mattknee

The Caregiver Handbook – a free, simple guide for taking care of loved ones

In the past few years, my family has had to take care of several loved one’s and this is everything we’ve learned in one simple 10 page handbook. The handbook includes simple checklists, recommended resources and information that took us months or longer to learn. This handbook is appropriate for helping you take care of pretty much anyone not fully able to care for themself long term. Things like: The handbook is free and always will be. All I ask is you give any feedback (my email is in the handbook on the last page) or other helpful advice you … Read more

10 Steps to a Rock Solid Personal Financial Plan

Years ago, Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, wrote a very simple one page list to get your personal finances in order. There’s not much to improve off that list though I’d like to provide a more thorough list and some recommended resources for anyone who wants to get control of their finances.  Note that this plan applies to probably 98% of people. The other 2% either have a higher or lower risk threshold, have unique investing knowledge (especially insider) or are a multimillionaire/billionaire where the normal rules don’t apply.  First, let’s start off with some very simple financial principles.  Personal … Read more

Heaven and Hell on Earth: Part 2 (Heaven)

In part one, I went through various scenarios where living on Earth could become a living hell. Of course, to many people currently alive, they would argue that life is already a living hell – and for many, I would agree. In this post, I’m going to get ludicrously utopian and brainstorm what we might do to make living on Earth more heaven-like.  I already know what many are thinking: this type of thinking leads to insane ideologies like Communism, cults, etc. The problem with being that skeptical is that if we’re not even trying to imagine a better future, … Read more

Heaven and Hell on Earth: Part One (Hell)

I believe it’s important to have a future vision of the life you want to live and that the same principle applies to society as a whole. If the last few months (I’m writing this in June of 2020 for future reference) are any indicator, we’re at an important crossroads on planet earth and I think the decisions we as a society make soon will determine whether we’ll soon live in a hell on earth. I’m not trying to be dramatic or terrifying here, but I don’t think I’m alone by saying I see a lot of things potentially and … Read more

How to Get Healthy (Everything I Know in One Post)

The greatest wealth is health. – Virgil Introduction As I mentioned in my introductory post, I like to take complex information and distill it down to first principles or basic concepts. In my opinion, there are few categories of knowledge that have been subject to more disinformation, over-complication and even political manipulation (vegan vs. carnivore, “big agriculture” influencing recommended diets, etc.) as health.  Is coffee good for you? How about eggs? What about sitting vs standing all day? The things we’re supposed to do seem to change by the year. A lot of our confusion comes from sensationalist media and … Read more

How to Turn Regrets into Life Lessons

I see a lot of motivational quotes and memes on the internet about how one is not supposed to live their life with regret. My reaction to that is: how is someone supposed to correct course in life or make sure they’re not on their death bed with a list of regrets if they’re not going to at least acknowledge their regrets? I think our culture has a few problems in this regard. First, many have a sort of “just don’t think about bad stuff ever” mentality. These people can’t handle regret or other negative emotions at all simply because … Read more

A Gentle Introduction to Zorga

How My Failed Software Helped Me Figure Things Out In the introductory post I mentioned the topic of personal development and how I think it’s important to living a good life. Zorga was the name of productivity software I had developed several years ago (the name is a twisted version of the word “organize”) that I ultimately decided not to launch. I built the software because I was obsessed with productivity (based mostly on the Getting Things Done system) as a way to improve my life and effectiveness. The software was actually pretty good but I eventually realized (as many … Read more

A Gentle Introduction to MattKnee.com

Hello. I’m Matt Knee and I’m passionate about learning to do things better. Since I was young, I’ve been a voracious reader and learner who has collected, according to Evernote, over 7,000 notes. One could say that I’m a “data hoarder”. Now that I’m in my 40’s (and after a few health scares) it occurred to me that these notes will probably never be organized and some plans or ideas I have may simply die in my head. Perhaps they should die in my head but I think there’s a few helpful things I’ve learned that may help others. There … Read more

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