“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”
Pierre-Marc-Gaston (1764 – 1830)
This question was originally pulled from Tim Ferriss’ Tools of Titans in the Rapid-Fire Questions section. I thought it would be fun to answer it for myself, plus it’s an opportunity for me to take a break from writing research heavy content. I’ve noticed I’ve been feeling a little burnt, so I’m going to take the foot off the gas and change gears, at least just for this week.
When I first pondered this question I was thinking of just putting one item, but I couldn’t pick just one item and say this provided move value than anything else I bought (less than a $100). So I’m going to answer this question with a few different things simply because they gave me value in different and incomparable ways. This list isn’t going to include books, otherwise I’d never get this post finished!
The first purchase I’m going to name is going to have to be my Yoga Mat. I started doing yoga consistently at the beginning of 2019 and I’m so glad I did. I’m more flexible and I feel like I have more physical control over my body in a way I didn’t realize I could. It has been a way for me to practice holding my body in between chaos and order – to practice cultivating myself as an individual.
Someone once told me “You should never let my body figure out it’s dying” referring to working out consistently to slow the aging process. Stretching and practicing yoga has given me a whole new relationship to my body. I used to just feel generally okay/kinda shitty all the time, but now that my body knows what it’s like to not be tight, I actually notice when my body isn’t feeling right. One of my favorite things to do at the end of a long day is some yoga to stretch out all the stress and tension of the day. Most days I can’t believe how good it feels. Sometimes I think about people who haven’t stretched their muscles for decades and how stiff and rigid they must feel – their bodies definitely know they’re dying. Anyways, the yoga mat has been an invaluable purchase. I invested in a pretty pricey one so I had incentive to take it seriously at the beginning and it worked!
The next thing on the list would have to be my Kettlebell. I bought a 25-lbs one sometime last year to start doing some kettlebell swings because I read they are some of the most efficient and effective workouts. I have found this to be true! I love my kettlebell, it’s inexpensive and incredibly versatile. I can get a great cardio workout in if I do high reps, but I can also do slow and controlled swings for a more strength focused work out. I also use it to make my crunches more interesting as well as a free weight to target other muscle groups. I definitely want to get more once COVID-19 blows over.
The next purchase isn’t a physical product, but a digital one. Notability has been my personal #1 app purchase in the last year. It is a note-taking app made for tablets and it is phenomenal! I use it for organizing all of my tutoring sessions as well as a portable whiteboard and a sketch pad. I never buy paper anymore and I never lose any of my student’s work. It also makes online tutoring seamless! If you are someone who needs notebooks all the time, invest in a good tablet with a high quality stylus and get notability. I can go on for a while about it, but purchasing Notability has opened the floodgates (so to speak) to spending money on other digital products.
My Splice Subscription is going to be my next extremely valuable purchase. Splice is a website that has thousands and thousands of high-quality royalty-free sounds that are excellent for music production. For many years I was producing songs with whatever free sounds I could find online or from other producers I’d meet, but that limited me in ways that I couldn’t imagine. I had the toughest time trying to mix songs perfectly. I spent so many hours trying to become a better music producer by learning technique after technique, but I never could get them to sound professional. Finally last year, I found out why I could never get that professional sound. It was all because
garbage in, garbage out.
The sounds I was trying to work with could only sound so good, I needed to get better music quality at the source. Investing in splice gave me tons of high quality samples and just in a few short weeks, I was making mixes that sounded better than anything I could have made before. I was being cheap, but honestly for less than 10 bucks a month, I have been able to make my best music yet. Can’t put a price on that.
Honestly, I can go on forever, but I’ll cut it short here. Those 4 purchases we’re probably some of the best I made in the last year. They all give me something different and if I didn’t make any of these purchases, then my life would be in a very different place. The biggest changes in our lives don’t need to come from high ticket purchases or grandiose gestures, sometimes they can be a simple as a yoga mat or an app.
Something interesting happens when we are asked questions – we come up with answers. So I ask you now, what purchase of $100 of less has most positively impacted your life in the last year?
