Tag: Productivity

Book Review – “Eat That Frog! Get More of the Important Things Done Today” by Brian Tracy

Eat That Frog: Brian Tracy: 9781444765427: Amazon.com: Books

This is one of the audio books that I listened to during my time driving to and from the job a city over. There is no real timeline other than I listened to these between September 2020 and February 2021. I was on a kick of motivation and productivity being at the new job.

I remember this book being short but sweet. This won’t be a very long review I remember laughing because the guy sounds pretty smug in the recording I listened to and I believe it was the author that read it. He sounded like he just made a bunch of money for writing a cheesy book about being productive, time management, and setting goals. To me this books was fairly basic in terms of revolutionary ideas. The past couple books I listened to were much better overall and contained more relevant information.

I liked the easy read or listen. It was pretty basic in terms of lasting importance. It focuses on prioritizing the biggest most important or otherwise lucrative tasks and goals. It has some solid information and ideas for anyone who struggles with a mountain of things to do or tasks to finish. It was definitely a useful read and I got something out of it for sure. I carried everything that I read and did forward from that time working out of town. I learned a lot and was able to listen to some good material for self growth. It was a good life experience and this little books was a worthy read. Not much I didn’t like about the book. It was short and not complicated. The phrase “eat that frog” gets said a lot but the book describes what it means in better detail.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for help with productivity and accountability as this book provides some good common sense advice and tactics. You could probably finish it in a couple reading sessions but you never know the information could help you manage yourself and your time better.

Overall this is a good little book. Nothing wrong with it even if I didn’t get much out of it. Check it out if longer more in depth books aren’t your thing. It’s easy and thoughtful. A little something for everyone contained within. Hope this review was helpful or informative. As always thank you for reading and feel free to comment or engage.

Pax

Book Review – “Broke Millenial” by Erin Lowry

Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

This was another of the books I listened to while driving to and from work in another city. This was the more modern answer to “The Intelligent Investor”. In this book the author Erin Lowry gives no nonsesne and practical information on budgeting, saving, and a brief explanation of investing. The demographic of this book and her story is aimed at the average millennial. I am a millennial which is described as people born between the years of 1981 – 1996.

I remember the book was good and she more or less told a story of her upbringing and what inspired her and necessitated her need to learn budgeting and financial stability. The story involves teaching and wisdom from her father but ultimately the knowledge and advice contained within is fairly common sense and practical. To me it was nothign really revolutionary but solid information for sure.

Over the past couple years I have been more and more into personal finance. At the time of listening to this story I was making more money at a normal job than I ever had before. I was interested in preserving my money and learning how to maximize my paychecks. This book taught me a lot and I applied the knowledge practically. I no longer work at that job, but I carried all of the habits forward for the most part. I also still have all of my investments and never sold anything.

I think personal investment and finance is important for anyone to learn and for some reason they don’t teach us enough in the course of our normal schooling. I always wondered about that myself. I figured they didn’t want the average man to be learning about high finance and the way those weird systems work. As we’ve seen in the past couple years what happens when the average person has access to the finacial world, modern apps and online brokerages make available what used to be reserved for financiers, investors, and bankers. The past couple years has shown that retail investment can turn whole markets. For mbetter or worse.

I liked that the book was easy to listen to and was aimed at my own demographic. After listening to “The Intelligent Investor” I needed a book that has a bit more modern examples and practices and this book was a perfect answer for that. I enjoyed the easy and relatable nature of the book. There wasn’t much I didn’t like about it. As mentioned it was a no nonsense book of ideas and experiences. If anything the information was rather common sense but it wasn’t bad at all.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in personal finance or who is, like me, a broke millennial trying to make and save money in this backward ass, late stage, capitalist world. It’s an easy read or listen and worth the time really. Anyone can benefit from the basic information and ideas on how to build better habits for your financial success.

Overall thoughts, definitely check it out. Not much more to say about this one. Hoped you enjoyed the review and it was informative. Feel free to comment or share if you dig the material. Till next time.

Pax

Book Review – “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham

The Intelligent Investor Rev Ed. - (collins Business Essentials) Annotated By Benjamin Graham (paperback) : Target

This books was listened to during the fall / winter of 2020. The overall text is mostly analytics and investment theory with provided examples. To me a lot of it was common sense information. However the smaller details were life changing and overall helped me get a better grasp on my personal finances and budget. To me some of the information was kind of hard to follow because I was driving and the reader would run through examples with numbers and stats and it was difficult for me not to be able to see it ion paper. I think I would have gotten a bit more out of the book if I would have read it.

The information contained in the book has been proven throughout time. The book remains vital reading into the fundamentals of intelligent investing. I believe this book was written in the 1940’s or 50’s by Benjamin Graham, a renowned and successful investor. The data and stats in this book reflect the time in which they were originally written. It definitely would be nice to have an abridged modern version that would run some of the numbers with modern day stats and inflation and wages. Lets face it the standard of living was much different in the 1950’s.

This book was very informative to me overall. I was currently working a new job and learning about my finances in a more mature light. For the first time in my life I was thinking about the future and making plans for long term savings and investing. Also this was all relevant information to me because a certain security i owned had recently taken on a massive upswing. For the first time in my life I had a stash of “Nest Egg” money that I didn’t know what to do with. More than anything I wanted to learn how to protect my investment and make the most of the opportunity. This book set me on a path of great knowledge and understanding about my personal finances.

The book was great in that all of the knowledge was easy to follow and the examples were real life and not pertaining to billionaires or the super rich. The text is aimed at helping the average man handle his finances better and pointing one in the right direction to start investing correctly and smartly.

My one negative critique of this book was the older examples but it is no fault of the author. This book was written in a different time and money and finances were a lot different. I took the information and applied it as best as i could to my own personal situation was able to learn and take a lot from the book.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to better their base knowledge of finances, budgets, and investing. This is not a strategy book, and it doesn’t dive into analyzing companies or anything like that. This book gives some solid metrics on what is healthy savings, what percent of income you should be investing long term, and overall ideas on good financial health. it was a fairly quick book from what I remember.

Great book overall. There are definitely more relatable books out there on this subject that have more modern examples and numbers. In regards to the information in the book it is solid knowledge for anyone to have. I got a lot out of it and if you are interested in finance, or curious about investing you should probably check this book out as a good starting point.

Hope you enjoyed the review. Hope it was helpful. Stay tuned for more. Playing a bit of catch up on my media reviews. haha Procrastination nation!!

Pax

For the Sake of Writing – An update and shameless self promotion

It’s been a couple months..  Unity Sound Co is in full function this year and business is already going pretty well.  I am super happy with the support and business I have gotten already while gigs and rentals keep on stacking up.  I am practicing my DJing and building a persona for myself with a logo and the whole story-bio thing.  I am stoked and I want to play some music again.  I know how to use all of the equipment the business owns, why not enjoy some of it.  All work and no play makes me crabby.  Haha

I have been working on various novel projects as well in my spare time, writings that I may or may not put on here eventually.  I don’t know.. not very confident with them yet.

Let’s see… I got a new smart phone I went back to the best phone on the planet, the Iphone SE.  It’s the shit, it’s not a huge tablet phone, it is a nice, sleek, and powerful device with a great camera.  It has the old Iphone 5 body so it is nice and small.  I don’t need some big ass screen in my pocket to keep me distracted and oblivious..  Yep..  I still don’t have the fakebook app on the phone, and I still use my computer for a lot of my social media usage.  I have been keeping it mostly as a tool for communication and networking.

I finally got the physical copy of my Business degree!  Stoked to actually have all my hard work in some kind of physical form.

For the most part everyone in the music scene is doing good things.  Lots of great music coming through even if I won’t be able to enjoy most of it.  I have to save for a place to live, you see, and I am tired of renting so I am going hard on the big purchase, the ultimate commitment, a house.  Holy shit all kinds of adulting going on this year.

Yeah that is pretty much it, still disgusted with the current state of political shit show and how backward our world has become..  It’s like the worst parts of great sci-fi novels.  We live in it today..

Regardless it’s important to try to find the beauty in things.  No matter how shitty the world around seems, if you lose the phone and ditch the computer screen and look around, you will see beautiful people doing beautiful things.  It’s more of a challenge to be positive but I have always liked to push myself to a degree.  Stay friendly toward each other even as the world and our tempers heat up.   We need solidarity if we are to become a good honest nation again.

All this boils down to why I started my business and why I like to be a sound man.  Throughout my 31 years of life some of the best times of it involved music and pleasant noises.  I named my business Unity Sound Co because we need unity in the world.  I have seen different crews come together and make magic happen, I’ve seen all kinds of different people working together to make amazing events that people will remember for the rest of their lives.  I am honored to carry the torch and help provide something that we all love so much.  Music.

I hope my business can support me fully but I am thankful to have other ventures for if it does not.  The overall aim is to be pure and fair but to make money because I know my worth.  I am not ashamed of being a successful business man.  I’m very proud of it in fact.  Many businesses fail because they sell themselves short and don’t know their own worth.  I don’t want to be one of those businesses.

If you would like to be part of things and enjoy all of the great music that the business will be a part of, please follow on facebook , @Unity Sound Co.  Also follow us on Instagram for pictures and flyers of upcoming events @unitysoundco.  Lastly please visit and check the website, unitysoundco.com , often for the event calendar and info on upcoming events that have been confirmed.

Much love! Thank you, as always, for taking the time to read my blog and if you would please follow and share my business and events.  This means the world to me, otherwise I hope to see you soon at one of Unity Sound Co’s events!