Thoughts on health and building wealth

I formally have finished the next book I started (yesterday, 12/26/15), today. If I keep up this momentum, I'll be reading a lot of books this coming year!

Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson was an OK book. The author seems to make an attempt to understand his own brain using actual modern day technology and methods. I underline "actual" because some people consider things like neural beats, music and tones designed to make you experience a certain state of mind, like being on drugs, as modern brain technology.

Johnson uses techniques like; bioneural feedback, MRI & fMRI scans, trance, hypnosis, meditation, etc. Apart from being a somewhat interesting journey, the book is more like a diary. Although I will say the author wrote it in a very organized matter, which matters a lot to my book reading experience.

Wealth.... again?

Today I'd like to take the opportunity to clarify what wealth is exactly. Although on this blog I do focus on building financial wealth, there are many other ways to build wealth that do not require large capital or experience.

1. Gain experience. Obviously, this is one of the most efficient ways to build wealth. if you can show a potential employer that you've got a lot of experience, you'll have more of an advantage than your less experience colleagues. Even if you can't exactly prove this experience through traditional means, if you can explain your experience, that is very valuable!

How does one gain experience? Start! Start anywhere! Don't know what you want to do with your life?? GUESS!!! Too many people waste years away because they "don't know what I want to do with my life yet"-- I always respond, "what have you tried??" Needless to say their responses don't warrant "trying". 

Like reading? Try becoming a book critique! Enjoy food? Be a cook/chef!! Perhaps a nutritionist! Do anything, try anything. Don't just wait until it "comes" to you-- it won't.

2. Network. We've all heard the story of how Johnny from up the block knew nothing about mechanics but was friends with someone who worked in Tesla and was therefore recruited and now works on the head assembly line inputing valuable opinion. How does this happen? By knowing people. Connecting and knowing many different people allows you to be exposed to opportunities before they are presented to the masses. A company would much rather hire someone that they know, or someone that someone in the company knows of, than a random Joe from the street.

I read an article on Flipboard the other day that people are more likely to like you if they do favors for you. .... WHAT?!? Yep!! You read that right; get people to do favors for you and they will like you, more! Of course there is a threshold there, so don't push it. Why does this happen? I have no idea. Exploit it!!!

3. Read, read and read some more. The reason I have reading as one of my goals is because reading is the one surefire, free, highly accessible way to gain knowledge and wisdom. If you don't choose any of these to start doing today, do this one!!!! Read! Read anything! Eventually your tastes will become more refined and you'll know what books to look out for.

1. As winter comes to it's climax, the weather and temperature has followed suit.  The roofing materials require a temperature of 35 degrees or more before being applied. It's been a study 25 below, so I haven't been able to get out there. Plus, it's a bit too cold to tear up the wood flooring so I'm just gonna wait till it warms up a bit, preferably above 35.

                                        

2. I've decided to change my goal of ASL development to career development as I am starting to see more and more how I do not want my interpreting job to become a long-term career.

So, what does this goal entail? Not sure yet. I think to be on the lookout for what I'd like to do as a career. Right now I'm considering a couple of options; entrepreneur, musician, investor, technology/programming/coding.

3. As mentioned before, I finished the book I started yesterday and have begun a new book called Millionaire Before Thirty by Douglas, Aaron and Emron Andrew. I saw plenty of good reviews on this book so I'm excited!!

4. I've slowly but surely been learning some important things about investing. 

#1- generally invest for the long term. Many people attempt to beat the stock market but studies have shown that more than 80% fail at it. Could I be part of that 20%? Perhaps with more experience. As of right now, the most I can do is learn and invest smart.

#2- investing young is the best way to ensure a wealthy future. I'm young, so I have that going for me :)

#3- look for low cost trading platforms. Luckily for me, Robinhood charges $0 per trade.

5. I've had to dramatically change my goal of learning electricity to learning about career and job development. The reason for this is because my current job is not giving me job satisfaction. I don't feel like I'm using my full potential for my job and it's causing some depression and difficulties sleeping.

So, what have I learned? The most important thing is that I need to just try a career. If I don't like it, move on. I'm waiting until we finish building the house before I try new careers-- we need a good amount of money still to finish.

6.  Piano playing has been going really well so far. I'm committed at least 30min a day to practicing, and it's starting to pay off a bit. I'm learning songs like Coldplay's "Clocks" and the Mario theme song. It's really fun, I gotta say. I can't wait till I can write my own music!

7. I am also proud to say that I've kept up with my 30min cardio x2 per week goal. Yes, this is an easy goal, but that's the point. I start off so easy that it's impossible to fail (a lesson learned from the book The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg).

I've eliminated some of the other goals that I had because I realized I was too overwhelmed with all of them and I wasn't given my full, honest effort into developing them. So, I ratcheted them down a bit and will begin giving 100% effort to the goals I have now. We will see how I do :)

How a book can change your life

Well.... shit. This book was one hell of a life changer... I can say with 100% honesty that I am sure glad I got this book.

Meg Jay first opens the book with the fact that she has been a clinical psychologist for a long time. She talks about how her first client was when her (and her client) were both in their 20's. She says in a TED talk

I got a twentysomething who wanted to talk about boys. This I thought I could handle. But I didn't handle it. With the funny stories that Alex would bring to session, it was easy for me just to nod my head while we kicked the can down the road. "Thirty's the new 20," Alex would say, and as far as I could tell, she was right. Work happened later, marriage happened later, kids happened later, even death happened later. Twentysomethings like Alex and I had nothing but time.

But before long, my supervisor pushed me to push Alex about her love life. I pushed back. I said, "Sure, she's dating down, she's sleeping with a knucklehead, but it's not like she's going to marry the guy." And then my supervisor said, "Not yet, but she might marry the next one. Besides, the best time to work on Alex's marriage is before she has one."

The premise of her whole book is just that; preparing 20 year olds (whom she calls twentysomethings) for things that haven't happened but will. Things like; marriage, debt, careers, etc.

--BOOK SPOILER--

She says that 20 year olds who say they don't know what they want to do with their life are generally just afraid of commitment. I can attest to that!

--END OF SPOILER--

I've realized after reading Jay's book, that I have a great fear of commitment and that's why I enjoy jumping from job to job so much; the scene is continuously changing. I might've learned this from my mom who also was notorious for the number of men she dated (while at the same time claiming complete religious devotion).

What I find interesting, though, is that I do struggle with commitment, yet in all of the lower end, underemployed jobs I've worked at, I've always held the title of 'veteran' or 'most commited'-- this doesn't make sense!

I think (and Jay alludes to this) many 20 year olds are afraid of committing to a career because of our conception of what a career is which isn't a good one!



If you're between the ages of 20-30 (about), you qualify as a Millennial. Yay!!! Congratu-fuckin-lations!... not really.



We should be better off, right? Us millennials.... but we aren't. Why? We saw our parents slave at their jobs, then regret they didn't spend more time with their family and friends. We also know that having money is important, so, what do we do? We are left with the millennial conundrum.

1. The fireplace and roofing materials have arrived! I've got a tentative timeline to seal and coat the roof before January. After that, we'll tear up the floors and begin building the frame. At that same time we'll need the windows and door.

2. After a rather rough work week, I had a big realization about my career as an interpreter; I don't necessarily like my job. This is an obvious issue. Why don't I like it? I'm not sure... part of me doesn't like the fact that the clients who use my service have more power over where and when I work than I do. Of course, this'll also happen if I create my own business so the question I'm left with is; should I learn how to deal with this now to give me valuable training in customer service for later?

 

I've also decided that I'm going to change this topic to "Career" seeing as though I won't be in interpreting for very long.

3. I lost my momentum in reading and am now down to about a book a week. I realized that in order for me to really speed read, I need to be in quite a delicate mind set and after reading the book I talked about above, my emotions have been kind of out of control recently. 

In any case, I'm now reading a book called "Misbehaving" by Richard Thaler. It's an economics book that talks about the origination of the study of economics called "behavior economics"-- so far so good, but definitely not my kind of read. I don't condemn reading it, but I do suggest that if you decide to pick it up, get ready for some super economics!

4. My Lending Club loans have finally gone through (mostly) and I am now officially on the way to make some money off of lending my money to people! This should be fun :) my excepted return is 5-8%, which, if I lend out all of the $2,500, that's $125-$200!! Not bad! Better than the banks thats for sure. I'll keep updating here as it progresses.

As for my Robinhood account, I'm still up 5%, although down from several days ago, I'm still up. I'll hold onto my shares of Atlasssian for quite a while before considering selling them. As I go along, I'll buy more dividends so that I can build my passive income up.

5.  I had a good friend of mine explain to me the different parts of electricity and I can now say I have an amateurs grasp on how it all works. I'll have to consider my next topic of study here soon, although I won't stop with electricity for a couple more weeks I think.

6. I haven't been taking this topic seriously, so I really need to buckle down on it. My speed has obviously been slacking and so has my networking.

What I'm gonna do now to fix that is really focus on this topic. I'll see if that works; bringing a lot of awareness to it. If I find out it doesn't work, I'll try something more structured.

7. I spoke with a close friend who is practically a master at piano playing, about pianos. He gave me some friendly advice. He told me that learning to play an instrument is like learning a language, so, "do what you did when you first learned a language; learn how to speak it first, then learn to read and write". What that means is learn how to play songs without knowing how to read it off sheet music, then learn to read it and write it.

Sounds like good advice to me :) Practice has been going well, although I've been slacking here and there. Why? I think it has to do with my emotional volatility recently. I'm gonna try to hunker down more on it.

New Topic!!!

8. I've decided to start doing a lot of cardio, to help with my health. I'm starting with 30min of cardio, twice a week. The secret to building a good habit, according to the book The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg is to make it so easy that no one could not do it.

We'll see how it goes!!

Self-realization and book completions

"When you do what you fear most, then you can do anything.” 

The above quote is by Stephen Richards, a well known author. I like this quote because it accurately describes how I feel about life and what I'm constantly trying to get myself to do; overcome fear.

There are plenty of things I'm afraid of (like the dark, yes, I'm afraid of the dark), but there are also many fears I've overcome (like my fear of meeting new people, although I still get nervous).

Currently I'm reading a new book called "The Defining Decades" by Meg Jay. But before I discuss this book, I want to discuss the book I just finished, "The Mind Trip".

The Mind Trip was an excellent book, very well written. The book was about consciousness, and how we can use science to accurately describe what the heck it is and what it's used for. I learned tons reading this book. 

For example, one things I learned was that there are many states of consciousness, not just 2-3 that most of us are accustomed to. Of course, there is the waking consciousness where we are relaxed, perhaps watching a movie, then there is sleep and that's where it stops for most people. But there's actually another state of consciousness where one is super focused, meditating, in a trance, hypnotized, etc. The author breaks down consciousness beautiful and very scientifically. Don't worry, this book is 99% science based (the 1% or so that isn't, still is back by science).

The author keeps it scientific and specific yet uses a lot of light humor to keep the reading somewhat quick, although don't expect to finish this book quickly. I finished it in 3 days because it was extremely technical in parts and I can't just scan over technical words... yet. ;)

The Defining Decades has so far been a very good book. The author talks about the 20's (specifically, the age range 20-29) and how they are an extremely important growth period that many people don't take seriously. Her main focus is the generation popularly called the 'Millennials'. Millennials are the generation after the baby boomers, and before the generation of 'Toddler Technology', as I like to call it, a period where younger and younger kids (aged 4-8) are growing up with technology like cell phones and laptops.

Millennials have had the good fortune of seeing first hand what its like to sacrifice one's youth for job growth. We also are fortunate to see what happens when you dedicate your life to a job you don't really like. We are often called the 'in-between generation'; in between career success, 401k's and an unhappy life & technology taking over our lives. We didn't grow up with Facebook, although we did see it's birth.

The author so far has been detailing stories about how many "twentysomething" year olds say they don't know what they want in life but in reality, they are afraid to make choices. That's an interesting concept to me because I've never had problems defining what I wanted until I realized it's because I often times avoid making big decisions like that. I've got some figurin' to do.

1. Neither the fire place nor the roofing materials have arrived, but I'm not too worried. This is right in the middle of normal holiday shipping... it may take a while.

2. Everything on professional development has been going swell so far... although I find that my patience is less "trained" than I'm comfortable with. I find myself getting annoyed/angry at clients/consumes who are not understanding what's going on, not because of me or the content but because they aren't paying attention (you can tell).

3. I've got 3 books in transit to the local library so that when I finish the book I started today (which should be tomorrow), I'll be ready for the next book :) We'll see if I can stay on top of this.

4. I'm still 'up' in my Robinhood account (about 8%!) and I've officially had my funds transferred to Lending Club. The notes won't be dispersed for a little while I assume, since each note is $25, I have to wait for the entire loan to be funded before I see any return (some loans are $3,000, and if you divide that $25 notes, I have to wait for less than 120 people to fund the loan before it starts... whew). The site came recommended by Mr. Money Mustache (mentioned in an earlier post).

5. I've sort of veered off the electricity track and have gone back to studying investment techniques. Studying investment techniques isn't bad!, although it isn't what I planned. I need to train my mind to stick on one topic at a time until I officially decide it's time to switch topics. I'll attempt to go back to studying electricity and report back what I learn.

6. At this point I'm on track to reading >3 books a week, which is right where I want to be. I'll start the difficult part of this path by adding another characteristic I want to improve on while not letting my Speed characteristic falter. 

I've decided my next characteristic will be Networking. This will be defined as meeting someone new a week, and that will be defined as getting to know them somewhat well and perhaps on a texting basis.

7. If you didn't notice, I forgot to put piano on #3 because I haven't been practicing it lately. I'm learning the hard way the difficult process of continuity and commitment to a skill. I still want to learn how to play it but I have been tired recently (since I've been working nights) and haven't felt the same drive. 

Hopefully I'll get off working nights and be able to resume my piano playing.

Sleep is for losers!.... ?

This weekend has been one heck of a weekend for ASL skill development. I've gotten contracted on several over night jobs and haven't been getting a lot of sleep, which always affords me opportunities for new observations of myself.

First off, my ASL is best when I like the D/deaf client I'm working for. This may seem obvious, but isn't. When I get along with the client (somewhat), that makes me what to do the best ASL I got so that they understand. If the D/deaf client begins treating me like crap, that's when I need to consider getting off the job because I begin not wanting to provide clear communication.

1. Haven't gotten the materials for the house yet, but I have been reviewing and editing what is next.

-Repair hole(s) on roof

-coat roof twice

-get windows and door

-cover all holes on the walls

-remove old wood floor

-begin building frame

The only question I have right now is; should I build the frame after I've built the sub-floor or before? I'll have to figure that out before I begin building.

I also need to know when electrical wires and outlets are often installed.

2. Already talked about my ASL skill development.

3. I can definitely see how less sleep makes me less motivated to play/practice the piano. When I'm low on sleep, it seems as though my brain begins eliminating things that are necessary for my survival and starts thinking more and more about sleep.

Lesson?: Get enough sleep.

4. I had to learn the hard way that I need to have at least one book waiting for me in the library, or else I'll get behind on my schedule like I did this past weekend. I finished "Think Like a Freak" and on that same day ordered my next two books. This obviously will keep me from reading for a few days.

What have I done to fix this? Order 3 books at a time. when I'm at the middle of my second book, order another.

The book I got recently is called "The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness" by Jeff Warren. The description on goodreads sounded interesting so I snatched it. We shall see what it's like :)

5. I have to start this section off by saying, if you haven't discovered Mr. Money Mustache already, you need to check it out here. Although the site description says "Retirement through Badassity" (great name), that's not what it's all about. MMM talks about many topics pertaining to finances. 

                      

I read an article of his this morning and realized that my playing with the stock market is like gambling and I should I feel the need to continue, I shouldn't invest a ton of money. I have $100 of my money invested in it now and I won't exceed $100. If I earn money while doing it, I can withdraw that portion and keep the $100 in. If I lose it, oh well. It's $100 I can afford to lose.

In any case, he pointed his readers to something called Betterment. Betterment is another investing site/app that does automatic portfolio balancing and assessment, leading to more long term success.

                      

MMM has himself invested in $100,000 and says it's been working really well so far. I'll read more about it to see what it's about before making my move. 

The basics is that they'll take your money and invest it in Vanguard Index funds which are notoriously low cost/fee index funds (which is what you want!). The only difference between them and Vanguard is that Betterment will rebalance your portfolio whereas Vanguard will just ride the S&P 500 waves to success; Betterment attempts to avoid the pitfalls, and does pretty well!

I also wanted to mention that MMM has also invest in peer-to-peer lending like yours truly and has reported good returns in over a year and a half. He claims upwards of 7% on his returns, which is great! His is more of an experiment and I can't wait to start mine.

6. I was finally able to have some knowledgeable in electricity explain to me the differences between amperes, volts and watts. They explained it to me basically in the way that I understood them; amperes is like volume, voltage would be pressure, and watts is a measure of the amount of energy flowing, which is measured in joules. The person also informed me that it's "not the watts that'll kill a person, it's the amperes"-- good to know! I'll soon move onto how an electrical system is built; outlets, switches, breakers, etc.

7. The development of speed as a characteristic is going well, although I need to stay on top of the books coming in and out of my possession so I don't have to wait so long for the next book to become available for me to read.

Overall:

-how do electrical systems work

-get to practicing piano for 1hr. each day

-consider next characteristic for practice

-stay on top of the books that come into my possession

Book and piano update

This is essentially what it looks like outside my window, it's beautiful. I don't really have a good relationship with snow (getting my car stuck, having to shovel for hours, etc.), but it's still beautiful.

I got quite a bit done yesterday, including work! So, let's get to it!

1. Still haven't gotten much done with the house. My lady and I are gonna go look at it today and make sure the holes we've sealed aren't leaking. I ordered some new material to start sealing the roof, it should arrive soon.

2. As I mentioned early. I was able to work yesterday and therefore able to practice my skills.

There were (luckily) no angry callers yesterday. I was able to work on my awesome ASL skills, as well as my transliterating skills (more English based sign language). I am noticing that my ASL skills are improving slowly but surely. How can I tell? Because my facial expression as well as my hand gestures are beginning to reveal more about the speaker's message that I didn't include before.

Becoming better at ASL is a perpetual cycle; you get better at signing, so you're able to listen more to the original message, and therefore include more in your interpretation. The more you can include in your interpretation, the more you can listen to the original message and include more (if there is any) of the original message.

3. I still haven't gotten the hang of playing for more than an hour each day. I'm not sure what it is, but I think it might be due to the fact that I don't have a set plan of what I'm going to practice. I just sit down and start practicing, which makes me leave earlier than intended because I'm not sure what else I should practice. I'll need to start making a plan of what exactly I'll practice each session, and more if I run through it faster than expected.

Current: no exact goal, not practicing for at least an hour

Goal: come up with plan for each session the day before and practice for at least an hour

4. I finished the book "Think Like a Freak"-- that means I finished reading it in about 2 days, which is great for me! That means if I truly focus while reading, I might be able to read 3 books a week. I'm already at 2....

Think Like a Freak was a great book. It really inspired me to try and train my brain to think slightly different about specific things. I really should say the authors inspired me because it wasn't just Think Like a Freak that inspired me to think differently, it was also Freakonomics. 

They encouraged "quitting", questioning everything, especially commonly held beliefs, think twice before arguing with someone with the intent to persuade them, etc.

That last point I'd like to extrapolate on a bit. They are convinced that arguing/debating with someone to persuade them differently from what they originally think/thought is a bad idea-- a waste of time. Why? Because, they say, people rarely change their minds based on a debate/argument. I tend to agree with them!

I enjoy debating/arguing, I really do. I love trying to think information, arguments, stories, etc. on the fly in the heat of the moment. There's really nothing else like it for me. In any case, I don't think I necessarily convinced many people in all my years of arguing. Mainly what happens is I outlast them (stamina) and they just give up on trying to convince me of their point. I didn't really think of this before reading their books.

I also found this cool website that has an iOS app with it called "Goodreads". It allows you to keep track of the books you're reading/have already read and you can download their app which doesn't take as much space on your phone because it stores info in the cloud, not your phone like my last app did.

Current: Reading 2 books a week

Goal: Read 3 books a week

5. The trades are still going well. But, of course, like you all know, right now it's a waiting game. I can't trade yet because I haven't necessarily made enough of a profit. I'm back up to ~$100, and need to get up to $110 before I consider trading. This week has been a good mix of ups and downs.

6. I studied a little bit about electricity yesterday. I mainly studied how one installs an outlet into a wall and learned some interesting techniques. 

One technique the electrician showed was how to install dry-wall on a wall that has outlets. They showed a nifty magnet that you place inside the outlet box before placing the dry wall, then place the dry wall on top of that, and place a magnet when you think the other might be. This causes (obviously) the magnets to stick together and you have an outline for where the dry wall is.

He then had a fancy cutting tool that allowed him to cut around the box without giving him the ability to cut through the box. Fascinating stuff.

7. My development of "speed" is going really well. I'm reading at a faster rate than I ever have! Today I'll be able to practice my skill of remembering people's names, recalling facts quickly, and working on my feet fast.

Overall yesterday was a good day. I need to improve the following;

-piano practice. Play longer, play with more of a plan

-have 3 books ready per week

-make ASL practice more deliberate

Books are meant to be burned...

As I mentioned before, I'd like to keep track of all the books I've read and of the book(s) I'm reading now.

This list is meant to be exhaustive and in alphabetically order. Hopefully I remember them all...

100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know by Russ Kick A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins
Bite Me by Christopher Moore
Bright Side by Kim Holden
David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes by Friars Club
Gus by Kim Holden
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Holes by Louis Sachar
How Children Succeed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Simon and Schuster
Investing in your 20's & 30's for Dummies by Eric Tyson
Mastermind by Maria Konnikova
Mastery by Robert Greene
Mutual Funds for Dummies by Eric Tyson
Practicing the Jhanas by Stephen Snyder and Tina Rasmussen
Rock Breaks Scissors by William Poundstone
Super survivors by David B. Feldman and Lee Daniel Kravetz
That's Not What I Meant! by Deborah Tannen
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The 50th Law by Robert Greene
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
The De-Textbook by Cracked.com
The Humanuare Handbook by Joseph C. Jenkins
The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Think Smart by Richard M. Restak
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Winning Body Language by Mark Bowden
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig


I'm currently reading Think like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the same authors who wrote Freakonomics. Freakonomics was a good book, albeit a bit random. In it, the authors talk about many seemingly unrelated topics of economics (both macro and micro), with things like; athletic corruption, the dynamics of large scale drug dealing, real estate and much more. The main premise of the book shows the reader that many things are not caused by what may be the most commonly held beliefs. 

One example, was the decline of crime in the early 1990's. Many people thought this decline was due to smarter policing, more police, the age of the criminals increasing (and crime therefore decreasing), etc. One of the real reasons crime declined so rapidly was the legalization of abortion in America. This allowed many low-income, low educated socioeconomic groups to not have kids who would undoubtedly grow up to become criminals (most criminals and drug dealers come from a family of low education and low income).



Recap of today

Today has been pretty productive so far. I've gotten a lot done, although I haven't worked today like I was supposed to. It snowed like crazy this morning therefore many schools, businesses and banks were closed for the day due to weather.

1. Didn't get any work done on the house. The next step is to make sure the roof isn't leaking, and if it isn't, to wait for a good day to buy and apply a roof coating.

Current: Roof not coated
Goal: Coat roof before January

2. Haven't gotten to work on those yet. I usually use work as a means to improve/practice, and I didn't get to work today.

Current: Not practicing everyday
Goal: Get into practicing everyday for at least 10min

3. I played the piano for less than an hour today. I'll have to go practice some more. The practice I did do, however, went really well. I'm still practicing on memorizing the notes of all the keys.

I've noticed the beginner's curve has slowly crept up on me; I love that phase of learning. In the book Mastery by Robert Greene, Greene talks about a natural progression in one's journey towards mastery. He says that one improve quickly, then meet their first plateau. After serious practice, one gets to their next improvement, then plateaus for a longer period. The progression looks like this:

I don't necessarily notice the improvement then slight depression as this chart shows, but it's adequate. 

Current: can play Mario Theme Song moderately

Goal: Be able to play MTS well

4. I finished Rock Breaks Scissors by William Poundstone today. It was a good book, although most of it was "you can't exactly predict anything with enough accuracy, but you can improve your odds slightly". The author gave tips to improve one's odds in things like; the game rocks-paper-scissors, pool betting (basketball, baseball, football, etc.), the lottery, real estate timing, and the stock market.

The author gave some good tips on how to improve your odds in the stock market, which I found particularly useful. He talked about a man named Robert Shiller who created what's called the price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 to predict if the stock market will fall, soon, or climb. 

Robert Shiller claims that if you follow the S&P 500's price-to-earnings ratio (PE), found here, on a monthly basis, and bought stock if the PE dropped to 15 or below and sold if the PE rose to 24 or higher, you'd be able to side step some, if not most, of the markets crashes. I'd suggest checking out the website with the link provided to read more.

Current: Reading about a book per 5-7 days

Goal: Read a book every 5 days

5. I still have stock in Robinhood (the free stock trading app), which haven't been doing so well this week. I started the app with $100, rose to about $105 (that's a 5% rate of return, which, after inflation, is about 2% which isn't bad!), then dropped down to $99.84 today. I have 3 shares of a new company named Atlasssian, and one share of Western Union (they pay dividends). 

So far it's going well! I can't expect to make record gains every day (or even week or month for that matter), so losing a couple of cents here and there isn't bad. Another key point to this is I'm prepared to lose $100. I also have a lot of money in a S&P 500 index, which I won't get into right now.

Current: $99

Goal: $110

6. I learned quite a bit about electricity yesterday and today. 

Although, there aren't many clear resources to learn precise things related to electricity so I've been left to my own devices to figure it out.

Amperes(amps): amount of electrons flowing through a certain point per second. Think of electricity like a water hose: amps would be the volume of water leaving the tube.

Voltage(volts): pressure or force of electricity. With the water hose analogy, this would be the pressure of the water hose.

Watts: I don't understand watts yet. What I do know of watts is that it's a measure of power, energy flow. 1 watt is equal to 1 joule per second.

One can calculate any of these by using the following equation: volts X amps = watts. Of course if you're given watts and not volts, you can do some algebra and have the following: volts = watts/amps, etc.

Current: Don't understand electrical basics
Goal: Understand and fully grasp electrical basics

7. I am currently working on the characteristic of speed. I enjoy being able to do things quickly, especially read! 

I timed myself to see how quickly I read and I calculated that I read about a page a minute. I also realized that I can read more/faster if I can focus longer. I didn't think, but my focus definitely needs some work.

Current: 1 page per minute
Goal: 1 page per 45 seconds