No Need to be Perfect to Have Success

The Utopic Pursuit of Perfection

Some people think you have to be perfect to have any success and accomplish anything significant in life. Even though I’m literally allergic to incompetence, I still tend to believe quite the opposite. From my standpoint, nobody is and can be perfect, yet everyone can improve and achieve wonders.

As a sample of great accomplishments of imperfect humans until now, just look at all that fascinating technology and architectural marvels that surround us. All those things were not built perfect the first time around. We are far from perfect but still are getting somewhere. And that somewhere is most of the time, getting better and better.

Furthermore, those who try to become or remain perfect will most likely get away from their true self in the process. Their resentful and sometime annoying pursuit of perfection may also result in a lack of support from their peers.

Letting go of minor discrepancies, admitting we are all human and embracing the contribution of others to focus together on essential matters can be a much more interesting and productive approach.

Accept Occasional Mistakes

Only person who do nothing never make mistakes. You’ve got to allow yourself and others to make a few here and there.

Get All That Stuff Off Your Mind

If you’re like me, you always have something that pops up in your head: things you have to do, interesting writing ideas, fascinating subjects to reflect on, etc.

If I let my mind wonder on, it becomes very difficult for me to accomplish anything.

That’s why I now have a system to collect my thoughts and ideas (called items). In a few words, I immediately note any item that comes up and develop it later when I have more time.

Try it; it will help you quiet your mind.

An effective system has to free your conscious mind; you need it to stay focused on the task at hand. And the funny thing is that without much effort on your part, your subconscious will continue to work on those «collected» ideas.

This principle is especially applicable in our multi-tasking era as some people always seem to be doing many things without really doing anything right.

My system was inspired by the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology by David Allen.

The system assures me to avoid the risk of forgetting brilliant ideas. It also enables me to simply put aside and forget boring stuff that I will deal with later.

In today’s electronic world, it can be pretty easy to use your devices to collect and organize your items. I personally mainly use Outlook at work and Toodledo for my personal stuff. I also employ some basic mainstream software like Word for writing stuff and Excel for budgeting and finance.

Just don’t hesitate to use good old paper if you are away from your devices. For instance, you could keep a notepad close by for those middle-of-the-night genius ideas. If these come to me, to avoid sleepless nights, I often gribble down a couple words to remember my inspiration in the morning and go right back to sleep.

So organize yourself to put some order in that mumble jumble; it could unlock all the potential of your so powerful mind!

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12-Minute and Your Schedule (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on March 12, 2012

The 12-Minute Approach can be applied tons of ways to your schedule. We will submit you some ideas here but the possibilities are almost endless.

Why 12 Minutes

Using the 12-Minutes Approach will allow you to be more efficient; doing something different only 12 minutes every day can produce surprising results.

If you break down your day in 12-Minute Periods, you’ll find that there are 120 such Periods:

1 day = 24 hours x 60 minutes =

24 hours x 5 x 12-Minute = 120 x 12-Minute

Wacky Golf Fact – Generate Humongous Drives Using Cart Paths

Today, we’re gonna mix driving and hard bouncing cart paths. Driving as in hitting a tee shot and opposed to trying to control a vehicle. You’ll see that these trivial ingredients can produce ridiculously explosive long drives but also ridiculously funny situations.

Most golfers love (or would love) to hit the ball long. Some are even willing to try almost anything to add a few extra yards to their drives. Aiming at cart paths and benefiting from big bounces off them sure can be an excellent way to hack it much longer. Any passionate golfer worthy of the name must have tried it at some point during his illustrious career.  

We hope you’ll think about this post next time you make an attempt at it. But beware this aggressive strategic as most cart paths are located on the side and unfortunate ricochets off them may often only result in getting further into trouble.

Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy (Kevin Costner) sure learned about hard-pan-insanely-long shots by hurtfully losing a thousand bucks to bad boy David Simms (Don Johnson). Simms even used the car path (the road) instead of the cart path to teach him his lesson with their now Famous 7 Iron Bet.

Dreaming About Out-of-this-World Drives

Some time ago (ages ago if you must know), for young golf studs full of testosterone like my friends and me, reaching a par-5 in 2 strokes was the ultimate objective. Nothing could stop us; we would have bounced our heads off walls if we had to. So we only viewed cart paths as great opportunities to achieve our goal and had no complex using them to propel of drives farther.

Get To Financial Independence Quicker With a Smaller House

Living in a smaller house might be one of your most important decisions on your way to financial independence (FI: I like to define financial independence as being wealthy enough so you can choose to work or not). Rest assured, I’m not talking about those tiny houses that seemed to be popping all over. Rather, I think you should own a regular house, only a tad smaller. As we will see further down, downsizing only 20% could get you a long way towards FI.  

Not only will it reduce your mortgage payments but also many other related expenses. Hence, a more modest home will automatically result in less property taxes, less insurance, less maintenance/repairs and also a much more affordable utility bill... Ultimately, it may also save you a lot of time.

A little more than 15 years ago, our frugal nature enticed us to buy a smaller house and we now realize all the benefits of that decision. One of the most interesting consequences will be that we will get to financial independence much faster.

I decided to do some digging on this subject after I played golf with Alvin, a distant acquaintance. Alvin inherited some money and a fancy house in a rich neighborhood from his uncle 2 years ago.

Workout The 12-Minute Way (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on February 12, 2012

Whether you want to lose some weight or be in better shape, a simple solution exists:

Add a 12-Minute Workout to your daily routine!

Taking an extra 12 minutes a day or 1 hour a week to work out can greatly improve your figure and your general health.