Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books

How John Erickson Documents

How John Erickson Documents

I like the way that John Erickson documents his sources in a simple and clear manner here.

Simply:

Name of author > Publication date > Page number

Uh. Why couldn’t we learn to cite sources like this all those years we spent in school? Rather than spending hours skimming back and forth between formatting guides. This is bold, no italics. You only capitalize the first letter. Minus 10 points because you forgot a comma. What hogwash.

I need to do a comprehensive post on how I read, annotate, and document books here too.

The short version is that, I mostly use Evernote.

The system I use in documenting my research follows this pattern: [Lewis 2001: 49]. It is a system used by archeologists, and I have found it to be the least cumbersome of the several methods of footnoting. It gives us the name of the author, the publication date of the source, and the page number. Most readers won’t do anything with that information, but those who wish to trace the source can find it listed in the bibliography.

-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)

Derek Sivers On Being Rich

Derek Sivers On Being Rich

I enjoyed this post by Derek Sivers on being rich.

A friend wants to know how he got rich.

So Sivers explains:

I had a day job in midtown Manhattan paying $20K per year — about minimum wage. On weekends I would earn $150 per day performing circus shows for kids, though I’d spend about $50 in bus fare to get to the gigs. I was sharing a three-bedroom apartment with two other roommates in Queens, so our rent was $333 per month each. I made peanut butter sandwiches for three meals a day, and at night maybe some eggs. I never ate out, and never took a taxi. My cost of living was about $1000/month, and I was earning $1800/month. I did this for two years, and saved up $12,000. I was 22 years old.

Once I had $12,000 I could quit my job and become a full-time musician. I knew I could get a few gigs per month to pay my cost of living. So I was free. I quit my job a month later, and never had a job again.

Of course, everyone wants to know how Sivers sold CD Baby for $22 million, but that misses the point.

The point is that he was free.

Making $40,000 per year, or making $500,000 per year would not have changed his lifestyle.

It shouldn’t change yours either.

Get it?

Simple advice on getting rich is here from Donald Miller.

For an extensive discussion, listen to Naval talk about wealth.