Michael Kaplan - The Best Time to do Everything: Expert Advice on How to Live Cooler, Smarter, Faster, Better

THE BEST TIME

TO DO EVERYTHING

THE BEST TIME

TO DO EVERYTHING:

EXPERT ADVICE ON HOW TO LIVE COOLER,
SMARTER, FASTER, BETTER

MICHAEL KAPLAN

BLOOMSBURY

Copyright 2005 by Michael Kaplan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission from
the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury
Publishing, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, New York and London
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

All papers used by Bloomsbury Publishing are natural, recyclable
products made from wood grown in well-managed forests.
The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental
regulations of the country of origin.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaplan, Michael, 1959

The best time to do everything : expert advice on how to live
cooler, smarter, faster, better / Michael Kaplan.1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

1. Conduct of life. 2. Life skills. I. Title.

BJ1595.K296 2004

646.7dc22

2004014827

eISBN: 978-1-59691-823-8

Portions of this book have appeared in various forms in
Reader's Digest, American Way, Cigar Aficionado, and Book.

Certain material in this book appearing was originally published in SmartMoney
magazine. SmartMoney 2001, 2002, 2003. All rights reserved by
SmartMoney, a joint publishing venture of Dow Jones & Company,
Inc. and Hearst Communications, Inc. Used with permission.

First U.S. Edition 2005

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Polmont, Stirlingshire, Scotland

Printed in the United States of America

by Quebecor World Fairfield

For Melodie, Lola, and Chloe

CONTENTS

In February of 2000, my wife and I sold our Manhattan apartment. New York real estate being what it is, we made a healthy profit. Four months later, in June, we took that money and put it toward a lovely brownstone in Brooklyn. We paid a decent price, and I felt pretty good about both deals.

Then I happened to speak with a real estate broker who challenged the logic of my timing. "Housing prices are lowest in winter," he stated. "And they're highest in summer." That means, relatively speaking, I sold low and bought high.

"It's a matter of supply and demand," the realtor explained. "More people are looking to buy houses in the spring and summer. That's when prices rise. Then, because fewer people want to move during cold-weather months, prices drop in the winter. Simple."

Oh. It got me to thinking about how much I could have saved by timing things a little differently. Then I began considering all the other things that could be timed more effectively: buying shoes, making restaurant reservations, finding a job, playing basketball, getting married, saving for retirement. How great would it be to know the best time to do everything? Especially if you could go to impeccable sources for the information: Donald Trump on the best time to haggle, punk-rock star Johnny Ramone on the best time to learn guitar, mob lawyer Bruce Cutler on the best time to plead the Fifth, Bill Maher on the best time to talk politics, David Blaine on the best time to do magic.

So I set out to find all the answers, conducting nearly two hundred interviews with some of the best minds on every subject from gaming to romance to cooking to travel toyesreal estate. Follow the advice within these pages and you'll be able to make your life cooler, smarter, faster, better, and much more efficient. Plus, if someone happens to ask you when might be the best time to run into a burning building, how you can get your hands on the freshest fish, or when to snag a hotel-room upgrade, you'll have the answers.

TO DO EVERYTHING

Best Time to Buy a New Car

Auto prices are always somewhat negotiable, but at the end of every month, salesmen become downright flexible. It's when they focus more on volume and less on commissions from individual car sales. "We have monthly quotas that we try to hit," says Fred Altman, one of America's most successful Dodge salesmen (he works out of Christopher's Dodge World in Golden, Colorado, which consistently ranks among the country's top dealerships). "Everything in the car business is on a monthly schedule. Sell enough cars in a given month and you get a higher commission percentage the next month, as well as a better work schedule. As the thirtieth and thirty-first approach, I am definitely more aggressive in closing sales."

Best Time to Launcha High-Fashion Modeling Career

You see those pale-skinned beauties flaunting string-bean physiques, strutting down catwalks, and figure you can do it, too. Hopefully, this decision is being reached before you're old enough to drive. "For a woman, the best time to start exploring a modeling career is when she is a junior in high school," says Michael Flutie, who co-owns Flutie Entertainment and once managed the likes of Cindy Crawford, Elle McPherson, and James King.

"It's a year prior to graduation, and she'll have time to explore the possibilities. Before becoming a full-time model, though, a girl wants to be finished with high school. After graduation, she should plan on spending the twelve months one would ordinarily devote to freshman year of college in trying out the business. If a girl waits till after she's done with college, she's too old. And if she tries doing it at fourteen, the industry will love her, but mistakes get made when a young teenager is standing in front of the camera and exuding sex for a fifty-year-old male photographer. Young girls get drawn in and don't have what it takes, emotionally, to deal with the industry."

Men who want to enter modeling have it easier, at least in terms of the timing: "For men, it should be right after college or else during sophomore or junior year. Women need to look like girls, but male models should look like men."

Best Time for a First Kiss

Em and Lo (aka Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey), tag-team sex columnists and authors of The Big Bang, suggest ditching the cliched end-of-first-date lip lock and thinking outside the box: middle of the second date. "After the first date," they opine, "you might not even know whether or not the other person really likes you, and you have a chance of getting the cheek instead of the lips"a depressing denouement. "But by the second date, he or she is obviously interested, and by not waiting until the end of that date, you break the ice and get any lingering tension out of the way." But what if your date seems immediately and totally into you? Does that make your first night out together suitable for a smooch? Uh-uh. "There is something cool about delayed gratification, which can be very sexy."

Best Time to Teach Your Dog a Trick

Remember the movie Gladiator? It contains a stunning scene in which the character played by Russell Crowe gets pawed and clawed by an angry tiger. Not surprisingly, that wasn't Crowe under the big cat. More surprisingly, the attack was done without special effects. Randy Miller, Hollywood's reigning master of the wild animal-attack scene, got mauled for real, and Crowe's face was digitally implanted later on. While Miller, a trainer of ferocious beasts, lives in a Northern California compound with his lions and tigers and bears, he also has a handful of dogs, which are among the most disciplined you'll ever meet.

He says that the best time to teach your dog a trick is soon after the canine's first birthday. "The dog's young and active, but maturing quickly, and his brain is developing," says Miller. "On the other hand, he's not so young that he can't understand what you want him to do. To