I desperately wanted a cup of milk. No, I needed it.
The milk I already had on hand. All I was missing was the cup to pour it into.
Going through my friend’s cupboard, I only found cheap-looking wine glasses. Fair enough, a cup is a cup.
I don’t need to describe how I poured the milk into the glass, or how delicious and refreshing the milk was. You can use your imagination.
What you probably didn’t expect, though, was my friend’s reaction to this. To put it simply: she freaked out.
“Could you PLEASE not use those wine glasses?! They’re VERY special to me. They’re from my mom’s wedding. Oh god, let me wash it, no, give me the glass.”
I thought she was joking at first, but it turned out she wasn’t.
There’s something weird to me about keeping functional items where they belong and then freaking out if anyone ever touches them. Just get rid of the wine glasses and save yourself the stress of worrying about them.
I can’t take it anymore! I’m finally posting this after countless requests – just too many people wanted to see this post.
I weighed a little less than 160 lbs. all throughout high school. One time I got sick, and that weight even went down to about 155 lbs! Like about 90% of other red-blooded males, I scoured the Internet in search of ways to build muscle.
I didn’t take any measurements or do any health-related tests, but I have one indisputable indicator of progress: before and after photos.
Here are a few comparative shots. Oh, and I forgot to mention, all of this was done with one 30-minute workout, for a total of 30 MINUTES of gym time:
How did I do it?
Here are the six basic principles that made it happen:
1. Sit at a computer for a couple hours at the beginning of the day. Do nothing physical.
2. Create a backdrop and lighting set-up that does not cast any favorable shadows on your body that might reveal musculature.
3. Do not actually flex during any poses, and in fact, have noticeably different postures than the “after” picture.
4. Go to the gym and work out really hard. Get a nice pump going.
5. Return to that backdrop you set up, but change the lighting so that it casts shadows that exaggerate your musculature. This will complement the pump you’ve got going very nicely.
6. Do the following: flex your muscles, stick your feet out, and change your hand positions so that they favor a more muscular look.
BONUS: if I had eaten a lot of carbs and drank a lot of water before the first set of pictures, I could have looked fatter! I also wish I had more body hair in the “before” shots.
Want to absolutely transform your body? Follow these guidelines, put in your 30 minutes, and you can make yourself look totally amazing for about an hour (until the pump wears out).
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So what’s the point of this?
The more that I’ve studied marketing, the more I’ve come to resent a lot of the manipulative tactics that the hot shots use.
This post, if you didn’t know, is a direct parody of one of Tim Ferriss’ most popular blog posts, From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks. (As of this writing, he’s nearing almost 800 comments on that post, most of which are from people who are excited by his pictures and about to try the program themselves.)
I remember running across that post about a year ago and being blown away by his results. I stumbled on it again recently, though, and immediately recognized all the manipulative tactics he used in his before and after shots that make his results seem better than they actually are. I’ve tried to mimic his every posture in my above photo set.
His hands in the “after” shots indicate he’s flexing and more tensed than in the “before”. His feet are angled outwards in the “after” shots, which give a more three-dimensional shape to the legs. The final “before” shot – where he’s standing facing straight at the camera – features maybe the most unnatural standing posture in the history of mankind. (Try it yourself – stand up straight and angle your palms facing backwards, hands at your waist. It not only twists your arms and shoulders in, making them appear smaller, but it feels awful.)
Also it’s easy to see that the lighting is completely different in both shots. (Just take a look at his shadows.) The after shot has much more favorable, indirect lighting.
All of these differences are so subtle, though, that most people would never notice.
Maybe the results and numbers he lists are the real deal. I really doubt all of it, though, since he is clearly trying to manipulate us with his before and after shots. And if he has to use manipulative tactics for a blog post on gaining muscle, what can we expect from an entire book about it?
All marketers are liars
I want to get out of the way that I’m a huge Tim Ferriss fanboy. The 4 Hour Work Week gave me the inspiration to leave my job, get rid of my stuff, and pursue things I never would have before. I wait for his every blog post with baited breath. The guy seems very, very focused and good at almost everything he does. (Watch any video of him speaking other languages – he’s good.)
But he also embellishes – a lot. And not just in the “you’re a hater, I just work very hard and get things done” type of way, as this post reveals.
And this is true for a lot of marketers, especially more amateur ones. The blog world is packed with these people. They embellish their results for the sake of traffic, and damage the free trade of good, solid information in the process.
Listen, if you know how to do something, that’s awesome. Share it with the world and make all of our lives easier and better. But if you have to embellish your results to be able to get your message out, then don’t waste our time.
I spent the month of August this year on a bicycle trip down the Pacific Coast. Now I’m going to spend the next 30 minutes writing about it. This write-up is intended for anyone interested in doing a bike tour themselves, since I found bike tour write-ups really helpful when I was preparing.
Sometime in March 2009, I came back to my apartment in Medellin, Colombia to find my good buddy and roommate, Derek, psyched about something. “I’m riding my bike across the USA, dude,” he exclaimed amid frantic typing on his laptop. “I ran across some guy’s web site about it and it sounds awesome.”
“Can I come?” I asked.
And thus was born The Tour de Force 2009: The Pacific Coast.
The back story
I’m generally in pretty good shape, but that shape was never a product of bicycling. In fact, I had never biked more than about 5 miles at once in my life when I agreed to a bike trip across the United States. Double fact, I didn’t even own a bike.
In our Medellin apartment that day, Derek and I quickly agreed to do some kind of cross-country bike trip before summer was over. We would research the details of the trip shortly before leaving for the trip. That way we had a rough plan of action, but wouldn’t psych ourselves out over the details for months before leaving.
Flash forward a little more than two months later, to early June. Derek has just purchased a bike from craigslist for $350, and I’ve taken my dad’s extra mountain bike for a couple of 10 mile spins. After a bit of research, we find that the best route for us, time-wise and health-wise, is the Pacific Coast route, from Vancouver, Canada to the Mexican border in San Diego, California. We don’t set a specific date until mid-July, when we decide to just go for it and book plane tickets to Seattle 10 days away.
Preparation
This should help out anyone who’s looking to do a bike tour themselves and don’t know what it takes.
Like I said, I had never ridden a bike more than 5 miles at a time in my entire life. I don’t think I had ridden a bike at all more than 10 times in the last 15 years of my life.
For about two months before leaving on my trip, I rode every other day for about 15 miles. About three times I threw in a 30 mile ride, but I generally stuck to the shorter 15 mile trip. The 30 mile ride was hard and I didn’t want to do it too much.
In late June, I sprained my ankle pretty badly playing basketball. (My ankle was still pretty badly sprained throughout our trip, but it didn’t affect my riding at all.) I didn’t ride at all for about a week and a half after that, and had to work up to my usual 15 mile rides over about an extra week or two. This meant that, in the month before leaving for my trip, I wasn’t on my bike much at all. I didn’t do a single 30 mile ride this month because of my injury and because I didn’t want to.
In other words, I wasn’t biking very much at all before our 2,000 mile trip. Did my lack of preparation make the trip more difficult? I don’t think so.
Gear
Amazing technology 40 years ago.
I didn’t want to spend a lot of money for this trip. I found out my dad still had his old touring bike torn apart and in boxes, and a friend of his was willing to put it together and refurbish it a bit so I could ride it; this meant a nearly-free bike. I should mention that when I say “old” touring bike, I mean “old as shit”. It was originally built and purchased in 1969, and it still had most of its original parts. When I pulled out its hideous, worn-out strapped pedals in front of Derek for the first time, he laughed and said, “Hey, the junk yard called. It wants its pedals back.” I responded with, “1998 called. It wants its cliche back.” I think in reality I botched the delivery, though, plus my pedals were still crap, so Derek won that round.
My bike didn’t use clips, and I figured it was best to avoid installing clips and buying the proper shoes for them shortly before leaving. I think my rationale behind this is that I didn’t want to spend more money. My biking shoes ended up being a pair of Puma sneakers I bought in Colombia about six months before, and which about two weeks before leaving were my only pair of shoes.
Solid biking shoes.
Originally I stored all my stuff in a raggedy, dying red sack strapped to my bike’s racks with shoelace (I wish I was kidding), but after the shoelaces snapped and the bag broke a spoke in my back wheel, I decided it was time to invest in new panniers. I went with the cheapest, smallest panniers they had at my local Performance Bikes, which were TransIt bags.
For camping, I had a Big Bertha insulated air mattress, an REI compact sleeping bag, and an old bivy shelter. All three were chosen because they were small, compact, and either cheap or free for me to borrow from family.
Clothes-wise, I had two biking shirts — and just one after I lost one in a spill two thirds through the trip — that I alternated every day. I wore some cheap “century” biking shorts with extra padding every single day that I picked up on sale. When off the bike, I had one pair of thin pants and one Icebreaker shirt. I also only had one pair of socks that I washed every night in sinks. They were dress socks I stole from my dad’s closet that I think he originally got in a bulk pack for about three dollars; specialized bike socks are expensive and unnecessary, in my opinion. Surprisingly, Derek reported I only really smelled bad on one day. That’s the magic of good clothing selection and being me.
For water, I had a Camelbak that, as you may have guessed, I got on sale at a bike shop.
All our food was bought at grocery stores along the way, and I usually just bungy-corded extra food to the top of my rear rack.
That’s really all the gear I had. Beyond that, I had my iPhone, a pair of headphones, and my digital camera which, I regret to say, was stolen just a week before our trip was up.
Both Derek and I packed very lightly. Most people who saw us asked where the rest of our stuff was, since it all neatly fit in just two small rear panniers. We often wanted to ask other cyclists — some with four or five large panniers filled with stuff — why they had so much. We never did, though, because that seems passive aggressive and weird.
For Derek’s packing list, check out what he wrote up on his blog.
Lodging
I slept in the green mansion, Derek slept in the red cocoon
We stayed at state campgrounds every night. Many camp sites have hiker/biker space, which does not require a reservation and costs less than $10. Almost all of these sites had showers, too, usually costing about 50 cents for a little less than ten minutes.
The only exceptions were when we found ourselves in a town at the end of the day that didn’t have anywhere to camp nearby and a nice family ended up letting us camp on their lawn, and when we stayed with friends and family for two days in San Francisco.
Food
I ate it all in one sitting. You can see the passion on my face.
We had no cooking gear, and bought the majority of our food at supermarkets throughout the day.
I tried eating healthier on our first day — relying mostly on protein bars, fruits, almonds/almond butter, and other “smarter” choices — and felt like I was going to die. By about the 40th mile, I was dizzy, had little energy, and by the last two hours of our day I had developed a horrible cough. I really felt more physically ill and weak than I’d felt in years. At first I thought it was maybe because I hadn’t prepared physically enough for the trip, and thought that my food choices weren’t the cause since I was getting enough calories.
But after we stopped at a supermarket near our campsite for the night, I caved and indulged in a big bag of candy corn, a couple sugary drinks, and some candy bars. Literally within minutes I felt amazing and full of energy; just minutes before, we had been sitting outside the supermarket and passers-by had commented that I looked like I was about to die. Fueled by crap food, I was rejuvenated and could have biked an extra few hours if the sun hadn’t been setting.
After this experience, I never looked back and I thrived off junk food the entire trip. While I struggled to pull off about 50 miles on the first day, our second day was an effortless 80 miles thanks to my new diet. I was probably getting in about 5,000 calories minimum a day, and most likely more normally. Every day I put back three or four donuts, one or two cinnamon rolls, humongous 14″+ deli sandwiches, an assortment of fruits, a few peanut butter sandwiches, some kind of meat or other protein source, candy bars, and much more.
For the first two weeks of the trip, I lost weight while eating this way. Derek and I learned that the secret to weight loss is simple: bike six to eight hours a day. You can send me donations through PayPal for that tip.
I was dropping more money than I expected on food, though. I probably spent about $30 a day or so to eat the way I was. But I got to eat all kinds of foods I love and don’t normally get to eat without the hassle of putting on weight. I’m sure my insides were dying, but I still looked great so I was ecstatic.
The pace
We finished the entire 2,000 mile trip in a little less than four weeks. We averaged a bit over 80 miles a day, and had two “century” days, our highest mileage being about 120.
We took three days off to rest, one of which was forced on us due to broken bikes and closed bike shops.
I don’t know what our average pace was on the road, but we only ever got passed by one other bike tourer (tourist?), and often were moving faster than people just out for rides around the town. We know how bad ass we are, and you don’t have to comment on it, but you can leave me PayPal donations in recognition of it.
The physical side of it
Yes I knew the dinosaur was there.
For the first week or so of the trip, my lower back was killing me. It would get very sore very fast, and I had to stop to stretch (and crack) it every couple of miles. After that first week, though, I adapted to it.
But then my focus was on my butt. Man my butt was sore. I adapted to the sore butt after about two and a half weeks.
Beyond that, I didn’t really have any discomforts. Like I mentioned before, with hardly any biking experience under my belt, I was able to crank out at least 80 miles a day by the second day. This meant we had to bike all day with maybe two and a half hours of rest interspersed throughout the day, but it was still done pretty comfortably.
Would I do it again?
I would do a trip like this again, and in fact will likely do a true across-the-USA trip in the near future. It is the best way for me to justify a diet of donuts and cinnamon rolls. I wish I were kidding about that but it is honestly one of the best motivators for me, especially the “fancy” cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting on top. Absolutely fantastic.
I actually don’t want to dwell on this too much because not only is writing about how much money I make tacky, but writing about making just $1,000 per month is flat-out lame. But, as those who try to make money online without a service-based business know, the first bit of money you make is the hardest.
I actually accomplished my goal two months ago, but held off writing about it until I knew I had duplicated my efforts. Two months ago, I put a couple hours a day into my work and hit my goal, but this past month was a little different: from July 27 to August 27, I was on a bicycle tour down the Pacific Coast and was away from my computer the whole time. I didn’t do an ounce of work the entire month. I ended up making almost exactly twice my goal amount, completely passively.
So, it feels safe to say: goal accomplished. I have now set my money goal far higher — aiming for $200 a day minimum with maximum of 3 hours of work a day within the next month, and gradually higher from there — but I know what to do now to get it done so it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge.
So what did I do? I won’t spell out an exact method because you can find millions online. What I think will help more is knowing the core principles that will help you make money online that I failed to grasp in the beginning.
I sell affiliate products, specifically through ClickBank, a vendor of digital products like software and PDFs that are instantly downloaded. Some of the products offered there are crap, while others are gold (and some I use myself every day). If you can sell a product on ClickBank, you get paid a generous commission — a maximum of 75% of the product’s price. All products are sold through simple sales pages I have set up for specific keywords I’ve targeted.
Selling products is the trickiest part, though. You have to find a market that is desperate and needs help, which is what most of the products on ClickBank cater to. This means: you need to find a market where people are willing to pull out their credit cards and find the solution to a problem NOW. Think about things that have driven you crazy in the past and what you would have done to get them resolved. I know that, years ago, whenever I woke up with the beginning of a cold sore, I’d start searching on Google desperate for ways to cure it before it got worse. If I had run across a product back then promising to cure my cold sore immediately and naturally or my money back, I probably would have considered it. If someone was able to direct me to that product through my Google searches, then they would have made a commission off my sale.
That’s the main idea most people miss: find markets where people are absolutely desperate, find out how to get their attention, and send them to great offers from great products. It’s not more complicated than this.
(Every web page I have that shows up for specific keywords in Google is text-only and about two or three printed pages in length. I have ONE and ONLY ONE link on each of these pages, and it’s to the product I’m promoting. Don’t over-complicate your affiliate marketing efforts.)
For those that already know a bit about affiliate marketing, this post likely makes sense. For those that have no idea, this post is probably infuriating. If you really have no idea at all about this stuff but want to know more, I recommend reading as much as you can over at the Warrior Forum.
And that ends this explanation. I really don’t like writing about making money.
In the past couple weeks, I’ve run across some amazing airfare deals. I found a flight to Buenos Aires for $300 round trip and a number of flights to various Caribbean destinations for about $200 to $300 round trip.
But those didn’t really interest me. Actually, they really interested me, but I’ve been wanting to explore the United States a bit this summer.
So instead I’ve booked a plane ticket to Seattle for Monday, July 27. From there I’ll be meeting up with my good buddy Derek and heading to Vancouver, equipped with some camping gear and a road bike. From Vancouver, we’ll be biking about 1,900 miles down the Pacific Coast, through Washington, Oregon, and California, all the way to the Mexican border.
A rough idea of our route
Although we’re going to camp the whole way down, I’ll have a Dell Mini netbook with me and will be posting updates as I go, as will Derek. Coming soon, before we head out, will be my gear list.
In preparation, I’ve hardly biked more than 35 miles at a time over the past month and have taken one bike repair class, which happened to also be my first ever. Before deciding to do this, neither Derek nor I had ridden a bike more than twice in a few years. I haven’t camped outside in about 10 years.
I graduated from a top university just a few years ago. In my final year, I did the least amount of work possible to still qualify for my diploma. Now I wish I could go back.
In just the past few months, I’ve discovered a number of skills I wish I even had the smallest amount of proficiency in. I’m talking some of the “old school” basics, like cooking, wood work, and mechanics. I also wish I just knew a bit more about a number of subjects, like history and science. Some creative writing classes would be fun and beneficial to me, too.
This list could go on and on. It all boils down to this: now that I’m in my mid-20s, I’m starving for skills and knowledge. When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I couldn’t give a crap. When I couldn’t give a crap is when I had the free time to dedicate myself to school, but now I want all that knowledge and have other ambitions that make dedicating myself to one location for a semester’s length very difficult.
Isn’t a diploma valuable for job hunting?
The diplomas handed out by even the world’s top universities carry very little of the value they used to. I’ve never once used my college degree for anything, and was surprised to find out recently that my mom had even received it in the mail. In the four years I spent trying to earn that degree — note I consider it time I spent earning a degree and not learning — I could have started at a job I was qualified for and worked my way up the food chain. College degrees do have the ability to start you off at a higher position, but those who develop valuable job-specific skills will eventually be higher and more powerful than those who rely mostly on the prestige of a college degree for promotions.
What are signs that I should or shouldn’t go to school?
In my final two years of school, I was taking classes I didn’t care about or have any interest in just so I could get a degree. In almost every single class I took, I did the bare minimum to be able to pass them.
If you have this mind set — that it’s better to pass classes than get something out of them — then in my mind you shouldn’t bother going to school. Sure there are social as well as other benefits, but you can find those without the university environment. They won’t be quite the same, though, so I won’t stop you from attending college for those reasons if that’s what you want.
I remember reading about schools going to “pass” or “no pass” systems long ago, ditching the grading system altogether. People got up in arms because they have no way of objectively knowing how well they’re doing, and I was of the same attitude. I’ve realized now, though, that grades don’t mean anything. If you get the desired skill or knowledge you wanted out of the class, then it did its job — there’s no grade necessary. If you feel like you need a grade out of a class, and not a skill set or knowledge, then in my mind college isn’t for you either.
The diploma system completely ruins universities. If you love the material you’re studying for your diploma, then you’re one of the few lucky ones. Most people get trapped into classes they hate simply because they’re requirements to fulfill for a piece of paper that will likely get very little use in the future. If I could do it over again, I would have skipped the hunt for a diploma and just paid tuition for a few years taking the classes I wanted until I got kicked out.
I guess my entire argument boils down to this: college should not be a means to get a diploma because diplomas simply aren’t worth very much in the real world compared to well-developed skill sets and knowledge. Go to college for the latter, not the former.
College or university is not necessary, and by association neither are their diplomas in most cases. However, if you’re actually interested in learning and developing new skills, then it’s the best thing you can do for yourself.
The alternative for those of us who can’t go to university now
I have a lot of things I want to do now — travel, explore, experiment. My lifestyle simply doesn’t support attending even a community college over the course of three months. That’s not enough to stop me from continued learning, though. (That’s the fucking cheesiest sentence I’ve EVER written in my life. I’m so sorry.)
What I’ve found as a great alternative are short-term, intensive private classes.
In whatever subject you want to learn, they’re likely available in your area. My interest at this very second, for example, is cooking. I want to be useful in the kitchen. There are tons of one or two week cooking courses available where I am that meet for a couple hours a few nights a week.
I want to learn basic French. I’ve already researched French schools in Los Angeles, many of which have small group classes that do intensive night classes over a four week period. That’s perfect for me. I learned Spanish in Ecuador, which ended up being cheaper than private classes in the United States, even after adding in plane costs.
In a few months, I’m going to look into a basic “shop” class since I’m a useless urban dweller.
Most of these small-to-private classes carry pretty big price tags — $500 and more for four weeks or less — but are usually cheaper than taking classes at big universities. They’re also, in my mind, worth every penny regardless since they’re making me a better person. (Second fucking cheesiest sentence I’ve ever written in my life.)
What to get out of this
If you found this article because you’re out of high school and wondering if college is necessary for you, I hope my tips helped you make a decision.
If you are reading this because you’re old as shit like me but want to keep improving yourself (third cheesiest, this is a record), then just go do it.
And if you’re reading this because you’re bored, here’s a link to a Wikipedia entry on Karl Malone. I ended on it the other night while I, too, was bored. Maybe you can pick up where I left off.
If this doesn't turn you on, then good. It's supposed to be eaten.
Among my guiltiest pleasures, tucked between finding better ways to calculate the neutrino mass of supersymmetric particles and prank calling retards, is my love for self improvement blogs. While I really like a lot of the practical information they provide, there’s one subject on which I’ve never agreed with them: eating a vegetarian or vegan diet. (I make a blanket reference to “them” because all self improvement blog authors are one or the other. And they point it out a lot.)
Well, I’m here to defend meat. At least, in its dead form. I’m going to scientifically document this post the same way most self improvement bloggers document their defenses of going vegan: absolutely not at all.
Meat is delicious
There are some anomalies that don’t agree with this, but meat is delicious. Especially after experiencing the perfection that is Argentinean beef, there is nothing in this world that I would rather have inside me than a slender, juicy slab of meat. (EDIT: please read that in context.) I met multiple people in Argentina who claimed to be vegans who couldn’t resist and ate at least one steak. I’ll leave them anonymous and this claim very vague.
Meat Makes Me Feel Good
Many anti-meat folk claim that eating meat makes them feel gross. As in, the process of chewing and digesting meat results in them feeling physically ill. I would claim the same thing about vegetables if all I ever ate were McSalads made from plants grown in a test tube. If you eat high quality meat, like grass fed beef, you’ll not only feel good, but you’ll feel GREAT. (I spent fifteen minutes writing that single sentence.)
Meat makes me stronger
This is just the personal experience of me and millions of other people. Take it with a grain of salt. (Or take it with a slab of beef! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.)
Meat makes me better looking
It’s easier to put on muscle while eating meat. More muscle means more good looking. For anyone that claims otherwise, I’m going to need full body pics of you holding a newspaper so I can judge you.
Meat made us who we are today
We evolved into the supercreatures we are today because of meat. The high levels of omega 3s found in the meats and marrows that we ate long, long, long ago helped evolve our massive brain size. Judging by the amount of meat that I eat, my children will likely be early indicators of what the next evolutionary step is.
For those who don’t eat meat for humanitarian reasons
I respect your choice and have no criticisms. While I don’t suffer the same guilt you do about killing and eating animals, I do give preferential treatment to black people because of my white guilt. It’s a very similar level of guiltiness and I just wanted to say that I understand you.
I’m going to stop this now
I really do feel that eating meat is healthy, makes me look and feel better physically, and is the most delicious part of my diet. However, I feel like this article probably hurts the cause more than helps it, so I’m going to stop now.
Either way, I feel like I should point you in the direction of someone who follows the same plan and shares my beliefs, doesn’t write like a sarcastic jerk, and actually has good information. His name is Mark Sisson and his web site is Mark’s Daily Apple. I have lost countless hours to his archive of articles on exercise, nutrition, and I’ll be honest, his golden blonde locks are absolutely gorgeous.
You’ll walk away from his blog posts satisfied, not pissed off like you are right now.
I have a very simple test to discern whether or not you are a total dick. It’ll take you just a minute to complete.
When I worked in retail and customer service, I developed a theory that has proven to be 99% accurate in determining how total of a dick you are. (I did that calculation on a TI-83 calculator, so it is definitely correct.)
Here it is:
If you have ever in your life had to ask to speak to a manager in any customer service interaction, you’re probably a total dick, but this isn’t a guarantee. If you’ve had to ask to speak to a manager in a customer service interaction multiple times in your life, then you actually are a total dick.
When you think you are being wronged in a customer service interaction, you are most likely, in fact, being annoying and demanding more than a normal person would reasonably expect.
Any intelligently-run business, though, knows that customers like you aren’t worth the time or hassle. So, of course, you’ll probably get what you want when you ask to speak to a manager, no matter how ridiculous your demand.
You can learn a new language at any point in life, and relatively fast. Especially if the language is similar to your native tongue, you can be talking comfortably pretty fast.
Well, I’ve got a fire hot language learning tip for you today. Do you want to drastically elongate your language learning time? Develop horrible grammar, poor pronunciation, and embarrassing speaking skills?
Well, then you should avoid real language classes at all costs.
I spent about six months in Latin America trying to teach myself Spanish. I never took classes, and instead opted for every self-learning course I could find.
And after six months, I could talk like a retarded four year old. (I would say a regular four year old, but I met a few of them in my travels and they spoke and understood way better than I did.) Six months is a lot of time, and now I know that had I taken real classes, I would have been near fluent in that time.
Out of frustration, I flew to Ecuador and took five weeks of one-on-one Spanish classes. And in those five weeks, I improved my Spanish many times over. I was having comfortable, coherent conversations with adults for the first time ever, and after only five weeks.
In fact, one week of my classes was dedicated solely to unlearning a lot of the stuff I had taught myself. I had unwittingly taught myself nothing but bad grammar and poor speaking skills, but everyone in South America was too nice to correct me. (Think about it — do you correct non-native English speakers when you run into them in everyday life? And do you make fun of their horrible broken English afterward? Exactly.) In my day-to-day activities, I was able to bumble out enough broken Spanish to get my basic needs across, and no one ever said a word to correct me, so I had a false sense of Spanish ability. While spending time with my Spanish teacher, I typically committed one or two grammar errors in every single sentence I spoke, and she was not quite as forgiving.
For the frustration and annoyance of wasting 6 months trying to teach myself Spanish, the cost of 5 weeks of private classes was more than worth it. I just regret not doing it way earlier in my travels. I’ll be taking this approach for any future trips I make.
Here’s a nice craigslist tip I just discovered and wanted to share.
I’m building a basic home gym and am trying to get weights on the cheap. I’ve already got some equipment super cheap off craigslist, but need to get some more.
I found that every time I remembered to search for new deals, if a deal came up, it was already gone by the time I could contact the seller. I guess a lot of other people have the same idea as me.
I just found a somewhat hidden craigslist feature that makes my search much, much easier, and much more automated. I want to share it in case you find yourself wanting to monitor the “for sale” section on craigslist for a future deal.
You will need an RSS reader for this to work. I use the Mac OS X Mail program’s built in RSS feature, but a popular solution is to use Google Reader, since it integrates with your Google account.
Just go to your local city’s craigslist site and do a “for sale” search as you normally would. (I’m looking for Olympic weights, so I just search for “olympic”.) Scroll to the very bottom of the search results page, and on the bottom right, there’s a link that says “RSS”. That link is actually an RSS feed for your search term, meaning you can put it into an RSS reader and it’ll automatically fill in all the latest search results for your specified term.
The beauty of RSS is that it automatically updates itself when new content is available — meaning, in this case, when new results come up for your search on craigslist.
If the idea of RSS is confusing to you, then check out this website for a brief explanation. And once you know what RSS is, subscribe to my web site’s RSS feed.
