Self-Management

Freedom brought by self-employment comes with the price of self-management. If you want to become successful self-employed entity, you need to take managing yourself seriously! Here I will document some methods I use to get most out of myself.

Time Management
I use Toggle alot. It is so easy to use and get started that I suggest you to follow the link and just create an account for it.

If you want to be happy, you have to invest in yourself; that is the most fundamental aspect of happiness. If you don't invest in yourself, you have outsourced your happiness to the government or another system, which you hope to provide for your own needs. This is dangerous, because every system has been built by people to provide for themselves. If you just try to smooch off and let the system take care of you, there is a huge change that you are being cheated upon.

Most of us do 40 hour work weeks. In addition to that I do 20 hours work for improving myself as a professional, so in a sense I do 60 hour weeks. I think 60 hour weeks are easy to do, because I love the things I do; and you should too. If you can't make the 60 hours you are mostlikely being abused by someone or by your own addictions. I will tell you later how to deal with addicitons and abusive systems, but for now this link will do.

Pro-tip: You should evaluate your apsirations and goals clearly. This is why you should create one "company" for each life agenda with competing priorities. It will be easier to track your efforts and it becomes rewarding to see how much time you have put aside in order to pursue your dreams.

Advanced Pro-tip: Become vague with your time tracking! If you are in doubt about your priorities, stop tracking time with Toggle, but use paper and pen or Excel Spreadsheets instead. The problem with Toggle is that it is too accurate. When you are in doubt about your priorities and track your time usage with 30 minute precision. You have to start rounding up or down your time. When you try to exaggerate the time you spent for something, you are not passionate about that aspect of your life. This is very important piece of information. You should have a meeting with yourself (meditation, jogging, whatever makes your brains flow) and try to figure out how to bring passion back in your life.

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Learning Management
Our educational system is very outdated. If you want a proper job with a good salary, a degree won't cut it, and getting one is very expensive and time consuming. If you decide to get a degree, think it through! On the other hand, being a student is awesome carefree life-style, which can be very good for you if done right. If you are a creative personality driven with passion to build new things for others. the most important thing universities can provide you are the networks of people associated with them.

Effective self-learning is the most important thing to do. Internet has made all information free, even the university courses (I use Coursera, Udacity and Udemy, but you can find more from here and here).

There are many different kinds of learners, but I believe I have found one method that is very relevant today. This one! This Wiki is my personal learning project, because I noticed that by writing things down, with the links and the effort of trying to teach things to others, is the best model of learning I can come up with. Starting your own Wikia is very easy and the user interface is much easier than the traditional Wikipedia. Just click the "Start Your Own Wikia" button at the top right corner of this page! You will be done in ONE minute!

Having your personal Wikia solves many of the huge problems in learning: it makes your thoughts well organized, it encourages you to create links (associate things) and because it is public, you tend to process your thoughs more thoroughly. Traditional learning emphasizes memorizing and measurement of the memorized with tests, which leads to suboptimal learning that has no meaning regarding the deep understanding of topics. Education is the ability to CREATE knowledge derived from the existing information.

Another flaw of the current education system is the stupidity shaming. This teaches people to shut up, which is the most damaging thing to do, when you want to learn. In order to learn fast, you need to maximize the network effect of learning and expose your stupidity so that people can fill you up with knowledge.

Unfortunately the professional environments are very offensive towards methods that make stupidity transparent and encourages learning, because people are affraid of losing their jobs. People try to appear less stupid than they really are, by being shutted up and shouting only to make someone else look stupid. This is hazardous for innovation. Innovative learning is based on being stupid often and using your network of people to educate you.

Internet is a very good for networking. However, discussion forums and Facebook are very bad for learning, because they enhance the human tendency to peer-pressure and ego-boosting. For this reason I recommend Quora, which has been built for knowledge hungry people effectively eliminating our biological learning challenges. It's easy to use, so start now by following me at Quora so that you can see how stupid I really am! Start educating me!

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Building Your Networks
Today there is a social network for everything. You have to market yourself and productize yourself in order to enjoy full potential of your life, because you can't achieve your dreams alone (EDITOR TODO: improve this section with examples of why these methods are effective!):
 * Start by creating your personal Wikia for your life learning process.
 * Create accounts to Facebook, Quora, LinkedIn and other relevant networks.
 * When you write something to Wikia, post it to your network to get feedback
 * At your Wikia, back track your readers to follow your accounts in the networks you use, so they can easily contribute back to you later and followers build up reputation for you, which is good
 * Do not use networks you don't use often
 * Do not steal other peoples ideas in order to appear smart, always link the sources of your ideas. This is essential for building a better future based on sharing, not competition.
 * Collaborate and contribute, do not compete and steal.
 * Building a network is hard work (life is all about hard work), but it will ultimately change your life. Do not trust the system, which tries to abuse you, trust the community of people around you instead.

Build Networks with CrowdFunding Campaigns!
This is huge opportunity in modern world. When you do CrowdFunding campaign, you are marketing your idea. It has never been so easy to simultaneously do marketing and sell products at the same time!

You just have to get creative about what you can offer, if you can't sell products made by someone else in order to support your cause. I think every CrowdFunding project should sell Amanda Palmer's book The Art of Askin, because she is one of the most iconic CrowdFund raisers. Just like me, she doesn't care about money, but is passionate about a life-style that has plenty of freedom and creativity in it.

There are several different CrowdFunding websites, like Kickstarter and Indie Go-Go, for Finnish readers I would recommend Mesenaatti. Contact me if you want to know more, I would be happy to help you out in the process of getting CrowdFunded!

Start networking by following me at my Facebook-page!

Financial Management
We are human beings with basic needs of eating and having shelter. Everything else is secondary. Unfortunately we live within an abusive system, in which eating and having a shelter (home) without money is illegal. This makes everyone of us slave to the money, because without it, you can't stay alive.

Financial insecurity will make you vulnerable. This is why consumerism is so dangerous. If you are addicted to consumption, you will end up being a slave to the system and you can't improve your life for positive experiences. This addiction is not just about shopping clothes, but it is everything you do! You play computer games, which cost you money and time. You watch TV, which is free but makes you a subject to advertisement. Beware of these, they are much more complex and tricky than you think!

You might also wonder if you are working for an industry, which is based on corporations that abuse these consumption addictions or are you building something with real value (making life easier for someone else). These are tricky also: in my opinion Netflix is not bad, because it is reinventing the movie industry, which makes it easier to find good movies, which can be inspiring. The movie industry today requires you to see many movies, be subject to advertisement and pay quite a lot of money. Netflix is different, it makes life easier.

In Western world people are more or less slaves to the money due to the social security policies. For example USA is a very slavery driven country, since education and healthcare is expensive. For this reason people need to save money or take loans when life events happen. In order to pay back the loans, many are in a sad situation of having to do two jobs, which mean they can't improve themselves at all, for years. This is huge waste of human potential in my opinion.

Finland is quite the opposite. We have a huge social security system, which guarantees over 1100 € / month for unemployed, we have free healthcare (including medicines), free education and Helsinki has very good transportation system. However, our system is too bureaucratic and oppressive to the entrepreneurs; cost of labor is high, taxation is high and entrepreneurs can't enjoy the fruits of the system as well as employees for many political reasons.

If you have loans to pay, you have violated your financial security, which also threathens your social security, because you have long-term monthly payments to deliver, which you can't get rid off by reducing your consumption. How stupid of you! But maybe you needed the money, for example I did take a loan for one of my entrepreunial ventures.

In order to avoid loans, you have to plan ahead. For example you absolutely have to be prepared for unemployment.

The amount of money you need to save can be reduced greatly if you are prepared and know your rights within the social secuirty system, know about organizations that can help you out and can depend on your network of friends, fools and family. Be prepared!

Reducing your consumption and being aware of it is the best way to effective saving. I can live with netincome of 1,000€ / month if I must and net income of 1,500€ / month allows me to live very nice. With savings I can do awesome life choices.

Especially if you are an entrepreneur, never take out more salary than you must (of course there are taxational exception to this rule). Generate a buffer of savings and use them wisely. This way you will remain freeman and avoid the slavery of this system.

All this is very common sense, but still many of us fail to do it. The reason is that we are exposed to such a huge volume of marketing propaganda every day, that it will reprogram our subconscious needs towards spending the money -- our social security -- for artificial needs.

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