Don't Be Lazy; Go Do It Right Now

I am a lazy person. Seriously. I am pretty lazy.

The problem is that I am also a high achiever. I am very driven and have become even more driven in the last few years of college. The way I see it, the value of self-awareness is to:

1. Figure out my goals – what I value in life, both professionally and personally.
2. Become aware of my character flaws that stand in the way of reaching my goals.
3. Come up with tricks and fixes to counteract those character flaws.

I got away with laziness all throughout high school and college. In high school, my only extracurricular activity was being a news co-editor of the high school newspaper during senior year (what Stanford saw in me in 2004, I have no idea). In college, I spent the first few years in laziness and fear of committing my time. Only by the end of junior and beginning of senior years did I realize that I should have done anything and everything that interested me.

So I went lightning speed and in my last quarter at Stanford, I took a full graduate unit load, TA-ed a microeconomics course and wrote an undergraduate thesis. Good times.

In January 2009, I suddenly found myself on my first job, sitting in an office for 8 hours a day and performing magic tricks with Excel. I went from being busy with 100% control of my time to being busy with only 30% control of my time. How do you get any of your personal goals or life errands accomplished when you are working nine to done? Here was an opportunity to let my laziness take over.

But I did not let it. And I do not let it every day. I have been putting in operational life rules by which I live so that my laziness does not take over. So what are they?

1. Lunch breaks are not only for eating lunch, but running errands. Whether it is a quick trip to the shoe cobbler, Walgreens, Safeway or a quick call to the bank, doctor’s, etc, I make it a rule to run at least one errand or take care of at least one thing during the weekday lunch hour. It does not matter how small it is. It is all about baby steps. Chipping away at my to-do list one errand per lunch makes a huge difference at the end of the week.

2. Why put something off for tomorrow if you can finish it in the next 15 minutes? This one I borrowed from my advisor who quoted my former office mate. If you can write up a quick note, quickly call the bank to take care of an issue, open a Roth IRA, etc. in the next 15 minutes, just do it. Seriously, stop reading and go do it right now (and then come back to finish the post). This rule works well for both work and personal projects.

3. If you are not feeling efficient and feel like you are wasting time, immediately take care of two tasks on your to-do list. Just like inspiration breeds more inspiration, productivity breeds more productivity. The more you accomplish and cross off your to-do list, the more inspiration you will feel to keep going. The 10th task will feel like a breeze and you will not be able to stop yourself from crossing off more and more tasks. Each task will become easier and easier.

4. When you get home at night, clean the room and the kitchen before your brain figures out what you’re doing. I usually fly into the apartment, throw my jacket and purse on my bed, run into the kitchen and start furiously doing the dishes. Before I know it, the dishes are done. I’m still pumped up, so I clean up my room, put all my clothes in the closet and take out the trash. The routine takes 20 minutes, but by the time I realize how much cleaning sucks, everything is done! Simple as that.

5. Accomplish at least one thing a day that is just for your own personal development. I call these “personal projects.” A personal project can be the smallest thing, such as writing an email that you have been putting off (like the one I wrote to Ramit Sethi last week…it was so funny, but he still blew me off…whatever). It can be a blog post. It can be sewing up a torn piece of clothing (yes, I do sew up my opaque tights…those suckers tear after like one wear and it would be too annoying to throw them away).
The importance of this one project per day is to feel that you are not only your work and that you are taking proactive steps to grow personally outside of it. The most important investment you will make is investing in yourself.

The common thread in all the rules? Be spontaneous, do before you have time to think of all the obstacles and just keep going.

By following these rules for the past three months, I have managed to set up a dynamic spreadsheet tracking all my spending, write some blog posts, connect in person with a few awesome bloggers like Penelope Trunk and Jenny Blake and become a personal finance mini-expert.

Many more projects are in store, but I have forgotten what it is like to be lazy. Because when I get home at night, I cannot wait to work on my personal project of the day.

How I Failed at Networking

Last Thursday, I decided to go to Ramit Sethi’s book launch of I Will Teach You to Be Rich for three reasons:

1. The topic of personal finance is currently one of my biggest interests.
2. It was a great opportunity to practice networking.
3. I had a very productive week at work, which made me feel confident, which made me want to conquer the world.

And what better place to start the conquering than a personal finance party?

Well, I failed. Completely.

In my journey of career self-discovery in the last few months, I have voraciously devoured any career-oriented blogs I could come across. Additionally, as I have been trying to get my finances in order, I attentively read blogs such as Get Rich Slowly, No Debt Plan and I Will Teach You to Be Rich.

I really enjoy Ramit’s writing and his raw sense of humor (I had a great couple of days of reading when I discovered Things I Hate. I even went as far as buying Ramit’s book, after many of my Twitter followees twot its praises.

Another thought on my mind for a few weeks now has been my desire and readiness to expand my network. I moved to the city and started working in January and only in the last few weeks started feeling my life settling down in a comforting routine. Now all I needed is more people around me who share my passions.

Naturally, when Facebook reminded me of Ramit’s book launch in a Union Square bar in San Francisco, I printed out a few of business cards and off I went.

At 7 p.m. sharp, I excitedly pranced into the bar.

Happy Hour was still winding down, so there were a few people there who did not have anything to do with the book launch. I ordered a glass of wine and waited. I was all alone and knew no one there, so I started doing what every Gen Y-er does in a similar situation. I sat down on a bench in the hallway between the bar and the entrance, flipped through a magazine, texted my friend (who was spinning at the gym) about how awkward this is and pretended I was waiting to meet up with someone.

At 7:20, I had made no progress. I saw Ramit walking around, but he looked busy talking to people. Besides, I had absolutely no opening line and anything I could think of sounded too awkward in my head. So I sent for reinforcements.

At 7:45, I met my friend at a bus stop and we decided to return to the battlefield. The bar got fairly busy, so we ordered wine and pretended to be catching up with each other (side note: she works in the same company and on the same floor as I do). We still did not know anyone at the bar, while everyone seemed to know each other. I just could not think of a way to strike up a conversation, nor could I bring myself to do it cold turkey.

At 8 p.m. I gave up and we left.

Total failure. I was not proud of myself. Lessons?

1. If you are going to a professionally-minded event where you anticipate meeting people, shoot a quick email to someone who you might see there in advance to tell them that you want to chat. That way, when you approach them, it is definitely less awkward (i.e. not “Hi Ramit, remember that time I tweeted you and you tweeted back?”).

2. It is always helpful to bring a friend to such an event. The advantages are numerous. One: it is for some reason easier to strike up a conversation with someone if there is two of you than if there is one. I think it just seems to be less intense. Two (selfish): it does not look as bad when the two of you are monopolizing someone’s time as when there is one. You can always fight people off more easily together than by yourself. Three: if you find yourself in between conversations, you can talk to your friend and then you will not look like such a loser.

3. And finally, be gutsy. Networking is hard, but it is fun to learn. And the best networking experience is when you are genuinely interested in what people tell you. So go do it as much as you can. I know I will be trying.

P.S. Ramit, if you are reading this -  your book better teach me how to be rich…

Demand Good Customer Service When You Get Ignored

A few weeks back I wrote about how it is each consumer’s responsibility to give constructive feedback to companies. It is also each customer’s responsibility to demand good customer service from those companies. As an example, I give you a story in which I clawed my way to good customer service.

My purse, along with my wallet, were stolen in August 2008. Both my Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual credit cards were used fraudulently. After I canceled both and filed a claim with both banks, I waited. Wells Fargo (my darling) reimbursed me the money within two weeks. I waited on Washington Mutual…

Then I faxed in an affidavit, a copy of my police report and other supporting documents to Washington Mutual and waited…

Nothing. I faxed it in again. Waited. Nothing. I faxed in again. Waited. Nothing.

In December, I decided to call their customer service. They told me they did not receive my documents, so I faxed them in again. Nothing. The fax machine was not broken, by the way. And so then I started calling them bi-weekly. Great fun. After a few such frequent calls, when they would tell me different things each time (i.e. they do not have my affidavit, they do not have my police report) or just blatantly disconnecting me from the call, I had had enough.

So one evening I was at work at 8 p.m. and I was already pissed off about being there late. And I had spent half an hour waiting for a customer service representative (with annoying not-even-advertisement music playing in the background…I mean, if you are going to make your customers wait, why would you not give them the quiet to work on something else?!!) only to hear that they do not have my document and that I should call back when I send it in. I was fuming, so I finally mustered the courage and desperation to launch an executive email carpet bomb (EECB).

The basic idea of an EECB is to send an email with a plea for help to all the top executives of the company. By this time, Washington Mutual had become Chase. So I went to my favorite consumer blog The Consumerist, looked up Chase’s executives email addresses and typed out the angry email. And then I went to Chase’s SEC filings and found the names of all VP’s and non-executive Directors and typed their email addresses into my Gmail address line.

Now, I am not completely unreasonable and I understand that Chase executives are important. So I took the time to address my letter to each individually (thank God for cut and paste). I wrote an angry email in which I told each man that I had had a very bad customer service experience with his bank, that Wells Fargo is awesome and that I would like Jamie Dimon and gang to “please read over carefully and see to it so that [my issue] gets resolved.” I typed out the subject line of “PLEASE HELP” in all Caps, attached a PDF of all supporting documents and went home satisfied.

The next day, three women called me back from Chase Executive Customer Service, gave me their direct extensions and promised to personally follow up on this matter. They were all very nice. Two weeks later, my money was refunded. I am pretty sure that my email never got to any of the executives, but I did get what I want. But even though my money was refunded thanks to the work of very nice women, the bank wasted a lot of my time, so I will be canceling my credit card.

Lessons?

1. When companies do not listen to you, which they will most likely not in our bad economy, you have to creatively take matter into your own hands.
2. No one (really – no one) will take care of you. You have to take care of yourself.
3. You have to act. I sat around doing nothing for half a year because I was too lazy or afraid to act and demand good customer service from a company. Once I acted, I got it.
4. Vote on companies with your money. I will be canceling my WaMu/Chase card and transferring those purchases to my Wells Fargo card.
5. EECB’s are just awesome.

Next up – LabCorp. CEO David King got paid $8.2 million in 2008 (well, a lot of it is in out-of-the money options…but still), so surely they can afford to refund me the money that they grossly overcharged me. But that is a story for another time.

Everyone Run and Open a Roth IRA Right Now

Being a huge nerd, I have been reading many personal finance blogs lately. I cruised through college with my parents paying for my credit cards, so being on my own financially is both terrifyingly confusing and extremely exciting. It also does not hurt that my job is all about making crazy dynamic Excel spreadsheets of money moving around, so I feel very empowered to take charge of my finances. I can understand and track where everything is going.

My favorite personal finance blogs are Get Rich Slowly, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Tough Money Love (this one is superbly feisty) and, most recently, No Debt Plan.

In fact, learning about personal finance is one of my new obsessions, which is kind of ironic, given how my iPhone was just stolen 2 days ago and now I have to pay $541.42 to replace it at the early upgrade price. But that is a whole different (and tear-inducing…in myself) story where I hate on AT&T and Apple and low life thiefs. Back to personal finance.

I started following No Debt Plan a few weeks ago and today stumbled upon a post on how to retire easily on $1,000,000. Now, given my inability to trust calculations unless I do them myself and my mastery of Excel spreadsheets, I decided to test Kevin’s conclusions, as well as play around with some sensitivity analyses by altering assumptions about the annual return, compounding, etc.

Kevin basically says that if you start contributing $5,000 annually to a Roth IRA account at 24, STICK WITH IT, retire at 66 and assume a “conservative” annual return of 7%, you will have amassed $1.2 million of untaxable (!) income by the time you retire.

Astounding, but true. I seriously have to open a Roth IRA account:

Omg I Need to Open a Roth IRA Omg I Need to Open a Roth IRA irina.issakova6516

Get this. If I start at 23 and retired at 64 and stick to this plan, I would contribute a total of $205,000 and earn a total of $1,018,036 (!!!) in interest. OMG! You never believe it until you make your own dynamic spreadsheet.

I am now keeping this spreadsheet as a shameful reminder of the fact that I currently do not have a Roth IRA. But all of you out there. Run. Open one tomorrow. I know I will be (well, at least by the end of 2009).

Next step: figure out asset allocation based on my retirement profile. I’m guessing somewhat aggressive during these crazy stock market times.

Always Tell Companies Whether They Are Good or They Suck

Two weeks ago, my office mate was telling me that he was going to call his gym and cancel his membership. He was going to switch over to a competitor who offered a better deal and had newer equipment. “I think I’ll just tell them that I am moving to another state.”

Wait a second! What?! I suddenly started paying close attention to what he was saying. I asked him why on earth he would lie about the real reason, especially since he was not going to be charged any fee for the cancellation (no matter the reason). He said he did not want to be confrontational and he knew that they were going to offer him better rates and convince him to stay and he just did not want to deal with all the mess.

Hold on! I tried to convince him that he absolutely had to do the opposite in the following way:

1. Tell a customer service representative (”rep”) that he would like to cancel his current membership because he is switching to a competitor who: (a) is offering him a better deal on his monthly payment and (b) has better equipment and a more pleasant general ambiance.
2. When the rep would come up with all sorts of ways to retain him, just be stern and show her that he was going to cancel no matter what.

In fact, even if the rep would not have asked for the reason, he should have still offered it. Because telling the real reason would have been a great service to the gym company. The business would have learned exactly why it is losing at least one customer and could have taken the appropriate steps to improve and become more competitive.

It is your right as a consumer to decide that you want to stop your consumption of a certain product. But it should also be your duty to spend a little bit of time giving feedback on how that product can be improved. By telling a company the real reason its product sucks or rules, the consumer is actually increasing competition and watching out for herself.

Urgh, of course my office mate bailed on that and came up with some b.s. excuse.  Whatever.

One of my favorite blogs is The Consumerist, whose mission is to make consumers more aware of the companies that they are supporting with their consumption choices and empower consumers to fight back when those companies screw them over. In the last few months, it has made me both very aware of my rights as a consumer to demand good customer service from everyone to whom I give my money and give all sorts of feedback to both good and bad companies.

Here are a few quick examples:

1. Wells Fargo:  I greatly respect and am very grateful to this bank. When my purse was stolen in August 2008, the thief charged a total of $1,000 to my credit and debit cards. Wells Fargo reimbursed me within two weeks. They also removed an overdraft fee I had last month within 30 seconds by seeing that I do not have a history of overdrafts and it was just an accident. And they are just really nice and knowledgeable on the phone.
2. WaMu/Chase:  absolutely horrible customer service. I HATE this bank with a passion. I have spent probably a total of 20 hours on the phone with them trying to resolve a claim for fraudulent unauthorized transactions made on my credit card in August 2008 (!!!). They keep transferring me from one department to the next, mysteriously “not getting” my faxes with my affidavit and police report and generally just being horrible to me. Once I get my money back, I am closing my credit card with this bank. And I am also telling everyone I know to never ever deal with this bank.
3. Overstock:  I recently shipped back two items to the website, but my account was not being credited for them. This morning, I chatted online with a rep called Wes. The chat took about 10-15 minutes and Wes’s average response time was 5 seconds. Turns out, Overstock did receive the packages, but for some reason the returns were not processed. So he sent a note to the department to speed up the processing and two hours later, I got an email alerting me of the completion of returns. Needless to say, when a feedback form popped up at the end of our chat, I left nothing short of a raving review.
4. ING Direct:  Do I love them or what? They give me great rates on savings, do not bother me with needless emails, answer my solicited questions by email within 24 hours, have awesome billboard ads and promote financial responsibility through The Declaration of Financial Independence. Needless to say, when I received a SurveyMonkey survey from them this evening, I spent 10 minutes giving honest and detailed feedback. They are serving me well, so I want them to succeed.

So that is that, my friends. Help the companies that are serving you well. And do not be afraid to tell those that are not that they you are not happy with their service and are therefore switching to their competitor. It is for their own good and for yours, too.

Daughter Trump Rocks My World

The social media junkie that I am, I came across the following video of an excerpt interview with Ivanka Trump in my Google Reader last week:

I thought I was so awesome. Turns out - not so much.

Quick background for this post. I started my current job in August and worked for 6 weeks. Then I took a leave of absence for 3 1/2 months to finish up a masters degree at Stanford (yeah, it sounds better and more important when I explain it). And I just recently graduated and came back to work in beginning of January. Stop background.

An hour with a role model

So tonight I met Penelope Trunk.

About

My name is Irina Issakova. I am a recent college graduate working in a consulting firm in San Francisco. I graduated from Stanford University in December 2008 with a B.A. in Economics and an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering. I am an avid fan of macroeconomics, an appreciator of fashion, a proponent of personal finance and an aspiring good person.

Upon graduation, I realized that college has not taught me too many real world things. So I started this blog as an exploration of who I am, my capabilities, fears, accomplishments and other goings on in the life of a young professional Gen Yer. Over the last few months, this blog has taken the direction of learning about what makes someone an effective individual and just in general using one’s brain. I like it this way.

Goodbye, College. Thank You for Teaching Me.

I am finally graduating from Stanford (or so I hope…Stanford just does not seem to want to let me go…or my money, to be more precise). Well, at least I am done taking classes. Therefore ’tis now time to reflect.

« Previous Page — Next Page »