Goal setting and actually achieving them

Setting goals is not a mundane task but a fun and exciting one that enables us to progress clearly. If we don't know where we're going then any path is fine, so don't complain if you end up poor, alone, and ill. After all, if you don't set goals, other people will set them for you.

When my clients (I work with pupils aged 9-19 on a one to one basis) say that they don't know what to do, I cajole them into making a decision of sorts, because if they're indifferent to their future, they will become flotsam and jetsam on life. And life's too important to float around. (Something I pick up on in my first novel, Wither This Land, which follows a character who doesn't have any ideas and who gets caught up in an ideological battle between animal rights activists and hunters). Excuse the plug, but I'm in charge of marketing my own novels...:



In a sense, we have lost the childish ability to want things. Children have  great way of focusing their attention on something they want and then working on us or themselves to get it. Amazing. What happened to us adults - we were told that it's wrong to want, or we experienced too many times when our wants were dashed by others or life's circumstances. Well - I'm here to tell you: don't give up. A child doesn't give up pestering and we should not give up pestering ourselves until we win.

Now let's focus in on what we're doing: setting goals.

Primary goal: what is the most important thing in 2014 that you want to achieve? If you're stuck on that one, give yourself a year to live. Morbid, I know, but go with it. It's December 31st 2014, and you are just about to pass over. What would you have wanted to experience. It's no good lying there dying thinking, oh, I should have visited the Taj Mahal while I was capable. Use that immediate image of what you think you should be doing and jot it down ... visit Taj Mahal...What else?

As it's the New Year, it's always considered to be a good time to write down resolutions. But resolutions don't really get anywhere unless we take action towards them. Most people fail within a month of attaining their resolutions; they are quickly forgotten and ignored until the next New Year when we confess, as Zig Ziglar notes, what we didn't do this year: didn't lose that fat, didn't get that promotion, didn't get that room cleared...

If you keep doing the same thing and expect the same results ... what do you expect?

So do something different this year. Goals need not just writing down but also revisiting regularly. Hey, if you achieve something early (wow, we get a bargain flight to India and saw the Taj Mahal...) put something new down, don't wait till the New Year.

We're going to work backwards from what we want - and give ourselves a year to do it in. It's also important to set up life goals, ten year goals, five year goals...but since this is a starting place, a year's a good one to get your head around.

Take a blank piece of paper - any size will do but big sheets, like A3 or A2 are great as you can write your goals in large writing, and that makes them important to you.

In the middle, write the year 2014.

Then do a spider diagram branching off into the various areas of life that you live:
E.g.,
 Health:
 Wealth:
 Self-development:
 Family:
 Acquisitions:
 Holiday:
 Friendships:
 Relationships:
 Charity/Church:
 Sports:
 Culture/entertainment:

For each one write the main thing you want to achieve.
 E.g., Health - reduce body fat/weight
         Wealth - reduce personal debt and increase income
         Self-development - read more books, learn piano.
         Family: spend more time with the kids
         Acquisitions: purchase new car
         Holiday: two weeks abroad
         Friendships: catch up with old friends
         Charity/Church: give more to charity.
         Sports: take up golf.
         Culture/entertainment: see opera at Covent Garden.
As they stand, these are not very good goals and are more likely to be ignored. Why? They're not SMART:

SMART is an an acronym used in business to get focused, and in setting goals we need a focus.

SMART stands for:
SPECIFIC
MEASURABLE
ATTAINABLE
REALISTIC or RELEVANT
TIME-FRAMED.

Let's look at each of our targets:
  HEALTH: reduce body fat/weight.
    So far this is NOT specific, not measurable, therefore we don't know if it's attainable or realistic (it's just so vague) and there's no time frame.
   I'll put my own goal here - I want to drop from 15% umbilical fat to less than 10% (SPECIFIC and MEASURABLE) by May 2014 (NOW TIME FRAMED).
    Is this ATTAINABLE (within the time frame)? In conjunction with the training programme I'm on it is highly attainable (and I'll check my trainer on that!);
   REALISTIC OR RELEVANT? Sure - it's part of my overall goal to be healthy, and it's within my ability to drop the fat levels, since I've managed to drop similar amounts in the past.

 WEALTH: to aim for less debt and more money is not yet SMART. So let's change it.
  SPECIFIC: how much debt do you want to get rid of? Let's say you reply "all of it." How much is all of it? £5000, you reply. Okay. Now we have something specific.
  Next useful question here is - how long do you want to take to reduce this debt? A year. Okay - now, that's TIME-FRAMED, but then we can ask whether this is attainable. Using a debt calculator (assuming £200 monthly payment, interest at 18%), if you increase the payments to £419.51 per month, you'll have zipped the debt in 12 months. Is this ATTAINABLE though? Finding an extra £220 per month means finding an extra £55 per week, or £7.55 a day. Where are you going to get this from?

If you can save it from your budget by cutting back on extraneous spending (on stuff you can live without) then that makes sense: renegotiate the phone contract - say that saves £10 a month; give up the magazine subscription (saving £8 a month); cut back on some luxury groceries (saving £20 a month) - hey, we're up to £38. That means only £17 to go. Can you work some extra hours? What if you can't and you've screwed your budget down as best as you can - well, it will take more than 12 months to kill the debt: 14 months. That's not bad is it? Now we have adjusted the time frame to make it more attainable.

FAMILY: okay, when, how much time, how?
I aim to put an hour a day into my children. When? After work and dinner - I'll make it special daddy time so they get me without interruptions. Is this attainable? Indeed - we don't watch tv, in the evening I can settle down with both children and have uninterrupted play.

ACQUISITIONS: what car? by when? how much?
  Specifically, I want a hybrid car, a Honda Jazz, second hand £10,000. By when? October. How will I pay for it? Save £1000 per month for ten months. Is that attainable? Say current disposable income is £800 per month, then again I have to adjust my goal if I want to avoid paying for it on finance (and that is a complex issue, but say that's the goal). Okay, I can put £800 a month - that means the TIME FRAME is now twelve and half months.
 Some prefer to use RELEVANT instead of REALISTIC. This makes sense with a car purchase: is it a relevant goal according to everything else I'm doing? Well, if my current car can last another two years or so and I am reducing my personal debt, then I may want to put the £800 a month into debt reduction and get out of debt quicker instead of buying a car. It depends why I want to buy the car - if the current car is on its last legs and I will need a car for work and I'm likely to face increasing bills with the old one, then it certainly becomes relevant.

And so we go on.

Pick up the paper, sketch out the primary goals. Then add in the SMART categories under each goal (another good reason for using a large sheet).

E.g.,

 For each balloon, you can add in the specific goals with dates to achieve them. E.g.,


 Tick them off as you achieve them or set them into motion.

Once you've got the ideas down, it's time to add the visuals. Without visuals to help, the ideas can remain just words on paper. So time to do some research on the web or in magazines and get the printer going (which is fun in its own right!)

Consider for acquisitions the hybrid car: get a picture and slap it onto the visualisation board you're creating:



Now we can see it our brain starts to understand that we're on a path to get it.

We'll set up a standing order to put money into an acquisition account (or earn more money to acquire it through more work or reducing other bills); we'll automate that process so that in eight months we can go into the market and get the deal. Naturally, we'll aim to pay less than the full price and any reduction can go into another money account to earn interest/be traded/put towards self-development/holiday/debt reduction, etc.

The picture is worth a thousand words - it gets into our subconscious and starts to drive us towards the goal of acquiring what we want. This is the The Secret or Law of Attraction: when you visualise, you train your brain to believe in having what you want, this alters your behaviour and sends out vibes to mirror what you want. Things start coming your way - however we explain it.

Be a kid for a while - write out your proper Christmas list and then build up a visualisation board.

Can the government really create jobs? The Welsh government pays companies to hire people.

Jobs Growth Wales is a government funded programme (partly and perhaps ironically EU funded) designed to put encourage young people into work.

On January 3rd it celebrated creating over 10,000 jobs. 81% of those entering private sector jobs (fully subsidised by the government for six months) retain employment afterwards. From a public sector viewpoint, the programme is a success - officials have spent 12 millions on providing jobs in high unemployment areas or about £12,000 per person.

What's the economics here? Companies are offered the services of an 18-24 year old for free (to them) for six months during which time the youngster has an opportunity to learn the key skills required either for that job or to make themselves more employable.

If each of the 10,000 people managing to get government funding, the state is in reality spending £24,000 per annum per person - a relatively high salary for a low employment area. Could the money have been spent better elsewhere?

Possibly, but when it comes to spending tax payers' money, governments will generally tend to be highly inefficient spenders.

Arguably, from a free market perspective, the deprived areas would have been served better if that money was returned to the people rather than taxed from them in the first place: when the government 'creates' a job, all it is doing is diverting funds from one area of the economy (and so depriving that area of funds and jobs) and giving it to another.

As such, many people may think of this as a simple game in redistributing income, but because the funds are also funnelled through government offices, they also have to support all the officials involved in the scheme.

Say £12m was removed from the economy somewhere ... £10m may be used in 'job creation' but £2m may be spent on the programme. Simply put, it's robbing Peter to pay Paul, with Patrick being paid as a middle man. The minimum wage does not help of course: if a young person has to be worth £5.03 (18-21) or £6.31 (for over 21 yr olds) and a company views there skills as not worth that much (for there are other costs in hiring people) is it any wonder that there are so many unemployed young people? To encourage companies to take on these victims of state education (we could call them) the entire salary and national insurance bill has to be covered.

This indicates how poorly educated these folk have been (more of that in a moment) but also that the minimum wage acts as a barrier for them to be able to compete in the market place for work.

Consider it from an employer's perspective. She wants to hire a person to work in her shop; at the minimum she has to pay £5.03 (who came up with the .03?). She has two applicants (to make things simple): one applicant who has never worked, didn't get great grades, has never volunteered (couldn't be bothered), has a few interesting piercings and believes the world owes him a living; the other has worked since the age of 12, had paper rounds, baby sat, acted as a mentor at school, volunteered in the town, played team sports, got okay grades, has ambitions of passing a business diploma and becoming a manager... hmm, which one, which one... same price...hmmm, difficult.

Now imagine that the ambition-impaired youngster could be taken on for a pound an hour to see how they get on with some responsibility, time keeping, and general workplace duties. The employer may take on both - one for £4 an hour, as they seem good, the other for £1 an hour as they have to prove their worth. They may do this in the space of a week, but the minimum wage bars them from competing. Their only alternative, and one that is often recommendable, is to work for free for a week to build up work experience. This can be a very successful way of getting on the job ladder - but it doesn't attract the entitlement minded however.

 Ethically though, other issues arise.

Is it right to remove funds from one area of the economy (and it doesn't matter if it is Cardiff or Rome) to channel money into deprived areas? Removing those funds is taking money from a productive area, from people who are creating wealth through their commercial activities and then are distributed to areas not producing relatively as much. For a socialist, for whom the world should present a picture of social and economic equality, there's no ethical problem on taking from the productive to the give to the unproductive.

In other words, there's no problem in stealing (or being a recipient of stolen goods). From a consequentialist point of view, we can ask troublesome questions concerning the propping up of economically deprived areas. If a company needs subsidising, it means that the market does not want its services in sufficient quantities; likewise, if a worker needs subsidising, the brutal truth is that the market does not want his or her services in sufficient quantities. Take away the subsidy, and the company and worker go bankrupt.

That's the name of the game of the market: each of us has to serve our fellow neighbours with what they want and if we fail to do so, then they do not provide us with sufficiency and we get a big hint to change what we are doing.

If the government comes in to rescue us, we are given a false sense of security (which is lying to us about our job's chances) as well as presenting us with resources taken from other people who are (or even were following a tax hike) succeeding. The market is not, by the way, some whimsical Grendel like monster that kills people indiscriminately (something the military tend to be good at); the market is you and I and millions of other people making decisions about what to purchase - and what not to purchase.

When we serve more people, we earn more people; when we serve only a few, we earn little. When we have low level of skills and are easily replaceable, funnily enough we don't earn much relative to someone whose skills or aptitude for a job are less replaceable.

 But now let's look at this from another viewpoint: from the educational point of view. We can ask: is this really job creation or is it providing the young people with the education that their initial (ironically state sponsored) education failed to offer?

 This is another sharp critique best avoided if you wish to remain fuzzy headed about things governmental. But seriously, the government 'educates' people for around eleven years in the UK leaving many of them (currently one in five in the UK, fifty percent in Spain, Greece, and France) as unemployable as they went into school.

Now that is a failure of education. (We can of course ask, what do you expect when the government runs the school system? Did you really expect highly productive, literate, cultured, critically individualists capable of adaptive thinking and innovation in the market place...? Dream on.)

 The scheme is however, from this point of view, nominally successful - as a re-education programme. It is finally providing some of the Welsh youth with an education that is relevant and indeed gets 81% of them a 'real job'; but that should encourage Welsh taxpayers to look at the value for money they've (not) been getting over their children's education!

The failure is manifest and a human tragedy when young people leave school with little or no skills that can gain them access to the job market. But perhaps we can underline the deeper malaise: attitude.

When deprived areas are subsidised, the people living there are given a false sense of security that some day, some how, the real jobs will return. Perhaps they may - if the government gets out of the way of wealth creation. But throwing welfare into deprived areas creates an entitlement attitude that perpetuates the belief that someone else should be providing them with a living - people in London for instance, or people who live in big houses.

Again, we're back to theft - and generalisations about other people's wealth and their ability and willingness to fund strangers' lives.

The false hope that is fostered with welfarism is compounded with the entitlement attitude that creates, in the words of Bill Bonner (the "rogue economist" newsletter writer) a zombie class: unskilled, poor attitude, dependent on the living, and not going anywhere fast.

 Ministers in the Welsh government may counter that at least the programme is giving people hope - and I agree: it is. Hope is vital for all of us, and if the money is to be spent anyway (and not given back to the taxpayers), then assuredly providing people, especially the young people whose lives have been thwarted by an inadequate education and perhaps an entitlement philosophy (i.e., socialist principles), then certainly I would condone spending money on helping people gain hope and a sense of self worth through work sponsorship. Because once people gain a sense of self worth and can act daily towards bettering themselves, then we all gain.

Nonetheless, that is more likely to come from the people themselves than patronising politicians dishing out other folk's money.

Pakistan economic growth and education

Intellectuals and economic growth. Hmm. What can we offer?

In recent news, Prof Ahsan Iqbal, the Minister for Planning etc in Pakistan (sounds ominous when there's still a Planning department!), proclaimed that economic stability was possible through a knowledge based research economy.

Poignant words in a country wracked by bubbling civil disorder and fundamentalism. 

He is in many respects right. When we invest in ourselves we reach beyond the basics that our parents and home culture can give us, we stretch ourselves into the unknown and we improve our own understanding of life and of others. Far better to be educated than to be ignorant and Prof. Iqbal rightly alludes to Muslims' excellent history of education and the legacy, we can infer, than the Arabic world bequeathed the west and its scientific and industrial revolution.

Prior to the Renaissance, higher learning was to be found in the great universities of the east - the academics of the Arabic world sustained the momentum that the Greeks had provided: they produced great philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians. 

Then sadly academic growth was stifled by a rise in fundamentalism and the wars with the crusaders. Arabic learning passed subtly but surely into Spain and then into Paris and Oxford and Cambridge: the division in the Christian church them permitted nonconformism to emerge and that was a fertile ground for thought to flow freely; and as governments took a back seat, entrepreneurs were relatively free to develop what became the industrial revolution. That revolution empowered the west (and its aggressive governments); it relieved people from poverty (gradually but surely, as even Marx admitted); it produced the plethora of goods and services we increasingly take for granted.

But is education the cause of economic stability (and growth) or a symptom? It's a controversial notion -  yet we can gain a glimpse of the causal logic when we look at our academics in the universities: are they financially free? Some may be, but most will not be. They are dependent on government largesse or the corporations that modern western universities are turning into for their salaries and pensions. They are generally not entrepreneurs. Indeed, when academics teach about entrepreneurial activity or business it can be done with disdain or an aloofness that the Ancient Greeks would have commended. 

What about the evidence? Is there anything in history that supports the growth of education as being a necessary condition for economic stability or growth?

In Britain's development, much of the development occurred in a society with only a rudimentary education; religious feelings were strong and intolerance of foreigners and Catholics ran high despite the humanism taught by intellectuals - and in many cases religion encouraged reinvestment rather than profligate expenditure. Schools only taught the modicum of reading, writing, and arithmetic: enough to get the peasants and their children work of a higher standard. Only a very small elite went to university, yet arguably much of Britain's industrial development grew from its supposedly uncouth backwaters of Birmingham, Manchester and the great northern cities. London, as always, grew on trade and banking, but the nuts and bolts came from the densely populated, barely educated peoples who turned their new found freedoms into tinkering and innovation. The elite immersed themselves generally in war, politics, and country pursuits. The nonconformists - Quaker families such as the Lloyds, Cadburys and Barclays - created long lasting companies that employed thousands and served millions (and still do today). Very few of the highly educated were actually responsible for Britain's astounding economic growth. The same is true in America: it was not its educated elite that were responsible for its prodigious growth in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Indeed, one thesis in British history is that as the mercantile classes became richer, they sought to send their children to the elitist schools that the aristocracy and landed gentry patronised - and that was the end of Britain's economy miracle. It is a thesis worth considering. The schools diverted attention from the grubbiness of money making and industrialism to enjoying the races, fine art, clever conversation, and society. 

Academics, Prof Iqbal, needs to understand, do not a rich nation make. Their role is to enlighten and to espouse the greatness of humanism, toleration, and the love of learning - on that I think we would both agree - and also to understand that they need to get out of the way of entrepreneurs and wealth creators, something, as Minister of Planning, I think he might not comprehend. 

Education alone does not create wealth - rather the curriculum grows with the market place. As economies develop, companies (or churches or local charities) have an incentive to secure a modicum of relevant education for their workers. A company that does not invest in its colleagues and workers will lose its edge in the market place to those that do. 

This is what the Quakers did. They provided schools and learning to their workers. And because it came from the needs of the marketplace, the education had to be relevant. When it is imposed from high above by intellectuals in charge of ministries, we can guarantee it will be barely relevant, mainly out of date, and when supplied by the government, it will cost a fortune (to the tax payer), and the kids will become disaffected and turned off the great learning that Prof Iqbal and myself would love all to enjoy. 

Where we differ, I assume, is that I prefer pupils to come to the learning they would like to follow rather than be told this will be good for you because this is my vision of the future.  Economists, educationalist and academics are often at fault at creating a rosy picture of the future that includes their  own particular likes. But the business world and the febrile world of innovation does not work like that - the open society, as Popper called it, is open to change and what change occurs is unpredictable. The future needs of the marketplace cannot be predicted. Who could have predicted the ubiquity of smart phones, personal computers, video-conferencing, email, and digital photography? 

Economic growth comes from the mavericks, the innovators, the people who quietly tinker away with machines and software - but fundamentally, it comes from freedom: the freedom to try, the freedom to be yourself and to follow your dream. As intellectuals - and I love fine art, good conversation, classical music and literature - this is what we need to explain to the world and to our friends and influential folk. Freedom first, then education will come of its own accord. 

That is our duty, not to place the rest of humanity in our favourite mental chains. 

In defence of tutoring

For some reason, every few months, the press bring up the private tuition industry. Some proclaim that it is divisive, some accept it, some just monitor its growth (often in the same article of course).

What's the big deal?

Private tutors have existed since the beginning of formal education. Having a mentor, a coach, a master to teach you a trade is nothing new. Indeed, as an apprentice, a pupil often gave up wages in order to learn: i.e., they paid the master with their time and energy while they were apprenticed for usually seven years.

Today, there are thousands of ex-teachers, enthusiastic postgraduates and undergraduates - indeed, some sixth formers too - who earn money from tutoring.

For myself, it's not a hobby or a way to top up my pension or other earnings, but a profession.

I see the position as one of great responsibility and privilege. I work with those who voluntarily want to purchase my services - sometimes it's for content, sometimes it's for content, direction, and confidence.

It is a privilege in the sense that working with a young person one-to-one is highly rewarding - it's not teaching in the sense of broadcasting the information and hoping that some of the pupils get the ideas (some of the time); it's a matter of working with the pupil and learning with him or her. To be adaptable and sensitive is critical.

Sometimes I spot a need for a change in lifestyle - diet or environment, or even a change in school: discussing such issues requires enormous tact and timing of course, but it has been wonderful to open a door to a young person and say to them that they don't have to struggle so much!

Behind every great business leader is a mentor, by the way. If you don't have a mentor in your life, someone to turn to and discuss ideas or who can point out what you need to be doing then you're walking blind. Mentors can come in the form of books - the great motivators and leaders of our world whose words can enthuse - but they can also be met in person, which is much better!

I've got several mentors I can ask or explain things to, including my personal trainer, Guy Baker in Nottingham, whose holistic approach to training reflects our own view of education; my wife and I have wealth and business mentors who we can discuss ideas with.

Now imagine being a young person and having an academic coach and mentor - what a difference that would have made to my life is incalculable! I would not have made so many errors in my youth and early education - my grades would have reflected my mental potential rather than being a little haphazard, and I would not have struggled for so long thinking that "only I can do it and I can do it alone" selfish philosophy. The wisdom of the years has taught me to delegate to others but also to listen to those who have created paths in academia and wealth.

I don't understand why some may oppose tuition - it's like saying, don't get extra golfing lessons, don't go for football coaching, don't have a business mentor...perhaps they've not experienced the benefits of one-to-one? Whatever their reasons, it's nothing to do with 'the rich will pay for the tutors and the poor won't and the poor will suffer lower grades.' It's all to do with attitude. If you're a teacher, you should be open to teaching from all quarters and you should be instilling an attitude of life long learning as a matter of course, and to encourage people to take that learning from all areas that are available. After all, we all buy hair cuts on the free market (at varying prices) so we are free to buy extra learning.

Is there a recovery when only 2% feel it? (UK survey by TUC)

In a survey by the TUC (Trades Union Congress) in the UK, only one in fifty people feel that there is an economic recovery occurring. Makes sense: the UK governments have pursued two fallacious policies to create growth and to foster recovery.

The first has been to increase debt levels to extraordinary peace time highs. The interest on this has to be paid for. The interest is currently £828 per SECOND; the debt, if shared equally amongst all of the population including the children and the retired would be over £17000 each.

By driving into debt the government has created a situation where it must keep its interest rate payments low. It does this by the second terrible policy: quantitative easing or printing money.

By printing money, interest rates are pushed down below market rates (i.e., set by the supply and demand for loanable funds). In order to keep interest rates squashed below the market rate, increasing quantities of money must be printed: this follows Wicksell's law (a Swedish economist working a century ago). Printing money in turn creates a horrendous amount of distortions in the economy - some sectors profit indeed, and these sectors tend to be very visible - construction and large capital intensive projects for instance. But other sectors experience a drain of resources as the new monies flooding the economy attract workers and entrepreneurs into the inflated areas. Ultimately, only a few people benefit from what I call the inflationary tidal wave that is unleashed by the QE. The rest suffer from falling real wages - this is experienced in the UK's 'north-south divide' in which money, printed in London for the London capital markets supports an artificially inflated market there, while the rest of the country suffers.

The Bank of England recently commented that house prices needed calming...really?! Then stop QE.

Ah, but if the BofE does that, the government faces rising interest payments on its debt.

And that means pain.

So it's not surprising most people don't believe the statistics peddled by government (whatever colour of party). The economy's struggling in most parts of the country because people are still coming to terms with the fact that they are not as rich as the 2000s made them feel (through loose money). The government has yet to realise that it too has a duty to cut - to cut properly - its debts.

Dr Alex Moseley

Economic recessions and colds - fight the causes not the symptoms

Suffering slightly from a Christmas cold, the analogy between an economic recession and a dip in the immune system was worth noting.

At the onset of a cold most people rush to cover up the symptoms and take the over the counter cold medications and continue on as normal. Then they like to blame the last person that they came into contact with for causing their cold. Then they moan and groan through the symptoms until they finally pick up.


Same with governments really. At the first sign of a recession they rush to print money, squeeze interest rates, pump into the economy more government spending… basically infuse the economy with a bunch of drugs. They then may blame other people - foreigners, large corporations, oil prices: basically markets. Then they moan and groan about how well their policies of drugs will help the economy improve and that all will soon be well.

But as with a cold, the reason for heading into a recession is not the symptoms but the causes. How do we catch a cold? Our immune system is compromised - we partake in too much alcohol, sugar, refined foods; we do not allow our bodily systems to recover from work or exercise; we do not get enough nutrients to sustain ourselves and to protect our immune system from functioning. And yes, we may talk ourselves into a cold or illness directly or indirectly through mental stress.

An economy heads into recession because it has been drugged up in a boom through artificial low interest rates and monetary expansion; the government borrows on its good credit rating and spends money on anything that moves (or sometimes doesn't move). At some point, the crazy highs created by the central banking system and fractional reserve monies falter and people realise that the drunken state of the economy is vaguely masking a very unhealthy body economic. The effects will come regardless of whether people recognise how ill the economy has become, but a change in expectations can create a swifter alteration in the economy, just as if we realise the onset of a cold we make take some preventative measures such as getting more sleep or avoiding the sugars. As with a cold, a lot of TLC is required - which in the economy's sphere is laissez-faire. Leave it alone, give up the causes that created the cold in the first place, and just let the body recover.

What helps the body recover is a dose of good nutrients (the chicken broth, the vitamin D and C, and sleep, and of course time.) What helps the economy recover is a dose of good nutrients in the form of encouraging private investment (letting interest rates rise to encourage saving), foreign investment, low taxes (to stop further drains on the system), a reduction in government spending (a parasite on the economy), and time to allow people and the markets that they engage in to sort themselves out.

Dr Alex Moseley

The attraction to things that don't work...

We are creatures of habit and as an educationalist I am keen to encourage good habit formation with my  pupils.

But the difference between good and bad habits is not always apparent. Good habits, we would assume, are conducive of higher productivity, great health, better friendships and relationships with family, a clearer sense of purpose, an organised life and house.

Bad habits negate such values - they lead to lower productivity and time wasting, poor health, random swings in relationships, a lack of purpose and direction, a disorganised household and life. Of course, we would all wish to avoid those but what is it about us that creates mayhem, purposelessness, poor health, and disorganisation?

It's because we don't pay attention to the little things in life. We become wedded to poor habits that take us away from succeeding. We are attracted to that which does not work.

Weird.


Funnily enough though, successful people aren't attracted to that which doesn't work. If it doesn't work, they quit it; they move on; they keep on trying until they get something that does work. And they don't get emotionally attached to doing the wrong thing.

Unsuccessful people or 'lucky' people do not do this. When things are going well, they slowly but surely engage in habits that eventually wreck their success.

Imagine being a student who's just scored an A on a test. Well done! But what really got the A? If it was luck - the questions fell the pupil's way and that burst of revision paid off. But if that's not repeated, guess what - the student will receive a lower grade next time. Then he or she will feel despondent and moan that they're not good at exams or that they didn't really like the subject anyway (I hear 'it's boring' a lot - I change that to 'it's difficult' or 'I'm not engaged in class').

On the other hand, if the pupil reasoned, hey, that bit of revision got me a good grade, so if I work a bit harder on my next exams, I'll do better … and guess what? The average level of attainment will increase.

However, while revising, the student thinks, hey, I'm doing fine, I can take some time off to watch a dvd or surf some funny youtube videos or call my friends or play with my phone…then they quickly lose the edge they were sharpening for a higher performance.

It's the same as looking at our household budget and finances. Oh, it's only a little thing to add to the shopping trolley. Or, hey, I really need a new coat/shoes/car…Then the credit card bills come in and you're struggling and you pretend you don't know why … or even worse, you stick your head in the ground and pretend that you don't really owe so much on the cards or overdraft … or dream of winning the lottery. What good will that do?

Or with weight loss. If you think that that little bit of sugary food won't really do you much harm…you're wrong. The good habit of avoiding that which fattens you up or reduces your immune system is broken immediately - one exception becomes another and then another and then the rule, and before you know it you've put the weight back on.

There are no fairies in life that magically wave the wand and suddenly life's different and you're thinner, smarter, richer.

No, it all takes good habits. And no exceptions to the rule.

I'm suffering at the moment. Generally, I eat very healthy … but it's Christmas, I reasoned (or rather rationalised): that little bit of sugary food will be okay, and ah, another cup of coffee, after all, I love the taste, and let's stay up later and get less sleep…  I must be very sensitive, because my body has rewarded me with a cold!! So, back to the stricter diet (I follow a paleo based diet of no dairy, grains, legumes, or sugars sticking to meat/fish, lots of salad, nuts, fruit and organic as best as we can get.)

We're human - we err…but it is useful to know that we are attracted to that which brings us down and thus to be armed against such temptations! Behind the good habits is the key value that rarely gets mentioned in today's world: DISCIPLINE.

What is a disciple? Someone who follows a set of principles. So discipline is - following a set of principles.

What principles should we follow? … those that improve our minds, health, finances, friendships, and relationships...

Now the fun bit of life is working out what works!

I'll end on a not so subtle thought - no one accidentally put food in their mouth.

Think about it.

We can adapt that to no one accidentally picked up their phone to surf, opened their browser to waste time, put those extra doodads in the basket or bought worthless junk.

Alex