Think and Grow Rich test: Have you learned anything of value today?
November 10th, 2009 by JD
My answers to the Think and Grow Rich Self-Assessment Test
Recently, I was reminded of the self-assessment test in Napoleon Hill’s best-selling book, Think and Grow Rich.
There are fifty-four questions in that test, and I’m going to be giving my answers and thoughts on one or two of them as close to daily as I can manage. I may miss a day here or there, but I’m going to follow through until I reach the end of the test.
I’ve started the series of posts with:
Question Number 28. Have you learned anything of value today?
I try to learn something of value every day. Most days, I succeed; a few, I don’t.
Today, I learned the value of going back to sleep when you’re too tired to do your best work.
I woke up about 2:00 am and was ready to go, but just couldn’t quite get into the swing of things. About 4:00 am, I decided to go back to bed and try again when I was really awake and ready to go.
It worked.
I’ve gotten more done in the last hour than I would have achieved in several hours, if I had not gone back to bed.
I’m not one of those people who can just grind out work. To do my best - and that’s what I always strive to do, I need to feel like doing it.
I learned something valuable yesterday, too.
I spent the whole day out and about in Murphy, NC talking to a variety of business owners and managers. We discussed the state of the economy, how their business was doing, the Murphy Gold marketing system I’m building, and other topics of interest.
One of the local business owners had already found Murphy Gold and Murphy Connections and we had a very interesting, brief discussion about what I was doing and how it could help promote not only locally-owned, small businesses, but the town, itself.
Later, I talked to the Mayor of Murphy and the Chairman of the Cherokee County, NC Commissioners and asked them a couple of questions. Based on their positive responses, I’m going to ask the members of the Murphy Town Council and all the County Commissioners the same two questions and I’ll be publishing their responses on Murphy Gold and Murphy Connections.
It’s amazing what you can learn when you just take the time to ask a couple of simple questions.
What about you?
Have you learned anything of value today?
All the best,
JD
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Books, Self-Improvement, Success and Failure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Man, I’d have to say no on this one. Now, I might be overly hard on myself, but it’s this thing about “value” that’s a hard one to get my mind around.
For instance, I obviously learn a lot of stuff everyday. I’m an information junkie, of sorts, so I read a lot of stuff and retain a lot of stuff. I may forget why I went into the kitchen, but stuff I read, I’m pretty good on.
However, how valuable is much of what I read? If I can remember enough to refer to it in a blog post, was that valuable? If I didn’t learn anything that will ultimately help my life, or help me make money, was that valuable?
I think for someone like me, who does accumulate so much information, that if I can’t apply any of it to my life, then it’s not really valuable, it’s just information. Even if I can use it in a blog post, not every blog post affects my life one way or another. I may be seeing it wrong, but that’s where my mind is at the present time.
Mitch´s last blog ..No-Self Pings
November 11th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Good afternoon, Mitch.
You bring up some good points about value.
Just as you did when you wrote How Do You Value? on your blog, we have to define what we mean by value and valuable.
Does something have to help us earn money to be valuable?
Does it have to make a real difference in our lives to be valuable?
Is there value in something if it makes us stop and think about it for a few minutes?
I found it valuable to be reminded to go back to bed for awhile when I didn’t feel like working. I got some rest and accomplished a lot more the rest of the day.
It didn’t help me earn any money that I know of and it didn’t change my life, but I still feel that it was valuable.
If you learn something today and only make use of it a month from now, for example, is it still valuable? I would say, yes.
All the best,
JD