Kolz Blog

Memorial Day marks the start of the serious grilling season, and there's no better weekend to try your hand at outdoor cooking, or bolster your established grill master game. Luckily, honing your outdoor culinary skills is a lot more simple than it seems, given the right tools, a little preparation, and a few tips on technique. Take a look at some pointers on getting the right gear, turning out great meals, and even preparing for uncooperative weather, after the jump. Photo by Another Pint Please....

Get the right tools

• Lump charcoal or briquettes?: This is one of those endless, both-sides-are-right-and-wrong debates (kind of like Mac vs. PC), but there is some fairly common ground. As The Virtual Weber Bullet puts it:

  The general consensus is that lump tends to burn hotter than briquettes, but not as long or as consistently. Some lack of consistency is to be expected, given that the content and piece size varies within an individual bag and between bags.

  Personally, I recommend briquettes for anyone just starting out with their grill, as lump can be finicky in lighting. Of course, you can save yourself a lot of effort and frustration by investing in a chimney starter, which you can also use for flash-cooking. Photo by Joshua Thompson via WikiMedia.
• Choosing a gas grill: Ignore the BTUs and heat for the most part—unless you really need to cook a whole bird or roast this weekend, most grills have got your steaks and burgers covered. Consumer Reports' blog recommends bringing a magnet with you to gauge the quality of steel used to contain the heat. If the magnet sticks, it's likely a cheaper grade that will rust more easily. Feel free to give a test model a few shoves and shakes, as an unstable grill is a recipe for serious problems.
• Multi-use utensils: The three-tool grilling sets you see at big-box stores have all you'll need for basic grill work, with long-handled versions of a spatula, tongs, and a carving-type poker. A long-handle brush would be your next purchase, and then a grilling basket and skewers when you start branching out. Make sure your tools feel heavy and firm in your hands, as clumsy handling creates the kind of BBQ stories you don't want repeated. Photo by rick.

For more grilling gear, our gadget-crazed brother site Gizmodo runs down 10 awesome grills you can buy for the ultimate Memorial Day barbecue.

Getting ready

• Clean that grill: If there's black crust on the grill bars, you need to get it off to ensure no-stick cooking and easy food flipping. If you're feeling strong, wad up some aluminum foil and go to town on that stuff. For seriously stuck grime, you could also try popping the grill in the oven to bake off the stubborn bits.
• Make your own sauce: Most of the pre-bottled sauces you see on grocery shelves are over-sweetened, and none match the taste of homemade. Making your own isn't that difficult, either. Use one of BBQ Recipe Secret's three sauce bases as a starting point, and build your own flavor ideas into them. It'll give you something to talk about while you're waiting for the ribs to finish. Photo by Jason McArthur.

Hone your technique

• Use a cheat sheet: Experience is the best indicator for knowing the precise moment to yank your food off the rack, but Real Simple offers a super-helpful cheat sheet you can print and bring to this culinary test (original post). Here's a sample that covers the basics of red meat and sausages:
• BBQ chicken: As my fellow editor Adam can attest, eHow's technique for grilling whole or partial chicken results in some juicy bird. The basics: Oil the grill, cook the chicken uncovered slightly off the heat center, and, for Pete's sake, don't put your sauce on until the last few minutes.
• Perfect burgers: Our commenters don't necessarily agree on cooking great burgers, but they do have some common wisdom to share. Use meat that's as close to room temperature as possible for even cooking. Don't press them on the grill, unless you like your meat dry. And the best "secret" to great burgers is buying good meat, preferably ground by a butcher while you watch.
• Seriously salt your steak: Got filet mignon dreams for the weekend, but only a Quarter-Pounder budget? Buy a cheap cut of "choice" meat, then salt, salt, salt the heck out of that thing—for only one hour before grilling, and then pat it dry. By doing so, your salt is breaking in your meat and loosening some of its protein strands, making it hold flavor better and cut like the steakhouse commercials of your dreams (original post).
• Let it rest: You'll be eager to slice open your tender steak or succulent chicken, but you'll lose a lot of juicy flavor if you do so. As the food techies at Cook's Illustrated point out, cutting into your food right off the grill releases a significant amount of juice, which would be re-absorbed for better succulence if you let it sit a few minutes.

Recover from a rain-out

All that planning, cleaning, and purchasing, and Mother Nature calls an audible on your perfect grill day? You're not finished yet. As the New York Times' food guru and cookbook author Mark Bittman points out, your oven broiler can sub in for your grill with a little prep-work, with results almost as satisfying. Brown your meat in the pan, roast or braise it slowly, then use the broiler to give it that grill-like finish. Check out his oven-based pork ribs or brisket recipes if you need convincing.

Document your success

When you've put all this effort into creating a great fire-cooked feast, you'll want more than just compliments to remember it by. Break out your digital camera (or pass it off to a trusted friend) and try the following tips to take some great grilling shots. (Photo by ctaloi):

• Tell a story: A BBQ-friendly shooter named Nika notes that a lot of grilled food might look good to the human eye, but smoky crusts and perfect charring can look like unappealing dark nothingness without good framing. Try to capture moments of "drama," such as when the meat's being pulled, or focus on the tools used to make the meal to get shots you'll remember.
• Get in close: At the same time, Flickr user Another Pint Please..., also known as Mike and who shot the steak picture you saw at the top of this post, recommends being brave and getting up-close and personal with your heat source—while being safe with your lens, of course. You'll have time to take wider-angle shots when the cooking's done, but those sudden flare-ups and perfect glistening angles only happen once.

Got some great resources for first-timers or experienced grill gurus? Planning on trying a new technique this weekend? Let's hear about great food, and solid tips, in the comments.

Kevin Purdy, associate editor at Lifehacker, will be cooking outside this weekend, whether it snows in Buffalo or not (kidding?). His weekly feature, Open Sourcery, appears every Friday on Lifehacker.

I know you can read. You’re reading this, aren’t you? (If you’re not reading this, never mind.)

But are you productively literate? That is, when you read, do you learn anything that you can apply immediately to your life, or do the words and ideas just bounce around your brain’s pleasure areas for a while before disappearing like so many wisps of morning fog?

Not that there’s anything wrong with reading just for pleasure now and again — by all means, grab a novel and hit the beach. But too often we read important stuff — how-to manuals, business and personal development guides, science and current affairs treatises, and yes, even personal productivity blogs with the same mindset. We read to make us feel good, about what we’ve done or what we could do or what others have done — even about what a smart person we look like reading such a smart book on the subway — and not as an exercise in personal growth.

This post is inspired by Seth Godin’s post, How to read a business book, which I linked to earlier this week in our link round-up. Godin — the author of quite a few business books — offers these three tips for reading productively:

1. Commit to making at least three changes in your life as a result of your reading.
2. Create todo lists as you read, instead of notes.
3. When you’re done, give the book away, so someone else can learn from it.

Godin’s advice applies to more than just business books, I think — imagine committing yourself to making at least one change a week based on your reading at Lifehack, for instance.

Here are a few more tips about reading productively:

• Use an index card as your bookmark. That way you always have something to write on while you’re reading. Go ahead and stick a few post-its to the back for marking significant passages, too.
• Have expectations. Not about quality, but about content. Before you start, ask yourself, “What do I expect to gain from reading this?”
• Keep a reading journal. When you finish a book, write down a quick summary of the book, any quotes you highlighted or flagged, and what you learned from it. Or keep a collection of chapter-by-chapter notes — maybe on a blog or wiki. Thursday Bram has some tips on journaling in one of her Lifehack posts.
• Talk about it. Tell you boss about the new working strategy you just read about. Tell your friends about the interesting history you’re reading. We labor under the misconception that we learn by reading; we don’t. We learn by using what we’ve read.
• Teach it. You don’t have to be a formal teacher to share your knowledge with those around you who might need it. When you can, take the opportunity to present the information you’ve gleaned: set up a seminar at work, organize a workshop at the local library, etc. This may not be for everyone, but let me tell you: nothing will help you make better sense of a topic than teaching it to others.
• Pay attention to structure. You can often learn as much from the way the author has organized their information as from the text itself.
  • (Let me give you an example: for several years, I taught anthropology from a textbook that promoted a view of humanity as defined by a group’s relationship with the natural environment. The central part of the book had a chapter on foragers, one on horticulture (small scale farming), one on animal herding, one on agriculture, and finally one on industrialist societies. Then I switched to a textbook that saw political organization as the key element in understanding human behavior. This book devoted its central chapters to the different kinds of political structure: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.)
• Google it. Nowadays, it’s easy to find authors on the web, who often post new material expanding or correcting their work after it’s published. Check out their websites — even strike up a conversation with the author if you feel like it.
• Take a moment. People want to read fast, to get it done. That’s why speedreading courses are so popular, despite the fact that you almost never come across anyone who can successfully speedread. The reality is, reading takes time, and learning takes even more. If you only have 20 minutes to read, read for 15 and spend 5 minutes thinking on what you’ve read. If you’re not pressed for time, take long breaks between chapters, even between sections, to reflect.
• Interrogate. It’s a cliche, but not everything is true just because it was in a book. While developing a Stephen Colbert-like distrust of books is probably overkill, it’s a rather good idea to ask from time to time, “How does the author know this?” and even “Does what s/he’s saying really mean this?”
• Make a list. Always carry a list of books you want to read or topics you want to read up on. You never know when the opportunity might arise — maybe you stop into a Borders to kill some time between obligations, maybe you notice a new used book store in your neighborhood and want to check it out, maybe someone in your office clears out a box of books from their office, whatever. As you read, add books recommended by the author to your list. (P.S. Mine’s in a tabbed page in my Moleskine. Of course.)
• Switch it up. Every now and again, read something you wouldn’t normally read. Check out an aisle of the bookstore or library you’ve never been down. Take a friend’s recommendation even if it doesn’t sound very interesting. You might be pleasantly surprised — or you might be challenged to your very core. Either way’s a net gain.
• Accept defeat.On the other hand, if a book isn’t doing it for you, drop it. Some books are over-hyped pabulum, and there’s no need to feel guilty if you got caught up in the hype. Other books, you just aren’t ready to read yet. Whatever the case, if you’re forcing yourself to get through a book page by page, drop it and move on — you’re not being productive reading like that.

  (Of course, if you’re a student and it’s a required text, you’ll need to read it somehow — make sure you talk to your professor or teacher about the trouble you’re having.)

Any other advice for more productive reading? Let me and your fellow Lifehack readers know in the comments!

---

Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and women's studies in Las Vegas, NV. His personal site can be found at dwax.org.

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Each Friday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book.

One particular aspect of personal finance that has always fascinated me (and this should be pretty obvious to long-time readers of The Simple Dollar) is the idea that most of our money decisions are fueled by a bunch of conflicting signals - the signals we get from others, the signals echoing forward from our childhood, the signals society gives us, and the signals from our own heart. Part of the challenge of modern money management is that we have an overflow of signals - the media is much more pervasive than before and we’re still learning as a society how to filter all of those signals.

When I first picked up The True Cost of Happiness, I was frankly attracted by the cover, which appeared to be newsprint and stood out from the other books on the library shelf. But when I opened the cover to read the dust jacket, it immediately began to talk about those signals - and thus I was intrigued.

Does the book itself hold up to that intrigue? Or does it dissolve into “ordinary” personal finance talk? Let’s dig in and find out.

A Walk Through The True Cost of Happiness

1 - Working Together
On the very first page, The True Cost of Happiness hits upon something interesting by listing what the authors describe as “The Big Three,” or the three major influences behind our choices aboutmaking and spending money: the lessons we learned about money growing up, the messages society tells us about money, and the messages we tell ourselves about money. In a very succinct fashion, it sums up a strong sense that I’ve had about money for a long time - and it’s that same sense that drives me to things like obsessing over the messages I’m teaching my kids and extolling the virtues of the grocery list. Your money choices are often the result of a lot of signals - but which ones should you focus on and which ones should you ignore?

2 - A Little Awareness Goes a Long Way
One idea I’ve often mentioned on The Simple Dollar is that at some point there is a “switch” that goes on in your head. That “switch,” which I talked about before and referred to as a “fundamental choice”. Choosing to be frugal and careful with your money versus spending everything you earn - that’s a fundamental choice, and it alters how you deal with your financial life and, by association, the world as a whole. That’s basically the same argument that this chapter provides, arguing that the little glimmer of awareness that surrounds that fundamental choice is the key to changing your financial life.

3 - The Big Picture: What You’re Planning For
Long term goal setting. That’s the story here. What are your goals over the next five years - and longer? Just saying “uh… retirement?” isn’t enough. Dream big, define that dream in detail, and then break it down into what you need to do today - and it probably involves not buying that $4 latte. That’s the real key.

4 - The Price of Pleasing Mom and Pop: Are Your Early Lessons Working for You or Against You?
I’ve written a lot about my early money lessons - especially the painful ones. Tisdale and Kennedy argue here that those lessons are often key in forming the financial mindset that we grow into - and unless one is mindful of this phenomenon, we’re often doomed to repeat the mistakes of our parents. While reading this chapter, I spent some time really thinking about the money lessons I learned from my folks - I learned how to be frugal, but I also didn’t really learn how to save or invest.

5 - Social Messages
From there, Tisdale and Kennedy move on to the messages society tells us about money: the media, our friends, our acquaintances, and so forth. We often get very false ideas planted in our head - ideas that our self-worth is represented by the possessions we have, that people that appear “rich” are living a lifestyle we should gravitate towards, and that we let issues of gender and race affect how we see money and our personal goals. For the most part, Tisdale and Kennedy encourage brushing all of that inside - they do this in something of a “workbook” format, in which they ask a lot of very good introspective questions.

6 - The Songs We Play in Our Heads
The third piece of the puzzle are the messages we tell ourselves. We can’t do it. We’re inadequate. We need this thing. The chatter of ideas between most people’s ears is enough to drown out most rational thought. Mostly, these messages are just excuses to let us make the easy choice, when it’s often the hard choice that leads us down the path to our dreams.

7 - Life Planning for Two
There’s really only one thing you need to do to be a part of a financially successful couple: communicate. That’s really what it’s all about. Tisdale and Kennedy even go so far as to recommend monthly financial meetings where you sit down and go through all of the statements and financial choices of the last month and agree on spending for the most month. The book even advocates spending “allowances” for partners, where each partner gets to spend a certain amount each month, no questions asked.

8 - Teach Your Children Well
Tisdale and Kennedy claim that there are three things you can do to get your children on the right financial page: be a good example, give them experience with money, and communicate with them about money. Most families fail at at least one leg of this puzzle. The book spends several pages describing how children should be involved in monthly family money meetings, something I wholeheartedly agree with. Why involve them in your financial decisions? The reasoning is simple: you get an opportunity to be a good example for them when it comes to money, communicate a bunch about how money really works, and even give them a bit of experience with regards to how the adult world of money management works.

9 - The Truth About Change
Making a significant change in your life is hard. I look at it as being like a well-worn trail - it’s much easier to stay on that trail than to get off the beaten path. The beaten path is our current habits - that hard route through the forest is the change we want to make. This chapter offers loads of suggestions - I find that the best way for me to bring about change in my life is to do it a tiny bit at a time. Want to start exercising? Park your car 1,000 feet farther from your workplace, or do some leg lifts in the evening when you’re watching television. Let the baby step become the new routine, then add another one. And another one. You get the idea.

10 - Your Bottom Line
This section discusses in detail the “bottom line” concept - in other words, exactly how much do you have to spend each month to maintain your minimum standard of living? What’s the real bottom line here, once you strip away all of the stuff that’s really unnecessary? This, to me, gets back to the “wants versus needs” dilemma I talked about in the past - what really are your actual needs? Tisdale and Kennedy believe that answering that question is vital to building a strong personal finance foundation.

11 - Saving Money
From the chapter 10 calculation of one’s bottom line, Tisdale and Kennedy recommend adding to it, starting with savings. Not retirement savings per se, but more along the lines of an emergency fund or a savings account for a future large purchase, like a car or a house down payment. These should be the first thing added onto your stripped-down bottom line.

12 - Debt: Wipe the Slate Clean
After that emergency fund is built and you have stable savings plans in place for your big future expenses, Tisdale and Kennedy recommend hammering the debts hard. They advocate a split into “good debt” and “bad debt” - for the most part, it’s really a split between interest rates and purpose. Anything with an interest rate above approximately 10% and anything incurred for something you don’t need is a bad debt - everything else (like a car loan or a home loan or a student loan) is a good debt to Tisdale and Kennedy. They advise paying off your bad debts as rapidly as you can and, more importantly, avoid incurring any more. Once you’re down to just good debts, you can keep moving forward.

13 - Living Longer and Stronger: The New Retirement
The next step is to set up a retirement plan, and the usual advice is offered here. The best bet for most people is to fund their 401(k) at work up to the employer’s match, then fully fund a Roth IRA, then dump anything extra you wish to save into the 401(k). There are a lot of formulas out there to use for calculating this - I’ve found that once you’re doing both the 401(k) up to the match and the Roth IRA and you’re under 30, you’re in great shape and you should focus hard on other goals.

14 - Covering Your Assets: How to Choose the Right Insurance
The chapter starts off with a long list of insurances you must have (health, dental, long-term care, long-term disability, homeowner’s/renter’s, and auto) and ones you might want to have depending on your situation (life, short-term disability, accidental death and dismemberment, umbrella liability, and possible riders on your homeowner’s insurance). These are all covered in a whirlwind in this chapter. Personally, I’ve got the health, dental, auto, homeowner’s, and life covered and I’m considering long-term care and long-term disability, just in case - they’re both really cheap at my age.

15 - Investing for Your Future
After this, start investing. Invest for big, long-term goals that maybe you can’t articulate yet (or maybe you can). The book recommends starting conservative so that you don’t overshoot your personal level of risk - and I completely agree. Put your money in something relatively low risk as an investment goes, with just enough of a real taste of risk that you’re not scared away. I usually recommend a very broad-based index fund from Vanguard, something like the Total Stock Market Index, so that you own bits of thousands of stocks and thus you’re largely unaffected by one of them tanking.

16 - The Real Cost of College
I was very happy to see that The True Cost of Happiness didn’t go down the easy road and just start talking about financial preparations for college. Instead, they looked at the many, many opportunities that exist in a child’s life to prepare them for college, open them up to other kinds of financial aid and scholarships, and grow as people. For instance, they suggest getting your children involved in working for volunteer programs - this makes them eligible for other kinds of financial aid that aren’t available to those who focus solely on their 529 balance and their FAFSA.

17 - Giving Back
Charity. That’s this chapter in one word. I’m a big advocate of just budgeting a piece of your annual spending for charity, whether it be church or secular charities, and sticking to that, and that’s largely what Tisdale and Kennedy advocate here as well. I find it much better to send out a few really big checks to charities that are most important to me each year and then saying “no” immediately to other charities that contact me - I can offer the rejection completely without guilt.

18 - Estate Planning
This chapter very briefly covers the absolute basics of estate planning, covering wills and other basic documents that everyone should have. Everyone should spend an afternoon taking care of this stuff - without it, your family could be out in the cold should you kick the bucket unexpectedly.

19 - A Final Thought on Your Finances
Update your plan once a month (yep, during that monthly personal finance meeting with your family) and look at your bottom line each day. For me, that “bottom line” is my children - a living reminder that I don’t really need a lot of the stuff that I try to talk myself into.

20 - Staying on Course
This is one aspect of personal finance that I find particularly challenging - once you start down the right path and start seeing some success, it’s easy to give it a break and lapse right back into your old habits. The book suggests a ton of fixes, most of which make sense - I find that constant reminders of the right thing to do (and my reasons for making those choices) work best for me.

21 - Change Happens
Our lives change over time, and change is often hard to deal with. Tisdale and Kennedy advocate the value of talking often to people you trust about your finances and about what you’re really thinking and feeling, just to get another set of eyes on your situation that can help guide you through changes. That’s brilliant advice - I firmly believe my wife is the best asset I have because of the wonderful advice and perspective she gives.

22 - Getting the Help You Need
This is important. If you have financial questions, the place to go is a fee-based financial advisor. Don’t go to one that earns commissions - choose one that will advise you with a fee. Your financial situation is unique and deserves to be treated as such - if you don’t know what to do, turn to a real expert.

Should You Read It?

This is a very good primer on basic personal finance, and it stands out a bit from the crowd because of the whole analogy of starting from the absolute bottom line and building up from there. I think that provides a very strong view of one’s own financial situation, because it forces you to discern clearly between want and need and, once you make that separation, allows you to build upon your needs in order of importance - a rational and carefully considered plan not trapped in the impulsiveness of buying.

That being said, there are a lot of what I like to call “primer” personal finance books out there - they offer the basics of what a person needs to know about managing their money but don’t offer anything exceptionally beyond that. This book falls into that category - it’s a good example with a good perspective, but it doesn’t take that extra step to jump out from the crowd.

If you’ve never read a book of this type before, this one’s definitely a good read with a lot of strong, sound advice, but if you’re familiar with the theme, it’s not one of those exceptional books that stands out from the pack or offers a completely new spin on things.

A lot of unexpected things can happen in the course of a day at the office, so the SimpleProductivityBlog recommends putting together an office survival kit in preparation for the unforeseen. The author's must-have tools include a sewing kit to mitigate a popped button or tear and a stain remover for those times you bring lunch back with your clothes. The author's toolkit is rather small, so let's hear what you would add to the ultimate office survival kit in the comments. While you're at it, you'll never be unprepared with a solid go bag. Photo by aokettun.

Too many large email attachments weighing down Outlook's PST file and your hard drive, but you don't want to throw out the message with the attachment? Weblog Digital Inspiration details how to separate attachments from email messages in Outlook without deleting the message. It's a simple process, and when you're done the file is no longer attached to the message; you can keep or delete it as you see fit. It's not difficult, but the little two-step process could save you hard drive space and keep Outlook's PST file lighter and snappier—especially if you back it up regularly.