Dreamcatcher: Posts and podcasts that inspired me this week

Welcome to the Dreamcatcher: FinCon edition. I spent last week in Dallas with hundreds of money bloggers, podcasters, video folk and the like swapping stories and learning a ton. This week’s roundup features just a few of the amazing people I met, as well as a roundup of FinCon recaps from them.

Tell the universe what you want – Two Cup House

 I’m not a shill for “The Secret” or anything, but I do believe there’s something that exists between karma and coincidence that shows up every now and again. Claudia — whom I didn’t really get to talk to but was at the smallish Saturday night afterparty — has a great story that demonstrates how those things come together sometimes to let you know you’re living right. I love her advice: Be intentional and let the universe know what you’re aiming for. It’ll let you know when you’re on the right path.

Build focus with Roosevelt dashes – Minafi

 Adam and I crossed paths quite a bit over the four days of the conference, and as it turns out he’s moving to Salt Lake City at the end of the month! I really enjoyed talking with him, and I really enjoyed this productivity post about Roosevelt dashes, a technique used by Theodore Roosevelt to accomplish deep work. Essentially, you tackle tasks on a self-imposed deadline with the goal of continuous, distraction-free work. The idea is to aim for progress, not perfection. I like this concept and may try to use it soon, because I’ve become very distractible over the years.

Beware the frivolous purchase threshold – Keep Thrifty

 Chris was another blogger I just happened to run in the same circle with over the course of FinCon. He’s currently on a mini-retirement and had some really cool things to say about that experience. In this post, he talks about how each of us has a dollar amount where if an item we want is below that amount, we just buy it without much thought. That amount is different for everyone. (I think mine is actually pretty low, like  $3, but maybe that’s only for a certain class of things.) What he encourages us to do is to weigh the quality of an item more than its cost. He also offers several great tips on how to short-circuit the absent-minded buying pattern for under-threshold items.

FinCon17 in all its awesomeness

Jim from Route To Retire and J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy. It’s like looking at a mirror. OK, maybe a funhouse mirror.

There were a lot of memorable things about FinCon, a gathering of personal finance freaks and geeks from around the world, but none more memorable than turning Jim from Route to Retire into J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy for the closing costume party. I got to hang out with so many amazing people. On the first night, as about 50 FIRE bloggers gathered around three huge tables for an informal meet up, I told Jim it was like I was hanging out with my Twitter feed. And the weirdest thing was, even though I had never met any of those people, I knew more about that group than I would getting together with 50 random coworkers. I decided not to write a FinCon roundup, but so many of the people I spent a bunch of time with did. So here, in no particular order, are their FinCon reviews in case you’re curious.

• Purpose, Community and Beer: A #FinCon17 Adventure | Adventure Rich
• FinCon17: What the hell just happened? | Think Save Retire
• The Power of Community, at #FinCon17 — and Everywhere Else | Our Next Life
• I Found My Tribe! FinCon 2017 | Slowly Sipping Coffee
• My FinCon 2017: 4 days of Accidental Connections, Beer & Memories – Minafi
• Beer and BBQ in Dallas. Is Pecan Lodge the best BBQ ever? Yes, it is. | 1500 Days 
• Adventures In Tipping: FinCon 2017 | The Happy Philosopher
• Oh What A Week! #FinCon17 Ya’ll Are Awesome | Life Zemplified
• 10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) | Budgets Are Sexy
• 9 Game-Changing Blogging Takeaways from FinCon 2017 | Do You Even Blog
• Why FinCon 2017 was Amazing and I’m Going to FinCon 2018 in Orlando | The Mastermind Within
• FinCon17 Recap: The Conference that Doesn’t Sleep

The Polybius Conspiracy – Radiotopia Showcase podcast

 This podcast has nothing to do with personal finance. Here’s how Radiotopia describes it: “The Polybius Conspiracy tells the complex story of two men united by a decades-old urban legend: Polybius, a mysterious arcade game from the ’80s whose alleged existence in the Pacific Northwest is fueled by myth and an obsessive online fan base, and which may have factored in the abduction of two teenage boys.” This is a several-part series podcast, and by the end of every episode I’m like, “well, the wheels have finally come off this story,” and then BAM — they tease some unbelievable twist and then back it up. I’m hooked on this story. Start at the beginning and, if you’re like me, you’ll be blasting through the next episode immediately.