Getting Things Done - Henry Miller's Commandments

Henry Miller wrote the following about writing but it applies to other tasks as well, with a little adjusting. [from Henry Miller on Writing (New Directions, 1964) p 161.]

COMMANDMENTS

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.

2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring”

3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is at hand.

4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

5. When you can’t create you can work.

6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

9. Discard the Program when you feel like it – but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Frugal: Reduce College Costs with CLEP

I'll bet you that most of you reading this have never heard of CLEP, College-Level Examination Program®. Fortunately when I was applying for collages, The College Board had an excellent marketing campaign for it ... and the school I planned on attending accepted it. I was a solid B student, definitely not a brain, and was able to "test out of" a full year of college, the boring stuff. This was good because I was about one year short of funds to make it through.

The idea is that you take a standard test administered much like the SAT's. CLEP offers 33 exams in five subject areas, covering material taught in courses that you may generally take in your first two years of college. Most CLEP exams are designed to correspond to one-semester courses, although some correspond to full-year or two-year courses.

Their TV advertising program expressed the concept rather well. The ad showed Abraham Lincoln being interviewed for a job. The interviewer asked him about his education. Abe responded that he had done a lot of reading on his own and had apprenticed at a law firm. The interviewer shook his head and said that they required a diploma. The test is to recognize knowledge you might have gotten some other way. How about the excellent, and Free, online classes you can take, which poor Abe couldn't use, but you can?

Exams are approximately 90 minutes long, with the exception of College Composition, which is 120 minutes. Exams contain mainly multiple-choice questions. College Composition and a few other exams contain other types of questions and essays. They cost just under $100 per exam, so much lower than a college class.

Get your accounting in order with QuickBooks

I've been using QuickBooks since 2004. I reviewed all of the alternatives, including Quicken and do-it-yourself spreadsheets, but found QuickBooks to be the easiest to use. Their technical support is very good, including when your problem is accounting rather than computer-related.
They offer several different versions, depending on your business and which of the functions you want it to handle. QuickBooks Pro is their most popular, and the one I'm currently using. It does everything I need, and lets me ignore the functions I don't need. (For some reason, the same exact product but for Mac is just called QuickBooks).

Answers to the competency test at knockmeoff.com

This post is mostly for those who took the test at knockmeoff.com, but it wouldn't hurt if you read this anyway. Being less stupid is always good.

1. Do you know shit from Shinola? Shinola is a brand of shoe polish that was popular during World War II. It is recognizable by the word “Shinola” on its container. Shit generally does not come in a can and does not say “Shinola” on it.
   
2. How to pour piss out of a boot. Apparently in some parts of the country, it is customary to piss in one's boots. Therefore it is necessary to know how to remove the piss. Because of the assumed low IQ's of those who piss in their boots, instructions are put on the bottom of the boots, on the heel. The simple act of reading the instructions generally results in dumping the piss out of the boots. We give one point for answering yes and two points for not pissing in your boots in the first place.
   
3. Which is further west: Reno, NV or Los Angeles, CA? Although California is on the west coast, it's southern part curves toward the east. As a result, Reno, NV, which is located in the western part of Nevada, is actually further west than Los Angeles. Because this is an important test, if you weren't sure, you should have looked it up. To not do so indicates that you are not too bright.

What business are they in?

My mentor (What? You don't have one!) and I were talking recently and he referred to something I had just said as "Knock's Rule #1". I didn't recall ever defining a "Rule #1", so I asked him to explain. I don't always realize it when I say something really smart, but he does.

Whenever we are talking about sources of information, or pretty much anything we read, I almost always ask the question, what is the business of the source. Ah yes, I remember saying this a few hundred times. Example: Most news sources make their money (both income to cover expenses and profits for themselves and their investors) from advertising. The price you pay for your local news paper covers only a small portion of its expenses. The rest is made up by advertising. Without advertising, they would close their doors. They wouldn't have a choice. Circulation numbers are important, not so much for the income they produce, but because the higher the numbers the higher the advertising rates they can charge.