December 2008

Start Moving Towards The Life of Your Dreams TODAY

by Vlad Dolezal on December 30, 2008

Do you want to live the life of your dreams?

Here’s a fun fact – most aspects of your dream life don’t cost much money, or that much effort. It just takes a decision, and a little bit of action! And also a bit of awareness of exactly what you want, which is what I’ll help you with today.

I heard from several great personal growth authors that they do a big review of their life goals every year – so I thought I might start as well. And December seems a  good time for that.

So I went through a small mountain of stuff on goal-setting, life-reviewing and general big-picture-thinking. And I’m bringing you a very concise  summary of the best stuff I found. I also give you a couple of links to the full content below. It’s a really good idea to follow the links I give you today.

Your Ideal Life

This exercise comes from the marketing guru Paul Myers. Apart from being a great marketer, he’s also a bit of a free spirit and self-improvement hobbyist, and this second side of him is what you’re going to see today.

Basically, you imagine an ideal day of your ideal life in great detail, all the way from how and where you wake up, through what you do and who you spend the time with, hour by hour, up to the point when you go to sleep at night. Just doing this alone would probably make you think of a lot of ways you could bring your life closer to the life of your dreams. And you will automatically start taking some actions to get there.

But Paul also takes you through a bunch of exercises to really make sure you realize exactly what you want, how much it will take to get there, and how you can get start moving towards it as quickly as possible. Get a copy of the exercise here. Yes, it’s a good idea to follow this link.

The Guide to World Domination

This one comes from Chris Guillebeau, the author of the awesome blog Art of Nonconformity. In his guide to World Domination, Chris talks about how to stop other people’s expectations controlling your life, and also guides you through the two most important questions that guide your life (I fully agree with his choice of questions).

I definitely recommend that you grab a copy of the free manifesto A Brief Guide to World Domination. (This is another link you really might want to click on)

Some of my own ideas

Okay, the ideas below are my own, although I probably got bits and pieces from other people. I just can’t remember :) .

One of the things I did was simply grab a big piece of blank A4 paper and a pen. Then I thought about the major areas of my life at the moment. I came up with health, relationships, mission in life, blogging, and social life. Then I summed up all the great things that happened in each of those categories in 2008. To grossly understate things… a bloody LOT of awesome stuff happened in my life in 2008 :) . Which reminds me of a quote…

We tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a day, but underestimate what we can achieve in a year.
- Chris Guillebeau

Then I took another page, and wrote my major goals for the same main categories for 2009. (This made me realize I have no idea how to make progress on my mission in life. But I’m on my way to figuring it out, thanks to Paul Myers’ Ideal Life exercise.)

If you want to do the same exercise I did, feel free. Pick the main life categories important to you. Some might be pretty similar to mine (health?), while others might not (blogging?). I like starting the exercise with looking over the successes of 2008, since you tend to get really surprised with how much you can achieve in a year. That gives you some motivation and inspiration for the next year :)

Then just pick a couple of major goals for each of your categories (I picked roughly three for each). The goals should be a bit of a stretch. As I heard someone say (can’t remember who) – If I achieve 100% of my goals, I’ll start to worry I’m setting them too low. Achieving about 80% of your yearly goals should be fine.

What’s up with all this goal-setting?

Let me answer that with a quote (it’s either from Chris Guillebeau or Paul Myers. I can’t remember which):

I’d rather work poorly on important things, than work efficiently on unimportant ones.

I’m hoping I helped you do that at least a bit today. (Do really click the two important links. The stuff there is much more in-depth and… well… awesome :) )

I noticed a lot of stagnation in my life was simply because I wasn’t aware of exactly what I wanted. Once I spent some time thinking about what I want and how I can achieve it, I started working towards it much more consistently. Yes, I still have fun while doing it :) . In fact, I have MORE fun now that I spent time thinking about things I really enjoy, because I took some simple actions to add more of them to my life. (like a quick google search and visiting a local hobbyist club.)

And that’s really what the exercises I gave you today are about. To get you thinking, and raise your awareness of what you really want, and how easy it is to get there. Happy New Year!

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On One Year of Blogging

by Vlad Dolezal on December 26, 2008

Happy Birthday An Amazing Mind! Today, my blog officially turns one year old! Man… it feels like it was a lot longer :)

This is going to be a pretty self-indulgent post. So if you don’t care about me or my blog much, and instead want information that will help YOU, feel free to skip this post. I’ll be back with useful information on Tuesday!

The past

It all started one day when I read a post on Coding Horror. In there, Jeff recommended starting a blog – hey, it won’t hurt, you’ll get all those awesome ideas you have out into the wild, and who knows… your blog might even become popular!

So I started a blog! I bought a domain name (that was a VERY wise decision, as it turned out – plus they cost like $10 a year anyway), got free hosting at blogger and went for it!

I was really excited, I was planning to churn out 5 posts a week, become famous, become a millionaire! Sure enough, I burnt out within 10 days, and didn’t post to my blog for about three weeks after that. In fact, my blog might have died right then and there, and nobody would have ever even heard about it. But somehow, I picked myself together. I realized I couldn’t maintain the crazy tempo, and decided to blog twice a week.

So I was steadily blogging for a few weeks. I think less than a dozen people have ever seen my blog in those days. Then I read some tips on writing interesting articles, and used them together with an idea I had – I wrote about Why Linux Doesn’t Spread. I thought that post was better than my usual stuff, so I posted it to a couple of social news sites. Others apparently agreed. The post hit the front page of Slashdot, I received over 100 000 visitors in the next 24 hours, and the rest is history.

Here’s my tip for you. If you’re considering starting a blog, but aren’t sure, remember the 70% solution:

Once you are about 70% certain of the right course of action, just DO IT!

Maybe you’re about 70% certain you want to start a blog?

The present

So where is my blog at the moment?

I’m just about to release my free e-book, 5 Elements of An Amazing Mind. That’s a big milestone for me :)

I also continue to publish blog posts regularly. Because providing regular good content is the most important thing to me.

I don’t measure my success as a blogger by the number of page views, or the number of comments. I measure it by the number of RSS subscribers – because when you subscribe, it means I have consistently provided you with quality material, and you want more. And that’s what matters to me. (If you’re a regular reader but you don’t know what RSS feeds are, don’t worry. I’ll explain them in a blog post a week from now.)

The future

And finally, my plans for this blog!

I’m planning to expand this blog, and start earning some money. Ideally, I would like to earn my living through this blog. (Okay, that’s the medium-term view. Say, for the next 5 years. Long-term, I would like to reform the Western education systems, and I won’t achieve that just by blogging :) )

I’m planning to sell e-books packed full of useful information, as my main source of income. They’re more effective than obnoxious ads anyway :)

Also, it looks like I’ll be starting a joint math blog with a couple of friends from my course next year. Finally a chance to get all my random ideas about maths out there, without overburdening you non-math-geeky folks :) (We’ll probably start the blog on 1st February, so don’t get too excited just yet :p)

All in all, I’d say 2009 is going to be an awesome year! Set sails on full throttle, and ahooooy!

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You have a chance to review my newest free e-book!

by Vlad Dolezal on December 23, 2008

For the last six months or so, I have been working on a free e-book. I call it 5 Elements of An Amazing Mind. And that’s what it is – 5 chapters densely packed with the best personal growth information I have found, mixed with a dash of my attitude towards life :) . The 5 most important aspects that are guaranteed to accelerate your personal growth, in 36 exciting to-the-point pages!

And you can help me with that!

I’ll send you a copy of 5 Elements of An Amazing Mind, and you can review it for me and send me your comments within a week of receiving it.

If you’re interested, just e-mail me at vlad@anamazingmind.com. I’ll send the e-book for review to the next 15 people who contact me. (Update: Well, the 15 copies have been sent off :) . Thanks to everyone who offered to review the e-book! And if you offered but didn’t make the first 15, thank you too, and I hope you enjoy the e-book when it’s released to the general public.)

I’ll be straight with you. You’re not getting any bonus stuff compared to the general public. I was going to include a free bonus with this request, but I realized that if something is good enough as a free bonus to this, it’s good enough for a blog post, where it can help more people. And if it isn’t good enough for a blog post, I would be insulting you by giving it to you as a free bonus. (I also thought of giving you a special signed version, but I realized that’s a bit ridiculous with an e-book. Unless I electronically signed it with my PGP key or something :p) So, you’re getting the same thing you would get if you waited 2 weeks to download the official public release. Oh well :)

If you do e-mail me asking for a copy of the e-book, I would like something in return:

1. A short testimonial:

  • 2 to 3 short paragraphs
  • to the point
  • specific

Basically saying what you liked about the e-book, and being specific about it. A generic sentence like “The whole e-book is awesome” is nice, but I would really like to know the specific things you liked!

2. Any other comments, questions and suggestions you might have

The official release date for my e-book is two weeks from now (Tuesday), so please send in your comments a couple of days before that. You too can help others grow by doing that :)

Cheers,
Vlad

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Dispelling the Low Energy Myth

by Vlad Dolezal on December 20, 2008

Do you sometimes feel tired during the day? Do you think it’s because you’ve run out of something called energy? I’ve got news for you. 90% of the time that’s NOT the case!

We humans are not like a tank of fuel – being full of energy meaning happy and excited and being empty meaning tired or depressed. We’re more like… guitar strings. We vibrate at a certain frequency, and the higher frequency we vibrate about, the more happy and excited we are!

Imagine you’re holding a guitar. You pluck one of the strings, and then, as you hear the tone, you tighten one of those knobly bits at the back. You’ll hear the pitch rise. That’s analogous to us humans getting more excited and energetic.

So when you’re feeling tired or bored, most of the time it’s not because you’ve run out of energy. It’s because you’ve been doing some kind of activity that lowers the energy level at which you vibrate. That’s why a boring assignment can “tire you out” within 15 minutes, while you can keep going with a fun activity for HOURS! Even if the fun activity requires just as much focus and thinking.

Sure, there are times when you actually deplete the glucose levels in your brain. That’s when you really, physically, run out of energy. But to do that, you’ll need hours of sustained focus. And a simple 20-minute nap will get you up and running again. If you’re feeling tired within 30 minutes of starting a task, it probably means you aren’t tired – just bored.

Sympathetic resonance

When you have two strings of the same pitch, and you pluck on of them, the other one will automatically start vibrating as well. We humans also operate like that, and a bit more! When a fun and exciting person comes in our vicnity, we automatically start vibrating at a higher energy level just by being around them. It’s like they literally pull our energy level up!

And yet high-energy people don’t lose any of their energy by helping others! Because it’s not like they’re giving away energy! They simply vibrate at a high frequency, and by natural resonance everybody around starts vibrating at a higher energy level too!

Have you ever wondered what charisma is? It’s when you vibrate at a high energy level, and aren’t influenced by what others think. Pretty much like a tuning fork. So an inspiring leader will keep vibrating at the same frequency, and others will simply feel drawn to them, and naturally start vibrating closer to the leader’s pitch.

Energy levels vs. Energy flow

If you believe it’s all about energy levels, you can fall into another trap. You’ll think energy is a precious resource and you have to conserve it and keep it for later. That’s like thinking your muscles have a limited amount of strength, and you need to conserve it for later. You’ll end up with much weaker muscles than someone who uses them every day.

And the same thing goes for exercising. You might think exercising drains your energy levels. But it actually IMPROVES your blood circulation and nutrient transfers! You’ll get more glucose and oxygen into your brain, which means you’ll have MORE energy to work with!

Sure, you will feel tired out after a good long exercise session. You’ll just feel like crashing into bed and having a gooood long rest. Once that feeling passes though, you’ll feel more calm and energetic for DAYS afterwards!

Also, if you feel REALLY tired when you exercise, maybe you’re just exercising in a boring way? I was never a big fan of going to the gym – it feels way too much like work. I prefer to get my exercise in a fun way – rock-climbing, jiu jitsu, parkour, etc.

So if you see someone who can focus for hours when your brain already feels like a pile of mashed potatoes, it’s not because they saved up some “energy reserve” by spending two weeks at the beach. It’s because their energy flow is more efficient.

Raise your pitch

It’s time for some simple, actionable tips! Let’s raise your pitch!

1. Hang out with people that raise your energy levels

These are usually fun and high-energy people. If you see a person and they just naturally bring a smile on your face, you found the right person.

2. Eliminate boring tasks from your life

Mentally challenging tasks don’t drain your energy the most. Boring tasks do! So take some time to figure out how to eliminate them from your life. Maybe you really like your job… but you spend 20% of the time on boring tasks you don’t want to do? Try negotiating them out of your job description!

3. Improve your energy flow

You can also improve the physical flow of energy in your body. This is a pretty complex topic, so I can only skim the surface here. Thankfully, I’ve covered this in much more detail in the first chapter of my upcoming e-book, _5 Elements of An Amazing Mind_. In there, you will find:

  • a simple technique to make you more calm and focused within minutes
  • how to exercise without the dreaded “going to the gym” (at least _I_ never liked the gym. If you enjoy it, that’s cool.)
  • how to find foods that are best for YOUR energy levels – without worrying about fancy diets or nutritional charts
  • and 4 more chapters full of completely new material!

The e-book is coming out within the next 3 weeks! And you might have a chance to get your hands on it even before that, so stay tuned!

Just so you don’t say I left you without giving you any actual tips on the last point, here is one:

  • Foodstuffs packed full of sugar will give you a glucose rush for 15 minutes and then make you crash and burn even harder. But if those 15 minutes of focus are all you need, feel free to eat that chocolate bar!

So remember… If you’re feeling low energy, ask yourself if you’re really tired or just bored. If you’re tired, take a nap. If you’re bored, eliminate the boring tasks from your life.

Adios!

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Multitasking vs Singletasking? Nah… They’re BOTH Awesome!

by Vlad Dolezal on December 16, 2008

If you’ve been reading self-improvement blogs for a while, you’ve probably heard this a dozen times: Multitasking is evil! Multitasking is bad!! Get rid of distractions!!! Focus on a single task!!!!

Then there are a few lone mavericks who argue the opposite case. Just this week, I’ve read two diametrically opposite views: Taming The Web 2.0 Mind and In Defense of Multitasking.

And I, being the scatterbrained nutjob I am (I like to call it “considering different points of view”), will tell you they’re BOTH right!

Multitasking is fun!

Let’s start with the main point. Multitasking is fun! It feels very much like flipping through TV channels. No one knows why we guys love flipping through TV channels so much. We just do. (Okay, I’m not being fair. I’m sure some evolutionary psychologist somewhere figured out exactly the reason why. It probably has something to do with the mating habits of Borneo monkeys, and the evolutionary advantage of the TV flipping gene.)

(And yes, I actually like and appreciate evolutionary psychologists.)

(I like monkeys too by the way. Though I like penguins better. So if you want to get me a Christmas present, anything with penguins will make me happy!)

Ok, where was I? Oh yeah. Multitasking.

It’s simply fun to be scatterbrained. I sometimes work on 3 or 4 unrelated tasks online, while simultaneously chatting with a friend and Stumbling Upon websites. And when I momentarily lose focus, I don’t need to force myself to refocus. I simply alt-tab between browser windows. It’s just like changing the TV channel. Effortless.

This allows me to get the tasks done while casually browsing the web. It simply doesn’t feel like work. It takes longer, but I actually get the stuff done, instead of procrastinating!

Singletasking is productive!

Then there are tasks that are just made for singletasking. A distraction will completely throw you off, and you’ll need several minutes to refocus. And if you get distracted several times in a row, you might as well pack up for the day. If you’ve ever tried studying in a frequented spot at the university, had a few friends interrupt you with questions, got a text message, had another few friends walk up to say hi, and realized you’ve been sitting there for half an hour and you’ve only answered one small part of one question, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Singletasking is insanely productive. You simply sit down, and get a huge chunk of useful work done at once. You become immersed in it, completely consumed by it, to the point that it doesn’t feel like work anymore.

If you keep getting distracted, it might be for a couple of reasons:

1. You didn’t turn off the distractions

If you get an annoying pop-up every time you get an e-mail, have your phone ready to interrupt you with a ring just when you get in the flow, and have your door open to others coming in and distracting you, guess what. You WILL get distracted :) ! Turning the obvious distractions off is the first step.

2. You WANT to get distracted because you find the task boring

This used to be an extremely common reason why I kept getting distracted. Lately, it’s been happening a lot less, because I took some active steps to avoid having to do boring stuff. For example, I rearranged my priorities – at the university, instead of focusing on grades I focus on learning. So when I get a homework, I only do the interesting questions that will help me learn more. I simply leave the tedious boring questions unanswered.

And you can always turn the work into fun! It’s a great way of curing procrastination.

3. You can’t focus because you’re tired

Your brain isn’t designed to work full-blast non-stop. You simply deplete the glucose levels in your brain, and they take some time to restore. You need frequent short (as in 5-minute-short) breaks, and longer breaks every couple of hours. In fact, here are the two best solutions when you’re too tired to focus:

  • a 20 minute nap
  • a long nap (like 2 hours)

It’s quite easy to confuse being too tired with being bored with the task. But from my experience, here are two simple indicators that you’re tired:

  • you’re craving something sweet
  • if you close your eyes for a few seconds, you just want to KEEP them closed. Forever.

Yeah, sometimes the best solution when you’re craving something sweet is to… eat something sweet! But more often than not, this will only get you going for another 15 minutes, and then you’ll crash even harder. A nap is MUCH more effective!

Summary

Focus on one task if you need to. Use the above methods to avoid getting distracted. If you keep getting distracted without an obvious cause, maybe the task isn’t worth doing? And if you don’t need super-sharp focus to get something done, feel free to multitask! It’s fun!

By the way, did you know somebody found a lolcat picture from 1905? Amazing!

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An Amazing Mind – The Manifesto

by Vlad Dolezal on December 13, 2008

Important note for RSS subscribers:

Before I get on to the main article, I’ve got an important note for you. In a few weeks’ time, I will be releasing a free e-book via my RSS feed. Unfortunately, to get the e-book, you need to be subscribed to the feed of my blog hosted on feedburner. Due to my own mistake (sorry), about 15% of you are subscribed to the wrong feed.

(If you don’t know anything about RSS feeds, ignore this for now. You’ll have a chance to find out soon.)

How do you check you’re subscribed to the right feed? Scroll to the bottom of this post. If you see two small links saying something along the lines of “Stumble This!” and “3 Comments on this item”, congratulations! You’re subscribed to the right feed! If you don’t see anything like that, please subscribe to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/AnAmazingMind

Thanks for your attention!

An amazing Mind – The Manifesto

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’re probably wondering – What exactly IS “An Amazing Mind”?

Hmm. Let’s see. It’s a mind. It’s amazing. … Okay, that wasn’t the best explanation… Let me start by telling you what it’s not. It’s not me implying I have a super awesome mind. In fact, my mind is pretty average.

An Amazing Mind is about the philosophy of my blog. It’s not even an actual thing. It’s more like a… mirage in the desert. Something you keep going towards, but never quite attain it. Consider this story (I’ve told it before):

In one advanced rock-climbing class, the instructor devised an interesting test to see which of the beginners were ready to join the advanced class. He had them climb a mountain with a fake top. That’s basically a spot where it looks like the top of the mountain from below, but once you get there, you find out you’ve got plenty more climbing ahead of you.
The instructor then hid behind a rock at the fake top, and watched the students’ reactions as they reached the fake top and discovered they have a lot more climbing ahead of them. Those who looked disappointed were politely refused entry to the advanced class. But those whose eyes have lit up at the prospect of more climbing were welcomed with open arms!

The instructor knew his stuff. Rock-climbing isn’t about getting to the top. It’s about enjoying the journey. And that’s what An Amazing Mind is about.

In martial arts, there isn’t a point where you can say “There, I now know everything there is to know about the martial art. Now I can just lean back and do nothing for the rest of my life.” Martial arts are about constantly improving yourself. Even after being a black belt for 30 years, you still have loads to learn. And that’s what An Amazing Mind is about.

It’s the symbolic ideal mind you keep aiming for. Of course you never reach it. It’s like some computer games magazines – they used to rate games from 1 to 10. But some games that weren’t quite perfect started getting 10, which was surely supposed to mean absolute perfection? So the magazines included 11 in their ratings. It would represent the unattainable perfection that computer games should strive for. Similarly, An Amazing Mind is something you can never attain, but it keeps you on track, constantly growing and improving your own mind.

In other words, An Amazing Mind is about:

  • becoming more knowledgeable every day
  • becoming happier every day
  • becoming more productive
  • becoming more authentic

Finally, I’d like to quote from Steve Pavlina’s article How to get from a 7 to a 10. His 10 is pretty much the same thing I call An Amazing Mind:

As you begin charging ahead towards your 10, youll eventually discover that there is no 10, at least not in the sense of a fixed position. It was just a mirage. You may reach the 10 you defined back when you were a 7, but once you reach it, youll see a new 10 off in the distance. There will always be another pot of gold ahead of you.

The real 10 is not some position. Its the path itself. Human beings arent cattle we arent supposed to be settled and domesticated. We need to keep things stirred up in order to continue learning and growing.

No matter what fixed position you arrive at in life, it will never be fulfilling. Fulfillment comes from action, not position.

So what are you waiting for? Take some action!

The real reason

Okay, after all that fluffy nonsense, let me tell you why I REALLY called my blog “An Amazing Mind”. I never expected my blog to become big. So I went with the first name I thought of that still had the .com domain available. Not so exciting, huh? :)

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December is here! With that, it’s time to look back at how far you’ve come this year, and plan for the year ahead. So expect more stuff on goal-setting and your life as a whole! My blog’s birthday is also coming up on December 26th, so you’ll get a chance to find out more about me as a person :)

Plus I’ve got a free e-book coming up! Keep your eyes open for opportunities to get your hands on it early!

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Where Are You Heading? How’s Your Jerk?

by Vlad Dolezal on December 7, 2008

When you drive a car, just as you stop, you can feel a sudden jerk. You can slow down pretty smoothly all the way from driving at highway speed to walking-pace crawl, but when you go from walking pace to stopping, you’ll feel that jerk.

That jerk is a sudden change in your acceleration. You’re slowing down, you’re slowing down, suddenly you stop, and you go from slowing down to not slowing down in one instant. Your acceleration suddenly changes. Physics geeks have a pretty appropriate name for the rate of change acceleration. They call it a jerk.

So jerk is the rate of change of acceleration. Acceleration itself is just the rate of change of speed. Which is the rate of change of your position. Another fun fact: You might normally place a limit on how fast your car can go. Hey, you might even place a limit on how fast you can accelerate, for example if you’re carrying an unstable load. Well, the Hubble telescope has a set limit on the rate of change of jerk! In other words, it has a set limit on the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change of position. Woohoo!

By the way, you can try avoiding that final jerk when stopping your car. (as Bill Beaty calls it – “Don’t drive with a jerk!”) Do this by slowing almost to a halt, then gently releasing your break pedal so you don’t quite stop, and just keep releasing the pedal so you keep going as long as possible (yet always slowing down). With a bit of practice, you can make the final jerk so small you almost don’t feel it. I hear airline pilots use this technique to fool passengers who are eager to jump up from their seats as soon as the plane stops. Try it the next time you fly. You won’t be able to tell when the plane has actually stopped without looking out of the window.

How’s your jerk?

Ok, after that long-winded intro, here’s the point of this article:

It doesn’t really matter where you are in life. What matters is in which direction you’re moving, and if you’re accelerating or slowing down. (and if your rate of change of acceleration (your jerk) is positive. And if the rate of change of your rate of change… okay, forget it :p)

Back in the old days I used to look at people who were more successful than me, and make myself feel bad because I wasn’t in their place. I would wish I was as famous as Arnold Schwarzanegger, as rich as Bill Gates, or as wrinkled and grey-haired as my maths teacher.

Then, one day, instead of looking at what others have accomplished, I looked at my own life. I saw how far I had come in the last couple of years. And I was like “Damn! I never realized! I’ve come a looooong way!” And I realized it’s ok that I’m not in my ideal place yet. Because I never will be. I just need to keep moving, and my life will become so much better. So here’s my next message for you:

It’s ok to be where you are. In fact, it’s the perfect place for you to be right now.

Let’s jerk you into the future!

Okay, let’s get you accelerating in the right direction! First things first… let’s figure out what your core values are:

Grab a pen and paper and write down what you think are the 5 most important values to you. For example, mine would include:

  • open-mindedness
  • freedom
  • curiosity

This might sound like some wishy-washy spiritual nonsense at the moment. (it sounds like that to me anyway). So let’s make it specific. As you think of your core values, come up with three specific examples in your life of each.

For example, to me, open-mindedness means:

  • not accepting stuff thoughtlessly just because the majority of people believe it. Like nutritionism
  • not rejecting stuff outright because most people think it’s nonsense. Like fork-bending (I still haven’t tried that one out myself. I will try to organize a fork-bending party next term though :) )
  • trying out a bunch of different stuff to find what suits me best. For example, my favorite language to learn is Esperanto

Ok, once you know your core values, and know exactly how they apply to your life, let’s move to the next step! Think of huge long term-goals that would support your values. And by long-term I mean 5 to 10 years. Is one of your values freedom? Maybe become self-employed. Is one of your values curiosity? Maybe decide to spend a year living abroad (ideally somewhere pretty different from where you live now). In any case, pick huge, challenging goals that align with your values. Don’t be afraid to think big.

It’s better to shoot for the stars and land in the mud, than shoot for the mud and make it.

- Doctor Paul

Next, decide what you need to do to make them happen. Contact the people you need. Start saving money if you need to. Ask around what kind of books will help you with your goals. Write down on paper everything you come up with. Feel free to brainstorm without restrictions. You can pick out the most valuable ideas later.

Once you have figured out what you need to do, do what’s important, not what’s urgent. There will always be something urgent demanding your attention. Like that homework assignment, or that party you just have to go to. And yet a week later, you will barely remember them, let alone think of how they enriched your life. Take the time needed for truly important things – like striking up a friendship with someone who has similar goals, or writing that book you’ve kept delaying.

And once you know your values, your long term goals, and have a pretty good idea of your short term goals, use The 70% solution. Once you’re roughly 70% certain about the right course of action, just do it. You’ll do the right thing most of the time, and you will be able to correct your course of action the other times. Moving forward boldly in roughly the right direction is more important than moving forward timidly in exactly the right direction.

And, with that thought, I’ll leave you for today. Enjoy the jerk :)

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