Jantima's Blog

How to choose achievable goals

When a bunch of friends first came up with the idea for 43 Things, we each created our own “List of things to do before I die.” The goals on my first draft list included bold – and sometimes pretentious – things like “play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on a grand piano,” “have a house on the beach,” “shave my head,” “learn to make a perfect martini,” “witness childbirth,” and “have my life flash before my eyes.” Though I did shave my head (not worth it), my list was almost entirely stagnant for months. I felt sluggish and unmotivated to do anything because my goals were too precious to actually make progress on.

One day either Josh or Daniel suggested that we overhaul our lists and remove anything that we hadn’t made any progress on in the last couple months (they could always be re-added later). By removing “have a house on the beach” and adding “project movies onto my wall” I found the motivation to buy a projector and get into old Billy Wilder movies. By replacing “learn to make a perfect martini” with “find an alternative to owning a car” I ended up selling my car and signing up for FlexCar (a popular car-sharing service in Seattle). Most importantly, I learned that the most important attribute of a list of goals is that it constantly shift, move around, evolve, and feel alive. A couple things that your goals shouldn’t feel like:

Making achievable goals shouldn’t feel like buying art. Reviewing your list of goals should feel more like learning to paint with your hands than walking through a gallery of masterpieces. You should be constantly editing, rewording, removing, and adding goals from your list. Building momentum and confidence is the secret to making achievable goals.

Making achievable goals shouldn’t feel like balancing a checkbook. There’s a tendency for people to fanatically over-plan their goals. This creates a sort of smokescreen that helps hide the fact that you’re not actually doing anything. I’ve been guilty of this for many goals, until I eventually found out that there was a tangible sense of relief from removing goals that I didn’t want to do, but merely wanted to want to do. Most goals don’t need a list of next actions, progress meters, line graphs, and customizable excel spreadsheets. Really! The sign of an achievable goal is that it wants to be worked on immediately.

Four tips for making achievable goals:

1. Entertain a mix of ambitious and silly goals. Goals should vary from ambitious (write a book, be financially independent) to silly (consider getting a pet fox, bet $100 on a rock paper scissors match) to novelty-seeking (try a new restaurant every week, go to the opera) to personal (fall madly in love, lose 10 pounds) to world-improving (convert to green energy, give 10% to charity) to educational (learn Italian, read a book a week). Marking off a few silly or easier goals is a good way to build confidence and momentum for larger more ambitious goals. When you’ve recently gotten rid of your television and spoken in front of a crowd of fifty, it becomes a hundred times easier to pitch your book idea to a publisher, or call someone about a lease on a space for your new business.

2. Make a good number of goals… but not too many. Somewhere between twenty and, say, forty-three. Don’t try to go to one hundred or else you’ll get more caught up in juggling and organizing your list than actually doing them. Don’t have fewer than five or else you might get caught with all super ambitious goals. Add goals that are vague dreams that you can’t quite articulate yet… let them sit there for a couple weeks as you figure out a more precise goal that it’s a placeholder for.

3. Review your list weekly. I review my list every Friday afternoon, forcing myself to add, edit, reword, or remove at least a few goals. Keep it organic and alive. Clear the clutter of goals that are stagnating—having a stagnant or guilt-inducing goal on your list will stink up the whole room if you’re not careful. You’ll find that just by looking at your list every week that you’ll come up with the real reason some of them are there and slowly zero in on the achievable, rewarding, nugget in even the most ambitious and impossible-seeming goals.

4. Talk to friends about your goals. You can write a thousand entries on your blog about your goals, but real accountability and a surprising amount of support comes from simply talking about your goals in social settings. Relationships are strengthened by people helping each other, and good friends want to help each other. Also, find ways to help them with their goals too.

Buster McLeod (previously Erik Benson before he adopted the goal to change his name for a year) originally wrote this essay for Lifehacker. Buster works at the Robot Co-op and helps build sites like 43 Things, 43 Places, 43 People, All Consuming, and Lists of Bests.

Do you have advice on goal setting you want to share? Send us your ideas at robots@robotcoop.com

“I am doing 43 things”
People have known for years that making a list of goals is the best way to achieve them. But most of us never get around to making a list. 43 Things is great for that! Make a list on 43 Things and see what changes happen in your life. Best of all it’s a way of connecting with other enthusiasts interested in everything from watching a space shuttle launch to grow my own vegetables. So the next time someone asks you, “what do you do?” you can answer with confidence, “I am doing 43 things!”.

Contents
How do I …
Delete a goal?
Change my city?
Change my user name?
Put my list on my blog?
Invite someone to do something on 43 Things?
Post to my blog from 43 Things?
Post from my blog to 43 Things?
Add my blog (or other) link to my profile page?
Delete my account?
Block an annoying, harrassing or spamming user?
About 43 Things
Why is it called 43 Things?
Why would I want to do what everybody else does?
Do I have to pay?
Is this blogging?
Want to know more about us?

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How do I …
How do I delete a goal?
Go to your list by clicking “Your N Things” in the top navigation bar. Then click on the goal you want to delete. On the goal page – look to the end of the goal name for a link to edit or remove this goal. Click that link, look for the red delete link, click that – say yes, you really want to delete it. You’re done.

How do I change my city?
Click on to your list of places up in the top navigation bar (“your N places”).
Click on edit your account (you’ll have to be signed in to the account).
Click on the “Share more information link”
Scroll down and find the field for your city – change it as you desire
Save your changes
How do I change my user name?
We are sorry to say that at present you can’t change your user name. You can however add a first or last name to your account, and these will display instead of the user name on your posts. To change your display name click on edit your account > share more information, then add your desired display name to the first and last name fields and save the changes.

Can I invite someone to do something with me on 43 Things?
When you add a goal, you can use the “invite” feature to ask someone to join you on a goal. Just enter their email address, or if they already have a 43 Things account you can enter their user name. You’ll both be able to document your progress and share information together.

Can I put my list on my blog?
Sure. Try this.

Can I post to my blog from 43 Things?
You bet, but first you’ll have to configure an external blog (do that here). You’ll be guided through the set-up process and at the end you can try a test post to make sure everything works.

Once that’s done, you can have any entry on 43 Things show up on your blog as well.

We currently support the following blogs:
Blogger
Typepad
Movable Type
Live Journal
Word Press
You can set up as many blogs as you like. We haven’t made a way for you to delete one yet. Sorry.

Can I post to 43 Things from my blog?
Not yet. But we are working on our API now. More details soon. Check out our API and recommend it to your favorite blogging software developer.
Add my blog (or other) URL to my profile page?
go to your profile page (click on your picture or “your ‘x’ things”)
click on “edit your account” (green box to the right of your picture)
click on “share more information”
enter your URL into the “your URL” field
click the “save changes” button
your profile page should now have your URL on it
Delete my account?
go to your profile page (click on your picture or “your ‘x’ things”)
click on “edit your account” (green box to the right of your picture)
click on “close your account” (red link below your picture)
click on “close my account” button to confirm
How do I block an annoying, harrassing or spamming user?
go to their profile page
click on “block this user” (to the right of their picture)

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About 43 Things
Why is it called 43 Things?
Everything needs a name. We think 43 is the right number of things for a busy person to try and do. Why not more? It’s too much. Why not less? You can do less, but it is still called 43 Things.

Why would I want to do someone else’s goal?
Other people often have great ideas. You can get inspiration from others. Adopt a goal as your own or set up your own goals from scratch. Either way, 43 Things can help you document your success, share information, and make progress on what matters to you most.

Do I have to pay?
Not today and not in the near future. We think it is important that people who get value out of a community find ways to support that community, but we are commited to finding clever ways to make this happen.

Is this blogging?
No, this is a list of Frequently Asked Questions. What a weird question.

Want to know more about us?
43 Things is owned and operated by The Robot Co-op. We are a privately held start-up based in Seattle. You can read more about what we are up to on our blog. We are funded by Amazon.com, our ads are provided by Google, and we run on FreeBSD, Ruby, MySql and the fabulous Ruby on Rails framework.

We drink way too much coffee (and lots of tea) at Cafe Vita, and eat way too often at Ballet. You can see our 43 Things here: Josh, Daniel, Buster, Todd, Laurel, and Ivan. If you are still looking for more Robot love, it turns out you can sign up to make sweet lovin’ to one of the robots thus proving we are truly making Social Software.

Wanted: Oil workers
Retiring baby boomers, roaring global economy and focus on information technology are leading to a labor shortage that could squeeze supply.
By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
November 2 2007: 7:05 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Quit cutting chemistry class.

That's the advice experts give people wanting to capitalize on the current shortage of highly trained oil industry workers - a shortage that's also expected to delay new oil projects and could drive crude prices even higher over the next few years.

 
A shortage of highly skilled oil workers could soon squeeze supply.
Special Reportfull coverage
 
Wanted: Oil workers
Oil jumps $4 on Fed, supplies
Oil: No longer a heavyweight
Chevron's quarterly profit falls 

In the next three or four years, there's expected to be a 30 to 40 percent shortage of technical and professional oil workers in the Untied States, according to Damon Beyer of Katzenbach Partners, a Houston-based management consultancy that specializes in the energy sector.

Over a quarter of the industry's highly skilled employees - petroleum engineers, process engineers, geologists, geophysicists and the like - are eligible for retirement in two years, said Beyer.

"It's a real issue," said Beyer. "Success in attracting new people into the work force is limited."

The new math of oil
Worldwide, the industry's "people deficit" is expected to reach up to 15 percent by 2010, according to Pritesh Patel, an associate director at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Part of this is due to baby boomers leaving the work force, and part is due to the global economic boom that has strained the heavy industry labor market in general.

But oil has its own problems.

During the 1980s, low crude prices forced layoffs throughout the industry. Around the same time, students formerly drawn to basic sciences such as mathematics, chemistry and engineering were enticed into a new, sexier field: Information technology.

"[Oil] wasn't considered the most forefront of fields to be in," said Patel.

So now, projects to find and bring new oil to market are delayed as oil firms compete with one another for workers with the competence to bring new, often challenging fields into production. It also means new, less experienced people are designing projects, and errors can be made in the design process that take time to correct before the facility can become operational.

"This could cause some delay in supply reaching markets," he said.

And as anyone who's followed oil markets over the last four years knows, supply concerns factor first and foremost in the minds of traders, who have bid prices to record highs of over $96 a barrel in recent weeks.

The industry is trying to fix the problem.

For starters, salaries are fairly high. Patel said a petroleum engineer typically earns $70,000 to $90,000 a year, right out of school.

Second, there are stronger academic programs in emerging countries, such as India and China, home of many of the new graduates entering the field. Those graduate are closer to most of the new supplies of oil, in places such as Russia, Central Asia and Indonesia.

Beyer sees that as a good thing. "This is a global problem, and it needs to be solved globally."

Recession risk rises with record oil
But even in the United States, he said enrollment at schools specializing in petroleum sciences - such as Texas A&M and Colorado School of Mines - is increasing.

That's also a good thing, as it's fairly difficult to break into these high-skilled, high-paying jobs without studying engineering and then petroleum engineering at the graduate level.

The few exceptions, said Patel, are chemical engineers and process engineers who work at places such as pharmaceutical companies, but he added that demand for engineers is up across all industries.

"Some have switched over, but we're seeing a boom in other areas of the economy as well," he said.

For those not mathematically inclined, he said there is a similar boom going on in demand for skilled trade workers - welders, pipe fitters and such.

And unlike a half decade long stint in graduate school, those programs can typically be completed at your local trade college in six months or a year, with little more than a high school diploma. The median wage for a welder is about $30,000 a year, according to the Labor Department. 

Exxon Mobil: $9.4B profit in 3 months

Oil shale may finally have its moment

How to Make Money From Your Website
by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com

Now that you've got a website, how do you make money from it? There are at least two ways in which sites can make money:

Advertising Revenue
Selling Goods and Services
I shall deal with the second case, "Selling goods and services", in another article. In this article, I will address the issue of how your site can actually make money from advertising.

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g Money From Advertising
If you look at many websites, you will probably notice that there are banner advertisements displayed on most pages. If you are a newcomer to the scene, you might think that you must either be a company or that your site must be famous before you can get advertisers, just as it is the case in hardcopy publications.

In reality, anyone with a website can get advertisers. While it is true that if your site is well-known, you may get companies contacting you to offer to advertise on your site, you can get advertising revenue even if you are just starting out and your site is relatively unknown.

The way to do this is to join as an "affiliate" of various sites, either directly, or through an affiliate network. An affiliate network is simply an intermediary where you can select from a variety of advertisers.

Payment Schemes
Before joining any program, you should probably be aware of the different payment schemes available.

Pay Per Impression (CPM)
Here, you are paid according to the number of times the advertiser's banner is displayed on your site. The amount you earn is typically calculated based on the number of thousand impressions of the banner (impressions = number of times the banner is displayed), often abbreviated CPM (cost per thousand, with the M being the Latin numeral for thousand). That is, $5 CPM means that you get paid $5 for 1,000 displays of the banner. In general, the amount paid is usually small, but it is easy to earn since everytime a visitor loads the page, you earn. This is known as a "high conversion rate". Needless to say, this method will allow you to automatically earn more if your site attracts a lot of visitors.

Pay Per Click (PPC)
When you are paid per click, you are only paid when visitors click the advertiser's banner on your site. The amount paid is usually higher than the pay per impression scheme. Whether you get a high conversion rate here depends on the banner (whether it attracts people to click it), although in general, it has a higher conversion rate than the pay per sale method. A high traffic site will probably enjoy a higher click rate than a lower traffic site, although you will probably get better results if your banners are carefully selected to suit the target audience of your site.

Pay Per Sale or Lead
While you will probably get the highest payment rates with this method, it has the lowest conversion rate of the three schemes. You will only earn if your visitors click through the banner and either purchase an item from the advertiser or take some other prescribed action (eg, sign up for a service). Like the Pay Per Click method, you get much better results if you carefully select your advertisers to suit the target audience of your site.

In general, to avoid wasting resources in issuing cheques for very small amounts, advertisers will usually accrue the amount owing to you until it reaches a certain level (such as $25) before they pay you.

Where to Find Affiliate Programs
You can find a list of affiliate programs and affiliate networks on thefreecountry.com's Affiliate Program page at http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/affiliate.shtml

To join an affiliate network or program, simply go to the site and complete their online application form. Some programs will give you instant approval while others require a human to check out your application before it is approved. Once it is approved, you'll be given some HTML code which you can cut and paste into your web page. Note that some affiliate networks and programs will not accept you unless you have your own domain name. If you are planning to earn from your site, you should seriously consider registering your own domain name.

How To Choose An Affiliate Program
How should you choose an affiliate program? My suggestion is not to choose a program according to the payment scheme, but rather according to the kind of people who are likely to visit your website. For example, if you are targeting parents on your site, links to affiliates with educational software, books and the like may generate more revenue than banners that link to web hosting companies. The most important rule of choosing an affiliate program is to know your target audience.

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Another point to consider is whether you really want to join every single affiliate program that comes your way. Some studies suggest that sites that make the most money from affiliate programs are affiliates of only a small handful of programs. Furthermore, concentrating your advertisements from one network may allow you to be paid faster. If you advertise for hundreds of different affiliate networks on your site, you may wind up earning only (say) a few dollars per month from each network. If your advertiser's minimum payment amount is higher than what you can earn each month, it may take you a long time before you accrue enough to be paid.

On the other hand, that formula does not necessarily hold true for every site (or every page on your site, for that matter). For example, if your site has a particular theme, and an affiliate network only supports one or two suitable advertisers, you might want to sign up for a few affiliate networks so as to get a greater number of relevant advertisers. After all, advertisements that are relevant to your audience are more likely to be taken up than general advertisements. (What's the point of putting banners from only one affiliate if nobody is going to click them?)

Automated Context-Sensitive Advertising
One of the latest trends in website sponsorship is to sign up with an advertising network like Google AdSense ( Generate revenue from your website. Google AdSense. ) The advertising network automatically checks your web page and determines the most relevant advertisement for the page. As a result, without much additional effort from you, you get advertisements targeted at the interests of your visitors. As mentioned earlier, targeted ads tend to result in better performance and returns.

Get Started
Advertising revenue is one of the most effortless way to earn money from your site. You merely have to put the banner there and wait for the money to roll in. (Well, okay, not quite. You will still need to have some visitors first before you can make anything.)

Why wait? If you already have a website, let it earn even while you sleep (literally). Every day you let your site "idle" without advertising is a day of lost opportunity.

All the best in your endeavour! Remember also to check out our other article, Increasing Your Affiliate Program Income, for more tips on earning from your website: http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/moremoney.shtml

Copyright 2000-2007 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
Get more free tips and articles like this, on web design, promotion, revenue and scripting, from http://www.thesitewizard.com/

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Sa-wat-dee kha everyone,

We took a 45 minute train ride from Ayutthaya back to Bangkok. The train route has a stop right at the airport, so it is very convenient. We had to get the person at the ticket booth to repeat the price for our tickets. We were in complete disbelief and thought we had misheard him the first time. It was 11 baht each for our tickets. That is less than 30cents! Needless to say you can get around Thailand extremely cheap. The train station was old and gave a neat feeling of what it must have been like when it was the main form of transportation.

The train was full of local people. Some were obviously going long distances. They had brought baskets with them full of everything they might need on the trip. One lady was pulling out stuff from her basket, to our amazement she had a whole meal in there. She had some meat and rice in a bowl, then she added some green onion. She pulled out a little plastic bag with chili sauce in it and continued to stir that into the mixture. After eating she pulled out a small pillow to have a nap with. I sat beside a cute little man who I swear was a hundred years old. I can assure you with out a doubt I probably weighed almost 3 times what he did. I was also considerably taller.

We took a short one hour flight with Thai airways from Bangkok to Chiang Mai which is in northern Thailand. It gets very confusing because there are many provinces that have a city in them with the same name. Like Chiang Mai province and Chiang Mai city. It was only $50 Canadian for the flight as opposed to taking a 13 hour train ride. The scenery is supposed to be very nice on the train, but we decided we wanted to get there the fast route. Hats off to Thai airways! Excellent service, we even got fed a meal on a one hour flight!

We arrived in Chiang Mai at about 3pm. We had a guesthouse in mind that we wanted to stay at, but had no reservation. We phoned it from the airport and they said they had room. We usually like to go and look at the place before we book, it can be hit and miss. We read in our travel book that you could go up to a desk in the airport that would arrange a metered taxi into the city of Chiang Mai. We had to pay them 50 baht at the desk and then the remainder to the taxi driver according to the meter. Which was about 60 baht. So under $4 altogether to get into the city.

The taxi desk asks you which hotel you want to be dropped off at. They write the name down on a slip for you to show the driver. We were unfortunately dropped off at the wrong hotel. We didn't discover this until after we had given the driver the money and he was long gone. We went inside the hotel to inquire what there prices were for a room since we were there anyway. It was over 4 times the price of the place we intended to go to. We showed the paper the taxi desk had given us. The name they wrote in Thai characters was the correct guesthouse we wanted to go to. We are not sure if the taxi driver just can't read or if it was some kind of scam where he would get a commmision had we decided to stay at this hotel. We then asked how much it should be to get one of the tuk tuks or taxis sitting out front of their place to the correct hotel. They said 40 baht, but when we inquired with the drivers outside they wanted over 100 baht. We were warned about this kind of tourist scamming. We told them forget it and we would walk, since it wasn't that far anyways. The taxi drivers kept bothering us as we walked away. We informed them we were well aware that the fare should only be 40 baht and maybe they should stop trying to rip tourists off.

We stayed 4 nights in Chiang Mai. It was not in the guesthouse we first thought of, it turned out to be a dive. We ended up at the Montri hotel, which is right across the street from the Tha Phae gate. Chiang Mai is a walled city. This wall now separates the old city from the newer section. It was a bit more than we intended to pay for accommodation, but very nice and super friendly staff. We had a king size bed for the first time, what heaven! It has air con, a t.v. and fridge in our room, and a nice marble bathroom. Also a good location. A restaurant with good food and a modern internet cafe. All this we decided was worth the splurge of $20 Canadian, lol!

creative fruit we would have with our breakfast every morning at our hotel

Chiang Mai is kind of like a toned down version of Bangkok. It doesn't seem as polluted. Although this province can get quite bad for haze and smoke during this time of the year as the farmers burn off their fields.

The 4 days here were spent shopping, shopping, and more shopping! This is the capital of shopping for Thailand. We actually didn't buy much, but looking was fun. There is an incredible night bizarre here. It starts up from about 6pm and goes past midnight. It is spread out over a large area of the town. There are sections with small outdoor food vendors and tables. There is some great food to try. There is another section with many bars and entertainment. Some good and not so good live singing. One spot has a massive climbing wall. Other areas have rows of chairs lined up with people getting cheap foot massages. It can be as cheap as $2. All of this shopping area has local hill tribe people in their traditional clothing walking around trying to sell items. They try to get your attention with a small wooden frog. They run a stick along the back of. It makes a sound just like a croaking frog. When there are several of them in an area it sounds like a chorus.

Foot massages, funky lights for sale and Hill Tribe ladies selling souviniers

There are two Starbucks here, but again neither one of them has our Chai Tea! I had to take a picture of the Starbucks with a row of tuk tuks lined out front of it, too funny! It even rhymes, Starbucks and tuk tuks.

One night we were in the night bizarre area when we noticed a crowd growing and a lot of police and military presence in one area. We were a bit concerned because we have been watching on news about a growing protest against the government. Last count was 50,000 people in an area near the Grand Palace and another convoy of 30,000 coming in from the rural areas.

We asked someone what was going on. It turned out that the queen of Thailand was going to be coming and always stays in the Royal Princess Hotel that the crowd was around. We decided to hang around and get a glimpse of royalty. We ended up waiting for about an hour. The security was pretty lax compared to an arrival of the queen of England. We ended up seeing her for less than 2 minutes as she was getting out of the limo and greeted by some dignitaries. She then quickly disappeared into the hotel. The crowd was thrilled to see her though. The royal family here is loved by the people and highly respected.

One day we hired a tuk tuk driver to take us shopping to an area outside of the city. The road is called San Kamphaeng. It has about 13kms of factory type shops. We ended up hiring him from 12:30 to 5pm. He took us to several places and patiently waited outside while we shopped. He charged us 300 baht for all of this. About $9. Some of the shops include Celadon Pottery, this is famous in Thailand and comes in green and blue colours. There were many silk fabric shops where you can buy the material or have clothes made. There are also silver, leather, antique furniture, hand woven carpets, gems, and a village where they make hand painted umbrellas.

On the way back we passed by another funny site on a motorbike. There was a family of 3 on it. In the very back was a young boy, he was holding an umbrella up to keep the sun of him and the mom who sat in front driving. In the very front was a baby that looked to be about 1 1/2 years old. She was holding on to the bike with one hand and was drinking her bottle of milk, holding it in the other. We pass by scenes like this everyday.

A day at the spa........ahhhhhhh

We decided to treat ourselves to a spa. It is located just above the Mcdonald's at the night bizarre and is called Relax Spa. Jack had a 2 hour full body massage and a 45 minute session of foot reflexology. I had a 1 1/2 hour hot stone massage and an hour facial. It was a very professional spa with a tranquil atmosphere. The total price for all this was 3800 baht. ($115 Canadian) For those that have ever had spa treatments we don't need to tell you how cheap this is!

The stone massage was hot! It definitely gets you sweating. I think it really allows the massage to have extra benefit though. I felt so relaxed after. I fell asleep during my facial, lol! Jack was also like a piece of jello when he was done.

Even Ronald McDonald does the wai greeting in Thailand!
 

We have spent other days just wondering around the city seeing what it has to offer. We saw a cheesy Thai fashion show one day. We have also been trying many types of food here. It seems much better for selection and quality than what we experienced in Bangkok. They also cater to vegetarians extremely well. Including many full vegetarian restaurants. We ate one night at a place called Whole Earth. It has a very nice atmosphere within the city. You almost get to completely escape from the traffic scene as you eat your meal. It has a nicely manicured garden setting with lite up coloured umbrellas around the eating area and property. The food was excellent. We had a full course of Indian vegetarian dishes, not too spicy either.

Inside a large shopping complex and a shopping street in Chiang Mai
 

Next stop the Elephant Nature Park