The Total Money Makeover Infomercial

My parents bought tickets for Rachel and me to see "Total Money Makeover with Dave Ramsey" in Grand Rapids. I figured I was never going to get around to reading the book and it would be faster to see the seminar instead. Rachel was extremely reluctant to attend but decided she would rather not spend the day alone.

I was doing most of the program already without knowing it. I guess that's why I have hardly any debt, I live without credit, and I progress to fewer and fewer bills to pay instead of more and more. Let me spare you the money, the sermon, and the cramped stadium seats (and being surrounded for five hours by a church-like infomercial setting) by telling you for free everything worthwhile you can get out of The Total Money Makeover.
( The Total Money Makeover )

( A follow-up social commentary not having to do with finances )

Behavior Hacks

I agree with Dave Ramsey when he says success comes a little bit from head knowledge but mostly from behavior. When I disagree with the guilt-fear-and-pep-rallies approach to behavior modification, it behooves me to mention the approach I use instead. One can take the computer hacker approach to one's own brain.

Hackers are not content to use their property in the way the seller intended. They examine the innards, overclock it, give it more power, and make it do things the inventor never thought of. A hacker is not 0wnz0red by limitations built into the hardware. He or she 0wnz the hardware.

That's not the only way that behavior hacking is like other hacker creations. Instead of being preached to you from a centralized source on a stage with paying for ticket admission and paying for books and paying for courses, the shortcuts and heuristics for behavior modification are tossed at you for free on the internet in a hundred variations.

Neurological science is advancing at a surprising rate, and the articles on the internet are aflush with the results. It seems like every day the del.icio.us Most Popular list has a new example. Web popularity is not guaranteed to weed out the stupidest of the self-help, but there's plenty of well-informed practical advice that just works. Some call the techniques Life Hacks. Some call them Mind Hacks.

There are hacks for habit breaking, habit forming, depression, sleep, procrastination, motivation, productivity, learning, creativity, thinking, and a slew of related topics.