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  • How to get a good night’s sleep

    Sleep is the part of life when you recharge your batteries and gather new strengths, especially to overcome daily challenges. A sufficient amount of sleep is necessary for functioning creatively, leading a healthy lifestyle and enjoying everyday life. But oftentimes, you don’t give enough time to sleep, convinced that you’ll be able to do more throughout the day; or you might be even suffering from insomnia.

    However, in the long run, you’re actually doing yourself a lot of harm with a lack of sleep. Both your productivity and your creative abilities fall, you’re significantly more irritable and sensitive, and a lack of sleep can also lead to chronic fatigue and diseases. I absolutely agree that needing less sleep than others is a huge advantage. But despite that, it’s necessary that you ensure that you get as much sleep as you need. Nevertheless, your health should be in the first place.

    I myself need eight hours of sleep, because otherwise I just don’t function like I should. I wade through the day more than live it, I’m less focused, I lose sensory sharpness, and I could go on. If I don’t sleep enough for a longer period of time, I get sick very quickly. Besides that, I’m also very sensitive to various conditions that have to be fulfilled in order for me to fall asleep easily. This is why I spent some more time thinking about what truly contributes to a good night’s sleep.

    Let’s look at a few key elements that contribute to you waking up well-rested. Here are 24 secrets how to get a good night’s sleep:

    24 best pieces of advice how to get a good night’s sleep:

    1. No food four hours before sleep

    Food habits take the first place by far. If you eat right before sleep, the body uses up energy mostly for digestion instead of resting and regenerating. Whenever I’m at a business or private dinner and I “stuff myself” with food, I wake up feeling more or less sleep-deprived the next day. Food before bed kills peaceful sleep as well as contributes to excess body weight the most. You simply do yourself a huge favour if you don’t eat in the evening; it’s best if you eat nothing after seven o’clock.

    That’s why the first rule that you should try to follow is no food at least three to four hours before sleep. Better four hours. Even if it’s necessary to turn down an invitation to a business dinner – better to do lunch instead. If you don’t manage to eat anything after lunch until the evening, it makes sense to eat something light, no meals that are complex or difficult to digest. Trust me, whenever you eat something heavy or in big quantities in the evening, you’ll always be sorry the next day. Very sorry.

    2. No screens two hours before bed

    Besides food, devices with an active screen right before sleep are the biggest enemies of peaceful rest. An active screen strongly stimulates the eyes and the brain, and so you’re simply not ready to sleep. The rule you should try to follow is no active screens at least two hours before sleep. And you shouldn’t watch television anyway. If you find it problematic to not have an iPad or any other device in your hands, increase the transaction costs. Only have your iPad far away in the office.

    The only acceptable device in the evening is Amazon’s Kindle, which has a passive screen. It’s similar to reading a book, but you can have an unlimited amount of books in a single book. In short, your brain will understand that Kindle is not a “computer”. The only thing you have to be careful about is reading something light before sleep. Classic literature or math equations will make your brain go crazy and you definitely won’t fall asleep easily.

    It’s also essential that you don’t have electrical devices, such as clocks and similar, near your heads during sleep. Instead, they should be as far away as possible. It’s especially crucial that they don’t shine. The more electrical devices that you have turned on in your bedroom, even if they don’t give off light, the harder you’ll fall asleep; much less if they do give off light.

    3. Go to sleep before midnight

    I once read that each hour of sleep before midnight counts double. Well, I don’t know if that’s true for everyone, but I definitely wake up significantly better rested if I go to bed before midnight. Every time I distract myself with something, be it a computer, work or reading, and stay up an hour or two after midnight, I regret it the next morning, even though I sleep for enough hours.

    On top of that, it’s harder for me to fall asleep if I look at the screen before midnight. If it’s at all possible – which it usually is, except for a few rare days – go to sleep before midnight. Try it and see for yourself if going to sleep before midnight has any effect on how well rested you wake up the next day.

    4. A sufficient amount of sleep

    The number of hours of sleep that you afford is, of course, crucial for how well-rested you’ll wake up. Experts recommend 7 to 8 hours of sleep. For me personally, 7 hours of sleep is too little. I feel that I’m not rested enough throughout the entire day. I’ve accepted this and I try to sleep around 8 hours as many days a week as possible.

    Even though I have an hour less at my disposal, I do a lot more with the given time. Some can simply function normally with only 6 hours of sleep. If that’s really enough and not taking advantage of the body, so much the better. They also say that you need less and less sleep as you get older. Well, this hasn’t happened with me yet, but it might be true.

    It’s also known that too much sleep has a negative effect on well-being, which I can also confirm on the basis of my own experience. With me, it’s somehow true that if I sleep more than 8.5 hours, I don’t feel like I should. Much like too little sleep, too much sleep isn’t good either. It’s best if you have a set internal clock and sleep schedule, and wake up exactly when you need to. Your body knows when to go to sleep and when to wake up better than a clock does.

    5. Oxygen and temperature

    The body needs oxygen, even during sleep. If you don’t believe me, try not breathing for a couple of minutes. This is why it’s recommended that you air out your bedroom before sleep, making it fresh and full of oxygen.

    It’s even better to sleep with an open window; if you aren’t too cold, of course. Experts estimate that sleeping in a room where the temperature is too high isn’t that good. It’s best if the temperature is somewhat lower (approx. 18 – 22 degrees C). Everyone should figure that out for themselves. And for guys, lower temperature helps produce testosterone, which means better sexual performance at least.

    Me, I wake up feeling the most rested at a lower temperature and an open window supplying a steady flow of fresh air. If you can’t sleep with an open window because you’re cold, at least air out the room before going to bed. But you should absolutely choose what suits you best.

    6. Regular exercise

    It’s no secret that regular exercise has a lot of positive effects. Even on sleep. Every single one of us can probably confirm that. During the periods when I exercise regularly, I fall asleep much more easily, I sleep better and wake up feeling better rested. During the periods when I don’t do regular exercise, my quality of sleep gets systematically worse from one week to the next. By exercising regularly, you can do yourself the biggest favour, especially for the quality of life.

    But you have to figure out the time of day when exercise suits you best. I, for example, can’t fall asleep if I exercise before going to bed. Impossible. I have to exercise at least 3 to 4 hours before sleeping. Afternoon is best. Morning doesn’t suit me that well either, because then I feel slightly tired and constantly hungry throughout the day.

    But some people prefer to exercise in the evening and then immediately fall asleep from tiredness. You have to listen to your body and figure out what suits you best. The charm lies in the fact that we’re all different – there are certain general guidelines, but all of us have to figure out what suits us best on our own.

    Sleep Like In Nature

    7. Investing into a high-quality bed

    One of the best investments you can make in life is a bed with the best possible mattress and bed sheets. The difference in sleep quality is incredible. It’s true that a quality bed isn’t cheap, but you shouldn’t see a quality bed as an expense but rather as an investment.

    Depending on your sleep quality, you’ll be a lot better rested and more productive, which also means that you’ll enjoy life more and profit from the investment sooner or later.

    8. Bed location

    This element of good sleep strongly depends on whether you believe in energies or not. I do to a certain extent, therefore I’ve measured energy flows (water flows etc.) under my bed and made sure my bed isn’t near them. I cannot say whether this is important or not, but it’s definitely true that I sleep better in certain areas than in others. Each space definitely has its own energy. Some also swear on Feng shui when placing a bed. But this is truly an area where each individual has to figure out whether the bed location has any value added or not. I believe that some people are more sensible to energies than others, and if energies aren’t right for you in a certain place, then you can have problems with sleep, nightmares and similar.

    9. No coffee, alcohol or drugs

    By drinking coffee, you definitely confuse your internal clock. I myself have not been drinking coffee for a couple of years now, and I have no need for it. If you do drink coffee, the most suitable time is definitely in the morning. The closer to the evening that you are, the harder you’ll fall asleep if you drink coffee or your quality of sleep won’t be that good. So you have to be very careful when drinking it.

    Same with alcohol. If it seems that alcohol and maybe even drugs relax you, the quality of sleep is actually significantly worse. It’s better to go for a quick jog than to help yourself out with alcohol or drugs. With these kinds of substances, you don’t do anything good for your body, neither in the short term nor in the long. By excessively consuming alcohol and drugs, you definitely damage your sleep quality as well as your health. You’re locking yourself into an emotional cage with no easy exit.

    10. Dark and quiet

    It’s scientifically proven that you sleep best in the dark and quiet. That’s why it’s important that the television is off, all noises are eliminated and the body is thus prepared for sleep. Dark also supposedly plays an important role in allowing all important chemical reactions during sleep to happen. It’s recommended to close the blinds and curtains, especially if the full moon is getting closer or already occurring (so that you don’t sleepwalk because of it).

    I’m very sensitive and have a hard time falling asleep if I’m not in the dark and quiet. Introverts usually have that kind of problems. But I know a lot of people who aren’t bothered by that at all. They can fall asleep at any time and anywhere, no matter the conditions, as long as they’re sleepy enough. I can’t do that, so I also can’t really judge the quality of such sleep. You have to find out for yourself, but the dark and quiet will probably help.

    11. No skin-tight underwear

    An important finding originating from Taoism is the concept of energy flow (ch’i) in the body. You can really block your energy flow by wearing skin-tight underwear (one that squeezes the manhood or breasts). And it’s scientifically proven that it messes with the production of testosterone (for men).

    Such energy blockades can strongly contribute to worse sleep. That’s why it might be a good idea to see if you find it easier and better to fall asleep in clothes that are meant for night sleep and aren’t too snug where they aren’t supposed to be. Pyjamas.

    12. Let your worries flow away

    It’s difficult to fall asleep and relax to the world of dreams if you’re troubled by difficult thoughts. It’s very important that before sleep, you let go of the worries and troubles arising from your negative thoughts. The burden of every day is enough on its own and it doesn’t make any sense to live worrying about what could happen tomorrow. That definitely doesn’t always work, but you have to do your best.

    You can help yourself by drawing a hot bath before sleep, listening to relaxing music, reading relaxing content, meditation, visualisation, affirmations or any other tool that can relax you. If nothing else, you have dozens of smartphone apps that can help you relax (just don’t look at the screen).

    Beside eating too much in the evening, I have the biggest problems with sleep if I’m bothered by negative thoughts and worries. Controlling your mind is thus an incredibly important life skill. Learn it.

    13. No work two hours before sleep

    Negative thoughts and intense feelings can also be caused by work responsibilities, especially if you focus on them right before sleep. They don’t have to be difficult duties at all. Even getting into the flow of some work and being chased by deadlines can contribute to you not being able to fall asleep.

    That’s why it’s good that you finish work at least two hours before sleep. It’s even better if you’re ultra-productive for 8 hours, during which you can do all essential things, spend 8 hours charging your batteries and then devote the rest of the time to other activities that fill your life.

    Sleeping Family

    14. No liquids two hours before bed

    It’s hard to get well-rested if you get up often during the night. Drinking water throughout the day is definitely crucial and it’s recommended that you have a flask with you the whole time.

    But drinking water before sleep naturally forces you to get up more times that necessary during the night. That’s why it’s good to not drink anything at least two hours before bed; and before you head into the world of dreams, you shouldn’t forget to go to the toilet.

    15. Going to sleep when you’re sleepy and intervals of sleepiness

    The worst thing you can do is pressure yourself because you can’t fall asleep. If you lie down and try to fall asleep but can’t, that’s an excellent opportunity to take a book into your hands. You should go to sleep when you’re truly sleepy. But still get up at the same time every day.

    Research says that sleep takes place in intervals that last about 90 minutes and that in each interval, different sleep phases take turns. At the start of the interval, you get sleepy. So if you aren’t sleepy, you should wait for the new cycle to begin.

    I noticed that with myself as well. If I become sleepy and don’t go to sleep, I’m awake again and have to wait for quite some time to get sleepy again. It’s the worst if you get sleepy before midnight and don’t go to sleep, and then the new interval of sleepiness only comes late after midnight. As already mentioned, you’ll regret your decision the next day.

    16. No annoying alarms

    It’s best to wake up without an alarm. Once you have a set sleep schedule, that’s not difficult. Most days, I have no problems waking up without an alarm.

    I do have my alarm on just in case, but it’s with relaxing music on my smartphone (far away from my head). Well, to feel better, I also have the more annoying one set for the extreme hour when it’s absolutely necessary to wake up, but I rarely need it. If you need an alarm clock, set some music or sounds to which you’ll wake up gladly.

    17. The bed is (almost) exclusively for sleeping

    Some experts emphasise that the bed should only be for sleeping. Well, and for one other activity – sex, of course. The brain is thus supposed to associate bed with sleep and once you lie down, you simply fall asleep; after having sex. Maybe that has a big effect on some people. I haven’t noticed a significant difference if I also use my bed for reading, meditating, listening to music etc.

    18. Fresh bed sheets and a shower

    It’s necessary that before sleep, you wash out all the “dirt” that you collected during the day. You’ll feel significantly better. Morning and evening showers have an incredibly beneficent effect on peaceful sleep as well as on productivity and well-being during the day.

    Of course a freshly washed body feels best with fresh bed sheets, which have to be changed often enough. New and fresh brings nice things and events into your life.

    19. Dream diary

    Some people benefit a lot from keeping a sleep diary (hour, quality of sleep, dreams, experiences etc.). A dream diary is most useful when you’re experimenting with what suits you and what doesn’t, but it definitely also has value added if you monitor your dreams, especially if psychology is close to us. I don’t keep a dream diary myself, except sometimes when I use my subconscious to solve complex problems or when I don’t understand a part of myself well enough.

    Investing energy into keeping a dream diary signals that you’re prepared to take enough time for yourself, your quality of life and good sleep. If you keep a dream diary, I’m sure that you’ll also take care of all the other elements that contribute to better sleep. Sometimes, the best strategy is starting with the thing that requires the most energy and effort, because everything else seems significantly easier afterwards.

    20. If you wake up feeling sleep-deprived, accept it

    Sometimes, it just doesn’t work any other way and you wake up feeling sleep-deprived; maybe because of work, difficult thoughts, food or anything else. Accept that and don’t worry.

    Go through your day as calmly as possible, and don’t make the same mistake in the evening. The worst thing you can do is to burden an underslept body and spirit with additional worries that don’t make any sense. Even if you aren’t able to fall asleep for several days in a row, it’s important to accept that and do everything you can to get back to your set sleep schedule. No additional pressure.

    21. Set sleep schedule

    It’s best if you create your own sleep schedule with your habits as soon as possible. Wake up every day at the same time and go to sleep before midnight. The steadier that your sleep schedule is every day, the more easily you fall asleep and the better rested you wake up.

    It’s also useful to know the concepts of a morning and evening type of person. If your responsibilities allow you, you can also probably turn your schedule around (being awake at night and sleeping during the day) and still wake up feeling well-rested. A turned-around sleep schedule is mostly characteristic of creatives, musicians, visionaries, thinkers and even entrepreneurs, in a certain stage. But you still have to make an assessment for yourself and decide if the turned-around sleep schedule allows you to get enough sleep and rest, and not walk around the world as zombies.

    22. Catch up on lost sleep

    Of course there are also exceptional periods when you have to grit your teeth and give up on sleep – before exams, work deadlines, when a baby joins the family etc. So sometimes you pull an all-nighter or spend an entire week or even several weeks not sleeping much. That’s when it’s crucial that you don’t overwhelm your body with other things and that you catch up on sleep as soon as possible. If not sooner, then weekends are an ideal opportunity to return what you took from the body. It’s especially important that you try to strain your body like that as rarely as possible. After all, you do a lot of energy harm to yourself with a lack of sleep and sooner or later, there will be time when you have to pay the bill for taking advantage of your body.

    23. Be careful with naps

    Some people can simply substitute lost sleep with a nap; others have a lot more difficulty. In the Western society, an afternoon nap like that is often called a “power nap”. It’s only up to you to find out what suits you. It doesn’t suit me at all. If I fall asleep for just 5 minutes in the afternoon, I won’t be able to fall asleep late into the night. Strange, I know, but that’s just how it is. Even if I’m underslept, I prefer to hold out until the evening and then go to bed an hour early. But I know a lot of people who simply need a power nap and afterwards, they wake up full of new energy.

    An afternoon nap mostly suits those whose work enthusiasm decreases somewhat during the afternoon. Then they can fall asleep without problems in the evening as well. It’s true that there are certain guidelines on how to get a good night’s sleep, but everyone needs to find out what suits them best. Experiment and find out for yourself.

    24. So little is needed

    Most advice for better sleep in this article requires an input of several minutes of energy each day. Don’t let procrastination or laziness encroach upon the best possible sleep that you so strongly deserve. So little is needed in life for you to get the sweetest experiences. Remember: your job isn’t to do remarkable things, but to make everyday things remarkable, which also includes getting a good night’s sleep. I wish you a lot of peaceful sleep!

  • Margin and taking a step back

    There’s no doubt that in order to have outstanding long-term quality in life, you need to lead a balanced lifestyle. Yet balance is a word that’s often misused and wrongly interpreted. I also had a wrong perspective on balance a decade ago. I was sure that balance in life is like a calm sea, like a perfect puzzle where everything is in order – you have a partner you never fight with, you exercise every single day, eat perfect meals, everybody respects you at work etc. Every single area of life is precisely planned with just the right amount of everything. I was wrong.

    Let me explain. Balance in life is often compared to balance in nature. That’s why I also correlated balance in life to a calm sea in nature. But one day, after a severe storm, I asked myself whether balance in nature really exists. Unbearable cold in the North and South poles on the one hand, and unbearable heat in the desert on the other, things like storms, volcanoes, earthquakes, and many other extreme natural phenomena. I don’t think there’s a place on Earth where the temperatures are perfect throughout the entire year and neither are the wind and other weather conditions; there are always storms, earthquakes or other natural disasters and extremes present.

    There definitely is balance in nature, but the balance is not a calm sea, but rather the sum of all different extremes (hot and cold) and quiet periods in between. Balance in nature is the calm before as well as after a storm. It’s a quiet and peaceful feeling after every extreme situation, allowing you to prepare for the next one. Of course there are places on Earth that are more exposed to extremes and others that are less, but it’s the same in life, depending where you live.

    Earth level

    Balance in life therefore doesn’t mean having everything in perfect order, a dull life where nothing exciting happens, it means taking a rest after an extreme state and preparing yourself for the next sprint. In other words, life is neither a marathon nor a sprint, but rather a series of sprints with periods of rest in between. By the way, that’s also the fundamental philosophy of agile management. A series of sprints.

    Studying for finals, proving yourself at your first job, getting a baby, relationship break-ups, moving away from home, changing a job, improving your physical fitness level, getting a severe illness – everything brings some form of a storm into life, together with its changes and challenges. Some situations are more extreme, some less.

    But all situations demand focus, dedication, sacrifice, pushing yourself and so on. You can’t just give back a baby if you’d like to sleep more. If you’re asking yourself why that is so, the answer is quite simple: a smooth sea never made a skillful sailor and one of your purposes in this life is to grow and develop.

    But there’s also another side to this equation that you have to understand. As I mentioned, life is a series of sprints with rest periods. Even in nature, the sun shines after a storm every time. That means balance. Everything you do in life excessively for a longer period of time backfires sooner or later. Putting yourself under stress for years is definitely the best way to slowly destroy your life and become a zombie.

    Taking a rest is therefore definitely a very important concept in life management. The general recommendation for all workaholics is to take time off at least one day per week, one extended weekend (4 days) for every quarter and additional two full-time weeks a year. On the off days, you should be lazy and do nothing, or do some activities that really relax you – taking care of your garden or pool, travelling, getting a massage, reading magazines, watching TV or doing other things that will completely disconnect you from this world.

    In addition to taking a rest, there are two more concepts that can help you manage a series of sprints in life with adequate rest. The first one is called (1) having enough margin in life. The second concept is that (2) you sometimes have to take a step back in order to take two steps forward afterwards. Let’s look deeply into both concepts.

    You need bigger margin

    Margin in life

    Margin in life has been quite a popular concept in time management ever since the book Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives was published. I really recommend the book, since it provides a very good definition for how to use margin in life for a higher quality of living. I’ll summarize the main points, and then you can decide whether reading the book is worth it.

    The idea of margin is that you have physical, mental, emotional, and financial limits that are more or less fixed. When you exceed this limit, it leads to overload and consequently to more stress, intensity and unhappiness. On the other hand, if you let some space between your maximum capacity and how much you take upon yourself it leads to you restoring your emotional, physical, time and other reserves. The space between your maximum capacity and how much you take upon yourself is called margin.

    Margin is the space between your load and your limits. Margin is the opposite of overload. R. Swenson

    Almost everybody in today’s busy world let themselves only enough space to just get by and nothing more (operating on a daily/weekly maximum or near it) so they are constantly over-stressed and anxious. The right solution is bigger margin that leads to higher quality and happiness in life. With the right margin, you can slow down and give yourself more space to really enjoy life.

    Margin is nothing but breathing room, and you need four basic margins:

    • Emotional
    • Physical
    • Time
    • Financial

    Here are some examples:

    • If you need bigger physical margin, cut down on some projects, exercise less if you’re over-training, don’t go to partying every weekend or go to sleep earlier, for example.
    • If you need bigger time margin, learn to manage your time better and before you do that (learning how to manage time means taking a new activity and goal), cancel two other activities that are at least as time-consuming.
    • If you need bigger emotional margin, you can take a weekend off totally for yourself and isolate yourself from the world and people. This especially goes for introverts.
    • If you need bigger financial margin, you can downsize your home or your car instead of taking on another job.

    To have the right margin, you simply have to set limits in life. Maximums and minimums. Minimums make sure you don’t under-perform and progress in too low a gear. With maximums, you have to make sure you don’t operate at your upper limit or even exceed it for a longer period of time. You make sure you keep enough margin in life so you can breathe.

    Now comes the hardest question. If life is a series of sprints, should you give it your all in every sprint? The answer is yes and no. The shorter the sprint, with less margin you can survive if you get enough rest after the sprint. The longer the sprint, the more you have to make sure that you have enough margin, even though you’re sprinting. If you know that it’s going to be a long sprint, you definitely don’t do it at your maximum, because you’ll only hurt yourself sooner or later.

    A very good thing is that you can be very flexible when it comes to having enough margin in life. You can reschedule your daily or weekly obligations, you can cancel some projects, downgrade something financially demanding, simplify, sell things, outsource, automate etc. The moment you feel overwhelmed, you can do something to increase your margin. Maybe you’ll have a feeling of slower progress, but there’s no point in fast progress if you’re overloaded and completely unhappy in life.

    The longer the sprint, the more careful you have to be about setting your upper limit and taking care of your margin in order to have time to breathe.

    Taking a step back

    The second concept that can help you with a series of sprints in a lifetime is taking a step back. As mentioned before, sometimes you have to take one step back in order to take two steps forward. Neither linear nor rapid improvements really take place in straight or exponential lines. There are always ups and downs along the road, and sometimes just taking a rest isn’t enough, sometimes you actually have to go back. There are no straight lines in nature.

    path_to_success3

    There are four most frequent scenarios when you have to take a step back:

    1. When you want more than your foundations can handle
    2. When you’re overloaded for a longer period of time without any margin
    3. When you have gone too far along the way based on wrong assumptions (climbing the wrong ladder)
    4. When there’s a rapid unexpected change in an environment and your strategy is not adequate anymore

    Taking a step back is usually not a conscious decision. That’s why you HAVE to take a step back. Most often, life forces you to take a step back; and the more you insist on not taking a step back, the harder life is pushing you back until you seriously hurt yourself.

    If life demands from you to take a step back, the best advice ever is to do it. It may be a short-term punishment, but it’s a long-term gift, because if you want something badly enough, you will take care of the essentials and come back to continue the path afterwards. If you’re aware of that, the following quote definitely makes sense in life: “An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. So when life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means that it’s going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming.”

    Here are some examples for each of the scenarios, just for getting a more plastic picture. You decide to start running to be fit. (1) Instead of starting slow and pacing up day by day, you want to run a half-marathon right away. You throw up in the middle of the way and because of all the stress, you simply don’t want to hear about running for an entire month. That’s a big step back. (2) You run every day without taking any rest, your calves and knees start to hurt, the pain escalates, but you still run all the way anyway until your bones get stress fractures. Because of the injury, you can’t run for another few months. That’s a step back. (3) You think that running is easy, something everybody can do, and so you don’t need any knowledge about it – the technique, equipment etc. Because of a wrong technique, you hurt yourself. Again a step back. (4) It’s a cold and rainy day and you don’t feel well, but you go for a run anyway, because it’s written in your plan. The next day, you get a flu or a cold. Again no running.

    When life forces you to take a step back, you’re usually quite far along on the wrong path. Before that happens, you get many signals that you’re doing something wrong, but usually you don’t listen to yourself. You ignore a problem, and ignorance only causes it to grow until it really hits you hard and knocks you out.

    Pain is an obvious indicator that something’s wrong. Physical pain shows that there’s something wrong with your body. Many times, you may be causing the pain simply by doing something excessively (sports, alcohol, food etc.). “No pain no gain” can be the worst advice you can get in this context. Emotional pain shows you that there’s something wrong in other areas of life.

    Remember, it’s not the future that you’re afraid of. It’s repeating the past that makes you anxious. Don’t resist life, you must have learnt that much.

    The good news is that if you learn to listen to your body and emotions, you can take a step back by yourself, way before things get serious and life forces you to take a step back. You maybe don’t even need to take a step back if you react fast enough (observation to action), but only need to increase margin in your life. Nevertheless, if you ignore your body and your feelings, life will force you to get some margin in life by kicking you a step back sooner or later.

    Learn to listen to your body and your emotions. They’re a compass helping you make the right decisions for managing your daily life and ensuring you quality and happiness. Your body and your emotions can help you make the right decisions for your long-term success. It may take you longer than planned to reach your goals, but to be honest, it’s about the road not the end goal, no matter how hard that is to accept (everyone wants the final event, but only a few respect the process). That’s what being lean and agile is really about.

    Make sure you have enough margin in life. The longer the sprint you will undertake, the more careful you have to be about enough margin. If you’ve set your limits wrong and are exhausting yourself, take a step back. Your body and your emotions will give you several signals to take that action and the quiet signals will begin immediately after you start over-burning your system. If you somehow miss all the signals and life knocks you down, respect that and embrace that you’ve fucked up. Take a step back, regroup, make a new plan, adjust, and all that will give you strength to take two steps forward, right after you take care of foundations and essentials. If you won’t take a step back, the knockout will only be more severe next time.

  • Manipulating your discipline with transaction costs

    Transaction costs (also known as friction costs) are a very important term in economics and finance, representing costs of participating in the market. In economics, transaction costs are divided into three main categories, such as search and information costs, bargaining costs and negotiations, doing all the legal and paperwork, as well as policing and enforcement costs, representing the legal authorities that make sure everyone sticks to the deal. Transaction costs may also include transportation and communication costs. In short, transaction costs are all the opportunity costs in terms of the time, energy and money it takes to make a transaction on a market.

    For example, when participating in the stock market, you have to pay the brokers’ commission, then there are payments to the bank, government fees, and so on. And if you go to buy one item in a different market-store, because the item is a little bit cheaper there, you have to consider transportation costs, that are again transaction costs and have an overall influence on how good deal you get.

    Logically, transaction costs decrease the net result and financial returns. If you trade a lot, you want to make sure that transaction costs are as low as possible. Because of their impact on the net result, transaction costs play an important role when we’re deciding whether to make a deal on the market or not.

    Very similar every activity that you (want to) do has some transaction costs, and they have a strong influence on your self-discipline. The higher the transaction costs, the more effort and discipline it takes to do a desired activity. The lower the transaction costs, the more easily you take action or enforce a new routine. Knowing that gives you the power to manipulate your discipline by influencing transaction costs. Let’s see how.

    Discipline is like a muscle

    Firstly, you have to be aware that willpower, discipline and cognitive abilities are like a muscle. You have a fixed daily dose of discipline/cognitive power and there’s only so much you can do to stay organized, disciplined, make good decisions and follow your desired daily agenda. It’s totally true that you can train your cognitive abilities and self-discipline (and you should) like you can train your muscles, but a maximum always exists. You aren’t a robot and once you reach your maximum, you simply have to give yourself a break; unproductive or old bad habits will start to prevail, no matter what.

    You probably know the feeling when after following a strict diet for a long time, you say to yourself “I’ve had enough of this s*it” and open a bag of chips.

    As I already mentioned, one way to be more disciplined is to train your discipline muscles. When you’re forcing yourself to do something, whether you like doing it or not, you train your self-discipline. You push yourself to stay more focused and better stick to actions that lead to your planed outcome (goals). The more you push yourself, easier it gets to stay disciplined.

    Discipline and muscle training are very welcome, but a maximum still always exists. Even if you regularly train your discipline, you achieve your global maximum sooner or later. You simply can’t be disciplined 24/7. That’s why you also have to consider the second part of the equation. The less discipline and cognitive power every action takes, the more good actions/decisions you can do/make given your current maximum.

    Let’s say you have 80 units of discipline per day. On average, it takes 5 units of discipline (with transaction costs) to make a good decision and enforce a desired new behaviour. You can make 16 disciplined decisions/actions, but after that, you’re out of willpower. If you train your cognitive abilities and discipline power, you can maybe reach 120 units of discipline per day. That means 24 disciplined decisions, and thus you’re making progress much faster. But if your (global) maximum is 120 units, there’s only one more thing you can do to get even more disciplined. You can lower the transaction costs in a way that every decision takes fewer units of discipline. If you manage to decrease them from 5 to 4, you get 6 new disciplined decisions, that is 30 in total. Going from 16 to 30 means being almost twice as disciplined and productive.

    Low transaction costs

    Transaction costs and your discipline

    The easiest way to lower the necessary willpower and other resources for making good decisions and following a new desired behaviour is by decreasing transaction costs (or, in some cases, increasing them for undesired behaviour). By doing this, you have more willpower and cognitive abilities available to be more disciplined and organized in other activities during the day.

    The formula for manipulating transaction costs is very simple.

    • You want to automate wherever possible, and minimize the number of irrelevant decisions to zero, so there are no transaction costs at all.
    • For a desired (new) behaviour, you want to decrease transactional costs to the minimum, really going as low as possible.
    • For an undesired behaviour, you want to increase transactional costs to the maximum, always putting new obstacles in your way.

    Let’s look at some practical examples.

    You want to get in shape. Having a bag of chips at home means it takes you almost zero energy to start eating unhealthy food. All you have to do is take the chips out of the cupboard, open the bag and you can start stuffing your face with junk food. The transaction costs are almost zero. If you always have chips and cookies on the kitchen counter where you can just grab the unhealthy snack, transaction costs are nearly zero. Having cookies in your pocket means that transaction costs really are zero. You’re constantly tempted and undesired behaviour takes zero effort.

    On the other hand, if you don’t have any junk food at home, the transaction costs are much higher. You have to change your clothes, drive to the grocery store or gas station, decide which junk food to get, buy it, come home, and only then can you enjoy your snack. It takes much more effort and energy, thus transaction costs are quite high. The further you have to drive, the higher the cost. At some point transaction costs are so high, you rather eat an apple than make all the effort to get to the junk food.

    Let’s look at another example from a different perspective. If you live close to the gym, if you always have your training gear near you, if you can just step through your door and start running or jump into the pool, the transaction costs to start exercising are low. It takes a minimum of your willpower, time and other resources to start training. But if you have to drive far to get to the gym, if you always have to call your friends to find a gym buddy, if your sports bag is not ready etc., the transaction costs are high and it takes a lot of effort to start the desired behaviour.

    By decreasing or increasing transaction costs, you can manipulate your discipline a lot, especially in the beginning when you’re enforcing new desired behaviour and developing new healthy habits. Make sure that it takes a lot to perform an undesired behaviour and that there are almost zero transaction costs for the new habits you want to develop.

    Here are some additional ideas for how you can manipulate your discipline with transaction costs:

    • When you get your paycheck, automatically transfer a certain amount to your savings account. Automate paying yourself first.
    • Don’t just impulsively buy expensive things with a credit card when you are in the shopping center. Make a system with many check points that you have to cross in order to buy an expensive item. For example, first you have to put the item on a wish list, discuss it with your partner, wait a few weeks, find the best price etc.
    • Make your files, folders and apps that lead to your progress easily accessible with shortcuts, bookmarks etc., and delete all entertainment apps and folders that are constantly distracting you. You can also install a web-nanny that blocks your social networks if you use them too much.
    • Unplug your TV and change your programs so you’ll never ever turn your TV on again.
    • Always have a book with you and put one next to your bed. You can also do the same with banana.
    • When you’re doing focused work, turn off your mobile phone (it takes quite an effort to enter all the pass-codes and PINs) and make it hard as hell to open e-mail or any other distraction apps
    • Use e-mail templates with Yesware and automation apps like IFTTT.
    • You can dress yourself the same every day, like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs did. That’s how you’ll save cognitive decisions and willpower for other, more important things.

    There are many other ways of manipulating transaction costs. Think of the behaviours and habits you want to get rid of and make it as hard as possible to get started. On the other hand, make it as easy as possible to start and perform the good habits and enforce new behaviour. If you additionally manipulate habit triggers and rewards, you will become a superhero of self-discipline sooner or later.

  • Biofeedback

    In its broadest sense, biofeedback is an important and popular trend that can help you stay healthy and have a better quality of life. When I talk about biofeedback, I’m talking about using or being connected to electrical devices and sensors that help you to receive information (feedback) about your body (bio). That’s the simple reason why it’s called biofeedback.

    Having information about your current state of the body can help you take action and achieve the health result you want more easily, for example reducing the pain and stress level or enhancing your physical performance. The greater the awareness you have of your physiological functions, the easier you can manipulate them and take the right actions. The actions you can take are most often closely connected to changes in your thoughts, emotions and behaviour. In other words, you apply data about your body processes to your personal development plan.

    Most frequently, biofeedback is connected to measuring brainwaves, heart function, breathing, muscle activity and skin temperature using sensor modalities like EMG, EDG, EEG, PPG, ECG, REG, HEG, and so on. But since biofeedback is such a cool buzzword, I also use it for simpler body measurements with devices you can afford. With more and more smart and wearable devices on the market, you can measure, observe and take note of many different body functions at home without any professionals.

    Basic biofeedback

    With more and more smart devices, sensors in your mobile phone and different applications, you can measure many variables of your body functions. They’re very good for measuring inputs (calories intake for example), your body function status (heart rate or weight, for example) and the outputs you get with changing your behaviour (brainwaves when meditating or body fat percentage when changing your diet, for example).

    What’s not only a fact of life but also true for your health is that wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups. You don’t want to take actions that influence your health based on your assumptions, but rather actions based on actual data that is as accurate as possible. You can manage only what you measure. Thus your set of biofeedback devices should act as a kind of sixth sense that allows you to see or hear activity inside your body and take more appropriate action.

    Here are the variables you can simply measure with smart devices and applications that are easily available to you on the market:

    • Aerobic activities – walking, running, hiking etc.
    • Anaerobic activities – reps, load etc. when weightlifting
    • Blood pressure
    • Blood sugar
    • Body Fat Percentage
    • Body Mass Index
    • Brainwaves
    • Calories intake
    • Hearth rate
    • Lean Body Mass
    • Nutrition intake
    • Sex
    • Skin temperature
    • Sleep Analysis
    • Weight

    By taking a relatively cheap test, you can also get feedback on your:

    • Blood analysis
    • Breathing
    • Hormone levels
    • Muscle tension
    • Many others

    Biofeedback watch

    Devices and applications

    There are more and more devices and applications on the market that enable you to monitor different body functions. In the near future, we can expect even more devices, much more capable ones that will measure an even broader set of functions more accurately and in more detail. Of course wearable technologies and medical devices are also a big business opportunity.

    Here are some devices and applications I use for biofeedback fitness:

    Online, you can find many lists and reviews of different devices and applications.

    Challenges of biofeedback

    There are of course some challenges when implementing biofeedback in your life. The first and biggest challenge is time, discipline and thus additional stress. It’s not easy to examine your day-to day life and status of the body’s processes. It’s important to take things step by step, from basic measurements to the more advanced ones. Automating as many things as possible also makes sense.

    The second problem is the financial cost. You have to invest some money into an application, devices etc. They’re not that expensive, but you still have to spend some money. Again, going step by step and making sure you actually use the devices you buy is the best way to go. Otherwise you’re just wasting your resources.

    Actions you can take

    Based on the biofeedback, you can take different actions for your health, mood and energy levels. Most actions are connected to some sort of relaxation or behavioural changes. Thus biofeedback can’t do magic (yet) and cure you of different diseases, but it can definitely help you manage your body and energy levels better. You also get faster feedback if something is going into the wrong direction, for example your body fat percentage.

    Apple Health Dashboard
    Apple Health Dashboard, Source: Huffington Post

    The most popular actions you can take based on biofeedback:

    • Dietary changes
    • Taking supplements
    • Emotional accounting
    • Exercise decrease or increase
    • Meditation
    • Reframing
    • Changing sleep patterns
    • Stretching
    • Visualization
    • Water intake

    Biofeedback can help you the most with your fitness and energy levels, getting in shape, managing anxiety, stress and insomnia, headaches and other similar tensions. The final goal of all the effort is using all the data for personal development and behavioural changes to optimize your daily life, potential, how you feel and how much you can achieve.

    In the future, I’ll show detailed examples of how I use different devices to gather feedback about my body functions.

    Disclaimer: In this blog post, biofeedback is meant in a very broad meaning of the word, measuring basic health stuff with devices you can buy on the market. The blog post doesn’t give any advice for serious health issues. If you are experiencing a serious health issue, you should consult your doctor.

  • Free your mind with your own digital brain

    In order to innovate, create, improve yourself and enjoy life to the full, you need to be as free as possible. You need to be as free as possible on all four levels – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Freedom simply means that you have the power to act, speak, or think as you want; and as you’ve probably figured out by now, we are more often slaves to ourselves than to anything or anyone else; at least as long as you don’t do anything that would be so stupid you end up in prison.

    On the physical level, flexibility, balance, strength and endurance bring more freedom and options. The better your take care of your body, the freer you are from being a slave to yourself. You can reach higher mountains, dive deeper into the oceans, have sex in more positions, do more sports, and so on.

    On the emotional level, cognitive distortions can be the ones keeping you in an emotional prison. Negative thinking very much correlates to negative feelings and negative emotional states. All four levels (body, mind, heart and soul) are connected, and more freedom on one level means more freedom on other levels.

    On the spiritual level, freedom means freeing yourself from expectations, attachments and fear. The greater your capacity for love is, the freer you are. You free your spirit when you realize that having a good trip is better than just arriving. You want to have a trip full of joy, happiness and bliss.

    On the intellectual level, you need to free your mind. One way of freeing your mind is taking control of it. There are only two options: either you control your mind, or your mind controls you. If it controls you, you’re on autopilot, which often leads to cognitive distortions and other mental errors. The best way to take control over your mind is to practice meditation.

    The second way of freeing your mind is getting to know yourself better with reflection. With regular reflection and by analytically thinking about yourself, your environment and your situations in life, you bring things that burden you from the unconscious to the conscious mind. The best way to do regular analytical reflection is to keep journal, and we’ll talk more about that later.

    The third way to free your mind is keeping your brain as unburdened as possible with unimportant things. There are several ways for doing that. One is to keep trivial decisions to the minimum. You have a limited daily cognitive ability, and every decision, thought or worry takes some of that ability away. Entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg and the deceased Steve Jobs even go so far that they wear pretty much the same thing every day, just to keep more cognitive power for decisions that are more important than choosing clothes. You should automate as many things as possible, from what to wear, what to eat and so on.

    Another very useful way is to have your own “digital brain”. With a digital brain organized in the right way, you can free your mind from irrelevant information, you can store things for reference, write down ideas and so on. Not only do you have more cognitive power to allocate for the things that really matter, you are also much more productive and creative; because you don’t lose your ideas, you can find your references really quickly and connect different pieces of information better.

    Don’t get me wrong: having a digital brain doesn’t mean that you become lazy; you just don’t burden your brain with information that isn’t important in a certain moment or with an information overload. There is no way you can create if you only consume. Nonetheless, it makes sense to work hard on your intellectual capabilities. Reading, doing mental exercises, making new yet unknown connections, thinking out of the box etc., are all things that increase your intellectual capacity.

    Your digital brain

    Your digital brain is nothing more than an electronic system for note-taking, brainstorming and archiving.

    The structure of your digital brain should be pretty simple. You should write down or save everything you don’t need in a certain moment but may need someday, save your ideas and, of course, keep everything that helps you to organize your daily life. Below are the things you should store in your digital brain at the least.

    Journal, thoughts and reflections

    The first and most important thing you should keep in your digital notebook (brain) is your journal, especially if you don’t want to keep any paper and want to have everything digitalized. Keeping a journal could mean two things. The first one is actually keeping a journal, meaning writing down what you’ve experienced throughout the day, where you’ve been, who you’ve met and so on. Maybe someday, you’ll want to show that kind of a journal to your kids.

    But an even more important journal type is a journal of your daily thoughts and reflections. It’s about analysing and getting to know yourself, reflecting on your decisions and what’s happening to you and so on. It’s about becoming more aware of your beliefs, values, perspectives, thoughts, mood triggers and so on. Regular reflection is the best way to free yourself from emotional and intellectual burdens as well as to get to smart work, because you become more strategic, proactive and less reactive.

    The good thing about keeping a journal is that you can always go back, look at your epiphanies, cognitions and thoughts, and re-reflect on them. It’s how you grow and improve.

    Here are some types of documents you should keep in your digital brain:

    • Reflection journal – As mentioned, it’s a journal about you, making the unconscious conscious, understanding your motives, desires, frustrations and other psychological traits.
    • Emotional accounting – It’s about keeping a table to rationalize your cognitive distortions. You simply draw a three-column table, where the first column is the automatic negative thought (“I never do things right”), the second one is the type of cognitive distortion (overgeneralization) out of the ten different types mentioned before, and the third one is your rational response (“Not true, I do a lot of things right”). Keeping everything in one place helps you see how you’re improving.
    • Your life strategy – Your thoughts about your life strategy, from your investment and money strategy to your traveling plans, developing competences and so on.
    • Your optimal environment – Keeping thoughts about the people in your life, the situations you face as well as an analysis of your environment, such as your country, macro-economic trends, your office and home.
    • Minimums and maximums – It’s about setting limits in your life, the minimums and maximums you should achieve to keep the balance and different areas in life in check (for example, the minimum amount of times you should exercise per week or the maximum amount of time you should work on average each day).
    • Desired outcomes – Whatever you do, you should start with an endgame in mind. That’s the list of outcomes you want in life, how you’ll achieve them, what could go wrong and how you’ll adapt and adjust your strategy.
    • Personas – It’s a technique that can help you clarify what kind of people you want in your life and the kind of organizations you want to function in.
    • Personal improvement strategy – It’s a list of where and how you want to improve yourself and when you’ll do it. It’s not only a list, but a document with an important life strategic value. This is probably the most important list in your life and has a deep reflection benefit.
    • Personal SWOT analysis – It’s a good tool for identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and can help you make your personal improvement strategy.
    • Traditional journal – It’s also good to keep a regular journal, into which you write about things like what happened to you on a specific day, where you’ve been, what you’ve seen and what you’ve learned. You can just write a few bullet points in your reflection journal.
    • “Thankful for” and “proud of” document – The two documents you should definitely have in life is a list of things that you’re really proud of in your life, like your achievements, strong personality traits, good deeds and so on, and a list of things that you’re grateful for.
    • Other thoughts and reflections – You can also keep all other types of personal documents and your thoughts, like quotes, positive affirmations, messaging archives, personal e-mail archives, dreams, associations and everything else that strongly impacts your life.

    Cloud computing

    Tasks and lists

    The second thing you should keep in your digital brain are various lists. You don’t want to try to remember everything, and you don’t want to torture your brain to recall everything you have to buy in the grocery store or be mad because you’ve forgotten something. If you help yourself with lists in your daily life, you’ll have much more cognitive power at your disposal.

    Lists also help with one more thing, if you write them correctly. They help you with not feeling overwhelmed. The right way to do it is to have all kinds of lists that free you from anxiety and a feeling that there’s too much to do. You only keep one list (or board), showing what’s in process (to-do list) for the following week. With an approach like that, you try to focus on one weekly or bi-weekly sprint, and you try to live in the moment more.

    Here are some lists you should keep:

    • Your vision list – It’s a big list of everything you want to experience in life. It feels good when you look at a list that shows what you’ve already experienced in life and what else you want to live to see. It empowers you and helps you focus on the positive.
    • Your “maybe someday” list – There are some things for which you aren’t sure whether you want to experience them in life or not. You can keep a “maybe someday” list to prevent burdening yourself too much with all the things that exist in the world. If one day you decide that you want to experience something from this list, you put it on your vision list, if not, you delete it.
    • “Not to do” list and distractions list – You should keep a list of things you know you won’t do or don’t want to do in life. It’ll help you stay focused and say no more easily.
    • Being a minimalist list – It’s a simple list of things you don’t need anymore and plan on giving away, selling or dumping. If you don’t do that as you go along, you can keep a list and then do a cleaning every three or six months.
    • Reading list and wish list – A good list to keep is a list of books you want to read in life. Make sure that you cross a book off the list every two weeks, or at least one per month. You should also keep a list of things you want to buy and have. But think twice before making purchasing decisions.
    • Your shopping lists – Simply a list of things you should buy the next time you visit the grocery store.
    • Daily/Weekly To-Do list – You can have a to-do list, but I recommend visualizing your tasks with a Kanban board. If you don’t want to have a physical board in your life, you can keep it electronically. One way to do it is with a software application like Kanbanery. The other ones are notebook applications that also have post-it notes integration.
    • Other lists – You should keep all other kinds of lists in your digital brain, for example a weekly home cleaning and maintenance schedule, gift ideas, things not to forget, things to do with your spouse etc.

    Business and other ideas

    Your digital notebook should also be your brainstorming tool. You can get your business and other ideas (like ideas for blog posts, for example) randomly throughout the day and when you do, you should write them down immediately. We can quickly forget ideas, even if they’re really good. So make sure you write down every idea you get, bad or good. Noticing and identifying your ideas throughout the day will also improve the quality of your ideas in the long run.

    The second way is to take time and brainstorm. You should do that regularly, at least on a monthly basis. It’s how you keep your creative muscle strong. Having good ideas is an important part of success in life. The good news is that everyone is creative, you just have to practice enough.

    Here are two additional resources:

    Mind maps and summaries

    As you reflect on yourself, you should also reflect on the things you read, listen or see. For example, after reading a really good book, you should go through your highlights again, making a summary or a mind map of things that fascinated you the most. You’ll get much more out of it and you can go back and refresh your knowledge anytime. I do mind maps in the Mindjet MindManager and then save them in my digital notebook.

    Notes

    You should also keep notes in your digital brain, all kinds of notes. Notes from team and client meetings, classes, phone calls, sales visits, all other types of meetings, the conferences you attend and so on. The good thing is that you can send a note to all other parties involved to confirm everything you’ve agreed on. It’s part of good communication and it helps keep clarity.

    What you can also use are templates for different kinds of meetings or activities. For example, you can have a business meeting template. The purpose of a template is to first maximize the value of the meeting, making sure that the subject is clear etc. as well as to prepare and share the minutes faster.

    References

    You should also keep all different references and resources in your digital brain. The webpages you like, infographics, blogposts, articles etc. Things you’ve read and want to keep, things that you may need again someday and so on. I call my reference notebook Intelbox and I keep all kinds of useful information and good ideas in it.

    Documents and archive

    Last but not least, your digital brain should also be your document archive. You want to keep everything in one place, systematically organized and easy to find. It’s good if you can digitalize everything and keep a no-paper policy. I know it’s not always possible, especially when it comes to the government, but you should keep things on paper to the minimum. You should digitalize as much as possible.

    Since your archive will become bigger and bigger as you go through life, it’s really important to have things organized from the very beginning; you should also do regular cleaning and organizational updates. Your archive can be the place for storing your personal documents, business documents, bills, medication and medical records, etc.

    It’s also good to have different information you only need sometimes in one place, for example the tax ID number, clothing size, different home measurements (window size, quadrature…), manuals, and so on. You can also keep important phone numbers, insurance policy, a “what to pack” list for traveling and so on in your notebook. There are numerous ways of using your digital brain.

    Advanced uses of your digital brain

    Thanks to technology, applications are becoming more and more powerful. With multiple users, sharing abilities, extensions and synchronization across applications, there are many advanced ways of using your digital brain, either all in one application or with different applications synchronized.

    Here are some examples of using your digital brain in an advanced way:

    • Tracking your time
    • Tracking your finances and investments
    • Keeping a digital rolodex (scanning business cards and keeping contacts in one place)
    • Your weekly menu and different recipes
    • Tracking your calories
    • Your fitness and sports journal with a plan and tracking progress
    • Writing blog posts or your own book etc.

    Recommended applications

    I use the following applications to keep my digital brain:

    • Evernote – Evernote is an extremely powerful and popular notebook tool. It gives you everything you need to organize your digital brain. You can encrypt sensitive data, it’s synchronized across all devices and keeps a copy in the cloud, you have an extensive app market with a post-it extension, for example, and so on. There are also many templates available.

    You can easily enter data, for example capture websites, e-mail documents, synchronize applications, and so on. You can directly scan documents into Evernote, you can make audio notes, save pictures, easily share notes you write down and so on. There really is basically everything you need to keep your digital brain structured and organized. I strongly recommend it.

    • Dropbox – I keep almost everything in Evernote, except files. For my files, I use Dropbox, where I have a directory Intelbox and in it, all the different files I may need as a resource or reference one day. From free eBooks to presentations, papers and other materials. By using Dropbox, you can easily access and view files from all the devices you have. Sharing is also very easy.
    • Google Inbox – Another important part of my digital brain is my e-mail client. I keep an archive of my e-mails in my Gmail account. I try to keep it as clean as possible and I try to write a minimum amount of e-mail. I use the Inbox application, which really keeps things with e-mail productive and simple.
    • Other applications – I also use some other applications as part of my digital brain, for example Pocket, Mindjet Mindmanager, WordPress and Twitter. And I must not forget IFTTT, for keeping things as automated as possible. There are many other specialized apps on the market, but I recommend you to keep things as centralized as possible. Evernote is a good place to start.

    If you’re interested in organizing your digital brain with Evernote, here are some recommendations for further reading: How to organize Evernote for maximum efficiency.

     

  • How people fuck up their lives

    There are generally two ways how people fuck up their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I know that many people living in poverty without access to education don’t have options and are forced to do terrible things that don’t bring any good to them and others. But there are also many adults who have all the options and possibilities in the world and still end up fucking up their own lives or lives of people around them. It’s hard to answer why, but it’s very easy to see how.

    The first way is making one big wrong decision. You marry the wrong person. You take a big bribe. You drive drunk or tired. You cheat. You have a kid when you aren’t ready yet – materially or emotionally. You don’t exercise at all. You rob a bank. One big wrong decision can completely turn your life around, and make a mess out of it. So you should consider all big decisions very carefully and think about the long-term effect that they will have on your life.

    Fuck up your life with one big deciision

    The second way to fuck up your life is regularly making small wrong decisions. They’re called habits. You spend more than you earn. You drink alcohol every day. You stuff yourself with fast food daily. You don’t kiss and hug your spouse. You play Solitaire during working hours. You watch TV instead of reading. You go to a job you hate day by day. Small wrong daily choices accumulate until a crisis occurs. What you choose today has an impact forever.

    In both cases, the worst you can do is avoid the problem even once it’s obvious that you’ve made wrong decisions or are still making them. When you make wrong decisions, decisions that don’t lead towards your progress, improvement and positive (purer) energy, life will kick your butt sooner or later. You get close to bankruptcy. You fall ill or get injured. You’re on the way to divorce. You get fired. You get caught in the act. Once more, the worst thing you can do is to avoid your problems.

    For sure nobody can make good decisions only. After all, good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. But you have to kill the monster (problem) while it’s still small. If you run a mile away from your problems, they’ll only get worse and they’ll be harder to solve. Don’t stick your head in the sand and hope that the problems will go away. Even if they do, it will only be temporary, life will kick you again sooner or later, this time even harder.

    Fuck up your life with small decisions

     

    That’s how people really fuck up their lives. They wait, feeling powerless and like a victim, until it’s too late. Enough courage and a superior strategy with immediate action are the best things you can do to solve your problems when they occur. You have to make a series of good big and small decisions that prevail over the bad decisions you were making in the past.

    A very important fact you should also be aware of is that this works the other way around as well. You succeed in life because you make some really good big decisions and/or a series of small right decisions. You marry a person that really supports you and empowers you. You find the right job you can shine in. You exercise regularly. You save and invest. You put your integrity above everything else. To make good big and small decisions in life, you need a long-term view and you have to be very clear about what you want in life; you have to fight for it.

    Make the right decisions, no matter how big or small they are. And when you know you’ve fucked up, don’t run away from your problems: the sooner you tackle them, the more control you have over the damage. Face it or you’ll lose by default. Now make as many right decisions as possible.