live lean

Multitasking with Your Left foot and Your Right Brain.

The secret was in my feet.

By Brad Beckstrom

Many people think they they can multitask effectively. Companies put it in job descriptions, people put on their resumes, and talk about it in interviews. Neuroscientists say that we’re not actually multitasking but quickly switching from one task to another. Even if we believe we’re getting more done, multitasking makes us less effective.

But, what if we were to combine a single focused mental task with a simple physical one? A single physical task like walking. This way we’re able to do the physical task almost from muscle memory and focus on the mental one with minimal interruption. We can also minimize interruptions by being in motion instead of sitting in an office, for example. [Read more…] about Multitasking with Your Left foot and Your Right Brain.

Live Immediately. Understanding The Real Value of Time.

02/15 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

“It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil. They achieve what they want laboriously; they possess what they have achieved anxiously; and meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return”. Seneca

This quote is over 2000 years old but it could’ve been written yesterday. The more we acquire, the more we need to work to keep it. The word “toil” suggests that this is not work that we have chosen, but work for someone else. Work to further another man’s dreams.

More important is the comment about “time that will never return.” Many, myself included, can be very frugal when it comes to acquiring and maintaining stuff, but often lose sight of the one thing that we can’t buy more of, and that is time. There are 24 hours in a day and you can’t purchase any more. None of us know how many of those days we have left. [Read more…] about Live Immediately. Understanding The Real Value of Time.

Your Money or Your Life. The Frug’s Advice for College Students and Recent Grads.

01/15 by The Frug 2 Comments

By Brad Beckstrom

Photo credit: morguefile.com

My nephew wants to live lean. He’s twenty-something and still in college. He’s moving to a new town and asked me for advice. First, I’ll tell him be careful what you ask for, you’ll often get it.

So, here goes. My advice, not in any particular order.

Get some roommates.

New in town? Get a roommate. If you’re in college, I recommend you avoid expensive campus housing and meal plans and opt for a near campus rental. When I was in college and working my first job, I opted for two roommates. While this is often not ideal, it allows you to rent a small townhouse or slightly larger apartment and save money at the same time.

With three people chipping in for the bills, everything becomes a bit more affordable. If you’re lucky, you may meet some friends for life, as I did on several occasions. Good roommates are sometimes hard to find but it’s easier now to explore options with Craigslist and social media. I found the best roommates are often someone I’ve already met, possibly someone I worked with at a restaurant, or met at school.

At first, avoid year long leases, if you can. Try to find an existing two roommate set up that’s looking for a third. This way if things don’t work out on your first try you’re not locked into any long-term situation.

I stuck with the roommate set up for years, even after I started my own company and had purchased other homes. I kept the first home as a rental, replacing myself with another roommate when I moved on. I had a roommate until I got married.

Roommates can be a pain, so you have to really work at it until you find a great setup. Once you find it, volunteer to help out with the bills and track things using Mint.com or apps like Splitwise. A simple shared Google docs spreadsheet is great if you have multiple folks adding items to the document.

Work in High School and College.

My grades were just below a 3.0 at a midsize state college, but I was offered the first three corporate jobs I interviewed for. I was hired and put to work for a boss who was Princeton grad, and coworkers who went to Dartmouth, Duke, and Notre Dame. My point of difference was not the name of my university or my GPA, it was my work experience in college and high school. Interviewers were impressed with my proven work ethic. Very few of those Ivy League types had worked two jobs in college and started a travel business. [Read more…] about Your Money or Your Life. The Frug’s Advice for College Students and Recent Grads.

The Voice in My Head is an Asshole.

01/15 by The Frug 1 Comment

Exploring the convenient connection between mindfulness and sleep.

By Brad Beckstrom

“The Voice in My Head is an Asshole.” I laughed out loud when I read this line on the first page of a new book by Dan Harris called 10% Happier. I got a few funny looks on the airplane with the laugh. It was the day before Christmas Eve and the overbooked flight was delayed. There weren’t a lot of happy people on this plane.

I was happy. My family was on the plane and, even though our flight was delayed in Houston, our final destination was Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I had a decent seat, a cup of coffee, and was on page 1 of what looked to be an interesting book.

Dan Harris’s book is all about silencing the voices in our head and reducing stress. Even before I bought the book, I knew where it was going — mindfulness, meditation, breathing exercises, assorted gurus, granola, and yoga instructors.

I’d read about meditation before. I understood the benefits. I’d learned how everyone from Silicon Valley CEOs, soldiers dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder, athletes and coaches, Nobel prize winners, all reduce stress and up their performance with daily meditation. Phil Jackson a winning coach with 11 NBA titles. He got entire NBA teams to sit entirely still and focus on building mental toughness through meditation. That cannot be easy.

In fact, meditation is not easy. I had tried it, I approached it as mindfulness, doing breathing exercises to clear the mind, simply by focusing on breathing. In and out, in and out. It didn’t work for me. I’d find myself thinking about everything, and basically unable to sit still for more than two minutes.

I believe this is where most people struggle. They get all set up, turn on the timer, start their breathing exercises, try to clear their head. That’s when the voices start reminding you of all of the other things you have going on, are worried about, or should be doing.

Turning off the Monkey Mind

The $300 Vacation Home

12/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Shack Builder Is Part of a Movement.

By Brad Beckstrom

Derek Diedricksen, or “Deek” for short, doesn’t fit the mold of someone who would be sought out to lecture at MIT. He’s not a famous physicist or a Nobel Laureate.

He builds tiny houses which he likes to call “relax shacks.” His yard is filled with these shacks in various stages of development. He also collects all types of salvage, often from the side of the road and trash dumps, to give his his small structures a one-of-a-kind appearance.

Looking at his backyard you might think, ”I’m glad this guy’s not my neighbor.” As a turns out, the neighbors love what he does and even let him build some structures on their land as well. In fact, people come from all over to purchase these shacks as fast as he can build them.

Shelter as Art

The Lunar Lander

If you look closely, you’ll see that each one of these shacks is really a piece of art. A piece of art you can sleep in. Deek spends a lot of time creating these structures in wild pen and ink drawings and then brings them to life using innovative, low-cost building techniques.

The results of his efforts become summer cabins, artist studios, home offices, lakeside retreats. Deek has years worth of designs he hasn’t built yet. He’s been doing some very cool hands-on, relax-shacks workshops up and down the East Coast. At this workshop, a small group (limited to 20 attendees) can actually bring one of his designs to life. He teaches people how to use hand tools, framing techniques, window repair, and salvage construction.

Burning Man or MIT

The Snack Artist.

11/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

A Minimalist approach to snacking.

With football season in full swing and the holidays on the way, this would be a good time to go deep on snacking.

When I used to work in an office, one of my coworkers would regularly bring in a large jar of dry roasted peanuts. He used to leave the dry roasted peanuts in a few different spots around the office.

Several times a day he would walk by and grab a handful of peanuts from the jar. He would also gesture at people, with the jar and say “nuts” ? I would usually answer yep, then, keep on walking. Other times, I would grab a handful en-route to a meeting.

I always wondered why he didn’t just leave the nuts in his office. Later, I realized my coworker had a snacking strategy. By leaving snacks in a location outside of his office, he had established a routine whereby he needed to get up and walk to get to the snack. [Read more…] about The Snack Artist.