Michael Andrew's Blog, page 69

The Truth About Fatty Foods - College Humor

A follow up on yesterdays post about sugar and fats. Fats are good! Sugars are bad. Here is your quick history lesson:

Quest Hero Bars

I haven't done any food reviews for a while, but I have discovered a few new things Im eating that I need to share!



As many of you know, I have for the most part given up nearly all sugary foods, and most standard starchy carbs from my diet. I had been gaining a lot of weight, went a on keto diet for a few months and immediately lost 30 lbs.



I love cross-fit though, and just couldn't get enough energy for the workouts, so I eat certain kinds of carbs in the am, and taper them off as my day goes and have found a sustainable diet balance I am very happy with, and continuing to lose fat and gain muscle. I haven't eaten real ice cream in many, many months now, and I feel like I am cheating when I eat the occasional apple lol.



Often I do not have time to eat a complete meal, and in conversation with my buddy Thad I told him that I occasionally eat Quest bars if there is nothing else and I am in a hurry. They taste pretty good, but don't have many sugar carbs than affect insulin, usually between 2-4 grams.



The other day I was grabbing a few Quest bars at GNC, and I spotted their new "Hero Blue Berry Cobbler" bar. Reading the ingredients, it sounded similar to the other Quest bars as far as insulin spiking sugars (4g) but that there was something called "Allurose" another type of sugar substitute that tastes sweet but isn't metabolized by the body.



So I bought it thinking Id save it for a rainy day snack.



Holy cow. This is best tasting protein bar Ive ever had (and I have had many in my life time). It really does taste like a glazed donut. It was incredible. I felt very guilty! Bad maven!



Honestly, Im not sure if this is messing up my diet, but obviously, it can't do the damage of what all that ice cream I used to eat did.



If you are looking for a low carb, guilt free snack. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

A Killer Communication Tip – Episode #013

- Michael shares an awesome communication tip he learned from his friend The Becker



Good morning everyone! Michael Andrew with the Maven nation. Today I want to share a really cool communication tip that I saw yesterday. Credit to Chris Becker. He is my photography coach way back when I got started. Now, he is a KETO diet coach. He just opened a website called ketology.co. He basically coaches individuals in the keto diet, how to get started, discipline and some of the tools and tactics of losing weight. It is by far the most effective thing that I've ever seen in terms of losing weight. I've lost about 30 pounds in the last 3 or 4 months just by changing a few things in my diet. It's really working for me. But that's not the topic of today's episode. Hopefully we will have Chris on here, he goes by Becker. He has been a great influence for me in photography as well. He was one of the top mentors who helped me get started.



We were communicating yesterday and I was asking him some questions. He responded with a video that he was addressing me in. When I got it, I said.. "Holy cow! He's talking to me on video." Becker took sometime out of his day  to record a 1 or 2 minute video for me! I texted him back.. "I've never seen this before, this is really impressive!" He mentioned that he has been teaching this for a while. He would coach wedding photographers for years and he uses it with his brides. It's a way for him to stand out and to be personalized and build a relationship of trust with them. Essentially, what you do is record a video snippet, addressing a person by name, answering perhaps questions they may have and you return that back to them in text message. The interesting thing about this is it felt personal far more personal than just getting a text. It felt like he had done something ten times greater than texting but the truth of the matter is it was probably much  faster to record a video. I have never seen this form of communication in a text message. It had really caught me off guard.



That is the tip. If you get a question from somebody, whether it's a client or a loved one, send them a video respond. Just sit down and record it. It's gonna be faster than to text it out especially for long answers. If its a short answer, I get it with text. If it's a long explanation, it is going to be both more efficient and more effective by doing a video text back to the person. Try it out and watch the responses. So that is the tip for today... video text messaging. Try it out, let me know in the comments what you guys experienced with it. Thank you for listening. Have a  great day today! See you next time.

Operant Conditioning / Shaping - Episode #012

- Update on the Success of the Efficiency Playbooks Release!



Good morning everyone, thank you for tuning in. Michael The Maven here. Today I want to share with you guys a very important principle and concept that you have to be aware of, if you are on social media. It comes from a psychologist named B. F. Skinner. You've probably heard of him, not familiar with his name. He is credited with inventing the Skinner Box, which was an experimental box that you put rats in. It would have a floor that he could electrocute these little guys, but it also had lights and levers and food dispensers, things of that nature. This box was used to manipulate the behavior of rats and other animals. He did pigeons, but the principles apply to dogs, dolphins, anything that's intelligent enough to receive positive reinforcement. Now B. F. Skinner believed that free will was an illusion, meaning that most of our decision-making could be influenced or engineered.



I don't personally agree with that, but he makes some very valid points. He's backed it up with research, in that something called operant conditioning, which basically means that you can teach an organism to do something specifically that you want them to do, by using positive reinforcement, and they may not even know about it. They may not even be aware of the puppet master pulling the strings. So shaping is a little bit more complex. It's a complex behavior, and as the organism gets more and more correct, you can continue its progression. So maybe move in a direction, maybe sit here, many stand on two legs; and rewarded in each of those parts sequentially until it's mastered a very complex set of skills.



If you want additional reading, look up Project Pigeon. B. F. Skinner taught pigeons how to navigate and control bombs, by putting them in the nose cones. He had success with this, by teaching them to peck on targets. That's a whole different story, because you know in World War II we didn't have GPS positioning, targeting systems, things of that nature. He had figured out a way to get pigeons to control bombs. Now let's take this concept a little bit further. If you were a researcher who was trying to control behavior of rats, the food might be little expensive, you might be tired of paying for the food, so instead of food let's give them a virtual reward. Let's create something that gives them positive reinforcement. It can be maybe the score of a video game, maybe a new avatar, maybe a like, maybe a share, maybe the number of followers or subscribers.



So I'll try to include this article that basically comes out and says that, "Hey, you know what? Social media, we are the rats." It essentially ... this article essentially says that certain social media websites ... won't say any names ... are using Skinner's psychology to manipulate their users and to modify their behavior intentionally. Think about that for a second, if a company is using the tactics and skills from one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century to keep people into their apps and their websites ... and this guy didn't believe in free will ... it's something worth paying attention to.



So be aware of this idea of operant conditioning. It's essentially where somebody rewards you, gives you positive reinforcement for a certain type of behavior. That is the key distinction there, is that just to know that you can be psychologically manipulated, even to very complex skill sets, if you're rewarded over and over in certain ways. Hopefully at some point we can talk about something that I think is also super-important, vanity metrics. It's the same thing, it's this principle that if you want to have a big ego, have a certain number of subscribers, have a certain number of likes, and it's something that we're striving for. It's like chasing the wind, because in the end vanity metrics are not real. There is a conversion number. If you look at even some of the superstars on social media, they may have like ten million followers, and they post something and they'll only get a fraction of that number of likes.



Vanity metrics are a lie, it is a total illusion in that it doesn't really translate into the metrics that matter, if it sells, whatever it is you want to measure. That's a whole different topic and I'm not a subscriber of vanity metrics. I try to look at measurable results that matter. In any event, I know it's a lot of information. I just wanted to share with you the concept of operant conditioning, from B. F. Skinner, in shaping. Be aware of positive reinforcement that is given to you for certain types of behavior. I am Michael The Maven. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I hope you guys are enjoying the podcasts. Please subscribe, reviews would be great. If you guys have questions, send them in to me, at michaelthemaven.com. We have a place where every episode is transcribed, if you want to read it again.



Thank you guys so much, I'll see you next time.

The Efficiency Playbook is now FREE on Amazon!

Ladies and Gentlemen! The day has come!



Get your FREE Efficiency Playbook right now on Amazon-



You will need an Kindle App reader if you do not have the device, it is also free:



Kindle App for iOS

Kindle App for Android


We are going to do everything possible to get the word out, but because this is a limited time offer, my recommendation would be to download it as soon as possible before it expires.



I've worked very hard for many years to finish this book, so I am very excited to be able to give it away to my faithful blog readers!







If you enjoy The Efficiency Playbook, I would be thrilled to have you review it as well!



Limited time FREE OFFER Efficiency Playbook right now on Amazon:

The Praise Experiment - Episode #011

Valerian

It started off really strong (the first 5-10 minutes). Incredible visuals. I hate to say this, I had more empathy for the CGI pearl creatures than I did the humans who were shot in incredibly unflattering light. The chemistry and dialogue between them from the start was absolutely painful. I found myself asking myself over and over "Is there really nothing more to these lines?".



It dragged out far longer than it should. Halfway through the film, I found myself fighting the urge to leave with every fiber of my being. It was painful.



Id definitely say skip this in theaters, and probably as a rental unless you are super super bored.



There was some absolutely real talent involved in making this movie. Seriously. Unfortunately, it was bad where it mattered most, character development, plot, editing, quality of acting, you know those kinds of things.

Dunkirk

As far as movies go in general, yes, it was amazing.

As far as awards go, yes, it will win many.



As far as Christopher Nolan films go, it was not his best. Ill try to explain.



IN my opinion Christopher Nolan is one of the very best working directors ever, and will go down as one of the best of all time. Take any of his films and compare it to the smorgasbord of terrible films and he always stands out among the rest. He has a very long pedigree of simply amazing films, even since Momento.



I appreciate that Nolan is always challenging himself, and he does stick in one genre. He caught my attention with The Prestige, solidified himself with the Dark Knight series, and pushed far beyond what anyone expected with Inception and Interstellar.



The 3 intertwined stories in Dunkirk was very interesting and new. I appreciated it very much. The cinematography is beautiful and amazing, and yes, I do think you should see it in theaters, but temper your expectations a little.



Im being really nit picky here but a couple of the problems:



There was an over reliance of the Hans Zimmer score to create tension. It got old & predictable after a while and pulled me out of suspension of disbelief. It was too much.



I think Nolan was trying to do too much. Trying to tell 3 stores diluted his efforts and made it harder to connect deeply with any of the protagonists.



What he did well? Made you feel and relive what those soldiers at Dunkirk did. You can feel their desperation, and for that, it was incredible.



It will definitely be among the best of 2017

Not Invented here - Episode #010

Good morning everybody! Michael the Maven here. Today is July 21st 2017, which means tomorrow, we are launching The Efficiency Playbook. We are going to have a few special episodes. typically, we are going to go Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We are going to go through the weekend and even through next Monday and Tuesday, five days in a row, simply because we want to make sure you get your opportunity to download The Efficiency Playbook. The Kindle version is going to be given away barring any technical difficulties starting tomorrow from the 22nd through the 27th. Go to my blog michaelthemaven.com, sign up, and we will send you the link as soon as it is available. If there is a problem, this is something I can only do once in 3 months according to Amazon's rules. I want to make you guys get your chance for a free copy.



Today, we are going to be talking about something very interesting, something I didn't really know the name for but I realized as a teenager was that when I was emotionally invested or financially invested into something, it clouded my judgment. This is common for everybody. When you have invested time, money or emotion, it is harder for you to make an objective decision. This is something I want to make you aware of. It will give you the advantage to take this wrapper off of your mind so to speak. I noticed that originally, when dating as a teenager, my brother Aaron and I, we have figured out that if I was dating somebody, Aaron would have better advice for me on how to deal with her because my judgment was clouded. When he was dating somebody, he would come to me and give me certain situations and I could get him answers immediately that he couldn't see because he was emotionally invested.



Later on in life, I saw these with the companies I have consulted with. They would have a problem and when advice is given to them about an external resource, they were resistant to it. They didn't want to accept it because it came from another place. Even now, when I consult for my own business, I have certain friends that I go to because I know they are not emotionally or financially invested. They can see the situation more clearly. This is the phenomenon that I've been wondering. Programmers are great examples. Sometimes I hire or fire programmers so I have some code, I give these codes to other programmers and they will say "That is not our code! We can't work on that, we didn't make that!" There is always been this phenomenon. I've seen this resistance to ideas that did not originate with you. Things that are not familiar, we are automatically a little bit resistant to them. This also ties into the investment part of clouding out judgment.



I am reading this great book right now called The Universal Principles of Design. It is a great book. It is a summary of designed principles from different sources. Wow! Just an incredible book! This phenomenon is called "Not Invented Here!" Robert Claggett, an MIT student in 1967, is the one who is credited with a form of a definition of Not Invented Here and per that he wrote called The Receptivity to Innovation. The idea is basically when you are dealing with a new idea. Technology, language or product that is coming from an external source, there is going to be this psychological bias against it even if it is superior to what you are currently using. I have seen this so many times. The problem with this is... it is limiting our options. If you read the Efficiency Playbook, there is Chapter 11 called Spyglass. It talks about using other people's solutions to fix your problems. There is a tendency to believe that everything that originates with us is the best. But this is not the case. Chances are if you have a problem, somebody out there has already solved it. The chances of that are very good. They're great!



Not Invented here results to something that is sometimes referred to as Reinventing the Wheel Syndrome. If you have a problem, you believe that you need to create a brand new solution, you need to be the inventor of it. Statistically the chances of this, you being the original problem solver, is already been done most of the time.



That's not to say that all foreign ideas and solutions are superior simply because it's unfamiliar. You have a bias against the fact that sometimes that it is. So the question then becomes How can you tell that a tech or an idea is superior to your own. Give me the answer right now. If you see somebody who is solving your problem and they are excelling at it 2or 3 times or more, being more productive or more successful or better results, it's time to look at what they're doing and how they're doing it.



I talked about this in the book. I am not talking about forgerizing or copycating. I'm talking about using free ideas, free solutions that already exist to solve your problem. Here is the takeaway... this is why this is going to be so important. Using unfamiliar things can be a huge advantage because it is going to increase the rate and the speed of your ability to adapt versus trying to invent it on your own.



In closing, let me give you a fun story. We played with the University of Washington in 3 years. A sophomore year, we lost. A Junior year, we lost. A senior year, we lost. i was 3 years in a row. I graduated. The last game that we played in was against Tulane in 1998. They had a perfect season, that was that and I graduated and we lost great right? The BYU coaches spent time with the Tulane coaches, this is their enemy, their competition, learning their offense.

Then BYU incorporates it into their own offense and so when BYU plays Washington in 1999, the next year, Washington was unfamiliar with the new BYU offense. The twists that BYU had put in, BYU beat Washington for that fourth year in a row we played.



So keep that in mind... unfamiliarity can be a great advantage if you are receptive to it. Be open minded with foreign ideas. Don't be afraid to consult with people who are not emotionally or financially connected to what problem you are currently trying to solve.



In any event, the Efficiency Playbook is going to become available tomorrow. Definitely, check it out! Get a free Kindle copy. Thank you guys so much for joining and listening. I really appreciate you and I'll talk to you next time.

23 and Me - Episode #009

Good morning everyone! Michael the Maven here. We have a very important weekend coming up where I will be giving away free Kindle copies of the Efficiency Playbook if you sign up at theeffeciencyplaybook.com. We will send you the link as soon as it is available. There is also a way to share that link that can track how many of your friends signed up and you can get the audio book, we can get you as a VIP in my new social network coming up later this year, a free autograph copy of the book. It's free for everybody. You just sign up for the newsletter, we are going to give you the

kindle copy once it is available. It is going to be available in a couple of days. I just to remind you that it is supposed to happen this weekend barring a technical glitch



Today I wanted to talk about that is crazy important if you haven't heard about it already. It can really benefit you in terms of extending your life even. In the history of the world, we don't know how long humans have been on the earth if you're religious, many of you will think it's 6 or 7 thousand years, if you're not religious, it could tens of thousand of years. It's sufficeth to say humans have been around for a while.



In every human that has ever been born has been given a deck of cards, a genetic deck of cards with the problem of not being able to see what those cards are. We have an idea based on how tall we are, our eye color, things of that nature. Just general appearances, these are called

phenotypes. We've never been really able to take a peek at that deck of cards until recently. It's estimated that there are about a hundred and ten billion of people that ever lived on the planet. So if you take all of the people that are here now of the spirits of many thousand of years. Only recently, have we been given the ability to see what these decks of cards are. Why is this important? I want to get into Science of it but genes are physical molecules (DNA) are passed on from the parents to the children. Sometimes DNA makes mistakes when it is replicated. We start off as sperm and egg, a single fertilized egg, a single cell, and that cell replicates. It divides over and over and over. It's a cell division and that what makes a human. That's how humans are created.



If you have a gene that's passed on from one of your parents that have a physical change. One of the sequences, there is a way to see that now. This is really important! Coming back to the discovery of DNA in 1953, Watson and Crick, and some other scientists used some X-ray. There's a lot of ways to figure out that it's a double helix. That is the birth of molecular biology which is how these physical molecules relate to our actual development. It's a whole field of Science.



Now let's skip to 1997 where a movie called Gattaca with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, came out. I would strongly recommend that you watch it if you haven't seen it. It's one of my favorite movies. This film depicts the balance in the struggle between nature, the genetics that we're given versus nurture, our surroundings, our decisions. The aspects of life that are playing on us. This is also a great film about the human realm. I think Gattaca is predictive of the future. It is really interesting because, in the movie, people are no longer judge in appearances, but the genes they're given.



A lot of this is based on every cell that has a nucleus. Your skin cells, your hair cells... if it has that nucleus in there, you can get a full DNA sequence of an individual. What happened recently, in 2000, the human genome project and Celera genomics had a contest where they race into the map the human genome to get a foundation. They basically mapped not everything because there's a lot of genes but they're cataloging the types of genes that control different rotations. If a gene has an exact base sphere change, it could cause a disease. This is why this human genome t is so important, it's because this database can be built of all these genetics diseases. So you can go in now, as of today, 2006-2007, 23 and Me was formed and many other sequencing businesses out there. Essentially the way it works is you swab your mouth, put it in the test tube, send it in, and they do some genomic sequencing. You are not going to get everything but you are going to learn many fascinating things about yourself, about your ancestry, where your genes come from. In some cases, it can help identify genes that you have that might create some problems in the future. This opens the door for a whole new type of science. Pharmacogenetics is one of them. It's pharmaceuticals that are specifically engineered to your own genes specifically. There is a predictive medicine. Scientists and doctors can look at your DNA and they can tell if there is going to be a problem in the future. It looks like a fountain of youth. So what happened was shortly after these services became available, Angelina Jolie, the actress, had a test done and it was discovered that she has a copy of BRCA gene, that contributed to breast cancer.



In the Efficiency Playbook, I talked about knowns versus unknowns and also probabilities. In any time that you can take an unknown and transform it into a known, you're at an advantage. You are dealing with something like your genetics, a lot of really important unknowns within the last ten years, we now have the ability to take a look at that deck of cards that you hold that was given to you by your parents. I talked about this to my friends... " Hey have you done it yet?"

I had it done. I'm happy I am linked to my dad. In 23 and Me, we can see some of my heritage and our ancestry and how it's connected. It's getting better. 23 and Me got me some trouble in FDA for kind of giving a medical advice. It's cleared up now. There are other services out there but coming back to this example, Angelina Jolie basically said there is a chance she can develop breast cancer. She preemptively took care of this. She had a surgery done. She reduced her chances of getting breast cancer significantly because she was able to take a look at her genes.



There are some people who say that 23 and Me test is not perfect for the BRCA gene. there is another company say that there are 250 bucks that are more accurate. But in terms of breast cancer, I think it's very important thing to figure out. Taking statistics in 2014 in the United States

237,000 women and 2,000 men have diagnosed some form of breast cancer. In 2014, there are 41, 200 women and 465 men died from breast cancer. Men get it as well. If this is one of the most common types of cancer among women, it's the number one death for Hispanic women, second most cancer-related deaths for whites, blacks, Asians, American Indians, It's worth taking a peek.



This is obviously related to efficiency because if you do have a gene that could create this issue, this preventive attack can extend your life significantly. I am not a doctor. I cannot give a medical advice, what I am suggesting is do the genetic tests and get the information. Take a look at your deck of cards. I have friends who would not want to do it but note that in the history of the world, there are hundred billion people have lived before us, they never had the opportunity. I think it is super exciting. This is when nurture has finally been able to hop the fence and do something about nature, the genetics that you are given, and we're given the ability to at least at some degree know something to do about it. It is a very exciting time, medically and genetically. I am not an affiliate of 23 and Me, it is a program that I use and want to share with you guys. Get out there and do the research. Read about Angelina Jolie, what happened and all that stuff, it's very interesting!



In any event, that is 23 and Me taking a look at the human genome, your human genome. Again, check out the EffeciencyPlaybook.com, there are actually commercials there on the website. Once you register, you can see what's the Efficiency Playbook is all about. Coming out July 22 - 27. I'll send you an email if you sign up. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next time!