Summary – Shopping is like war, finish your mission and get out of there ASAP
It’s weekend, and you are thinking of going to the mall for some shopping. That’s like preparing to go to a battlefield, where almost everything you do will result in some loss of blood (in this case, money)

However you are not the typical guy who go into a war unprepared. You have learnt almost every little tips to control your expenditure especially combatting impulsive buying. You prepared a list of what things to buy. You start your engine for the shopping trip. Not long after that, you are back with a lot of items you actually don’t need, fewer money to save and sometimes a huge debt in your credit card account.

Where did you go wrong? My guess, it’s the list. Here are some suggestion on how to improve your shopping list.

1) Research monthly items
Take two months to actually do the experiment. Whenever you go shopping, jot down every little things you buy, the quantity and the price. List that down and make a proper list of all the items you usually need every months.

2) Print it out and make 5 copies.
The best way to make a shopping list is by putting a checkbox near to the items on the list. Once you have print it out and make 5 copies, you must use them for 5 months. And if there are additional items you want to add, you need to add them manually by pen. Do NOT print another copy.

The whole idea is to make adding new items into the shopping list as difficult as possible. That is why I suggest we make 5 copies and finish them first. This way, by the fifth month, we will usually forgets what other items we add to the list in the first month.

3) Map the shopping list according to your grocery store.
When you are making your shopping list, try to visualize you entering your grocery store. What do you see first? What essential items can you get there? Try to make that shopping list in such a way that you don’t need to go through the same area in your grocery store twice.

The idea is to minimize the time spent in the store. The lesser the time spent, the more money can be saved.

4) Put a warning message on the list
A warning like “Every cents counts, Do NOT buy it” will work just fine. Make it extra large and bold it if you have to. For a more personal touch, put a picture of you begging so that you will not overspent. That should do the trick.

5) Give yourself sufficient money
Remember when we did the research in step 1? You are jotting down the price for all the items. Now whenever you are going on your shopping spree, calculate the total amount you will need to buy the whole items. Add another 10% to the total amount and give the rest to your shopping partner (i.e. the mrs)

Forget that you have surrendered the remaining money to her and shop away knowing that you only have exactly the amount of money to buy the thing on your list. Works like a charm..

– I wonder –
Any other ideas for a more effective shopping list?

——– I wonder ———
The mrs is actually a bit annoyed when I first introduced her to my shopping list. A lot of items are added. Can’t blame her. My first shopping list is for a bachelor, so I have to overhaul the list altogether with her.

Now the list has become a necessity whenever we go shopping. If not, we might forget something 🙂

Photo Credit – BruceTurner

Summary – A question that will change your life if answered properly
Once upon a time, there was a wise man. He was a very popular person then. Not popular for his wisdom, but because he was known to go to a village and single-handedly brought out the best of every person in the village. Everyone suddenly became more productive, more focus and happier.

All he did was only asking one simple question. One of the most powerful question ever created. The question is this

Is what you are doing right now, making your life any better?

/end story

I just made up the story. There was no wise man, no village. There is the question though. A very powerful question and I truly believe that this question is one of the most influential question ever. Just think about it.

If you are window shopping at the mall, ask that question. Is this activity making your life any better. If you were actually thinking of buying a computer and you need to survey which gives out the best price, then it is definitely will make your life better.

But if you are just killing time, you will immediately know that what you’re doing is just pointless. So why are you still there loitering?

Be honest. You are not answering the question to anyone. You are answering for yourself.

There will be two type of respond to the question. Both have opposite effect but equally life-changing and if we are not careful we may fall into the negative type. So identifying these two types is very important.

Type 1 – The one that actually become better.
These are the type of people whom the question is designed for. When they know that what they are doing is pointless, The first thing that will come to their mind is “why bother doing it”. They will immediately renovate their activity to achieve something from it.

One example is when you are spending time chatting on the net 10 hours a day. Yes, it is bringing you closer to so many people, but you are losing on so much more like real relationship, or socializing with neighbour. What you should do is to maybe limit the time of chatting to about half, and adjust from there.

Type 2 – The one that will feel more depressed with the question.
These are the pessimist approach. They will answer the question by saying that nothing they do can make their life better. When they study and they fail, they just assume that the whole studying is not making them any better. This is of course wrong. The failure itself is making them better. They should study what is wrong in the first place. Maybe their study method is ineffective, or they are friends to the wrong crowd.

Conclusion – Such a powerful question can bring so many different result if used wrongly. We are all smart people. Decide how you are going to benefit from the question 🙂

– I wonder –
What other question that you think can change a person?

———- Personal Note ———–
I once chat with a friend about self development in general. He has an interesting view. According to him, self development is rubbish. We are who we are and we should not change it.

I of course disagree. If we are who we are, we should be lying on the bed, naked, crying to be fed like a baby 🙂

p.s. Thank you Glen Allsop for the correction.

Photo Credit – Jamuraa

Summary – Sometimes the mind requires tools

“To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail. — Abraham Maslow”

I remember this quote today while at work. I was walking around with a torchlight in my hand. Don’t ask why I’m carrying one in a bright daylight. I’m actually using it to see the inside of a troubled gearbox.

Suddenly, just like established by the quote, everything I see seems to be a bit dark and I need to use the torchlight to have a better view. Almost everything. And that’s when I remember the quote. How true..

You can try yourself, take one item and hold it in your hand. It can be a broom, or a book, anything. Hold it for 10 – 15 minutes and walk around the house. You will understand what I’m talking about. If you are holding the broom, you will start seeing a lot of dust on your floor. If you hold a book, you will want to read it after a while.

There are only two rules you must abide

• You must forget that you’re doing an experiment. Just act normal but with an item in your hand.
• Hold the items for at least 10-15 minutes. It will only have effect then.

Reading what I just wrote, one question come up to my mind. “What can I possibly achieve by doing this?”. Aha! There’s actually quite a few positive effect of applying this.

1) You will never forget what you’re going to do.
This sometimes happened to me. I walk into my room and I saw an empty bottle that need to be thrown away into the rubbish bin. I continue with my other things-to-do, and not long after that, I forget that bottle totally. I will only remember it when I enter the room again.

If only I take that bottle and hold it all the time while I’m inside the room. I’m sure I will never forget the task.

2) It makes you more alert and notice things.
If you are holding a broom, you will notice all the mess in your house more clearly. The same goes to if you’re holding a pen. You will start getting inspiration on what to write. For some children, they will redesign the whole room with cartoon character on the wall. 🙂

Conclusion – our mind is an amazing thing. You want something from it, just give it a tool to work on, and you will get it.

• You want a painting, hold a pen with a blank paper in front of you. Draw away.
• You want idea for your blog, just put your fingers on the keyboard and type.
• You want to cook something, open up that fridge and see what’s inside.

The thing we do will not be a masterpiece immediately. The painting will not be another Monet, the blog post may not be noticed at all and the food may not be featured in Food Channel, but you are already stimulating your mind to work towards what you want

That’s a very very good start 🙂

– I wonder –
What do you like to hold today?

———- Personal Note ———–
Holding the broom can be tricky sometimes. One can easily replace the idea of the broom to a holding a guitar. * Guilty 🙂

Photo Credit – Jam343

I wrote two entries today – 5 Scenarios Where Procrastination Is A Must and this personal rant.

Yesterday was a day of a mission. A personal mission. My mission should I choose to accept it (which I did) was to go to PC Fair and try out Wimax there. A fairly simple mission but not an easy one I must say.

Just look at the crowd there. People are rushing to check out what’s this wimax is all about. Some may go there just to get the extra big paper bag (Very handy in a PC Fair). I just stick around and see the demonstration done by the presenter there. And I have to admit, I am impressed.

To start with, users will be given a downlink speed of up to 10Mbps. I’m not sure how fast that would be. But I like what I saw at the demonstration.

• Connection is so fast that watching youtube is like watching the movie right from your computer.
• Broadband TV is just like watching normal TV, which means that we can actually say aurevoir to ASTRO 🙂

The best thing is we can actually test the Wimax at the luxury of our home. They are currently giving out free Wimax modem to everyone signing up. You will be able to test the speed, latency etc for one whole month, which in my opinion is a pretty good deal. Why would we want to subscribe to a new ISP if we don’t exactly know the quality?

So if you are living or working at the area below, why not join the free trial yourself.

• Kuala Lumpur City Center
• Subang Jaya
• USJ 1 and USJ 2
• Sentul
• Setapak
• Gombak

And since you’re there. you might as well enter the contest they’re having. Just pick up the contest form and answer the easy questions there. You might win yourself some cool printers 🙂

More information at P1W1MAX.com or just visit the booth at PC Fair

There you have it – my findings of Wimax at the PC Fair as promised. Why am I excited on this? 25% of Malaysia will be covered with Wimax by the end of this year. Of course I’m excited 🙂