Cody Staub

It’s no secret that having a hobby can be an important instrument in relieving stress…and what better instrument to use than a musical one. One of my goals for this coming year has been to learn to play the guitar. Growing up I learned to play the piano, clarinet, and saxophone….all mediocre. They were (are) all great stress-relievers…and can be used to impress a person or two as well…but I eventually lost interest in them all for one simple reason, they’re not that popular. What I mean is, when was the last time you heard a Billboard Top 100 song on the radio that was written for the clarinet? The piano is a little better, but it’s kind of hard lugging around a 600 pound piano. That’s why I chose the guitar, it’s portable and can play a HUGE variety of music. So the question is, how will I accomplish this? Here’s a breakdown:

1. Get a good-quality guitar. I was lucky and got one from my mother for Christmas :). It’s an Ibanez Sage acoustic guitar. It’s not a top of the line professional model, but a VERY good beginner/intermediate guitar. This is what my guitar looks like:
Ibanez Sage Series Spruce Top Acoustic Guitar

2. Have the tools. The next thing I did was to go out and buy some good picks, a quality tuner, and a guitar bag. I know from experience with other instruments that if you don’t have the tools you need, you lose interest really fast. Playing becomes frustrating and eventually you just put your instrument into storage. Make sure you get these items in the beginning.
3. Get some lessons. While you can certainly learn to play the guitar without lessons, it sure does make it a whole lot easier. I started looking around for lessons and they come out to be about $25 per lesson…roughly $100 per month. So, being the cheap-skate I am, I tried finding free stuff on the internet. There’s a ton of it out there, but nothing of really good quality for free, not that I could find anyway. I researched this out for about a week and decided to give JamPlay a try. You pay $20 a month to get unlimited access to their video lessons, chord charts, supplemental content, and forums. I’ve had it about 3 months now and am REALLY happy with it. This was actually an essential piece to me actually making progress on my guitar because it fits my weird schedule. I suggest taking the lessons from Jim Deeming if you’re a beginner.
4. Set aside some practice time. I started out with a small goal…just three hours per week. Eventually, as I started to get the hang of things, guitar got more fun to practice. Now I can practice for a couple of hours in a single sitting if I have the time. It just sucks you in! However, in the first month or two, practicing was painful. I felt like I was never going to get it, my fingers and wrist hurt, and the sound coming out was less-than-awesome. The simple key here is to practice regularly! It will get better, I promise.

That’s it…so far I can play a few basic songs (very basic), but I’m well on the way to my year-end goal. I encourage everyone to pick up a productive hobby to fulfill your spare time, and if you’re interested in learning the guitar, visit the links above….they’re some great resources!

Last week I made a goal to myself of making more posts, and then I flopped. I shouldn’t make excuses, but I know this is because of my work/school schedule this last week, which has afforded me ZERO time for the internet. I worked almost 60 hours and had school for about 12…which left not much time for anything else. Sorry about that.

Because of my increasingly hectic life and my goal to maintain great grades this semester in school, I decided to drop one of my courses for this semester. This still leaves me at a full-time status in school, but I feel like having this one less class will help me manage stress, get better grades, and focus on all my goals. I also signed up for a condensed summer course. I plan on taking some paid time off from work during the summer classes so I can get them out of the way.

My eating also slipped up this week. I found myself eating out several times through out the week because I was too busy to stop at home and prepare a healthy meal. Along with that, I didn’t work out at all this week (maybe once or twice). Yup…I feel like crap already. It’s amazing how fast you can go from feeling like you’re in great health to feeling cruddy.

In other news, I bought a few new websites and am working on restoring some old ones, since I let all my internet hobbies drop a while back. Who knows if anything will come of them, but it’s a skill that can only benefit.

This next week is a lot less hectic for me. I work my three 12-hour shifts, but they’re spaced out better this week. My class that has been dropped will allow me to have a little more normal schedule as well. So plans/goals for this next week:

1. Write some good, quality articles for this blog

2. Practice the guitar

3. Sell my car (Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. I’m selling my Nissan 240SX)

4. Work on my other websites, especially the forum on a particular site.

Disclaimer: I am not a tax professional nor an accountant. You should review your situation with a tax professional or certified accountant before employing any advice here.

The hot topic at work lately has been “When I get my taxes back…”. For a lot of people, tax season is a payday… a pretty big one. They make plans and hold out all year for taxes to come back so they can make that one big purchase. I don’t understand this kind of thinking, and here’s why.

It’s a horrible savings plan. I talked to one girl who said she withholds extra taxes every year just so she can get a refund. She said it’s like her savings account because she’s terrible at actually saving money. If using your tax withholdings as a savings account is your justification, you need to sit down and think about this. When you withhold taxes, the government puts that money into its own “savings” accounts. Those accounts make the government interest (or maybe not, depending on how they invest it). So, you’re paying the government to make money off of your money! And will you see any increase in your refund if they make a return off it? NO! In fact, depending on the market that year, inflation and such may actually cause your money to LOSE value by the time you get a refund. It’s one of the only non-insured savings accounts out there.

Refunds breed a mentality. If you are the type of person that lives from paycheck to paycheck and have a hard time saving your money, then what are you going to do when you all of a sudden have an extra $xxxx in your bank? Well spend it of course. If people were a little smarter they would invest or capitalize their refunds. Instead, most people will blow their refund within a month’s time. After the refund’s gone, what happens with the extravagant spending style? It’s still there. This is dangerous ground, especially if you have credit cards or other lines of credit. No one really wants to stop spending, and people get into debt.

Your refund is taxable. If you get a large refund this year, guess what? It’s counted as income next year! That means your taxes get taxed next year, which will increase your tax liability next year. How’s that for getting screwed?

Okay, so we’ve established that getting a refund sucks. What do I do?  Well there are a lot of options available when it comes to withholding and paying taxes, and a lot of it depends on what kind of money-maker you are. Here’s a rough breakdown:

1. Own a company. The ideal system would be to own your own LLC or S corporation and pay your taxes quarterly (or monthly, depending on your income). In the screwed-up tax system we employ here in America, corporations have the least amount of tax liability. This isn’t because they are actually liable by tax-code to pay less, but because a company can claim a LOT more deductions than an employed individual. (side note: the individual will ALWAYS get screwed in the US tax system, no matter how the politicians dress it up) This means that a company making $250,000 a year may only pay 15-20% in taxes whereas the individual making the same in salary may pay 35% or more.

2. Withhold your own taxes. This is personally what I do with my current job. Because the government really only cares about how accurate your taxes are when you file them, and because withholdings are only an estimate anyway, you can basically withhold (or not) any amount you want. Because of this, I list 99 exemptions on my withholdings form, which means I pay zero tax withholdings (but still Social Security and Medicare). Because I know roughly how much money I will make in a year, I figure out my tax bracket and have my employer deposit that amount every pay period into a separate savings account. All year long, my taxes are earning me interest and when it comes time to file, if I end up owing taxes, I have the money there to pay them…plus a little extra. If I don’t owe taxes, my refund is all there…without having to wait up to a month to get it!

If you’re concerned about spending your tax savings if it’s there, open an account at a totally separate bank and “forget” about it. Most employers will allow you to direct deposit to separate accounts on the same paycheck, so check out the possibility.

In the end, your goal should be to PAY taxes, not receive them. Getting a refund means you paid too much to the government or that you don’t make enough to support yourself (according to the gov’t)….or both. How is that a good thing?

Last week I wrote two separate posts on my shift in this blog’s focus and some personal goals for this upcoming year. To keep me motivated and keep everyone else informed I’ll be doing weekly recaps.

Although I gave some little tips on eating healthier and tips on getting in shape, I didn’t do nearly enough posts last week (in fact this post probably should have happened on Monday). That’s goal number one for improving for this upcoming week.

My eating habits have been remarkably improved this last week, but are still not quite where I’d like them to be. I only ate out once last week (Arby’s chicken sandwich), but I haven’t been eating as often every day as I would like. I do still notice I’m feeling a lot healthier though. In addition to eating better, I’ve been doing a little more working out this past week. I worked out about 30 minutes four or five separate times last week. It feels good, and now that it’s finally starting to thaw out here I can start jogging again (only two feet of snow left to melt!).

One personal goal I feel especially proud of this week is my guitar practicing. One of my birthday goals was to pick up and start learning the guitar this year. While my practicing has been fairly hit-and-miss up until lately, this past week I practiced a lot. I’m even learning a few simple songs (motivation)! Another goal I’ve been putting off is to finish roofing Kenya’s doghouse. Today, with the mild thaw we’ve had, I was finally able to start working on that project again today.

Look for some great new posts this week

A bowl of cereal in the morning, a ham/turkey/cheese/mayo sandwich for dinner, and a cheeseburger with fries for dinner. That’s been my average meals in a day for several months now. Obviously not very healthy, so I decided to change my habits a bit and see where it takes me. Here’s the plan:

• Cut down on red meats. This isn’t for everyone, but my family has a history of high cholesterol and heart/clotting problems, not to mention that the red meats I typically consume are pretty fatty. In addition to cutting down on red meats, I want to increase the amount of white meats (chicken and fish) that I eat.
• Veggies and fruits. I was typically eating very few fruits and vegetables before. Most of the vegetables I ate in a day were on top of the cheeseburger. My diet now consists of a large portion of fruits every day as well as more vegetables.
• Smaller portions, more meals. Eating more often throughout the day maintains a healthier metabolism. In addition you keep from getting very hungry so you’re not as tempted to binge eat at meal time (kind of a problem for me).
• Prepare. For me the biggest problem in my eating habits was the convenience of bad foods. I find now that if I plan out what I want to eat for the day it not only keeps me from eating on impulse, but I actually look forward to my meal times instead of waiting for the hunger urge.

So what does a typical day look like for me now? Yogurt and fruit with some granola for breakfast, an apple for a snack, cottage cheese and pineapple for a mid-day snack, and a big dinner. Last night for dinner it was tortellini formaggi, tonight is going to be some mahi mahi and rice. I’ve discovered a ton of new dinners that are easy to make and keep my taste buds working. After just the week that I’ve been doing this I’ve found that I’m eating a lot less (portions), I feel more awake, and there’s just an overall healthier feeling. I encourage everyone to take a look at your daily diet and make some room for improvement.

The following is an excerpt from an article over at ZenHabits called ‘17 Fitness Truths To Get You In Great Shape‘. It inspired me the most to change my nutrition habits this coming year. Enjoy!

1. Small steps. That you get fitter in stages, as you exercise more, is pretty obvious I think. You might start out just walking, but as you get fitter, you might add some slow jogging to your routine. And then eventually you’re running three miles, several stages later. However, this really applies to everything, including diet, and many people don’t realize that. You shouldn’t try to change your entire diet overnight — do it in stages. Small steps, one thing at a time, and you’ll get there. Just start eating more fruits at first, for example. Then cut out sodas. Then eat more veggies for dinner. Then change your white bread for whole wheat bread. Then cut out candy at work. And so on. The thing is, you get used to each thing after awhile, and so the changes don’t seem drastic. A year later, and you’re eating extremely healthily (that word again), and you can’t imagine going back to your old diet. Small steps — this is extremely key, to both diet and exercise.
2. Find short-term rewards. Most people quit their diet or exercise program because they’re looking for immediate results. And they’re discouraged when they don’t get them. But you won’t get immediate results. One fitness trainer said something like, “After a month, you’ll start feeling some results. After two months, you’ll start noticing results. After three months, others will start noticing.” And that’s pretty true — it takes months before you start to see the results you want … but in the meantime, you have to look for other things to keep you going. Those shorter-term rewards could be simple things like the great feeling you get after a workout — that helps me stay motivated. Or you could give yourself a treat (something healthy, preferably) or buy a book or something like that.
3. Track your progress. The scale is probably the most popular way to see your progress, but other ways include measuring your waist, or taking photos of yourself each month. You could also track your performance — for example, do a 5K every month to see if you’re getting faster, or log your miles to see them increase. However you do it, you should have some kind of objective way to see your progress over the weeks and months. Otherwise, you might not really notice the difference — but the numbers or pictures will.
4. Enjoy yourself. Very very important. If you see your exercise as extremely difficult, or painful, you won’t be able to sustain it for long. You’ll quit. If you see your diet as very restrictive, or torture, you’ll go back to junk food in a short while. You must find exercise that you enjoy, and find healthy foods that taste good to you. Maybe not chocolate cake good, but good nonetheless. Experiment with new recipes until you find ones you absolutely love. (Try my soup and chili recipes for example.) Above all, enjoy the whole process. It’s what’s kept me doing it — I love my new life.
5. Never ever give up. Maybe the most important truth on this list. If you give up, you won’t get to your goal. Very obvious, I know, but the problem is that people don’t put this into action. Messing up by falling back into junk food or stopping exercise — that happens. Life gets in the way. No one is perfect. Just forget about that stuff, and move on. Learn from your failures, adjust your plan to prevent the same thing from happening again, and start again. If you stop, that’s OK — just start again. Always start again. If you do that, there’s no way you won’t eventually get to your goal.
6. Get a workout partner. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s been the key to my most recent exercise success. I began running with my sister, Katrina (who btw is an incredible inspiration — she’s come a very long way in the last year), and even though we’re at different levels, we really enjoy our runs. When we agree to meet at 5 a.m. for a run, I have to be there, or I disappoint her. And sure, once in awhile we cancel appointments, but most of the time we’re there, and we run, and that’s the important thing. These months of running with her have really gotten me in much better shape. Now I’m also running with my wife, so having two workout partners is taking me to another level. Get a workout partner. Best move I’ve ever made.
7. Brush your teeth after dinner. This is such a simple thing, but it really helps. It makes you have that fresh, clean feeling in your mouth, and makes you not want to eat an after-dinner snack. For me, after-dinner snacks or desserts are what ruin my diet a lot of the time.
8. Vary your workouts. This helps keep things fresh and fun. For runners, for example, don’t just do 3 miles every day at the same pace. Vary the distance, the route, the speed. Do intervals. And do stuff other than running — go hiking, go biking, play basketball, do strength training, swim, paddle. Mixing it up will get you in even better shape, challenging your body in new ways, and making it an enjoyable process.
9. Focus. There are always a lot of things we want to accomplish, goals we want to focus on … but by spreading ourselves thin, we lose focus and energy. Focus on one thing at a time in order to really get it ingrained as a habit. For example, for one month, focus on adding healthier foods to your diet (and dropping some of the less healthy ones). After that month, it’ll be ingrained. The next month, add walking or jogging or something like that, and only focus on that. One goal at a time, one month at a time, and you’ll get healthy.
10. Rest is important. People who really get into exercise often forget this. Without rest, exercise just keeps breaking down our muscles, and they don’t have time to recover and grow. The exercise puts stress on our bodies, and the rest allows them to adapt and improve. Without the rest, they can’t really improve. You should always follow a day of hard workouts with a day of rest. If you’ve been exercising a long time (and then you probably don’t need this article), you can do hard-easy days, or rotate different types of exercises so that parts of your body are getting rest on different days, but even then always have at least one day of complete rest, or you’ll get burned out.
11. Shoot for a year or two, not a few weeks. There are no instant fitness fixes, no matter what that website or magazine promises. Don’t believe them. Getting fit and healthy takes time, and should be gradual. If you’ve got a long way to go, aim to be healthy after a year. Those with a very long way might shoot for two years. Those closer to the goal could try for 6 months. Main thing: gradual improvement.
12. Focus on your diet first. I’m a huge proponent of exercise for health and other benefits, but if you’re looking to lose weight and/or fat, the biggest factor is diet. You can cut out more calories from what you eat than you can burn with exercise. Of course, both should be vital components of your fitness regiment, but start on diet first, then add exercise. Don’t think that because you are exercising you can eat whatever you want (unless you’re a marathoner or triathlete or something like that) — you won’t reach your fitness goals that way, most likely.
13. Don’t compare yourself to magazine models. Seriously. I’m sure we’ve all done this, wishing we looked like that slim or cut or buff model on the cover of a magazine. It’s natural. However, it’s not healthy. First of all, genetics plays a key factor in how these models look — most of us don’t have body types like that. Second, these models don’t usually look like that — they go on special diets a couple weeks before a photo shoot, so they look perfect for that day. Third, most of these magazines do some pretty heavy photoshopping. And fourth, what’s important is getting a healthy body image, not trying to look like a perfect model. Focus on health, not appearance.
14. Find the exercise that works for you. I love running, but not everybody is born to be a runner. Many people enjoy swimming or water aerobics. Many like lifting weights. Many like cycling, or tae bo, or Pilates. Others like sports like basketball or soccer or rugby. It doesn’t really matter what you choose, as long as you’re moving and you enjoy what you’re doing. Also find the solution that works best: working at the gym, going on the road (running and cycling, for example), working out at home (which I do), etc. Choose the one that you’re most likely to stick to.
15. Learn to be present. Going back to one of the key principles above, “enjoy yourself”, one of the best ways to do that is to learn to really be present when you exercise and eat. For example, when you run, try to keep your mind in the moment, and feel your body and your breathing, and experience your surroundings as your run past them. As you eat, really taste the food and feel the textures, instead of gobbling it down mindlessly. It makes the entire experience much more enjoyable.
16. Don’t let your body adapt too much. Sometimes we hit plateaus, where we’re still doing the same exercise but not really improving. The reason is that you have to keep changing things, either taking your exercise to a slightly higher level (gradually), or giving it new angles or routines. Otherwise, your body adapts to doing the same exercise over and over, and it stops improving. Once you start hitting a plateau, take it to a new level by increasing intensity or length of time in some way.
17. Get inspired. Another key concept for me. I like to read blogs or websites that show me how others have been successful. One Zen Habits reader, for example, recently gave me some inspiration with his blog, Fat Man Unleashed. He’s doing a great job, making amazing progress, and it’s inspirational. Fitness magazines, for me, began to seem useless, because they just rehash the same articles over and over. But then I realized that I like to read these magazines for the inspiration, not the information. Find something to inspire you and it’ll keep you going.

Happy 21st birthday to me! Actually my birthday was yesterday, but who wants to work on their birthday? Twenty was a pretty exciting year for me…I moved back to Southeastern Idaho, found my perfect dog, landed my dream job, went skydiving, bought a new truck, and started into school again with a renewed determination. Life has been busy, but to me busy means worthwhile!

I’m going to try something new this year, instead of the normal “New Year’s” resolution, I’m going to make some resolutions for my 21st year of life…or things to accomplish before I’m 22. Here we go:

1. Get into better shape. As of this writing I weigh in at 205 lbs per my cheap bathroom scale. I’m 5′9″ and a pretty beefy build…not large or husky or fat, just beefy. My ideal weight I believe was 165-175 back when I was in high school. My goal for this year is to get down to 175 lbs and not go above 185 again. More on this goal tomorrow.

2. Be organized. This is sort of a tough one for me. I have a strong urge to just set things wherever and forget about them. This year I’d like to make a spot for everything and keep it there.

3. Plan out my day. This goes a little bit with being organized. I need to start planning out my days better. To me this means planning out my 3 things to do for the day the night before and keeping a monthly calendar of important days (tests, family events, etc).

4. Financial responsibility. I have no idea if that’s worded right, but this encompasses building my credit, growing savings, and learning more about smart investing. Buying my truck was really my first major purchase, and with it I have an interest in building up a good credit so I can save myself money in the future.

My fitness plan will start tomorrow (and I mean it!), as well as my other goals. It’ll be tough to get through a whole year of doing all these things, but I believe if I can force myself for at least a six months that it will all become habits I can continue for the rest of my life.

When I first started this blog I had meant it to be just another John Chow look-alike blog, where I posted useless “tips” and hoped for large audiences to come pouring in. I lost my focus, got busy, and more-or-less let this blog sink into the shadows. But today I am resurrecting it.

I’ve thought a lot about what I really want from this blog lately, and I’ve come to a conclusion. Over the past couple of years I’ve learned a lot about my meaning of happiness and and what I want out of life. To reflect this, and because this blog bears my name, the shift in my blogging will be to self-improvement. This covers a wide variety of things including being happy, financial freedom, time-management, learning…and who knows how many other categories. You should expect to see posts about saving money, cutting down stress in your life, and eating healthy. I think this shift will help my writing to become more focused and less stressful.

Of course ultimately this blog is still all about one thing: Me.

In order to convey this shift in my blog I also wanted a new theme. I wanted a theme that had a photo-friendly header space and a three-column layout. What I ended up with was the Mandigo theme, which actually fit my bill perfectly. Here’s some features of the new layout:

• Rotating banner: With each refresh and page view the banner image rotates. Most of the banner photos are taken by myself, but a few were found on the internet (copyright free, of course).
• Random quotes: In the far right sidebar at the top you will notice “Inspirational quotes”. Like the header, these quotes also rotate with each page view, giving you new inspiration with each page!
• Flickr gallery: Directly underneath the “Inspirational quotes” are four thumbnails from my Flickr gallery. Clicking on any one of those will take you to my Flickr page where you can view all of my photos.

The overall point of all these features was to provide inspiration while at the same time a little relaxing scenery. I hope everyone enjoys this shift in my blog. Now everyone should subscribe to my RSS so you can come back and learn to live a happier life!

EverybodyGoTo is the blog of a web designer/internet entrepreneur by the name of Hyder (it’s the only name I’ve ever been able to find). Hyder has his start in the fashion industry, but is a self-taught web designer and graphic artist as well. His posts are generally about making money online, blogging, and web design. Hyder’s latest project is called Weborithm, the wordpress design company that brought you the re-design of JohnCow. This is a great blog with a lot of good tips in a wide range of categories.

Vanessa Fox. Nude. Relax! This isn’t a porn site! Actually, this is the personal blog of one of the great internet marketing females right now. Vanessa Fox is an expert in search engines and search engine marketing, and perhaps if you’ve been to any sort of internet conference lately you’ve heard her speak. She writes for several blogs and publications including the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog and Search Engine Land. To see her LONG list of credentials, check out her About Me page. Her posts on her personal blog, however, tend to be less professional and mostly entertaining, but every once in a while there is a gem of a post on how something works or how to get better rankings. Go check it out, her blog is definitely one to have in your reader.

As a follow up to my post on Thursday and as a precursor to Super Tuesday tomorrow, I wanted to try and explain the difference between a primary election and a caucus. It turns out in speaking with our county clerk since Thursday that Idaho (where I live) utilizes both a Democratic caucus and a Republican primary. The caucus is tomorrow (February 5th) and the primary is May 27th, so it looks like I won’t be voting until May.

So what’s the difference? And why the two voting dates?

To answer the first question, a primary election is run much like the general election in November. Each person is given a ballot and that ballot is cast in secret. A caucus is usually where members of the political party gather into groups according to their candidate preference. I’m a little sketchy on the caucus process, but my understanding is that this is not a private ballot, nor is it very accurate, but merely to get an idea of who the delegates should support. The state laws usually govern whether the voting process is opened or closed, meaning that if you vote in one election/caucus you cannot vote in another (closed).

Each party can choose to have either a caucus or a primary election and when it takes place. In Idaho, the democratic party has chosen a caucus to be held on February 5th and the republicans have chosen a primary election to be held May 27th. Both of these elections are open in Idaho, meaning I could go to the democratic caucus tomorrow and also vote in the primary on May 27th.

I still encourage everyone to get out and vote. This is going to be a very charged election.