James Clear's Blog, page 17

My Upcoming Speaking Schedule (Let’s Meet in Person!)

Earlier this week, our little community passed 84,000 members. (First time visitor? You can sign up free here.)

One of my favorite parts about writing for a global audience is meeting you all in person when I speak at various events and organizations.

With that in mind, I’m starting to book my speaking schedule for the end of 2014 and the first half of 2015. If I’m coming to a city near you, I’d love to meet you and say hello. And if you’d like me to speak at your organization or event, details for contacting me are below.

My Upcoming Speaking Schedule

I already have a few events booked. I’ll be speaking about habits, creativity, and productivity at an entrepreneurship event in Dallas, Texas on September 25th. (Tickets are free.)

I will be covering similar topics at an event in Miami, Florida on November 18th (tickets will be available soon), and tentatively at a conference in London during November as well.

Book Me to Speak at Your Event

Would you like me to speak at your organization or event? To get the conversation started, click here and fill out the form.

Each week, I write about how to stop procrastinating, how to build good habits, how to develop systems that work, how to boost productivity, and other ideas for generally mastering your behavior. I believe that learning how habits work and understanding how to improve them is one of the best investments you can make in yourself and I would love to share the lessons I’ve learned at your event.

As always, thanks for reading and hopefully we can say hello in the near future!

What I’m Reading: Fall 2014 Edition

It’s time for the Fall 2014 Edition of my reading list.

For each of the books below, I have assigned a rating and written a three sentence review, which summarizes my thoughts about why I did or did not enjoy the book. At the end of each review, I have included a link to the book on Amazon so that you can read additional reviews and learn more about the book.

Here’s what I’m reading…

Book Rating Scale

5 – Top-notch writing, thorough research, and highly valuable or interesting content.

4 – Often great writing or excellent content, but not necessarily both.

3 – It may have a chapter or two that are excellent, but the book is average overall.

2 – Perhaps you will find an idea or two, but there is little value inside.

1 – Do not read.

5-star books

The Emperor of All Maladies – by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies covers the history of cancer and does so through a remarkable combination of fascinating storytelling and historical research. Mukherjee, who is an oncologist, clearly explains the complexities of cancer treatment and fills the book with surprising and useful insights (like this). I highly recommend it for anyone interested in science, history, or the story of how we treat cancer. (Amazon link)

The War of Art – by Steven Pressfield

The War of Art is a book for anyone who struggles from The Resistance, which is the force that prevents us from creating what we want to create. As Pressfield says, “The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” This book is filled with proven ideas and reminders for beating Resistance and doing your life’s work. (Amazon link)

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! – by Richard P. Feynman

Richard Feynman was an insanely curious and brilliant physicist. In addition to working on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and winning a Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics, Feynman had a passion for cracking safes, playing bongos, drawing nude models, chasing women, and pulling pranks — all of which are covered in this book. He also shares advice for future scientists: Don’t confuse knowledge with understanding, develop a broad set of skills and tools to use on problems, and don’t take the expert’s word for it, figure things out for yourself. (Amazon link)

4-star books

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work – by Mason Currey

In Daily Rituals, Mason Currey documents the daily habits and rituals of more than 150 of the world’s most famous artists, authors, musicians, and scientists. Many of the individual stories are great, but here’s one takeaway I had from the book: everyone’s rituals are unique to their lifestyle, but all great artists share one thing in common—they have a time and space to do their work with consistency and without interruption. Also, a shocking number of these top performers relied on drugs, caffeine, alcohol, and the good ole daily walk to spark their creativity. (Amazon link)

The New New Thing – by Michael Lewis

The New New Thing is the story of Jim Clark, a brilliant computer scientist who founded three billion dollar companies in Silicon Valley from 1982 to 1999. The author, Michael Lewis, is one of the greatest non-fiction storytellers of our time (I love his ability to weave cliffhangers into true stories). If you’re interested in hearing about completely delusional Silicon Valley investors, gutsy serial entrepreneurs, and the people who have their lives transformed or wrecked because of them, you’ll love this book. (Amazon link)

There were no 3-star, 2-star, or 1-star books in this reading list.

What have you been reading recently? Click here to leave a comment.

Measure Backward, Not Forward

We often measure our progress by looking forward. We set goals. We plan milestones for our progress. Basically, we try to predict the future to some degree.

We do this in business, in health, and in life at large.

Can we increase our quarterly earnings by 20 percent?
Can I lose 20 pounds in the next 3 months?
Will I be married by 30?

These are all measurements that face forward. We look into the future and try to guess when we will get somewhere.

There is an opposite and, I think, more useful approach: measure backward, not forward.

Here’s what I mean…

Measuring Backward vs. Measuring Forward

Each week, I sit down at my computer and fill out a little spreadsheet to track the essential metrics in my business. Traffic, email subscribers, revenue, expenses, and so on. I have the process down pretty well by now, so it only takes about 15 minutes.

In those 15 minutes, however, I get very clear feedback on whether or not I’m making progress in the areas that matter to me. I can tell which direction things are moving. And, if the numbers in one area are moving the wrong way, I can make adjustments the following week.

Basically, I measure backward (What happened in my business this week?) and use that backward measurement as a way to guide my actions for the next week.

I use a similar strategy in the gym. I lift every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. When I show up at the gym, I open my notebook and look at the weights I lifted during my last workout or two. Then, I plan my workout by slightly increasing the sets, reps, or weight from where they were last week. I go for tiny increases, of course. I’m interested in one percent gains.

In the gym, just like in my business, I measure backward and use that measurement to determine my next move. I am constantly looking to improve, but I base my choices on what has recently happened, not on what I hope will happen in the future.

The Chains of Habit

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

—Samuel Johnson

When it comes to building good habits and breaking bad habits, one of our greatest struggles is maintaining awareness of what we are actually doing. The more automatic a behavior becomes, the less likely we are to notice it. This helps to explain how the consequences of bad habits can sneak up on us. By the time the repercussions of our actions are noticeable, we have already become hooked on a new pattern of behavior.

However, measuring backward can call attention to these invisible patterns by making you aware of what you are actually doing. Measuring backward forces you to take notice of your recent actions. You can’t live in a fairly tale world of hopes and dreams. You have to look at the feedback of what has recently happened in your life and then base your decisions and improvements on those pieces of data.

The good news is that you can now base your decisions off of what you’re actually doing, not off of what you project your future self to be doing.

The Importance of Short-Term Feedback

The best way to change long-term behavior is with short-term feedback.

—Seth Godin [1]

There is one caveat to this strategy: when you measure backward, your data needs to come from the recent past.

If I used data from two years ago to make business decisions, my choices would be off. The same is true for lifting weights or other areas of improvement. I don’t want to base my actions on what I achieved a long time ago, but on what I have achieved recently. In other words, I want short-term feedback, not long-term feedback. The shorter, the better.

Measuring for Happiness

There is an additional benefit to this strategy as well. When you measure backward, you get to enjoy the progress you are making right now rather than yearn for a different life in the future.

You don’t have to put happiness off until you reach a future milestone or goal. Happiness is no longer a finish line out there in the future. You are finding ways to improve right now and focusing on how you can immediately improve over your past self is more satisfying that comparing your current state to where you hope you’ll be some day.

The Idea in Practice

Nearly every improvement we wish to make in our lives requires some type of behavior change. If you want different results, you have to do something differently.

The tough question to answer is what should we do differently to get the results we want?

We often respond by focusing on an outcome and setting a goal for ourselves. Goals are good and having a sense of direction for where you want to go is critical. But when it comes to determining the improvements we can make right now, measuring backward is the way to go. Let recent results drive your future actions.

Weight Loss: Measure your calorie intake. Did you eat 3,500 calories per day last week? Focus on averaging 3,400 per day this week.

Strength Training: Oh, you squatted 250 pounds for 5 sets of 5 reps last week? Give 255 pounds a try this week.

Relationships: How many new people did you meet last week? Zero? Focus on introducing yourself to one new person this week.

Entrepreneurship: You only landed two clients last week while your average is five? It sounds like you should be focused on making more sales calls this week.

Measure backward and then get a little bit better. What did you do last week? How can you improve by just a little bit this week?

Click here to leave a comment.

Sources

Short term, long term by Seth Godin

How Creative Geniuses Come Up With Great Ideas

In 2002, Markus Zusak sat down to write a book.

He began by mapping out the beginning and the end of the story. Then, he started listing out chapter headings, pages of them. Some made it into the final story, many were cut.

When Zusak began to write out the story itself, he tried narrating it from the perspective of Death. It didn’t come out the way he wanted.

He re-wrote the book, this time through the main character’s eyes. Again, something was off.

He tried writing it from an outsider’s perspective. Still no good.

He tried present tense. He tried past tense. Nothing. The text didn’t flow.

He revised. He changed. He edited. By his own estimation, Zusak rewrote the first part of the book 150 to 200 times. In the end, he went back to his original choice and wrote it from the perspective of Death. This time—the 200th time—it felt right. When all was said and done it had taken Zusak three years to write his novel. He called it The Book Thief.

In an interview after his book was finally released, Zusak said, “In three years, I must have failed over a thousand times, but each failure brought me closer to what I needed to write, and for that, I’m grateful.” [1]

The book exploded in popularity. It stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for over 230 weeks. It sold 8 million copies. It was translated into 40 languages. A few years later, Hollywood came calling and turned The Book Thief into a major motion picture.

The Simple Secret to Having Good Luck

We often think that blockbuster successes are luck. Maybe it’s easier to explain success that way—as a chance happening, a fortunate outlier. No doubt, there is always some element of luck involved in every success story.

But Markus Zusak is proof that if you revise your work 200 times—if you find 200 ways to reinvent yourself, to get better at your craft—then luck seems to have a way of finding you.

How do creative geniuses come ups with great ideas? They work and edit and rewrite and retry and pull out their genius through sheer force of will and perseverance. They earn the chance to be lucky because they keep showing up.

In her Dartmouth Commencement Address, Shonda Rimes shares a strategy that echoes Zusak’s approach…

Dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change…

Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer. Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just … do.

So you think, “I wish I could travel.” Great. Sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok, and go. Right now. I’m serious. You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day, so start writing.

How Creativity Works

We all have some type of creative genius inside of us. The only way to release it is to work on it.

No single act will uncover more creative powers than forcing yourself to create consistently. For Markus Zusak that meant writing and re-writing 200 times. For you, it might mean singing a song over and over until it sounds right. Or programming a piece of software until all the bugs are out, taking portraits of your friends until the lighting is perfect, or caring for the customers you serve until you know them better than they know themselves. You can make any job a work of art if you put the right energy into it.

How do creative geniuses come up with great ideas? They work hard at it.

Sources

“Markus Zusak talks about the writing of The Book Thief” by Macmillan Publishers Australia

Thanks to one of our own community members, Michael A., for sharing the Markus Zusak story with me. As always, our community is doing the real work and I’m just trying to do you all justice.

The Physics of Productivity: Newton’s Laws of Getting Stuff Done

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his groundbreaking book, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which described his three laws of motion. In the process, Newton laid the foundation for classical mechanics and redefined the way the world looked at physics and science.

What most people don’t know, however, is that Newton’s three laws of motion can be used as an interesting analogy for increasing your productivity, simplifying your work, and improving your life.

Allow me to this present this analogy as Newton’s Laws of Productivity.

Newton’s First Law of Productivity

First Law of Motion: An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force. (i.e. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.)

In many ways procrastination is a fundamental law of the universe. It’s Newton’s first law applied to productivity. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

The good news? It works the other way too. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When it comes to being productive, this means one thing: the most important thing is to find a way to get started. Once you get started, it is much easier to stay in motion. [1]

So, what’s the best way to get started when you are stuck procrastinating?

In my experience, the best rule of thumb for getting started is the 2-Minute Rule. [2]

Here’s the 2-Minute Rule adjusted for productivity: To overcome procrastination, find a way to start your task in less than two minutes.

Notice that you don’t have to finish your task. In fact, you don’t even have to work on the primary task. However, thanks to Newton’s first law, you’ll often find that once you start this little 2-minute task, it is much easier to keep moving.

Here are some examples…

Right now, you may not feel like going for a run. But if you put your running shoes on and fill up your water bottle that small start might be enough to get you out the door.
Right now, you might be staring at a blank screen and struggling to write your report. But if you write random sentences for just two minutes, then you may find that useful sentences start to roll off your fingers.
Right now, you might have a creative block and be struggling to draw something. But if you draw a random line on a sheet of paper and turn it into a dog, then you might get your creative juices flowing.

Motivation often comes after starting. Find a way to start small. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Newton’s Second Law of Productivity

Second Law of Motion: F=ma. The vector sum of the forces on an object is equal to the mass of that object multiplied by the acceleration vector of the object. (i.e. Force equals mass times acceleration.)

Let’s break down this equation, F=ma, and how it can apply to productivity.

There is one important thing to note in this equation. The force, F, is a vector. Vectors involve both magnitude (how much work you are putting in) and direction (where that work is focused). In other words, if you want to get an object accelerating in a particular direction, then the size of the force you apply and the direction of that force will both make a difference.

Guess what? It’s the same story for getting things done in your life.

If you want to be productive, it’s not merely about how hard you work (magnitude), it’s also about where that work is applied (direction). This is true of big life decisions and small daily decisions.

For example, you could apply the same skill set in different directions and get very different results.

Note: the idea for this image came from artwork created by my friend, Oliver Emberton, in his wonderful post titled, “Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.” Thanks Oliver!

To put it simply, you only have a certain amount of force to provide to your work and where you place that force is just as important as how hard you work.

Newton’s Third Law of Productivity

Third Law of Motion: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body. (i.e. Equal and opposite forces.)

We all have an average speed that we tend to perform at in life. Your typical levels of productivity and efficiency are often a balance of the productive and unproductive forces in your life — a lot like Newton’s equal and opposite forces.

There are productive forces in our lives like focus, positivity, and motivation. There are also unproductive forces like stress, lack of sleep, and trying to juggle too many tasks at once.

If we want to become more effective and more productive, then we have two choices.

The first option is to add more productive force. This is the “power through it” option. We gut it out, drink another cup of coffee, and work harder. This is why people take drugs that help them focus or watch a motivational video to pump themselves up. It’s all an effort to increase your productive force and overpower the unproductive forces we face.

Obviously, you can only do this for so long before you burn out, but for a brief moment the “power through it” strategy can work well.

The second option is to eliminate the opposing forces. Simplify your life, learn how to say no, change your environment, reduce the number of responsibilities that you take on, and otherwise eliminate the forces that are holding you back.

If you reduce the unproductive forces in your life, your productivity will glide forward naturally. It’s like you magically remove the hand that has been holding you back. (As I like to say, if you eliminated all of the things distracting you from being productive, you wouldn’t need tips on how to become more productive.)

Most people try to power through and hammer their way past the barriers. The problem with this strategy is that you’re still dealing with the other force. I find it to be much less stressful to cut out the opposing forces and let your productivity naturally flow forward.

Newton’s Laws of Productivity

Newton’s laws of motion reveal insights that tell you pretty much everything you need to know about how to be productive.

Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Find a way to get started in less than 2 minutes.
It’s not just about working hard, it’s also about working on the right things. You have a limited amount of force and where you apply it matters.
Your productivity is a balance of opposing forces. If you want to be more productive, you can either power through the barriers or remove the opposing forces. The second option seems to be less stressful.

Click here to leave a comment.

Sources

Psychology studies have also revealed that it is easier for us to stay in motion once we have started. Actually, what the studies show is that our human brains have a strong urge to finish tasks that we start. We don’t like leaving things unfinished or partially done. This is a widely research phenomenon known as the Ziegarnik Effect, named after the Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.
The 2-Minute Rule originally comes from David Allen’s best-selling book, Getting Things Done.

Thanks to Travis Dommert for sharing the idea behind the “third law of productivity”, which sparked this post. And to Sir Isaac Newton for being a man ahead of his time and for being a bold mofo who owned his rockstar hair.

7 Improvements I Have Made to My Writing and Work

Back in June, I took a sabbatical from writing for the entire month. One of the reasons for the break was to reflect on how I could produce a higher standard of work.

When I returned in July, I started to test a few of my ideas. Today, I want to share 7 ways my work has improved, what you can expect from me in the future, and what steps I am taking to deliver a higher standard of work to you.

1. Citing references at the end of articles.

You may have noticed that I have begun adding a “Sources” section to the end of my articles. For example, my articles on how to sleep better and on the health benefits of music both have extensive sources listed.

I added the sources section for two reasons. First, to properly cite the original sources that inspire my thinking. This is rare online. Even established journalism outlets like The New York Times or Wall Street Journal rarely cite the full source (they typically reference it within the article, but it’s not always clear).

Second, I have a surprising number of teachers and students who refer to my work. I hope that the sources section will make it easier for teachers and students to refer to my work (or properly cite the original source) when using these articles for their projects and classes.

2. Creating a Research Review process.

In 2005, a Stanford professor named John Ioannidis blew the lid off of the academic community when he published a highly regarded paper called Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.

Among other problems, Ioannidis’ work has revealed that 80 percent of small, non-randomized studies (the majority of research studies) end up being proven wrong at some point in the future. In other words, most of the research findings people are citing today will be false tomorrow.

Because I base a lot of my writing and ideas on proven scientific research, I worry a lot about bad science. I want to avoid these errors and I think it is my responsibility to deliver information to you that is based on the best science possible. Here’s how I’m doing it:

Only 10 to 15 percent of large, randomized trials end up being proven wrong later. In other words, you completely flip the scales in the favor of truth if a study is large and randomized.
If a study has been repeated dozens or hundreds of times, then you have a significant trend. For example, when I wrote about implementation intentions, I drew on research from more than 100 studies that all confirmed the same finding.

By focusing on scientific research that has been repeated consistently and that is the product of large, randomized trials, I am taking careful steps to only cite research that has a high likelihood of being correct in the long run.

Sadly, bad science is often cited on the web. Many authors will see one small scale study that proves a point, and then cite that research as if it represents the scientific consensus on the topic. It rarely does. In the future, I’ll be writing more about how to protect yourself from psuedoscience, bad science, and quackery.

3. Adding a Thank You section at the end of articles.

I have said this many times before, but nearly every idea I write about, I learned from someone else.

So I thought, why not thank these people? [1]

Now, when you click on the sources section at the bottom of any article and you’ll see a line that says “Thanks to…” at the bottom of the article. I figure people should be rewarded for their contribution whenever possible. Plus, it’s just good karma to thank the people who help you out.

You can see an example at the end of this article:

Breaking Bad Habits: How Vietnam War Veterans Broke Their Heroin Addictions

4. Adding hand-drawn images to articles.

Readers have been asking me to add images to my articles for awhile now. I have always wanted to do it, but I couldn’t figure out a way to add images that brought more value to the post. (I didn’t want to just add stock photos.)

Now I have an answer.

I have been creating hand-drawn images that visually display the main idea of the article. Not only do the images add more value to the article, I have fun drawing them too. [2]

You can see more of my hand-drawn images in these articles:

How to Build a New Habit: This is Your Strategy Guide
The Photographer Nobody Knew: Lessons on Sharing Your Gifts With the World
How to Build Expertise, Talent, and Skill: Lessons From Peyton Manning

5. Putting the reader experience above all.

I think a lot about what it would be like to visit JamesClear.com as a first-time reader. Could I find everything easily? Would it be pleasant to read? What parts of the experience would be distracting? Can I eliminate those distracting parts?

I want your experience as a reader to be the best possible. For this reason, I have eliminated nearly every annoying part of the reading experience: no advertising, no sidebar, no in-your-face marketing, etc.

In my opinion, good design is a way to serve the reader. Most recently, I spent a day optimizing the font sizes, line heights, space between paragraphs, and headings of my articles. I want your experience as a reader to be flawless. It’s not perfect yet, but I’m confident that I’ll continue to improve the reading experience for you as time goes on.

6. Writing about topics that stand the test of time.

Lifting weights increases your muscle mass. In the past they used to say that weight lifting caused the “micro-tearing of muscles,” with subsequent healing and increase in size. Today some people discuss hormonal signaling or genes, tomorrow they will discuss something else. But the effect has held forever and will continue to do so.

—Nicholas Nassim Taleb, Antifragile

I try my best to write about topics that will stand the test of time. What effects will hold forever? What ideas are actually useful in the long-run?

Rather than discuss the latest technology for building habits, I focus on falling in love with boredom and doing the work.
Rather than debate the latest workout craze, I focus on the fundamentals of strength training.
Rather than worry about a savvy new productivity theory, I talk about a strategy that has worked for decades.

7. Creating a safe space for you to comment and share.

I recently added a subtitle to the comments section: “Share your knowledge and experience.”

One of the things I love most about our community is that we have people who help others by sharing their knowledge and experience. For example, when Martin asked for help with quitting his smoking habit, five people jumped in and shared their ideas and experiences.

I can’t tell you how much I love that. Our community is a family of people from all around the globe and I couldn’t be happier to provide a space for us to help one another. In the future, if you have an idea or question, the best place to leave it is in the comments. Not only will I try to help out, but you’ll get the collective brain power of our community as well.

Bringing It All Together

I don’t always hit the mark with my writing, but I’m putting a lot of work in to get better at it.

Here are three articles that showcase some or all of the ideas I have mentioned above. I hope you enjoy them.

How to Get Better Sleep: The Beginner’s Guide to Overcoming Sleep Deprivation
How to Read More: The Simple System I’m Using to Read 30+ Books Per Year
How to Build a New Habit: This is Your Strategy Guide

As always, it is an honor to have you in our little community. I’ll do my best to keep improving and, in the meantime, what are your suggestions?

What else would you like to see? Is there something I am doing that annoys you? Is there something I could be doing to make my work even better? I’d love to know about it.

Click here to leave a comment.

Sources

I also too inspiration from Paul Graham on this front. He often thanks the editors of his articles.
I have enjoyed Jessica Hagy’s hand-drawn images on 3×5 cards for quite some time and her drawings have been an inspiration for my work. I also got the idea of visually displaying the main idea of the article from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who included graphs and charts of his main ideas at the back of his book Antifragile.

Thanks to Jono Hey and Carl Richards for also inspiring my drawings and sketches.

How to Build Skills That Are Valuable: Lessons Learned From Selling Matches

In the early 1940s, a young boy was growing up in the small county of Almhult in southern Sweden. Within a few years, he would impact millions of people. At the time, however, nobody knew his name.

The boy was occupied with a small and relatively simple project. He had recently discovered that it was possible to buy boxes of matches in bulk from Stockholm, which was a few hours away from his small town. He could get the matches for cheap and then sell them individually for a nice profit, but still at a reasonable price.

Pretty soon, he was riding around town on his bicycle and selling matches one by one to anyone who needed them.

Once the matches began selling well, the young boy expanded his tiny operation. Before long, he added christmas ornaments, fish, seeds, ballpoint pens and pencils. A few years later, he started selling furniture.

The young boy’s name was Ingvar Kamprad and when he was seventeen, he decided to name his business. He called it IKEA.

In 2013, IKEA made over $37 billion dollars. It’s amazing what you can do with a few matches.

Selling Matches and Building Skills

Everybody is obsessed with building their IKEA. Nobody is focused on selling a few matches. We live in a society that values skills, but everyone is obsessed with results. The problem with this is that it can become really easy to get trapped focusing on results when you should really be building your skills.

It’s really easy to focus on the dream of building a successful business. What entrepreneur wouldn’t want a company that makes $37 billion per year?

But that’s not how Ingvar Kamprad started. He started by building his skill set. He started by selling one book of matches at a time. He focused on a small problem and then used the skills he developed to solve a bigger problem (just like cancer researchers do).

Focus on Getting Good, Not Making It Big

Ingvar Kamprad focused on getting good at business before he tried to get big at business. Think about that for a moment.

Many people (and I’ve been guilty of this as well) want to get big more than they want to become good. The new photographer wants to be published in National Geographic or win that big photo contest, not shoot in relative obscurity while mastering his craft. The new writer wants to hit the best-seller list, not become an expert of prose. The young basketball player wants to be in the starting lineup, not become the best dribbler on the team.

But if you only focus on these results, then it can be very easy to get distracted from doing the volume of work required to build the skills you need to succeed. And it’s the volume that matters. The process is more important than the goal. This is especially true in the beginning. Focus on getting good before you worry about getting big.

In fact, most of what you create early on — even if it’s good — probably won’t be that good. In a previous article, I shared a research study that analyzed over 70 famous composers and revealed that not a single one of these musical geniuses produced a famous musical piece before year 10 of their career. This period of little recognition and hard work was referred to as the “10 years of silence” and it’s very similar to the period that Ingvar Kamprad spent selling matches. Different industries, same dedication to developing skills.

Think about what you want to be good at. How can you start selling matches?

Click here to leave a comment.

Photo Essay: The Rocky Mountains and Streams of Colorado

Each week, I write about the science of behavior change and better ways to build habits. My hope is that the research I share makes it slightly easier to improve your health, happiness, and creativity.

But I don’t just want to focus on the highest quality research. I also want to be someone who puts ideas into action. I think it’s just as important to understand what it’s like to make improvements in the real world as it is to ground your ideas in proven science.

With that in mind, one of the creative habits I have been working on is my photography. In my 2013 Annual Review, I mentioned that I would be putting more energy toward photography in 2014. This started with my trip to Morocco. (Photos here.)

Today, we’re continuing with another photo essay from Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. As always, all photos are my own.

Colorado Pictures

A fly fisherman reels in a line as the sun sets

 

Rolling down the mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park

 

A young bull elk grazes near a stream in a forest of Aspen trees

 

Two moose, probably siblings, standing near Sprague Lake

 

Hundreds of elk in Rocky Mountain National Park

 

Elk grazing on Moraine Meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park

 

Ski lines in Breckenridge, Colorado

 

Sunset over Moraine Meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park

 

A sunset reflection on Sprague Lake

 

Dusk at Sprague Lake

 

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Mozart as Medicine: The Health Benefits of Music

David Binanay started playing the violin when he was five. By age twelve, he performed at the world famous Carnegie Hall in New York City and, soon after, at the White House.

In 2006, fresh off graduation from Villanova University, Binanay was positioned perfectly to build his life around music. He had just moved into his own place and started a job at a high-end violin shop.

That’s when he noticed the bleeding.

Music and The Mind

It was a gastrointestinal bleed. Binanay had experienced one before and he called his mom to let her know what was happening. She wanted to help, but David stopped her.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to handle it myself,” he said.

This was the first time Binanay tried to handle a serious health issue on his own. When he arrived at the hospital, things began to spiral out of control. His hands started shaking and his mind began to separate from reality. “It was my first psychotic episode,” David recalls.

The situation went downhill fast. After resolving the bleeding issue and leaving the hospital, Binanay’s psychosis continued. He started having delusions and became fearful of everything. “I couldn’t even walk into a grocery story because of the fear,” he says. “I didn’t really know what I was afraid of, but I feared for my life. In the span of one week I went from being normal to having a complete psychotic breakdown.”

This was the peak of David’s psychosis, but his battle was just beginning. He would struggle with schizophrenia for the next five years. His medications worked, but David had trouble sticking to them. There was one thing, however, that always seemed to help.

“My dad would look at me and say, ‘Dave, go get your violin.’”

The Healing Power of Music

Music stopped the pain. “Every time I did played, I noticed a change,” David said. “I would channel my emotions through my music. The fear would turn to music. It would turn to sound.”

A new medication schedule helped too. David found it much easier to stick to his medication when he switched from pills to injections, which he only needed once per month.

Today, after a five year battle, Binanay has made a full recovery. He plays his violin up to 10 hours per day and runs a non-profit, Music Over Mind, that performs free music shows at hospitals for people suffering from mental illness. “Music has been my catalyst for recovery,” Binanay says. “It has been a 180 degree turnaround. From complete loss to total re-birth. I recently got married. I have my own place with my wife. I feel like I’m a better person than before my illness.”

David Binanay’s story raises an interesting series of questions. Can music help heal us? What role does music play in our health and happiness? Can music be a form of medicine?

Let me share what I’ve learned about the health benefits of music.

The Stroke Victim Who Was Healed by Music

In her book The Power of Music, author Elena Mannes shares the story of a stroke patient who has lost the ability to speak. After struggling to re-learn normal speech patterns, the patient makes a breakthrough by singing her words rather than saying them. This approach is known as melodic intonation therapy and it engages the right side of the brain more than normal speech. As a result, this different section of the brain can stand in as a replacement for the normal language area and be used to communicate through song. [1]

At first glance, this story may seem like a very specific way to combine music and health, but it actually provides a good indication of the state of music therapy. There are many stories about music being used to help Parkinson’s patients move, autistic children focus and learn, or multiple sclerosis patients reduce spasms. These stories, however, have no research studies supporting them. My guess is that these are individualized results which, although true, are difficult to extrapolate to the entire population.

That said, there are a handful of health benefits of music that are well-accepted and scientifically proven.

The Research: Music as Medicine

First, music can be used to relieve pain in patients. For example, surgery patients at the Cleveland Clinic that listened to recorded music saw a 4x decrease in post-surgical pain. Music has also been shown to reduce the amount of anesthesia needed during operations. [2, 3]

Second, music can be used to relieve stress and anxiety. Calming music decreases blood pressure, steadies the heart rate, and eases stress. Research has shown that music can reduce stress for patients undergoing surgeries and colonoscopies, for children undergoing medical procedures, and for patients with coronary heart disease. One study found that live music decreased anxiety in 57 percent of chemotherapy patients, while those in regular therapy saw an increase in anxiety of 11 percent. [4-8]

There is also preliminary evidence showing that listening to music can boost immune system function by decreasing stress hormones and increasing growth hormones. These changes should prime the body to be in a better state for recovering from and resisting illnesses, but the research is weak thus far and needs further investigation. [9]

Finally, there are a range of studies that link music to happiness and pleasure in different ways. Despite the differences in the individual studies, the scientific consensus on the topic is that music does stimulate the same areas of the brain that trigger pleasure in other activities. A range of studies have found that listening to pleasurable music stimulates the mesocorticolimbic system in the brain, which is the same “pleasure center” that is triggered by humor, tasty food, and even cocaine. In this way, you could say that music is like a drug. If music makes you happy, then it might be possible that it is good for your health. [10-13]

These benefits sound great, but is music unique in providing these benefits? Not really.

Given the current state of the research, it is not known if music is any better at healing than other alternatives. Music is not the only way to relieve pain or reduce stress. Music might work well for Person A while meditation is better for Person B and deep breathing or exercise help Person C. If nothing else, however, music is another tool at your disposal when you want to relieve pain, reduce stress, and promote healing.

The Limitations of Music Therapy

You can summarize the current state of research on the connection between music and health by saying that we know music impacts our brains and bodies, but we don’t quite understand exactly why or how music does this. And because we don’t understand the details, it can be hard to use music for healing.

To be honest, part of these issues could be solved if researchers performed better studies. Right now, researchers aren’t doing themselves any favors because musical research rarely follows a typical format.

Here are a few common errors (and solutions). [14]

Current research doesn’t clearly differentiate if it is the act of playing music or the act of listening to music that benefits patients. For example, if a patient gets better after playing songs on a keyboard, chanting in different tones, or singing their favorite song, are they benefiting from the musical notes or from the act of playing music? Future studies should investigate if active performance or passive listening yields better results.

Current research poorly categorizes the impact of different music styles. Most researchers lump music therapy into broad “stimulating” or “relaxing” categories. Future research should include more clearly defined boundaries, so we can understand which types of music can be used to heal in specific situations.
Current research flip-flops on who controls the music. Sometimes the experimenter chooses the music. Sometimes the patient chooses their own music. This can complicate things because sometimes you are more likely to see music as having a positive impact simply if you selected the music. Future research should be more clear about this selection process.
Current research varies between individual listening, individual playing, and group playing. In many cases, patients may benefit from simply doing an activity with a group and not the music itself. Future research should investigate these environmental factors to help clarify the impact of individual vs. group music therapy.
Current research, at least what I found, was universally missing a large, randomized trial. This type of study is the gold-standard of research and if music therapy interventions are to be taken seriously, then a high quality randomized study is needed.

The Health Benefits of Music

Whether it is a pick-me-up song that brightens your mood or a live-saving violin practice like that of David Binanay, we have all felt the healing power of music.

From a research standpoint, the health benefits of music are unproven. However, I have always said that I try to balance being a scientist with being a practitioner and, from a practical standpoint, there are very few reasons to avoid music as a way to improve your health and happiness. Music therapy is noninvasive, inexpensive, and convenient. And music is one of the lifestyle choices we can make that relieves stress and anxiety, decreases pain, and protects against disease.

Stefan Koelsch, a senior research fellow in neurocognition at the University of Sussex in Brighton, summarizes the healing effects of music by saying, “I can’t say music is a pill to abolish diseases. But … So many pills have horrible side effects, both physiological and psychological. Music has no side effects, or no harmful ones.” [15, 16]

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1-3. The Power of Music by Elena Mannes. pg. 181

4. Cepeda, M.S. et al. (2006) Music for pain relief.

5. Nilsson, U. (2008) The anxiety and pain-reducing effects of music interventions: a systematic review.

6. Dileo, C. and Bradt, J. (2007) Music therapy: applications to stress management. In Principles and Practice of Stress Management (Lehrer, P.M. et al., eds), pp. 519–544, Guilford Press

7. Bradt, J. and Dileo, C. (2009) Music for stress and anxiety reduction in coronary heart disease patients.

8. The Power of Music

9. Gangrade, A. (2012) The effect of music on the production of neurotransmitters, hormones, cytokines, and peptides: a review.

10. Breiter, H.C. et al. (1997) Acute effects of cocaine on human brain activity and emotion.

11. Small, D.M. et al. (2001) Changes in brain activity related to eating chocolate: From pleasure to aversion.

12. Mobbs, D. et al. (2003) Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centers.

13. Blood, A.J.and Zatorre, R.J.(2001) Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion.

14. Many of these research limitations are covered in the guide, The Neurochemistry of Music by Chanda and Levitin.

15. The Power of Music

16. There is one side effect of music: opportunity cost. Listening to music that makes you happy is a great way to spend your time, but only if you’re not ignoring other things that make you happy or could improve your health and lifestyle. For example, if you listened to music that made you happy all day, but never worked out, then how big of a health benefit are you really getting? The same could be said for happiness. If you simply consumed music that you enjoyed all day long would you end up living a better life than if you had spent that time building a business you loved or mastering a skill that advanced your career? As with all uses of our time, there are tradeoffs to listening to music and it’s important to balance it with other areas of life that provide a payoff.

Thanks to David Binanay for taking time to chat with me and to Sam Sager for his help researching this article.

Breaking Bad Habits: How Vietnam War Veterans Broke Their Heroin Addictions

It was 1971 and the Vietnam War was heading into its 16th year when two congressmen, Robert Steele from Connecticut and Morgan Murphy from Illinois, made a discovery that stunned the American public.

While visiting the troops in Vietnam, the two congressmen discovered that over 15 percent of US soldiers had developed an addiction to heroin. (Later research, which tested every American soldier in Vietnam for heroin addiction, would reveal that 40 percent of servicemen had tried heroin and nearly 20 percent were addicted.) The discovery shocked the American public and led to a flurry of activity in Washington, which included President Richard Nixon announcing the creation of a new office called The Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention.

The office was created to promote prevention and rehabilitation of drug addictions and also to track and research the paths of addicted servicemen and women when they returned home. It was this last part, the tracking of returning soldiers, that led to some surprising insights.

Lee Robins, one of the researchers in charge of tracking the veterans, found that when the soldiers returned to the United States only 5 percent of them became re-addicted to heroin. In other words, 95 percent eliminated their addiction nearly overnight. [1]

This finding completely contradicted the patterns of normal addiction. The typical heroin cycle went something like this: an addicted user would enter a clinic and get clean, but once they returned home, the re-addiction rate was 90 percent or higher. Nearly every heroin addict relapsed. The Vietnam soldiers were displaying a pattern that was exactly the opposite.

What was going on here? And, perhaps more important, what can it teach us about changing our own behaviors, building better habits, and breaking bad ones?

How Addictions Get Shaped

Here is what happened in Vietnam: soldiers spent all day surrounded by a certain environment. They were inundated with the stress of war. They built friendships with fellow soldiers who were heroin users. The end result was that soldiers were surrounded by an environment that had multiple stimuli driving them toward heroin use. It’s not hard to imagine how living in a war zone with other heroin users could drive you to try it yourself.

Once each soldier returned to the United States, however, they found themselves in a completely different environment. Not only that, they found themselves in an environment devoid of the stimuli that triggered their heroin use in the first place. Without the stress, the fellow heroin users, and the environmental factors to trigger their addiction, many soldiers found it easier to quit.

Compare this situation to that of a typical drug user. The individual picks up a bad habit at home, goes to a clinic to get clean (i.e. somewhere devoid of all the external stimuli that drive their habit), then return to their old environment with all of their old triggers surrounding them, and somehow hope to quit their bad habit. It’s no wonder 90 percent of typical heroin users became re-addicted once they return home—they are surrounded by all of the things that caused them to get addicted in the first place.

Similar situations drive bad habits for all of us, from nail biting to smoking to drug use. Of course, none of this is to say that the change in drug use was purely due to environment changes. (It is likely there were a variety of factors at play. [2]) But the central idea is a solid one: the stimuli that surround you shape your behaviors day after day, often without you realizing it. Environment drives behavior.

To Change Your Behavior, Change Your Environment

The impact that external stimuli can have on behavior is well-known. I have written previously about choice architecture and how it can be used to drive better health habits.

These effects go beyond the physical environment. Your friendships matter too. One popular study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, tracked 12,067 people for 32 years and found that “a person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese.” [3] The people we connect with and the places we live in often determine our behavior and habits as much as we do ourselves.

The good news is that, at least to a certain degree, your environment is within your control. If you want to change your behavior, then change your environment. Even small adjustments can make a difference. One of the simplest ways to do this is to “design for laziness” and make default options healthier or more productive, which is a strategy I covered in detail here.

Here are some other examples to get your creative juices flowing:

Trying to build an exercise habit? Rather than going home after work, stop by a new place like a park or a hiking trail (or a gym, if that’s your thing), and let the new environment be a blank slate for your new behavior rather than trying to force yourself to overcome all of the old triggers at your home.

Want to think more creatively? Move to a bigger room or surround yourself with expansive architecture away from the normal space that drives most of your thought patterns. (More on the link between architecture and behavior here.)

Hoping to buy healthier food? It is likely that you have some autopilot shopping habits right now. Try going to a new grocery store and developing a different routine of selecting food. You may find it much easier to avoid unhealthy food when your brain doesn’t automatically know where it is located. (You can even use my outer ring strategy to avoid most of the processed food.)

By simply removing yourself from an environment that triggers all of your old habits, you can make it easier to break bad habits and build new ones.

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Sources

Vietnam Veterans Three Years after Vietnam: How Our Study Changed Our View of Heroin by Lee N. Robins PhD, John E. Helzer MD, Michie Hesselbrock MSW and Eric Wish PhD
There is an additional caveat to the Vietnam study that I believe is worth mentioning. The percentage of soldiers who remained addicted after returning to the US was very similar to the percentage of addicts we typically find in society. I’m not an expert on addiction and can’t say what the answer is, but it’s obvious that environment change is not a magic cure to all addiction problems. It is best to view this simply as another tool in your tool belt that you can use to build new habits and break old ones. As always, the only truth for you as an individual will be what works for your life, so embrace an attitude of self-experimentation and try things out to see what works for you.

The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years by Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D.

Thanks to the NPR story that inspired this article and to Eric Barker for originally pointing me to that work.