Work Lean

A Short Guide to Lean Investing.

Have things gotten too complex?

Today we have more savings and investment options than ever before. Online tools and investment options that give us access to over 10,000 mutual funds and exchange traded funds, with another 40,000+ publicly traded stocks worldwide. Most of these investments are accessible without setting foot in a brokerage firm or bank. Online banking, trading, and mutual fund supermarkets give us access to sophisticated investment tools available only to professionals just a decade ago.

Yet, despite so many options, the US personal savings rate is hovering between 5% and 6% and has been in steady decline since the 50s. The retirement savings picture is even worse, one in three American adults has zero saved for retirement and 62% have less than $1000 saved. Many Americans like to blame the government for this predicament but in fact many countries with significantly higher taxes have savings rates that are 2 to 3 times ours. On top of our tax advantages, we have a wide selection of pre-tax and post-tax savings options many other countries don’t have, including 401(k)s, IRAs, SEPs, Roth IRAs, Health Savings Accounts, 529 college savings plans, and about 10 more with various combinations of numbers and acronyms in the name. All of them are underutilized by any standard of measurement.

Part of the problem is complexity. We’ve made it easier to go out and get a loan for a new SUV or a 5,000 square foot house than to start saving or put that money away for retirement. We’ve been incentivizing people to take out student loan debt instead of starting college savings accounts.

To solve the complexity problem we need to make it easier to save and invest. We need to create a simpler path to wealth through regular and efficient investing. I like to call this Lean Investing. [Read more…] about A Short Guide to Lean Investing.

8 things I’ve learned after 1 year on a 10,000 hour creative quest.

05/16 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Just over a year ago I embarked on a creative project I called my Big Audacious Quest. My plan for this ambitious creative project is to master something I’d walked away from years ago, photography. The idea was to have this quest be about more than just photography. I felt that I had gotten into a creative slump over the years and wanted to create a body of work that would not only help me breakout creatively, but also write about it, and share what I learn. I also wanted to see what kind of impact things like photo sharing sites, digital cameras, social media, and photo management tools would have on my efforts. These are all things that were not around when I was first passionate about photography in the early 80s. So, after a year at this, here are a few of the things I’ve learned.

How to define mastery on my terms.

To start I needed to define what becoming a master photographer would look like and put some clear goals and milestones in place along the way. In many ways, my quest is an actual journey so I also wanted to add some geographic elements to my goals as well. First, I had to address this whole mastery thing. In his book Mastery, Robert Greene talks about the origins of master craftsman guilds as far back as the early Middle Ages. Green gives examples of journeyman apprentices and masters on their own 7 to 10 year journeys. Green, Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers) and others talk about the 10,000 hour rule as the time investment required to truly master something. There are plenty of people who poke holes in this theory, especially as it relates to creative fields, but I feel these authors at least defined mastery and gave readers an idea of the type of time investment required. For me, it was a great place to start. There’s no guarantee that investing 10,000 hours in something will make you a master but it allowed me to put some goals in place and begin the journey. So, I took the core elements of my quest: photography, geography, creativity, and time and put the goals down on paper. At the end of some crazy back of a napkin calculations on what 10,000 hours would get me, this is what the quest looks like.

100,000 photographs

10,000 photographs published

1,000 places explored

100 cities

10 years in the making

1 amazing journey

How to hit walls

Sometimes going gangbusters at the beginning of a project can be the kiss of death, especially when you hit a wall. I knew if I was going in to stay on track, I would need to publish about 1,000 photographs a year from 100 places in at least 10 cities per year. Publishing can include, blogs, websites, photo sharing sites, and photo books. After my first year, I’m ahead of my goal on certain items and behind on others. Over 2600 photos published, from 90 places, in 27 cities. Starting out I purposely kept the number of photos to publish goal relatively low as I knew i’d likely get ahead of the goal and later hit some obstacles that would slow me down, like a big work related project or the 3 months of crappy weather that we’ve had recently. Dealing with some of these obstacles has helped me put a daily practice in place so I can keep a few balls in the air and pivot between projects as needed.

Don’t compare your beginnings to someone else’s middle or end

Working Lean – 8 things I do to make work fly and enjoy life.

04/16 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

It’s going to be 75° today. The sun is already blasting in my office window at 7:30 AM. When I’m working at home, it can be hard to focus, especially if there’s someplace I’d rather be, like out on my bike. We all have work to do, but it’s hard to get stuff done if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing. This is even harder if someone else is dictating your schedule, meetings, conference calls, commutes etc.

There are a few things that I do daily to make work more enjoyable. Since they’ve become habits, they take very little effort but are a crucial part of getting stuff done.

Work in zones.

I divide my day into three zones: prime time (for me, mornings), the dead zone 3PM to 6PM and home (evenings). I like to get the tough stuff out of the way in prime time. I like to schedule one big task during prime time. The best tool I’ve found for this is a free product called Momentumdash. Once installed it presents you with a beautiful image, and reminds you of your focus each time you open a new tab on your browser. I also plan for the dead zone each day, scheduling the easy stuff, or a workout, during my least productive times.

Don’t work off big to do lists.

I treat to do list apps as a catch-all for any necessary task that takes over a few minutes. If you stay focused on the big stuff, sometimes you find a little items on this list fall away. At the end of each day I’ll take some time to plan the following day, pulling some of the most important tasks off the big catch-all list and writing them down in my notebook. I put the heavy-duty stuff in prime time. The act of pulling tasks off an overflowing digital list and writing it down in a notebook, gives you a more realistic feel for what can get done in a day.

Throw a tomato at it. [Read more…] about Working Lean – 8 things I do to make work fly and enjoy life.

Gratis Photography. The ultimate list of curated free photo sites to make your creative ideas pop.

03/16 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Images are the language of a generation. Regardless of our race, language, our education, our views on the world, we can all be moved by a great photograph. If you’re creating a blog, presentation, new website, or just want a fresh look on your boring computer desktop, a great image can communicate a lot. Most modern websites feature a single image or video across the entire top third of the page.

Just one image

The best presenters use one large image per slide and just a few words to communicate their ideas. Watch any Ted talk and you’ll see very few people presenting slides full of words, charts, and bullet points. Less is more. Some of the best blogs have a consistent look and feel using images to accentuate quality content. Even tweets and Facebook posts with images get far more attention than a string of text with a link.

If you work for a large company, you may have access to a stock photo account or archive. I’ve found that even some of the largest stock photo sites lack some of that creative edge I’m looking for. I can often spot traditional stock photos instantly. You’ve seen them, people with coffee and laptops usually perfectly dressed for a business meeting in 1996, pointing at things and smiling, maybe even a high five.

Know the rules

Testing big ideas, finding your muse, and doing the work you were born to do.

03/16 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Do you have it? Have you found it? We all have one. Some long dormant or untested skill just waiting to be discovered. Sometimes we find it at a young age, then the real world, school, work, family become the priorities. As we get older, the skill lies dormant, often gets rusty like an old toy long forgotten.

Schools and family, meaning well, often steer us in a certain direction toward something that fits in a curriculum or is a “viable” skill in the working world. My parents did it, and I find myself doing it with my sons. I guess you can count yourself lucky if you have someone who cares, but all that advice is just a small piece of the puzzle.

It’s on us

It’s still on us, finding “it.”” Things you pick up on in school, your hobbies, books, or websites you find yourself going back to, these are all clues, part of your personal archeology. Ok, so I collected beer cans and read car magazines in middle school. What does that say about me? Well, looking back now, I had an early interest in design. I loved all the different labels, the uniqueness of certain can designs. I was also fascinated with cars, but not for the horsepower or mechanicals. I was interested in the design of early Mustangs, Camaros, and Chargers. Could I combine the best features of each and design my own muscle car? I certainly thought so. I was told “you’ll need a lot of math for that.” I didn’t have a lot of math. How about architecture? “Yep, need a lot of math for that too.”

I kept searching. Over the years, I learned that my passions are visual. I picked up photography in my early teens, and again, felt I had found my calling. I was told “that’s a wonderful hobby but you’ll need to study business in college.” My parents called a business degree a “safety net.” That turned out to be good advice as back then a business degree actually was a safety net. It allowed me to apply my creative talents in a 30 year career in marketing and advertising. Little did I know that my search was far from over. [Read more…] about Testing big ideas, finding your muse, and doing the work you were born to do.

Please Go Ahead.

02/16 by The Frug Leave a Comment

How using these 3 words daily, will change your life for the better.

For the last few months, I’ve been involved in a social experiment. It’s one of the simplest and most effective things I’ve ever tried. I dabbled with this in the past but wasn’t always the best at sticking with it. The experiment involved using three words “please go ahead.”

I decided that regardless of where I was, airports, hotels, restaurants, in my car (especially in my car) I would utter three words “please go ahead” whenever someone maneuvered in front of me, around me, or even needed to just butt in line or nudge me out of the way. I decided I would stick with this regardless of the situation. Someone would literally have to throw an elbow into my gut for me to skip it.

It was the perfect time to try this 3 word experiment. I’d be traveling to several US and foreign cities large and small, along with all of the flight and hotel check-ins that go along with that. I’d be busy as usual around home as well. If you’re a person who sometimes runs late or considers yourself an “excellent driver” who has no time for the other “non-drivers” on the road than this may be a bit difficult to stick with. However, it’s the folks with type A personalities that will benefit the most. So stick with it.

Once you find yourself involved in this experiment, you automatically become more observant of the people around you since you’re letting them go ahead of you. [Read more…] about Please Go Ahead.