Ludvig Sunström's Blog, page 13

How to Solve Problems While You Rest

Have you ever got stuck while trying to solve a problem, only to take a break from it and have the solution come to you effortlessly?

You probably have.

But how often?

In this post I’m going to teach you a two methods for solving problems while resting or taking a break.

This is a skill that you can practice over time to become a more creative and inspired problem-solver–anyone who tells you otherwise is either ignorant or can’t do it themself.

———————————

David Ogilvy.

Winston Churchill.

Thomas Edison.

What do these men have in common?

It’s probably not what you think.

It is that they had strict routines for getting ideas and solving problems.

They all exercised a high degree of control over their subconscious mind–and took great care in practicing that skill. They all led lives that were conducive to becoming “inspired”.

David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy was one of the greatest admen to ever have lived, and one of the most creative people during the 20th century. Here are a few of his thoughts on exercising the subconscious mind:

I am almost incapable of logical thought, but I have developed techniques for keeping open the telephone line to my unconscious… I hear a great deal of music. I am on friendly terms with John Barleycorn. I take long hot baths. I garden. I go into retreat among the Amish. I watch birds. I go for long walks in the country. And I take frequent vacations, so that my brain can lie fallow—no golf, no cocktail parties, no tennis, no bridge, no concentration; only a bicycle.

While thus employed in doing nothing, I receive a constant stream of telegrams from my unconscious, and these become the raw material for my advertisements. But more is required: hard work, an open mind, and ungovernable curiosity

– David Ogilvy –

Winston Churchill

Churchill would not only power nap, but he would also take a longer naps – usually around noon. He made a mental distinction by separating the day in half: Before and after noon:

You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner, and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one-well, at least one and a half, I’m sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day because that was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities.

– Winston Churchill –

Thomas Edison

Edison was the most extreme of these men when it came to power napping. He kept beds in all of his houses and workshops. I’ve read in many times (websites and blogs) that he used to nap at his work desk – but I don’t believe it.

Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take each day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night.

Edison was much too conscious of his environment to sleep at his work desk–which is why he kept beds in other rooms than the one he worked in.

The reason Edison did this was because he understood that the brain creates situation-specific mindsets and habits in different environments.

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Note: You can successfully use the same strategy as Edison without having to buy multiple beds. You can divide your room/house/apartment in different sections

Keep each section apart to associate different moods and mental states for each section. If you, for example, conduct multiple activities in one room, it will take longer for you to change between the specific state conducive to each activity.

Keep:

–One section for working.

–One section for reading and writing.

–One section for resting and meditating.

–One section for eating.

If you are starved on space, one way of solving this is by buying Chinese screens to create different sections.

Two Ways You Can Use to Solve Problems While You Rest

These two ways are power napping and prospective meditation.

When you use either one of these ways your results will improve if you state a specific intention before beginning.

Before you start resting you should give your mind a clear order of what you want it to do for you.

You must state your command either by thinking it, by writing it, or by saying it loud.

After you have done that you can use these two methods:

Power Napping. Take a power nap and focus on the problem while expecting the answer to come. Keep the nap short, rest no longer than 30 minutes or you’re likely to get tired. You want to wake up feeling refreshed and inspired.
Prospective Meditation. This is a meditation I have developed myself. I’ve practiced it for about a year. It really helps with brainstorming, creativity, and inspiration. You become an idea machine.

I have meditated consistently for close to three years now, and while I probably suffer from the curse of knowledge, I would guess that prospective meditation is more difficult to a novice than “normal” meditation is.

When I say normal meditation I mean quieting your thoughts while shifting your focus into the body and relaxing fully.

There’s three steps to the process of learning to do prospective meditation:

You need to be able to do normal meditation and quickly shut off your thoughts while shifting your focus into the body, or in other words, to feel rather than to think.
You then slowly start observing your internal dialogue without getting drawn into it or identifying with it. This is hard for a novice, which is why you might need to first practice your metacognition a lot. One aspect of having good metacognition is to be aware of your internal dialogue and the thoughts you’re having.
You wait and observe your internal dialogue for interesting thoughts. You wait some more, until a good idea comes along. The process is analogous to prospecting for gold–you put a lot of things through a funnel and look for the good stuff. In this case your ideas represent the gold and the funnel represents your conscious mind..

The more you do it the easier it gets and the faster it goes.

But how do I know if it’s a good idea that comes along?

–You will feel it instantly. And if you can’t feel it, use your common sense. It’s impossible to mistake the feeling. You know, the feeling of having a great idea and just wanting to get it out of your head right away!

And that’s exactly what you’re going to do.

When you have come up with 1-4 ideas you must immediately write them down, and preferably execute them.

The reason it’s imperative you do this is because the short-term memory is much weaker than most people think it is. The short-term memory is limited to about 30 seconds. And the conscious mind cannot hold more than 5-9 items (ideas) at the same time.

Don’t overestimate your memory like most people do.

Don’t lose the smart ideas you have.

Now Start Practicing Your Subconscious Mind

It wasn’t until about 2-3 years ago that I understood that it’s possible to practice my creative process and find ways of improving inspiration, creativity, and problem-solving by practicing.

In this time I have experimented with various ways of practicing my subconscious mind.

I have now distilled all those things down to a few things–the most efficient ones. Like power napping and prospective meditation in combination with a clear command.

These things work very well.

I am much more creative and “inspired” than I were a few years ago, and it’s only getting better.

When you find successful ways of practicing these things, your ability to synthesize information improves. Meaning that you get better at combining ideas and coming up with new ideas. Meaning that you become more creative.

This is potent stuff. But don’t expect to see any major results from practicing it for a few days or a week.

 

RESOURCES:

 

This is a video of Lee David Zlatoff, the creator and writer of MacGyver. He speaks about his creative process and how he had to improve his creativity to write new episodes for MacGyver. This is interesting stuff, because you’re probably in a situation where you are forced to you to produce creative content as well.

He’s not the best speaker. But the content is good, and I can vouch for most of the things he’s saying. My method is very similar.

He starts speaking about the things specifically related to creativity and practicing your subconscious mind at 10 minutes.

The implications from the video are:

–Your subconscious mind is much faster at processing information than your conscious mind is.

–You subconscious mind should be used to solve problems. Your conscious mind should be used for delegating the problems.

–Write down your questions or to-do items.

–Take a rest.

Do you have any personal strategies for solving problems and becoming more creative?

 Photo credit: agustinrafaelreyes

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Should You Talk About Your Goals or Not?

In the past 19 days I’ve heard this question get talked about repeatedly by random people. It’s haunted me everywhere I’ve gone.

Some people have told me that I should talk to other people about my goals, while others have said that I absolutely should not.

But no one has been very convincing in telling me why I should do one or the other.

I’ve noticed that there’s a surprisingly large amount of dogma, blind following, and regurgitation of gurus’ opinions on the topic.

For example, yesterday a girl told me, “It’s a good thing to talk to other people about your goals — you should do it. Oprah said so last week!”, and maybe she’s right, but there’s not much analysis to back up the argument. I wasn’t exactly convinced by the girl.

The question remains:

Should you talk to other people about your goals, or should you not?

There are two different camps of psychology that both have a different answer to the question.

I’ll break down the reasoning behind both of these answers for you.

Why You SHOULDN’T Talk about Your Goals

The people who say that you shouldn’t talk to other people about your goals base their argument on the claim that:

If you talk about your goals/ideas/New Year’s resolution to other people you will feel good about yourself despite not having executed on it.

In other words, you’re prematurely rewarding yourself. You’re skipping right to the reward of having accomplished the deed without first putting in the hard work required to earn the right to feel good.

How does this work?

It works because your brain, or your subconscious mind as it is often referred to, doesn’t distinguish between real or imagined scenarios.

The same logic is used to explain why phenomena like visualization and mental rehearsal work.

Don’t believe me?

Take a five-minute timeout and think about fighting someone you hate. Think about punching your boss in the face. Think about taking down your worst enemy and stomping on his body repeatedly.

Envision this in great detail.

See how the blood spatters  from his face while you give that bastard what he’s got coming to him!

…

How do you feel now?

You suddenly feel energized and tense as a result of having flooded your system with adrenaline, just from thinking about it.

The reason for this is because the brain and body are bidirectionally connected. The things you do — or say — influence how you feel, and how you feel influences what you do as well.

It goes both ways.

So when you talk about your goals and ideas you’ll start feeling good about yourself, granted that these are things you’re passionate about.

You’ll feel like you’re already accomplishing these goals, even if you aren’t!

Why You SHOULD Talk about Your Goals

Conversely, there are reasons why it might be a good idea for you to talk about your goals.

There are the two main arguments:

1. By talking about your goals you’ll force an extra repetition.

It is through repetition that we learn things — this happens by rewiring or strengthening the neural pathways in our brains. The more repetitions we do the more synaptic connections we build and the more reinforced they become as they become covered in myelin.

In my opinion, any extra repetition is a good repetition, because it strengthens that particular neural pathway and speeds up the learning process.

In this case the learning process is that of you seeing yourself as capable of accomplishing your goals — and believing in your own abilities. The more you believe in yourself the more you’ll increase the chance of your goals coming true.

The idea of faking it until you make it works by the same logic.

2. By talking about your goals you’ll become accountable for accomplishing them.

If you keep talking about things you’re going to do people will start keeping tabs on you to see if you’re doing what you said you’d do. That is, unless you have shitty friends who want to see you fail.

Here’s the thing:

The mind seeks one thing above all else – integrity and orderliness.

What does this mean?

It means that if you present yourself in a certain way or say certain things people will form an image of who you are.

Once this image has been formed the brain will want to keep it congruent — it wants things to stay the same.  People will then unconsciously strive to keep you from changing. Not because they’re evil, but because the brain dislikes change.

This is the reason why a kid who’s being bullied in school for dressing awkwardly will get even more bullied if he suddenly decides to change his dress code and shows up to school dressed in cooler clothes.

The other kids will pick on him and say mean things about his clothes to make sure that he reverts back to how he was before.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the new clothes, it’s just that the new image of how he’s trying to present himself is incongruent with mental image that the other kids have of him, and it makes them uncomfortable.

On the outside this looks like immature bullying — but on the inside is a mental battlefield of the brain striving to keep things congruent.

Reconciling the Two Approaches

So which approach is better?

None.

It’s completely individual.

The first approach, of not talking to other people about your goals,  has got many people confused. Mainly because they struggle with separating the cause and the effect behind what successful people do.

They see a successful person who doesn’t talk about his goals. Then they see a ton of losers who frequently talk about their goals and ideas without ever doing shit.

The losers sit around and talk about, “What could’ve been if only… If only they had the support of some influential mentor, if only they had the money to fund their idea…”, instead of just shutting the fuck up and focusing on how to execute.

People see this phenomenon happen over and over again. They quickly make the inference that, “Successful people don’t talk about their goals, only losers do!”.

But it’s not that simple — and thinking that leads to a false conclusion.

The reason that the losers are losers is not because they talk a lot about their goals.

The reason that the losers are losers is because they lack follow-through, discipline, and work ethic.

The reason that the losers are losers is because they are incompetent people who have a flawed understanding of how the world works, and blame their incompetence on external factors.

When the losers talk about their goals to feel good about themselves it probably adds to their incompetence. But it’s not the root cause for it.

The root cause of their incompetence lies somewhere in how they think and how they govern their daily routine.

How they sleep poorly.

How they eat poorly.

How they don’t exercise.

How their attention spans are short.

How they are insecure, scared, and self-defeating without having the tools to overcome these things…

And what is the result of these things?

– That they resort to taking the easy way out by  unconsciously rewarding themselves prematurely by talking about their goals instead of executing.

And when it comes to the second approach,  that of talking about your goals?

Personally, I think it’s usually a good idea to put it all out there — if you’re an ambitious person.

Why?

Because the motivation that comes from not wanting to lose face is powerful — especially in certain cultures, like Asia. Being held accountable by people can be a great motivator.

But here’s the thing. If you’re a hopeless loser people don’t want to hold you accountable.

Why?

Because it requires a bit of time and energy on their behalf — and they don’t want to invest that energy in keeping tabs on you unless they think it’s going to help you succeed.

People like supporting winners!

People like supporting daring  up-and-comers!

People like supporting ambitious underdogs!

It’s similar to what Cicero said:

We hate gladiators if they are keen to save their lives by any means, we favor them if they openly show contempt for it.

Meaning, that if you got the balls to talk about your –hopefully — big goals, while also showing that you are executing them, a lot of people will go out of their way to help you or cheer you on.

How to Decide what is Right for You

As with everything else in life there’s pros and cons to both approaches.

Both approaches are merely tools for harnessing motivation.

You’ll have to figure out what suits you best by experimenting with both approaches over time to see what yields the best results. Think for yourself and figure out how this applies to your unique situation.

Personally I’m more disposed toward the second approach — which you’ve probably noticed if you’ve read this blog for a while, or if you’ve read my eBook Breaking out of Homeostasis.

My philosophy is this:

I try to get as many repetitions as possible into my life — and speaking about my goals counts for another repetition — which speeds up the process of deliberately rewiring my brain the way I want it to work.

However…

I am currently experimenting with the first approach — that of not talking to other people about my immediate goals. I will stick to this for a few more months and then decide whether to go on doing that or not.

What’s your take on this question?

Do you talk about your goals or not?

Resources:

My buddy Chris Bailey over at ayearofproductivity has put together a free book on New Years resolutions. The book contains, among other things, interviews with Charles Duhigg and David Allen. You can check out the book site and download it for free here.

 

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How to Use Social Proof to Your Advantage

I’ve gotten treated much better by people in the past six months than I have ever before.

Why is this?

While it’s true that I have become more competent during this time, it’s doesn’t sufficiently explain the disproportionately respectful manner in which some people have treated me.

So, what have I done to deserve this?

Simple. I’ve accumulated social proof.

Social proof is probably the most powerful way of influencing people. Much of the effort that companies put into the process of marketing is directed at generating social proof.

Most people are incredibly susceptible to social proof. You and I are as well, but far less than the average person. The reason I say this is because people like you and I, who are into self-development, are usually critical thinkers and doers.

I recently wrote a piece over at Bold and Determined in which I emphasized the importance of building referrals and social proof. In this post I want to show a few innovative ways that social proof can be used.

Here are three everyday examples of how you can use social proof:

Girls. If you surround yourself with a lot of girls, other girls will automatically think that you are interesting. If you’re a little innovative you can use dirty tricks like this one to your advantage.
Business. The most efficient marketing and sales method is word-to-mouth referrals and being able to showcase previously satisfied customers.
Social Proof in General.  Think of celebrities. They can get away with anything because: 1. They are perceived as familiar. 2.  They are put on a pedestal due to social proof.

Why does social proof work?

The reason why social proof works well is because it signals to other people that you are preselected – meaning that people have already taken the time to look into you and decided they like you.  This saves other people time and energy in making a decision by thinking:

“Oh, if so and so already approve of him, then I don’t have to do the due diligence myself.”

And this is more powerful than you can imagine, because 95% of all people are primarily concerned with saving energy. They operate from a semi-awake state of striving to maintain homeostasis.

Are You Looking to See what Someone Else is Doing?

I read in some marketing or psychology book that:

“95 % of all people are imitators and 5 % are doers. Therefore social proof works best in most cases when you are looking to influence the consumer.”

And this is absolutely true. Most people are imitators.

Doers on the other hand tend to be critical thinkers who care very little about the opinion of other people.

Why?

Because they’re concerned with doing, not with imitating.  Doers don’t have the “approval-seeking filter” that imitators have in their brains. They have overcome it by learning to think accurately.

But 5 million fans can’t be wrong…?

Actually yes they can.  The masses are rarely right about anything. If the masses have agreed on something you can almost be sure that it’s something that you ought to stay as far away from as possible.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

– Mark Twain –

Back away slowly, as if you were escaping from a bear, whenever someone tells you:

But, they say…

I hear there’s a lot of people…

Everyone else is doing it…

Know this:

Other (nameless) people are NOT reliable sources of information. Trust yourself only. Do your own thinking. Stop trying to save energy.

The next time you find yourself looking to see whatever someone else is doing – think again!

There is no substitute for your own judgment.

Online Uses of Social Proof

Online is the future and it’s time to get with the program.

No matter who you are or what your niche is, if you are looking to be successful you will want to establish yourself online. You don’t need to be a computer whiz to do this. You could either do it yourself, or you could hire some professional to help you do it.

If you’re Swedish and you want professional help I have a talented friend who has a company designing websites. The reason I recommend him here is because he’s helped me A LOT. [Note: This is not an affiliate link.]

Even if you don’t use professional help, and your site looks like crap, it’s still much better than having no site at all. It can still count for some social proof, because far too few people have caught onto the trend of creating their own websites.

With that said,

Here are a couple of common ways to use social proof online:

Using Influencers and Experts

This is probably the most powerful way to use social proof when you’re selling a product or a service. You’re borrowing authority directly from experts, and people who look up to these guys will eat it up. I probably would too if it was an interesting product.

This image is from the website where I purchased the theme being used for this blog. Most of the experts that endorse the theme are either famous bloggers, marketers, or WordPress authorities.

Followers and Subscribers

It varies greatly how much social proof you’ll get from having followers on social networks, but subscribers are always going to count for solid social proof.

Why is this?

Because having subscribers signals a lot more commitment than having followers on Twitter, Google , or Facebook.You can have a ton of followers on social media, but it says nothing about their commitment. Stupid people will dig you for it. Intelligent people will not be swayed as easily.

As Featured…

If you’ve been featured in a popular blog, website, newspaper, or TV show you will want to put that up in your sidebar. That’s potent social proof.

You’ll see this on every large company website, it’s common for blogs too.

The reasons why you might not want to do it would be if you absolutely don’t want to be associated with it or if you think it would look ugly on your site.

Brilliant Historic Uses of Social Proof

I like studying historic events because they’re often orchestrated in very clever ways. Here are a few excellent examples of how social proof has been used to influence people.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon always made sure to bury the dead soldiers of his own army far away from the roads or battlefields. He did this to give the impression that a disproportionate amount of the enemy troops had fallen compared to his own army.

During the Battle of Leipzig Napoleon ordered for as many enemy helmets as possible to be thrown into the Rhine River. The helmets then floated downstream towards the enemy camp and gave the impression that Napoleon’s army was winning the battle.

Napoleon was always popular among the people, but not so much with the elite. To change this he got himself inaugurated into the French Academy and deliberately associated himself with these intellectuals as much as he could to gain the respect of the elite.

Julius Caesar

Before large battles Caesar would prop up slaves, women, and other people who weren’t part of his army on mules and put helmets on their heads. He did this to give the impression that his cavalry was larger than it really was.

Caesar wrote a total of 11 war commentaries. Why did he do this when he had his hands full leading his armies? He did it because back in those days news traveled very slowly, and propaganda was hard to see through.  The purpose of these commentaries was to prove to the Roman people that Caesar was worthy of his elected position.  In writing these commentaries Caesar was able to remain popular among the people despite being away from Rome for many years.

Adolf Hitler

Before Hitler had reached the status of demigod among the German people, he had to build his image of being an authority for many years. One of the ways he did this was by giving speeches. He continually improved the process of making a powerful first impression on the audience until he came up with a potent formula for doing this.

The formula looked like this:

1. The person who spoke before Hitler was always a terrible public speaker who bored the audience. This was a deliberate ploy to make Hitler seem even more brilliant than he was. Hitler was then introduced in a respectful manner by a person that the audience already looked up to – a man whose judgment was trusted by the audience.

Note the eagle, the red flags, and the lighting.

2. Dozens of uniform-clad guards then marched up to the stage in pairs of two accompanied by loud music, creating a sense of importance and prestige.  The pairs always marched to the far sides of the aisle leading up to the stage. Hitler then came in last, walking in the middle of the aisle looking dead ahead, not even so much as glimpsing to the side.

3. Then add to this that Hitler had Albert Speer create massive spotlights, humongous red flags, and a large eagle Nazi emblem.  Back in those days no one else made use of these powerful tools to amplify the effect of speeches.

Learn to Use Social Proof to Your Advantage

Intelligent people are not easily swayed by social proof, but most other people are.

A lot of smart people think that other people should acknowledge how smart or skilled they are without having to resort to using social proof in any way.

But they’re wrong.

Whether you are of the opinion that using social proof is unfair, unethical or beneath your dignity doesn’t matter.

It’s still there and it’s going to be used by your competitors.

Social proof will be used by people who are less qualified than you are, but more strategic. These people may be less skilled than you are, but they will still beat you.

They will be more respected than you are.

They will earn more money than you do.

They will have a much easier time getting ahead than you do.

Whether they “deserve” any of these things is irrelevant.

Social proof is always going to matter, whether you want it to or not. Instead of hating on those who use it to their advantage, start using it yourself.

The easiest way of gaining social proof is either by borrowing it from someone who is already perceived as an expert/authority/guru, or by slowly building it yourself by putting in the work towards becoming an authority yourself. You can do this by writing, by giving speeches or by associating yourself with powerful people.

Now ask yourself:

How can I get social proof to work in my favor?

What activities can I start doing to cumulatively build social proof in the long-term?

In which area of my life should I start?

 

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How Successful People Read Online

In the last year I’ve thought a lot about how people in our society take in information.

We get most of our information from reading. The problem is that we retain almost none of that information due to how shallowly we read, not to mention that there’s a collective lack of follow-up and repetition.

Reading a ton of tabs +  shallow skimming of text + no repetition or follow-up = unproductive online reading habits.

In 1958 a guy named George Millner wrote a paper called The Magic Number Seven – Plus or Minus 2. You can read the paper here. The name of the paper refers to how much (little) information our short-term memory can store: only 5-9 bits of data per second.

This means that we can’t keep more than 5-9 things in our heads in the short-term (ca 30 seconds). You can test this yourself here.

What are the Implications?

Since most of us take in a ton of information from many different sources every day, this means that we are wasting time reading online. We think we’re being productive, but we’re really not.

It doesn’t matter if you consume a ton of great information if you can’t remember it and use it to your advantage when you need to.

But fear not friends, all hope is not lost.

Reading online isn’t an inherently useless or inefficient activity, it’s just that the way most of us do it must change.

My Generation has been Ruined by the Internet

I go to university.

I see many people in my generation ignoring the professor during class to scroll for notifications on Facebook, check forums, or skim useless news sites.

They’re disrespecting themselves by not valuing their time.

What’s the point of going to class if you’re not going to pay attention?

Exactly.

It’s a waste of time. And it’s a weak and haphazard way of conducting your life.

You either go to class and take the responsibility of becoming fully engaged, or you spend your time doing something else. Don’t be haphazard about it. Don’t go to class from a sense of moral obligation.

Go there because you’re going to learn, and use that time to the best of your abilities. Ask all the question’s you’d like to. Squeeze as much information as possible out of that class.

But, most people my age don’t understand this, and they’ve got another even bigger problem. They simply cannot handle using the Internet responsibly.

In group work they routinely interrupt their workflow to check social media or watch YouTube videos, completely oblivious to what it does to their concentration.

They’re mindlessly searching for useless information and entertainment, and their cravings never stop.

Their cravings only get worse.

Many of them would be better off smoking crack than having an Internet connection.

…

So, this is obviously an example of what you don’t want to do.

But what is the right way to go about reading online?

How do successful people read online?

What do they do differently from the masses?

How Do Successful People Read Online?

For starters, they are very selective in what they will and won’t read. There are three things in particular that successful people do:

1. Successful people are very selective in their online reading.  Successful people have trained themselves to filter out useless information to a higher extent than ordinary people. They avoid forums where the signal to noise ratio is high and trustworthy information is tough to find.
2. Successful people preemptively set deadlines for how long they will read online to avoid Parkinson’s Law. They know how easy it is to get swept away and drown in fascinating information if they don’t have a time limit for how long they allow themselves to sit by the computer.
3.  Successful people read with the end goal in mind. This stands in opposition to the norm of casually reading or browsing for stimulating news stories. Successful people read to solve problems or fulfill goals. They direct their reading at a purpose. They don’t read for entertainment’s sake or to kill time. They don’t fall for the temptation of reading a compelling headline if it doesn’t seem related to what they’re specically trying to accomplish.

Everyone knows about number 1.

Some people make use of number 2.

But how many people actually abide by number 3?

What Do Successful People Do Differently from the Masses?

What is it that differs between ordinary and successful people when it comes to reading online?

If we are to believe Nick Carr, author of The Shallows, we easily get distracted by hyperlinks whilst reading online.

Successful people understand and respect this phenomenon. They have strict principles that they abide by when it comes to reading online.

Successful people keep their impulses to click on irrelevant hyperlinks in check by finishing what they started before reading something new.

They do this because they know that if they begin the process it can be very hard to stop – taking them further and further away from the initial problem they set out to solve.

I call this entering hoarding mode.

Successful people avoid entering hoarding mode at all costs.

The Online Behavior of Successful People

You could sum up the online behavior by successful people in one word – responsible.

In addition to having a responsible Internet behavior, successful people consistently do three things to get the most out of what they read:

1. They leave comments to connect with similar-minded people. Successful people know that there is little to lose, but much to gain by commenting on good posts.

You never know what sparking up an initial interaction may lead to. Successful people understand this and don’t fear being the first to comment on interesting posts. Ordinary people are afraid to go first, they need someone to follow.

2. They write down key points and summaries. Successful people know about the weakness of their short-term memory and therefore don’t trust their brains to store all the useful information that they take in. As a result they have formed the habit of jotting down the key takeaways. Perhaps in their commonplace book.
3. They implement and practice the key points. Successful people know that despite having already written down the key points, they might still not remember it. So they seek to put the information to practice as soon as possible and measure its efficiency.  This is a really fundamental difference between successful people and ordinary people because it prevents the former group from reaching a state of information overload and experiencing decision anxiety.

These three things have one thing in common:

They raise the degree of mental investment put into learning the new information.

This has the effect of making the information more memorable, and it also gets perceived as more important.

It’s simple really, the more time, effort, and emotion we invest in something the more important it will be perceived to be by the brain.

This is why depth is the way to go about online reading. Not breadth.

Key Takeaways

Stop consuming unnecessary information.

What isn’t put to practice is waste.

Drop your online hoarding habits

Develop a responsible Internet behavior by not keeping too many tabs up at once and avoiding the temptation of clicking all the compelling hyperlinks.

Don’t read more than you can use, or you will start suffering from information overload.

Begin with the end in mind and conduct your online reading to solve a problem or fulfill a goal. Don’t aimlessly browse social networks or blogs to kill time, because it quickly becomes a negative habit.

Don’t trust your short-term memory. Write down the key takeaways and implement it in your life as soon as you can. invest in a whiteboard and write down the key takeaways so that you’re reminded to act on it ASAP.

Over to you

I leave you with the wisdom of Uncle Ben from Spiderman:

With great power comes great responsibility.

The question is whether people can act responsibly or not…

What are your online reading habits like?

The post How Successful People Read Online appeared first on Startgainingmomentum.

How to Keep a Book for Summarizing Books

Merry Christmas friends!

What you do when nobody’s watching matters.

How you spend your holidays matter.

How you spend your free time matters.

These things matter because they say something about who you are.

When you’re at work or in school you have an external pressure imposed on you to perform. On your free time you don’t. Therefore, this is the time when your real self shines through.

That’s why this is the time that it’s most important than you’re consistent in your execution.

Otherwise, you’re just a paper tiger. A person who puts on a show in public. A person who hides the fact that he’s being weak by relying on others for feeling a sense of purpose or getting the motivation to put in the work.

For that reason I’ve been sure not to slack off on my reading in the past week. I’ve read four books, though admittedly two of them were rather short.

Once I finished each of these books I’ve done something very important. I’ve spent some time summarizing the most actionable pieces of information. I’ve written this down in the white book that you see depicted in the image above.

I keep this book specifically for the purpose of summarizing the information of the books I read. This is a great habit and I would recommend anyone who’s not doing it to start.

Let me tell you why I do this.

Learning and Adapting

I spend a lot of time learning new things.

I often decline or ignore offers to hang out or go to social events so that I can read books or practice a skill I’m trying to learn.

To me, learning is not a joke, it’s very serious business. I consider it my job.

I do not want to be average or mediocre. Therefore I must set myself apart by becoming better and more competent. Fortunately, that’s not very hard to do when you learn new things at a faster pace than the average person.

Apart from my hatred of mediocrity, another reason why I place a major importance on learning things is because we humans live by the rule of survival of the most adaptable.

It’s not survival of the fittest – it’s survival of the most adaptable. And the people who learn and apply things the quickest are those who are the most adaptable.

Because I am good at learning things I am not worried that I’ll be left behind and made useless or obsolete by some new trend or technology coming along.

I don’t waste my time fearfully pondering future difficulties. Instead I trust that I’ll learn as I go along – I trust in my ability of adapting to the situation.

Why Should You Summarize Books?

Because summarizing is note taking on steroids.

Not only should you summarize books, but you should summarize every piece of useful information that you come across.

The reason you should do this is twofold:

1.

You need to act while the information is still fresh in mind.

You must write, express, and summarize the information you’ve learned immediately while you’re still seeing the world from this perspective.

You might not realize it, but your frame – the way you interpret information – is constantly changing. As you’re reading a book you’ll become more and more immersed in the author’s way of looking at the world. You’ll start to see the things he speaks about in various situations of your own life.

While you’re still seeing things from this perspective you need to make maximum use of it and put down the core concepts on paper while it’s still fresh in your mind. The thoughts you’re having are often invisible to you right now because you’re too immersed in them. But that’ll change when you review your summarized notes later.

2.

You become better at distilling large chunks of information into the simple essentials.

And that’s always a great skill to have. All leaders are great simplifiers – and you should be too.

By summarizing the things you learn you’ll improve your big-picture thinking and your ability to get down to the core of the message of the book.

The Fallacy that More is Better

If you have any experience of the academic world you know that it secretly encourages and propagates the notion that it’s fancy to write or provide redundant information, in particular in research papers.

A lot of academic people foolishly pride themselves on this, and in university many teachers reward this kind of behavior.

But they’re wrong, and that’s why no one wants to read their boring papers.

Keeping a book for summarizing books is a good way to fight these negative influences if you’ve been poisoned by this fallacy.

Why Summarizing Matters

When you come across intelligent, motivated and successful people you realize that they don’t have that much time. They’re busy perfecting their craft, practicing their skills, and running their businesses.

In other words, they don’t have time for bullshitters or time wasters.

If you want to associate with them you need to say what you want to say and you need to say it now.

I struggle with this myself, but I’ve improved a lot over the past six months.  For example, I’m much better at pitching face-to-face and over email than before as a result of having become more succinct.

I attribute much of this improvement to my summarizing of books, articles and other information.

After the Book is Finished

Now you know why I write book summaries.

But you don’t know how I do it, so let me to explain the process.

I read a lot and I have slightly different systems for taking notes and storing information depending on what I read.

I keep different section in my commonplace book for pdf-files, articles, blog posts, and online reading. If it’s a physical book I’ll write down notes on paper with a multicolored pencil.

When I finish reading a book I will do two things:

Summarize the book in my book summary book.
Do a video log explaining the main concepts and key takeaways from the book.

My Process for Writing Book Summaries

First I go through all my notes from start to finish. Then I begin summarizing the information from the book into my special book summary book by writing the most important things first.

I try to keep it as short as possible and cut whatever information I can.

To do this I ask myself the following questions as I go through the notes:

Will I have use for this information 5+ years into the future?
Can this be cut, or is it essential to remember?
Does this have any practical implication or is it merely cool trivia?

I try to keep my summary to 1-2 pages – and the pages are small: About half the size of an A4 paper. If there’s a lot of useful information in the book I’ll probably write a longer summary.

For example when I read Atlas Shrugged I ended up writing 6 pages, but that book is 1200 pages and 2 of those pages were filled with great quotes from Fransisco D’anconia and John Galt.

Make it Easy to Review

This is the first page in my book for summarizing books. What you see here is the content section. Each line is a book read.

I’ve written the following:

Title
Author
The date I finished the book.
Number of pages

By doing this you’ll make it easier to navigate when it grows.

Know Why You Do This

When you stack up a large number of entries in your book summary book you’ll experience a sense of pride and contentment. Probably because it taps into your evolutionary hoarding instincts.

This is actually good for motivational reasons, but it’s not your main reason for doing this.

You’re doing this to look through the book every once in a while – to rehearse the most important information you have learned.

This book contains only the most concrete, simplified and actionable information out of the books you read; the key takeaways that you’ll want to implement and remember for the rest of your life.

When you summarize books remember to:

Cut what you can – leave only the essentials and the core message.
 Keep only the most actionable and useful information.
Make it easy to review

Now go buy an empty book to write your book summaries in!

The post How to Keep a Book for Summarizing Books appeared first on Startgainingmomentum.

Use Dunbar’s Number to Create Your Own Reality

“What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one..”
- Don Draper

I walk into my corridor kitchen only to find people laying in the couch watching TV.  They are watching some Harry Potter movie. They start complaining loudly —in a surprised way— when suddenly the movie breaks for commercial.

A fat girl yells out:

—I love Christmas because this is the time of the year that they show the best movies!

I’m thinking to myself: what, you can’t download movies any day of the week?  Or is it that you don’t even know what kind of movies you prefer to watch?

The fat girl sees a commercial and screams:

—Ahh, Avatar? I hated that movie, but then I watched it again and kind of liked it…

I ask her why she would possibly watch it again if she hated it.

Guess what she said?

—Well… Uh.. I believe in giving things a second chance.

She was completely serious.

——————————————————

What we have here is a perfect example of how to live your life unconsciously.

This is the kind of person who has no purpose in life.

A person who places zero value on her time.

A person who is content to kill time by any means necessary to carry on her pathetic existence for no other purpose than to…  prolong homeostasis and eat more food?

A person like this is completely stuck in the leisure mindset and will avoid temporary boredom at any cost.

This is the complete opposite of what we’re aiming for.

So how do I avoid becoming one of these people?

By carefully managing your inputs for information, stimulation, and your environment.

Here in this post I’ll go into how you can manage your inputs for information.

But before I get into that I need to tell you into about Dunbar’s Number.

Respect Dunbar’s Number

Dunbar’s Number is a scientific finding within evolutionary psychology which states that humans have a cognitive limit that confines us to being familiar with a maximum of 100-230 other people. For some reason 150 is the number that’s usually being used when speaking about this, and therefore the number I’ll use as well.

So, what does this mean?

It means that:

These 150 people are the ones that you feel a sense of familiarity and connection to — they are the ones you perceive to be part of your tribe. Everyone else is perceived more or less as an outsider, and gets treated with much more suspicion and resistance.
Groups above 150 people tend to get increasingly disorganized the larger they become.

With regards to controlling your inputs for information, we are concerned mainly with the first implication.

But that’s not all.

There’s actually a twist to this — and an important one at that!

The cognitive limitations described by Dunbar’s Number are NOT confined only to how many human beings we perceive as being part of our tribe, but to anything we perceive as being a living entity with a personality.

This includes celebrities, imaginary characters, brands, and other things.

This is a major reason why companies spend massive amounts of money on PR and marketing. It’s because they want their companies to be perceived as a person and become one of your 150 buddies  — they really want to be perceived as part of your tribe.

If you respect Dunbar’s Number you will not allow any of these things to be part of your tribe.

If you respect Dunbar’s Number you’re going to be VERY mindful about what 150 perceived personalities you allow into your life. Since you inherently trust, like, and feel connected to these 150 things, they are going to have a huge influence on how your life is governed.

If you respect Dunbar’s Number you will deliberately avoid poisoning your mind with celebrities, imaginary characters, brands, and other things that don’t serve as positive guideposts or role models for you accomplishing your goals.

Skip all that unconscious bullshit.

What you’ll do instead is to carefully and consciously select the 150 most important influences that you want in your life.

Stop Living in Hyperreality

Dunbar’s Number is also the reason why so many people live in a confused hyperreality.

Hyperreality is defined as “a real without origin or reality”

It’s a hard concept to grasp for most people because they are so immersed in it that they can’t see it. But it’s very obvious to those who aren’t.

This is why I recommend that you stop watching TV — forever.

Since many of people’s 150 most influential sources of information are occupied by useless things, they inevitably get a skewed understanding about what is important in their lives. They are influenced by things such as:

The mainstream media
Coca Cola
Justin Bieber

And this handicaps their ability to critically consider questions about how they should lead their lives.

We are bombarded with more ads, social media, television, and other unnecessary sources of information than we have ever been before.

No one knows the exact amount, but the average person is subjected to about 5000 advertising messages per day.

There’s no doubt that this affects us.

Yes, even you.

So how can I avoid this from happening?

—By managing your inputs for information.

Just like the stupid fat girl from my corridor, most people aren’t very mindful of what sources they get their information from.

They just consume whatever information they can get without thinking about how this aligns with their goals in life.

Why?

Don’t even go there…

Just focus on yourself and manage your inputs for information.

Summary: Manage Your Inputs for Information

Remember Dunbar’s Number and be mindful about what 150 perceived personalities you have in your head.
Drop TV and mainstream media forever. Stop being average, these are activities reserved for the uneducated masses.
Read books and direct your information search to things that have to do with accomplishing your goals.

It’s up to you to build your own reality, step by step – brick by brick, to slowly but surely create a masterpiece.

If you don’t, you’ll automatically be part of the hyperreality that 99% of everyone else is part of. And take a good look at 99% of all people; they’re living vastly below their potential, they are generally unsuccessful and in many cases miserable.

They lack drive.

They’re uncertain about what they want out of life.

They are willing to do whatever seems to be the most fun in this moment because they lack a long-term vision of what they’ll accomplish in life.

The older they get the worse they become; wishfully looking back at their youth making up stories of how cool and great they were (when they really didn’t do shit) – stories that they relive on a daily basis and live vicariously through.

It’s pathetic.

So if you don’t make the decision to step up and own your life —starting by controlling your inputs for information — this is likely going to be the outcome, at least statistically.

Will you allow yourself to be a mere statistic?

The post Use Dunbar’s Number to Create Your Own Reality appeared first on Startgainingmomentum.

Take More Action and Crush Perfectionism by Following this Principle

I’ve been rather busy for the past few months.

I know what you’re thinking.

But Ludvig, being busy is no indicator of productivity. It’s about working smarter, not harder. I think you’re confusing this.

No I’m not.

When I use the word busy I really mean it.

I like being busy because it means I’m getting shit done.

I’m not busy if I have time to piss away on Facebook or Skype chatting to old-time friends.

I’m not busy if I have time to check my phone for calls, text messages, or other notifications.

I’m not busy if I have time to engage in meaningless small talk with uninteresting people.

It’s a semantic difference, but it matters a lot to me because I see many people saying they’re sooo busy and yet they seem to find time to waste on doing these kinds of things.

So, how did I become this busy?

That’s what I’m going to tell you about in this post – how I’ve been using a great strategy for the past six months to become more action-oriented.

By consistently using this strategy I’ve also become less of a “perfectionist” – meaning that I’m more focused on the process of execution than I am about getting everything to be “just right”.

Perfectionism

For the most part, being a perfectionist is a huge time-waster and is therefore a foolish thing to pride yourself on. But knowing that doesn’t make it easier to stop…

6 months ago, when I decided on buying my video camera, I struggled in making that decision. Mainly because I knew absolutely nothing about video equipment. I had to read quite a bit before I understood what it was that I was looking for in a video camera.

I probably spent 10 hours in total, just researching the topic.

I ended up purchasing a cheap video camera for around 1500 SEK – which is a about $230.

The main reason I wanted the video camera was to shoot video logs, but I wasn’t sure about what I needed because I’d never had a video camera before.

The point here is this:

I wasted a lot of time on such an unimportant decision. You can get money back, but not time.

I did the same stupid thing when I first transferred this blog from WordPress.com. I spent way more time than I’d like to admit on getting the right theme – it had to be just perfect.

Like I wouldn’t get another shot at it…

Pathetic.

A theme costs between 20-80 dollars, and I almost wasn’t willing to invest that money in myself.

What does that say about me?

Two things:

That I didn’t fully believe in myself.
That I was pissing away time at non-80/20 activities.

It’s like my web designer friend told me the other day:

 I don’t waste time customizing my clients theme so that it can look like another theme. I buy that theme and bill my client for it, if I don’t already own it.

It would take my friend hours to fix some these theme-specific customizations.  In that time he can solve many more problems and earn more money by just buying the theme – and he knows this so he has no hesitation in doing so. People pay for his know-how, not for his grunt work.

Time is money, and he knows that – because he’s a busy dude.

The 40 > P < 70 Principle

I could have solved both of those two problems much quicker had I stuck to the 40 >P< 70 principle.

It would’ve shattered my pathetic illusion of perfection and kept me on track – it would’ve kept me in momentum by just going with it and trusting myself to think on my feet.

So, what is the 40 >P< 70 principle?

I’ll let Colin Powell, who came up with the concept, explain what it means:

Don’t take action if you only have enough information to give you less than 40 % percent chance of being right, but don’t wait until you have enough facts to be 100% sure, because by then it is almost always too late. Today, excessive delays in the name of information-gathering breeds “analysis paralysis.” Procrastination in the name of reducing risk actually increases risk.

– COLIN POWELL –

(If you have a whiteboard go write this on it immediately and start considering it when you’re making your daily decisions.)

After reading the quote, you’re probably wondering:

How do I know when I’ve achieved 40 to 70 % certainty?

And,

How do I know if I go overboard, above 70 %?

The short answer is, you don’t.

Drop your desire for absolute certainty in taking the right action. It’s better to make 10 decent moves than it is to make 1-3 good moves while missing opportunities.

Drop your wanting to find the perfect answer – it doesn’t exist. Deal with it.

Drop that shit like a rock and learn to just go with it.

Know this:

If you’re slightly uncomfortable about doing a thing it’s usually a good indicator that you need do that thing now. Do NOT wait to do the thing until it’s become fully comfortable – that means you’re wasting time and productivity by prioritizing your sense of comfort over your personal development.
People who succeed do so because they’re willing to go through more trial and error than those who don’t want to succeed as badly.

If you’re willing to do 10 decent moves you’ll likely fail with a few of those.

But that’s a good thing. That comes with being an executor.

That’s a good thing because in failure you learn things. Your blind spots become visible. You notice the things you tend to screw up with after a while as the pattern emerges – and that means that you can fix it faster than you would’ve been able to otherwise.

It’s better to fix your errors now – as early as you can in life – than it is to wait until you reach the breaking point.

It’s the people who don’t fix these things that wind up with midlife crises.

Shatter Uncertainty

When you start thinking in terms of the 40 > P < 70 principle you will eventually condition yourself into becoming more comfortable  coping with uncertain situations.  After you’ve lived in alignment with the principle for some time you’ll soon find relief in the knowledge that,

Yes, I might not have taken the best possible action here. But I executed to the best of my knowledge and that’s all I can do.

Alright.

So now that I’ve acknowledged this, I can more quickly move on to doing the next thing as a result of having dropped unnecessary thoughts that stem from being uncertain whether or not I took the right action.

That means I’m becoming more secure in myself continually taking action.

That means I stop pissing away time trying to find enough information to make me 100% certain of my choice.

Conclusion

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship.

– SETH GODIN –

Don’t strive for perfectionism or total security in your actions.

Don’t waste time trying to find a magic pill or a fool-proof solution – trust that you will eventually find the answers by taking a lot of action and learning through trial and error.

Ship before the product it’s finished.

Pull the trigger before having a perfect aim.

Act while you’re still feeling slightly uncertain or uncomfortable about a thing.

Use the 40 > P < 70 principle as a strategy to govern your decisions and as a guideline for when to take action.

Resources:

Seth Godin: Ship it.

This is a  free 26 page text that will take you about 5 minutes to read and maybe 30-60 if you really think about it and do the exercises. I recommend it. Start by reading the final page.

Colin Powell: Leadership Slides.

This is a Slideshare presentation of 20 pages. It will take you 10 minutes to read. It contains some of the best lessons from Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey, which is a great book. On page 16 you will find the 40 > P < 70 principle.

 

Question: Do you have any strategies for taking action and avoiding information overload?

 

Photo credit: Stuhillphotography

http://www.startgainingmomentum.com/e...

The post Take More Action and Crush Perfectionism by Following this Principle appeared first on Startgainingmomentum.

How to Get on the Radar of Successful People

I felt golden.

I’d got a fully paid graduate job while doing my thesis at a major marketing company – a job many of my peers would kill for.

Then it happened.

Just a few weeks before I was supposed to start working, suddenly the HR person I’d been in contact with told me that due to the major restructuring going on in the company there was no longer any spot there for me.

Ouch. That came like a punch to the stomach.  I’d spent months on getting that job and I’d fixed it far ahead of time for my thesis.

I figured I was safe, but I was wrong – big time.

This whole thing made me rather upset and disappointed at first…

But instead of crying about it I asked myself:

What can I learn from this experience?

I learned that nothing is ever safe. Nothing is for certain until it has actually gone down.

I then got mad as hell and took massive action for two days straight.

After these two days I’d got myself on speaking terms with four other companies and I ended up getting several new offers.

How did I do this?

I did it by being able to get on the radar of successful people.

I did it by leveraging the interactions I’d had with guest lecturers at my school and other successful people outside of school.

I did it by turning cold approaches into warm approaches.

The Strategy

Tell me:

How many times have you been in the same room as some very successful person, but not had the guts to go and speak to that person?

Probably a couple of times.

I see a lot of people who would like to speak to successful people, but I see very few people who actually do it.

Over the past couple of months I’ve approached and contacted a lot of “successful” people – I.e. managers, CEOs, or just generally cool and competent people.

By analyzing the things I’ve done I’ve now come up with a strategy for how you can do it too.

Contacting and getting in touch with people is an invaluable skill– so I figured I would share my strategy here and explain the reasoning behind it.

Prerequisites for Getting on the Radar of Successful People

The first thing you need to know is that my strategy is very situational-based.  To use it you’ll first have to place yourself in an environment where you have some sort of access to successful people.

This means that my strategy works better in person than it does over the phone or via email.

For me to get into this kind of environment, I’ve attended many guest lectures in university as well as a variety of other social events – such as trade fairs, parties, or company visits.

Also, know this:

You can’t sit at home and wonder why no one is reaching out to you. You need to be very proactive about this whole process or it’s not going to work.

Successful people don’t exactly go out of their way to do nice things for people for no reason.

This means that you’ll have to give them one by getting them to invest in you.

Some Brief Advice to People in University/College

Since I know that a fair amount of young people read this blog I decided to write this just for you guys.

As a student, you should choose your classes based on what kind of guest speakers who will come and give lectures.

This is often more important than the content of the course itself.

This is coming from me retrospectively.

I didn’t follow this advice, I didn’t think about it at all.

But I was fortunate in that one of my final courses was jam-packed with influential guest speakers.

If I had to do it over I would have changed the two other final courses I had and chosen courses that had more guest lecturers or company visits.

If you know what’s good for you, make it your goal to talk to each guest lecturer and make it a consistent practice.

Getting to know the right people is a lot more important than getting good grades as a student. Rich people don’t send their kids off to Ivy League colleges for the education primarily, but for the network it provides.

Learning how to learn things is really important, but grades are irrelevant.

Diplomas are bogus. What matters at the end of the day is your ability to produce value, not to that you have some paper with a title.

However, you are fortunate to be in this setting of having access to successful people as a student. Dare to defy the status quo of cowardice and actually make the most out of this opportunity.

My 4-Step Strategy for how to Approach Successful People

This whole strategy is based on talking.

It really helps if the successful person in question has either given or if he/she has done something remarkable.

When I say remarkable I mean just that – something worth remarking on.

The main things that you’re going do is to pay close attention¸ ask questions, and always follow-up on the initial approach. Just don’t follow-up like this.

This isn’t rocket science, but it works like clockwork when you do it consistently.

Here’s how it works:

1. Before

Listen intently; show clearly that you’re interested in the person.  Avoid the #1 deadly mistake of sitting with a laptop or a smartphone. Seriously, don’t do it. If you look at your Facebook you will come across as rude, and disinterested.

2. During the Talk

Ask at least one question to show your interest. This has the added effect of making you stand out from the crowd and building the crucial first step of rapport. You must get the speaker’s attention as early as you can.

You must bridge the gap of audience/speaker, master/student or player/spectator.

A good sign that you’ve succeeded in doing this is if the speaker holds eye contact with you disproportionately compared to the other people (in the crowd).

You might feel the compelled to chicken out at this point due to the discomfort of speaking up in front of people.

Your brain might tell you to shut up; it might tell you that your question is stupid and that others will think you’re wasting their time. (But are you trying to look good or are you trying to accomplish the goal?)

In most cases the question is not stupid at all.

You just think so because you’re afraid, and when you’re afraid your brain comes up with excuses in order to feel safe and comfortable – to maintain homeostasis.

 3. Afterwards

At this point there is either a break or the speech is over. It’s now time to approach the successful person and ask questions. Remember to introduce yourself. A lot of people don’t do this, and it’s stupid.

The first question should be a situational-based question to get the other person’s interest and build rapport.  For example, it could be about some remarkable thing that the person said in his/her speech.

The point is that you need to spark a conversation about something that they will enjoy talking about, and people enjoy talking about the things that they feel they are the authority on.

So, first things first –get the other person to feel good before doing anything else.

The second question you ask can be a canned question.

I often ask successful people something along the lines of:

“What are the 3 books that have made the biggest impact on you?”

Or:

“How do you structure your daily routine to keep up this busy lifestyle of yours?”

Usually I ask something related to self-development, because that’s one of my major interests. This way I can use canned questions without coming across as inauthentic.

The third question you’re going to ask should be a self-centered question to benefit yourself.

For example, I would find out if this person can put me in contact with someone I’d like to reach –  in this case for my thesis job. I might also ask for the other person’s opinion about some goal I have and see if this person can help me somehow.

Successful people will usually be very helpful to you at this point. They will acknowledge your initiative, because it takes balls to walk up to someone and ask for help.

And it takes skills to ask someone for help without coming across as a beggar. Asking for help is a sign of strength – but only when done correctly.

And you’re going to do it correctly if you follow this strategy. You’ll come across as humble and friendly.

4. Finish

To round things up, ask for their card or contact info. Be sure to follow up by sending a good “thank you” email showing your appreciation for them taking time out of their busy schedule to help you.

Break the 4-Step Strategy at Your Own Peril

You can skip the first part of asking questions and listening intently at your own peril.

It could still work.

But the reason why I recommend doing this is because it will increase the likelihood that you get responses on the follow-up email.

Everything hinges on that email – and why the fuck should they answer it if they didn’t like you?

I’ve seen many people approach “shamefully” by speaking out-of-order and cutting directly to the chase of asking for way too large favors – but it rarely works well.

They usually get a cold answer like:

 – Uh yeah.. Get in contact with our HR department and they’ll help you.

Actually they won’t.

I on the hand usually get the massive advantage of the social proof that comes with a warm approach from having this successful person recommend me to their HR department.

Or – optimally – I might get put in contact with someone else through this person. That’s infinitely more powerful.

The point being – you can cold approach, but it rarely works as well.

The Reason Why Most People Don’t Do this

So, why doesn’t everybody do this?

That’s a fair question to ask.

First off, most people are afraid of step #2 – asking the first question needed to establish rapport.

Secondly, most people don’t feel entitled to speak to a successful person. They don’t feel that they’re worthy of taking up this person’s time.

They’re stuck in fear, thinking to themselves:

 – But I have nothing cool to say!

After reading this post I hope you do.

If you’ve listened intently you should be able to ask interesting and relevant questions that relate well with the successful person.

Conclusion: Final Advice on Execution

To finish off I’m going to give you some helpful tips to avoid making common mistakes.

Dare to approach. You won’t get bitten.  Successful people are usually friendly and helpful.
Don’t put yourself down. Successful people want you be successful as well.
Don’t let your brain bullshit you into not asking questions by thinking that the questions are stupid. Ask your questions anyway. If you are interested it will show through despite your nervousness.

Avoid falling in the trap of putting the successful person on a pedestal.

Speak as if you were speaking to a peer.

This could be hard to do at first because it’s human nature to cower to authoritative people. What you need to do instead is to acknowledge them as equals and have a normal conversation.

If you follow this advice I’m sure you’ll do well rather quickly.

Try it out for yourself and stick to the strategy.

Or maybe you have a strategy of your own?

Do you have any tips of your own for contacting, approaching, and getting on the radar of successful people?

The post How to Get on the Radar of Successful People appeared first on Startgainingmomentum.

Ray Dalio: The 5 Criteria for Success

Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund. He has been ranked as one of the 50 most influential people in the world. He grew up in a middle class home as the only child of two Italian-American parents and started investing at age 12.

In short, he is a pretty badass dude who went from very humble background and has made it to the world elite.

The best advice I can give you is to ask yourself what you want, then ask ‘what is true’, and then ask yourself ‘what should be done about it’. If you honestly ask and answer these questions you will move much faster towards what you want to get out of life than if you don’t!

– RAY DALIO –

In the book Bridgewater Principles (included in the bottom) Dalio describes his own five main criteria for success in life; regardless of how one defines “success”.

Theoretically speaking all these five criteria are pretty easy to understand. But there’s a huge difference between theory and practice: it takes a long time to not only understand, but to fully embody all the five criteria.

The first of the five criteria for success is…

1. Letting Pain Stand in the Way vs Accepting and Managing Pain

Once you accept that playing the game will be uncomfortable, and you do it for a while, it will become much easier … When you think that it’s too hard, remember that in the long run, doing the things that will make you successful is a lot easier than being unsuccessful

– RAY DALIO –

People who fail to overcome the initial pain, effort, or boredom that is required to execute on a long-term goal tend to not make it that far.

On the other hand, those who accept that they will have to go through some tedious work at first in order to accomplish epic things will look upon the pain as temporary and see it as a necessary evil while focusing on the light in the end of the tunnel.

To illustrate this Dalio uses the example of how there is good pain and there is bad pain. Good pain comes from pushing through towards one’s goals, bad pain is what we will end up with if we don’t go after that which we desire.

When we accept the temporary pain that comes from overcoming challenges we are in what Dalio refers to as the stretch-zone.  It’s similar to conducting strenuous physical exercise; positive pain is the pain that comes from growing.

2. Avoid Facing Harsh Realities vs Facing Harsh Realities

Remember that identifying problems is like finding gems embedded in puzzles; if you solve the puzzles you will get the gems that will make your life much better.

 For every mistake that you learn from you will save thousands of similar mistakes in the future, so if you treat mistakes as learning opportunities that yield rapid improvements you should be excited by them.

– RAY DALIO –

Surely you have some friend who is pretty mediocre in all aspects of his life, but still sees himself as an übermensch despite having NOTHING to back that belief up.

It’s like this friend of yours is blind to reality – and not in a positive Steve-Jobs-kind-of-way of distorting reality to his advantage.

It’s a lot better to face harsh realities RIGHT NOW rather than avoiding them. Ray Dalio meditates every day in order to better face reality and prescribes the same to others. (I concur.)

People who don’t face harsh realities overstay their visit in the comfort zone while gradually becoming more and more passive until the comfort zone eventually turns into anxiety mixed with pain and eventually swallows them whole.

People who face harsh realities understand that they are not perfect, nor will they ever be, but yet they consistently try to adjust to the feedback given to them and they strive to become better by acting in alignment with reality.

The sooner you can face a harsh reality, the sooner you can start to change it.

In the case of your friend it would be better to face the harsh reality that he currently sucks at life and needs to correct to the feedback that reality is giving him. Only then can he work on his weaknesses in a sincere effort to improve.

The bottom line is this: you cannot wipe reality out, but reality can wipe you out.

3. Worrying about Looking Good vs Accomplishing the Goal

People who worry about looking good typically hide what they don’t know and hide their weaknesses, so they never learn how to properly deal with them and these weaknesses remain impediments in the future.

T o test if you are worrying too much about looking good, observe how you feel when you find out you’ve made a mistake or don’t know something

– RAY DALIO –

Are you playing not to lose or are you playing to win?

If you are playing not to lose you are valuing your social image above the accomplishment of the goal.

If you are playing to win you accept that you’re going to fall face down and make a fool of out yourself every once in a while and it’s going to be embarrassing or painful in the short-term, but in the long-term it is going to be A LOT more satisfying.

If you are playing to win temporary setbacks will not deter you because you know and accept the fact that it’s impossible to win big without failing first.

People who cling to the idea of thinking that they know everything are scared to ask questions because they are afraid it might make them seem ignorant. People who think that they are perfect are afraid to do anything that is socially questionable and might make them lose face.

The result in both of the cases above is that these people will end up spending their time and focus on maintaining current appearances rather than to actually make forward progress.

To prevent this from happening to you, constantly ask yourself this one question:

Am I currently trying to keep up my appearance so that I look good, cool, or socially correct, or am I disregarding that in priority of accomplishing my goals?

Play. To. Win.

4. Short-Term Thinking vs Long-Term Thinking.

It is important not to confuse ‘goals’ and ‘desires’. Goals are the things that you really want to achieve, while desires are things you want that can prevent you from reaching your goals.

– RAY DALIO –

One of the major differences between people who are successful at accomplishing their goals vs those who are not is whether they are able to defer immediate gratification, develop their long-term thinking, and keep track of their goals.

People with good work habits have to-do lists that are reasonably

prioritized, and they make themselves do what needs to be done. By contrast, people with poor work habits almost randomly react to the stuff that comes at them, or they can’t bring themselves to do the

things they need to do but don’t like to do (or are unable to do).

– RAY DALIO –

People who regularly give into their desires for instant gratification haven’t really learned to think in terms of second-, third, or fourth-order consequences. They don’t see how the actions they’re about to take might induce a downward spiral. They don’t realize how small things accumulate into big things – or as I call it, the cumulative effect.

5.  Blaming others vs Taking Responsibility

By and large, life will give you what you deserve and it doesn’t give a damn what you ‘like’. So it is up to you to take full responsibility to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it, and then to do those things — which often are difficult but produce good results — so that you’ll then deserve to get what you want.

– RAY DALIO –

To avoid taking personal responsibility is an indicator that you’re being run by your brain’s inherent mechanism to conserve energy. I refer to this state as being deeply in homeostasis. This is how the brain keeps you from changing.

Why would the brain do such a thing, you wonder?

Because change requires the expenditure of lots and lots of energy and the brain is a lazy bastard that wants to stay the same.

People who are stuck playing the blame game will avoid taking personal responsibility at all costs. That is the safe thing to do, and that way they don’t have to change because if something goes wrong it’s not their fault because they never assumed responsibility to begin with so they cannot be blamed, and if they aren’t blamed then they don’t have to change!

Sounds like a really shrewd strategy for long-term success, wouldn’t you say?

Or not.

The fact is that success – including wealth – stems from elevating your mindset and building your character over a long period of time. That was why Henry Ford said that even if they took away everything he owned he would still be able to replicate his entire organization in a matter of years.

Ultimately you will never build character unless you take personal responsibility. It’s really that simple.

I really recommend reading the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. The book is a 1200 page long leviathan that really hammers into you the importance of taking personal responsibility for achieving the things you want out of life. I suspect Ray Dalio has read it a couple of times.

Conclusion and Study Resources:

In summary, I believe that you can probably get what you want out of life if you can suspend your ego and take a no-excuses approach to achieving your goals with open-mindedness, determination, and courage, especially if you rely on the help of people who are strong in areas that you are weak.

–RAY DALIO –

Conclusion

The five criteria for success are:

      Letting Pain Stand in the Way vs Accepting and Managing Pain
      Avoid Facing Harsh Realities vs Facing Harsh Realities
      Worrying about Looking Good vs Accomplishing the Goal
      Short-Term Thinking vs Long-Term Thinking.
      Blaming others vs Taking Responsibility:

Also, some advice to people my age:

The main difference between school and business is that not only can you break the rules, but in many cases you should.

In school you are usually not allowed to enlist the help of others to work in a symbiotic way that makes up for each other’s weaknesses, in the real world you have to do that in order to achieve maximum leverage of your time.

It is often better to work smarter – I.E in a way and in a business area that gives rise to less competition than it is to work harder in a way and in a business area where competition is plentisome.

This is something that the average Joe or the corporate guy sitting in his cubical does not understand. They think that if they just work harder they will eventually get rich or be successful.

Study Resources:

Bridgewater Principles: Here you can read the entire book. It is 123 pages in total, the first 38 pages are about Ray Dalio’s personal opinions about life, success, and self-development. The rest of the book is dedicated to management and organizational strategies. I warmly recommend it. It is on my list of books to re-read.
Short video of Ray Dalio giving tips on various things.

 

Question:  which of five criteria for success are you most focused on right now, and how is that going?

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The 2-Day Fast

Recently there has sprung up a fad called the 5:2 Diet. The two-day fast is not to be confused with that.

About a month ago I was asked by a few people about this 5:2 Diet, and it sounded a lot like my own special fasting strategy.

But it wasn’t.

The 5:2 Diet is some adapted version made for weaklings where you are “allowed” to eat 500-600 calories a day for two days of the week and then eat completely normally for the other five days.

So, it’s not fasting, it’s just calorie restriction, and it’s vastly inferior to my 2-day fasting strategy for reasons the following reasons:

The 2-Day Fast is a great exercise for Breaking out of Homeostasis.
The 2-Day Fast usually gives you a natural high.
The 2-Day Fast gets you ripped pretty damn fast.

The 2-Day Fast is a 40-48 hour period where you don’t consume more than circa 50 calories at a time to avoid the activation of the digestive system.

Eating Dulls the Mind

In the our bodies we have something called the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and  the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The ANS has to do with being active and doing stuff, the PNS has to do with resting and conserving energy.

Your body can only activate one of these systems at a time. Guess which system most people spend the majority of  their time being in?

- The PNS.

When you eat you are activating the PNS and it puts your body in a state of “rest-and-digest” that makes you mentally lazy and demotivated – just like a grazing cow!

The 2-Day Fast will snap you out of that trance in a major way.

The 2-Day Fast as a Way to Break out of Homeostasis

Longer period of fasting – just like physical exercise – are great ways to BOOH  because feedback comes quickly and it’s very easy to see how your brain and body will try to fool you into quitting. It’s all good practice because it’s so damn predictable.

When you do it a few times you know exactly what’s happening beforehand so you can more easily brace yourself against it.

Fasting involves an easily observable plateau during which you’ll experience an initial hunger and a hormonal urge to eat in order to keep you in homeostasis.

This hunger-plateau is hard for most people because they trust in the feedback from their brain and body too much. They believe everything they experience – and this feedback is telling them to eat quickly or something dangerous is going to happen.

Seriously, brace yourself for this oncoming barrage of negative emotions and strange voices in your head telling you to stop what you’re doing.

These are the lies your brain and body tell you to keep itself in homeostasis.

However, it’s only temporary and  it will drop away very quickly once you break the hunger-plateau.

The 2-Day Fast as a Way to get Naturally High

When you don’t eat for a while (for me usually after 20 hours) your ghrelin levels will increase and this gives your brain surges of dopamine which makes you more curious and improves learning and memory.

This makes reading or studying great activities to undertake while doing a 2-Day Fast.

I once sat and read for over 24 hours straight reading a book about Napoleon only with the exception of bathroom breaks.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as immersed into a book as I was then.

Two things usually happen to me once I get through the hunger-plateau:

The most notable one being that I experience an increase in cognitive and introspective abilities somewhere around the 20-hour mark after beginning the fast. This is accompanied by slight shivers as I slowly begin to get a bit colder and get a constant tingling of energy in the head.  These things remain with me throughout the rest of the fast.
Following this, I start getting into an incredibly deep state of focus. I can literally feel my brain flex. My brain is now in an activated state for many hours to come.  This feels very euphoric. It’s hard to describe it to someone who hasn’t experienced it. It’s like being curious about everything.

This is likely the ghrelin-induced dopamine high kicking in.

The 2-Day Fast as a Way to get Ripped

This one is a no-brainer.

If you don’t eat for 40-48 hours that’s a lot of time you spend in fat-burning mode (ketosis) reducing your amount of body fat.

I dropped from 77 kilos to 70 kilos in a couple of months by using this strategy, but then I stopped it because it was too effective and I got scared of losing more weight.

I still use it occasionally but not from a weight-loss standpoint.

I might go on a 2-Day Fast if I am super busy and need to get things done, or as a practice to break out of homeostasis and make sure my willpower stays strong.

Action Plan: Here’s what you Do

Depending on how strong your willpower is it’s going to be more or less easy to do the fast.

To make it easier you can:

Drink plenty of water mixed with glutamine.

I cannot recommend drinking glutamine on a daily basis strongly enough. Even if you’re not fasting.

I randomly found out that glutamine makes longer times of fasting much easier without losing out on the beneficial effects. Just make sure you don’t go over 50 calories at a time.

Glutamine will not activate your digestive system because it is absorbed before that.

Glutamine is awesome for getting a healthier stomach and to recover from injuries or sicknesses. I used to have candida albicans and my gut would swell up big time and get gassy, but that’s for another post. Glutamine definitely played a big part in curing that.

Drink coffee or tea however much you feel like.

Coffee in combination with the ghrelin-induced dopamine high that hits after around 20 hours gets you into a state of fanatical focus and single-mindedness.

Summary: Breaking it Down

The 2-Day Fast is great because it’s:

Good practice for making a lasting decision and practicing your willpower.


Good exercise to learn more about your body’s devious mechanisms to maintain homeostasis. If you can do 2 day fasts you will become a lot better at breaking out of homeostasis because you will become better at detecting ways that your brain will try to fool you by means of rationalizations and excuses for WHY YOU SHOULD EAT – and go against your decision.


Often yields a natural high that makes you feel very clear-headed, focused, and overall awesome.  It helps you keep focused much longer and it allows for a higher degree of immersion that food breaks usually ruin otherwise. I recommend reading or studying during this period as your ability to learn is improved.


It helps you burn fat by switching on ketosis instead of glycolysis.


It’s very freeing to find that you don’t really have to eat all the time. It breaks the cycle of incessant stimulation.

To make it the 2-Day Fast easier:

Drink about 5g of glutamine every 3-5 hours.


Drink coffee or tea. They both suppress hunger and do not contain any calories.

You will easily notice if you break your fast by consuming too many calories, because then your stomach will start to growl and you will feel the need to start eating – you will get hungry again. Your brain will stop being clearheaded and will start thinking about food instead.

On working out:

I often break my 40-48h fast by drinking some coffee, creatine, glutamine, and heading to the gym. I usually lift for about an hour, then I tend to find myself getting tired.

Some people may not feel comfortable doing this, but ultimately it all comes down to self-experimentation. So it’s up for you to try it, but I wouldn’t recommend doing extended cardio.

What’s your take on longer periods of fasting than IF (16-24h), have you tried it?

 

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