A really good article…
The Best Financial Advice I ever received
The crutch of the article: Invest your time, don’t spend it. Among other like ideas such as “Time = Money” etc, the author lists out ways to save time and ways to invest that time saved. Here’s a few TTV ideas.
Television: we like to watch one show or less a night after the kids go to bed. On the weekends sometimes we’ll do a DVD movie. At one point, we were super hardcore, no cable TV, no phone. We used our cellphones tethered to our computer for internet connection, media center for over-the-air network television, and the library for movies and TV series. Now that I work from home a little more, we justified getting DSL for $25 a month. With that, we can hook up our Ooma
- Never watch a commercial again – We like the DVR idea for sports especially. Watching a football game in 1 hour is fantastic, if you start after half time, by the end you are pretty much watching in real-time. Baseball and basketball you are talking about 2-3 hours every night or every other night (trust me, we’ve been there). Catch the highlights, or pick a matchup game you really want to watch.
- Get rid of cable – Admittedly, this is difficult for sports fans (sports is about the only thing you can’t get online). But if you can go hardcore, you can catch the highlights online the next day. You can still watch your favorite shows online, netflix, media center for the major networks (Over-the-air signals) or our personal favorite the public libary.
- Consider a media center – At TTV, we hate monthly fees. If you’re tech savvy, you can build or buy a media center PC (maybe we’ll do a future post on this). Get the major networks with an Over-the-air antenna. Never watch a commercial, and never pay a monthly fee. Also, use it to store up all your movies and television shows. Connect the media center to your big TV and get a remote, you’ll never want to go back.
- Never experience disc skipping again – use your media center and some free software to put all your television and movies in a central location. Never wait for discs spin ups, no annoying disc spin noise. Buy a portable harddrive and watch on your laptop or netbook while you do dishes.
Games: Not mentioned in the article, but we think it deserves it’s own section. Back in the day, we used to be into gaming more. When the kids get old enough, I’m sure I’ll be playing with them. But here are some of my opinions on gaming. These are really just my personal opinions. I know a lot of people who disagree.
- Go multi or bust – If I was going to play games, the only reason would be to play with friends or family. Gaming with friends is really really fun. You can have an experience together, talk about it later, etc. But as for single player games… My favorite quote, “It only took me 27 and a half hours to finish it”. Think about that statement.
- Practice… We talkin’ about Practice! – Allen Iverson had it right. I had to go thru it to realize it, but when I got to the point where I had to practice at a game on my own, I started to re-think priorities. Now if gaming is one of your priorities and you’re in a league/guild or whatever, then go for it. But when I think about accomplishments worth practicing for, rarely do I think “being good at X game” to be one of them. Of course, some people would say the same thing about sports
- Time Wasters – They have that name for a reason. I mean if you at least do sudoku, or crosswords, you’re exercising your brain. But those mindless games, we don’t really see the point. I have no games on my phone. I do have some language learning software and audio lessons, audio books, e-books, to-do lists, podcasts, downloaded audio articles, guitar lesson videos etc.
Commuting: Another good topic.
- Audio Books – Definitely like this one. We use, you guessed it, our local public library. We’re lucky to have a library system with a great online system. If our library doesn’t have it, you can request it from another and it’s delivered to our local library for pickup.
- Learn a new language – Our other favorite. Here’s our favorite site… innovative language podcasts.
- Posture exercises – From better homes and garden, these posture exercises can probably be modified to do in your car.
Standing in line: Everyone hates lines. Here are a few ideas to keep you busy.
- Phone Apps – Probably the most obvious choice. You can do e-books, language lessons or notes, update to-do lists, podcasts or videos.
- Exercise/Stretching – Probably our favorite since the phone things are a little distracting and it’s probably not enough time to accomplish much unless you are in a really long line. So for short lines, we like this live strong article. There are also posture exercises (from better homes and garden) you can do.
Exercising: We agree with the author, the benefits are great and it is a great way to spend a portion of your time. One thing we like to think about is volume vs intensity training. In our opinion, intensity training provides more gains and takes less time. Something you may want to consider.
- Tabata Training – A good example of intensity training vs volume training. 4 minute workouts. Doesn’t get much better, and Study done vs 60 minute steady pace biking, tabata improved cardio health by 14% vs steady biking at 10%. Also, anerobic benefits were much higher. You just saved 56 minutes of your workout day.
- Pull up bar – a great exercise. Keep a Pull Up Bar
available in your house. Bang out a few reps whenever you walk by and feel like it. Get some Ab Straps
, and do some knee raises (way better than a bizzillion crunches).
- Planking – if you set it up right, you can do it while watching TV.
- With the kids – young kids generally like to exercise. You can make up games, have planking contests, etc. Fun can be had by all.
- Stairs – obviously “take the stairs” has been around for a while. But if you walk every set of stairs with good posture and quiet foot steps, you can get a better workout.
Reading: Not much to add to the author’s section. We like self-help, family help, work-help books, and of course the classics. Check out the gutenberg press.
We really like the author’s take on many of the topics. We feel that it goes along with a lot of TTV ideas. A lot of these things can be done for free. So we’ve opened our new free section, and hopefully we can share some ideas (and get some new ones) on how to best invest our time.