GET LUCKY | A Flid Media Blog » Self Help

Save Yourself Hours of Frustration!

Amir Lehrer — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:42:41 +0000

I happened to be in a friend’s office yesterday when they were reading their email. One of the emails had MS Word document attached and they opened it. Looking at her, I noticed a slightly frustrated look on her face and asked what was wrong. She told me that she can’t stand how Word documents always open up in “reading layout” instead of “print layout”. I told her that she can just close it if she wanted to change the view but she already knew that.

She said that she’d been closing the “reading layout” every time she opened an attachment from an email which is about 5 times per day, for the past 5 years. Doing the math, considering that she probably works 5 days per week and 50 weeks per year, that is a total of 6250 times that she had to close the “reading layout”. It only takes about 2 seconds to click “close” and another 5 seconds for MS Word to process the command each time but if you add it all up, she wasted over 12 hours just trying to change a layout. That doesn’t include all of the frustration that could have led to other problems, slowdowns or wasted time.

I got so frustrated with Microsoft Office a couple of years ago and how slow it is that I started using Google documents and other tools to get my work done and open email attachments so I didn’t have the answer for my friend offhand but I did offer to help. I clicked on “Help” in the menu bar, and then typed in “change default view”. Within 30 seconds, I had the answer and changed her default settings.

From now on, my friend can save time and frustration on a daily basis, be more productive and all it took was about 30 seconds. Just think of all the things you can save time and frustration on if you are willing to invest 30 seconds or even a couple of minutes to solve. If you want to learn more about solving your little technical problems, read “The Wise Man Gets Lucky” or “Just F’N Google It”.

What should you learn in 2 minutes that can save you hours of your life?

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It Takes Six Years to Become An Overnight Success

Amir Lehrer — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:58:50 +0000

I was reading a post written by Seth Godin where he mentions that “it takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success”. I’ve never quantified the amount of time it takes to become successful but Seth has a very good point.

We often look at companies and people and say “wow, that guy made millions overnight”. There are plenty of companies who were not heard of for years and then all of a sudden, they are the talk of the town. They are in the news, at the top of digg.com and somehow connected to everyone’s facebook profile. We look at these people, get inspired and decide that we are going to be the next overnight success. We think of an idea, put it to work and hope for the best. The unlucky person has little success and after a while gives up. The lucky person has very little success but continues to push through and work harder at every stage of the game. It can take years but in the end hard work pays off and if you give up too early, you will never know the meaning of success.

I don’t know if six years is an accurate amount of time or if it is some sort of average but the number does make a lot of sense. If you want proof that it takes years to become an overnight success, just do a little research. Go to Google and search for all of the overnight successes you can think of and you will learn the truth about how long it takes for overnight success. It doesn’t have to be a company, it could be actors too. Jim Carry was an overnight success but it took years of failed stand-up comedy and living in his car to finally achieve his “overnight success”. Now getting over $20 million per movie for playing with his rubber face is natural.

I decided in July 2007, almost exactly a year ago that I want to be successful. I’m not exactly there yet but I am an infinite times closer that I was back then. Now I have ideas that I am putting into place, I have goals that I am working toward and I have a drive to get there. I don’t know if it will take another 5 years but I am most definitely willing to put in the time.

Are you willing to put in 6 years of hard work to be successful or make it big?

After posting this, i read Brian Armstrong’s most recent post on Startbreakingfree where he talked about Ronald Jenkees, “an “average” guy in small town America who happened to really enjoy playing music” and started posting his songs to Youtube and then selling his cds. Brian mentions that it takes 7 years to become an “overnight success” but more importantly, the only reason that Ronald stuck it out was because he enjoyed doing it.

Find something you enjoy and stick to it for your 6-7 years. Best case, you will be the next overnight success and worst case, you will have spent 6-7 years doing something that you love.

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Why Your Friends and Family Don’t Want You to Succeed

Amir Lehrer — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:21:53 +0000

When you have a great idea that you are sure is going to be a success, the first thing you want to do is tell the whole world. You usually start with the people who are closest to you such as your family and friends. You would think that these people who hold such a dear place in your life would want you to succeed and would root for you but this is not always the case. Although they might actually want you to succeed or say that they do, something else is going on in their subconscious.

Deep down, whether they know it or not, something registers that really scares them. They realize that if you go along with your new idea and you are successful, you are going to change and in turn, so will your relationship. If you go for a higher degree, you may be more educated and they’ll feel that you won’t have your intellectual conversations with them anymore. If you start a diet, they may not have those snackfest pigouts that you have every Saturday night at the movies. If you start a successful business, you may be too busy for them or even worse, start to socialize with a higher class of people.

Without knowing it, they will start to find all sorts of flaws with your idea and try to convince you not to go ahead with it. They may seem supportive but they may also be a little hesitant with their support. These friends and family members can really kill any drive you have for success and then you will be stuck in the same place that you have always been with no chance of growing and reaching for the stars.

Lucky people don’t usually have this problem because they make friends or already socialize with people that are where they want to be. If they want to be rich, they will hang out with rich people. If they want to be in good shape, they will hang out at a gym. I don’t remember who said this but there was one wealthy man who said that if he ever lost all his money, he would work hard to buy himself a nice suit and then go hang out at a country club with rich people.

When you have a great idea and you are really motivated, try to keep the idea to yourself for a little bit while you put together a plan and figure out how you are going to do it. If you tell anyone about it, make sure they are someone who is already where you want to be. After all, if you get advice, the person who is already there is the best person to get it from. Just remember, never take advice from someone who has never successfully done what you want to do. If you take their advice, you will end up exactly where they are.

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Commuting with my IPod

Amir Lehrer — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:31:13 +0000

Last week I finally bought myself the 80 gig video ipod and my only regret is that I didn’t get it sooner. I have about an hour and change of a commute to work each way which sometimes turns into 2 ½ hours or more each day traveling back and forth to work. I always thought that I was taking full advantage of my commute by reading books, magazines, blogs and anything else related to my current goals but this past week I found out that I have been missing out.

Store as Many Books as you can Handle

The beauty of the ipod is that you can store as many audio books, podcasts and notes as you need at any given time. Instead of carrying around a bag full of books and magazines, all you need is a pocket sized mp3 player. That way, if you get bored or tired of one book or subject, you can just switch over to something else. Many times at the end of the day I am too tired to focus on heavy material so I listen to something lighter.

Learn While you Walk, Drive or even Rest

Another advantage that audio books and podcasts have over written materials is that you can continue listening even while walking or driving. When I’m really wiped from a long day, I can sit back, relax, put my feet up, close my eyes and just listen.

Let ITunes do the Hard Work for you

BI – Before ipod, I would spent quite a bit of time just finding the right books and blogs and either getting them from the library, store, Amazon.com or online and then some more time if I had to print it out. With itunes, I can just subscribe to podcasts and have them uploaded automatically to my ipod and also browse through books and audio clips right in itunes.

I would highly suggest to anyone looking to get lucky, to get themselves an ipod.

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Was I Lucky or Unlucky? You Choose!

Amir Lehrer — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:09:01 +0000

Two Novembers ago, I was on my way to a friend’s wedding in a car service. I took the car service straight from work because I had to finish up some work and I told my wife that I would meet her at the wedding. I sat in the back seat, minding my own business and played games on my palm pilot while being driven to the wedding hall. I wasn’t sure where the wedding was so I wasn’t paying attention to if the driver was taking the best route. All of a sudden the car crashed into the car in front of us and the car behind us crashed in to us. I was wearing a seatbelt but it happened to be defective and I flung forward into the seat in front of me which was broken so the plastic and metal from the inside of the seat was sticking out. I wasn’t really sure what happened at the time but I started putting pieces together, especially when a witness saw me and got all freaked out. I was gushing blood from my face. I didn’t realize it until I wiped my face and then found a mirror to look into.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aycasanflickrcom/2081437674/sizes/o/

Someone called 911 and an ambulance was there within minutes. They checked me out and suggested that I go to the hospital to be checked out. That meant that I would have to spend most of the night in the emergency room and miss the wedding. I decided not to go to the hospital and instead go to the wedding.

Here is the rest of the story in point form. You can rate each point as lucky or unlucky, or you can just give it a score as a whole at the end.

It turned out that my driver was not a licensed car service driver.
The Police didn’t want to arrest him because it would take up to much of their time so they forced me to say he was my friend.
I had to walk to the wedding from that point because I was in the middle of nowhere.
I didn’t pay for that car service ride (which took me more that ¾ of the way there).
I missed the cocktail reception before the wedding.
I did make it to the wedding in time for the ceremony.
I was able to freak people out with the cuts all over my face that were still bleeding.
I had to walk around with paper towels and constantly wipe off all the blood.
My friends had a good time making up stories about me taking on a whole gang that was hurting a pussy cat.
I enjoyed the wedding and went home with my wife at the end of the night.
I spent the next night in the emergency room getting checked out to make sure there was no damage.
Today I have a story to tell and I never forget my friend’s anniversary.

Each of the above points can be argued either way as lucky or unlucky. It’s just how you look at them. I consider myself very lucky that I didn’t have any permanent damage besides some little scars. I was held up for a little while but I didn’t miss out on anything too important. I just went on in good spirits.

Feces occur and your luck is how you deal with the cleanup.

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