Kolz Blog

Traveling? Want to get the biggest bang for your buck? Two years ago, guest writer Matt Vance showed you how to book a 5-star hotel on a budget. [Read more]

Over at 43 Folders, writer Brian Oberkirch looks at how one of his favorite artists beats his worst tendencies to be intimidated by the hugeness of the work in front of him. By dividing his work into a grid and breaking it into smaller incremental tasks—like knitting a sweater—he sidesteps his anxiety.

What I found that one of the nice things [about] working incrementally is that I don't have to reinvent the wheel every single day. Today I did what I did. You can pick it up and put it down. I don't have to wait for inspiration. There are no good days or bad days. Every day essentially builds positively on what I did the day before. [Read more]

There are many benefits to setting up an automated personal finance system, as Gina has previously shown us, and with the new year still fresh, it's a good time to get your own system set up. The Get Rich Slowly finance blog offers one guest writer's solution—set up two checking and two savings accounts, to get the most interest out of savings and keep bills and expenses in separate compartments. One benefit of his system:

... If there are billers who need to (draw from) a checking/savings account, I can completely isolate what they have access to. I can also make sure that the money is sitting in savings until the last possible moment but gets automatically transferred over in time to pay the bill without incurring a late fee. [Read more]

There are four steps you can take, every day, to help bring fulfillment into your life, achieve happiness and help you attain success. Though it may seem impossible, taking these four steps will actually help set you up to achieve these goals and, even more importantly, will help you become a better person and define your own legacy to those around you. Take a few minutes to read this list, and more importantly commit the time everyday to undertaking each of these. You will find that if you are persistent, once you have made an effort to do these things each day that after a short while it becomes second nature – you are actually doing it without thinking about it! That is how a person truly grows when they no longer have to think about doing what is necessary to achieve their goals; they just do it as part of who they are!

• Step 1. Visualize Where have you been in your life? How did you get to where you are today? How will you get where you want to be tomorrow?It is important to understand where we’ve come from and how we are going to get to the next step in our lives. By visualizing where you want to be, you start helping your mind formulate ways to achieve that next goal in your life. It’s a powerful tool and one that many successful people have used to find their own happiness in life. By reviewing what you have done in the past, you can also make sure that you don’t repeat the same mistakes in the future. Similarly, you can also take the things that worked well in the past and apply them to help you achieve your goals in the future. Remember the old saying about those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it?
• Step 2. Take Responsibility You are responsible for your actions – or for your lack of actions. All too often we blame others for our failures or missed opportunities when we have nobody to blame but ourselves because we failed to take the steps necessary to achieve a particular goal.Taking responsibility also helps you become a better person and earn the respect of those around you. We all make mistakes, and when we own up to them, that builds trust in those around us. They know that when we do mess up we are going to make it right and take action to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. We aren’t going to blame our failure on somebody else. [Read more]

About 10 days ago, I accidentally posted a question I had meant to schedule for later this month, and as I’m coming to expect, your responses really got me thinking. The question was simple: What one big productivity block do you most struggle to overcome? But the issue it raises — how can we keep ourselves on track? — is really complex, and speaks directly to why a site like lifehack.org exists and continues to attract a daily readership in the six figures. We talk a lot about goals, motivation, and self-development. All of these things share a common root: desire. The desire to fulfill our destinies, maybe, or to attain for ourselves something that’s missing, whether that’s security, luxury, meaning, or even just a sense of completion and closure.

Planning our own absence

But things get in the way of us attaining the things we desire. Sometimes those things are external factors — a harsh government, a poor economy, bad business choices by our employers. But much of the time, what keeps us from fulfilling our desires is internal. Some things we have no control over — health problems, for instance. Boris left a particularly touching comment last week:

I do a very good job at managing most activities related to my business. However, no matter how well I planned… I have chronic health problems that get in the way very often.

I don’t have chronic health problems, but even something as simple as a cold or a toothache can derail all my planning and send me into a tailspin of depression and self-doubt – I can only imagine what it must be like to experience that on a regular basis. The thing with health issues is that, although we can work really hard to keep ourselves fit, we are always under the threat of a sudden flare-up, whether of a chronic illness or a new infection or injury. No matter how much we tell ourselves that we are captains of our own destinies, our bodies can betray us, laying us low in a matter of moments. The answer to this lies, I think, in planning. I’ve been strongly inspired by Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Work Week. Ferriss devotes a large part of the book to describing systems that continue to work even when we’re not there to run them. The point, for Ferriss, is to allow us the time to gallivant around the globe in search of tango lessons or extreme sporting events (or, I suppose, enlightenment), but the lesson applies to those of us worried about a sudden illness knocking us out of commission for a week, a month, or a year. Set up systems that require as little attention as possible, so you can commit your time to activities that serve your self — whether that means spending six months seeking the latest thrill or six months recovering from an injury. [Read more]