(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best personal success books

If you're really truly interested in mastering this hobby and applying yourself to learning it, here's what I would recommend:

1. Define short-term goals. Do you want to learn A, B, and C tricks? Do you want to work on body movement and dance? If you're having a hard time defining this for yourself, look to the spinners you respect and try to figure out what it is about their style you admire and would like to make a part of your own.
   
   
2. Schedule a regular practice. Make an appointment with yourself that you would keep just like an appointment at work. Remember: this is something you're doing for you? Who is more important to keep your promises to in your life than yourself? Doing this will also help keep you from the dreaded "I can't find time to practice" conundrum so many of us wind up in...make times for the things that are important to you.
   
   
3. Create a regular 20-30 minute warmup ritual before you practice. This could be your meditation or a dance warmup, a series of stretches, etc. Pick a piece of music you'll listen to whenever you sit down to do this or have a particular scent of incense you put on. For the spiritual out there, this ritual will help prepare you for the work you're about to do and focus your mind on the task at hand. For the scientific folk out there, this is classical conditioning: you're setting triggers to put your mind into a state of focus and eliminating outside distractions.
   
   
4. Structure your practice around your goals. Want to integrate gunslingers into your flow? Try for one week to get ten spirals and ten meteor weaves every single day, then next week up the ante and practice the transitions between a flower and these moves ten times. Want to work on your dance/flow? Set aside 10-20 minutes to just spin to music and explore the space around you. Some days you'll be on and make lots of progress and some days it'll feel like you're backsliding or hitting your head against the wall. Both are important to the learning process.
   
   
5. Define your overarching goals. What is it you want to do with poi? Do you want to have a fun physical hobby, perform with it, get into the tech world, etc? Figuring out what attracts you to the art will help you focus your energies on practicing those skills that are most in line with what you enjoy. Also be prepared that you may discover something in the course of your practice and experience that changes this dramatically. Reevaluate it every 4-6 months or so.
   
   
6. Learn to love the plateau. We love getting new tricks. We love the excitement of novelty--and it's really bad for us. It teaches us to value the temporary over building in the long-term. Mastery is a lifelong journey where the goal becomes subsumed more and more by the experience of getting there as time goes on. Plateaus are important because they allow you to refine the things you've just learned and polish them into a more beautiful form. It is inevitable that you will spend the majority of your time in the flow arts on a plateau of some sort or another, so the more you make your peace with it early, the easier that journey will become.
   
   
7. Become comfortable with solo practice. All the research we have on mastering skills at this point indicates that it takes thousands of hours of deliberate solo practice to become a virtuoso at a given skill. Spinning with people is fun and you will learn new things, but the majority of the progress you'll make will be on your own. This is harder for some people to adapt to than others, but it is an essential part of the journey (unless, of course, your goal is to become a virtuoso at partner poi ;)
   
   
8. If possible, find a good teacher/coach. A good teacher will push you when you need to be pushed, challenge you in ways you never thought possible, and guide you to becoming the best possible poi spinner that you can become. Sadly, this tends to be a luxury as good teachers in the flow arts world are extremely hard to find, but if you're able to find a good one make every use of their services.
   
   Good luck with your journey! It's been one of the greatest I've embarked on in my adult life :)
   
   Here are some books I would recommend on the topic:
   
   Mastery by George Leonard (talks a lot about mindset and learning to love the plateau)
   
   Talent is Overrated by Geoffrey Colvin (gives a lot of pointers when it comes to deliberate practice)
   
   So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport (lots of counterintuitive but useful info on developing skills)
   
   The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle (lots of great info about what to look for in a good coach/teacher)

Hey friend, first off - go easier on yourself. Part of the process of making progress comes when you believe you're worth the effort and start treating yourself as well you would someone you love. It sounds corny, but really it's huge because it shifts your priorities pretty drastically in the direction of making positive changes.

I've been exactly where you are. I'm still working on getting better everyday. By posting and asking for help to change you've already gotten better today. Now get a little bit better tomorrow. Than again. Marginal, consistent improvement eventually adds up to exponential change. Just like your bad habits took years to creep up and form, your good habits will take time to establish.

Sometimes understanding how your brain works can help you to change the way it works. Check out: The Power of Habit.

Model yourself after people you admire. If that's not anyone you know personally right now, look to your cultural heroes. Read/listen/watch about how they started out, what choices they made and habits they formed early. If you can't think of anybody to emulate start here: 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, then start browsing related books from there. Educate yourself on HOW to change.

Figure out your WHY. Why do you want to make these habit changes? Write it down. Look at it everyday, and put it in your mind. Let it affect your choices and shape your habits into better habits.

​

There's tons of motivating material out there in the world - if you find it helpful, put it in front of you more often. Recurring bursts of motivation can get you over the initial hump of building discipline to form new habits. Also, this video from Will Smith genuinely inspires a different way of thinking about yourself and the world (seems like a joke, but Fresh Prince is inspiring as hell.) That's all I'll list, go out and find your own inspiration.

​

Good luck.

​

TL;DR - Every *morning tell yourself...

“You are going to start working out, stop smoking, start a new hobby, and most importantly become a man.”

Then do it in the smallest way possible. Next day, add to it. Repeat. Repeat. Prosper!

​

EDIT: fixed some typo's.

> that the forces that impede or expede your hard work are not merely random

Might I suggest that you read and try hard to grok this recent MIT study: If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Turns out it's just chance. This particular study uses wealth as a measure of success, but it pretty much applies to any material measure of success. The study pretty much shows that success is largely contingent on luck.

You might also read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets.

Random chance plays a much, much larger role in our lives than most people are willing to admit. I'm not saying it's all random, but chance (luck) does play a larger role than we like to believe.

The key, then, in being successful is in defining success in ways that don't depend on random chance.

If your definition of success is a career in academia...well, good luck, because it will definitely hinge upon luck.

But if your definition of success is providing break through results in some research area...that's a little less contingent on luck.

Might I suggest that you read some of the stoics: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. Learn to clearly see what is within your control and what is not. And don't allow your happiness or satisfaction to rest upon that which is not in your control.

Props to you for taking the leap and I wish you the best of luck.

I completely agree that motivation is overrated, but I have one minor nitpick. In my mind, discipline is almost synonymous with willpower. I know they have their differences, but there is significant overlap. Having discipline is still kind of a white-knuckled approach.

What I suggest is developing a routine. Routines are not subject to motivation and they result in a cumulative daily effect that adds up and compounds over time. In the words of W. H. Auden: "Routine in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition."

 

If you're interested in developing a routine, you have to consume information about strategies from the experts. Here are some of my favorite sources:

• One of my personal favorites is James Clear. His articles on habits and performance are excellent.
  
• The book Peak by Anders Ericsson. The author is world class expert on how people become experts.
  
• Deep Work by Cal Newport. Great book on creating better work habits
  
• The Art of Charm podcast by Jordan Harbinger. Great informational podcast. Check out his recent episode with Leo Babauta, who is incredibly knowledgeable about the field of habit formation and turned his life around with his own tips.
  
• Tim Ferriss occasionally has good information about routine formation on his podcast.
  
  There are many others but these are some great places to start.
  
   
  
  Social accountability is also important as another user mentioned. I recommend telling friends about your site or doing a case study. There are also great tools like stickk that donate your money to a charity or cause you hate if you don't meet your goal.

I've been in QA for about three years - started out in Support, kept getting stuck with the "weird" tickets, got better at troubleshooting and bug hunting, and eventually started doing testing with the dev team. Working at very small startups helped speed this process up tremendously. I'm now working at a ~500 person company (huuuuuge from my perspective, I'm used to a dozen coworkers, tops!) and learned Selenium/Capybara automated tests about a year ago.

I haven't found any quality-related books that have interested me, and most of the technical resources I've found have just been whatever pops up on Google/Stack Overflow. I am also subscribed to this subreddit, and /r/qualityassurance, but they're both pretty low-traffic, and I wish more articles were shared here. If there are any blog posts that have resonated with you, I'd love to take a look as well!

The best thing I've done for myself, technically, was re-writing our automated UI test suite in POM. This ended up saving me hours of work a few months later when we added a bunch of new features, and I just had to copy-paste a few things to test for them. This is a good overview:

https://www.guru99.com/page-object-model-pom-page-factory-in-selenium-ultimate-guide.html

Because of how much grief this saved me, I continue to evangelize for it!

I can, however, recommend some management/team/soft skills/business-y books! I'm not in love with my current company, so I end up reading a lot of these to keep myself sane and motivated. Here are some of the ones I've liked the best:

• First, Break All The Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
  
• The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
  
• Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst
  
• Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators
  
• Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
  
• The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice
  
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
  
• Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior - Kindle version on sale today for $2!
  
• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, 3rd Edition: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships
  
  A lot of these are available in libraries too, and I've made a habit of checking them out there, and buying them if I really like them.
  
  I hope this helps!

It's not there. Mostly I got results related to the aquatic life form. Maybe you're seeing it because you've already clicked on the search result or Google is targeting you based on your searching habits?

Or maybe you're referring to something I could find if I paged back a couple of times (which I did, eventually)? If so, that does not cut it. lgtmfy is for when the search results are obvious, not when you have to dig for it. If you're trying to prove a point that something is easy to find and it's not obviously easy to find, then it isn't working. If you're genuinely trying to help, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=fish+interactive+shell would be a better url.

In any case, my point, which you are proving, is that these features are not sufficiently discoverable in the current terminal market. Fish does look nice, though. I'm going to try it out.

Here's a copy of the front page in case you were curious.

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Image results for fish - Report images

Fish - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A fish is any aquatic vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic (or cold-blooded), covered with scales, and equipped with two sets of paired fins and ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish - 169k - Cached - Similar pages -
Aquarium Supplies, Fish Tanks, & Live Tropical Fish - Fish.com
Fish.com is your source for aquarium supplies, fish tanks, and even live tropical fish at guaranteed lowest prices! From aquariums to aquarium stands, ...
www.fish.com/ - 46k - Cached - Similar pages -
The Fish Times
At Fish. Restaurant we serve Wild Salmon when we are able to get it from a trusted sustainable source but when we can't we won't use farmed salmon and ...
Show map of 350 HARBOR DR, SAUSALITO, CA 94965
www.331fish.com/ - 18k - Cached - Similar pages -
Local business results for fish near Mountain View, CA - Change location

A. Seascapes Fish & Pets Inc - maps.google.com - (650) 961-1386 - 8 reviews
B. Pasta? Trattoria - Food Delivery - www.mountainviewpasta.com - (650) 938-4147 - 19 reviews
C. Scott's Cantankerous Fish - www.thecantankerousfish.com - (650) 966-8124 - 19 reviews
D. Fish Hawk Enterprises - maps.google.com - (650) 961-7200 - More
E. Fish Tank - www.ftsun.us - (408) 736-7940 - 1 review
F. Aquatic Life Forms - www.aquaticlifeforms.com - (408) 245-9600 - 4 reviews
G. magickitchen.com - www.magickitchen.com - (877) 516-2442 - More
H. Bella Vita Italian Restaurant - www.ristorantebellavita.com - (650) 917-0300 - 5 reviews
I. Fish Market Restaurant - www.thefishmarket.com - (650) 493-9188 - 33 reviews
J. Global Food Technologies - maps.google.com - (650) 947-9210 - More

More results near Mountain View, CA »
FISH! Philosophy :: Home
The FISH! Philosophy is a set of simple, practical tools to help you create the work culture you've been looking for. It's a way to build stronger ...
www.charthouse.com/ - 30k - Cached - Similar pages -
Fish Pictures, Photos, Facts, Information, Sounds, Habitats ...
Get fish pictures, photos, facts, information, profile, sounds, habitats, reports, news, and more from National Geographic.
animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish.html - 40k - Cached - Similar pages -
Amazon.com: Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve ...
Amazon.com: Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results: Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, John Christensen, Ken Blanchard: Books.
www.amazon.com/Remarkable-Boost-Morale-Improve-Results/dp/0786866020 - 294k - Cached - Similar pages -
Yahoo! Babel Fish - Text Translation and Web Page Translation
Yahoo! Babel Fish provides free online text and web page language translation tools!
babelfish.yahoo.com/ - 21k - Cached - Similar pages -
Fish Printouts - EnchantedLearning.com
Some Fish Printouts: To make a fish coloring book, click here. ... Information and printouts on these primitive fish that go through metamorphosis. ...
www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/fish/printouts/ - 47k - Cached - Similar pages -
Fish Information Service
The Fish Information Service has info for the aquarium hobbyist, including descriptions of freshwater and saltwater fish, aquatic plants, and more.
fins.actwin.com/ - 11k - Cached - Similar pages -
Go Fish Sushi
GO FISH. 641 Main Street St. Helena, CA 94574 (707) 963-0700. CentaurGothic. Centaur Bold. Centaur Ita;ic. Centaur old Italic. Copperplate. Copperplate Bold ...
www.gofishrestaurant.net/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages -
Book results for fish
Fish: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and ... - by Stephen C Lundin, Harry Paul, John Christensen - 124 pages
Fish Sticks: A Remarkable Way to Adapt to ... - by Stephen C Lundin, Harry Paul, John Christensen - 150 pages

Here are all the books with amazon links, Alphabetical order :)

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• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591396190
  
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh et al. Link: http://amzn.com/160941280X
  
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Link: http://amzn.com/0804137382
  
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston Link: http://amzn.com/1590597141
  
• How Google Works by Eric Schmidt et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1455582344
  
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk Link: http://amzn.com/006227306X
  
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson Link: http://amzn.com/0307720748
  
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1400064287
  
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck Link: http://amzn.com/0345472322
  
• Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0385346654
  
• Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim S. Grover et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1476714207
  
• Rework by Jason Fried et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0307463745
  
• Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin Link: http://amzn.com/1591842948
  
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss Link: http://amzn.com/0307465357
  
• The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth by James Altucher Link: http://amzn.com/150100994X
  
• The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson Link: http://amzn.com/0060008768
  
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Link: http://amzn.com/0062273205
  
• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen Link: http://amzn.com/0062060244
  
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries Link: http://amzn.com/0307887898
  
• The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco Link: http://amzn.com/B004BDOUAI
  
• The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday Link: http://amzn.com/1591846358
  
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1885167776
  
• The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0984999302
  
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell Link: http://amzn.com/0316346624
  
• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1591848369
  
• Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out by Marc Ecko Link: http://amzn.com/1451685319
  
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel et al. Link: http://amzn.com/0804139296

So three years ago I was pretty much in the exact position, except I was probably even older than you. After a lot of just being miserable, I decided it was time to make a change. I started reading a bunch career-related self-help guides (What Colour is Your Parachute, Strengthfinder, and What To Do When It's Your Turn are some that I would recommend) and trying to think more critically about what I was good at naturally, and what I really wanted to do with my time. Then I began thinking about what I wanted my life to look like, ideally. Not just like, how much money I wanted to make, but things like where I wanted to live, who I would want to work with, what kind of projects and problems interest me. Then (and this was one of the most crucial steps) I started browsing the job application sections of websites of companies where I thought I might want to work. After finding out about a unique career I had never heard of before (User Experience Design), I went to meetups, talked to people, did more research. Went back to school (had to go to Langara for a year, which was the best thing I've ever done), networked at every opportunity I could, managed to get an internship, internship turned into a job, went back to UBC (because I realized that the job I really wanted to do would really befit from my degree–in cultural anthropology), and now I'm about to grad with honours. I should add that none of this has been easy, even though I really really enjoy school, school is super hard for me and causes me a huuuuuuuuge amount of anxiety. But, having the opporunity to envision, and then experience what the goal of my studies were was incredibly influential. So don't give up. Be realistic, be humble (being an undergrad in your late twenties requires a good deal of humility at times), but be persistent in pursuing what you really want to do with your time. After all, you'll be working for the majority of the rest of your life in all likelihood. Best of luck, hope this helped.

So... I was that guy.

It's somewhat painful to think about how much of a lazy ass-hat I was. I went through several relationships, roommates, jobs, and residences before eventually getting my shit together. Even now (in my 30s), I haven't fully shaken off the 1.0 Beta Version of myself.

I'm not sure what 18 year old me needed to kick my ass into shape, but I can tell you this: no one can change you but yourself. You're not going to be able to change him. He needs to value hustle and grit and tenacity. If you care about him, leave him. He is not in a good place to be in a relationship. His relationships are likely based on the ease and convenience of those relationships. For example, his parents giving him money when he could get a job, you travelling to him, living at home; these are all out of convenience. Ask yourself about his friendships and how he interacts with people. How convenient/easy/effortless are his relationships?

This dude needs to learn that working for things is important. Effort is important. If he wanted you, he would do the work necessary to keep you. His laziness likely stems from fear of failure and fear of success, as well as his parents coddling him.

Leave him, but might I suggest, you also leave him with some suggested reading material:

Grit by Angela Duckworth

7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Outliers, The Tipping Point, Blink, David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Last, but certainly not least: Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski - This one isn't so much for him as it is for anyone he dates in the future. This book discusses female sexuality, anatomy, and sex drive. It has helped me get laid with the wife a BUNCH.

I don't know if it is just growing up and maturing, but I can not emphasize enough how much these books have changed my life. These books have kicked me in the ass and made me a better man. My wife also played a major role in kicking my ass into gear, but we got married young and we were basically forced to make it work if we didn't want to get divorced, so I do not suggest staying with him to "fix him". He's got a ton of work to do on himself. You seem like you've got your shit well enough together, so don't tie yourself to a weight that heavy. It will hold you back and drag you down. It will get worse before it gets better. You can absolutely find someone who makes you happy and who contributes to the relationship. I've been married for 11 years, with 4 kids, and both my wife and I are pursuing our passions (I also happen to be a musician/creative type), while holding down full time jobs. We are madly in love, she is my best friend, and I am forever grateful for the work she put in to help me along.

Hell, just have him read this:

Bruh. I was you. Things seem to take so much effort, don't they? You probably have visions of yourself making music for a living, right? Record deals, and stage lights, and recording in fancy studios, right? Well, guess what? It's absolutely possible to make that happen. But you need to work for it. If something is worth wanting, it is worth working for. If you aren't really working for it, do you really want it? You need to make small steps toward an ultimate goal that you want to pursue and stick to it. By 28 years old, you could have a record deal. You could be touring. You could win a Grammy. I'm not kidding. You could if you hit the ground hard, right now, and start kicking your own ass. Get up and move or you're going to be in your 30's just starting to pursue your passions and you'll feel like you've wasted so much goddamn time.

I wish you both the best of luck. I hope this helps.

Wow, playing Carnegie Hall is quite the accomplishment!

> On a side note, OP, can you talk a bit about how you got through your perf. anxiety?

Sure! The first thing I did was read The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green. The whole book is great and he gives a lot of exercises you can practice in and out of performing that really help.

I would say the biggest thing that helped me besides all of the great exercises I learned from the book was the preparation routine I created for leading up to performances. The routine I'll go into below really helps me feel secure in my knowledge of the music, as well as helps to eliminate any unknowns I have, which seem to be a big part of what slips me up and makes me nervous.

If I'm giving a solo recital, for example, my first step is to give myself deadlines for 1) having my music learned, 2) having my music memorized, and 3) having my entire program ready to perform. It's different for everyone of course, but I typically want to have my music memorized a month before the performance and have my program ready to perform 2 weeks before.

In the weeks leading up to the performance, I do several things. 3 weeks before the performance, I start visualization. I go into a quiet room, close my eyes, and visualize the entire performance - how I feel 10 minutes beforehand in the Green Room, walking out on stage, what the stage looks like, what the audience sounds like, sitting down and tuning, starting the first piece, etc. Even if I don't really know what the stage looks like, it helps for me to visualize and truly feel myself getting amped up before and during my imaginary performance. I naturally find that, over time, I'm less anxious with each visualization.

2 weeks before, I play through my entire program every day. I cut an hour off of my practice time to do this so I don't tire myself out, but at that point, I should be prepared enough that I'm just hitting spots. One of the absolute biggest triggers for a memory slip or disaster performance is not being able to recover from a mistake, so when I run my program, I always play through my mistakes and then look at them later. A lot of the mistakes are just flukes - when you're playing for an hour, it'll happen. But, in my opinion, being able to recover from them is one of the most important skills a performing musician can have.

On performance day, I have my little routine I like to do. I go for a run in the morning, make my favorite breakfast, listen to some music for an hour or so, and then practice for a couple of hours throughout the day. Some people like to take the whole day off, but I like to keep busy.

About 30 minutes before, I'll go into a quiet space and meditate for 5-10 minutes. When I start to get anxious, I use the techniques I learned in The Inner Game - one of my favorites is, when my palms inevitably start to sweat, I observe that it's happening and remind myself, "Yes my palms are sweaty, and that's okay because it won't cause my hands to slip or play the wrong notes." They usually stop sweating at that point, but if they don't, I'm okay with it.

I've been doing this routine for years and, coupled with the techniques in the Inner Game, I have no anxiety on stage, just excitement and what I consider normal nerves. It's also worth noting that I perform a lot, so while I absolutely believe in this routine and it has helped me with every single one of my performances, I think a lot of it also has to do with me getting more seasoned as a performer.

This became a lot longer than I intended it to be! I hope it was helpful. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to PM me. :)

>Let the artists draw scenes, the A/V geeks create movies and the programmers create an app that quizzes other students. Grade on effort.

I have to partially disagree with you on this one. If you let the artists draw scenes in a math class (for example), then they aren't really honing their math skills, they're honing their art skills. For certain courses (such as history or biology) this open-ended process works well because these topics encourage a creative, critical thinking approach to understanding the topics, so a drawing/movie/app would be a suitable project to learn and apply that knowledge. In addition, the students will presumably learn better from these projects, as they can take ownership of the project (as opposed to doing problems 10-25 on page 256 of the textbook). This is anecdotal evidence, but I remember making a documentary about the use of nuclear warfare from 1945-1955 in Grade 11 history...and the things I learned during that project are some of the only things I remember now, almost 10 years later.

However, such open-ended projects do not work as well for subjects where specific skills are required (e.g. any subjects where math is a prerequisite); an analogy I particularly like (taken from this book ) is the difference between a soccer player and a budding violinist. Soccer is a free-flowing game which encourages creativity on the pitch and practicing this way will improve your performance in a game. However, to gain the necessary skills to become a creative, exciting soccer player (e.g. dribbling, passing) requires mindful repetitions of that particular skill (what's called deliberate practice ).

Therefore, when teaching subjects like math, physics and chemistry, you cannot necessarily allow the same freedom in projects until students have sufficient background knowledge, and you must also keep in mind what you want the students to learn; for example, if you require them to give a Powerpoint presentation of their topic, they might spend more time fiddling with that than actually learning their topic!

I'm getting a bit sidetracked though. For the OP, I think projects are a good idea, since high school biology does not necessarily rely on much prerequisite knowledge. For physics (my area of interest), projects must be chosen a bit more carefully, since it can become easy to strip away any actual physics from a project. As an example of this, in Grade 11 Physics, I wrote a paper on The Big Bang Theory. It ran about 20 pages (double-spaced, of course), and contained all sorts of interesting tidbits, such as black holes, quantum mechanics and all sorts of modern physics tidbits. The paper contained lots of facts, but no actual physics. I didn't have to do any calculations, analyze any data, verify any hypotheses. I essentially just reviewed some literature from popular science textbooks. So projects in physics have to be carefully chosen to in such a way that they are interesting to the students, but still allow them to practice the skills that the course requires (in a physics course, that would mathematical derivations or manipulation, critically analyzing data, etc.)
(Whoops, I got a bit carried away in that response).

So I found that article's "solutions" pretty useless (wow, watch my diet? Get more sleep? Why didn't I think of that?), but it raises a really good issue about how we're very overscheduled. Right now I'm working full time, studying full time, and I have a toddler. I also have a few hobbies that take up about 5-10 hours of my week. It's a pretty busy life but I wouldn't have it any other way. Here's my advice based purely on what works for me:

1. I don't make to do lists, they're discouraging and depressing. The urgent stuff is in my head already because it's urgent, and I keep a set routine so I learn to associate Wednesday nights with laundry, Tuesday nights with taking dinner snacks for class, etc. Everything else probably isn't important enough to remember.
   
   
2. I say no a lot. To social functions, out of state weddings that would suck a lot of time and money, movie night on the couch when I have some major stuff to get done tonight...it's all short term gains for long term pain, e.g. more work on the other end. I also say no to endless conversations about how everything is soooo stressful omg. It's become acceptable to just talk about this stuff without being solution focused at all. I know you're stressed and hurting. So let's do something together to help you feel relief. I don't want to just complain.
   
   
3. I say yes a lot. I say yes to my own time, my own wellbeing, to help from my spouse, and my own health. Time for myself, by myself, is never time wasted. I love to feel connected to my body so I say yes to massages, hikes, and exercise. I love to learn and I get bored/depressed if I don't learn something new, so I say yes to classes or activities as much as I can. I love to wear fun clothes so I say yes to sewing things and thrift stores. What keeps me happy makes my family happy.
   
   
4. I schedule my social life. I have a standing lunch date with a friend once a week. I make it a goal to make two other social engagements a month. It's enough but not too much.
   
   
5. I spend more money than I would like to. Right now time is my most precious resource, whereas I can always make more money (maybe not enough but hey). I love eating healthy but it takes so long to prepare, so I buy exactly what I want for lunch each day and don't feel bad about the expense. I cook a big meal once a week and I bake once a week and that's it, everything else is pre-bought. I miss cooking and baking but right now, it's something I choose to say no to.
   
   
6. I don't care about what other moms do. I've worked on a crisis line long enough that I know everyone is fighting their own battles, no matter how perfect their life seems to be. I get jealous sometimes but I also know my own limits. Some moms prioritize something like exercise whereas others might prioritize time to read or be creative. It's their life. None of your business.
   
   
7. I take the long view. We've all heard the phrase that the days are short but the years are long, so it helps me de-stress to think about why I'm doing this parenting thing: because watching her grow is amazing. Because I made her. Because she learns something new every day. It's not about a cute nursery or after school classes, it's about having the privilege to oversee this little human's life. And that makes me fine with a messy kitchen or weird stain on the carpet again.
   
   
8. I recommend the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less to learn how to focus on what's really meaningful to you. It's not about motherhood but almost all of the anecdotes are relatable for anyone who just has too much going on. We've fallen into a trap of believing busy = productive and productive = good, so we need to break that line of thought.

> How would this work on any sort of large scale? e.g. a city. Most people are strangers, so are they just going to be gifting strangers etc?

Give away shops. Gift exchanges.

> These vague, evidence less assertions is exactly why i'm not impressed by leftists.

Carrot and stick theories of human motivation have been disproven

> Leftists make the argument that humans are going to drastically change their behavior from what it is now all the time, and they do it without evidence or any good arguments.


Ancient societies centered around gift-giving and social debt practices rather than the common myth of barter. There have been plenty of scientific arguments in favor of communism.

> Well trade secrets. If you come up with a way to make some process 10% cheaper, and you keep it a secret, you can undercut all the competition and get more sales. It could take them a long time to get hold of this secret.

Depending on what the trade secret is they could just as easily make innovations and increase the price of their good because of the scarcity of the trade secret. This introduces an inefficiency that wouldn’t exist without a market economy. Why should we prefer the efficiency of markets over the efficiencies that can be had without them in this case?

> Is the answer not obvious? People who want the research done will fund it voluntarily.

I don’t think gift economies can be effective for work that requires one's full attention like scientific research without people having their basic needs guaranteed outside the market mechanism (like through gift economy).

> I see indie game makers making games all the time when there's not much chance they'll turn a profit. They do it because they love the idea of making the game, and the money is a bonus (or something that lets them do their hobby full time).

So you understand how people can be motivated in a gift economy. If gift economies can work for these things, why not at least try to get them to work for other sorts of relatively abundant goods?

> Right, but is it more or less efficient than having IP?

It is less efficient because while functionally the innovator gets to keep a monopoly on the knowledge in both cases at least with IP they share their knowledge with others even if those others would have to pay royalties to use that is still better than not having that knowledge not shared at all.

> One big issue here too is that IP laws by their nature violate physical property rights, and I view that as immoral. I mean if you want a great absurd example, it's John Deere claiming people who buy their tractors can't service them themself or with 3rd parties because it'd violate the copyright they have on the software in the tractor, and that John Deere is only licencing the tractors due to this. It's absurd, and a huge violation of property exchange principles (I can't imagine people agreed to this in writing when they bought the tractor).

This is largely a result of regulatory capture. It isn't hard to imagine a much more reasonable form of IP.

> IP laws are as much a moral issues as an issue of efficiency, and I think IP law fails on both fronts.

I agree with you that IP (all forms) is immoral, but I disagree that a reasonable form of IP would be inefficient if one is searching for the same sort of efficiencies that market economies offer for human capital.

> Did you forget competition exists for a sentence there?

Fair enough.

> I'm not sure you know what rivalrous means. It simply means two people can't use the same thing at the same time for different purposes. This absolutely applies to absentee ownership.

Absentee ownership means that the individual that owns it isn't using it, so how is it rivalrous?

> Is that research really that valuable though?

Extending human knowledge of the universe is a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself. Even without that motivation, this research could lead to technological advances down the line.


> Wait, are you saying you disagree with the division of labour?

The division of labour is obviously a great thing as it enables the complexities of modern society, but it isn't a goal unto itself. In the narrow scenario I was discussing, the specialization of the janitor doesn’t buy us much in the way of efficiency. It forces an individual to work a bullshit monotonous job when everyone in the organization can do their share of work towards it, so everyone can do fulfilling and valuable intellectual work. It also defeats the common argument used against communism about who will do the shitty jobs. If there is a job that no one wants to do but has to be done, the group can democratically decide on such a solution rather than just forcing the impoverished to have unfulfilling work.

> I agree market socialism wouldn't suffer from this kind.

Then, what is your objection to market socialism?

> Post-scarcity is utopian and never going to happen

Post-scarcity is only utopian if you define the term in a manner, which makes it not useful. Post-scarcity can refer to an economy where goods can be produced in relative abundance compared to their demand to the point where trading in that good becomes unprofitable. This has actually already occurred in agriculture causing the EU to buy up the surplus to increase the prices back to profitable levels. Production for use, while creating some inefficiencies, can lead to efficiencies like total distribution.

> (just like communism)

How would your view change if it were established that communism is feasible?

Lots of great recommendations in this thread; I've added a few to my reading list. Here are my suggestions (copied from a previous thread):

• How to Win Friends and Influence People - Everyone with a mother should practice this.
  
• Tao Te Ching (S. Mitchell translation)
  
• Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy - I never cared about economics until after I was done with school, and didn't remember anything from university class. This helped explain a lot of common fallacies many people make.
  
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets - As Taleb says in the beginning of the book, anyone from any profession could have written this book, but a financial background makes this much more interesting. Anyone interested in science and what we can learn from the world of past experience should read this. This led to the next book:
  
• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne - A biography of Montaigne, a great skeptic, always curious, interested in what it means to be human. I found I could relate a great deal with the man, as many others have in different ways. The dust-jacket description made it sound like a boring historical overview, but I think the book flowed pretty well and was always interesting.
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Anyone that ever creates a slideshow, or attempts to represent data visually should read this book. More than once. I'd say it changed my life.
  
  And, the following two are a look into the lives of two great men that lived in the 20th century; both offer many points worth emulating.
  
  
• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
  
• The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer (once available in full on PBS website, seems not to be the case now ...)

I've been exactly where you are. ADHD was, and in many ways still is, a defining feature of my life. Here's what I wish I'd known when I was your age:

-If you're feeling overwhelmed, there's nothing wrong with slowing down for a while. Consider dropping any honors or AP classes and taking an easier course load. The very worst case scenario is that if you want to attend a four-year-college, you'll have to attend community college first. By the time you're an adult, not even the world's most colossal snobs will care where you spent your first two years of university.

-Become an organizational freak, and do it ASAP. Keep your room squeaky clean at all times. Be someone who has a conscious system for staying on track. One of the most beloved systems for this, which also helps people without ADHD, is laid out in Getting Things Done by David Allen

-Start thinking about what you want your life to be like as an adult. What kind of career do you want? How important is money to you now, and how important do you think it will be by the time you're closing in on 30? What kind of work can you do for an extended period of time without making yourself completely miserable? These things are important for everyone to think about, but I think people with ADHD are even more prone to ignoring these questions. One of the most well-received books for helping address these questions is Designing Your Life, which is based on a course at Princeton. (Disclaimer: I just started reading it, so I can't offer a full assessment. But it seems like a book that someone in your situation would greatly benefit from reading.)

-Get physically fit, whatever that means to you. If fitness means being able to run marathons or swim fast, learn to do that. If it means looking in the mirror and seeing a ripped physique, learn to lift weights properly. Fitness is one of the world's most reliable confidence boosters, and if you're someone who struggles with ADHD, anything that can make you feel better about yourself is something you'll want to consider doing.

-Read about successful people with ADHD. It turns out that a lot of people with ADHD tend to perform well in creative and entrepreneurial endeavors. Personally, I'm working on building my own business, and I wish I'd started doing that a long time ago.

-Medication is an option, but don't rely on it exclusively. A pill isn't going to fix your ADHD, but it might put you in a frame of mind that helps you manage it more easily. Personally I can't deal with the side effects of the ADHD meds I've tried, so I don't currently take them.

Just be careful, it's easy to fall down the rabbit hole of 'thinking you're being productive' but working ON things instead of "In" things. (Meta-procrastination is reading a book about getting organized instead of getting organized.) You should strive to have the simplest, most boring system that actually works for you. It's very easy to get caught up in the trap of researching the latest and greatest fad rather than actually doing the hard tasks that need to be done.

The 'classic' is "How to take control of your time and your life" by Lakein. This is the most generic, 1970s version of time management possible, but is helpful to understand as it is kind of 'responded to' by multiple other authors, even if they don't call him out by name.

Another frequently referenced work is "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Covey. This gets mentioned in a lot of places. It is a 'top down' style.

For a completely different perspective, try "Getting Things Done" by Allen. This will lead you to realize how many commitments that you have made. It is more 'bottom up'.

Finally, some of the most interesting stuff in this space that I have read is by Mark Forster. His latest book is here. And his blog is here.

At a high level, it is always useful to think about the utility of what you are doing - that is, making sure you are doing the right things, even if you are doing them slowly (working on your most important tasks), rather than doing low value tasks efficiently (man, I can read email quickly). Peter Drucker, Tim Ferriss (Four Hour Workweek), etc.

Other ideas/Books to research: JIT/Kanban, 80/20 'rule', "Eat that frog" by Brian Tracy. Smarter Faster Better by Duhigg, The Power of Habit also by Duhigg I also very much enjoyed. The Magic of Tidying up by Kondo might also give you some insight into cleaning out your commitments.

Hope this helps. I have read all of these so let me know if you have questions I guess...

When I was applying for jobs after graduate school I went to a counselor and we spent an entire hour on negotiation techniques. It cost $60 and I used what I learned to increase my starting salary from $73K to $88K, with a grade increase to boot. That was over a decade ago, so I'm at over a $150K return (not including the percentage increases during the raises) on a $60 investment. When I left that company to come to my current place of employment, I wasn't able to get them to move on salary because it was pseudo government (it was already a big jump from the previous job so I was pleased), but I was able to get a signing bonus. As an aside, one of the contributing factors to women being paid less than men is that they generally are less likely to negotiate salary.

It sounds like you should take the new position, not just for the pay but also the engagement and the long term growth potential.

It is good that you are aware that you are looking for a complete compensation package which may include vacation (more accrual or more to start), signing bonus, relocation expenses, retirement contributions, etc, in addition to the salary. Some of these may only be available to executives though. Ideally you would want treat each one of these separately; negotiate base salary, then vacation, then 401k, etc.

You're in the best possible position to negotiate because they want to hire you. The key is to be respectful but straight forward. The company almost always has room to adjust, especially if it is a big place and they have someone that they want to hire. They don't want to go to the expense of screening and interviewing more candidates, checking references, making offers, losing working getting done, etc for another few thousand a year.

I put the material from my time with the counselor here so you might want to check it out.

Edit: A couple other points.

1. These negotiations should always be done in person if you can swing it
   
   
2. The first person to mention a salary number is at a disadvantage. If they press, you can say things like "I'm sure your company has a standard salary range for this position. What is it?" or "Given the new responsibilities of this position, I don't believe that my previous salary is terribly relevant to the discussion"
   
   
3. Talk in ranges. When I was offered $73K, I responded with "I was expecting something in the low $90s". That was when he said that that type of salary would be for a level 4 and this is a level 3 position that the offered, so I countered with "then maybe I need to be a level 4"
   
   Good luck!

So I struggled with this also when I was in my 20s. My family all went to college and we have numerous professionals in my family so the momentum was to go and study accounting....Dad kinda forced us all into that major. But I was miserable. It wasn't exciting enough for me....until I got my first job as an accountant working for a manufacturing business.

So I HATED cost accounting in college....like it was one of my least favorite classes and I struggled to get a C in the class. However this job was real world cost accounting and I LOVED IT!! Like literally was excited as hell to go into work each day because I got to use my brain to figure shit out.

So this right here taught me that there is a HUGE difference between the educational experience and how that will translate into post educational satisfaction on the job. This is something that aptitude tests can't possibly hope to measure let alone direct anyone into a major that will be satisfying. Now sometimes sure....people take those tests and magically find their path but most people I know or have talked to have struggled to find meaningful work....even with these stupid tests.

OK so where does that leave us? Well I think we need a better approach. For me, I had to start allowing myself to "do what I want" meaning, I started asking myself and noticing what was attracting my attention when I wasn't focused on working or accomplishing something......I found that I was drawn to computers and had always been drawn to them.

So while I was working, still miserable and in a job I fucking HATED, I started to ask myself what I wanted to do with computers. This questioning took many forms but it basically boils down to, "Ok SW, you can do anything and computers are a wide branch of study....what do you really enjoy or what would you think you might enjoy doing with them?" And the more I probed around this question I remember that I had always wanted to know how to fix them, how they worked internally, what were all those parts and pieces inside and what did they do and could I learn all of that stuff? I dunno but it sounded interesting to me so I'll spend a little time with it and see how I feel.

But I didn't know where to start with any of that so I headed to the bookstore to see if they had anything. This was back in the late 90s and I didn't have access to the WWW except at work so the bookstore was the best bet. I found out about A+ Certification and the more I looked into that the more appealing it was......so I bought a book and committed to studying it.

Every night I would come home exhausted from work, eat, exercise then plop down for a few hours of reading. I was totally absorbed in the material and 2 hours would pass like it was 5 minutes!!! This happened over and over again and somedays I didn't want to study but I'd committed myself so I did and over time I learned a LOT!

Now my story goes on and on from there but I'll skip a lot of the details. What it led me to was first building my own computer....then building them for work, then I wanted to learn about Linux so I started playing around with that and then I wanted to learn about programming so I started playing around with that which led be back to University at 36 to pursue a Comp Sci degree and here I am, some 9 years after graduating.....unemployed and happier than I can remember being in my life! :)

What's the point in all of this? Well follow your bliss. That's what I did and while you may think, "Wait you're unemployed why would I follow your suggestion?" just know that my unemployment was a choice....a new path and I needed time to give birth to my next area of focus....which is starting to emerge. :)

I posted this video a few days ago and it's a beautiful way of saying what I've said.

I know from experience how difficult Calc 3 is and Linear Algebra came right after that and kicked my ass like no other class I've ever had in my life. Holy shit that was an ass reaming!! What kept me going? My desire for that silly piece of paper and my commitment to getting my degree. Degrees have value precisely because they are hard to obtain!! Most people get pissed off at having to take so many classes that don't relate to what they want to do and over time, even the most highly motivated students will struggle.....I was more motivated than most and it was an absolute BITCH!!

However just because something is difficult doesn't mean I quit and go looking for a different path. I used to think that.....that if something was difficult or if I was struggling, I was off course and needed to find something better where I didn't struggle. WRONG....sometimes we need to press onward, dig deeper, STAY THE COURSE because we're on the right path but paths can be tough as fuck.

I KNEW I was on the right path because I had given myself enough time to explore and try on different ideas and paths and all that so I was willing to commit to the degree. Once committed, giving up wasn't an option because once you start quitting in life, it will forever be an option. NOPE, I wouldn't do that and I knew I had to press on.

I can't tell you if you're in the right degree or not or whether another one will be a better path for you. Only you can decide that but hopefully all these words will help you figure it out.

I found a couple of books to be extremely helpful when choosing a path and they are:

What color is your parachute

And

Zen and the Art of Making a Living

I wish you all the best on your journey.

Oh I typed all this for you my dude but these dastardly bullies caused you to delete it.

​

Hope it benefits you or another ENTP stoner:

​

What caught my eye was the Myers-Briggs test: I also (usually) test ENTP. Just wanted to say I think the Reddit subs seem to do it a serious disservice:

​

A) It is a management tool. It is not meant to enable some rando's life as a lovable eccentric. You should be shoring up the weaknesses it shows, not jerking off to how creative you think you are (not that you can stop yourself amirite? Ha!), and

B) It is not a tarot card reading of your soul. I get profiled regularly, by professionals, using whatever method is in vogue at that moment and while I absolutely see the value in the tests, it is limited, it is contextual and it will vary over time.

​

It is not so much "revealing" your personality as a prediction of how your behavior will manifest in a given context. MB being particularly general. For example, all my ENTP result tells me is that RIGHT NOW, I likely have too many projects going on and/or am managing my time poorly.

​

So based on your results, I would recommend you get out of your comfort zone and focus on active productivity exercises. Far from being something unsuited to you: they are likely just what you need. Anytime I dial this in tight, my life has a night and day improvement.

​

7 Habits is the granddaddy of course.



Unchained Man has a great time management system. Actually he refers back to Covey's 7 habits and explains why and how he updated the principle for a digital era. The rest isn't "bad" but its pretty standard 4HWW/TRP/Digital nomad type stuff. You could literally read Chapters 8-11 and get a great deal of benefit.

​

4HWW fuck I hate this book. And it's probably dangerous for lazy fucks. But Ferriss has nuggets of good advice on productivity and time management.

​

More conceptual reading:

Do the Work;

The War of Art;

The Power of Habit;

Rework;

On Form - some tips, although heavily weighted to glorify salaryman life;

One Minute Manager;

Extreme Ownership has helped a lot of dudes here. Personally I despise wading through the military waffle for two or three pages of content but the message of owning every aspect of your life and not accepting low standards from yourself or others is good (Hint: that means after you quit weed, (after a reasonable interval) you can and should expect your lazy wife to too).

​

Corporations have invested a great deal of time and money in training me but honestly most of the valuable things I implement are on that list.

​

Atomic Habits is on my current reading list. Check out this post (and comments) with some concepts from it.

Entry level "PhD-level jobs" outside of academia are few and far between in Neuroscience, but consistency and planning will land you something eventually:

Start here: [Versatile PhD] (http://versatilephd.com/), [SfN Neurojobs] (http://neurojobs.sfn.org/jobs), ["So what are you gonna do with that?" Book] (http://www.amazon.com/What-Are-Going-With-That/dp/0374526214), [A PhD is not enough! Book] (http://www.amazon.com/PhD-Is-Not-Enough-Survival/dp/0465022227).

Also [www.indeed.com] is probably the best job hunting site I have found out there.

My first piece of advice:
Start job hunting and making connections now. "PhD-level jobs" are hard to find and you will have to lower your expectations a bit, especially on your first job. While long term, the degree can be a huge advantage, that is not the case immediately after grad school and you will need to be flexible.

As you explore, you will see some immediate career options are:

Adjuncting with the hope to land a faculty position at a Community College, academic scientist, medical scientist (at a hospital lab), medical devices, teaching high-school, government (NIH, NIMH etc.), science writing (grants, journals, editing etc.), learning code/stat programs (R, Python, SAS, SQL, MATLAB etc.) and taking those quant skills into 'big data', or going the more typical pharma industry route.
Consulting is another popular option, but they typically like people with some industry experience (I've seen on average 10-15 years).

The pay varies wildly on all of these, but if you are looking for the biggest bang for your buck that lines up with your (hopefully still present) passion for Neuroscience...

The pharmaceutical industry would be a great place where a Neuro PhD could thrive. From my colleagues in Neuroscience who eventually got some type of industry job, two truths rang through before they made the transition:

1. Either they had their foot in something before/during gradschool which is why they were getting a PhD in the first place (the minority).
   
2. Post-doc and then industry (the majority).
   
   Unfortunately, a post-doc is almost unavoidable based on today's job market. I've seen people taking industry post-docs, which are competitive, but lead to the nice jobs and salaries you believe your degree entitles you to.
   However, there are several who took academic post-docs and bought themselves time, experience, and a bloodlust for a good job, which eventually landed them something that was 70k+ in industry and they can work up from there.
   
   Point is, there are options out there. The key is persistence, research, flexibility, and of course: networking.
   
   

Not to be too much of a downer, but the path to being a professor is very hard, and most people won't make it. Just being smart is not enough alone. I would highly recommend you read the book A PhD is not Enough as it contains a lot of very useful advice on how to be one of the few people who makes it. It mostly is useful for grad school and afterwards, but if you know that this is the path you want to take, it might be useful for undergrad too. I read it in my last year of undergrad, and it made me ultimately realize that a high level academic career was not for me.

Also make sure you learn some technical skills as well as math. Having good skills along with a strong background in math will set you up well if you decide against pursuing an academic career. There are lots of good recommendations in this thread on useful things to learn.

I guess I'm hoping for something that will help me see the world in a different light.

Read a couple really good books like this, both fiction and non-fiction, and you can really add some depth to your thoughts.

I'm reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance right now, and loving it, but something like The Elegant Universe or Fooled by Randomness can have the same effect.

Alternatively, a hilarious book would also be great. Haven't read a good book that make me literally LOL in a long while (I am America and So Can You was probably the last one), so if you think you've got one, I'd love to see it. =D

There is no easy fix to this. I am almost 30 and struggle with it frequently. Personally for me what helped the most was being in school getting my bachelor's in child and family studies. The degree doesn't do alot if youre looking to make money when youre done but it was heavily focused on self growth and development. Some of the books we read included "parenting from the inside out" "7 habits of highly effective people" (Cliche' I know), and "A man's search for meaning". While these books were useful tools, it helped that the professors I had encouraged people to discuss their lives, struggles, Journal (but constructively, not just your struggles but when you overcome them, and set goals for yourself, document your downfalls and triumphs and review when youre down) and to stay off of social media. Unplug completely. this is something I still do when I feel overwhelmed with being a single parent. Also I know it is hard but if you can have your little one help with all the mundane stuff (like housework) it can help make it a sharing moment rather than I need to get this done moment. (I personally struggle with that from time to time, I don't know if you do). I am sorry youre struggling, please keep your head up. you will raise a strong woman and when she is older you are allowed to have fun with her while all those friends will be raising babies.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Inside-Out-Self-Understanding-Anniversary-ebook/dp/B00HZ1E5BM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Q560RPRBOPQZ&keywords=parenting+from+the+inside+out+book&qid=1556573094&s=gateway&sprefix=parenting+from+the%2Caps%2C142&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=17U8X5LTV3VED&keywords=victor+frankl+man%27s+search+for+meaning&qid=1556573116&s=gateway&sprefix=victor+fra%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-2

https://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-Powerful-ebook/dp/B01069X4H0/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3JN0J6CGL5KOP&keywords=7+habits+of+highly+effective+people&qid=1556573140&s=gateway&sprefix=7+ha%2Caps%2C146&sr=8-3

Play more in public. Volunteer to play at church, or for a nursing home. Perform for your family, your friends, your classmates.

The thing is, performance anxiety and nerves don't just go away. As you get more experience performing, you get more used to them, to the point where I've heard (and read) professionals talking about how nerves are that extra little spark that makes a performance more special than a rehearsal - in other words, their anxiety doesn't disappear, it becomes a part of how they perform.

Now, all that said, there are things you can do to help you cope with the side effects of nerves on your playing. If this is something you're serious about tackling head-on, I highly, highly recommend tracking down either Performance Success or Audition Success by Don Greene. Perhaps see if your local public or college library has a copy or can borrow one via interlibrary loan before buying either one yourself. Two other books I see recommended a lot (that might be easier to find at your local library) are Zen in the Art of Archery and The Inner Game of Tennis, both of which have valuable insights that can be applied to performing. (The is even an adaptation of the latter called The Inner Game of Music, but I don't feel it adds much to the original.)

But yeah, the best thing you can do overall is to find and create more opportunities to play for more people. Force yourself to step outside of your comfort zone often enough, and you'll find it soon becomes comfortable. We've all been there to some extent!

Some things stuck out to me in your post. They were:

> Mom used to tell me as a kid that I was best at everything I do and I'm a genius.

and

> I've always thought of myself as good at everything. In fact even though I don't like saying it (anymore), I like to think I'm better than most people in most things. I have no idea if that's even true anymore, hence me doubting myself. I had a measured IQ of 154 when I was younger and everything came easy. When I actually had to start working for it, everything went downhill and fast since I was used to things being free for me.

I highly suggest reading the following two books:
Drive by Daniel Pink and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck.

They get right at the root of what you're dealing with, I think. The first book will allow you to place the blame on the people and organizations that raised you and that you reside in. The second book will challenge you to realize that you hold a fair share of the responsibility to make the changes within yourself in order to improve your life.

I can relate to your post in a lot of ways. I was in a similar place only a few years ago. I ended up graduating college but with a terrible GPA. I'm really smart. I have now realized that I could have sucked it up and put the effort in and it would have been completely worth it. I'm still working on myself but I'm optimistic about where I'm headed. I know it's cliche, but you must learn from your mistakes.

Don't mistake challenges as an attack to your intellectual integrity. They are quite the opposite of that-- they are opportunity and nothing else.

Also-- read up on things like nutrition and vitamins and exercise and blah blah healthy stuff.. seriously. Take vitamin D, fish oil, and vitamins. Avoid junk food-- it isn't hard at all just do it. Maybe you should look into polyphasic sleep schedules too. Remember, you are a biological creature who will respond appropriately to the stimuli that you receive. Good input = good output. That includes thoughts and actions as well. Good luck.

I hear you, I've been in seen scenarios just like this play out. If gathered the fact that sometimes Management knows they have to deal with some pushback when someone is passed over for a promotion, but it usually works out though not always in the ideal manner (Someone quit, gets fired due to insubordination, or lateral transfer).

I'm sure you needed to vent and also....tired. If you can, once everything is determined, settled in, take time off. I think for me if I would have had a two week vacation (paid or unpaid) I would have been able to handle my situation better but though I know outcome would have been the same (constructive dismissal situation).

You seem to have a good head about yourself, doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do... keep the attitude as positive as you can. Hopefully it will be noticed not just by upper but anyone you work with. Though sometimes this road is the one that at times, is the hardest. Keeping a good attitude will also keep you in competition for the job.

I also recommend the audio book Extreme Ownership. It may help you to improve your skills in how to manage up and manage down.

Don’t laugh, but do yourself a favor and download the GOOP podcast with Dave Evans (sorry no link) about prototyping your life. It’s an interview about this exact issue—for all ages. Here’s a link to the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans. The two have developed a system & class to help people as well as a book. But that podcast interview gives a great overview. As others have mentioned, you often don’t just “have passion”, passion comes after you’ve gotten really into something & become good at it. So right now, you’re looking to become brave and curious about stuff to try things out. Seriously though, podcast is like 45 minutes or so, will definitely help you out.

It's kind of shame that there aren't more good books out there on these topics. And that a lot of what is out there is shameless self-help-style wankery.

Here's what I'd suggest: Jump straight into good stories about finance, and pick-up the lingo and concepts as you go. Investopedia -- despite the cheesey name -- is a great resource for when you encounter an idea with which you're unfamiliar.

Good stories about finance include:

• Michael Lewis has, to my knowledge, never written a bad book, but Liar's Poker and The Big Short are great places to start.
  
• Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed is a good story about the hubris of hedge funds.
  
• James Stewart's Den of Thieves does a great job of covering the bond market and the white-collar insider-trading scandals of the 1980s. His Disney War is also a great introduction to corporate governance, in addition to being a novel-esque good read.
  
  On a more abstract, less story-based level, you might also look at:
  
  
  
• Taleb's Fooled by Randomness, the precursor to the much-lauded "Black Swan" (and in my opinion, the much superior book).
  
• Bernstein's Against the Gods, which gives a broad (and accessible) tour of how humans throughout history came to understand and build whole markets around probability and risk.
  
  Good luck!

First, congratulations! Exciting to be going out on your own.

Getting your contracting license is just the first step to running your own business. There is SO much to know. You may know the contracting field backwards and forwards, but as a business owner you also have to know accounting, bookkeeping, marketing, legal (business formation), management, and more.

While I can't give you any advice about contracting, I've owned a company for more than 17 years. I'd like to suggest a few books I think will really help you on the business/marketing aspects.

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

How to work ON your business, not IN it. Great book on building systems and processes in your business.

Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs

What the numbers really mean. How to read the financial statements and know what they mean to your business.

Getting Things Done by David Allen

The best productivity book out there.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Not as much a book on productivity as it is on priorities, leadership, and purpose. Probably the most impactful book I've ever read... it was given to me at my first job (almost 20 years ago) and I reread it every couple of years.

If you aren't into reading books, at least take some online courses in business, marketing, management, etc. Watch some TED talks. Go to a conference or two.

And be sure to post here and ask questions when you're stumped... lots of really helpful people here in /r/Entrepreneur!

For my own I consider the text trying to explain too much in classical authoritarian terms, I would even say that it's very conservative. Further on the text does not explain the most essential about left libertarianism from my perspective, which can be summarized in these sentences:

• share what is sharable (i.e. information, knowledge)
  
• collaborate about the rest (space, skills, finite resources)
  
• treat others as you want others treat you.
  
  I have also summarized the information/knowledge aspect and privacy aspect in one sentence like this:
  
  "you can not own information you define, but only you own the information which defines you".
  
  Also, although this has not much to do with left libertarianism I think, but one fundamental problem I found with this society already 40 years ago, when I was 17 years old, that was the adverse effect the monetary system has on people. A few days ago I saw this picture, and I would say that it summarizes the problem quite well.
  
  Also this picture I found I consider summarizes the left libertarian principles well (at least from my perspective, but we may of course be motivated of different reasons).
  
  One principle which has been known since eons is that money does only work as a motivator for the simplest of jobs, requiring no brain or creativity. This was recently proven by MIT-researcher Daniel Pink. Our motivation comes from the inside, not from the outside. If you have access to Wiley there is a text here, which is a review of his book, also found a book link here. There is also a Ted Talk (1/2), Ted Talk (2/2) as well as an RSA animation. Personally I like the compact, efficient style of the RSA animations.
  
  In summary: Trying to motivate people by money decreses their performance!
  
  From my own observations during the last 40 years since I became aware about the problems of money, there is in principle nothing wrong with money as such, they consistute a great idea, but they affect people's mind in a tremendously bad way. First, you said you had been a market anarchist, this is also great, but as you are certainly aware, today's capitalism is not a market economy. There are too many anti-capitalistic instruments built-in, which strives to create an anti-competetive monopolism instead.
  
  The most serious anti-capitalistic instruments I consider: Proprietary secret technoloy and software, Patents, Commercial copyright, You can buy your competitior, No real incentives to invest in machines, Banks producing fiat money.

That would definitely help explain your problem.

Unless you have a huge trust fund which is under good management and your lifestyle doesn't eat into it, you, like most everyone else, will need to earn a living.

What you do for work for the next 40+ years is up to you, if you have goals and work towards them. You could be a bum on the streets and panhandle/collect cans. You could choose some stressful, high-power career (doctor/lawyer) that funds a lavish lifestyle. Or you can pick something altruistic that doesn't pay so well, but is fulfilling to you: like the sciences or arts.

Going to college/university means you can pick from more interesting work and generally get paid more for doing it.

Going into business for yourself offers independence, and if it works out, can pay off better than many careers; but can take harder work, longer hours, and offers less perks until it really comes together. The high-flying internet startup stories are exciting, but are rare, not the norm. Even if you go this route, a grounding both in business classes and rounding out your education (history, science, writing, etc) will help in future.

Pick up something like Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow

Paul Graham wrote an essay on this too:
http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

In Chris Hadfield's book An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, he explains you're peeing for science roughly 25% of the time, and a urine collection can take around 40 minutes to complete.

>First you need to stretch that hot water bottle-esque bag to be sure the little septum between the condom and the bag is as open as it can be, so the force of your pee will overcome the little one-way valve and fill up the bag rather than squirting back out and all over you, all over the walls, all over—you get the picture. Once the bag is filled, you put it in a Ziploc bag just in case it leaks (at least once, it will) and shake it vigorously to make sure the chemical is mixed well with the urine.

>At this point, when your hands are covered with blobs of urine and drops are floating around the bathroom, too, it’s usually helpful to remind yourself that you are doing all this in the name of scientific inquiry. Take a minute to clean yourself up and while you’re at it, grab a disinfectant wipe—surely you’ve got a free hand!—and clean the ceilings and walls, too.

>All right, it’s time to fill the test tubes: depending on the experiment, sometimes you’ll only need to fill one, but typically it will be five. With a Sharpie, label each test tube with the time, date and your name. While you were shaking up the urine and chemical, bubbles formed in the sack, so now you need to spin it—gently!—like a centrifuge, so all the bubbles collect at the condom end. Then, through the little blue diaphragm, fill each test tube three-quarters full so there’s room for expansion after the sample freezes. Luckily, the tubes have Velcro on them so you can stick them to the wall. Once you’re done, seal up the big bag in the Ziploc, burping out any air, and clean yourself up again.

>Now it’s time to fire up the bar code reader and bar code the test tubes, then put them in a mesh bag and place it in a special -140 degree freezer, called a MELFI. It looks like something you’d see in a morgue, complete with sliding drawers that contain long, rectangular boxes. They’re so cold that you have to wear special white gloves to handle them, and you can only keep the freezer open for 60 seconds, so you don’t compromise any of the other biological samples already in there. That’s tricky, though, because as soon as you open a box, a bunch of previously filled mesh bags come floating out. Like a beekeeper, you’ve got to shove them back in the hive along with the new bag and close that drawer cleanly—if even a tiny corner of fabric gets caught, the thing will jam. This is actually something we practiced doing on the ground, where, of course, nothing was weightless and trying to escape. Here comes the fun part (seriously): as you slide the drawer back in, it flushes out ice crystals that envelop your upper body like the coolest cloud.

>Take off your gloves: you’re all done! And the whole procedure only took 40 minutes or so. Now you know how much time you’ll need to budget every single time you pee over the next four days, which is typically how long you have to give samples for any one experiment. Oh, and don’t forget to coordinate bathroom trips with crewmates who are also urinating for science—the MELFI can only be opened once every 45 minutes.

Currently reading Lord of Flies, 1954 and Don Quixote, 1605.

I already have had interest on literature, philosophy and books in general since... since I can remember. :/ But it was Oom Pram's Buru Tetralogie that made me fall deeper in love with books and classic literature in general.

Then, when I have started living abroad to study, I have developed big interests on classic world literature (Heck I even just learned Latin to understand about the 1500 years span of human literatures and maybe to read them myself when I have the sufficient skills to do so. Afterall, one of my personal reasons to learn language is to read the literature on its original language, because nothing match the beauty and uniqueness of one language that may 'lost' in translation).

As a poor student with tight budget and little spare time, I tried to buy second-hand books and read it time to time, like during the commuting time to class, etc.

I know, my finished read-list is not that great. Since the last months I have just finished reading George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm,,also Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.

My to-read-list has been reached to dozens and dozens of great titles. I try to fulfill it little by little like a small child.

I don't quite know about classic literature club or anything like that. I do realize that my interests are mostly unmainstream and heavy for my age. Thus I mostly enjoy them myself and I am quite content and happy with it. But if you want someone to discuss or talk, I can offer you a chance to geek-ly talk about that. Just drop a PM on me if you're interested and maybe we can exchange our contacts and do some 'book exchange' within each other.

P. S. Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey is also on my to-read-list. Honestly I'm quite surprised to know that there is someone who also read literature from that time.

In the early to mid 1980s, the best edition ever of the Whole Earth Catalog was published. Today you can find it in many public libraries. The catalog is a guide to the best books in the world (existing at that time) regarding almost every subject and field of human endeavor under the sun, including brief reviews about what make each great, along with brief juicy excerpts chosen for their intrinsic usefulness even if you never get around to reading the actual volume. Most people will discover not just one item of interest here, but many.

The workbook What Color is my Parachute by Charles Bolles is an acclaimed reference for figuring out what sort of career would best suit and engage you.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your-Parachute-2012/dp/1607740109

Lastly, just plain old reading in general will expose you to lots more and more varied things than TV shows, films, video games, and music listening ever will. So you may find what you're looking for simply be reading more for pleasure.

I hope these help!

>* What is the best advice you have ever been given (in and out of finance)?

• Focus on what you can control.
  
  >* So, it’s you last day. Everything you have ever done, written or saved for your children has been deleted. What advice or teachings would you give to your children or wife about finance in the hopes of them achieving more freedom/time (assume you only have a short time to explain)?
  
  
• No one cares about your money as much as you do. In fact, most people are after it (you broker, your lawyer, the grocery store, your dentist...), so learn to manage it and protect it.
  
  
• Never stop learning.
  
  
• In investing (and most things in life), simpler is generally better.
  
  
• Passive is preferable to active income.
  
  
• Diversify.
  
  
• Invest for the long-term on cash-flow-generating assets. Buying things hoping that they will simply go up in value is speculating.
  
  
• No one can tell the future.
  
  
• Do your homework.
  
  
• Ignore the crowd.
  
  
• Focus on what you can control.
  
  
• Be patient.
  
  >* What is the best lessons life have taught you so far?
  
  
• Time is the only limited resource, so make the most of it.
  
  
• Life is in constant movement, with or without you, so keep moving.
  
  
• Life is like a roller coaster, neither good things, nor bad things will last forever.
  
  
• Be humble and treat people well.
  
  
• Empathise.
  
  
• Don't complain.
  
  
• Don't criticise.
  
  
• Focus on what you can control.
  
  
• Think long-term.
  
  
• Fight for what you think is worth fighting.
  
  
• Work hard, it will pay off.
  
  
• Be patient.
  
  
• Ignore the crowd.
  
  >* What quotes do you live by or think a lot about?
  
  
• "Fortes fortunam adiuvat", "Fortune favours the brave", Roman saying.
  
  
• "If you think you're going through hell, just keep going", Winston Churchill.
  
  
• "This too, shall pass", Jewish saying.
  
  
• "Good things come to those who wait", popular saying.
  
  
• "The grass is always greener on the other side", popular saying.
  
  >* If you could have every 30 year old read/watch/consume 1 - 3 things, what would you prescribe?
  
  
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  
  
• The Slight Edge
  
  
• The Four Pillars of Investing

If I may make a suggestion, try changing the orientation of "I’m already tired of this whole life thing" to "I'm tired of ..."; you fill in the blank a bit more specifically.

From my exalted (AKA "old") perspective, if you are not clinically depressed, which I had to deal with in my mid-20's, then it is not "life" that's the problem, it's what you are doing with it.

I found that contentment was more correlated with satisfaction with what I was doing at the moment than how much money I had. I was fortunate to write some software that generated a nice amount of income. I was unfortunate in that I blew about 85-90% of that money on some other software that people did not need yet. (Classic Nolan Bushnell quote: It is better to be a little late to market than early.") I was about 10 years early on search engines, i.e. disk was > $10,000/GB (1986).

But then I met this woman. And she was simultaneously unlike any woman I had ever dated, and also disturbingly like my mother (but not in any kid of broken-arms sense). And she gave me a perspective that ... I had never had.

That was almost 30 years ago. We both wanted kids but physiology was against us. But then family dynamics meant we became "parents" of 5 kids as each turned 18 and could legally leave their situation. We now have 4 "grandkids" and a deliriously complicated but thoroughly enjoyable family situation.

tl;dr: I have less than a tenth of the money I had at one time, but my life is about 1,000 times richer than it was when I had that money.

Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow (or at least enough of it for you enjoy what really matters).

So "retire" from what is not satisfying and move on to that which is. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Yes.

Right down to the fucking core.

I have a full time job, but the autonomy allowed to me in my job is huge -- so it feeds my entrepreneurial urges just the same.

You will have grand ideas which will inspire the world around you. But outsource accounting work, legal work, and as much of the mundane stuff as you can. When you build your business, build processes - not services. You should be able to hand your business to a stranger and they can figure out how to run things without your help (think, McDonalds).

This is a book which was both a fun listen and a powerful lesson for me as an entrepreneur. It will speak to you as an ENFP and help you focus your vision for your business some: http://www.amazon.com/Built-Sell-Creating-Business-Without/dp/1591845823

Yeeeeow nice post man.

If you're a bit of a reader, I think you'd like the following books:

Drive: http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805

Talks about where human motivation stems from. People are mislead by thinking that extrinsic rewards are the no. 1 motivator for people (e.g. money). However most studies are starting to show that intrinsically motivated people are the most productive and successful.

Talent code - http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Born-Grown/dp/055380684X/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=41MunW5Js4L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR216%2C320_&refRID=168Q5YDYYGJGSE9QPMCJ

The practicing mind - http://www.amazon.com/Practicing-Mind-Developing-Discipline-Challenge/dp/1608680908/ref=pd_sim_14_17?ie=UTF8&dpID=41xIyq0O4wL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR100%2C160_&refRID=097CJ40FQXQ88KG5TDAS

Both of these books are great for instilling the fact that greatness isn't bestowed upon someone, it takes years and dedicated practice cultivate a valuable skill.

If you'd like these books, send me a PM because I have the PDF/Audiobook of them.

I think that you should sit down and give serious consideration to what you want to do in the future. I have a BFA in painting, and I worked for other people in various, non-art jobs for about 10 years before getting back to art. I find that the patience and creative problem solving I have developed from my art practice have served me well in these roles. But I'm a bit more analytical than many of my art friends :-p

If you're 18-20 years old I know it might be tough to sit down and map out the future, but I suggest taking a weekend to do just that. Start by reading 'What Color is Your Parachute' and do the flower exercise.

Here are some other thoughts:

• Passion is important, but it doesn't pay the bills - much less create or maintain a standard of living you can be proud of. And it certainly won't fund any kind of retirement. I know so many creatives in their 50's and 60's who will never be able to move away uninspiring work that makes money instead of traveling and / or creating personal passion projects.
  
  
• Build / maintain relationships with friends and professors now. That way it isn't weird to ask people in leadership roles for advice or letters of recommendation later.
  
  
• Start showing work wherever you can so you can learn about the finer details of doing so long before your exit show. Cafes are legit. It all counts.
  
  
• Read business books or do online training with people like Cory Huff. You can't expect your school to teach you about business, so why not start looking into it now so you're ready when you graduate.
  
  
• I don't agree that an MFA is necessary for a career in the (non-collegiate) art world. Especially as the economy gets worse, and it's harder for people to justify that amount of debt.
  
  
• Talk to as many people as you can about your projects / career goals. All opportunities start as an idea in someone's head and you only see opportunities in the classifieds when someone hasn't figured out a way to ignore or solve a problem on their own. How can you be a problem solver? How can you create win-win scenarios?
  
  
• Remind your family that nowadays there is no pipeline to success for any major.

I'll also suggest books on Stoicism and Philosophy. However, before you jump right into the ancient/classical wisdom I'd recommend a modern introduction to introduce and help digest the principles.

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine.

Then - Move onto Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and the rest. A great way to embrace stoic ideas daily is The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday

Also, strong recommendations for:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People
  
• Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink

If you get the chance, read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport. I completely revolutionized the way I go about studying and literally tripled my productivity. It's not that hard of a read, the and the author backs everything up with evidence. Put the amazon link below but you can probably find a free pdf version if you look.

Also, here is the copied summary of the book from the amazon page:


"Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.

In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. DEEP WORK is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world."



https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted-ebook/dp/B00X47ZVXM

After reading the other posters, I have a couple more thoughts:

• An engineering degree does come with a unique reward, that is, you become a registered Professional Engineer.
  
• When considering which program to go into, consider funding. Cosmology may interest you more than biology, but programs related to biology might actually have funding.
  
• CircinusSt's pessimism is real, but perhaps a little exaggerated. If you have perfect grades with internships, every door in the world will be open to you. For example, one of my classmates was awarded a 60k/year position in a research lab with only his B.S. (they offered to pay and assist with his PhD while he worked there). However, this student really did have perfect 4.0. He also spent time making connections with his professors, which led to the internships he needed.
  
• GPA cutoffs: 3.0 is a severe cutoff point for most all graduate programs, 3.3 is the advertised cutoff for most all competitive programs, 3.3 to 3.5 is ideal. A GPA above 3.5 is exceptional, you will be considered for any program.
  
• Perhaps trivial to say, but critically important: You need 3 letters of recommendation tailored to the type of job that you want to apply for.
  
• Be prepared to move. A lot.
  
• You need to read this book: A PhD Is Not Enough!: A Guide to Survival in Science.
  
  I'm sure I have more tips, just ask if you'd like.

I was a Sanders supporter. Sanders also supported closed borders. I was not a fan of Jeb. People make "low energy Jeb" jokes, but he brings back memories of Al Gore during the 2000 election. If Gore had been as excited about running for president as he was during An Inconvenient Truth, he would have won easily. I saw that movie, and said, "Who the hell is this guy, and where was he during the election."

Hillary was a terrible choice, and the Democrats knew it. Forget about Benghazi (which is mostly a BS issue, anyway). Forget about the emails (actions which would not have landed her in jail, but would have meant her immediate firing as Secretary). Forget the DNC collusion with her over Sanders. Those are all outside noise. When she had the time to talk, to make noise from the inside, the noise lacked substance. Most importantly, it lacked "Hillary" substance. I don't want to know why the other person is a bad choice. I want to know why you're a good choice. She never really figured that one out, and gave Trump extra help. In the polls, she and Trump were about even in favorability, but she had higher unfavorable ratings by around 3%.

It's the same thing that happened during the Republican debate that Trump didn't attend (but held a rally for wounded veterans). The first thing the other candidates (and I'm pretty sure it was Jeb) talked about was Trump. In a night where he wasn't even present, he owned their minds, and on a night where they could have acted like he didn't exist, they made him a star.

If you listen to how anyone sold her, she was either sold as a continuation of Obama, or "not Trump." Hillary basically followed whatever popular online movements were pushing. I'm not even talking important ones. I mean, even Trump said that transgender individuals should use whatever bathroom they want.

With Trump, at least his positions have been consistent for the past 30+ years. He's hated our trade agreements.

Realistically, he's not a Republican. I don't know if there's a definition for a political pragmatist. He has basically changed parties multiple times to leverage himself into the best political position counter to whatever the administration was at the time, all while being consistent on what and how he believes the government should be involved in stuff. He hated Reagan. He hated Carter.

His battle plan seems haphazard unless you read Art of the Deal. If you do, he is using the same media techniques that he used to fix the Wollman Rink. He will hire people who were once his enemy if they do a good job. The lawyer that NY used to sue him (in a case that Trump won)? He thought that guy was excellent and hired him. Yes, Trump churns staff, but he always has, and he will rearrange teams as situations change.

His economic policies seem weird unless you realize that he follows the American School of Economics. something that was great for us, and then abandoned while other countries used it against us, and grew strong economies. 6 of the last 7 presidents attempted tariff measures (Carter is the outlier, and also the one that gave China favored Nation status).

Let's use this when we look at repairing infrastructure and building. We need steel and we know that. Chine sells cheaper (both cost and grade) steel. If we use tariffs to force the price up, US steel becomes competitive and is better because of quality. So that money is spent here, which bolsters our economy vs China's. It goes to our workers, and they spend it here, which helps prevent a race to the bottom economic situation that happens with spending money overseas.

• The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Security Analysis - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• The Interpretation of Financial Statements - Benjamin Graham
  
  
• Financial Shenanigans: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports - Howard Schilit
  
  
• Applied Value Investing - Joseph Calandro
  
  
• Analysis for Financial Management - Robert Higgins
  
  
• Margin of Safety - Seth Klarman
  
  
• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings - Philip Fisher
  
  
• One Up On Wall Street - Peter Lynch
  
  
• Beating The Street - Peter Lynch
  
  
• The Essays of Warren Buffett - Warren Buffett
  
  
• Snowball: Warren Buffett and The Business of Life - Alice Schroeder
  
  
• Buffett Beyond Value - Prem Jain
  
  
• Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond - Bruce Greenwald
  
  
• You Can Be A Stock Market Genius - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• The Little Book That Beats The Market - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• The Big Secret for the Small Investor: A New Route to Long-Term Investment Success - Joel Greenblatt
  
  
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator - Edwin Leferve
  
  
• Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Taleb
  
  
• The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb
  
  
• Poor Charlie's Almanack - Charlie Munger
  
  
• Rediscovered Benjamin Graham - Janet Lowe
  
  
• The Theory of Investment Value - John Burr Williams
  
  
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger - Peter Bevelin
  
  
• Security Analysis and Business Valuation on Wall Street - Jeffrey Hooke
  
  
• Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment - James Montier
  
  
• Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset - Aswath Damodaran
  
  
• The Dark Side of Valuation - Aswath Damodaran
  
  
• Financial Statements: A Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding and Creating Financial Reports - Thomas Ittelson
  
  
• Buyout - Rick Rickertsen
  
  
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini
  
  
• Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes: Lessons from the New Science of Behavioral Economics - Gary Belsky
  
  
• The Warren Buffett Way - Robert Hagstrom
  
  
• The Most Important Thing - Howard Marks
  
  
• Competition Demystified - Bruce Greenwald
  
  
• Accounting For Value - Stephen Penman
  
  
• Distressed Debt Analysis - Stephen Moyer
  
  
• Bankruptcy Investing - Ben Branch
  
  
• The Vulture Investors - Hilary Rosenberg
  
  
• Creating Value Through Corporate Restructuring - Stuart Gilson
  
  
• Distress Investing - Martin J Whitman
  
  
• The Aggressive Conservative Investor - Martin J Whitman

Perhaps look into NGF/BDNF boosting substances like Lions Mane, Semax, or Noopept. These may help in the long term to strengthen and build new neural pathways. Besides that, to get the most out of practicing, I would look into how to efficiently practice. There's an awesome book called The Talent Code, which talks about how to get the most out of deliberate practice to learn a skill. Here's a video discussing some of the highlights. In the short term, I've found modafinil and caffeine to be useful for the speed needed in more technical guitar work. Oxiracetam and Aniracetam I find useful in mixing and producing in order to hear some of the more subtle details. I would imagine those could be useful if you're looking to train your ears.

This will, of course, appear as a copout, but I tire of this long quote monologues back and forth in a deep thread that will only ever be read by the two of us. I've gone through a few of them recently, and it goes on forever. So I'm going to be lazy and only address the low hanging fruit. If you feel strongly about certain points, please make a new topic about it.

>the capitalist does something valuable

>there is no monetary incentive to create innovation

>People have equal opportunity.

>the system would be gamed

All of these are broad enough to have a thread.

>Who is this capitalist

The one(s) who own the company, factory, etc. While one person can play the role of both the capitalist and CEO, often as not they're separate, which is why I included them on the list of workers above.

>Capitalism has been the single largest improvement in the working conditions

Remember what I said - capitalism is necessary to create the productive forces required for socialism to come about. In fact, the only reason socialism is possible is because of the contradictions within capitalism itself. Productive power is increased to the point where scarcity must be artificially created, because otherwise there is no profit. I don't wish capitalism had never existed at all. Also see historical materialism.

>the factory worker of the later 1800s and early 1900s, or the fast food worker of today?

That's because those factory workers and industrial society has been exported to Third-World countries with worse working conditions and labor laws. Have you looked on the tag on your clothing recently? Thailand, Vietnam, China, Guatemala, and so on. You claim to be against government intervention - so it's okay with you if these countries had a socialist movement preventing this imperialism?

>This is not the most common trend.

They all worked hard. But it's not simply a matter of effort - you need the right opportunities as well. This goes over some of the various things discussed in the book. The main point is that we are largely products of our environments, and case studies are presented over a variety of topics to show this.

>You work not out of passion or interest or of choice

Really? Beyond base level jobs (i.e. fast food), what motivates people is autonomy, drive, and purpose. In a communist society you will be able to pursue that which interests you, rather then what job you get. I'd also point out that in today's society you are alienated from your labor by your lack of influence on your workplace or what you produce. This is a good thread.

>Alienation is implicit to not simply the polity of liberalism, but all capital driven society (which basically encompasses most of the "age of civilization" thus far.)

>While it manifests itself in the ways most are forced to survive (by selling their labor) and the lack of influence they have over their workplaces, it extends right into how people relate to society in general. Much of the contempt and carelessness people show toward "public" spaces (often pointed to by liberals as a "proof" favoring privatization) has everything to do with the realization that we are pretty much "strangers and guests" in most of the spaces we occupy. People know better.

>Even the so called "representative democracies" are a farce. People quite rightly regard them as being mostly a spectator sport, where different wings of the oligarchy make a pitches about how much of our labor and security they will give back to us.

>Until the various "means of production" come fully under the control of those who utilize and maintain them (workers and society in general) and democracy becomes a feature of economics (where real power resides), this alienation will persist.

In a communist society, this would not be the case.

>Sure, but who are you to say how he should spend his money?

The point is that it makes sense for a capitalist to donate the most money - he has far more then the rest of us. Besides the fact, it is not "his" money - that was produced by exploiting the labor of others.

If you really want to make the most of your free time, get good at doing nothing. Unscheduled time is hugely important for generating new ideas, reflecting on your life, observing what's around you, and enjoying what you have.

Then, get good at doing less. I recommend reading about essentialism so that you don't become a burned out, unfocused college graduate with 50 different and unrelated things on your resume.

You sound like a naturally talented, smart, engaged person, so life will probably be kind to you. It'll be up to you to find where your key areas of interest are and nurture the hell out of them.

Businesses invest in employees who invest in a specialization. Few things make you look as unfocused as saying you are a "jack of all trades" or "well rounded."

And you've also experienced yourself out of entry level jobs. Take all of this as signs that you need to present yourself as someone specialized in IT since you have both experience, and to some extent, an education in it.

Craigslist is a good place to look, but postings there get flooded with applicants. A better way to look for jobs is know the business that are physically located in your area, going to their websites, and seeing postings there. Many business post jobs this way because they are not flooded with applicants, and the people who want the job most are usually willing to go through all the tedium to find one that way.

9-10 resumes a week and nothing yet doesn't mean that you need to put it more. That's already a lot to put in every week. Something about what you're doing just doesn't add up. Either you don't tailor them very well, you ruin yourself with the "jack of all trades" approach, or your skills in IT are behind your competitors. I don't work in IT, but have you considered getting more certs?

There is a job fair tomorrow at CSUF with about 75 companies recruiting there. Have you heard of that?

Also, buy this book:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your-Parachute-2012/dp/1607740109
It has lots of helpful advice on how to find a job that's backed up with solid research. Putting in a resume in response to an ad you've seen has one of the lowest success rates of any method out there. Also, calling businesses back after you have put in a resume doesn't help your chances at all. It makes you look desperate. It also gives great advice on how to direct your career in general.

Good luck

Did your comment mention the book titled

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything

that was written by your dad Chris Hadfield

Which can be found here?
http://www.amazon.com/Astronauts-Guide-Life-Earth-Determination/dp/0316253014/

If so I have no idea why anyone would want to remove a comment referencing a book with this description
> Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst-and enjoy every moment of it.

> In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement-and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff.

> You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Col. Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth-especially your own."

Do yourself a favor: breathe.

As many have said, we’ve been in similar situations in - and out - of the organization.

Frustration is a fantastic motivator. It’s what you choose to do with it that will matter most. Whatever the course you choose: it will work out. One is harder, Leadership is a hardship. The burden of command, even as a teenager, comes with strife. That’s what also makes it fulfilling. Because that strife gives you a stepping stone to create accomplishment.

Go read Extreme Ownership (Link: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1250183863/). It’s also available in audiobook. It may seem like a hefty book - and it is - but it’s an easy read. And, it’s an impactful read. I think there’s quite a bit that, in your situation, you’ll appreciate and can use to help you endure. Discipline equals freedom. Dig-in, prioritize and execute, and get after it. Or don’t. Your choice.

Whatever your choice may be, realize that you’re responsible for you. You have to live with the choice you make - make a difference or quit. If you leave, who will lead your cadets?

The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, I'm only half finished, and i really like it so far. He does a good job explaining how talent is nurtured and grown rather than won through a genetic lottery and backs up his findings with research. Most importantly its getting me motivated.

Perspective is huge. Customer's aren't really yelling at you, they're yelling at the situation. That said, it's hard to be the guy getting yelled at. There's a fun and easy book about customer service called FISH! by Stephen Lundin (amazon or check your library to borrow it for free). Remember to keep it light and have a laugh. Outside of work find ways to relax. Watch stupid movies with good quotes like Half Baked. Work isn't always work. We're at our most creative when we find a way to play.

When things get stressful, just remember you're standing on the ground, feel your feet and shoes and the ground. It can be a good way to come back down to earth.

Anger is always a result of some other emotion that comes up first. Anger is educational. You just have to take a look to see what it is that is making you angry. Monitor and review your emotions. What exactly is happening? In what order? Fear and anxiety are very common causes of anger. You're afraid of the rush and the insanity of meeting customer's needs. That's completely normal! Learn from everything you are feeling and see how you can use it to make the workplace function better and help you feel like you are a constructive part of it. When you get too hot, take a walk on your next break. Count down from ten breathing slowly and deeply between each count. These kinds of things really do work if you remember to do them in the moment and let everything slow down.

Always remember, you are not alone! You can only make one sandwich at a time. OK, maybe two! :) But all you have to do it get one order done, and then the next order. And then the next order. But focus on the order you are working on. Show each individual customer genuine attention. It can help you stay in the moment with the customer and help them feel they are getting attention. The person behind them just has to wait. You serve one person at a time. Not the mob all at once. Take a breath, expand your focus. Your life isn't in a tiny walnut. The universe is massively expansive and wants you to succeed!

Do you like the work? If not, it's time to get a different job. Hertz rent-a-car is almost always hiring. If you like cars that can be a good job. You can save money and one day open your own franchise. If you do like deli work, learn the business. You could one day own your own deli. It's not unrealistic.
Find another deli in town and just watch how they work. Are they better than yours? Why? How do they track orders? How do they split up job duties among the staff? Who is doing what? Are they all doing the same thing? Probably not. If you really like their food and how they operate - are they hiring?

Thinking about cutting yourself is not good. There are "manic" jobs and food service, whether it's a small deli or high end fine dining, is definitely one of them. The other big one is retail. The retail industry really sucks for people with any kind of stress or anger issues. Think of cutting as "negative self talk". Don't beat yourself up for trying to do a good job. You work hard, give yourself time to learn and you will find ways to improve.

Customers yelling at people is not ok. There's obviously a big problem. From what you have learned, can you help the deli organize things better so customers are happier? What kind of mistakes are happening that are big time wasters? Can the workflow or the work station be modified to make it easier or faster? How's your "mise en place"? Is it working for you or against you?

Estimate how long it takes to make all the salads and sandwiches each day. Could you divide up what each staff member does so it's better? Could one or two people do that full time? Everyone doing everything is always a disaster.

Henry Ford's method of mass production was the assembly line. What's broken about yours? How many customers are you getting on an average day? What breaks down during lunch rush?

Do you have any mandatory processes that are problematic? Is there a ticketing system? "Now serving customer number 99", etc? Would that help or would it make things worse? Sometimes formalizing a process only makes it more cumbersome. What could be skipped completely or done in a slightly different order so it makes more sense? Applying nuts and bolts common sense after seeing mistake after mistake is where real experience and knowledge comes from. Even a line cook at the 2am Waffle House has learned a thing or two about pounding out eggs and waffles when all the bars close on Friday night and they get a mad rush of customers.

How well does your customer flow through the store work? What happens right after they enter the door? Does the customer know where to stand to order? Where to pay? Where to pick up their food? If customers walk through in a disorganized fashion, you get a mob of people. Can that be corrected?

Sorry for writing a book! Good luck!!

Here are some resources that have been incredibly helpful for me. :)

Books:

• Driven to Distraction by Dr. John Ratey -- I haven't read this one in a while, but I love Dr. Ratey. He is a great writer on issues of science, biology, and mental health.
  
  
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by Dr. John Ratey -- Sections on how beneficial exercise is in managing ADHD, depression, and anxiety.
  
  
• Taking Charge of Adult ADHD by Dr. Russell Barkley -- Best book for adults with ADHD I've read. Backs everything up with science. Makes a very solid case for self-care and medication.
  
  
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World -- Hyperfocus == Deep Work. Use this philosophy to make the case to a boss or team about reducing interruption at work.
  
  
• Emotional Intelligence 2.0
  
  
• StrengthsFinder -- ADHD makes us painfully aware of our weaknesses. Learn what your strengths and positive personality traits are and how to build off them.
  
  Videos:
  
  
• 30 Essential Ideas You Should Know About ADHD by Dr. Russell Barkley -- Awesome series about the nature of ADHD. MUST WATCH
  
  Podcasts:
  
  
• The Value Of 'Deep Work' In An Age Of Distraction by Hidden Brain -- A podcast version of the Deep Work book if you're like me and have trouble getting through 200 pages.
  
  
• Embrace the Chaos: Why Disorder May Be Good For Us -- We may beat ourselves up over our struggles with structure, but here's a solid case on how less structure makes us more adaptable.

Look very closely at your picking technique. To go faster you may have to generate the picking motion from other muscles. The picking motion can come from several places, i.e., rotation at the elbow, rotation of the wrist, pronation/supination of the forearm, or moving the fingers that hold the pick. Research all of these different sources of picking motion, try them and find what works for you at the speed you are targeting. It's very important to find the technique that works for that speed. For some people different speed = different technique.

For your fretting hand, I don't have a lot of advice except practice, build up the coordination. Also, don't hold your fingers too far from the fret board. What I mean is, when you release a note, that is remove a finger from the fret board, make sure you're not lifting it up too high.

Overall, to play fast you have to learn to minimize the amount of energy you're expending for each note for both the picking hand and the fretting hand. Hands have a maximum amount of energy they can put out. You can increase that amount of energy with practice but for everybody there is a ceiling.

Also, check out this book: The Inner Game of Music. It will help you with execution. If you've been playing this long the hangups could be mental, that is, what your mindset is when you're playing. This book can help you find the right mindset.

Spend a little of that money seeing a career counselor. It's possible that one of your former institutions will offer you that service for free, most likely through their job counseling/employment services offices or alumni offices (they may be able to connect you with an alum who could use an employee like you). Government employment agencies may also offer surprisingly good analysis of your skills and match them with the employment trends.

See:
https://www.bls.gov/emp/

What you need to do is look at your skill sets and interests in a systematic way and figure out (preferably with the perspective of someone who helps others find their bliss) what kind of work would make you feel like you would do it even if no pay were involved.

https://www.amazon.com/What-Love-Money-Will-Follow/dp/0440501601

EDIT: maybe this is better posted on /r/askacademia

There is no point studying for the sake of studying unless you are independently wealthy. If you are looking for something that will capture your bliss, figure out how to use the skills that you have. Then get a job (or make your own) that will allow you to spend your time the way you'd like.

Here's a little bit about the book and a link for the lazy:
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything

Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst-and enjoy every moment of it.

In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement-and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff.

You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Col. Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth-especially your own.

Not sure if this will help but I just wanted to share my opinion. With codependency, we tend to lose our identity, I've definitely lost mine before in relationships and I wrote a blog post on my experience here so you're not alone. When we lose our identity we tend to forget/lose what's important to us to start people-pleasing others. (https://famous4love.com/identity/)...

But what's been helping me lately was this idea called essentialism. It's very similar to the idea of boundaries which my therapist recommended but it's more inwardly focused on helping you find what's the most important (essential) to you and how to stick to only that and say no to other things. Totally worth looking into since it seems like you need help finding a purpose or something that's vital for you to focus on. Here's the book I started reading. —https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg-McKeown/dp/0804137382

A piece of advice I had when I was younger and wondering how long it takes to get a piece right...

"A good musician practices until they get a piece right, a great musician practices until they can't get it wrong."

I suffer greatly from stage fright. That piece of advice helped more than any other as if you practice enough (and I mean just at the point you figure you're done practicing, go over the piece another half dozen times!) you can rely on muscle memory to get you through.

That meant that I could play pieces through despite my nerves and actually enjoy playing to the point that I could think more about performing the music rather than just playing it.

A great book on this topic is 'the Inner Game of Music' by Barry Green

https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Music-Barry-Green/dp/0385231261

That's a great read and fullof insight on this subject.

My girlfriend does ballet but doesn't perform. However, she was in a show shortly after we met and texting me about how nervous she was before she was going on stage. I simply said "Nerves are natural. Just remember, you have practiced - you know the moves and your body knows what to do." She said that immediately calmed her down and helped her focus.

Hope some of that is useful.

Good luck for your interview. I am sure you are well prepared but I read What Color is your parachute based on a college professor's recommendation and it gave me a great new perspective and not to mention the most important thing, confidence.

Since you posted it in this sub, check out the book by Chris Hadfield

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything

His interviews are great and it should help you get some perspective of what kind of traits you need to work on.

I find it's always helpful to find role models to keep motivated.

Also, you should probably do some research about the careers of UK astronauts. I'm not sure if they are all military or engineers. That way you can find the path that fits you best and start cutting it up into smaller and more manageable steps.

I'm not in humanities/social sciences but here's my weekday routine.

• 4:50am alarm.
  
• 5:30am -- In my home office for some time for prayer, journaling.
  
• 6-7am -- An hour of grading each morning before going to work.
  
• 7-8am -- Get my kids up, fed, dressed, and off to school.
  
• 8:30am -- In the campus office.
  
  What happens during the day depends. I teach two classes 9-11am on MWF and a class 11:30-12:45 TR. I hold office hours 4x a week and I try not to plan anything during then. Some days I have committee meetings, and some of those are on my campus while others are at our second campus so there's a bus ride involved. I set aside 9:30-11am every TR for research and academic writing. I usually grade and prep courses for a couple of hours each day. The rest of it is sort of flex time depending on what the big needs are.
  
  But then the rest of the day is kind of fixed. Between 4-5pm I leave to go get my kids from after-school care. Then the rest of the evening is devoted to family -- making dinner, helping with homework, playing video games with the kids, maybe doing a quick outing to the mall or something.
  
  Basically I force myself to stop working at this point because family >>> career, also I have found that when I work in the evenings the quality of the work really sucks. I am a lot more productive the next day after just relaxing and being with my family and getting a decent night's sleep and then hitting it early in the morning. Although, I do like to read stuff in the evenings that might be sort of profession-related, for example I'm reading Essentialism by Greg McKeown right now and it is really helping me think clearly about my job and my career and daily work.
  
  On the weekends I prefer not to work at all. However today (Saturday) I need to find some time to do a little catching up on grading. Sundays I do not work at all because of religious observances, although I do my GTD weekly review every Sunday afternoon.
  
  For context, I am in my 20th year of being in the profession, got tenure at one school (small liberal arts college) before leaving and am up for tenure and promotion to full professor next year at my current institution (large regional teaching-focused university with a research component) so if people are thinking this is some kind of slacker schedule then just realize that it's working fine for me.

Ishmael - If you ever wondered what it would be like to be a telepathic gorilla, this will probably give you the closest answer.

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking - The INTP Toolbox.

The Willpower Instinct - Because we all know we could use a bit more of it around here...

Emotional Vampires - A survival guide to protect your Fe

How To Create A Mind - Since it's ultimately the only thing we really seem to care about, it's interesting to think how we could theoretically create a 'backup' for it eventually

The Talent Code - In case you haven't quite figured out how to go about mastering skills yet.

> Statically NA is going to produce the least amount of talents.

That statement only holds under the assumption that each region "spawns" an equal amount of talents per X players. Then the largest region would always produce the most talents.

However, this is not how things work. Infrastructure and motivation are far more deciding than the user base, see pretty much any sport or competition in the world. There are always specific "hotbeds" that produce a disproportionate amount of "talent". If you're interested in this topic I recommend you read The Talent Code.

I highly recommend books A PhD is not enough, and PhD grind, they answer a lot of questions and I wish I've read it before starting my PhD.

Depending on your field, it might be the case that you would get a good position right after your defense, especially since you already have a lot of industry experience and willing to teach. Furthermore, a lot of universities practice 'equal opportunity' policies which forces them to not discriminate based on gender, age, or race. So this might be a good part that by your defense you would be in your early 40's.

It might be a good idea to find someone from your target field and talk to them about their path to their current position, how many postdocs they had to do and so on. Maybe you will find out that some of them don't even have a PhD degree, I don't know. A lot of these things depend on your field.

If I were you, though, I would consider other ways to scratch that teaching itch. Getting a PhD is a daunting and not that rewarding. But then again, it's a nice change of pace and might be your 3-5 years vacation.

As a professional musician and teacher, I've been (and seen my students) in that situation many, many times and learned the hard way...First of all, you need to really learn about this "nervousness" , since this is perhaps a manifestation of something happening internally (lack of preparation, personality trait, etc.). One of the things that you gotta know is that everyone--in the performing world-- (no exception) experiences nervousness (fear response) at some extent (regardless of what they tell you or you think). Mr. "he looks so relaxed when he plays" learned how to manage his nerves and embrace them as a positive force. I know it sounds esoteric but it's not....Once you accept is gonna happen, you need to define why it's happening. Does this situation mimicks your everyday personality? is it lack of preparation? are the stakes to high (competitions, job audition, etc.)? Are the odds against you? etc., so you can start looking at the real source of the problem and hopefully, finding some answers...Next, find (specifically) how this "nervousness" manifests. Is it physical? (Sweaty hands? dry mouth? shaky arms? stiff neck, etc.) or mental? (voices in your head, inability to stay focused, overreacting at small mistakes?. If it's physical, you might want to ask your doctor if he can prescribe you some propanolol, a beta-blocker used widely by performing artists (I'm not gonna tell you how it works, look it up) please talk to your doctor first (DON'T GET ONE FROM YOU FRIENDS!!), since he can evaluate your health and tell you if it's right for you. I know the musicians community is divided about using beta-blockers but I can tell you from my own experience that it helped me a lot with sweaty hands (I play a string instrument).
The mental aspect is a little bit more difficult to tackle but not impossible. Chances are that you are trying to micro-manage every aspect of your performance (don't mess up that fingering, exaggerate dynamics here, release the tension in your elbow to get a smoother legato) and this stuff gets in the way of artistry. Here is where you have to make a big difference between practicing and performing (two complete different things). Leave that micro-managing stuff for the practice room (but don't do it too much either, it will drive you nuts). Finally, performing is a skill that you need to practice!!! you need to put yourself into "performing mode" often so you can learn how to "embrace your fear". Play for your peers, friends, parents, bf/gf, etc. No one around? use your imagination. I have a colleague that used to put (he probably still does) a lettuce head with a baseball cap and glasses in front of him to simulate an audience. You need to practice performing so you get to understand your own fears and insecurities...
Some books that might help:

A soprano on her head: http://www.amazon.com/Soprano-Her-Head-Right-Side-Up-Performances/dp/0911226214

The inner game of music:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385231261/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0911226214&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0TG9NP8HF8RR8017J1J2

-Performance success (or anything by Don Greene): http://www.amazon.com/Performance-Success-Performing-Pressure-Theatre/dp/0878301224/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278682151&sr=1-1

I could write a lot more about this topic, but I have rehearsal; pm if you have more questions.

Interesting.

There is a spotlight growing on the problem of women negotiating salaries and a few books have been written on the issue but please do not mistake this as advertising, I'm just posting an example

Could this contribute to the number of minimum-wage workers? Possibly.

There are a lot of waitresses but I'm not sure how much of the minimum-wage jobs that accounts for.

Here's a very good, comprehensive study of the actual wage gap disparity done for the US Department of Labor back in 2009. It explained that the actual wage gap between genders was nearing zero when you account for different things. I'm posting it because it had an interesting data pertaining to the topic of the OP:

A greater percentage of women than men tend to work part-time. Part-time work tends to pay less than full-time work.

I'm surprised at the demographics from the article posted in the OP though.

I would recommend this book:
What Color is Your Parachute?

The guy has written the book for 30 years. It explains how to analyze yourself and how to effectively interview, search for jobs, network as well as helping you realize your dreams and goals.

Good Luck.

Firstly, I recommend the part-time/not in your field job. Because it's easier to find a job when you already have one. Isn't that sad?

I also second calling that friend's wife. I've been reading What Color Is Your Parachute?, and that books talks about how one of the best ways to network and find a job is to form an unemployed circle. Maybe your friend has passed on a job that wasn't for her, but that is perfect for you, and she can clue you in on it.

Thirdly, if you must reddit, be sure to check out r/jobs!

https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-J/dp/0399594493

Second best book to only the bible. Teaches you how to make great fantastic incredibly classy deals.

Don't say "career change," say "pivot".

If you want to leave teaching 100% behind and get into an industry in which you have zero experience, you will certainly have to put in your time. But you do have a lot of working experience and that will count for more than you think.

On the other hand, you can think about what you actually like about your job, and find a new career that is strong on those aspects.

Here's a great resource for you, in case you have not heard of it before: What Color Is Your Parachute?

Sounds to me like you're depressed. Sometimes people who are don't even realize it. I'm in this state and I'm trying to get better. Recently I've been looking at self help books and they all the same thing: add something or subtract something. It's all about materialistic things. But I came across a couple of resources.

The first one is a TedX video, its only about 11 minutes long. Logan Laplante has a video about being happy and his unorthodox education.

There is also a book I recommend called Designing Your Life written by two Stanford Professors. They talk about designing your life and building your life step by step. Essentially they talk about instead of starting where you want to be, they have you start where you are.

It's been an eye opening couple of days for me, and I hope that these resources also help you.

Couples counseling is the right decision when you both want to put effort towards fixing your problems, but you don't know exactly how to do it. It has nothing to do with how long you've been in the relationship. It is a mature decision that the both of you should make together with open minds. It has healed so many wounds in my relationship and we even argue calmly now and hear each other's points and come to a solution. It's freakin amazing! In the meantime, I recommend this book to learn how to effectively communicate without making the other person feel attacked. It's a skill I've used in so many aspects of my life. LINK

PM me if you want to talk about it. I know what you're going through. It's really rough.

Everyone needs to feel that their life is purposeful and they are doing meaningful things. If you want to start a new career, maybe part-time, I really enjoyed the book What Color is Your Parachute?. I found it helps to really figure out what a person enjoys doing. You seem to have a lot of skills. Your skills would be very beneficial to even non-profits or even showing other people how to become entrepreneurs.

Finding a good book is a great way to sort out a reading issue. I got HOOKED to Stephen King during my first tour in Iraq. I later would become my captain's driver, and he would joke about how I would read more books in a two week training exercise than he did during his four years of college.

If you like this sort of book, I may suggest Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I had a hard time with the first chapter, as I still have some things to sort out regarding my own service, but it is a fantastic book and well worth the read.

A book that does a great job of covering that concept and ownership in general is "Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win" by Jocko Willink. It's one of my top 3 favorite books and I highly recommend it, especially if you're a leader. He also has a podcast covering lessons in war and leadership. It's up there in quality with Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss, easily.

Book link, if you're interested.

Edit: formatting

I really enjoyed Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. It's narrated by the authors and they do a great job. All the advice is very practical and they give multiple real world examples for each point they are making.

For what it's worth, Jocko Willink also has a podcast on leadership which is excellent as well.

Thanks!

TropicalMBA podcast was super helpful. The book Built To Sell was influential on our thinking.

I'm a fan of Derek Sivers and gobble up quite a bit of his content.

+jwcooke:

Thanks!

TropicalMBA podcast was super helpful. The book Built To Sell was influential on our thinking.

I'm a fan of Derek Sivers and gobble up quite a bit of his content.

These are three that have my highest recommendation! I’ve read these books with other performing arts teachers in book study groups, and believe that they should be required reading for all teachers!

The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life.

Yup! There's a brilliant opening passage in The Talent Code that describes this girl who practices more efficiently in just six minutes than most people do in one month, and it's using the same process that /u/Hyperhavoc5 describes. Great stuff.

There are some books that give good insights into navigating the grad school process, including useful advice about how to map out important milestones (e.g. how to publish, navigating conferences, and most importantly setting yourself up early to be successful on the job market.)

1

2

3

[4] (http://www.amazon.com/Getting-What-You-Came-For/dp/0374524777/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=41H6-kRMd5L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160_&refRID=07NB1JFQT1BE3E6NARD9)

As a female engineer (recently graduating, not fully an engineer yet), you have to love the field you are in or you'll never be happy.

You'll be told by upper years, if you don't love your field, get out. Its far to expensive to waste your time doing something you hate.

I know many people who are very happy and successful with an arts degree (they also have good business sense).

Best book I read when I was in high school was "Do what you love, and the money will follow".

If you can't balance work, school, and a social life with a reduced course load than you'll be in real trouble at university.

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

"Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst-and enjoy every moment of it."

I read this book and absolutely loved it. It was easy to read, inspiring, and very informative. It's the first book I've ever given to another person just so they could enjoy because I wanted them to.

I think this is probably a bad idea. Teenagers require more sleep than adults, and your teenage years are very important for your body's development. There isn't enough research on polyphasic sleep especially not in teenagers, to say that this is safe.

> The reason for this is, I want to learn a lot of things, to read more and learn a new language.

If you are in school currently, you are unlikely to have more free time available to you than you do now. Part of getting to adulthood (in my opinion) is accepting that you can't do everything and you need to make tough decisions about what to focus on. I don't know what your existing schedule looks like, but if you haven't already, take a look at how you're spending your time and see if there is anything there you can remove to fit in things that are more important to you? You may enjoy Deep Work by Cal Newport for more on these ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U - contracts are great, but you have to spend effort and time to enforce them.


NOW, most of the time once you have a proper contract you are showing how well you are willing to protect yourself. So people behave accordingly.

Then, you have to actually use your contract to enforce the terms. This should be no surprise.

And, you can also bend the rules a bit, but you should always get something out of it for bending the rules.

​

This is a good book for having conversations. https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Second-ebook-dp-B005K0AYH4/dp/B005K0AYH4/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

This question gets asked all the time on this sub. I did a search for the term books and compiled this list from the dozens of previous answers:

How to Read the Solar System: A Guide to the Stars and Planets by Christ North and Paul Abel.


A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.


A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.


Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.


Foundations of Astrophysics by Barbara Ryden and Bradley Peterson.


Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program by Pat Duggins.


An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything by Chris Hadfield.


You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station by Chris Hadfield.


Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the Space Transportation System by Dennis Jenkins.


Wings in Orbit: Scientific and Engineering Legacies of the Space Shuttle, 1971-2010 by Chapline, Hale, Lane, and Lula.


No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative About the Challenger Accident and Our Time by Claus Jensen.


Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences by Andrew Chaikin.


A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin.


Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Teitel.


Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas Kelly.


The Scientific Exploration of Venus by Fredric Taylor.


The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.


Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her by Rowland White and Richard Truly.


An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Bradley Carroll and Dale Ostlie.


Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space by Willy Ley.


Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Clark.


A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.


Russia in Space by Anatoly Zak.


Rain Of Iron And Ice: The Very Real Threat Of Comet And Asteroid Bombardment by John Lewis.


Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John Lewis.


Asteroid Mining: Wealth for the New Space Economy by John Lewis.


Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris.


The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe Report by Timothy Ferris.


Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson.


The Martian by Andy Weir.


Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach.


The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution by Frank White.


Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.


The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne.


Entering Space: An Astronaut’s Oddyssey by Joseph Allen.


International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems by Hopkins, Hopkins, and Isakowitz.


The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.


How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin.


This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William Burrows.


The Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan.


Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz.


Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.


The end

PS - /u/DDE93 this list has all the links.

/u/ColChrisHadfield aka Chris Hadfield wrote a rather wonderful book called "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth" detailing his life experience in becoming an astronaut, and being an astronaut. It was actually really eye-opening.

If you happen to see this Mr. Hadfield, thank you for helping bring more awareness to space exploration. And I loved hearing Space Oddity in space.

If Trump hasn't divested from these businesses every dollar spent at a foreign establishment can be considered a bride. It's a matter for debate but until he proves he's divested it seems like a huge conflict of interest. But when has trump ever used a position of power for his own personal gain.

https://www.amazon.ca/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-J/dp/0399594493

Your welcome! Glad it helped. The relaxation thing is something most drummers don't want to hear because it seemingly has nothing to do with music. It also makes people feel weird or self-conscious. But it absolutely works.
There are several books on the subject that really helped me. https://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Cybernetics-New-More-Living-Life/dp/0671700758

https://www.amazon.com/Effortless-Mastery-Liberating-Master-Musician/dp/156224003X

https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Music-Barry-Green/dp/0385231261

One other thing I wanted to mention is the concept of dancing and drumming. There is a direct connection between the two. In Bob Moses book Drum Wisdom, he states that it behooves all drummer to dance. I tell tell students, if you're embarrassed about dancing in front of people go in your bedroom, shut the door, and dance. Again, this makes people feel weird, but it works. You don't have to be a good dancer. You just have to learn to relax and move with the music.

These two books by Cal Newport, one of the best authors on productivity and discipline.

Deep Work

So Good They Can't Ignore You

And also, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Aaaand, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

For mindset, I also recommend The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. It'll teach you to choose your battles carefully, although you can find most of that content in his site.

Someone posted a comment on the yahoo page that was a good main reason why this is an issue, at least in my opinion. Basically, troll reviews have been around forever, and a lot of times people want these reviews to be removed. Why do they only step in and take down the ones for Hillary? Why isn't this a site-wide policy of just immediately deleting negative reviews from people that haven't received the authorized purchaser logo or whatever? Yeah there's other places to bash her, but it's funny they just decide to enforce this for her.

For example, here is a link to Donald Trump's book, looking at 1-star reviews with verified purchaser only option turned off. Hmm, I could scroll through 40 pages of people that give it 1-star and haven't purchased the book. Then here's Clinton's book with the same search parameters. At the time I'm looking at it, there's literally 3 1-star reviews from people that don't have the verified purchase indicator. So 40 pages of 1-star reviews from non-buyers, versus 3 reviews. I'm not pro-Trump in the slightest, I just picked that as an example because it's very easy to bash him. Seems to me they're blatantly playing favorites...

I would also suggest looking at the book Designing Your Life (https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321). I’m in a similar situation to yours and they give you a lot of practical activities you can do to help narrow down on the things that you enjoy doing, and how to go about structuring your career on them. I’m not usually big on self help style books but it actually really helped and is quite popular. Apparently it is based on a popular college course...

I highly recommend a book called The Inner Game of Music. It's a short read but it has excellent methods for overcoming inner demons like self-doubt and exaggerated self-criticism. It's not "I'm okay, you're okay", either. It also helps with practicing, performance, composition, all sorts of things. And it can be applied to more than just music.

Downvotes... downvotes everywhere.

You're a little vicious in your critique, but I don't think you're wrong. I thought this was going to be the manga version of Primitive Technology; I loved watching them go into detail on how they were building up from 0.

But... then the village came up and I thought 'oh, maybe some of them got out of their shells early? Decided that technology was to blame for their predicament and decided to 'start anew' instead?' 'Oh... it's from his father. Who's an astronaut. Who puts his faith in his child who is turned into stone, and has no way of knowing whatsoever if it's possible to reverse the process.'

^(ensuing rant... ye have been warned...)

Like they couldn't have started trying to reverse the process themselves? The technological retrieval would have bean an awesome idea. You've just established the opportunity to completely reboot society to be more aware of the earth, the affects technology & society has on it, you've just completely stopped all carbon emissions, and allowed the animal kingdom to flourish (invasive species notwithstanding), and establish a society with all the benefits of the last 200k years.

Starting from 0 with some of the most intelligent minds on the planet who are literally trained constantly to face insane scenarios. Anyone who's read Chris Hadfield's book knows the amount of crazy situations they come up with D&D style just to play out how to survive. (eg: you're on the ISS, someone has just broken their leg and is losing blood... roll dice okay, a fire just broke out. You can't handle both. What do you do?)

They are problem solvers to the nth degree, who stare down the absolute worst case scenario, plan for it, and are always moving forward. No one in their right mind would rely on a child who may or may not be alive to 'rebuild society' when you have that much talent at your fingertips.


There really is so much I'm happy to accept (3700 year old trees; the complete absence of structures; the massively changed landscape... even if Japan does live near a fault) for the sake of watching these characters deal with a tough situation. I'll be curious to see where it goes (maybe someone in their team or folks who survived underground did try to make a mainland society). But... now it feels cheapened.

Read this book: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us by Daniel Pink


Basically, right now all your motivation is extrinsic. It's only by finding what intrinsically motivates you that you will be truly successful, thereby accomplishing all those goals you just listed.

Proper diet and cook all your own food. No joke. It is a huge amount of effort, but the more well you feel the better you will do at math.

If math is a muscle that requires a workout, wouldn't it follow that the muscle needs proper nutrition?

Also, I found this interesting. ABC news Nightline had a story about this on Sept. 30- "The Genius Code" Edit: added link

Just a couple of ideas:

1. Most federal jobs (like post carrier) pay the same amount everywhere. Both high cost of living and low cost of living areas. You could consider this type of job and move somewhere you would have a lower cost of living. (I dunno about state jobs)
   
   
2. Consider your values. Is the house more important than the working a "simple job" (or whatever you decide to do w/ extra $)
   
   
3. I think people often get into these kinds of "either/or" mindsets. I'm guilty of this as well. Think about how you could do BOTH. You could work part time as an IT guy. You could live in a low cost of living area. You could trade the car for a bike. Be creative. Only you (and those who know your full story) can help you brainstorm ideas. The book that helped me with this is: Design Your Life https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321 (if you're interested in reading it). I recommend it for these kinds of things.
   
   
4. Remember there's no right or wrong answers. Experiment carefully before making a drastic change. In "Design Your Life," they called this "prototyping."
   
   Hope that's helpful. Best of luck to you!

1. Treat it like a job. Do 9am-5pm at your desk, every week day, working productively. No facebook, no newspaper. No extra long lunches. Do not work late nights/weekends unless ABSOLUTELY necessary.
   
   
2. Keep yourself accountable for progress. Each week send an email to your supervisor, "this is what I did, this is what I plan to do". Before you send your email, check against last week to see how you did.
   
   
3. This is a good book. It's UK centric which seems like it will help you: https://www.amazon.com/How-get-PhD-handbook-supervisors/dp/0335242022
   
   
4. This is another good book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/PhD-Not-Enough-Survival-Science/dp/0465022227/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485777868&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=a+phd+isnot+enough
   

On this note, is freelance work at all a possibility for you? Or something different and more fulfilling?

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life is my favorite career life crisis book. In my experience, periods of great crisis and life upheaval lead to beautiful things if you allow yourself to embrace the journey. It sucks, but there are great things out there for you. You just have to look a little harder for them right now. ❤️

One of my favorite books is the Cal Newport book on Deep work:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X47ZVXM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

One of the things it talks about is making yourself less accessible. Talk to your manager and your team about the ideas of needing heads down time to get work done, and that their constant “just a quick thing” interruptions are actually leading to a DECREASE in team productivity not an increase. You are the one that will have to set boundaries with your team. The book would give you some good ways to phrase talking points. Good luck!

Also, about your wife.. I’d focus your talking efforts there, since presumably that’s the relationship you care the most about. Get more alone time at work, so that you have more energy to talk to your wife.

Agreed - A Random Walk Down Wall Street is the best book out there.

Also, see The Automatic Millionaire. This is a convincing book as to why you need to start saving for retirement at a young age, and how every year you wait to start saving can result in tens of thousands lost at retirement. (Essentially - compound interest starts compounding hugely after 25 years).

Also, Fooled by Randomness is a classic as well about having a sophisticated approach to investing - e.g. how randomness fools individuals into thinking that they're actually controlling the market in investing...

> Suppose an inventor wants to build an electric car. He will need a team of 10 engineers to assist him and $5 million worth of tools and equipment to build a prototype over 1-5 years. He will have a significant chance of failure, more than half the time his effort to build the car will fail and the allocated labor and capital completely wasted. Are you saying that under socialism he will have access to the labor and capital that he needs? How is that allocated? Or that ventures that have a greater than 50% chance of failure simply cannot be funded?

Take a variety of successful entrepreneurs from any or all era's (Jobs, Musk, Walton, etc). How many of them claimed to do what they did for the money? Few, if any. Now what was largely the determining factor in whether or not they were able to succeed? Access to financial resources and the ability to profit. This is the capitalist dynamic at work. In a socialist system, there's no need for that dynamic to have to play out, and it is seldom the thing the that truly motivates us.

Still trying to get through "An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth" but I'm off early today, so I should have more than enough time!

About four chapters in, it's a great read and very funny at times.

> just like our hearts, when we grew up and realized we'll never become an astronaut.

One of us made it. Great book, too.

Way to go, buddy. At the end of the day, only you know what is right for you. Congrats on staying true to yourself. There was a book published some years back, Do what you love, the money will follow. You may want to check it out.

Figuring out what career to gear up for while failing college felt to me like fixing an airplane in mid-flight.


OPTION I: Land the plane and fix it.

Two majors in, I dropped out and worked for six years, then the light bulb came on, and I got a BSCS from the CoE here. So that's the option that worked for me.


OPTION II: Fix the plane - hey, lots of altitude left!

If you try this, you need a much sharper image of who you are, what brings out the best in you, what you would do if had no financial constraints but wanted to be productive, what standard of living you want, where you want to live, and so forth. Get a self-discovery-oriented career guide like What Color Is Your Parachute and start noticing the good and bad patterns in your life and what they imply about a career that you could build without dreading Mondays.


OPTION III: Whee, we're gliding!

Included for completeness and popularity.

Maybe a bit lengthier of a response than you're looking for, but try reading Crucial Conversations. It's a great discussion on how to effectively handle these types of conversations.

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to help you out.


Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, by Feld and Mendelson


Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Term Sheets & Valuations


And of course, The Art of the Deal for when you want something more high-level. Hope this helps!

As an aside, you might also enjoy a similar communication approach called Crucial Conversations, which is similarly focused on going beyond silence and violence in dialogue.

Their approach is specifically geared towards workplace trainings, which is why I mention it. Here's some more info if you're interested:

• Book
  
• Events
  
• Trainings
  
• Talk by the author
  
  I just finished the book and really enjoyed it as a compliment to NVC.

Only one title of overlap, nice.
Out of your list, where would you start? Have you read any other in our original list?



Built to Sell, John Warrillow

The Automatic Customer, John Warrillow

How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors, Lawrence Steinmetz

Start With Why, Simon Sinek

Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek

The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber

Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith

What Clients Love, Harry Beckwith

Question Based Selling, Tom Freese

Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow: Discovering Your Right Livelihood . The converse reasoning seems to be that if the money is not 'following' you, then you are not doing what you love.

Fair enough, thanks man! and good luck! If you don't mind, I'll share a couple of tips I have learned.

1. Active recall is the most effective method of studying, just like you look at scientific evidence to prescribe anti-hypertension meds, look for the evidence for active studying evidence Short tips
   
   
2. Being active is important, not just physical health but elevated brain derived neurotropic factor evidence and reducing and preventing depression and burn out evidence
   
   
3. More broad than the previous tips do one thing at a time and in the same place. Study in one place and don't bring the phone into that place at all. A great book on this type of work "deep work" can be seen here
   
   Lastly, I know the worst kind of advice is the unsolicited kind, but I would of killed to know this 7 years ago. Best of luck in this tough and long journey.

That says more about you than it does about him. It's a pretty well known technique. It's even mentioned in this book. I'm pretty sure he knows the author.

Since I don't see it here already I'll recommend Col. Chris Hadfield's book "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything". It's a fantastic read. It's also on Audible if that's more your thing.

This book is super cheesy, but it can help with providing a temporary attitude boost in your situation. It's called Fish

If you're curious, you're welcome to read a few books which have given me this "forecast".

First, the best primer on social business is "Creating a world without poverty" by Muhammad Yunus.

To understand why this type of business will work, read "Drive" by Daniel Pink.

A) Addressing one's name and making fun of a physical characteristic are not in the same. Isn't the left supposed to be accepting of everyone and their "body image"?
B) Most people shorten it to DJT and he also embraces his middle initial himself. He even places his middle initial on the books he has authored.

Why? Because it's his name and he's proud of it. Why does Barry feel the need to hide his full name?

solopcism isn't selfishness, or narcisism/ego, though it overlaps often enough. It's self involvement, a lens of peer approval, of Ethos over logos, self-pathos over delivering pathos. How does this affect my reputation, what does it make me feel vice how does this make others feel?

> "...the tendency of women to think anything being discussed is about them personally"; or, extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

Aristotle said as much in ancient greece: Woman is more compassionate than man, more easily moved to tears, at the same time is more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and to strike. She is, furthermore, more prone to despondency and less hopeful than the man, more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech, more deceptive, and of more retentive memory.

and

“Women often worry more than men about the impact their actions will have on their relationships. This can prompt them to change their behavior… sometimes by asking for things indirectly, sometimes by asking for less than they really want, and sometimes by trying to be more deserving of what they want (say by working harder) so that they’ll be given what they want without asking.”

So it's not selfishness, it's self love, or self involvement. In a 10,000 foot view, you see it, even if there is variance between individuals. In OPs case, OP is talking about projection. Men assume women are the same as men, except the parts where they get it better. Thats not solopcism, thats projection. Also, most men do not view the average woman as a fat femenist. Most men view women as madonna/whore, or men with tits and more cunning. Again, pure ego and projection. Women view men more of 'how does he make me look?'

which easily shows itself as women thinking mose men are below average. Needs to be a man well above you in the SMP in order to make you look better in your peer group. Why do you think the girls in here are so adamant about getting a marriage, and not a husband? All about how it makes them look, feel, etc.

Of course, the average woman is somewhat obese (170lbs) and either a femenist, or mildly indifferent to it, while enjoying the benefits that came from it. So if you really wanted to, you could argue that men are just observant, but I won't go there

Okay, for sci-fi, you have to get The Culture series in. Put Player of Games face out.

I don't read a lot of space books, but Asteroid Hunter by Carrie Nugent is awesome. I mostly have recommendations for spaceflight and spaceflight history, and a lot of these come from listeners to my podcast, so all credit to them.

• Corona, America's first Satellite Program Amazon
  
• Digital Apollo MIT Books
  
• An Astronaut's Guide to Earth by Chris Hadfield (Amazon)
  
• Capture Dynamics and Chaotic Motions in Celestial Mechanics: With Applications to the Construction of Low Energy Transfers by Edward Belbruno (Amazon)
  
• Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration by Buzz Aldrin (Amazon)
  
• Red Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Part 1 on Amazon)
  
• Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War by Michael Neufeld (Amazon)
  
• Space Shuttle by Dennis R Jenkins (Amazon)
  
• The History Of Manned Space Flight by David Baker (Amazon)
  
• Saturn by Lawrie and Godwin (Amazon)
  
• Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Lovell (Amazon)
  
• Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz (Amazon)
  
• Space by James A Michener (Amazon)
  
• Encounter With Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes (Amazon)
  
• Ascent to Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography by Arthur C Clark (Amazon)
  
• Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by Bate and White (Amazon)
  
• Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein (Amazon)

Maybe I misread something, but none of the rules state you must love your work.

The last two ones, "be calm" and "smile" strike me more along the lines of the mantra "choose your attitude" from the book FISH!.

Have him read this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Astronauts-Guide-Life-Earth-Determination/dp/0316253030/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503248390&sr=8-1&keywords=an+astronauts+guide+to+life+on+earth

He will love it. It's fascinating.

He's for diplomacy with Cuba but we need to make a good deal with them. He said he'll close the embassy in Havana until a good deal can be worked out. The Art of the Deal.

Feel the same way. Society wasn't built for us. I spend most of my day dreaming of a place where I can let loose and finally be valued for things I excel at. Fortunately I'm working on an escape hatch that will take another few years to get into. Then, perhaps, I'll have my tiny house of the beach and a job I can enjoy. Don't hang in there, make a plan and go for it. I don't know much about passive income, but definitely check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321

You might try giving Crucial Conversations a read. Good luck!

Read Designing your Life to get a straightforward set of ideas for identifying what you like, and how to try some if them out. Excellent book.

It's not an all-or-nothing choice. You have lots of options as to what you do, where you want to end up, and how you get there. Follow your interests and they will continue to lead you either further into what you live, or into deciding to try something else.

At 24 you are still just starting out. I'm over 60 and still trying out new directions.

You should consider grad school in another country.

Also, let me recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your-Parachute-2012/dp/1607740109

Good luck

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport of Study Hacks was a great read. I've been looking for more books that are similar.

A PhD Is Not Enough! is a good book for those in the sciences, as well as Letters to a Young Scientist by EO Wilson.

I've always heard the basic advice of "think of where you want to be, and try to figure out how others got there" (educational requrements et c.). However, for my personal journey, I'm just as lost as the next guy.

So I assume that all of us who think he's awesome will buy the book. Right?

Here's a link to make it easier:

http://www.amazon.com/Astronauts-Guide-Life-Earth-Determination/dp/0316253014/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1383102020&sr=1-1&keywords=chris+hadfield

A Ph.D. is Not Enough

Academia is basically full. Unless you work your ass off for a decade, in which case you might have a chance. Networking is critical, and even that might only network you into a dead-end path. Even getting into academia isn't all that you might have expected. There are some amazingly smart physicists (i.e., clearly smarter than some Nobel prize winners) that nobody has ever heard of.

• Buy or borrow What Color Is Your Parachute 2016 and read it. It's got a lot of good suggestions.
  
• My local library offers classes, and they also have a resume critique session. Check these out.
  
• Did you graduate college? If so, contact them about their job placement program.
  
• Check out your local community college. They might have classes or help with getting a job.
  
• Networking is crucial these days. Get on Linked In and network with your friends.
  
• How long ago were your interviews? Can you contact them and ask why you weren't chosen?
  
• Why were you fired from jobs?
  
• Does Meetup.com have any social groups available for networking? (My local meetup does.)
  
  Job hunting unfortunately is a job in itself. It's much different even from 10 years ago when you graduated. You probably need a functional resume, not a "job" resume that only lists the jobs you've had. I'm sure I'm not listing everything that can be done, but hopefully other people will chime in.
  

I'm someone that had to learn those social skills, primarily through making mistakes and receiving help from friends/mentors. I'd probably see the person in a more positive light since they realized that it's an area they could improve upon and took steps to change things.


Also, they should check out Crucial Conversations. It helped me a lot in the past.

Yes, I see. Fair enough.

Try these:

/r/mentat (disclaimer: I'm a mod. And the only person who posts. :))

and

The Power of Habit

and

The Talent Code

To be honest, I never really discuss movies with people based on mutual knowledge. If someone wants to talk badly enough and mentions a movie, they'll make sure you know what it's about.

If you want to torrent some great movies though, go to this site and find something that looks interesting. Once the ratings are that high, you really can't go wrong.

One book that I read lately that really got me motivated (mostly about work, but I took the message into daily life), is Fish.

It's about choosing your attitude towards life and it's really helped me not be so negative about everything.

Try this, a book that takes an empirical look at our system, who's rich, and why, rather than anecdotes on individual people. Your sample size is disappointing, Taleb's is enlightening.

The fact that saving money and living frugally is necessary for becoming rich (it isn't, by the way, getting a nice fat government subsidy is by far the most profitable venture but it requires you to have money in the first place I guess) does not imply that it's sufficient and the cases where it hasn't been sufficient are too numerous to count.

Check out "Designing Your Life" by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans. On another note, guaranteed there are jobs that are high-paying and corporate that relate to your passion. You just have to change your perspective, make compromises, and be flexible. Example, don't be a struggling artist, be a well paid designer.

You've got this. If you have the time, I would strongly suggest picking up the book, Designing Your Life.

https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3K0H7JUCS8F28&keywords=designing+your+life&qid=1570294285&s=books&sprefix=designing%2Caps%2C217&sr=1-1

It really helped me to stay calm and focused when I went through a similar period.

Astronauts Guide To Life on Earth

I don't read much non fiction but I demolished this book and loved every page.

I recently listened to the book Built to Sell, and it was really interesting how once the guy learned to set up the business correctly, actually with the aim of selling it, it no longer was as important for him to sell it. I found it very insightful, and it also has some points in there of how companies are evaluated and how they can be adjusted to increase their value and what options he had to find a buyer.

> waiting for good suggestions from our IR folks

The only book needed to make a country leader of the free world*

-

*Note that the country is France, not the country of the reader

Book: The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It presents a strong case for a secular view and discusses the basic underpinnings of a skeptical mindset with a bit more subtlety than can be found in works by other famous atheist authors.

Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This book has nothing to do with atheism or agnosticism; in fact is was written by a Mormon. But it does provide some principle centered practices that are useful to people, particularly if you are feeling rudderless in the absence of a religious moral code.

This is good. You are thinking. Now take it a little further, expand your thinking and ask yourself how many offers did she have to make before he accepted the one he wanted? link.

As /u/ChuckEye mentioned, The Inner Game of Music By Tim Galloway and Barry Green is a good read. I've personally found it incredibly helpful so far.

Personally, I'm not huge on social media, especially FB. You need feet in the door as you are a physical business. Just getting virtual clicks isn't enough.

What you need is good old fashioned business advice. The fundamentals of business never change even though the tools (such as social media) do.

I recommend these two books:
Good to Great

Fish!

blink is awesome if you want a popular book by Malcolm Gladwell.

If you want a more obscure and more technical book, buy Fooled by Randomness. The same author also wrote Black Swan but Fooled by Randomness is more technical and perhaps would be more to his liking.

If you give up easily, programming is not for you. It's a very mentally-intensive field that requires a lot of thinking and discipline. That being said, you're very young still and have a lot of time to figure out what you want to do. Try different things to find out what you like, then try and make a job out of it.

If you're good at music, put some videos on YouTube. That's how Justin Bieber was discovered. Try programming again. It's a lot more fun if you have a project to work on, so try building a simple website or a simple game. Try job shadowing people (following someone around at their job to see what their day-to-day tasks are like).

Here's a website that lists off IT jobs. You can browse this site to get a feel for the types of jobs out there and the types of responsibilities they come with.

There's also a book called What Color is your Parachute? I've never read it, but it's helped a lot of people find out what they wanted to do with their lives.

I have to say, the sense of obligation you have for this company that's clearly taking advantage of you (and from what you say it's the entire recording industry that's taking advantage of everyone who is so desperate to work there) is astounding to me. If they value you, they'll turn that unpaid internship into a paying job and the other offer (assuming you get it) can be a good basis for negotiating. If they threaten you and say it'll "ruin your reputation", then fuck 'em. It's not worth having a "good" reputation with them (really the only reputation you'll have is "doormat").

I'm wondering if this attitude of not demanding more from an employer is solely the culture at recording labels, or if it has to do with your being a woman. I obviously don't know anything about you in particular, but it's well known that women can be too passive with job negotiations and undervalue themselves (http://www.amazon.com/Women-Dont-Ask-Negotiation---Strategies/dp/0553383876/).

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less changed my life. It's one of three books I recommend to everyone, I even keep spare copies around to hand out.

Please start your education early with the books that they will never introduce you to!! Here's a good start:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
  
• The Art of the Deal
  
• Still the Best Hope
  
• Righteous Indignation
  
  With this knowledge, no liberal will be able to fuck with you!

> saying no

If your boss would be receptive, try giving him/her a copy of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-The-Disciplined-Pursuit-Less/dp/0804137382

I'd recommend reading it yourself. It's good stuff.

Actually, I was reading this book: Women Don't Ask and it explores this in detail. One of the overarching theories examined is that boys are raised with a lot more autonomy with "the world is your oyster" mentality while girls are raised with believing that ensuring everyone is happy is the most important social skill in any conflict. They cite a lot of research studies and the priming is done at a very young age for boys vs. girls.

The Inner Game of Music was recommended to me by my director way back when. Great for the mental aspect of things (e.g. nerves, concentration, etc.).

It's tough to delegate and let go but it's the only way to grow. Especially if she wants to sell the business down the road. No buyer wants a business where the owner IS the business.

I would recommend this book if you can spare the $12 and hour or two to read it. It's a really quick and easy read but will get you both thinking in the right direction.

http://www.amazon.com/Built-Sell-Creating-Business-Without/dp/1591845823

I am in a similar situation, feeling that my life is passing me by, without me accomplishing much. Every day folds into the next languidly. Even the weekends have begun to look the same as any other.
A friend recommended this book to me and asked me not to skimp on its exercises "Designing your Life " "https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321".
The book is a product of a popular namesake course at Stanford. Knowing this made me wish I was reading this book in my 20s rather than in my late 30s.
Anyways, as usual the book began well for me, but when it was time to put in a regular effort to analyze my habits and life, I reverted to the same lack-luster effort from my end.
But, I do believe that this could help you - if , unlike me, you take it seriously and apply yourself to its exercises and infer the results correctly.
Heck, writing about this has made me want to go back to it and give it another shot.

The big question for me is why should I buy it. It is a solo project. Yes there is a product but only 1 dev. If you leave i need a small team to learn the code to make any changes. The same can be said for the sales, marketing, product,...

First i would build it in a scalable business, next comes the valuation.

Some good reads
https://www.amazon.com/Built-Sell-Creating-Business-Without/dp/1591845823
https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/B00094F0ES/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=emyth+revisited&qid=1569150615&sprefix=emyt&sr=8-1

Hadfield's is An Astronaut's Guide to Life On Earth. Great read! I usually give a copy out every Christmas to some random family member.

I haven't tried beta blockers due to other health problems, but The Inner Game of Music helped me greatly. It takes a few months to really work through all of it properly, but now I can use that kick of adrenaline to perform even better. It's worth a read, even if you still decide to use beta blockers.

Yeah, that probably would have been cool of me to include that part.

The first is called Fish!

The second is called Who moved my cheese?

I think one problem people usually have is being too precious about it and end up feeling too intimidated to write as much as you want or at all. Especially with pen and paper it's easy to feel that you shouldn't ruin this beautiful physical objects with your crappy handwriting and unimportant stuffs. I think I heard Merlin on one of the All the Great Shows™ talked about this and solved this by scribbling on the first page of a notebook then it's ruined already you can feel easy. But since you're having a yearly theme of sweating the small stuff maybe this doesn't bother you at all.

​

Oh and the yearly theme reminded of Chris Hadfield's book where there's literally a chapter on sweating the small stuff. Is that where it came from? If not it might be an interesting read for you

JUNE 6th 2017-

Ford to import Focus small car from China in 2019

Ford's president of global operations Joe Hinrichs says the move will save Ford $1 billion.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/ford-import-focus-small-car-from-china-in-2019.html

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018-

Ford Kills US-Bound Focus Active Crossover Due to Tariffs

http://www.thedrive.com/news/23349/ford-cancels-us-importation-of-focus-active-crossover-due-to-burden-of-imposed-tariffs

Read a book lol, here you go kiddo - Trump: The Art of the Deal https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399594493/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_AIxLBb4HT0T6R

Do What you Love and the Money will Follow

Essentialism by Greg McKeown is one of the best books I've read this year: http://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-The-Disciplined-Pursuit-Less/dp/0804137382

Great stuff here.