Archive for March, 2010

4 Ways to Stay Awake During Boring Meetings

Posted By damien on March 11th, 2010

Tired Man

Boring meetings can happen anywhere: work, school or even church.

I am only in my mid-twenties, but have sat through countless boring meetings. This post is a collection of methods I use to stay awake and moderately attentive when meetings get tedious.

Lift a Leg

I learned this one from the CEO of a venture capital firm who has seen more than his fair share of boring meetings. Whenever he gets sleepy, he lifts one of his feet an inch or so off the floor. This method really works! The attention required to keep your foot elevated fights off droopy eyelids and jaw-cracking yawns.

One note of caution:

It’s best to have a table or other object in front of you, otherwise it looks a bit strange to have your foot hovering in the air.

Chew on Something

Most of these suggestions involve some sort of movement and this one involves your mouth! Mints and gum are great things to put in your mouth to keep you awake. The chewing action and the cool minty flavor do wonders to keep your eyes open.

Another note of caution:

This method is recommended only if you have a passive listening role in the meeting. Many people consider chewing on something while speaking to be rude and unprofessional.

Get an Attention Buddy

When my wife gets bored, she fidgets. If I’m with her, she decides to bother me by flicking, pinching, poking or otherwise keeping me awake. I don’t think her purpose is to keep me awake, but it works that way! Find someone to be your attention buddy and keep each other awake during boring meetings.

The Yoga Breath of Fire

I’ve been practicing yoga for a few years now and love how it helps me reduce stress and relax. Yoga practitioners employ several breathing exercises to relax and/or energize the body. The breath of fire is one of the easiest breathing exercises for increasing energy and focus.

Basically, it is a rapid, constant breath that works the lungs and diaphragm. The breath of fire floods the body with oxygen, which keeps you alert during boring meetings. Follow this link to yogayoga.com (scroll down to the “breath of fire” section) for detailed instructions on the breath of fire technique.

How do you stay awake during boring meetings?

Posted in Business, Selp Improvement
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How to Ask Great Questions

Posted By damien on March 9th, 2010

Asking Questions

I’m taking a short break from financial posts and exploring other topics.  This post will help you ask better questions in teaching, business and personal settings.

Everyone asks questions, and for many different reasons.

An effective teacher uses questions to see if his student understands, accepts, and applies what is being taught.  A great salesperson asks questions to see if her customer is willing to buy and to determine their objections.  An effective “networker” asks questions to develop business relationships.

Through my experiences, I have come across three different types of questions that we use.  Each category is useful for different reasons.  These types of questions, from least to most effective, are as follows:

  1. Factual questions
  2. Reasoning questions
  3. Emotional questions

Let’s look at each category and see how effective they are.  We’ll apply these questions to teaching situations, but they can easily be modified to work for salespersons and networkers.

Factual Questions

Example: “In what year was the Declaration of Independence signed?”

These questions are used primarily to see if the student is paying attention and understands the lesson material. Factual questions do not evoke much thinking or feeling on the part of the student, but require a mere recitation of what the teacher has already stated. Factual questions are not open-ended, the answers are usually objective, and many times there is only one correct response.

Reasoning Questions

Example: “Why was it necessary for the States to declare independence from England?”

Reasoning questions are the next level up in quality. These questions require more critical thinking on the part of the student than do factual questions. These are used by the teacher to see how well the student understands what is being taught, and whether or not the student accepts it. Answers to these questions are more subjective, they include more of the student’s opinion than do answers to factual questions.

A student, in answering the example question, could follow a couple different paths of reasoning. Perhaps the student does not believe the US should have broken off from England. If so, then the student would answer that it not necessary.

On the other hand, if the student does believe in US independence then she would respond with various reasons as to why.

Reasoning questions are a great way to see if the listener understands and agrees with what you are teaching.

Emotional Questions

Example: “How is your life different because of the American Revolution?”

This is the best type of question. Emotional questions cause the student to tie the material being taught to his or her own life. When learning, students love to ask, “What does this have to do with real life?” When a teacher uses an emotional question, the students discover the real-life application for themselves! To answer an emotional question, the student must link the information being learned to personal experience.

Emotional questions start with a premise (sometimes called “begging the question”) and cause the student to work from that premise to apply the material being learned. The premise in the example question is that the American Revolution had some impact on the life of the student.

If the example question were made instead into a reasoning question, it would go something like this: “Has the American Revolution had any impact on your life?” The difference between the result of a reasoning question versus an emotional question is evident in these two preceding examples.

Better Questions = Better Answers

Every teacher’s dream is to have students who understand, accept, and apply what is being taught.

By using factual questions, the teacher learns if the student is paying attention and understands the material. Answers to reasoning questions show a deeper understanding and acceptance of the information.

The best questions of all, emotional questions, help the student make personal applications of the concepts being taught. By using these three types of questions, teachers will become more effective in instructing and inspiring their students.

So…how do you use questions?

Posted in Business, Interpersonal Skills, Selp Improvement
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Hardball is So Last Century: Why Mean People Lose

Posted By damien on March 4th, 2010

Angry catThe era of mean business is over.

Internet killed the hardball-playing jerk.

It no longer pays to drive a hard bargain.

Why do I say so?  Two reasons:

  1. The abundance of information thanks to the internet
  2. and the abundance of choice in products and business partners

No More Secrets…

The internet and the flood of information that came with it has been a game-changer for the American business model.  Today’s business world is too full of information and opinions for anything to stay a secret for long.

This abundance of information has negative consequences for mean people.  Anyone who acts the jerk in business (or life in general) nowadays will have to face the music on facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.  Mean people just can’t keep their meanness a secret for long.

Eeny, Meeny Miny, Mo

In this new, flat world, your pal in India (or Bangladesh, or Canada) can supply your business with whatever it needs. There is just too much choice in business to be a jerk!  We have no need to put up with bad products or business partners.

My generation, Gen-Y, is especially aware of the abundance of choice and information.  As my friend Brant Choate explains, if you are mean, boring, or incompetent, we’ll drop you in a heartbeat.

It Pays to Be Nice

How can you make sure you aren’t the jerk?  How can you keep your customers (and colleagues) from trashing your name on the internet?  I have just two bits of advice:

  1. Be Sincere: Fakeness has a certain odor to it that is instantly detectable and repugnant.  If you are insincere, people will pick up on it and withhold information, business, and even friendship from you.
  2. Bring Something to the Table: No one likes a person who takes and never gives.  If all you do is take, pretty soon the well will dry up and you will constantly be on the hunt for new “marks”: new people to use.  Give abundantly and it has a way of coming back to you.

Bottom line: in today’s business world, mean people lose.

Posted in Business, Interpersonal Skills
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Your Tax Return and the Problem with Found Money

Posted By damien on March 2nd, 2010

Gambling away found money

Tax returns are coming!  Why is it that so many of us blow our returns on junk we don’t need? You know you should be using it to pay down debt, but instead buy all 13 cycles (seasons) of America’s Next Top Model on Blu-ray.

Read on to learn about the tricks our minds play with us when it comes to “found money” and how to overcome them.

The Myth of Fungibility

In order to find out why we waste some of our money, including tax returns, we need to define some financial terms.  The first is what traditional economists call “fungibility”.  Fungibility means that all money, no matter where it comes from, will have the same value to a person.  $50 from work has the same value as $50 from the roulette wheel or $50 from a tax return.  Which makes sense, in a rational world.  All three of the $50 bills should have the same value to us because they can buy the same amount of stuff.

The only problem is that people aren’t rational.  Emotions hold a lot of sway in personal finance.  We make emotional decisions and place different values on our money depending on where it comes from.

This is where the concept of “found money” comes into play.  Found money is basically money that we weren’t expecting which comes to us from sources other than our earned income (work).  For some reason, we tend to place a lower value on found money than on earned income.

The Problem with Found Money

This is why you blow your tax return, because you place a lower value on it than money from a paycheck.  Why does this happen? Why do we place a lower value on found money and end up wasting it?

There is a whole branch of economics (called Behavioral Economics) dedicated to understanding why people behave emotionally when it comes to their finances.  The field of study is relatively new and economists are researching the topic as I write this post.

From what I’ve gathered, it seems that people compartmentalize their money depending on where it came from.  The experts call this “mental accounting”.  We label our money according to its source and thus attach value to it.

The $100 savings bond from Grandma we leave alone to honor her memory.  The $27 won in Vegas we blow on expensive sushi.  The tax return we spend on America’s Next Top Model Blu-rays and rationalize it by telling ourselves “Miss J” will improve our catwalk (I promise I only watch the show for my wife).  It’s clear that when we label our income based on where it came from, it can have negative effects.

Master Your Mind

So how do we overcome the problems of mental accounting and wasting found money?  Here I offer two simple solutions that have worked for me:

  1. Consider all of your money as earned income:  Do away with mental accounting! No more compartments for your income based on where it came from.  Just consider any of your income, no matter its source, as a paycheck.  Viewing all of your income in one big bucket called earned income will help you give it all the same value and use it equally.
  2. Wait a few days (or weeks): Before spending the money, sleep on it.  This advice is good for all large purchases, but especially for found money because we are more prone to impulse spending.  Since I am prone to impulse spending, my wife institutes the wait policy on me.  Whenever I just have to have something now, she reminds me that I really don’t. A night’s sleep before purchases clears your head and prevents buyer’s remorse.

Hopefully this post has opened your eyes to how much emotions affect our money decisions.  Emotional spending is so important that I wrote about a debt-repayment plan that takes advantage of your feelings.  Now, go use your tax return to pay down debt or invest!

Posted in Building Wealth, Dumping Debt
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