environment you operate in

Design the perfect life you want
If I mention the word design, you may initially think of a hipster, fashion runway, web graphics, or even a specific kind of art. Design is everywhere and it’s an important part of life. Design is not only about how things look, but also about how we put them together, how we innovate, what’s the overall experience and what kind of a feeling it evokes. Design is about harmony.

In this blog post, I want to talk about a special kind of design. I want to talk about a design where you are the lead designer, even if design is something completely alien to you or you never considered yourself to be a designer. But you are. You are the designer of your own life.

Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.

In this blog post, I will explain to you why you are the designer of your own life in today’s time. By reading this blog post, you will learn the following important facts of life:
- How and why institutions in history more or less designed life for almost all people
- How and why you became the designer of your own life in this century
- Why most people are unfortunately poor designers of their life
- How you can be different and really create the life masterpiece that leads to the good life you deserve
Buckle up and get ready to become a really inspiring and breathtaking designer of your own life. Let’s begin creating!

A few decades ago, life was more or less designed for you

From the whole human history to a few decades ago (that’s thousands of years), life was more or less designed for you. You became a potter or a blacksmith or a farmer like your father, or your duty was to take care of the home and kids if you were a woman.

If you were really a rebel and wanted something with more prestige, then becoming a doctor or a priest were the only respected and possible options. Oh, or you could go into the army or become a wanderer. Self-discovery was rare, travelling was only for traders and your real talents were rarely developed.

There was only one kind of religion that you had to follow or you were beheaded, there was one kind of a diet you could eat because there was no abundance of food, and you definitely had fewer opportunities to date or, more probably, your marriage was already arranged, so you had zero alternatives at all about who to spend your life with.

Your occupation was determined by your family heritage, your diet by locally grown food, your marriage by your parents or the very few options you had in your local village, and your values by the local church.

In history, your life and your destiny were more or less determined by the environment and its institutions (family, government, church, company etc.). If you wanted something else, you really had to make a crazy decision, like pack what few clothes you had in a bundle and leave everything behind, hoping to find something that fits you better. But it rarely happened that you found something better.

There were almost zero options for designing your life as you wanted. Your lifestyle and your future were a done deal. No room for freedom, no room to create. Today things are luckily a lot different.

Finally, you have the power to design the perfect life for yourself

Today we live in a very different world, in the free developed world. For the first time in history we live in a world full of material abundance, unlimited options, worldwide interconnectivity, high mobility and connectivity, easy access to information and knowledge, and much more. It’s true that the new era also brought us many new challenges (uncertainty, complexity etc.), but there is one big overall advantage we are rarely aware of.

Now you have the complete power to design yourself the perfect life you want. You can build your dream life like a mosaic from many different pieces that suit you best. In most parts of the developed world, you won’t be judged no matter what you choose, as long as you aren’t hurting other people or breaking the law in some other way. When your preferences change, you can replace one piece of the mosaic with another one (going from a job to freelancer, to entrepreneur and back to a job).

Stop for a moment and think about this great advantage. You finally have the power to choose who you will be, what will be happening in your life, and you can finally co-shape your destiny together with the environment that you choose. Institutions have very little power over your life, if we compare it to a few decades ago.

You can finally build your dream life like a mosaic from many different pieces that suit you best.

In every area of life, you can find things that fit you best, you can really do things that you enjoy or are good at, develop your talents to the full, travel the world, and you have the opportunity to potentially connect yourself with all the 7 billion people alive today. Opportunities and options are endless, all at your disposal as pieces of your dream life.

Violence is in big decline and consequently the world is becoming an increasingly safer place to be, tolerance is becoming a more and more important value, further technology development will enable us to be even more mobile, interconnected, productive, creative and educated. It’s totally awesome. Soon you’ll even be able to choose which planet to live on.

Below are just a few things I want to highlight as part of the options you have today to build your masterpiece called life that weren’t at your disposal at all even a few decades ago:
- You can be an atheist, choose from more than 15 major religions and many different belief systems or even invent your own religion. A few decades ago, you were hanged for even thinking of converting to another religion if you weren’t forced to do so (religious wars).
- There are more than 800 occupations you can choose from and new ones are constantly being added to the list with the technology development. Today, you can even do a completely different thing than you studied as long as you are motivated enough to develop new competences.
- There are more than 190 countries you can travel to and around 2,000,000 cities worldwide, freely choose where you can live and settle in the place that suits you best.
- You can choose from more than 50 different diets. You can now really eat the food you love, be it Italian, Mexican, Chinese or whatever you like. International restaurants, local organic markets, new creative dishes, cooking books and websites are popping up daily.
- There are more than 200 different types of hobbies, more than 1000 different sports, and you can buy the cheapest smartphone for 30$. We see more than 20,000 new products monthly.
- There are more than 200 social networks with 1+ billion people online you can connect with, not to mention all the IM apps, clubs, meetups, social organizations and different parties where you can meet many different people.
What you will wear, which competences you will develop, defining your value system, doing body art, your sexual orientation and the number of sex partners, where you will live, what you will believe in, what kind of technology you will use, …

… how you will make you money and where you will invest it, countries you want to travel to, what kind of art you’ll express yourself with, which sports you will do, where you will work, with whom you will forge relationships, how you will help make the world a better place, everything is more or less completely up to you.

You can finally choose, you can finally design your perfect life. I know there are still limitations, I know that the level of freedom and abundance in different parts of world is not the same, but the trend is more than obvious. In the future, even more options await.

Freedom brings responsibility

It’s really awesome that you can finally design the perfect life you want. Nevertheless, this huge benefit comes with a huge price. More options mean more freedom (to choose), which is obviously good, but more freedom also means more personal responsibility.

If the government, church, parents and family heritage aren’t designing your life anymore, you can’t blame them for the poor choices you make. Today, you hold complete responsibility for your life, your happiness and your potential.

With good decisions and choices, you can design yourself a really awesome life. By making too many bad choices, your design can quickly become an ugly photo.
- Your government is not responsible for your pension anymore, you are
- Your company’s union is not responsible for your job safety anymore, you are
- Your local grocery store is not responsible for your diet anymore, you are
- Your parents are not responsible for your occupation anymore, you are
- Your local university is not responsible for your skills and education anymore, you are
- Your local church is not responsible for your values, morals and soul anymore, you are
- Nobody is responsible for your life happiness but you
It’s up to you how much money you will earn and, even more importantly, save, which talents you will develop, what kind of people you will surround yourself with, whether you will go after your perfect job, and so on. Today you can do whatever you want with your life. That is freedom, but it’s also a huge responsibility.

You weren’t programmed to handle many choices well

But here’s the catch. Since the jungle times, you haven’t been programmed to make good decisions and live happily in the abundance world. You were programmed to make bad decisions. Many bad decisions actually, which we can call the desire for instant gratification.

Sugar was rare in the jungle so you were biologically programmed to eat as much sugar as quickly as possible. Biologically, you were programmed to spread your genes, so you have the desire to mate every time the opportunity shows up, which makes it more difficult to be faithful in monogamous relationships.

You were programmed to save as much energy as possible, because food was rare, so storing fat and lying in front of the TV on a couch is the perfect thing to do nowadays.

You can see where this leads. You have many options, the freedom to choose, but you were genetically programmed to make bad choices in the world of abundance. Having too many options (more than 50 types of cereal on the shelf) is already a big psychological burden, called the tyranny of choice.

Taking poor responsibility of your life (and also a bad design) in the abundance world means:
- Getting fatter and fatter because you consume too much sugar
- Taking poor care of your health and eating chips on the couch while watching TV instead of exercising
- Getting in debt and buying things you don’t need or even things you can’t afford (car, home)
- Doing a job you hate with people you don’t like, because you are too lazy to develop your talents
- Isolating yourself or having only superficial relationships due to of a low capacity for love
All these things are much more frequent than you’d think. The majority of people make bad decisions in the abundance world, and thus they are slowly turning into zombies.

In the end, they blame the government, financial markets, capitalism, religion, companies or whoever for their misfortune. I’m not saying that institutions aren’t responsible for people’s suffering in some cases, but people often destroy their own life through poor life design and making too many bad choices.

Luckily you aren’t programmed only for instant gratification. You’re also programmed for carefully planning your future, investing to have more tomorrow instead of spending today, you’re programmed with the curiosity to acquire knowledge, an ability to discipline yourself and considering all that, to consequently make better life decisions.

You just have to make sure you also develop these abilities and you really get the power in your hands to not only design your life, but to design your dream life, the good life you want and deserve.

If you want to live happily in the world of abundance, you have to develop new healthy habits. A counter point for the jungle behavior. It’s that simple. You have to educate yourself, build a superior life strategy and then consistently follow it in an agile in lean way (because today’s times are also very uncertain). The end result should be you making many good decisions, big ones and small ones.

It may be hard in the beginning but at some point, enforced healthy behavior becomes a habit, and a habit is automatic subconscious behavior that takes zero effort to perform. If it at first takes a lot of willpower and ability to develop a new healthy habit (the ability of making good life choices), it becomes a part of your lifestyle and who you are in the long run. That’s why we say that the hard road becomes easy, and the easy road becomes hard.
- Developing healthy habits (hard thing to do in the beginning) in the abundance world leads to real happiness and real abundance (easy way to live).
- Only taking the best from the abundance world (easy) without taking any real responsibility for your life leads to fake abundance. Only looking rich but not really being rich, having many online friends but few real ones, having a lot of food at home but drowning in health issues (hard).
Design your life with a superior life strategy

Let’s repeat that again, because it’s really important. If you want to live a successful and happy life in today’s world, you have to take full responsibility for your life. Complete and full responsibility.

Taking responsibility means either deciding to develop discipline to make good life choices or to completely accept the misery that bad life choices bring and not blame others.

You are the artist with the empty canvas called your life, and you can create whatever you want. That means madly educating yourself by going straight to the best knowledge for all life areas, shaping a superior life strategy, being superproactive, employing a first-rate decision and personal management system (like the ALL productivity framework), finding the right balance between instant gratification and investing into a better future and then taking the best that today’s world has to offer.

If you do that, you really open the doors to the dream life, to the good life, the best life possible on this planet that was never ever accessible before. And all that leads us back to design as a profession.

You have to see yourself as a designer of your perfect life

It’s somehow nice that people are posting pictures of their life on social networks, especially Instagram, with the desire to show all other humans how they are designing their perfect life. I hope that many people are really living a life that’s as awesome as they are posting it on the social networks.

The best way to design your perfect life is to systematically search for what works best for you.

But life design is so much more than just taking photos and posting them on social networks. Design is about problem-solving, user experience, beauty and putting the right things together. Thus you have to see yourself as a designer in a broader sense. You have to see yourself as a designer of your perfect life, in every aspect.
- How it looks: Your style, home and office decorations, the photos you take etc.
- Elements: Your life strategy
- How it works: Your productivity system, your habits etc.
- Overall experience: How happy and satisfied you are with your overall life experience
- Prototyping: How many new things you try and constantly optimize
Take full responsibility for your life. Stop blaming others. Develop your talents and healthy habits. Make good life choices and design your dream life as it suits you best. Appreciate this chance given to you, which more than 100 billion people who lived in the past didn’t have.
Healthy relationships are what matters most in life
Do you have big plans and big goals for your life? Do you want to live the good life, the dream life and are prepared to fight for it? Excellent. If you really want to reach the stars, there is one very important fact you must know.

The culture of the environment you function in eats your visions, goals and strategy for breakfast. How you act and consequently also the potential you can achieve in life is always the result of your personality and your environment. So you must constantly improve yourself, but you must also make sure you choose the right environment for you to thrive.

Your success = the best version of you + the right environment (markets, relationships)

To prosper in life, you need to be a part of something that feels like home and natural to you, and enables you to flourish, develop and grow. You need an environment with ideal conditions for you go after the big goals you have in life.

You need an environment that supports you in achieving your goals, an environment where you fit in perfectly and that shoots you right among the stars.

There are many parts of your environment that have an influence on you, like your country, political stability, demographic trends, dominating religion, access to healthcare etc. (here are all of them listed) but there are two environmental factors with the strongest influence:
- the markets you choose and
- the relationships you form.
Markets always win. Markets can make you or break you. And people you let close in your life can make you or break you. Who knows what happens after death, but people can make your life heaven or hell on Earth for sure.

Relationships are heaven or hell on Earth. Good relationships can make your life really worth living, and crappy people in your life can make you suffer, really suffer and drown in misery. Thus you must forge your relationships very carefully; and make sure you only have healthy relationships in your life.

Good relationships can make your life really worth living, and crappy people in your life can make you suffer and drown in misery.

In this article you will learn:
- Why relationships are heaven or hell on Earth
- Different types of relationships and why they matter
- What you should expect from different relationships
- How to choose who to spend time with
- How to find people who will support you in life
What are healthy relationships

Let’s start with defining what a healthy relationship is. First of all, mistakes happen in every relationship, there is no such thing as a perfect relationship.

Nevertheless, a relationship can be deep and strong, or shallow and superficial. And even more importantly, a relationship can be a healthy or a toxic one.

Here are the signs of a healthy relationship:
1. Both people have the center on themselves and only then is a relationship formed
2. You share similar values and interests and you create, have fun and experience things together
3. There is a high level of tolerance, transparency, trust and respect
4. You listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs
5. There are always more dimensions present in a relationship
6. You encourage each other to constantly improve and achieve personal goals
7. The investment into the relationship is close to 1:1 from both sides
8. You communicate with active constructive responses 80 % of the time and you communicate a lot about the important things
9. You hold each other up when tough times come
10. In intimate relationships, there must be love and sexual attraction
Don’t just read the statements and agree with them. Ask yourself the right questions for every relationship you have in your life.

What kind of activities are you doing together? Are you treated as an equal and with dignity? Are you asked for your opinion about important life decisions that influence both parties? Are you being constantly criticized? Is there a high level of trust?

As mentioned, there are always errors in relationships. No relationship is perfect. But there is a limit when too many repeating errors make a relationship toxic.

If there are patterns like severe criticism, contempt, rudeness, meanness, jealousy, insulting, degrading, blaming, guilt-tripping, criticizing, physically acting out, the person constantly repeating themselves, a relationship is definitely toxic.

Now, a toxic or abusive relationship has many negative consequences. It can literately suck the soul out of you. It can make you a zombie. Misery loves company!

First of all, it takes a lot of energy, then it hinders your self-confidence, in abusive relationships there is always an absence of strong foundations of love and support to go after your goals, you become depressed, bitter, you start doubting yourself and sooner or later you start drowning in the victim mindset.

On the other hand, healthy relationships provide you with strong foundations and roots to go after your goals. With a healthy relationship, you know you have a place to go when things go wrong, you are always encouraged and supported.

With many healthy relationships, you feel strong, grateful and alive. It’s definitely the best thing you can have in life.

Different types of relationships

Now that we know what a healthy relationship is, let’s look at the most important relationships you will forge in your life. Love and work, that’s all there is. Consequently, we have personal and professional relationships.

There are, of course, also different levels of intimacy in every relationship, from professional, to being only acquaintances, to being friends, friends with benefits all the way to real intimate relationships. You can experience different types and levels of a relationship with the same person.

But you probably already know that from your own experience. All in all, what’s more important is that there are six relationships that shape your life the most:

Personal relationships
- Spouse
- Family (primary/secondary)
- Friends
Professional relationships
- Boss
- Coworkers / Co-founders
- Mentor / Mastermind group
The more ambitious you are, the more you need the right environment that supports your ambitions – professional and personal one; besides market trends supporting you (financial, job markets etc.), you especially need a lot of healthy relationships.

A person in a healthy environment and with healthy relationships flourishes, a person in a bad environment withers like an unwatered flower.

When it comes to personal relationships, you must always be aware of your personal power. You can choose most of these relationships in your life. You choose who you’ll spend time with and who doesn’t deserve a spot in your life. Only if you are proactive enough. Actually, you must be superproactive.

But at the end of the day, relationships are your choice. It’s not love’s fault or the HR department’s to reply to your job application or whoever. You should never blame anyone else for having crappy people in your life (authority figures in your youth are an exception, but more about that later).

You want to be in a position to know exactly what kind of relationships you want in life and then going after them. Making a persona of ideal relationships might help you with that. Now let’s do a deep dive into the six most important relationships in your life.

Personal relationships

In your personal life, there are three pillars of love and nurture that you need: love from your spouse, your family (primary, secondary) and your friends (community). To be happy, especially in the mature ages of life, you need all three pillars, building them as strong as possible, at least in some form.

Spouse

You may be single at the moment (and fool around), but you will end up in a serious relationship sooner or later. If not, you’re probably quite emotionally damaged and need to develop a deeper capacity for love and commitment.

It’s hard to get real value out of intimate relationships if you are unable to commit. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

Now, the intimate partner you choose (they’re not brought to you by love or a greater force, you choose them) for the long-term relationship, will have one of the biggest influences on your life. Right after your parents. And I mean a really big influence on your life.

Your spouse can make you or break you. There is no third option. If you constantly fight, if you feel insecure and share no similar hobbies or values, your relationship will drain the energy out of you day by day before you eat breakfast.

Being in an abusive, boring or toxic intimate relationship is one of the most frequent ways to become a zombie (next to having an abusive boss).

So choose your spouse very carefully. Make sure you have similar values, but that there is also an opportunity to grow together. Make sure you have common hobbies and activities you both like, but also different perspectives that enrich you both.

Remember that couples who do things together, stay together. Make sure there is a physical fit, intellectual fit, emotional fit and spiritual fit. It must feel right. Make sure you encourage each other and provide emotional security when things go tough. And know that you have to constantly put effort into a relationship to develop a deeper and deeper bond.

We are all people; we all make mistakes in relationships. That’s normal. It’s not about the mistakes, it’s about a relationship being toxic or not; and whether you’re becoming a better version of yourself because of the intimate relationship you have.

It’s not easy to end a long-term relationship, but it’s often necessary for further personal development and happiness in life.

First of all, make sure your intimate relationship isn’t toxic and that you’re growing together all the time. If you have a hard time deciding whether you should stay together or not, there is a great book called Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay, written by Mira Kirshenbaum.

You may not choose who you fall in love with, but you can definitely choose with whom you will stay.

There are 36 questions in the book that should help you decide if you should end a relationship or not. Here are the top questions from the mentioned book that I find important and may help you decide on the quality of your relationship:
1. Do you currently share goals and dreams for your life together?
2. Have you made a commitment to pursue a course of action or lifestyle that definitely excludes your partner?
3. Do you and your partner have even one positively pleasurable activity or interest (besides children) that you currently share and look forward to sharing in the future?
4. Does your relationship support your having fun together?
5. Would you say that to you, your partner is basically nice, reasonable intelligent, not too neurotic, okay to look at, and most of the time smells alright?
6. Do both you and your partner want to touch each other and look forward to touching each other and make efforts to touch each other?
7. Do you feel a unique sexual attraction to your partner?
8. Does your partner bombard you with difficulties when you try to get even the littlest thing you want; and is it your experience that almost any need you have gets obliterated?
9. Do you have a basic, recurring, never-completely-going-away feeling of humiliation or invisibility in your relationship?
10. Have you got to the point, when your partner says something, that you usually feel it’s more likely that he’s lying than that he’s telling the truth?
11. Do you genuinely like your partner, and does your partner seem to like you?
12. Is there something your partner does that makes your relationship too bad to stay in and that they acknowledge but they’re unwilling to do anything about?
13. In spite of all the ways you’re different, would you say that deep down your partner is someone just like you in a way you feel good about?
14. Do you feel that your partner, overall and more often than not, shows concrete support for and genuine interest in the things you’re trying to do that are important to you?
15. Would you lose anything important in your life if your partner were no longer your partner?
16. Is there a demonstrated capacity and mechanism for forgiveness in your relationship?
17. Has your partner violated what for you is a bottom line?
18. If God or some omniscient being said it was okay to leave, would you feel tremendously relieved and have a strong sense that finally you could end your relationship?
These are definitely tough and to-the-point questions that should help you to make the right decision. If you decide to break a long term-relationship or if you are single and want to really find the partner of your life, start building up your sexual market value (after taking time for recovery).

Go to the gym, eat healthy, develop social skills, read a lot and become an interesting person, improve your bed skills, learn how to approach, and so on. Don’t expect “love at first sight” to do it instead of you.

Family

This is a very easy one, if you were raised in a healthy family environment, and a very tricky one if you were raised in a toxic family and you don’t have a deep connection and shared values with your family members.

In any case, family is important and no matter how difficult the situation is, you have to maximize the love you can get from your family ties.

Family is important for many reasons. The early relationships with your mother, father and other authority figures in your youth become blueprints for all your relationships later in life.

Family also gives you the framework for your values; how well you were nurtured influences whether you developed hope, strong will, purpose and industry in life or you’ll be hindered by negative emotions as an emotional midget. Your upbringing also greatly influences your happiness levels.

You can never truly understand yourself without understanding your family roots.

Family should be the one that’s there for you in tragic situations, family should be the one helping you the most financially (inheritance) and it should be the greatest support you have in life.

Healthy relationships with the family

Healthy family presents foundations and roots in your life, so that you can fly high. Family is legacy handed over to you, and you are the one handing legacy down to your offspring, enriched or impoverished.

Now, errors are made in every family, there are always disagreements and differences in values. But there is a limit, where errors are normal and when the environment becomes toxic.

If you have a healthy family, it’s your duty make this pillar of love even stronger, by nurturing good relations with family members and enriching the legacy you will pass on. You have to be grateful, because being born in a healthy family is the greatest security and given advantage in life.

Toxic family

One of the hardest questions in life is what you should do if your family was (or is) toxic. Many of the following blog posts will be dedicated to this topic, but in summary it makes sense to put at least some effort into making things better.

Nevertheless, you have to accept that many things are out of your control and may hurt while giving you no positive outcome. It all depends on whether family members are prepared to see the damage they’ve done at least to some extent or not.

If you had a painful childhood, you first have to work hard on becoming more self-centered, assertive, letting go of the responsibility for painful events from your youth, and you have to work hard on your own life vision and goals and take full responsibility for your life. You must work hard on your autonomy and make sure you aren’t an extension of your parents.

Then, if you want to make your family relationships a little less toxic, setting some strict boundaries and a gentle confrontation are usually necessary. The purpose of the confrontation is not to punish family members and dump negative feelings on them, but to tell them the truth, face them and set relationship rules that are acceptable to you.

Many parents don’t even realize what they’ve done, because they were raised in a pretty similar way. Being honest with them may be a fresh start of the relationship. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. If it doesn’t, you don’t have to forgive. You have to work hard on making sure that your past stops controlling you and that you can focus on the positive things from your upbringing. In many cases, it even makes sense to go to therapy.

I suggest you read the book Toxic parents for more insights what you can do.

And usually there are at least some family members you have good relations with. Maybe you can enrich your relationship with them. If not, you can focus your positive efforts into making a much greater legacy for your secondary family, your kids and your grandkids.

If you manage to change negative behaviors that were transferred from generation to generation in your family, you’ll do a very important and noble job, and you will definitely positively influence the future.

I encourage you to find a way to build strong family foundations. Family is different than friends. It’s a circle where people really deeply care for one another, especially in tough situations, no matter the differences and misunderstandings.

And if you had a toxic family, work hard on improving yourself, read a lot about how to deal with your past and how you can maybe make things better. At the end of the day, you aren’t doing it for them, you’re doing it for yourself.

Friends (community)

The third pillar of love in your personal life are your friends. When we’re talking about friends, we must have quality and quantity in mind. Quality always comes first when we talk about relationships.

If you want to be happy in life, you need a few close friends you share interests with, the ones you can really trust and help each other go through life.

Isolation leads to depression and bitterness, so enough socialization with people you care about must be an important priority in your life.

Now, a very important fact is that your friends are a source of great joy in life, but they can also be the source of social pressure. You tend to spend time with people who have similar values and interests as you. When you grow and change, your friends may get scared of losing you and thus put pressure on you.

I’ve seen it many times. For example, you start to eat a healthy diet and they mock you because you don’t want to eat pizza with them. The same can happen if you decide to become a vegetarian or stop drinking alcohol. They may not believe in you if you want to start your own business, because they even don’t know how, being only employees all their life.

So make sure you surround yourself with friends who support you, encourage you, with whom you do productive activities and not just kill time and have fun together.

Fun is an important part of every relationship, but you should also have the privilege of growing when spending time with your friends. And if they are blocking you when you’re making changes in life, make sure you calm down their fears and negative feelings. If they still block you after that, it’s maybe time to find new friends.

Besides quality, quantity also somehow matters. I especially mean always meeting new people, spending time with completely different groups and types of individuals, so your relationships can really be varied and rich.

Remember you can learn from anyone, and more different types of people in your life only mean that they’ll enrich your personality. To achieve that, the number one relationship value you must have is tolerance.

Business relationships

We’ve covered love, so let’s now move to work. You spend almost 1/3 of your time at the job. There is a zero chance of you being successful and happy in life if you work a job you hate with people you despise.

In business relationships, you have even more room to choose than in personal ones, the only thing you really need is a high enough level of competences.

The three pillars of healthy business relationships that lead to success are an outstanding relationship with your boss, great relationship with your coworkers, and finding yourself a mentor or a mastermind group that helps you achieve your career goals faster.

You should consider which business environments would allow you to deliver the most value, develop your competences to the full in the long run, achieve the position and the renown you want and, of course, achieve your financial goals.

If your business environment doesn’t enable you that, you’ll have to either change it or lower your ambitions. And you don’t want to do the latter in the most cases.

Boss

Your boss can either skyrocket your career or make your life miserable. Thus there is an important rule that you should never work for a boss you don’t respect. With an abundance mindset, you must be aware that there are many jobs and many good bosses. You don’t want to work for an asshole or a bozo.

Never work for a boss you don’t respect.

If you’re constantly scared of your boss, if you’re being abused, stressed out and treated unfairly, you will never be happy in life; even more, your life will be a living hell.

If something like that is happening to you, analyze very clearly if you don’t choose to be abused because it’s something familiar to you (one of your parents was abusive towards you).

If the answer is yes, start working on yourself, develop your competences, set some boundaries and start looking for a new job if necessary.

Never assume and hope that things will get better by themselves. If you were in an abusive relationship with your parents, you will almost always attract bosses and partners who will somehow be abusive to you, until you set some boundaries and put the center on yourself.

On the other hand, a great boss can give you so much. They make sure your potential is being developed, they mentor you and coach you, they make sure you get promoted frequently for your hard work, you get paid fairly, they help you to develop your social network, and so on.

A great boss can really help you to thrive and develop your career potential to the maximum. So make sure you find someone you’ll be proud to work for and with.

The boss should sometimes be tough on you to get the best out of you, but make sure it’s tough love, not abuse. As mentioned many times before, deep down you know very well if a relationship is abusive or not and why you cling to it.

If you are self-employed or a business owner, your customers are your boss; and sometimes other stakeholders. Again, relationships are extremely important, only in a little bit different way – you have to make sure you provide enough value to the markets, you work for customers you really understand and respect, and that you constantly improve and develop together with markets. Everyone has their own boss.

Coworkers or cofounders

Much like your friends are important in your personal life, so are your coworkers in your professional life. Again, there is a simple rule. Work in a dream team.

Work with people you respect, admire, can learn from, and about whom you can really say “we are a f*cking dream team, we can achieve anything.” A dream team will elevate you to the stars, a bad team will make you into a zombie.

There are probably fewer than 20 % good teams, and fewer than 4 % of dream teams. It’s hard to find or build the dream team. But if you aren’t in one, bitching, whining or complaining won’t help. There are only two options you have. Either find the dream team and join it, or help build one where you currently are and work.

It’s often a tough decision whether you should help build a dream team or join a new one. It depends on your visions, mission, life goals and how much you are willing to invest into a company you work for.

Changing team culture is a tough and demanding process, it usually lasts years, but it’s also a rewarding one, and it definitely enables you to develop superior people skills. I think in most cases, it makes sense to give it a shot, but if there is no progress after a while, it’s probably better to move on.

Become an A-player

Anyway, the first rule of being a member of a dream team is that you are an A-player. Only A-players (or people who work like hell to become A-players) work with other A-players. If you aren’t one yet, start working on it.

Become a role model for others, mentor others and start fueling your team with positive emotions and constructive thoughts together with your boss. If you want to work in a dream team, your competence level must be high and you must know how to be a good team player and, if necessary, show that to others.

Psychological safety is the key factor in healthy relationships

Now, this is the most important part of what makes a team a dream team (even in personal life) – Google did big research on the best performing teams, and their data indicated that psychological safety was critical to making a team work, more than anything else.

In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.

There were two indicators of that. Firstly, members of the team spoke in roughly the same proportion, in other words there was equality in the distribution of conversational turn-taking.

Secondly, all the good teams have high social sensitivity, meaning team members were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, facial expressions and other nonverbal cues. Now ask yourself if you are that kind of a team member and if you work in such a team.

I worked in an outstanding team and in a bad team. I know that working in a bad team made me depressed, people were doing everything but work, they were gossiping, blocking each other, feeling nothing but anger, envy, disrespect and other negative feelings. After eight to ten hours of that kind of bullshit, you can’t come home with positive energies.

You’re always also a product of your environment, so make sure you choose people you work with very carefully. And make sure you’re a productive and constructive team player. It’s easy to criticize others, but we are usually very forgiving towards ourselves.

Start changing your work environment by changing yourself.

Mentor and mastermind group

The last really important type of a business relationship is having a mentor; or even more of them, a whole mastermind group. Having a mentor often makes all the difference between making it in life or not.

The best athletes and businessmen in the world have mentors. Why wouldn’t you?

Good mentors can help you develop different competences quickly, like business skills, life skills, understanding market insights, they can help you with their social networks, wisdom, by believing in you, showing you the way and bringing out the best in you.

You should know that doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will, and that mentors are by far the best doubt killers. You can find a mentor at your job, hire professional coaches, write directly to people you admire and ask if they are prepared to mentor you, or you can even hire specialists who help you advance in certain areas of life (therapists, personal trainers, etc.).

If there is one way to accelerate you career success, it’s by finding a mentor. So make sure you do that. Some people even take a step further and build themselves a group of people who challenge them, push them and support them in every way.

The concept is called a mastermind group. If you’re really ambitious, build yourself a group like that, and I guarantee you that your career will start to flourish at a much faster pace.

Homework

Start building healthy relationships today

Now it’s time to do your homework. It’s time that you change your life strategy from relationships “just happening” to you tactically forging relationships that will help you flourish and prosper in life. And ending those that only make your life miserable.

Make personas of your ideal relationship

The first step is to clarify what kind of relationships you really want in life. So make a persona of your ideal spouse, a few different friends, your boss, your mentor and coworkers.

While doing this fun exercise, also make a persona of your ideal self. For your primary family relationships, brainstorm 5 – 10 things you can realistically do to make them better, instead of outlining a persona.

Assess your current relationships

Now you know what kind of relationships you want in your life. In the next step, it’s time to make an assessment of how close your current relationships really are to what you want in life. Take a big piece of paper and:
- Horizontally, write numbers from 1 to 10.
- Vertically, list 5 – 10 important relationships in your life.
- Rate every relationship from 1 to 10.
- If you rated some relationships between 4 and 7, it means that you can’t decide if they work or not, and that tells you nothing.
- Rate them again, now only with 1, 2, 3 and 8, 9, 10 marks. This will show you whether a relationship really works or not.
- All the relationships marked with 1 – 3 clearly don’t work.
Decide what to do with current relationships

For the relationships that work (got 8,9, or 10), great. Enrich them even more, nurture them and be grateful for them. On the other hand, when it comes to the relationships that don’t work, there are only three options why.
1. A relationship isn’t your fit. Irreconcilable differences or whatever.
2. It may be that it’s time to let go, it’s time for the relationship to end.
3. Your partner, you or both aren’t investing enough into a relationship and you should start doing that.
Based on the analysis, you’ll have to decide which relationships do work and which ones don’t. There’s nothing wrong about ending a relationship in a decent and human way.

Only a few relationships are lifelong relationships. All things come to an end, and there is always the point where you have to move on. So don’t be burdened with guilt and shame when it’s time to move on.

Now you should know which relationships in your life work, which don’t, which to terminate and which to try to improve. Start working actively on that. And simultaneously start forging new relationships.

Start forging new relationships

Prepare a list of your potential mentors. Prepare a list of companies you want to work for. Join different clubs, hobby gatherings, meetups, and so on. Look at your personas and go where people you want in your life are going.

Brush up on your social skills, meet new people, open yourself up to opportunities. You can find people and form relationships that will make your life heaven on Earth. Constantly add new people in your life and always stay open to healthy relationships that can bring so much into your life.

And never forget that at the end of the day, you deserve to have only healthy relationships in your life. Even one toxic relationship is definitely too much. But if you have it in your life, it’s probably your choice. If that’s the case, try to figure out why.
Anti-Kaizen
You can find a lot of information about Kaizen, the basic Kaizen rules as well as more specialized Kaizen rules for teams on this blog. Now let’s look at the same topic from a slightly different perspective. Let’s talk about the so-called Anti-Kaizen. It’s a toxic mindset and includes all the limited beliefs that prevent any kind of improvement and progress.

Before we go to Anti-Kaizen, make sure you remember all the Kaizen rules. The best thing you can do is to download and print the rules and stick them to a visible place in your home or your office. When stuck, look at the list, read the rules, and you will refocus your brain on the path towards the solution, and hopefully stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s the best way to avoid any kind of Anti-Kaizen behaviour.

You can download the documents here:

[sociallocker]
- Kaizen Rules: Your Personal Mindset for constant improvement (PDF)
- Rules of Kaizen for teams: The mindset teams should have (PDF)
- Anti-Kaizen: The mindset that prevents any progress in life (PDF)
[/sociallocker]

Now let’s go to the most frequent Anti-Kaizen beliefs.

Negative beliefs that prevent any improvements

There are 13 quite frequent beliefs and toxic behaviors that prevent any kind of progress and improvement. You’ll find that kind of behavior in many toxic and unproductive environments, where the status quo is the only constant; and most people in an organization like that are nothing but zombies. Well, even the status quo is only a mirage, because if you aren’t going forwards, you’re going backwards. There is no status quo in the long run.

Here they are, Anti-Kaizen beliefs and situations:
1. Lying to yourself
2. Victim mindset and being stuck in an emotional cage
3. “There’s no need for improvement” mindset
4. Lack of time
5. Firefighting and enjoying adrenalin rushes and dramas
6. Lack of confidence in self and others and lack of courage
7. You want to change others, not yourself
8. Getting in trouble for failing or pointing out the problems
9. Not following up on ideas
10. Giving up too quickly
11. Solving problems with additional administration
12. Hoping that others will do it for you and waiting for better times
13. Jumping to solutions too quickly
Lying to yourself

If you lie to yourself about where you are, there is no need for improvement. Many times, we like to picture ourselves or even the world as a whole in a much more beautiful scenario than it actually is (or, in some cases, much worse than it is, if the necessary improvement is to relax, for example). But in general, people are very indulgent towards themselves, lying where they really stand, and great critics towards others.
- You can lie to yourself that you live healthy just because you regularly use olive oil
- You can easily lie to yourself by only looking rich and not really being rich
- You can lie to yourself about how productive you are every day, but in reality only work a few hours on the things that matter most
- You can lie to yourself that your job is pretty okay, but in reality you suffer a lot and so on
If you want to make any improvements in your life or in any organization, you first have to know where you are. And be extremely honest about it. Today, that’s quite simple with all the data available. Never lie to yourself. Always be honest and seek the truth. Know where you are and where you want to go. Then start improving yourself or an organization step by step. For example, don’t only look rich, actually be rich.

Victim mindset and being stuck in an emotional cage

The victim mindset is one of the most common reasons why people get stuck and never start improving themselves, their life situation and the environment around them. It’s very easy to blame others, from your parents to the government, market trends, life in general, and so on. And many times, you have every right to do so.

But it doesn’t help anyone. Whining, bitching, complaining and feeling sorry for yourself never bring results, improvements or more happiness, only more sorrow. You only live once and if being stuck in an emotional cage is preventing you from improving and growing, start dealing with your past, your emotions and all the cognitive distortions. It’s the best option you have, no matter how difficult your past was.

There is always a move you can make in your life towards a better position. After you stop being a victim and take full responsibility for your future, you will easily find a move you can make. Don’t be a victim, take control over your life once and for all, and start improving. If you focus on problems, you’ll only get more problems in life, and if you focus on solutions, positive things will start happening to you.

“There is no need for improvement” mindset

You can have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. If you have a fixed mindset, you assume things are as they are and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you believe that there’s no need or no room for improvement, you won’t improve. Why would you?

Nevertheless, studies show that a growth mindset is one of the top personality traits of successful people. The most successful people constantly improve, even when they’re on top; because there is no top. In addition to that, the organizations that constantly learn and improve are the ones that are winning in business.

The conclusion is therefore pretty simple. If you want to be successful in life, you need to grow, you need to evolve and you need to constantly improve. It’s one of the reasons why you’re here on this planet.

“I/We have always done it like that” is the most evil sentence ever.

Lack of time

Many times, people work so hard that they don’t even take the time to look around and analyze if they’re digging the right hole. Until it’s too late. A lack of time should never be an excuse for not brainstorming and implementing improvements. You always have to work smart as well.

Therefore, the AgileLeanLife Productivity Framework has three levels of planning – the strategic, tactical and operational level. You have to see the woods and you have to see all the trees. You must always take enough time to plan and make improvements in where you go and how you do things on all three levels.

There is a very simple test that shows your speed of improvement. How many things are you doing differently now than you did six months ago? If the answer is none and you’re only working hard the same way you did half a year ago, because you don’t have the time to improve your working methods, it’s time to change something.

If necessary, make sure that your first improvement is that you start dealing with improvements at all.

Firefighting and enjoying adrenalin rushes and dramas

People who are prone to deadline adrenaline rushes and dramas in relationships rarely take the time to stop and analyze how to improve. The frequent reason for that is the existence of an internal conflict. Improvements take away the drama, unproductive adrenaline rushes and other toxic behaviors. And you simply can’t focus on improvements if you need to feed your emotional monsters.

An important part of improving yourself is to become happier and more satisfied, productive, relaxed etc. Firefighting and playing a drama queen means going in the opposite direction. The solution is simple. If there is any kind of drama, anxiety and constantly chasing deadlines in your personal or company culture, it’s time to start improving fast.

Not to be too extreme, everyone finds themselves in such a situation from time to time, but if it’s a part of the culture or how a person operates and it happens more often than not, then that is big Anti-Kaizen behavior.

Lack of confidence in self and others and lack of courage

As I mentioned many times, it’s not easy to implement new changes, even if they are positive ones. We are all afraid of change on the biological level. Nevertheless, you simply need the courage to face your fears and start improving. The first step is to have more confidence in self and others.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. In the same way, doubt kills more improvements than failure ever will. Skepticism, cynicism, excessive sarcasm, drama, negativity, indecisiveness etc., they all kill creativity and potential for improvements. Believe in yourself and believe in people around you. There is nothing to doubt about, to be honest. Your growth and personal improvements (or the improvements of family or company culture) are the best possible investments.

To improve or not to improve?

You want to change others, not yourself

As cliché as it sounds, change always begins with you. First you have to understand (system, process, environment, relationships, history etc.), then you have to ignite the spark in yourself with a great vision and a powerful mission and only then change and adjust yourself to the right vibration in coherence with the system to start influencing other people and implementing change.

Implementing change is always a carefully and surgically orchestrated process that starts with changing yourself and adjusting your actions to face the least resistance from environmental forces.

Why do you have to change yourself first? Well, it’s easy to blame others. It’s easy to see flaws. It’s much harder to come up with good solutions. It’s even harder to analyze the system and pull the right moves to implement a change step by step in a very non-invasive way. Everyone wants to change the environment, shape it more to their liking, but nobody wants to change themselves first. But that’s the only place where the change really begins.

Before you can start implementing change, you have to find common ground with the environment and then build on it. To find the common ground, you have to first change yourself.

Getting in trouble for failing or pointing out the problems

If you judge others when they fail or make a mistake, you’re doing a very Anti-Kaizen thing. But there’s a catch. Usually people never openly criticize failure, of course. They do it with gossip, silence, sarcasm, mockery or some other type of intolerant emotional behavior. That kind of behavior means people get in trouble for failing and making mistakes.

A whole different thing is if you show curiosity for why something didn’t work, if you’re interested in what has been learnt and in the new ideas for how improvements could be made. Because Kaizen people have to feel emotionally secure and not be afraid to fail and make mistakes. You show people that it’s okay to fail with words and emotions.

Make sure people don’t get in trouble if they show you the problems or if they fail when trying something new. It means they care and that they have the willpower and probably many good additional ideas for what to try.

If you get in trouble for failing or showing the problems, explain to your boss what the Kaizen philosophy is and how it can help the organization. Try to find a way for moving the system towards the philosophy of constant improvement. But if it’s not worth your energy, if you don’t care enough, find a different system that will appreciate your ideas and suggestions, and vice-versa, a system where you will really care and have the power to test and implement new ideas.

Not following up on ideas

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Testing ideas and executing the best ones is pure gold. For implementing change, you simply have to be a doer, not only a talker. You must have a culture of immediate implementation and execution. Not following up on ideas is one of the most Anti-Kaizen things you can do besides having a victim mindset.

There are several reasons why there’s usually no follow up on ideas. Either the ideas are too complex or completely unreachable, or there are strong emotional issues that block the implementation. Going back to basic Kaizen rules and having an honest conversation is the best cure for a situation like that.

Giving up too quickly

Implementing change is no easy task. It not only takes motivation and creativity, but also a lot of patience and a long-term view. Changing the culture of an organization can take years, for example. In reality, implementing change is not very different from going on a diet. You have to work hard and make sacrifices now, for benefits that are far far away; while eating sweets gives you instant gratification and the punishment in excessive fat and bad health seems far away. That’s why it’s so hard to go on a diet.

The reason why it’s so hard to implement any change is the same. Because you have to put in the effort now for results and benefits you will enjoy sometime in the future. But if you stay in the status quo, you don’t have to put in any effort and the punishment comes sometime in the far-away future.

With time, the hard road becomes easy and the easy road becomes hard. So you must have a long-term view for every change you plan to implement. Never give up too quickly. Even when you lose motivation, remember that tomorrow is a new day to start over. And don’t overestimate what you can achieve in a few months and don’t underestimate what you can achieve in a few years.

Solving problems with additional administration

Many times, when we identify the root problem, additional administration in the process seems like the right solution; but in reality, it rarely is. If you take that kind of an approach, you can soon find yourself drowning in paperwork and everything becomes counterproductive. Never let additional administration be your best solution, you can always find better solutions than additional paperwork.

Let’s get back to a practical example of the 5 Whys technique and how it can help you focus on the process that was presented in the Kaizen rules for teams. It’s very simple: you describe the problem and start asking yourself “why”.
- The vehicle will not start. (the problem)
- Why? The battery is dead. (first why)
- Why? The alternator is not functioning. (second why)
- Why? The alternator belt has broken. (third why)
- Why? – The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and not replaced. (fourth why)
- Why? – The vehicle was not maintained according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, the root cause)
After the last “why” and discovering core problem, one of your first solution may be, let’s add a checklist or some other form of paper to the process. Or an engineer should sign dozens of forms on what s(he) has done, and so on. Many times, our initial ideas include additional bureaucracy, who knows why. But that’s rarely the right solution.

Hoping that others will do it for you or waiting for better times

An interesting thing can happen. When markets go up, they can solve many problems so you don’t have to improve at all. Or sometimes you get a rock star in your team who solves many of your problems and, again, you don’t have to improve. Sometimes a few problems die on their own. It can happen, problems can be magically solved without you making any improvements.

But hoping that others will implement changes and improvements instead of you, or waiting for better times that will take care of everything makes no sense at all. Because sooner or later, new challenges will come and afterwards, you may be in an even worse position. The main idea of improvements is that you become better and more competent and capable. You want to develop abilities to tackle problems better, provide more value, and so on. Inner assets or competence, if you want, are one of the most powerful securities you can have in life.

It’s also one of the reasons why you’re here on this planet. You don’t want to be deprived of the feeling of satisfaction when you win a battle with yourself and change to a better version of you. The feeling is awesome.

Jumping to solutions too quickly

Jumping to conclusions without any real proof is one of the cognitive distortions that happens to people very often. Jumping to solutions too quickly, without any testing, experimenting and measuring, is what often prevents real change to the better. It’s not that hard to come up with a solution or ideas for what to do. But it’s usually quite hard to come up with a solution that works and can be realistically implemented with sustainable effects.

You need a systematic and scientific approach to implementing improvements. You need to measure your progress. You need to use real data, not just your hunches and intuition. Just coming up quickly with a solution and thinking that you’ve done your job is definitely an Anti-Kaizen approach; after all, you’re breaking rule number one of not lying to yourself.

You must not wait for the perfect timing or the perfect solution when implementing improvements, but on the other hand, acting without thinking is damaging as well.

The key takeaway

The roots of Anti-Kaizen behavior lie in either the wrong mindset or toxic emotional behavior. Therefore, you have to deal with both of them – mindset and emotions. Rationally, you have to see constant improvement as the common sense you simply have to follow in order to achieve your peak performance. That’s usually the easy part of the equation.

The emotional part is much harder. But there is no other way than to work on more self-confidence, facing your fears with courage and dealing with laziness and procrastination or whatever holds you back from becoming the best version of yourself. Sometimes playing it safe is no different from being locked in a safe. Upgrade your mindset, face your fears and start improving yourself.

Kaizen rules!
Personal Infostructure
Infostructure is a system and a process of how you consume, manage and share information. In the creative society, a quality infostructure has become as important as a quality infrastructure. What you feed your mind with matters a lot. A quality (good) infostructure will help you become more creative, competent and resourceful. A bad infostructure, on the other hand, is the biggest time waster ever, killing your creative potential, making you into an obedient consumer and a zombie – something that you definitely don’t want to become, but may happen if you don’t put any effort into building an outstanding infostructure for yourself.

What you will learn

In this post, you will learn about the following key things:
- The difference between infrastructure and infostructure
- Why infostructure is as important as infostructure in the creative economy
- Why infostructure is like fire when it comes to technological advancement; nothing more than a tool with which you can either cook yourself dinner or burn yourself badly, depending on how you use it
- How infostructure can lower the quality of your life by killing your creative potential, turning you into a consumer and a zombie
- How bad infostructure can become the biggest time waster ever and how to avoid that
- How you can build yourself an outstanding infostructure that will help you be incredibly more resourceful, creative and competent
- How I built my own outstanding infostructure and how you can do it as well
Infrastructure vs. Infostructure

You probably know what infrastructure is and even if you don’t, you definitely use it all the time. Infrastructure are the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society, be it a country, state, city, county or even enterprise. The main parts of an infrastructure are buildings, roads, power supplies, utilities, sanitary systems, and so on.

There’s definitely a big correlation between well-developed infrastructure and efficient productivity. Without sufficient infrastructure, the society is bogged down with higher operating costs, structural production problems and everyday frustrations, consequently suffering from a big competitive disadvantage, especially on the global markets. There’s no doubt that better infrastructure means a better quality of life, higher productivity and efficiency, and generally a better environment for business.

I’m sure you pay a lot of attention to where you live, how you organize your home and your office, what car you drive, how far away your favorite facilities, like shops, are etc. You definitely want to have electricity, water and other housing supplies all the time.

With all the loans, mortgages, rents, housing and transportation costs, you probably spend an extensive proportion of your paycheck for the infrastructure you use (your private and public part of the infrastructure). It’s logical that you do, because a better infrastructure brings a better quality of life, it helps you create more value for the markets, and so on. With a bigger paycheck, people often first invest into better infrastructure.

But we live in the creative economy and post-information age, where is not only infrastructure that’s important. In developed countries, adequate infrastructure is more or less taken care of. So infrastructure isn’t as important as it used to be for competitive advantage and success. You can see that very well in the business world. The best businesses don’t compete with better facilities, plants, equipment and manufacturing machines anymore. The best businesses today compete with creativity, innovation, intellectual property and new business models.

You’ve probably heard that Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.

If the competitive advantage of a business can fall on the CEO’s toes, it’s not real competitive advantage in the creative economy.

In developed countries, you can rent infrastructure when you need it and as much of it as you need it. In some cases, all you need is a laptop and a good connection to the internet, and you can compete on the global markets. Don’t get me wrong. Infrastructure is very important. It’s hard to be creative if your toilet isn’t working, if it takes you hours to get to the office or if you’re freezing in your apartment. But in today’s world, creativity, innovation and information are as important, if not even more important, than outstanding infrastructure if you want to compete, create, deliver and capture (make money) as much value as possible.

What do I really mean by personal infostructure?

If in the contemporary creative economy, innovation and information are as important for creating value as infrastructure is, one of your key competitive advantages is a system and a process of how you consume, manage and share information. That’s your personal infostructure.

Infostructure is a system and a process of how you consume, manage and share information.

The main idea of a good infostructure is that you acquire as much knowledge as possible as quickly as possible. Knowledge is nevertheless an important part of your competence level. Knowledge means knowing a certain field. It means you have a complete set of information that you imprinted into your consciousness. And you can do things with it – you can create and deliver value. A good infostructure also helps you continuously acquire knowledge. It’s called life-long learning based on an informal education.

Even more. Good infostructure definitely contributes to your creativity. Creativity is nothing but the ability to perceive the world in new ways, find hidden patterns, make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and generate solutions. With more information and knowledge, you can more easily connect the dots never before connected . The more right information and knowledge you have (depth, complexity, interdisciplinary …), the more creative and “aha” moments you can have in your life. Because you see connections others can’t see. Because they lack the same combination of knowledge.

Knowledge is power, there’s no doubt about it (actually, applying knowledge is power, but more about that later). Good infostructure means more knowledge, and more knowledge means more power. That’s why you should pay a lot of attention to your personal infostructure if you want to be successful in life. Good infrastructure as part of the outer assets (money, status etc.) is simply not enough anymore. You also need lots of inner assets (competences), and a superior infostructure can help you with that.

But there’s one big trick regarding infostructure. The society (with market demand) has already built one for you; much like it has also built most of the infrastructure. With one big difference, which is that the purpose of the public infostructure is to program you into an obedient and stupid consumer. That’s why I call it bad infostructure, the one you’re pushed into by default.

Bad personal infostructure

As I mentioned, bad infostructure is unfortunately the one that society has already built for you. More than 99 % of people probably use this default infostructure regularly, which consequently heavily contributes towards to living unhappy, average or even zombie lives. If you do what other people do, you get what other people have; and that’s usually an average life. And you don’t want that. So what is the default bad infostructure that society has built for you? Well, there are a few core media used in the default infostructure that are programing you into an obedient consumer. In addition to that, they more or less help you only with mental masturbation and are big time wasters. Here they are:

Television and radio

TV is nothing but a “multimedia ad player”, since you more or less only watch ads that are programming you into a good consumer. The content is usually no better than ads. Reality shows, watching other people play sports, watching people who live the life you probably want to live, be it the leading superheroes in a movie, saving the world, or the main actors themselves having fun filming and making millions. You’re obviously on the wrong side of the screen.

Here’s another trap. Maybe you haven’t turned on the TV for decades and you can tell yourself that you don’t watch it. But on the other hand, you still watch movies and TV shows, just not on the TV. We know video on demand now, we have Netflix, iTunes etc. Or you can even go to the movie theater too often. So you don’t have to sit in front of the TV to watch “TV”.

It’s pretty much the same with channels like Discovery, History and other “educational” channels or even MTV. They play nothing but semi-reality or reality TV shows. You either watch other people travelling, cooking, exploring or doing other amazing things or, on the other hand, you watch them get humiliated in front of a few judges and thousands of people so you can feel a little bit better about yourself. No thanks.

Don’t get me wrong. A good movie or an episode of a TV show can be very relaxing from time to time. And we all need some relaxation; we aren’t robots. But spending hours and hours in front of the TV watching commercials is definitely not the life you want to live. Wake up.

Radio is not much different from TV. You listen to thousands and thousands of commercials and stupid talk shows. You maybe hear a song you like once a day, after listening to hours of useless content. On the main radio stations, you can listen to the same bad news every half hour (it’s like it’s really programing you to be negative), and most interviews and discussions have zero valuable content and are only there to entertain the masses. I don’t remember the last time I heard something useful on the radio. And if you want to listen to music, you have iTunes and other music streaming services.

News (print, online) and most magazines

The daily news gives you a sense of connection with the world as well as a sense of urgency and importance. You feel like you’re in the flow of global happenings. In addition to that, we’re all prone to drama in life, from the evolutionary point of view. Drama and negative information raise your adrenalin levels and make you feel more alive. They make you feel like you’re running from a virtual tiger. Something important is happening, you better pay attention. Not. Most news pieces are negative because your mind loves negative information. You don’t want to fill your mind with negative information. It will only bring the negative into your life.

You can’t live a positive life, with a negative mind. You can’t have positive mind if you constantly consume negative information.

Additionally, news is history. It already happened. You have zero influence on that. And everybody reads it, so it brings zero competitive advantage into your life. Even if you spend hours and hours catching up on tech news, startup news or whatever, the value added of that kind of information is really low. If you want to co-create the future, you need to empty your mind, make some creative free time, read some heavily useful stuff or level up your skills and focus on your goals. Only your goals, nothing else. No drama.

The good thing (somehow, I guess) is that you don’t have to worry at all: even if you unsubscribe yourself from all the news, the most “important” (the most negative or shocking) news will definitely reach you sooner or later. Because everybody shares it, 99 % of people are little beacons of negative information.

Social networks

Social networks have become an important part of our lives. People spend hours and hours on social networks. For most people, it’s extremely hard to escape from being on the most popular social networks. This means at least Facebook and Twitter, but I can probably also add Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and many others to the list. It won’t get any better in the future. There will be even more websites fighting for your time and attention.

Now ask yourself honestly, will hours and hours of looking at pictures of what your friends and acquaintances are doing really help you progress in life? Definitely not. And to be realistic, Facebook and other social networks aren’t even close to showing the real lives that people are living. People are only posting beautiful moments, the few peaks they get in their lives. Behind these beautiful moments, every human being must face challenges, disappointments, struggles and other burdens.

At the end of the day, looking at the good moments of your Facebook friends makes you feel like you’re the only weirdo who doesn’t enjoy life to the full. Not a perception you want to program your mind with. And a big distraction from your own goals.

Pub debates

An important source of information for everyone are also their friends. That’s why social networks are so popular. Because people love to “stalk” other people and they’re so interested in what other people are thinking or doing. The same mental masturbation effect often also happens in real life, especially in pubs, coffee shops and similar locations. People love talking about politics, big world problems and negative events, and we can also add gossiping, criticizing, whining and complaining to the list.

A debate among a group of friends is rarely about brainstorming new ideas, challenging beliefs, pushing each other to the next level, looking for positives in life, and so on. I see that only among really successful people who sit at the same table, without any bozos present. People you spend time with are an extremely important source of your information and therefore also an important source of your motivation and creativity. You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind. In the same way, you can’t live a positive life being surrounded by negative people and participating in stupid pub debates.

Numerous trashy internet sites

Like every technology, internet has brought a lot of good, but also a few bad things into our lives. Just to mention a few good ones: internet has enabled us higher productivity, faster access to quality information, new ways of communication, and so on. The bad, on the other hand, is especially the fact that internet also gave everyone very easy access to shitty content and shitty information. With a single click. People are spending hours and hours on the internet browsing stupid internet sites.

From watching porn, arguing on forums, posting hateful comments and reading tabloids to watching “funny” vines, browsing through thousands of social network statuses, and so on. Well, at the end of the day, most people consume on the internet what they used to consume only with TV, daily news, magazines, gaming consoles and pub debates. Now with the internet, everything is intensified and accelerated.

You simply don’t want to have that kind of an infostructure in your life. Much like you want your toilet to work in your home, have nice roads without holes and bumps when you drive to your job, like you want lights in your office when it gets dark and a nice working car, why wouldn’t you want to get the same from the infostructure that feeds your mind and consequently also defines your quality of life, happiness level, competence level and potential?

It doesn’t make any sense to fight for outstanding infrastructure and not pay any attention to your infostructure.

Outstanding personal infostructure

Now we know what the bad default infostructure that society has built for you looks like and how it influences your life. Something that 99 % of people use and something that’s very hard to avoid in everyday life. Why? Because people like it (demand) and everybody profits from you using the default bad infostructure. Producers, advertising companies, media houses, even your country and your neighbors (so they don’t have to be envious), everybody profits. Except you.

Therefore, you have to put an enormous amount of energy, will and self-discipline into changing the default infostructure to a better one and regularly using it. The good news is that people have also built and created the good part of the infostructure, available to you with one click. Unfortunately, the masses just don’t use it as much as they use the mainstream media, so it takes a little bit more effort to surround yourself with the right content. That’s the beauty of today’s world: you have choices and you have the power to decide what you’ll consume. Fast food or quality stuff.

To be fair, there are temptations every hour of every day, fighting for your time, attention and money, trying to make you to go back to the default bad infostructure. But you have to be strong. You have to make the right choices most of the time (let’s say 95 %). You can never completely run away from a bad infostructure (there’s always a movie or a TV show you really can’t miss). But you can definitely build yourself an outstanding system for consuming and managing information that will help you achieve your goals and become the best version of yourself.

Here’s how your infrastructure should look like:

Books and carefully selected blogs and magazines

By far the best text source of knowledge and information are still books. You should read at least one book per month. Even better if you read one book per week. Some people read one book per day. You can take a speed-reading course and join a “one book per day” club. I should do that. An average person spends hours in front of the TV every day. Imagine if all that time were spent on reading top books.

I guarantee that if you read a quality book per day, then you will definitely become a lean, mean, creative knowledge machine in a year. And it never takes a year to get obsessed with reading. In a few months of regular reading habits, you’ll automatically start reading a book every time someone in the family turns on the TV, simply because you’ll see and experience all the benefits of reading.

What about other reading material? Well, the general rule is that you acquire a lot more useful knowledge by reading a quality book than by reading dozens of blog posts. Nevertheless, some blogs are pure gold (like this one :). You should find those rare ones and follow them. The same goes for magazines. You can find magazines of really high quality in some industries and for some topics, while for others not so much.

Always follow the rule to go for the best (knowledge) and forget the rest.

Before you buy a book and start reading it, check the reviews and the table of contents. Make sure the book is really something that will help you advance in life. Maybe you can read a summary of the book and then decide. The idea is that by reading a book, you “download” an upgraded software version of a specific topic to your brain. You must get creative ideas and learn new and better ways of doing things in life. And then do them. Apply them. Only reading will probably only bring you better language skills.

Audiobooks and carefully selected podcasts

We all have very busy schedules. Consequently, it’s often hard to find the time to sit down and read in peace. Well, if you really want it, you can make it. Anyhow, audiobooks are also a good way to accelerate your learning. You can listen to audiobooks when you drive, wait in queues or take a walk. You can simply buy and download audiobooks to your smart phone, and listen to them when the opportunity pops up. There are more and more audiobooks available, no matter the topic you want to listen to and get educated about.

Much like the comparison of books and blogs, the same goes for podcasts compared to audiobooks. There are only a few podcasts that are really good and useful. The reason for that is probably the fact that most podcasts are free. And as we said, because people love to consume useless information (demand), other people (producers) are producing tons of useless content (because as a producer, you have to listen to the markets). Therefore, you have to put in the effort and break through all the bad content in order to find the best one.

MOOCs and educational videos

Massive online open courses have become an extremely important source of learning for successful people. The good news is that you can find many quality courses, even from the best universities like Harvard, MIT and the best worldwide experts from many industries and life areas. You can follow the selected material at your own pace, you’re usually connected online with a group of peers who try to acquire the same knowledge as you, and so on. In short, it’s a great way to learn from the best.

The bad news is that the majority of people who subscribe to MOOCs never really take and finish the course. They only subscribe and participate in a lecture or two at the most. Some research shows that only around 2 % finish the courses they subscribe to. Well, to be honest, it’s not easy to finish an online course. It takes effort, self-discipline, motivation, there’s no teacher to motivate you etc. It’s much easier to turn on the TV and watch a reality show than to listen to an open course. But those 2 % are the ones who do advance in life while other people stagnate. It’s what separates successful people from average ones. You have to decide for yourself. The trick is that the hard road becomes easy with time and the easy road becomes hard.

Besides MOOCs, you can find many motivating and educational videos online. When you have only 20 minutes to do something useful or when you’re waiting at the doctors, you can plug in your earphones and watch a talk online that will help you with your goals and progress in life. There’s so much useful content online, you just have to put in the effort to find it and avoid all the crap.

Seminars, lectures and carefully selected conferences

An important part of your infostructure should also be seminars, lectures and a few carefully selected conferences that you visit as an individual as well as for business purposes (you should only work for a company that’s prepared to invest into your knowledge). Sometimes even advancing in formal education makes sense. The main problem with previously mentioned MOOCs is that you can get bored easily, especially if you’re not an introvert. Being in a group of people with the same goal and with dates and times set in advance in the real, not virtual, life helps a lot with motivation and self-discipline. And you can make new business and personal connections more easily.

This is why you should make offline seminars and lectures an important part of your infostructure, especially if you encounter problems with self-discipline behind a computer. Conferences can also be useful sometimes, but more or less for motivational purposes, networking and having fun. If you go to too many conferences, you often start wasting your precious time. Here’s why.

A mastermind group and a mentor

The most important part of your infostructure should be your mastermind group and your mentor(s). Your mastermind group are all the people you ask for advice and go for important information from your industry, about life, and so on.

Your mastermind group are your trusted coworkers, hopefully your boss, your ambitious and educated friends as well as the best lawyers, doctors and consultants you can still afford. People that help you grow, progress and advance in life.

Part of your infostructure system should also be your personal mentor. You should always have a personal mentor. Someone who pushes you, helps you to focus, does introductions to help you expand your professional network and directs you to the right information resources. Instead of gossiping in the pub and complaining about life, brainstorming about your next move in life with the right mentor could change your life forever.

Group discussions (online and offline)

Besides all the hateful comments on the internet and useless forum arguments, there’s also a positive side to group discussions. You can find many useful forums and communities online and offline. They should be an important part of your infostructure.

We love to belong and being part of a community enhances your desire and discipline to learn and acquire new knowledge. Therefore, online forums and offline meet-ups can be a great way to learn and to meet new people with the same interests as you. Again, you have to very carefully select where to join and where to invest your energy. If the quality of information starts to decline, you shouldn’t have any emotional problems finding new better groups.

Other resources

There are, of course, many extremely useful internet sites, eBooks and other resources you can find online (and offline) with only a few clicks. If you have high enough standards for what kind of content to consume, you’ll be fine. Just remember that you become what you consume. So go for the best and forget the rest.

The process of consuming information

The sources (specific media) where you go get information and how you get it (type of media) is a system you set as part of your infostructure. As already mentioned, even if you don’t build your own system consciously, your environment (family, society etc.) has built a system for you. The other part of the equation is when, how often and for how long you consume information as well as how you manage what you’ve read. It’s called the process, and the purpose of the process is to help you with self-discipline and to stay away from the default bad infostructure.

Here are the general recommendations for the process (and also system) you should set for yourself for acquiring and managing knowledge:
- Go for the best (knowledge), forget the rest. Carefully chose what you consume. Help yourself with reviews, summaries etc. before you really bite into anything. Sometimes the best knowledge is a best-seller book, other times a blog post you find after hours of browsing.
- Especially consume information that you can apply to your life and then apply it. At the end of the day, knowledge is not power. Applying knowledge is. When reading material, you should get new creative ideas or ideas for how to do things differently.
- If possible, do a mind map or structure the new acquired knowledge in some other way after reading specific material. Connect the new acquired knowledge with what you already know. Write down the best new ideas from the material and try to come up with your own new ideas.
- If you start reading something and you figure out it has no value for you (nothing new), stop reading it. It sounds funny but for most of people, it’s not an easy thing to do. We have the natural psychological tendency to finish what we start. For example, you rarely leave a theater, even if the movie sucks. Don’t do that. If the material sucks, move on. Don’t move on because a page loads for a second longer than you expected, but because of the bad quality.
- Don’t read the material you already know. People have a tendency to read the stuff they already know over and over again. Because it’s easier. Don’t do that. The exception is if you’re refreshing your knowledge or revising material.
- Read materials from very different areas you’re interested in and try to combine the knowledge in new ways. That’s called creativity. Don’t consume material only from one topic or industry. Be a curious human.
- Try to structure the most important knowledge you have in your own presentations, blog posts, lectures etc. Teaching others is a great way to reinforce and structure the knowledge you possess.
- Consume more difficult subjects when you’re well rested and lighter material when you’re already tired. You have to push yourself, but don’t push yourself over the limit. An important part of acquiring knowledge is that you enjoy it.
And a few recommendations regarding the limits of the process:
- Read something positive and motivational the first thing when you wake up.
- Don’t go to sleep if you haven’t read at least one page that day.
- Read for at least one hour per day.
- Read at least one book per month.
- Take at least one day per month only to upgrade your competences. Mark a no-interruptions day in your calendar and focus just on learning.
- Go to one educational seminar or do one MOOC at least once every six months.
- Go to one motivational conference at least once a year, especially for motivational purposes.
- A good way to learn is while you earn. Your work should always be slightly more demanding than your skills, so you have to learn while you work. Also make sure to work at a company that’s prepared to invest in your knowledge, if you aren’t your own boss.
- Limit mental masturbation (consuming useless content, social networking etc.) to 5 hours per week at the most.
- Sharing is caring. Share and spread good information. People desperately need it.
Well, reading can also mean watching, listening or participating in a group discussion.

Sharing information

An important part of infostructure is also sharing information, not only consuming it. The first rule is that you should produce only quality content. The world is already polluted enough with shitty content. So no hateful comments, no gossiping and talking about reality shows.

You should become a human beacon of positive and quality information and knowledge.

The second rule is that sharing is caring. If it’s not exactly a trade secret, you should share quality information with people. There’s this karma rule regarding knowledge. The more knowledge you share, the more knowledge you get. But also don’t have any constraints to charge for your knowledge.

You should be aware that in the information age, you share information and content all the time, with every move you make behind your computer and, of course, every time you open your mouth. Every e‑mail, every social media update, every blog comment and content recommendation is part of your infostructure. Much like you should be very careful about the content you consume, so you should carefully watch what you share

At the end of the day, what comes out of your mouth is more or less determined by what goes into your mind.

Practical example

My personal infostructure

Now let’s get on the practical level. Let’s look at my own personal infostructure, the system of how I get information and how I handle it. First of all, I follow the asset-light living philosophy, so I have everything digitalized and own no physical books, magazines, CDs or any other material (except an exercise book for language learning). An important part of my infostructure are also my digital brains.

I buy books on Amazon. I have a Kindle eReader and a Kindle app on my smartphone, tablet and PC. I try to read at least one book per week. Books are my primary source of acquiring new knowledge. The only magazine I read is the Harvard Business Review.

Before I buy a book, I read the summary. I use Blinkist for book summaries and, from the bottom of my heart, I can say that it’s a really awesome app. If I like the summary, I buy and read the book. Next to that, I try to read at least one book summary per day. I read books/summaries at every opportunity I have. When I wake up, before I go to sleep, when I wait in lines, when I have a few minutes to waste, I open the Kindle app or Blinkist and I start reading.

My favorite apps

I use Feedly as a RSS app for the few blogs I’m subscribed to. I used to be subscribed to more than 100 blogs but I felt overloaded. Now I’m subscribed only to a few really good blogs from different niches (startups, internet marketing, personal development, productivity …). To be honest, I often run out of time to read the blog posts and I don’t put pressure on myself to read all the blog posts. I have no problem with having many unread blog posts as long as I read books on a daily basis. I used to be a big fan of reading apps, like Flipboard, etc., but now they’re more or less no different from reading the daily news. So again, I go back to books.

I use Audible for audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks when I walk, wait in a queue and sometimes when I’m driving (if I’m well rested). I also listen to audiobooks when I’m doing the dishes and other chores. I don’t really listen to podcasts, except to Tai Lopez sometimes (or similar authors).

MOOCs are an important part of my infostructure. I regularly buy courses on Udemy. I’m subscribed to Lynda, Threehouse and Tutsplus, especially now when I’m leveling up my IT competences. As a source of motivational talks, I watch TED Talks from time to time.

I don’t watch TV at all. I don’t listen to the radio. I don’t read the daily news. I don’t participate in useless debates. And I don’t visit useless internet sites. I do watch TV shows from time to time, but with an upper limit of 3 hours per week (except when I’m ill and can’t do anything else than stare at either a TV screen or a wall). I’ve turned my social networks into a source of quality content. I do visit 9gag from time to time. That’s my weak point, I guess. When in any kind of dilemma, my philosophy is to go back to quality books. An even more important part of my philosophy is to apply the acquired knowledge and experience it for myself.
Markets always win

In capitalism, there’s only one really important rule. Markets always win. You stand zero chances if you go against the market. Markets determine a big part of your life. If you choose the right markets, things will go well for you; if not, you’ll experience only struggle, pain and failure. You may fight against the market for years and at the end, you’ll probably be brutally knocked out to the floor, no matter how competent you are. You may lose everything and markets will laugh right in your face.

The brutal thing is that even if you don’t want to play the game, you’re playing the game.

In love life, your sexual market value more or less determines the quality of the partner you can attract. It’s usually someone in your range of sexual market value. It’s like you have a number on your forehead. Trends on the job market have a big influence on whether you’ll be employed or not, how much you’ll earn and how quickly you’ll get promoted. You can be the best in something no one wants to buy and you’ll be poor. If you’re an entrepreneur and don’t have customers who want to buy your products, there is no market and there is no business. Most startups fail because there’s no market.

A market is not a nice thing. It’s like a moody, perpetually dissatisfied cruel person leaving no room for negotiations, no room for discussions or compromises. Either you hit the spot and make the market happy or you’re out of the game. You can even make the market happy several times in a row and then fail it, and yet the market won’t spare you any pain. Markets are copy-cats of nature; and nature can be the most beautiful experience in the world or the cruelest one. That’s also why so many people criticize capitalism.

Let’s take a step back now. What is a market, really? Well, it’s nothing but supply and demand. Markets are nothing but people voting with their resources, be it with money, attention, love, sex or anything else.

If you can provide something in great demand and of scarce supply, you’ve hit the spot. If you supply something that’s in big supply and short demand, markets will ignore you and you’ll be poor. Offer something people want, but not many can do, and you shall prosper; offer something anyone can offer, and few people want, and you shall be one of many waiting in a long line, hoping that maybe someone spots you; and they probably won’t.

There’s a good story representing this connection between creating, delivering and capturing value, and markets. An old couple is walking in the park. The grandpa gets a heart attack and collapses on the floor. A young person passes by. Grandma, completely panicked, asks the person if they know CPR. The person responds: “I’m a really good person.” Grandma says that she doesn’t care about that, she only wants to know if the person knows CPR. The person responds again: “I’ve also finished college and work really hard.” That’s nice and all, but can you do CPR?

The point of the story is that markets only care about the things you can supply. Money knows no racism, no borders and don’t care about your history. Markets don’t care if you’re a good person, in love or not, the only thing that the markets care about is the value you can provide.

The formula is simple: no value, no money. Well, it’s not that simple, of course. There are many different types of value a person can produce. It can be social value, attraction value or whatever. For example, a good teacher produces a great social value, but not that much of a financial value, because supply of teachers is quite bigger than demand.

I’m definitely encouraging you to find the right balance between market value and social value, but you should never leave market value out of the equation. When we speak in terms of business (financial markets, career markets, startups etc.), “no unique value proposition, no money” is the golden rule.

The biggest problem with markets is that it’s not easy to be in a position where the demand is great and the supply falls short. It’s one of the toughest things in the world. Most people who hit the sweet spot do it based on pure luck. Others struggle for years before hitting it, after putting huge effort into strategizing, innovating, analyzing and failure; and even then you need to have a lot of luck. The good news is that you have to be right only once, the bad news is that it’s extremely hard to be right even once. But understanding markets can help you a lot to progress faster in life.

Everyone’s dream should be to have a monopoly in some niche market for a short period of time. A monopoly is definitely not good for the general society, but it gives a great advantage to an individual, even if only for a short period of time. Everyone would like to have a monopoly, everyone would like to be on top, maybe just to taste it, even if they don’t admit it to themselves. Monopoly is how you get on the top.

There’s even more. We want to control the markets, not only as individuals but as a society as well. In the same way as we try to control nature. Nature and markets, they both make us feel insecure. That’s why we have the government and government interventions. To control the markets and to control nature (with all its resources, threats, borders etc.).

The sad thing is that most interventions bring a new set of problems, like inefficiency and corruption. Controlling the beast is no easy task, and people more often hurt themselves than not. Going against the markets is hard, controlling them is even harder. Sooner or later, market meltdowns and scandals happen. But that’s how we organized the world.

Now let’s look at the markets from a brighter perspective. What can you do to understand markets more? The first thing you have to do is un-ego yourself. We all have assumptions about the markets. We think other people want what we want, like and dislike the same things, use technology in the same way etc. In most cases, we have wrong assumptions and wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups. That’s the main point of the lean startup theory and its first phase of building a startup, which is empathy.

When you un-ego yourself, you become empathetic, you listen to the voices on the market, you observe what people respond to, you search for what people are prepared to pay for.

In the second step, you should stop following your passion and start following your effort. Rather than idealizing life, you look at the hard facts. What markets really want that you can actually provide. There is no place for romance, idealism or egoistic behavior towards the markets. Only supply and demand. The good news is that with time following your effort and seeing all the results passion will also develop. But…

If you ignore the market, the market will ignore you. As already mentioned, you have to be aware that even if you don’t want to compete, you are competing. You’re voting with your resources and other people use their resources to vote on how much value you can provide for them. There’s no escape.

With your birth, you were put on different markets and dealt different cards. Talents, family money, beauty, intelligence, and your hard work, they’re all building blocks of your capacity to prove your value on the market. The more of them you’re born with, the better position you are in. That’s definitely a big advantage in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term. That is to say, good times make soft people, and things like the Dutch disease can happen. And hard and smart work always put talent (or other given things) to shame. It’s up to you how you’ll play game of life.

No matter what, you should respect the markets, learn its rules and play the best game possible. When thinking about markets (financial markets, job markets, consumer markets etc.), you should analyze short-term and long-term trends, you should always stay empathetic, constantly acquire new market insights and quickly adapt to changes. You must know how to manage your ego and your false assumptions by constantly, testing, experimenting and innovating.

Go with the markets, make the markets your best friends and you shall prosper; put ego before the markets and you’ll stay alone and miserable. It’s that simple. Your competences are your downside protection. If you’re very competent, you’ll always make something out of your life. Markets define your upside potential. If you hit the right market at the right time, you can win big. But if you’re competent and hit the right market, something magical can happen.

So start learning about the markets. Here’s a nice set of videos with all the basic information: https://wetheeconomy.com/films/cave-o-nomics/
Minimalism and half-yearly major cleaning
I’m a big fan of minimalism. A few years ago, I decided to own as little as possible. I downgraded and bought a small car. I cleaned out all the wardrobes, drawers and shelves in my home. No souvenirs, no items I don’t regularly use, no excess of clothes or anything else. All digital things were transferred to a cloud and I’ve started with asset-light living as a big part of minimalist lifestyle. No CDs, photo albums, and as little paper as possible.

It feels good as shit. It makes so much room in your life. You get new margin and space to focus on things that really matter. A lot has been written about the minimalist lifestyle and there are so many stories of how people freed themselves from material prisons; I encourage you to find those stories on the internet and give minimalism a try. It’s not about ignoring the material world or not giving a damn about money, but about setting the right priorities.

The less you own, the less owns you.

Well, one of the most important things for living a minimalist lifestyle is regular cleaning. I try to discard the things I don’t need on a daily basis as life goes along, but in spite of that, things have a tendency to accumulate and take up space. That’s why I do regular monthly cleanings and a major one every half year. After every major cleaning, I feel like I’ve also tidied up a part of my inner world; I feel refreshed and ready for new achievements.

I’ve just performed a major half-yearly cleaning and it took me an entire weekend. I usually do major half-yearly cleanings after every summer (August/September) and after every winter (March/April). Here’s what I’ve done over the past weekend. I have…
- Cleaned out my closets and donated five big bags of clothes to charity. I donated all the clothes that I don’t really wear or that have become a little worn out or that I don’t feel good wearing. I really try to own as few clothes as possible and there’s still so much to give away every year.
- Cleaned out all the drawers and threw away all the things I don’t use, like pens, notebooks, paperclips, loyalty cards and other stuff that gets stuck in drawers.
- Cleaned and tidied up my car.
- Took care of all the paperwork and administration, and threw away all the papers I don’t need. I try to have as little paper as possible. You cannot totally wipe it due to tax and legal reasons, but I try to get rid of all other paper or digitalize it.
- Formatted my computer with a fresh copy of Windows 10, cleaned all the folders and files and, of course, made an archive beforehand. Now my computer is like new and everything is organized as it should be according to time management best practices.
- Took my netbook (Asus Transformer) to service because of a hardware fault. I use the netbook only for traveling and haven’t yet decided if I really need it enough. It will stay with me for the next six months and then I’ll see what to do with it.
- Cleaned my iPhone and got rid of all the apps I don’t need or use frequently enough (I has four screens of apps, and now only two). I also archived and organized photos, music and other digital assets.
- Arranged my contacts, social network profiles, passwords and other digital parts of my life.
- Canceled various subscriptions to apps and magazines I don’t use frequently enough. Many are good apps or reads, but if I don’t have time to use it, it’s time to lose it.
- Put some technical equipment I don’t use on eBay to sell it, and threw away some cables, CDs etc. I used to prefer to throw away things (because it’s easier) rather than put them on internet markets, but now I first try to sell all the things if I can set the price for at least 15$. I’ve figured out that almost everything holds value for someone.
- Canceled some mini projects and commitments in order to make more time to focus on work and tasks with the most value added.
- Arranged RSS feeds, organized eBooks and music and some other digital stuff as part of my minimalistic and asset-light living.
- I donated around 50 business books to one of the NGOs. Five years ago I had like 1000+ books. I sold, donated and gave away most of them. Now I have the last 7 physical books, that are my favorites. I need a little bit of time to get rid of them because of an emotional connection.
- Cleaned my master task list (backlog) and deleted a few tasks I wanted to do but aren’t that important. By deleting some of the tasks, I got some instant margin in life and it felt so good.
- Much like I’ve deleted a few tasks, I’ve also deleted a few hundred articles that were in the “to read” folder, but that I haven’t touched in the past few months. Deleting them felt good with no regrets at all.
- I’ve reordered and optimized my browser bookmarks and tidied up a few other little things to have my life and the environment as clean as possible.
- Since I’ve done all that work, me and my girlfriend also had a major apartment cleaning and now everything feels new and fresh.
You can do the same with your garage, the food in your refrigerator and other places in the kitchen, the basement and all the other places where junk gets accumulated. When you get rid of all the stuff you don’t need, you simply make room for new things. You make room for new, better things you can fight for; somehow cleaning feels like an exciting experience, being in touch with your past, remembering it one more time and, in the future at the same time, thinking what new you will attract to your life.

The purpose of this blog post is to encourage you to try a minimalist lifestyle or, if that seems like too big a step, try to make some space in your life with the purpose of attracting new, better things. You can do that with material things, but you can also clean up and reorder relationships in your life, business and personal, in pretty much the same way, all with the purpose of focusing on those that really matter.

Make minimalism a part of your life strategy. Happy cleaning.