Book Summary: How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not?
How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not?
by Robert Shemin (Author)
About a month ago I read this book pretty much cover to cover sitting in Borders Bookstore. Here are the key takeaways I took from it and have tried to implement in my own life. My responses to these points in are italics:
- have one goal only
To build recurring revenue to sustain myself during a 2month travel to Australia and SE Asia. My plane leaves in mid-December, 2008.
- have a charm to remind of goal
When my sister was in Vietnam, she sent me this amazing handmade dragon lantern. During the shipment a number of the dragons broke off. Today, I took one of those broken dragons (about the size of a quarter) and tied it to a hemp string and have hung it around my neck as my ‘charm’. Perfect, especially since the Asian dragon is symbolic of power!
- find some heroes to emulate and copy what they do daily
The way Tim Ferriss lives his life is an inspiration to me. He’s totally changed the way I think about the intersection between business life and personal life. I’ve been reading his blog a lot lately and staying up to date on his tweets via twitter. I’m still trying to find more ‘heroes’ so-to-speak. I have been a longtime fan of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is pretty much led by Ty Pennington. I look up to his zest for life and his urge to help people. So, perhaps I will add him to my list.
- start tracking daily money in and out down to the penny
hmmm…I don’t know about this one. But i have definitely started to be more aware. I’ve cut the spending on credit cards down to nil, so I’m just using my debit card for everything now. I’ve made an effort to move my auto billing for things like cell phone, internet, and auto insurance to my debit card, because I realize I had just forgot about all those auto bills, and my debt was racking up. This way I can see it all the time.
- a vision without a map is worthless
I have created an action item list for the 4 endeavors that are in front of me at the moment. I was sure to give myself deadlines for each item, and was especially sure to only put items on the list that help me reach my ONE goal.
- start a plan by first looking at the end goal
I’ve found that it’s a lot easier to get through a list of tasks when I keep reminding myself WHY I’m doing it. Forgetting the end goal in my experience is the worst mistake I can make. If I do, I lose a LOT of motivation. Otherwise, the tasks seem to fly through and it keeps my excitement level high.
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on May 29th, 2008 at 12:17 am
In reference to the second to the last bullet, “Vision with execution is fantasy, but execution without vision is blind.”
on July 21st, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Some great tips, especially about remembering your end goal. That’s one I’ve been trying to work on!
on September 30th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Thanks for posting this, David. Are you still actively using these pointers to achieve your goals?
on September 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
@lavanna yes, I’m still using these pointers. I’ve stopped wearing the dragon around my neck because i realized I finally got to the point where I was thinking about it so much that the end goal became ingrained in my head.