Review

The Dollar Shave Club commercial intrigued many. [Warning: some strong language bleeped out and one unbleeped dirty word]. It’s hilarious. Ridiculous. Completely over the top and worth talking about. As Seth Godin would say, it’s remarkable. I was tired of paying over $3 per cartridge (and many times closer to $4) for a 5-blade Gillette Fusion razor. It’s expensive because they market the Fusion as if it is the only solution to caveman-like beards. Guys, it’s not! It’s not the only way! Enter our friends from Dollar Shave Club. Their marketing alone sold me on the worthiness of trying it, at least for a month. This is a comprehensive Dollar Shave Club review in every sense of the word, so grab tightly to your can of shaving solution and get ready to nix your neck hair. (Here’s a quick synopsis of my Dollar Shave Club review: it rocks. Their blades rock, their service rocks, and I’m a believer. If you want to buy your next razor from them right now, here’s an affiliate link that gets me a month of free razors and will help keep my blog afloat as a nice little razor subsidy for me. If you want the full analysis, read on. Also, there’s a hefty amount of comparisons between the DSC razor and the Gillette Fusion because everybody and their mother has the Fusion. It was also my last brand-named, overpriced razor.) The Dollar Shave Club Blade Options ...

Reading books is helpful, but remembering and putting into practice what you’ve learned are equally important. There’s no sense in learning something but not applying it (especially true when it comes to the Bible, see Luke 11:28). I’ve struggled for a long time to figure out the best way to track things I’ve read and store the life-changing pieces of text to reference later and continue to apply. I love what John Piper says about sentences. What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this:It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%. Well-written sentences that deliver a thought in a new way can change the trajectory of your life. Here’s my process of maximizing a book’s impact, making sure I remember (and apply) the 1% of the book that was most significant (and any percent beyond that is just gravy). ...

I’m a freak for data. I love knowing how I spend my time, tracking fitness, donations to our ministry, books I’ve read–practically anything that is measurable I want to measure. One thing I hadn’t ever done a good job of was tracking my fitness. I kept a journal of my workouts for a few months. I tried a pedometer for all of three days. Then, I heard about the FitBit One and received it as a Christmas gift. The FitBit One is the fanciest pedometer you’ll ever meet. It’s far more than a step counter–it’s a fitness data machine. It tracks your steps per day, flights of stairs you’ve climbed, calories burned, sleep efficiency and more. Here’s my review after two months of daily use. ...