager who need to oversee the people.

Making good use of the productive time is the key message here. Since the book is relative short, it’s probably a productive use of my time.