How much does a smartphone cost? For most consumers, the answer is pretty straight forward: $200. If you’re looking for the latest iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone, chances are the standard price point is $200. A few special phones might cost $250 or $300, and some older and mid-range models might be $100 or $150. But for the most part, you’re going to be right in that $200 price range.

It’s a horribly deceiving number.

You might pay only $200 up front, but the phone actually costs much more than that. Seriously, go to any carrier’s website and look at their phone selections. You’ll see that $200 or whatever price tag in a large font, but if you look closer you’ll see a much larger number in a much smaller font. The retail price of that phone might be $500, or it might be $650. But we never really know that, since we pay only $200 for the phone.

No, the carrier is not some benevolent corporate entity that wants you to pay less for a phone. It is simply running a smart business maneuver. Carriers know you’re going to scoff at paying $500 for a phone, so they charge you only $200. They make up for the difference by requiring you to sign a two-year contract. That guarantees them revenues, which will compensate for the loss.

In other words, your monthly service rate reflects the $300 or $400 or $500 difference between the actual cost of the phone and what you paid for it. Even if you pay full price for the phone and don’t sign a two-year contract, you’re still paying the subsidy rate. Which is why T-Mobile has it right with its model.

T-Mobile no longer offers a subsidy on its phones. If it costs $500, you pay $500. But you’re not paying that $500 when you’re at the checkout. You’ll pay only $100 or $150 there — lower than what you’ll pay at Verizon or AT&T. Then you’ll pay $20 per month for 24 months to pay off the phone. It’s essentially a loan at zero percent APR. That’s tough to beat.

What makes this work is T-Mobile’s pricing. For $60 per month you get unlimited talk and text, plus 2.5GB of data. For unlimited talk and text with 2GB of data on Verizon, you’re paying $100 per month. So even when you add in the $20 monthly handset payment on T-Mobile, you’re still paying $20 less per month for what amounts to more service (.5GB more).

This model clearly makes more sense, especially with the zero percent APR feature. Say you hit a financial rough patch and can’t afford to pay another $200 for a new phone after two years. You stick with your old phone instead. With T-Mobile you’re then paying $60 per month, while with Verizon you’re still paying $100. In other words, with Verizon you’re still paying subsidy pricing even though you’re not actively receiving a subsidy. They can afford to keep this model, because of their size. But it’s certainly not friendly to consumers.

What works further for T-Mobile is the varying monthly payment prices. Some devices cost more than others. The BlackBerry 10 cost is not the same as the Samsung Galaxy cost. Yet when you go to the store they still have the same $200 price tag on them. You’re also charged the same subsidy. T-Mobile makes the differentiation, though. If the phone costs $500, then you’re paying a certain amount down and a certain amount per month, and your total payment will be $500. With Verizon you’re paying a lump sum up front and what amounts to a standard subsidy. In essence, you’re paying the same subsidy as someone with a $650 phone, which hardly seems fair.

T-Mobile certainly has a long way to go as a carrier. It’s been No. 4 for what seems like forever, and with Sprint making a turnaround T-Mobile’s job has gotten even harder. They have, however, taken a step in the right direction with these new plans. They’re consumer friendly, or at least friendlier than those of larger carriers. It might take consumers a while to catch on, but eventually I believe most carriers will go with this model.

The thought didn’t occur to me when I graduated college. At that point the task appeared simple enough. Scour job boards every morning, craft cover letters, attach resumes, and get a job. Only it never worked out that way. True, I wasn’t as diligent as I could have been, but after a year of job seeking I had come up with nothing but a part-time gig at a music shop.

Then came a break. For reasons I wouldn’t understand until I was in too deep, a local publication wanted to hire me as an assistant editor. At the time it sounded like a dream job. Start small with this local rag, perhaps work my way up to editor-in-chief, and then move up in the ranks of magazine editors. The catch: while I was expected to go into the office and work full-time hours, the company would treat me like a contractor. No taxes withheld, no benefits bestowed.

It was only after I realized the boss’s reason for hiring me — he thought he could mold me into an ad sales guy rather than an editor — that I found an actual job with actual benefits. That job tanked quickly, too, thanks to a boss who treated us like servants rather than employees. A day after quitting, I agreed to a new position. From freelancer to employee and now back to freelancer, all within the span of 10 months.

While the position was aimed at long-term employment, it still worked on a freelance basis — even more so than the first job. I had to take action in order to get paid; a paycheck would not be waiting for me every two weeks. Since the position was intended to be long term, I had to think about things like setting aside tax money. Overall the new position provided a wakeup call. I consider myself much savvier now that I’ve been through those trials.

The three biggest lessons I learned as a freelancer are ones that will stick with me no matter what path I pursue in the future.

You can be obnoxious when you’re owed money

In a way my freelance gigs put me in an envious position. Instead of getting paid on a per-project basis, I got paid bi-weekly in the same way an employee does. Oftentimes freelancers must live below their means, because they don’t know when the next paycheck will arrive. A freelancer making $40,000 per year might have to live like someone on $30,000 or less, because payments come erratically.

Even with a bi-weekly payment schedule, I still needed my employer to cut me a check. At first it wasn’t easy. I’d send the invoice, but it would linger and linger. Soon enough we’d be approaching another pay period, and I’d be living on Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza and ramen noodles. I could afford more, but just didn’t have the cash on hand. Eventually they’d cut me my check(s), but the process got annoying.

After a few months of this (also having proven my worth to the company), I started to speak out. A check mailed Friday, invoice day, would arrive by the next Tuesday at the latest. If it wasn’t there, I’d start chirping on Wednesday morning. It started with, “sorry to be a bother,” but I soon cut that line. No, I’m not sorry. I performed my duties. Now it’s your turn to uphold your end of the bargain.

Never feel shame about asking for money you’re owed. The more passive you become, the longer you’ll wait to get paid.

Have an invoicing and payment system in place

With no experience in a traditional freelance atmosphere, I was at a loss when my boss asked me to send an invoice for payment. What? You mean you don’t just cut me a check every two weeks? And so I did what any internet-savvy 20something would have done: I googled “invoice template” and clicked on the first result. That’s when the problems started occurring.

Of course, the first result brought me to a page that, without saying it directly, allowed me only five or six free invoices before starting to charge me. Great. That meant I’d have to change templates. A MS Word template would have worked, but at that point I didn’t have Word on my computer. And so it was onto another invoice template. Keeping track of invoice numbers became a pain for both mine and my company’s records.

The solution came in the form of PayPal, but that soon proved to be a bust. You’ve surely heard complaints about PayPal, and I can’t say I disagree. I wish I’d found a PayPal alternative like WePay at the time. It would have saved headaches.

The overall point: make sure you spend time finding an invoicing and payment system that works for both you and your company. Otherwise you’ll spend even more time, and grow even more frustrated, trying to get paid on time.

Save more than what you owe in taxes

When I became a freelancer I knew I’d have to save money for taxes. That’s why I set up not one, but two savings accounts — one for savings, one for taxes. But a guy in his mid-20s living with two close friends can blow through money like none other. And so the money leaked out of my accounts, leaving me with little left for taxes (and nothing for savings). Trust me when I say you do not want to be in this position.

On April 12th I finally realized it: I didn’t have enough in my savings to pay the tax bill. Which is crazy, if you think about it, because that also included my income from the first three and a half months of the new year. The only solution I knew was to borrow from my parents, promising to pay them back by May 1. And so on May 1 I cut a check, saw an empty bank account, and wondered how I’d pay next year’s taxes.

Temptation to spend is high, especially when you’re getting paychecks without taxes deducted. It takes great discipline to avoid spending that money, but it’s a necessity. While I always recommend setting up a savings account with a (relatively) high-yield bank like Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct), I also know that it’s easy to pull money out of that account at will. Freelancers need to discipline themselves so they have the cash to pay the taxman.

Even the most confident, level headed person has insecurities. It’s part of human nature. In many ways our insecurities define us, since we often act in ways that betray them. The question that I constantly ask myself: how far will you go to cover up your insecurities?

Fretting over our insecurities can lead to tunnel vision. We’re so worked up about covering them up and not exposing them to the world that we don’t realize the consequences of our actions. We hurt people, directly and indirectly, in an effort to hide that part of us. It takes a great degree of self awareness to reflect on our insecurities and avoid those harmful actions.

A former friend of mine often acted in ways that betrayed her insecurities. Like so many others, she saw college as a fresh start from her unpopular high school days. That led to a year of parties and socializing, but also led to her flunking out. The next school year she found herself at community college, along with those high school classmates who snubbed her. It was hard to not feel bad for her, but to her credit she did reasonably well.

Yet there were other instances where she’d behave in deplorable ways. Remember the original Livestrong campaign, with those yellow fundraising wristbands? They were considered cool when they first came out — so cool, in fact, that they sold out. She was so dead set on getting one, though, that she bought one from eBay. So instead of her money going to the charity the wristbands represented, they went into some dude’s pocket. She wore the wristband, but didn’t understand anything about it. Her insecurities about being cool left her with tunnel vision: she couldn’t see how deplorable it is to wear a charity wristband without actually donating to that charity.

This doesn’t exempt me from acting in odd ways to seem cool. In high school I dressed up like a goth kid on the first day of senior year, to stand out and seem different. That backfired, of course, because my core friends mocked me all day long. I’m sure, too, that I’ve done things for the sake of being cool that really hurt other people.

As we get older the need to be cool lessens, and so we can step back and reflect. When we’re young, though, that need is so great that it leads us down dangerous paths. Even those who are cool suffer from the same ailments. They do things so that people continue thinking they’re cool. You see this manifest itself strongly in the form of bullying.

There is no real point to this post. It’s merely a reflection on years of actions driven by insecurities. We all have them, but we all want to keep them under cover. To expose them, we think, is to expose ourselves as weak, or worse, frauds. Yet even the most confident and swaggering among us has insecurities as well. I often wonder what actions they’ve taken to cover them up.

Like so many others, I have tried and failed to develop a regular meditation practice. After failing to meditate on my own, I turned to guided meditations. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfullness programs seemed like a good place to start, but they involve 45-minute sessions. It’s tough to go from zero to 45 minutes in a day. (That, and during the full body scan meditation I’d almost always nod off.) I even tried a different means of meditation, but that too did not last.

The problem, I believe, centers on benefits. While I’ve heard a lot about how meditation can lead to a clear mind, that isn’t concrete enough. What does it feel like to have a clear mind? I have little basis for comparison; it’s too abstract a concept. The purveyors of meditation have not properly marketed the practice. They probably didn’t intend to, so it’s not an abject failure on their part. But it seems there is good reason why people like me fail to adopt the practice.

On his blog last year, Ben Casnocha described his experience at a 10-day meditation course. For those serious about starting a meditation practice, it seems there is no better method of adoption. The 10 days are spent doing little but meditating, to the point where you’re not allowed to talk. It might sound extreme, but it also sounds like a surefire method. Most of us, though, aren’t willing to block out those 10 days, even if the course itself is provided free of charge (donations are accepted after completion).

Yesterday he linked to a reddit comment about the benefits of meditation. If you have ever tried and failed at meditation, I suggest you spend the three minutes reading it. You might come away with a different view of meditation, as I did. And perhaps that’s just the kind of concrete marketing you need to finally pick up the habit.

For me this description succeeded on two fronts. First, it put into practical terms the purpose of focusing on your breathing. This is a common refrain in meditation, but the purpose is rarely made clear. Second, it puts meditation into the frame of training. You’re not just sitting down, trying to empty your brain. You’re essentially training your mind. Since I spend time training other aspects of myself, it makes sense to add mind training to the regimen.

When I wake up every morning, it’s a quick little routine and then out the door to the gym. There I train my body. Throughout the day I take breaks and head over to the couch, where I read about my professional industry in the form of books and articles. There I train my brain. At night I’ll oftentimes crack open writings by Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Montaigne, and other practical philosophers. There I train my soul. All are important, and all work together to help me grow as a person.

It’s easy to market body training. Show a bunch of fit, ripped folks and you can convince people that’s what they want, too. Brain training is fairly easy to market as well. See that guy in the corner office? He got there because he worked hard and knew his industry better than anyone else. (Even if that’s not actually true.) Training the mind and soul, though, require independent motivation. That makes it especially nice when someone can come along and put the benefits into more concrete terms. It has certainly helped me develop a program for training my mind, just as I train my body and soul.

In the early goings, work from home issues were a prominent topic in this space. That’s sensible enough, since I’ve been working from home for the past six years. Most of my views came from the perspective of personal benefits and flexibility. Yet those aren’t the only benefits of a work from home arrangement.

You might not think it, given that Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer recently abolished her company’s work from home program, but employers stand to benefit greatly from these arrangements. There is some additional nuance to it, but this video from OnlineMBA.com lays out everyone’s benefits pretty well.

The issue that stands out the most to me is turnover. Intuitively, I’d think that those who work from home would turn over faster than those who work in an office. An office can foster camaraderie and a sense of loyalty. Yet it appears that the additional happiness of those who work from home trumps any kind of physical connection in the office.

Honestly, after six years of working from home I’m actually jonesing to work in an office again. Perhaps that’s another statistic to study: how long do people stay happy working from home? I know that after spending a week in the office with my coworkers, I’m definitely missing that sense of bonding. Skype is a nice tool, but it can’t replace that physical connection.

Taking university level courses online is no new concept. All the way back in 2008 (or maybe before), MIT had syllabi and other course materials available for the general public. Around that time Yale launched Open Yale, which added video lectures to the offering. The idea of an online education was in its infancy, but it was clear that these platforms had a future.

Online education took a big step forward in 2012. Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabbarok launched Marginal Revolution University, which featured various courses in economics. On a wider scale, Coursera.org opened, offering dozens of classes from a handful of universities. These platforms have certainly outshone what was available five years ago.

Recently I enrolled in Ed Hess’s Grow to Greatness class, offered through the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. The class just finished up, so now seems like an appropriate time to document the experience.

Class structure

Each course is divided into week-long segments. In that way it’s almost akin to attending an evening class. While you meet just once a week, there is enough material to cover two to three hours.

Grow to Greatness consisted of weekly readings, available for download in PDF format, plus a series of video lectures. The readings were mostly case studies, focusing on a specific growth-related issue from one small business. Professor Hess then elaborates on the concepts with his series of video lectures.

At the class’s conclusion there was a final exam, which constituted 100 percent of participants’ grades. There were mini quizzes embedded into some of the video lectures, but they were not graded. The final exam, explained later, determined whether you received a certificate of achievement.

Readings

The readings were all interesting, because they focused on an actual business going through transition phases. Professor Hess studied each business personally and provided detailed accounts, making for a fuller learning experience. His focus on the people behind the business, and not just the business itself, also made the cases more compelling.

With a detailed account of not only the company’s history, but also its founders’ personalities, Hess sets up his students with insights we might not have otherwise gleaned. He was then able to teach his concepts with more clarity.

Video lectures

The highlight of the course were the weekly video lectures. Hess puts his vibrant personality on display, lecturing in the style of a preacher. He repeats his points, with emphasis, to make sure you understand not only the point itself, but also the importance of the point in the overall lesson. He pretends not that you are in a lecture hall listening to him, but that you are in a one-on-one setting and he is lecturing directly to you. It is a refreshing change of pace from most university courses.

To supplement his lectures, Hess employs PowerPoint presentations. These are not mere static slides that he clicks through, though. He draws on them, writes on them, circles phrases and objects — anything to hammer home the point in emphatic style. On some slides he underlines every word, signaling to the student that this is a particularly important part of the lecture.

The breakdown into five or six lectures, each around 10 to 15 minutes (some 20 minutes), makes the course much easier to follow. Students can get up, walk around, get a breather, and come back fresh. For lecture-style classes, this certainly beats sitting in an auditorium. It feels more personal, too.

Final exam

Other than the readings and video lectures, the only other aspect of the class is the final exam. This turned out to be a major letdown for a number of reasons. Chief among them:

1. Format. The exam consisted of 30 multiple-choice questions. There were four choices for each, and as with almost all multiple choice exams, there were many questions with one obviously correct answer and three dumb alternatives. The entire exam took me about 15 minutes.

The format is forgivable, given the number of students enrolled and actively participating. Hess used some open-ended questions for the in-lecture quizzes, but there were many instances where I typed in a reasonable facsimile of the correct answer, only to have it labeled incorrect. In order to avoid going over each exam manually, multiple choice was really Hess’s only choice.

2. Quirky questions. The questions themselves were more a reflection of Hess’s quirks than of the concepts presented. Perhaps this was the only way to make the exam work in multiple choice format. But it was off-putting at times. I enjoyed his quirks throughout the course — they made it more interesting for sure — but I’d rather have been tested on the actual concepts.

That said, it wasn’t much of a burden. I got 27 out of 30 correct, and a couple more seconds thought on two of them would have brought me to 29. (One I would have answered the way I did, even after seeing the correct answer.)

While there were some drawbacks to the class — I never used the forums, so can’t speak to their usefulness in regards to collaboration — overall it was an excellent learning experience. The case studies alone made it worthwhile. Hess’s infectious lecturing style kept me coming back every week.

The experience led me to sign up for more Coursera courses, though perhaps in haste. I joined a songwriting one and soon after un-enrolled; I can spread myself only so thin, and songwriting is far from my plate at the moment. I am currently working on the Foundations of Business Strategy, also from the Darden School of Business. And you can bet that I’ll enroll in Hess’s follow-up class, which will become available in a month or two.

At this point I’m supposed to make some overarching statement about the viability of online education. While I do think that it has plenty of potential, I’m not about to sing its praises after taking one course. True, the course itself was a wonderful experience. We’ll see if subsequent courses provide the same level of insight.

How well do you know yourself? We’d all like to think that we know ourselves, but before you become too confident in your self-knowledge take a look around you. How many people do you see who lack self awareness? This is not an uncommon condition. Few humans are highly self aware. Chances are you’re ignorant about many facets of your own behavior and personality.

Why do so many people lack self awareness, when the benefits of being self aware are so clear? It’s the same reason so many people are stuck in low-level positions for years on end: everyone wants a job, but few want to work. Gaining self awareness requires considerable effort. We strain our mental, and even physical, limits to learn ourselves on a deeper level.

Perhaps the question leading this post isn’t the best one. It will probably garner the most attention, hence its position in the lede. The most important question you can ask yourself about self awareness is, what are you doing to grow your level of self-awareness? This question in many cases will elicit a question as an answer: What can I do? The path to self awareness is not some cookie cutter reference. Each individual has an ideal path.

I do not proclaim to be fully self aware. There are many aspects of my personality and behavior to which I am blind. It helps to have a true partner in life, someone who will point out those blind spots (even if it takes considerable coaxing). Yet without deliberate efforts on my part to reveal these blind spots, I wouldn’t make any real gains. What works for me might not work for you, but perhaps my methods will provide insight for how you can pave your path to self awareness.

Self communication. If you were to diagram how I spend my time, you’d see the plurality involves writing. I might not be the most eloquent author, but I love to do it and I work at it almost every day. This works to my benefit not only professionally, but also personally. By writing in the form of a journal, and sometimes on this blog, I reveal aspects of my personality I hadn’t previously considered. With that knowledge in hand I can examine myself and decide if I’m on the right track. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve uncovered an aspect of my personality or behavior through writing and have felt thoroughly embarrassed. But it was only after discovery that I was able to make the appropriate changes.

Self communication is not limited to just writing, though. Sometimes I just need to pace back and forth in the living room and talk aloud to myself. When the words on paper aren’t right, sometimes the words from my mouth are. The combination of verbal and written self communication has helped me unlock many issues I didn’t even know I had.

Self experimentation. The idea of performing experiments on myself never really occurred to me until I read Seth Roberts’s blog. He champions self experimentation as a way to learn things about yourself that you can’t learn from practitioners. While methodology for self experimentation varies widely, depending on the information sought, there are two basic frameworks.

• Experimentation by addition. Want to test if drinking organic whole milk will help you sleep? Add a glass per day to your diet for a full month, and take notes on your quality of sleep. The following month, eliminate the whole milk. Compare notes from the two months. If there appears to be a difference, add it back in again and see if the first month’s results repeat. If so, chances are you’ve found something.
• Experimentation by subtraction. Wondering if that multivitamin supplement is really doing you any good? Cut it from your diet for a month. Then, 30 days later, add it back in. Did you notice a difference when adding? What did your notes say about the time when you subtracted it? The answer will provide plenty of clarity.

Self experiments are never easy, because they require discipline. But conducted successfully, they can reveal more about you than you ever thought you knew.

If no one wants to go through life an ignorant fool, then why do so many refuse to make an effort to gain self awareness? That’s for each individual to answer, I suppose. But no matter how painful the revelations, a deliberate effort to gain self awareness benefits us as humans in the long run. I submit that anyone dissatisfied with his or her station in life has to do little more than make this kind of effort. Improvement will follow.

In a realm where everyone has a voice, we can craft our own personal stories. There is certainly an appeal in telling our stories from personal points of view, rather than letting others tell them. But there are also pitfalls to which we too easily succumb. Nowhere is this more widespread than in internet-based industries.

Whether it’s SEO, social media, search engine marketing, PPC, or any other discipline that takes places 100 percent on the internet, you will find people calling themselves experts — or worse, gurus. In almost no instances did someone grant these people the title of expert. They merely slapped the word expert or guru in their Twitter profiles, and magically it became true. At least in their minds.

The next time you see an SEO expert, be wary. You never know who bestowed that credential. If you see someone advertise himself as a social media guru, you have my permission to laugh heartily. Chances are this person dispenses “sage” advice and shares lots of articles that say the same things over and over again.

Seeking a real expert? You’ll have to do some digging. They’re not the easiest people to find.

True expertise is silent

The people who get things done don’t often brag about what they accomplish. They just put their heads down, work at the problem, and emerge with a solution. Then they move onto the next problem. Your typical social media guru spends more time pontificating and touting her own expertise than actually doing anything of value.

Claudette Wyms, played by CCH Pounder on The Shield, makes this point perfectly during a flashback episode in Season 2. She is working a case with her future partner, Holland Wagenbach, and a veteran cop who is decorated for cracking a few tough cases. The veteran has an idea that he’s sure will crack the case, but Wyms has other ideas. She and Wagenbach work an interrogation angle and succeed, bringing in the kidnappers.

Captain Aceveda asks how they did it, and Wyms says something vague relating to the idea the veteran had suggested. Aceveda taps him on the chest and tells him great job. Wagenbach is beside himself. “You didn’t need to do that,” he says. Why give the other guy credit when she was the one who cracked the case? She responds with three powerful words.

“Credit is overrated.”

Getting shit done is more important than status or titles. Take the lesson from the fictional detective who solves cases and doesn’t flaunt her abilities.

True expertise is bestowed

Almost all of us know someone who has given himself a nickname. Almost 100 percent of the time, that person is totally lame. Nicknames are meant to be natural. They’re names that other people call you. They’re not names that you call yourself. That’s just ego. It’s the same with credentials of expertise.

Anyone can create a Twitter profile, tweet some generic advice, share some articles, and call himself an expert. It takes literally zero qualification. Anyone can read a few websites, figure out the basics of WordPress, and call herself an SEO guru. The guy who calls himself T-Bone? Lame. The gal who calls herself an expert on social media? Just as lame.

Experts certainly exist in these spaces. You just won’t be able to tell by reading their Twitter bios. Chances are you’ll have to find the people who follow them, because they’re the ones calling them experts. The expert surely knows of her own expertise. But she doesn’t flaunt it. She lets others believe what they want while she performs the work that gets results.

Expertise is a marketing tools

When you see someone labeled an expert, you’re actually seeing a marketing campaign. If they are the ones who originated the title, it’s nothing but self-promotion. They’re marketing themselves so that they’re more appealing — and usually looking for someone to pay them for their expertise. But self-branding isn’t the only place you’ll see someone called an expert for marketing purposes.

(As a side note, the old game of calling yourself an expert in hopes that someone gives you a job is, well, old. It might have worked in the mid-00s, when big companies didn’t quite understand internet marketing. Now that most of them do, they’re looking to people who have generated results, not people who bestow themselves fancy titles and statuses.)

Sometimes a company will deem someone an expert in order to better market their own services. For an example look to Answers.com. They have experts in nearly every category. This is certainly a step up from self-branding. And they do a good job marketing their experts, too. Take a look at women’s health expert Wendy Morley. In her profile you see a her credentials, so you can decide for yourself if she’s enough of an expert for your tastes.

Just because a company calls one of its employees or contractors an expert doesn’t make it so, but at least there’s a filter there. Ms. Morley is not calling herself an expert. She seemingly knows a lot about a topic, and Answers picked her to represent them. They’re engaging in a form of marketing that bears considerably more weight than self-promotion and self-branding. And if you look through her archives, her knowledge speaks for itself. She doesn’t need to tweet out articles and pithy advice all day to show the world what she knows.

In an environment where we can write our own stories, people will always exaggerate their own credentials. Hey, if anyone calls you on your lack of expertise, you can just label them haters and return to your own bubble. Ultimately, it’s nothing more than a parlor trick that will get exposed before long. True expertise is something that very few people possess. Which makes sense. In a world where everyone is an expert, no one is an expert.

There is no blog I miss more than Daily Routines. For nearly two years Mason Currey brought us the daily routines of artists and other distinguished figures. It was the perfect inspiration for that period in my life, when I transitioned out of my lazy mid-20s. Even though it has been inactive since early 2009, it remains one of the few blogs that produced a profound impact on me. (And also, Currey is publishing a Daily Routines book, due out in April.)

While my daily routine has changed considerably through the years, I have always maintained some kind of routine. There have been times when I’ve allowed others to discourage the habit. Colin Marshall, whom I used to read regularly, once wrote something that prompted me to ditch my routine:

I would imagine is very, very hard to earn your respect in an Ed Hardy shirt and flip-flops. At least I couldn’t do it. Nor could I earn my own respect while locked into the same daily routine, or while not making anything, or while encircled by discarded pizza boxes.

Around the same time Marshall wrote the above, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits wrote something similar, about having no goals:

I know I lived with goals for many years, and in fact a big part of my writings here on Zen Habits are about how to set and achieve goals.

These days, however, I live without goals, for the most part. It’s absolutely liberating, and contrary to what you might have been taught, it absolutely doesn’t mean you stop achieving things.

It means you stop letting yourself be limited by goals.

Well look at this, I thought. Here’s a guy who makes films and interviews artists and writers. Here’s another guy who makes his living with a blog. Surely they possess insight that can better my life. And so, for a period in 2010, I ditched goals and I ditched my daily routines. The result was predictable: I ran in circles, directionless, succumbing always to temptation and procrastination.

The overall lesson is that each individual has a different manner of approaching life. For some routine is something to be disdained, for living a new life every day is the only path to virtue. For others, scrapping goals and working only on what pleases us might work. But I submit that the routine-less and goal-less are the anomalies. For most of us, goals and routines help us move forward in life.

This was perhaps best illustrated, at least on a personal level, late last year. At some point in November I ditched my routines. There was no solid reason for doing so. It just happened. My routines, goals, and work habits had been strong prior to that, so I was able to ride past successes for about a month and a half. I certainly felt less productive (because I was less productive), but my output continued to surpass that of my peers. By the time I had fallen behind in January I had to work not only to tread water at work, but also to reinstate my routines and goals.

One routine I will likely abide by until the day I retire: working in 90-minute intervals. There was a recent New York Times article on just that topic. It’s something I’ve incorporated ever since I saw Charles Darwin apply a similar timeframe. To sit down and perform focused work for 90 minutes can prove as effective as your average worker’s output for half a day. I can typically fit five 90-minute sessions into my day, making for a 7.5-hour workday. I’m willing to bet that I get more done in those 7.5 hours than I would in three days without this kind of structure.

If productivity isn’t of concern to you, perhaps you’re among those who can do without goals and routines. But for those of us focused on accomplishing concrete tasks and assignments, rituals and goals help power us along. Goals can motivate us even when we feel lethargic. Routines can help us incorporate good habits while focusing our energies on the tasks at hand — that is, the less mind we pay to what we have to do the more mind we can pay to what we’re doing. That has certainly been my experience for the past five or so years.

Here are my favorites from Daily Routines. I really hope the book is more elaborate than the blog. Joseph Campbell, John Grisham (he and Elmore Leonard shared this ritual as they tried to be writers with day jobs), Ernest Hemingway, Benjamin Franklin (whose I’ve attempted to emulate), and Anthony Trollope (ditto).

What kind of cell phone did you own ten years ago? Chances are it was a small candybar-style phone; they were in vogue at the time. It wasn’t until Motorola released the RAZR in 2004 that flip phones really came into style. Regardless, it was a virtual certainty that you had a simple phone, mainly because that’s all that was available. The range of choices wasn’t that great, even if the price range was.

Today choices run much deeper. The pricing divide has increased, as has the range of device quality. Choosing a cell phone now is actually a serious matter. With the two-year contract you sign, and with few carriers allowing for early upgrades, you’re really stuck with that phone for the two-year term. So not only are you spending up to $300 on a phone, but you’re stuck with that decision until you can pay full price, up to $750, for a new phone, or you’re eligible for another upgrade.

When it comes time to pick a new cell phone, I recommend that everyone creates a list of sorts. You could do worse than to follow this layout.

1. Determine your needs

How do you use your cell phone. Do you really need data, or can you get by with just talk and text? If you do need data, what are your uses? It is mostly for video streaming, or do you need it for professional communications?

Your needs will help determine your priorities. If you don’t need a lot of data, then buying the new, shiny phone probably won’t be right for you. Likewise, if you need tons of data buying a year-old handset because it’s cheap might not be the best idea. We all have our needs; let them determine how you choose.

2. Pick your network

It sounds like a marketing tagline, but it is 100 percent true: a smartphone is only as good as the network that runs it. You can have the best cell phone on the market, but if you got it through Verizon and Verizon doesn’t get good reception in areas you use it most heavily, it does you little good. Picking a carrier is more important than picking a phone.

The carrier also determines your phone selection. T-Mobile’s new cell phones will differ from Verizon’s models, will differ from AT&T’s models, will differ from Sprint’s models. They all have their own selection, so you need to pick that carrier before you can think of choosing a phone.

This might be the most crucial decision of all, because you’ll almost certainly be signing a two-year agreement. Choose poorly and you’re stuck.

3. Set your price range

You can find a year-old smartphone for free, or you can find a brand new phone for $300. There is a wide range in the prices of smartphones, so you’ll have plenty of choices and flexibility as you choose. Once you do set your price range, your choices will become even clearer. Even more: you might find that there are no devices that fit your priorities in that price range. At that point it’s back to the drawing board.

4. Back to your priorities

Once you narrow your selection to two, or even one, go back to the priorities you set in the beginning. Does the phone fit your priorities? If so, the choice should be easy. If not, it’s back to the drawing board. At this point you’ll have plenty of knowledge about the process, so you’ll be able to better identify not only the handsets that appeal to you, but also your priorities in general. Maybe they will change as you progress in your research.

When faced with a daunting task, the best tactic is to break it down into manageable parts. When choosing a cell phone, creating a list or priorities will help make your situation clearer. Moving onto your preferred carrier, and then looking in a price range, will narrow your selection. Once you have your list whittled down, your priorities come back into play, helping you choose the phone that best fits your needs, at a price you can afford.

There’s a lot at stake when picking a new cell phone. Make sure that you cover all your bases when making that big decision.