This is a song I composed for the piano titled “Adventure.” Very exciting!
Download MP3 (1.7MB)
Download sheet music (PDF, 44KB)
Archive: 2009 February
If your beliefs conflict with your actions, it’s hard to progress toward your goals.
It’s hard to be a successful murderer if you believe human life is inherently sacred. However, if you believe the world is over-populated, it becomes all the more easier.
Your beliefs must be aligned with your goals for optimal operation.
If you believe you need to be rich to be happy, you won’t be happy till you’re rich. Your belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Therefore, it is important to train your mind for success.
I had to do this a lot when I used to pursue price-match and rebate combos. While other people may have believed a 200GB hard drive was worth $70, I had to adjust myself to believe its worth to be $20 to get good deals. Then, getting such a hard drive for $10 or nothing after rebate would show up on my radar, whereas a normal consumer would dismiss it as impossible or not even notice it. What raises a red flag for a normal person would raise a green flag for me. Sometimes I’d be burned; I can recall losing $100 in rebates to a company called Connect3D; but most of the time my sense for good deals would win out.
Beliefs like “you get what you pay for” and “nothing in life is free” will harm the amateur couponer. Indeed, companies like Wal-Mart give away samples, including free shipping, every day. This makes “nothing in life is free” a fundamentally flawed belief. Holding that belief will also cause you to receive fewer donations and gifts, because you won’t even acknowledge their offering.
If you believe you are undeserving of tips or gifts, you will repeatedly turn down free money when offered it. While you make think you’re doing this for the good of the other person, …
This is a song I composed for the piano titled “Inferno.”
I chose the title because the rhythm is a series of sixteenth notes without rest, reminiscent of a blazing fire. The right and left hands are mostly inverses of each other, though there are distinct melodies in serveral places. Enjoy.
Download MP3 (500KB)
Download sheet music (PDF, 32KB)
Download synthesized MP3 (2MB)
“Time is money,” the saying goes. You’re paid for your time with money, and you pay for the time of others with the money you’ve earned. Projects that don’t earn money aren’t worth your time, and projects that take too much time must make extra money.
While money can be replaced, time cannot. However money can be just as valuable as time, assuming it takes time to earn money. The alternate view is that money should not be earned proportional to time, but rather to value, such as through royalties, salaries rather than hourly pay, or fixed-input services like entertainment or computer software, where the initial cost is high but reproducing the item is cheap. This way, you continue earning money without further input of time. The ads on this site are an example of this: while I blogged nothing last month, I made $155 from advertising and affiliate commissions.
Most people spend too much time earning money or earn too little money for their time. The world is divided between work-o-holics, philanthropists, and lazies: capitalists and socialists. When I volunteered at the local public library, I learned that volunteering does not present a good money to time ratio. In fact, it’s a net loss, considering the costs of gas, food, and clothes.
While the IRS taxes “income,” there is really no profit to be had in income. While you may earn money at your job, there are countless expenses: your housing, your food, your car, your insurance, your gas, your clothes, your water, your electricity. It could be said that you have no income, because you’re losing as much as you’re gaining: you trade $50 worth of time and effort for $50 in cash. A large quantity of energy can be converted to a small quantity of matter, just as a large …
