Just in case you didn’t know, a “myth” is a story or a belief that isn’t true or at least isn’t proven.  Anyway…..

Add and I were walking to some local Chinese shop today to buy something for Add’s shower.  The sales woman had 3 similar products with different prices.  She said something interesting that got me thinking.

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Here I am, Shanghai 2:25 am on a Tuesday morning. I either can’t sleep or I don’t really want to, I’m not quite sure which it is at the moment.  I don’t really care either.  I’m quite happy to be blogging again.

I was in the grocery store today with Add.  He does most of the shopping and I wander around thinking.  It makes no sense but at least I keep him company and pay for half of the food.

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Hey guys,

I wanted to recommend one of the best authors I’ve read lately and a couple of his books. I don’t know him personally and I won’t make any money off book sales. I just want to recommend him because I think you’ll enjoy his work. Some of it’s free anyway.

The guy is “Seth Godin” and he writes a lot of books. A few ones that I personally liked were “Purple Cow“, “Permission Marketing” and “Tribes“. They are interesting and fresh. You can easily see this guy is smart and can think for himself.

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It’s funny that I’m writing this because I’m a notoriously impatient person. I want results and I want them NOW! I wish that patience wasn’t such an important life skill, but I have to face the reality that it really is.

We all naturally want quick results when we do something. We want to know if something is working or if we are just wasting our time and energy. We all know that consistently going to the gym will make us healthy, but we also know that the results come AFTER the hard work. It’s why we like sugar and junk food even though we know it’s not good for us. The good results from junk food come immediately. Chocolate tastes good while you are eating it and you get fat and unhealthy later. Any normal bad habit is like this, the benefits come immediately and the consequences take much longer to show up.

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I’ve been driving myself crazy lately looking for quality. Quality anything.

We’re in an age of abundance. Just so you know, abundance really means “too much” or “more than enough”. The world has “succeeded” in producing a lot of stuff. Think about the relatively “rich” part of the world for a second. This is the first time in our history that we have so much food. It’s obviously better than not having enough food, but it’s causing problems. Obesity (fat people) are growing like crazy everywhere. If you don’t believe me take a little vacation to the USA. (Not everyone in real life looks like they do in Hollywood movies. Too bad!)

So anyway, we have a lot of stuff. So much information, books, food, movies, clothes, whatever. We have too much. It’s hard to even research what we want to get. If you want to buy a new cell phone for example, there is no way you could possibly try them all out and see which one YOU like. You have to trust brands and friends.

It really depends on the industry, but often, pretty bad quality succeeds. This is quite true in movies for example. I’d much rather get a solid recommendation from a close friend than blindly watch the “most popular movie of the summer”. Those are often retarded.

I love reading, but I don’t want to waste my time reading garbage. The internet is amazing at producing garbage. I’m not sure if you know this or not, I just found out a few weeks ago, but there are actually software programs that write articles. The articles get found on Google. It’s hilarious and sad at the same time. Millions of people, and now software, are writing millions of worthless articles every day. It’s getting easier to publish books, and most of them suck big time.

I don’t want to point fingers (blame) anyone, but this is all a reality. I’m realizing it more each day that the internet needs to, and will, change.

The internet is mostly free. That’s good and bad. I used to think it was only good. Who wants to pay for anything right?

Well, imagine if everything was free. It makes no sense but just imagine it for a second or two. Imagine if golf was free on Saturdays. I would never play. It would be too busy. Everyone would rush to the golf course on Saturdays and spend most of their time waiting.

Free online forums are everywhere. The problem with these is that it feels like you need to read through so much garbage to ever find anything worth reading. It’s such a waste of time and energy.

My dad pays for an online investment forum. He learned about it from a friend he respects and trusts. Of course he knows that most investment forums are free, but they suck! The ones people pay for, even if only around $100 per year, make only serious people join. You don’t get any spam, very few idiots, and a lot of smart and serious people all in one place. Everyone else is not allowed to join the conversation. My dad isn’t a huge investor, but certainly big enough that the advice on there is well worth the $100 USD per year.

We need smart friends we trust to recommend quality stuff. I’d probably read 3 times as much as I do now if I knew the books I wanted to read. I’d use different websites but I don’t know where to find them.

As I said a couple blogs ago, I hope this 232 group can recommend cool stuff to each other. I’ll try to do my part when I can. If you like this site, we probably share a lot of the same interests and tastes. We can learn from each other. I really don’t want this to be ONLY about learning English. That is a big part of this site but not the whole story. I’m going to write a blog tomorrow about a really interesting book and author. I hope you check it out.

Follow me on Twitter for cool tips suggestions.

Looking forward to reading your comments and recommendations.

Andy