Blaz Kos

mindfulness

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  • Self-reflection, retrospective and journaling

    Imagine an iceberg floating in the ocean. Only one tenth of the iceberg is visible, while the rest of it lies deep beneath the surface – mighty, intimidating and alluring. It’s the same with your mind. Your conscious mind makes up less than 10 % of your brain function. The mighty rest is your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is composed of unintentional and habitual thoughts, behaviours, and actions.

    That’s why no human is the master in his own house. The subconscious mind is like an autopilot that triggers certain behaviours in certain situations. The triggered behaviour doesn’t necessarily lead to the desired outcome. Even more: you often don’t have a clue about why you’re doing a certain thing and why you feel the way you feel. In some situations, you can even become self-destructive or completely misinterpret the feedback from your environment, which leads to an entirely wrong decision.

    Self-reflection can help you with that. Through self-reflection, you can change how you see yourself and how you feel about certain situations and, at the end, how you act. Consequently, you can also change how other people see you.

    We could define self-reflection as careful thought about your own behaviour and beliefs. If we develop the definition further, self-reflection is really asking yourself thought-provoking questions so that you can develop a deeper level of understanding yourself.

    The most important direct or indirect benefits of self-reflection are:

    • Understanding and knowing yourself better, for example why you were feeling a certain way and why you did something or made a certain decision
    • Becoming more aware and thus more proactive than reactive, meaning you have more personal power and control
    • Having a clearer picture about your true desires and who you really are
    • Analysing feedback from your environment based on your actions and taking it into account for the desired final outcome of your actions (every action in life brings a reaction)
    • Removing inner roadblocks and releasing emotional tension

    There are also many side benefits of self-reflection, like developing better communication skills, critical thinking, self-learning, self-awareness, social awareness, empathy, analytical capabilities and sensitivity to cultural differences, meaning you become more tolerant. Long-term benefits of self-reflection are also increased professional value and value for personal relationships, resulting in you having a greater capacity for work, creativity, love and, at the bottom line, being happier.

    There are two levels of self-reflection you should be doing regularly:

    • Action retrospective for regular improvements and adjustments to the environment after every sprint
    • Self-analysis for knowing yourself better and being happier in life in the long-term

    Sprint retrospective

    No matter how productive or successful you are in life, there’s always an opportunity to improve. There’s always a way to do things better. The more you become aware of yourself, your actions and your environment, and the more you are open to experiment and try new things (frequently out of the box), the better your potential for improvement is. In different words: becoming wiser unlocks the opportunity for improvement.

    As Confucius said, we may learn wisdom by three methods: “First, by reflection, which is the noblest; second, by imitation, which is the easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.”

    Since we don’t want to be bitter in life and we don’t want to only imitate other people, much less the wrong ones, let’s focus on improving ourselves by reflection. In agile development, we know the so-called sprint retrospective. The purpose of the sprint retrospective is to learn what works for the team and what doesn’t, and to make adjustments for the next sprint. A sprint retrospective usually takes two to four hours and the team tries to answer a few basic but hard questions:

    • What went well during the last sprint that the team will continue doing?
    • What could the team do differently?
    • How can the team implement the change?

    Based on that, the team should make three decisions and stick to them:

    • What to start doing
    • What to stop doing
    • What to continue doing

    There is no reason why you couldn’t do the same in your personal life. When living the Agile and Lean Life, you don’t just do work and execute tasks. You have to think regularly about why you’re doing something and how you’re doing it, and whether you’re making real progress –progress that brings value to your life. Being strong and passionate about the reason why is the best motivator you can have in life, and as mentioned before, there’s always a way to do things better. That’s why personal sprint reflections are so important.

    In the Agile and Lean Life productivity framework, you have regularly scheduled intervals (seven or fourteen days) for planning the next sprint and reflecting on the previous sprint. While planning the sprint and doing the retrospective in your personal life, you should do the following:

    • Review the tasks done in the previous interval
    • Connect with yourself and straighten out your life vision (why)
    • Measure your real progress
    • Adjust the strategy and plan
    • Reflect on new things you learned
    • Gather new ideas
    • Identify potential improvements
    • Set new tasks for the upcoming interval

    Thinking about the elements listed above during your interval planning and reflection, you should ask yourself the following questions: what went well during the last sprint, what you were doing right, what didn’t go that well, why that is so and what you could do differently and how. Based on that, you should make three decisions:

    • What will you start doing in your life?
    • What will you stop doing in your life?
    • What will you continue doing in your life?

    To really implement the change in your life, you have to consider your own behaviour, the desired result, people involved in the process, relationships, the process itself and the tools that can help you improve your work.

    There are two options for when to take time for reflection:

    • Every week or every two weeks when you make time for planning the sprint and doing reflection
    • You plan the sprint in the beginning of the week and do reflection at the end of the week or in two-week intervals. Whatever works better for you. Some people like to combine planning and reflection, others don’t.

    The process is simple: you sit down and go through all the planning and reflection elements and questions listed above.

    If there is no change in your behaviour – the decisions you make, the strategy you follow, the actions you do etc. after your reflection, your reflection simply had no real value. The purpose of the sprint retrospective isn’t just to feel a little bit better about yourself for planning and strategizing. Avoid the fake feeling of progress at all costs. If you don’t know what you’ll do differently after the reflection, if you don’t know how you’ll change your behaviour, you’re doing it wrong. Applying wisdom in practice is the key to progress, not only being aware of something.

    Self-analysis and journaling

    Self-analysis is kind of a different story and takes reflection even a step further. Don’t get me wrong, you need both processes for the best results, but you do have to know the difference between both tools.

    To start with the biggest difference: if you have to force yourself to make a certain decision after self-analysis, you haven’t done it right. Self-analysis is about understanding yourself and noticing, not judging and forcing yourself into anything.

    There is no “stop doings”, “start doings” and “continue doings”. It’s about changing the course of your life without any force, by better understanding who you are and what you are through analytical thinking.

    With self-analysis, you’re going way deeper. It’s not only about your plan, actions and environment anymore, but about you, your whys, about who you truly are and what you want in life. It’s more about getting rid of emotional shit and intruded behaviour you’ve accumulated in the past, which consequently increases your capacity for love, self-worth and self-respect.

    Of course in the long term, self-analysis is also strongly connected to your performance level, productivity and success, much as sprint planning is in the short term. If you look at Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, the sprint retrospective is more about what and how, while self-analysis is more about why; and you should always start with why.

    There are two main ways of doing self-analysis:

    Psychoanalysis – Frankly, we aren’t talking about self-analysis anymore, but more about the professional process of gaining insights about yourself with a therapist. As you probably know, psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud and its aim is to release repressed emotions and experiences by making the unconscious thoughts conscious. It’s also about rebuilding your inner blueprint for healthy relationships.

    It’s a very valuable process, but the downside is that psychoanalysis is time-consuming and there are no quick answers. It usually takes a few years of regular weekly meetings with a psychoanalyst. You have to be very motivated to go through the process, but you know how it is: you only get out as much as you put in, and this process can be pure gold for you, especially if you have many cognitive distortions.

    Journaling – The second option, less professional, intense and scientific but still with great value, is to lead the self-analysing process yourself. You won’t internalize a new healthier blueprint for relationships, but you can get many insights about yourself. The best way to keep the needed discipline and to trigger analytical thinking in your brain is journaling.

    Journaling and your self-reflective journal

    Instead of having a psychoanalyst, a journal can be your tool for self-reflection and analytical work. When I talk about journaling, I’m not talking about writing down everything that happened to you on a specific day. I’m talking about why it happened, how you felt, why did you feel that way, how is that connected to your values and beliefs and so on.

    Keeping a self-reflective journal is not about your day and what happened, but about your thoughts, your perspective, your feelings, your words, your actions and about the feedback from your environment. It’s about becoming aware of why you acted like you did and what the result of your behaviour was. It’s about becoming aware of who you are, what your true desires are, identifying your cognitive distortions and so on. All that should lead to insights, understanding and better knowing yourself.

    Regularly reflecting by writing a journal will enable you to:

    • Get to know yourself step by step throughout different life situations
    • Be better connected to your true self, your values, emotions and desires
    • You will become more aware and come to more insights as well as understand your environment better, especially the people who are the closest to you
    • Develop deeper relationships by developing a greater capacity for love and by better understanding yourself. Being more tolerant towards yourself means being more tolerant towards others.
    • Have outstanding clarity and focus
    • Track your personal development and personal evolution. It will also accelerate your personal growth and development. You’ll be able to track your linear and rapid improvements.

    Other benefits of journaling:

    • You get things out of your head and clear your mind, which can relax you and give you more creative and analytical potential.
    • You gain insights you would otherwise miss, especially since you’re keeping track of your thoughts and thinking. You quickly forget what you don’t write down, even the best business ideas.
    • Journaling is also a very powerful problem-solving tool, especially for complex problems.

    There are three main ways of how to keep your journal (it’s not rocket science, but still):

    Notebook – By far the best way to do self-reflection by journaling is writing things down. Your hand is connected directly to your brain and it’s a good feeling to have full control, while nothing is buzzing or blinking or distracting you. All you have to do is buy a notebook, schedule some time and start writing.

    Applications – You have many applications you can use for journaling, such as text processors, editors, notepads and journaling software. If you decide for an app, you should test a few of them and select the one that works best for you. Maybe you can start with Evernote.

    Private blog – The third option, also electronic, is having a private blog. Here are the instructions for how to open a blog (a public one, but all you have to do is keep it private). It’s probably not the best option and it’s also not the safest, but if it works for you, why not use it.

    Some additional directions for keeping your journal as a self-reflective tool:

    Be constant

    The easiest way to start journaling is when you’re pissed off or have had a very vivid day. That’s okay, a journal is a great tool for situations like that, but to get the most out of journaling, you should do it consistently, daily. For example, for 30 minutes every day before you go to sleep.

    It will become a habit for you, your mind will get into the state for self-reflection faster and you’ll have consistent history. The most powerful thoughts you can work with usually come when you have an empty head.

    Be alone and without distractions

    Keeping a self-reflective journal is about association. Associations always lead you to the core of the problem. An important part of it is that nobody should distract your flow of associations. That’s why it’s good to be alone and without distractions such as a phone or anything else.

    Whys

    Encourage your association flow by asking yourself why. Do it five times if necessary. Even ten if it leads you to more insight. As already mentioned, associations will slowly lead you to the core of everything, you’ll become aware sooner or later. You will get an insight into why you feel like you do and why you’ve found yourself in the situation you’re currently in.

    5-Whys is also a great problem-solving method. Write down a problem you have and ask yourself “why” five times. After every answer, you ask yourself “why?” again and that will lead you to the core of the problem. Here is an example (source: Wikipedia):

    • 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)

    Intellectual and emotional body

    You need to distinguish between your mind and your emotions. It’s true that our thoughts and emotions are strongly connected, but you’re often in situations where something seems totally logical (how you should feel or do), but your emotions tell you a completely different story. Your emotions are the compass that leads you to the real insights.

    For example, it may be logical that you take a new job that has a higher pay-check and more opportunities. But your emotions may not completely agree with the rational decision. You can feel your emotional body resisting. It’s part of your analytical job to ask yourself why. Five or even more times, if necessary.

    You can help yourself with the following questions and guidelines:

    • Clearly describe a situation that happened to you
    • How does it make you feel and why? Continue with whys.
    • The situation you’re in and your feelings, what do they remind you of the most?

    No judging, just noticing

    The purpose of self-reflection by journaling is not to judge and criticize yourself or analyse what you should do and what you shouldn’t. It’s about being understanding, tolerant and noticing things about yourself.

    It’s not about strengthening your inner critique, but vice versa. It’s about increasing your capacity for love towards yourself and others by becoming more aware and knowing yourself and your past. No matter what, be gentle with yourself when self-reflecting.

    For increasing your short-term performance, productivity and improvement, regularly plan sprints and do reflections. And for increasing your long-term performance and happiness, do regular reflections and self-analysis by keeping a journal. It may seem like a huge investment, but it’s an investment that will enable you to really go for your true desires and goals. It doesn’t matter how hard you work if you aren’t doing the right thing. Dare to be yourself!

  • Considering and setting limits in life

    A very important part of life management is considering and setting limits. On the one hand, the laws of physics limit you and your potential, while on the other, you must set some limits yourself to keep up with the daily discipline more easily and to more easily achieve your goals. We humans are pattern-based beings, seeing patterns even where there are none, and an important part of patterns are limits.

    Limits are nothing but minimums and maximums in our lives. The especially important ones (with time horizon we can understand) are daily and weekly limits. The simple idea is that we have a minimum and a maximum number of units (time, money…) we’re prepared to spend on a certain activity (work, sports, spouse…). Having limits helps us organize investments of our time, energy and other resources.

    The idea of limits is to not overdo it or invest too few of our resources into a specific thing. There is an optimal amount of investment needed for everything we do in life. If we invest more, we’re wasting resources or hurting ourselves. If we invest less than necessary, things don’t go into the direction we want. The big challenge lies in the fact that limits aren’t always in line with our instincts and emotional needs. That’s why we need self-discipline.

    Minimum and maximum

    Your body may crave sweets all day. But you can set a limit to only eat one candy per day. You may not feel like exercising at all. But because you know all the benefits of exercise, you can decide to exercise at least two times per week. Your may love your work, but to keep long-term productivity, you can set a maximum limit of 50 hours of work per week and a minimum of 40 hours and so on.

    Limits can really help you organize your life and introduce steady patterns that are easier to manage. Since you are a pattern-based being, limits can help you to stay organized and disciplined. There are two types of limits we have to consider:

    • Physical limits: Our biological and environmental limits that we have less influence on.
    • Willpower limits: Limits we set for ourselves and completely depend on our self-discipline.

    Physical limits

    Physical limits are limits connected especially to physical laws, environmental limits and your energy levels. One important concept of time management is to not only manage time, but your energy as well. There are days when you’re more productive and there are times when you need much more discipline to get things done. Listening to your body and energy levels is very important for your optimal performance in the long run.

    Considering physical limits in your life simply means that you listen to your body. You have to push yourself all the time, but not too far. You have to go out of your comfort zone into the learning zone, but not too far. If you go too far, you enter the panic zone and you do more damage than good to yourself. If you push yourself too hard when working, partying, anything, then you’re doing damage to yourself. It will lead to a setback.

    If you’re doing something wrong, your body and emotions give you feedback very quickly. You get tired, you start experiencing bad moods, you become grumpy and so on. These are all signs that you’re pushing yourself too hard or doing wrong things. Vice versa is also true. You get the same negative signs and your body feels fatigued if you aren’t active enough. Minimums and maximums are very important.

    Thus you should always listen to your body. If your body tells you that you’re pushing yourself too hard, take a rest. If you don’t feel good about yourself because you aren’t doing enough, push yourself a little bit harder. Listen to your body on a day to day basis and adjust your workload to your daily energy state.

    If you push too hard, you know what happens. We have physical limits. Our bodies can break. Our discipline muscle can break. If you are under stress for too long, you definitely experience burnout sooner or later. If you push your body too hard, you will get an injury sooner or later. All that can lead to a setback that takes you many steps back.

    Two more aspects are important when talking about physical limits.

    The first one is that you can definitely influence your energy levels. So physical limits can be expanded. With a healthy diet, regular exercise, positive people around you, believing in yourself, goals that motivate you etc. you have a great influence on your energy levels. Much like you can increase your body performance, same goes for your intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacity. You should definitely have a lifestyle that enables you to maximize your daily potential for work, play, love and creativity.

    While you’re in the learning zone, your comfort zone expands. Your energy levels and daily output potential rise. You push yourself out of the comfort zone again and improve yourself. Your performance is improving step by step. We call that linear change.

    You reach a plateau sooner or later. When you exercise regularly, have an optimal diet, have positive people in your life etc. there is no more room for linear improvements. In that kind of situations, rapid improvements come into play. Maybe you start using leverage (other people’s time and money), maybe you become a minimalist or start meditating etc. You decide to do something in totally different way. Again, your capacity for output increases dramatically.

    The important thing is to do it step by step. You’re looking for small improvements, especially at first. You search for different ways of improving yourself and doing things better. Your soft limits may be very limited at the beginning. You push but you get tired really fast. Don’t worry, just keep it up. Everything is like a muscle, you build it up with time.

    The second aspect is how to optimally expand your physical limits. There is one sure way of doing it. You want small constant improvements, not one big push from time to time. It’s better to do moderate exercise three times per week than to do it once and not listen to your limits and your body.

    No pain, no gain is probably the worst advice you can get when you first start pushing yourself out of the comfort zone. First you crawl, then you walk, after that you run and in the end, you can sprint. The better condition you are in in any area of life, the more you can experiment, the more you can push yourself, the less limiting the soft limits are. But it takes time (years) to build that. You have to let things accumulate over time. The first step is thus the hardest but definitely worth it.

    To sum things up:

    • We all have biological, physical and environmental limits that present our daily output potential
    • We need to listen to our physical limits for optimal productivity in the long term. If we don’t listen to our body, we do damage that leads to a great setback sooner or later.
    • We can expand our physical limits by improving ourselves (diet, regular exercise, reading, brain exercises etc.), sometimes even by changing our environment. By expanding our comfort zone, our physical limits also usually expand.
    • It takes time and effort to expand our physical limits. We need to have long-term perspective. The most important thing is that the whole picture is constant. It’s better to do something every day, but in smaller quantities, than doing something once a week, trying to compensate and pushing too hard. That is how things accumulate.
    • Physical limits are the reason why we cannot achieve everything in life. We often aren’t even aware of how short life is. It is, which is why you should live it to the full.

    Setting limits

    Willpower limits

    Physical limits don’t depend on your will that much and are thus quite unpredictable. You simply don’t know what your natural energy potential will be tomorrow. Maybe you’ll feel super energized or maybe you’ll catch a cold. Thus the only thing you can do is to keep physical limits in mind as life goes by, and adjust accordingly. You have to stay flexible and constantly gather feedback from your body and environment.

    Willpower limits, on the other hand, are a completely different story. Willpower limits totally depend on your self-discipline. You don’t have 100 % control over your willpower limits, because of the influence of physical limits, but your control is definitely much better. You may not know how you’ll feel tomorrow, but in general, you know your daily potential. You know the average amount of hours you have available every day for a certain activity, your skills, your leverages etc. You have a pretty good picture of what you can achieve on your average day or in your average week or in your average month.

    Based on that, you can set willpower limits in your life. They should still be flexible, but it’s about the minimums and maximums you should do each day or each week on average for a specific thing or activity. Knowing your physical limits enables you to stay flexible, while having willpower limits enables you to maximize your long-term performance based on your self-discipline.

    Willpower limits are like your bank account

    Why do you need willpower limits? Well, every area in your life is like a bank account. You can do only two things. Either you withdraw money or deposit it. It’s the same in every area of your life. With every action, you either deposit or withdraw capital. Let’s look at an example.

    If you go exercising, you do a deposit on your health bank account. If you eat pizza and get drunk, you make a withdrawal. If you spend quality time with your kid or spouse, you deposit units into relationships. If you go too far in flirting with others while you’re in a relationship, you make a withdrawal. If you read a quality book for an hour, you invest into your skills and competences. It’s a deposit. If you watch reality shows, it makes you a little bit stupider. It’s a withdrawal.

    Now we can go a step further. You can have a lot of money on your bank account. If that’s the case, a withdrawal every now and again isn’t that painful. For example, if you’re an athlete, you can afford an unhealthy meal without doing any serious damage to your health. You can also have a lot of money on your bank account and do something so stupid that you go bankrupt. For example, if you’re an athlete, text while you drive, have an accident and sustain an injury that prevents you from training and competing. It can be a total bankruptcy.

    As mentioned, your bank account balance can also be negative or you are even close to bankruptcy. It’s like smoking a cigarette when you have lung cancer. The fewer units you have on your bank account, the more painful every withdrawal is and the more welcoming every deposit.

    That’s why you want to have a good balance on your account. You don’t want to go bankrupt, you don’t want to struggle “financially”, but on other hand you also don’t need billions to live a happy and successful life. Setting minimums and maximums can help you a lot with keeping adequate balance.

    Deposit

    Of course your minimums and maximums should be flexible, depending on your goals, on the current state of different areas of your life and so on. It’s good to review your minimums and maximums every three to six months, and adjust them based on your life situation and goals.

    Nevertheless, your willpower limits should be a steady and important part of your life. They concern all the activities that bring you long-term happiness, so any changes to your maximums and minimums should be minor.

    For example, you can decide to not exercise for a month, because you just had a baby, but it should be a short-term decision if you want to stay healthy; you also don’t need to run a marathon two months after having a baby, but you can definitely start walking, stretching etc. to reach your weekly health minimum.

    Now it’s time to sit down and consider the willpower limits you should set in your life and stick to them in the long term. For every area of life, analyze and think hard about your current balance in the account, how much you can start depositing (investing) and how you are going to keep discipline. Below, you can find the general direction of your minimums and maximums to help you out.

    And another important thing: if setting minimums and maximums in your life means making big changes, take things a little bit slower. You cannot implement too many changes in your life at once. Choose one area, set minimums and maximums, and stick to them for a month or two. Then go to the next level. If you try to implement too many changes in your life, you won’t change anything in the end.

    Here are the general directions for your minimums and maximums:

    Standard minimums

    The minimum amount of units you should deposit into different areas of your life weekly/monthly:

    • You (planning, reflection etc.): 2 hours per week
    • Exercising: 3 x 1 hour per week
    • Diet: Two pieces of fruit and vegetables at every main course daily and much more
    • Sex: At least three times per week, better daily ;)
    • Spouse and family: One to two quality hours a day + one whole day during the weekend
    • Friends and socializing: At least one evening per week
    • Money and wealth: Save at least 10 % of your salary each month
    • Career: Work at least 40 hours per week
    • Competences and informal education: Read/learn for at least 5 hours per week
    • Fun, creativity and travel: Travel at least once per year, do something fun every week
    • Donating (your time or money): At least 1 %

    Standard maximums

    The maximum amount of units you should deposit into different areas of your life weekly/monthly:

    • You (planning etc.): 3 hours per week, otherwise you can get caught in analysis-paralysis
    • Exercising: 6 x 1 hour per week (if you aren’t a professional athlete)
    • Diet: Afford one shitty meal per week.
    • Sex: Well… no limits I guess :)
    • Spouse and family: No limits, but you need to keep balance and have a spine.
    • Friends and socializing: Three evenings of socializing per week should be enough
    • Money and wealth: Saving 50 % of your salary per month
    • Career: Working 70 hours per week at the most

  • Cognitive distortions and negative thinking

    By far the biggest waste in life are cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are all extreme negative thoughts that bring bad feelings as well as longer periods of depression or severe negative moods sooner or later. You simply can’t live a positive life with a negative mind. By having too many cognitive distortions, you’re trapped in living a zombie life, seeing the world as very dark and full of terror. What a waste.

    There’s good news and bad news regarding cognitive distortions. The good news is that you can get rid of cognitive distortions and live a fuller and happier life. Without cognitive distortions, you can be much more positive, lean, agile and with a greater capacity to love yourself and the world around you. You develop inner strength that allows you to go after your goals with positive feelings.

    The bad news is that the way of getting rid of cognitive distortions is counterintuitive to us. For most people, assumptions about how to deal with cognitive distortions go something like this: I need [x]. Having [x] will make me happy in life. By having [x] and being happier, my negative thoughts will go away, I will free myself and be more motivated and become successful. As you’ve probably guessed [x] is usually a good car, a well-paid job, a dream spouse or anything similar from the materialistic world.

    There are several problems with that kind of thinking. The first wrong assumption is that happiness comes from the outer world. Well, it can come, but only for a very short period of time. Buying something you want makes you happy for a few days, after that you’re back in the same situation of negativity.

    The second very big problem with that kind of thinking is passivity. You put yourself in a passive role, waiting for life to reward you just because you deserve it, just because you’re something special. It doesn’t work that way. Life rewards those who master its rules and put all their creativity, cleverness and hard work into achieving their goals. Life wants you to be proactive, not passive and reactive. A passive role has never brought real happiness. You can find a lot of passive people who fake happiness, but you don’t want that.

    The next false assumption is that it’s going to be easy to get rid of negative thoughts. One new item, thing or person in your life, and your mind will get updated with a new, more positive “software”. You’ve probably been thinking negatively for years, it’s part of how you were raised, maybe your parents were too critical of you or you grew up in an abusive family. It’s been there for years; and it’s going to take a lot of effort and hard work to get rid of it. It’s not fair, but you have to face it. Nothing worthwhile comes easily and getting rid of your negative thoughts is definitely worth it. No matter how hard it is.

    The process of getting rid of cognitive distortions works the other way around. First you have to work on your mind, first you have to improve your mental state and change your inner world. Working on your mind will improve your thoughts, better thoughts will bring more positive actions, more positive actions will bring more positive outcomes. That’s a proactive position. You tackle the software in your brain to get rid of bugs and function optimally. You level up your game. You first have to work on your mind to become more focused, more decisive, clearer about what you want out of life, and more positive.

    It’s really important that you distinguish between the process and the event. Getting rich is an event. Meeting your perfect spouse is an event. Getting a raise is an event. Having a positive mind is an event. But before any kind of event like that, the process always comes first. Getting rich is a carefully orchestrated process that usually takes years if not decades to finally reach the final event. It’s the same with your mind. There are no shortcuts. There is no easy way out of negative thinking, there is no event without a process. But it can be done.

    You can’t just think positively

    You can find many self-help books that praise positive thinking. Well, it’s true that positive thinking is an important part of a happy and successful life, but you can’t just decide to think positively. If it were that simple, everyone would be happy and optimistic and super positive in life. You can’t force yourself into positive thinking, it will only make you miserable. Every time a negative thought crosses your mind, you will get mad and angry and disappointed, and that only means even more negative thoughts.

    In order to get superior results, you always need a superior strategy. You need to tackle the problem more smartly and systematically. There are two ways how to do it, the first one is the hardest, but gives the best results, the second one is a simpler version, but probably suitable for most people.

    If you have really big problems with depression, negative thinking and heavy moods, they probably won’t go away without professional help. In this case, I suggest that you enter the search mode, and do research on different types of psychological therapy, read a few professional psychology books, not self-help ones, visit a few specialists, try to get to know yourself as well as you can on your own and find the therapy that suits you best or you think could help you the most. It may take a lot of time, money and energy, but you don’t want to waste your life and live like a zombie. Your life is the most precious thing you have.

    The second, simpler version is to systematically tackle the problem by yourself. You can still do research on your own, but the best resource I’ve ever found by far is a book called Feeling Good, written by David D. Burns. If you want to get rid of your thoughts, you first have to understand what they are, where they are coming from, the different types of negative thinking that exist and how to deal with them. You can find all the answers in the mentioned book.

    Methods and techniques in the book are part of cognitive psychology. The foundation of cognitive psychology is the hypothesis that all your moods are created by your cognitions – thoughts, where cognitions refer to the way you look at things, from your perceptions and mental attitudes to beliefs.

    Based on that fact, you simply feel depressed when your thoughts are dominated by pervasive negativity. Your negativity is therefore probably not based on accurate perceptions of reality, but is instead often the product of mental slippage. The extent of negative thinking is enormous. Your mood slumps, your self-image crumbles, your body doesn’t function properly, your willpower becomes paralysed and your own actions defeat you.

    Feeling trapped
    You can feel trapped inside your own mind.

    Ten types of negative thinking

    I suggest you buy and read the book, as it can really be a life-changer. Nevertheless, here’s the summary of ten different kinds of cognitive distortions that are really eye-opening and the first step to understanding your negative thoughts. Before we look at ten types of negative thinking, let’s look at the scientifically proven hypothesis of the extent that negative thinking really has.

    “Every bad feeling you have is the result of negative thinking. Self-defeating emotions are caused by negative thoughts, illogical pessimism and strong inner critique. Your emotions result entirely from the way you look at things, by your internal dialogue on a series of events that happen to you. If your understanding of what’s happening is accurate, your emotions will be normal. If your perception is twisted and distorted in some way, your emotional response will be abnormal.”

    Here are ten types of negative thinking, described in detail in the book Feeling good:

    All-or-nothing thinking

    “You evaluate yourself and events that happen in your life in extremes, it’s either totally black or totally white. That kind of thinking is the basis for perfectionism. It causes you to fear doing any mistakes, it causes you to fear doing something imperfectly. If you don’t do it perfectly, if you make a mistake, you see yourself as a complete looser. You have the same interpretation if something doesn’t happen as you wanted or expected. It can go from all to nothing really quickly. You can see yourself as zero with one single small change in the outside environment. That kind of perception has nothing to do with reality. Absolutes do not exist in the universe.”

    For example, your spouse must behave exactly to your expectations, or they are not the right one.

    Overgeneralization

    “With overgeneralization, you arbitrarily conclude that a thing that happened to you once will occur over and over again. For example, the pain of rejection is generated almost entirely from overgeneralization. Without cognitive distortion, a rejection can be temporarily disappointing, but cannot be seriously disturbing.”

    You know how it goes: I will never get a girlfriend… (Based on one rejection).

    Mental filter

    “Mental filtering simply means that you pick out a negative detail in any situation and dwell on it exclusively, thus perceiving the whole situation as negative. Because you aren’t aware of this mental filtering, you conclude that everything is negative. All that you allow to enter your conscious mind are the negative things.”

    For example you have your dream job, it’s just your pay check that could be a little bit higher, but all you can see is that the pay check is not adequate.

    Disqualifying the positive

    “It’s about the unwanted ability of your mind to transform neutral and maybe even positive events into negative ones. You don’t just ignore positive experiences, you cleverly and swiftly turn them into their nightmarish opposite. “

    For example, if you get a compliment and your mind starts questioning the compliment and maybe even seeing it as manipulation that could definitely be this kind of cognitive distortion. It doesn’t make sense to constantly throw cold water on the good things that happen in your life.

    Jumping to conclusions

    “Jumping to conclusions means that you jump to a negative conclusion that is not justified by the facts of the situation. It’s as if you had a crystal ball that foretold only misery to you.”

    For example, you make assumptions that other people are looking down on you, and you’re so sure about this that you don’t even bother to check it out and talk with other people. You would rather have a negative belief about what other people think of you.

    Magnification and minimization

    “With magnificational or minimizational thinking, you either blow things out of proportion or shrink them. Magnification commonly occurs when you look at your own errors, fears or imperfections, and exaggerate their importance. When you think about your strengths, you may do the opposite – you look at your strengths in a way that makes them look small and unimportant. Of course if you magnify your imperfections and minimize your good points, you’re guaranteed to feel inferior.”

    Emotional reasoning

    “Emotional reasoning means that you take your emotions as evidence for the truth. Because things feel so negative to you, you assume they are true. But in reality if your thinking is distorted, your emotions have no validity of reality. Just because you feel overwhelmed and helpless, for example, it doesn’t mean that your problems are impossible to solve.”

    Should statements

    “You try to motivate yourself with statements like “I should do this”, “I must do that” etc. These statements cause you to feel pressured and resentful. With that kind of statements, you achieve the opposite result, feeling even more unmotivated and apathetic. When the reality of your own behaviours falls short of your standards, your “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” create self-loathing, shame and guilt.”

    It’s the same when you direct “should” statements towards other people. In most cases, you feel frustrated, because you want someone to behave according to your expectations. When the all-too-human performance of other people falls short of your expectations, which definitely happens from time to time, you feel bitter and self-righteous. You either have to change your expectations to approximate reality or always feel let down by human behaviour.

    Labeling and mislabelling

    “Labeling means creating a completely negative self-image based on your errors. It’s an extreme form of overgeneralization. Labeling yourself is self-defeating and irrational. Because we label ourselves or others, for example with the label “I’m a born loser”, we resent ourselves or others, and jump at every chance to criticize. But it doesn’t make any sense to focus on every weakness or imperfection of yourself or others as proof for being worthiness.”

    You must consider that a human life is an ongoing process that involves constantly changing the physical body as well as having an enormous number of rapidly changing thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Your life is therefore an evolving experience, a continual flow. You are not a thing. That is why any label is constricting, highly inaccurate, and global. Labelling means that you have a fixed mindset, but in life you can always grow, improve and change. Nothing is permanent and there is always a move you can make towards a better life. You have to innovate your way towards a better life.

    Personalization

    “The last cognitive distortion is personalization and it is the mother of guilt. You assume responsibility for a negative event or thing, even where there is no basis for doing so. You arbitrarily conclude that what happened was your fault or reflects your inadequacy, even when you are not responsible for it. Personalization causes you to feel crippling guilt.”

    In the case of personalization, you usually confuse influence with control over others. What the other person does is ultimately his or her responsibility, not yours.

    These are ten cognitive distortions identified by David D. Burns. You can read more about them in his book Feeling good. I really recommend it. Here is a good summary of why dealing with your negative thoughts is so important:

    “Your thoughts create emotions; therefore your emotions cannot prove that your thoughts are accurate. Unpleasant feelings merely indicate that you are thinking something negative and believing it. Every time you feel depressed about something, try to identify the corresponding negative thought you had just prior to negative feelings and during the depressed mood.

    Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood, by learning to restructure them, you can change your mood. Your emotions come entirely form the way you look at things. If your understanding of what is happening is accurate, your emotions will be normal. If your perception is twisted and distorted in some way, your emotional response will be abnormal. Feelings aren’t facts.”

    Smile more
    Free yourself!

    Dealing with cognitive distortions

    The first step in dealing with cognitive distortions is building up your sense of self-worth and self-esteem. When you are in a negative emotional state or, even worse, depressed, you usually believe that you’re worthless. The stronger the negative feelings, the more you feel like no one.

    Thus the first step is to closely examine what you say about yourself when you have negative feelings. Negative events grow in importance until they dominate your entire reality. All the distorted thoughts feel real to you. The illusion you have about yourself is very convincing.

    An important fact in the whole picture is that achievements and other external rewards can’t really help you with your feeling of self-worth. They can bring you satisfaction, but not happiness. Moreover, love, approval and friendship also can’t help you much. As stated in the book, a great majority of negative and depressed people are loved very much, they just can’t see it, because their focus is completely elsewhere.

    The only way to do it is to tackle your inner dialogue and your inner critique.

    The method that David S. Burns recommends for tackling your self-esteem is:

    • Talk back to your inner critique
    • Train yourself to recognize and write down self-critical thoughts as they go through your mind
    • Learn why these thoughts are distorted
    • Practice talking back to them so as to develop a more realistic self-evaluation system

    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 mentioned ten different types, and the third one is your rational response (“Not true, I do a lot of things right”).

    Genius people always test and implement new things in their life as quickly as possible. If you aren’t willing to use the tool and take time to deal with your thoughts, you simply won’t be able to do the job. The table tool will help you locate the mental errors that depress you and fix them.

    Even if this article is eye-opening for you and you do nothing afterwards, all the reading was a big waste of time; and waste is your biggest enemy to a happy and successful life.

    Emotional accounting

    The most important thing in cognitive therapy is to observe your thoughts and your feelings. Thus you can add two more columns to the above-mentioned table and do some emotional accounting. You can specify the type of feeling and its intensity (0 – 100) from before the rational response to cognitive distortion and afterwards. It’s a good way of determining how much your feeling will actually improve.

    Thus columns in your table would be:

    • Automatic negative thought (“I never do things right”)
    • Type of negative feeling and intensity (Anger, 90%)
    • Type of cognitive distortion (Overgeneralization)
    • Rational response (“Not true, I do a lot of things right”, for example…)
    • Intensity of negative feeling (Anger, 30%)

    An important part of emotional accounting is also the mental biofeedback. It simply means clicking a button each time a negative thought about you crosses your mind. With this technique, you will always be alert for negative thoughts about yourself. You should probably do this exercise first, before any others, just to become aware of your negative thoughts and how many of them you have.

    That’s basically it. It sounds simple, but it’s not. Nevertheless it’s definitely worth it. You don’t have to do anything especially worthy to create or deserve self-esteem. All you have to do is turn off that critical, inner voice. Your inner self-abuse springs from illogical, distorted thinking. Your sense of worthiness is not based on truth, it’s just the abscess that lies at the core of your negative thinking. Deal with your inner critique and your thoughts will improve.

    Negative thinking can really paralyze you, your willpower and your desire to do things. Mindsets like hopelessness, helplessness, overwhelming yourself, jumping to conclusions, self-labelling, undervaluing the reward, perfectionism, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of disapproval and criticism, coercion and resentment, low frustration tolerance, guilt and self-blame are usually most commonly associated with procrastination. And you deserve better.

    You should identify your negative thoughts, your cognitive distortions and your paralyzing mindsets. Keeping a schedule of negative thoughts, fixing your cognitive distortions, keeping a daily activity schedule as well as rewarding yourself and giving yourself credit is a way towards a whole new, more positive life. Focusing on your progress, what you’ve done and fixing your negative interpretations and beliefs will help you with your feeling of self-worth and thus you will be able to enjoy life more. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that you respect and love yourself.

    Here is a good checklist you can download to refresh your memory about cognitive distortions when needed.

    Start small. It is first action and then motivation, not vice versa. A little action leads to motivation and motivation leads to more action. Don’t just wait for motivation to come out of nowhere. It won’t happen. Just do it. Take a piece of paper and start writing down negative thoughts you have about yourself. Take a piece of paper and write down three small things you will do tomorrow. Then do them all.

    Source: David D. Burns, Feeling good: the new mood therapy

  • The key principles of the Agile and Lean Life – Have it ALL Manifesto

    This blog post is the Agile and Lean Life Manifesto, setting the foundations and key principles for living the Agile and Lean life. The twelve principles introduced in the manifesto are based on best business practices like “lean manufacturing”, “lean start-up”, “agile development” and other advanced business strategies, transformed so they can be used for managing personal life. In addition to that, a few best personal development practices and my own, already tested, ideas are also included.

    The five most important goals of living an Agile and Lean life are to:

    • Acquire inner assets faster (knowledge, skills, decision-making power …)
    • Create more external assets (time, money, revenue streams, status, energy, relationships…)
    • Have the tools to tackle the biggest challenges in life, such as career change
    • Successfully manage negative situations like anxiety, information overload and indecision
    • Blossom in all areas of life and thus live a more happy and quality life

    The key philosophy behind achieving these five goals is to eliminate waste from your life. Everything you do and have in life (decisions, material things, relationships etc.) either adds value to your life or drags you down. There is no third option. You can either make a return or loss on your every investment.

    Things that add value to your life are the things filled with positive energy and emotions. That means:

    • doing various different things that make you happy and self-confident,
    • doing things that lead to creativity and greatness,
    • having loving and empowering relationships,
    • being a part of a group in which you fit in and prosper,
    • doing things that make you healthier and more energetic,
    • doing things that lead to building up your inner assets and external assets by providing real value to the world, developing your talents and using prestige – a non-dominant approach.

    A very important task for all of you who want to live a more quality life is to eliminate as much waste as possible, with the end goal of making room for things that really matter to you – bring value. Unfortunately today, it is very easy to get distracted by waste, having wrong assumptions about life.

    If nothing else, you are exposed to thousands of ads that are fighting for your attention and assets on a daily basis. As the famous quote goes (and is sadly not far from the truth), before you know it, you can find yourself working a job you hate, buying things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like. This is all a big waste of life that you should totally avoid. That kind of a situation is the opposite of the Agile and Lean Life.

    Eliminating waste is an endless process and, in addition to that, it’s also not an easy task to carry out. But it’s very worth it in the long run. Eliminating waste is an important step towards personal freedom and genuine self-actualization, no matter where your starting point is. The Agile and Lean manifesto sets the foundations and key principles for doing it.

    Too long read for now? Download the PDF file!

    The Agile Lean Life Manifesto Banner

     

    Life can be managed even in today’s complex and turbulent world

    Before we go to the key principles, you have to be aware that it can be done, that there is a way.

    It’s true, life is not always easy. In life, you have to face big challenges, a lack of resources, negative emotional states and disappointments sooner or later. The new digital era has added additional pressure on top of that, with challenges like having too many options and unrealistic expectations, dealing with information overload, extreme market complexity and hardly bearable uncertainty, like no job security.

    But as you know, the world isn’t that dark. We live in the best times ever. Life can be an awesome and beautiful experience. But only if you manage it correctly. Only if you have the formula for facing life challenges and turning today’s disadvantages into advantages; and deep down inside you know that the formula is not posting your happy pictures on social media, no matter the short-term satisfaction you get.

    And don’t forget. There are no second chances in life. You have to get it right the first time.

    But what is the formula? In school, they teach you everything from mathematics and chemistry to history and geography, but almost nothing is said about life management. There are thousands of books written about personal development, but most of them are either too superficial or only offer small insights on how to improve some areas of your life. That may have sounded arrogant, but it is not meant that way.

    Yes, you should definitely read as much as possible in order to gain new insights on life, and there are many great books, but what you also need and is missing out there is a systematic and structured manual for how to live and manage life in today’s turbulent and complex world.

    Life is too short and you want to figure out the formula for success as soon as possible, and then live life to the full. You don’t want to bother with how to live life all the time, making and correcting big mistakes, feeling sorry for yourself while life passes by. You want to achieve as much as possible, have as many good moments as possible, acquire enough assets to fulfill your desires, have deep and empowering relationships and so on – as soon as possible in life.

    It’s true that everything takes time to be achieved, but the Agile and Lean life is about speed. It’s about the formula for accelerating your success. It’s about doing it as fast as possible in the right kind of way, meaning not being an asshole.

    There was a pretty good formula for living life that worked very well two decades ago. The formula was: get a good education, find a safe job, get married with your first love, live by the values of the local church, write down your goals and try to achieve a few of them, and live happily ever after. Jobs were available, markets were booming, education was cheap. The formula worked.

    Unfortunately the formula doesn’t work anymore. The times have changed too much. In 50 years, the world has been turned upside down.

    The businesses were the first ones to be dramatically affected by the new digital age and struck with all the new challenges, from market saturation and globalization to new internet competition and financial markets’ meltdown. They had to adapt, there was no other choice. Adapt or die. Many manuals have been written on how to do it, about running a company successfully in the new digital age. For example, two very popular new age manuals are the “lean production” and “agile development”, while the “lean startup” philosophy offers a new formula for success in business today.

    There is no reason why you shouldn’t use similar techniques for managing your personal life. More on that is written in the About this blog section. This gives hope that it can be done. By adapting the agile and lean philosophy to your personal life, you have access to a new formula for living life and being successful.

    The measurement of success according to the Agile and Lean Life formula is very simple. On your death bed, looking back on your life, you want to say to yourself: “Life was an awesome experience and a daring adventure. I have faced many difficult challenges but I have played the game right. I have made the right moves and have taken the right decisions. It was worth it. And I have contributed to making the world a better place to live in for generations to come.”

    The Agile and Lean Life Manifesto will show you how. You can become happy and successful in life no matter how difficult your life situation is – as long as you have access to the internet and possess sufficient intelligence to comprehend this text. For the rest of the world, we must all work hard so that they will have the same options. By living the Agile and Lean life you may not become the next Bill Gates, but you can definitely make a move towards a better and happier life.

    Before we go to the key principles, you should be aware that:

    • We all have to face many (old and new) life challenges that are not easy at all
    • We all deserve to live a quality life with adequate resources, self-actualization and happiness
    • Life can be systematically and scientifically managed in order to achieve these goals
    • You can do it as well, no matter where your starting point is. You can live a better life.

    The Agile and Lean Life Manifesto is based on twelve principles that successfully replace old life management techniques like setting goals, looking for job security and giving personal power for the important life decisions to other people (formal systems, bosses etc.).

    The twelve principle of an Agile and Lean Life

    1. Search before you execute: Experiment – Reflect – Learn – Execute
    2. Go out and see for yourself, see in order to compose your dream life
    3. Optimize your entire life, not only parts of it
    4. Visualize, simplify and make a move
    5. Move fast and with focus in the execution phase by using the flow
    6. Plan regular intervals with reflections and adjustments
    7. Believe in yourself over looking for outside safety
    8. Relationships and environment over work and tasks
    9. Continuously improve yourself and your environment
    10. Create value, be flexible and modest over having an ego
    11. Life Accounting – measure everything
    12. Live life with love and respect

    1. Search before you execute: Experiment – Reflect – Learn – Execute

    The key to a more successful life is having a superior strategy for how to live it. Your life strategy is shaped especially by your values, beliefs, personal management system, and thus by your decisions about spending your time, energy, money, skills and other resources.

    The Agile and Lean life strategy begins with the old Ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself”. If you want to be successful in life, you have to know yourself and what you want out of life very clearly.

    But how? The best way to get to know yourself and World is by experimenting, reflecting and learning (here you can find all the techniques how to get to know yourself better). The best way is to introduce a new search mode in life, the phase you should be performing every time before you do any kind of real execution.

    If you execute before you search, you could be climbing a ladder that’s leaned against the wrong wall. Somewhere midway or at the top, you can discover that this is not you, it’s not something you want. The higher you are, the more difficult it is to climb down. Most people never climb down, and instead start living a “zombie life” – a life of constantly running away from reality.

    Therefore in an Agile and Lean Life, you have to divide all activities of all areas of life into two groups:

    In the search mode, you shouldn’t have any expectations, you shouldn’t have any commitments and you shouldn’t do any hard work. Expectations lead to disappointments and before you understand something, you definitely have expectations that are completely wrong. Commitments lead to heavy energy investments, and you shouldn’t be investing before you know what you are truly investing in and whether the investment really fits your character. Hard work should always also be smart work, but you can’t work smartly if you don’t have the right map and coordinates.

    In the search phase you just try, experiment, observe, reflect and learn about yourself and the world. The most important thing is to have no fixed ideas and no expectations at all in this phase. Your job is only to test the assumptions you have written down, correct them, and try different things to find out what suits you best. Your only job is to learn about yourself and the world. No goals. No measurement of progress. Just learning and playing.

    After you find your fit in the search phase, you start executing. You set strong foundations, have laser focus, commit fully, start working hard and achieving your goals. You optimize, improve, and measure your progress. But first, you have to find the right thing. You must put the ladder against the right wall before you start climbing.

    After every experiment (action) you do in the search phase, you have to make a reflection. You learn about yourself by reflecting on your actions. Reflection is an insight into knowing yourself and life better. Reflection is an insight into how to do things in a better way.

    Why you need a search phase before execution:

    • To do adequate research and form first assumptions about yourself and life (for example you can write down your assumptions using the persona technique for people and organizations you interact with or you can just write down your assumptions on the spreadsheet)
    • To conduct small experiments and figure out what your best personal fits are
    • To not put pressure on yourself to achieve and do something that is not really you
    • To have fun and try as many things as possible in life and stay open minded
    • To set a realistic execution strategy that you can follow and really implement
    Practical examples

    Let’s look at an example. The old strategy was to write down a goal in a smart way (SMART = Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, Time-bound). OK. You then write down something like: “I want to lose 10 kg by exercising and dieting in one year.” What usually follows is that after a few months, you look at your goal paper, you step on the scale and feel even worse. No progress at all.

    In the Agile and Lean Life Search phase, there are no goals yet and no pressure at all. The first phase is driven by curiosity. You know that you want to lose weight and you know that you lose weight by exercising and dieting. But instead of setting goals, you ask yourself: Is there a sport that I would really enjoy and wouldn’t even be hard exercise? Is there a diet for me that is tasty, healthy and makes me more energetic? With whom can I try the first sport I think I might like? Then you continue reading, trying and researching. In the first phase, you put no pressure on yourself, you just experiment.

    Let’s look at another example. In every company that hires you, you are usually on a trial period for a few months. They want to know if you and your skills are actually what you have presented in your CV. It makes complete sense and you should have the same approach towards the company. It’s not enough to just have a job. You must find out for yourself if you really fit in the company culture, if you like the work, if you can develop your talents further and so on. Only then you can decide if you really want to fully commit.

    2. Go out and see for yourself, see in order to compose your dream life

    The second principle of an Agile and Lean life is based on the “genchi gembutsu” philosophy, which means go and see for yourself in Japanese. It is an important concept in the Toyota production system, and is also known as “Go out of the building” in the lean start-up philosophy. The “go out and see” principle is an important part of the search phase.

    It’s a very simple rule in the Agile and Lean Life. Don’t talk about things, but go and try them.Don’t assume, go out and test. Testing and trying is the best way to gain firsthand knowledge about yourself and the world. For every new experience you get, you should decide whether to preserve it in your life or not (pivot). Every new experience should also give your ideas and insights into what to try next. The best way to test and try new things is with minimum viable experience concept. The idea is that you try as many things as possible in life (your vision list), and based on your physical, emotional and intellectual response, you decide whether you should keep something in your life or pivot to something else.

    The difference between what you think is valuable to you and what is really valuable for your life creates waste. Don’t assume anything, try and test everything.

    Let’s look again at the previous two examples to prevent things from sounding too abstract.

    There is plenty of advice on fitness and diet. You can even find contradictory advice. But you can test what works and what doesn’t work for you as an individual. For someone, being vegetarian is the optimal diet. For others, far from it. There is no single formula for success. You can only try vegetarian, vegan, fruitarian, paleo and other verified diets until you find the one that suits you best. It doesn’t make sense to only read about it or argue about it, you have to try it for yourself and see. With no expectations and by keeping an open mind. After the search phase and finding what works for you best, you can execute (keep, set goals, measurements…) by optimizing details.

    While experimenting, you must be careful you don’t do anything that would really damage you. If necessary, you should consult specialists.

    The second example would be looking for a new career. Your emotions show you complete dissatisfaction in your current career. Here is how you would tackle this challenge in the first phase of an Agile and Lean Life. In your free time, you write down assumptions for careers you think you could blossom in. You start testing how much passion awakens in you when reading about specific industries, join forums and attend online courses etc. You take some part time projects, even for no payment, just to see how engaged you become. You continue experimenting until you find the new perfect fit for you. Then you go into the execution phase. At the end, you may find that design is your thing after trying to prepare an outstanding CV for a completely different industry.

    These are two very simplified examples. This phase must be done scientifically and systematically, and on this blog, we will talk a lot about how to do it and which tools to use.

    Your task in an Agile and Lean Life is to find your perfect fits in all areas of life by searching and experimenting. Trying completely different things, hanging out with different kinds of people and so on.

    At the end of the day, you must find your best fits and have your dream life composed like a beautiful mosaic – perfect diet, best exercise, best fitting career, investments best suited to your character, perfect partner etc.

    If we have started with the Agile and Lean Life rule that you have to search before you execute, this rule is all about you searching for your perfect fits by performing experiments in real life – actually doing and trying, not only talking about it. Talk is cheap and gives zero insight into you and life.

    3. Optimize your entire life, not only parts of it

    You can’t run a successful business if your marketing or cash flow management or any other key business functions suck. You have to optimize the entire business, not only a few business functions. In the same way, you can’t have a happy and successful life if you only focus on some parts of your life and forget about the others. There is no running away from any area of your life. You have to look at your life as a whole, and optimize it on the macro level.

    If one of the life areas collapses, everything else can collapse as well. Your health greatly affects your earning potential and the quality of your relationships. Your income level has a big influence on all other areas of life. There are some periods in life when you have to put more focus on a single area (e.g. when getting a baby), but you should never let the bigger picture out of your sight.

    Ten key areas of life

    You have ten key areas of life you have to juggle:

    1. You
      1. Your personality – knowing yourself, your beliefs, values, behavioral patterns, daily habits, your ideal-self etc.
      2. Your environment – country, city, home, office etc.
    2. Health and primary needs (body)
      1. Diet
      2. Fitness / Sports
      3. Other (sleep, sex, breathing…)
    3. Relationships and people skills (love and belonging)
      1. Spouse
      2. Family (primary, secondary)
      3. Friends
      4. Coworkers
      5. Others
    4. Money and wealth
    5. Career, achievements and respect
    6. Emotions (your emotional body)
    7. Competences – Intelligence, knowledge and skills (your intellectual body)
      1. Formal education (degree, certificates…)
      2. Informal education
    8. Fun, creativity and travel
    9. Spirituality, self-actualization and giving back to the world (your spiritual body)
    10. Technology as a leverage for being more productive on all areas of life

    The Agile and Lean Life formula for managing life at a macro level is pretty simple. You should do constant linear improvements (kaizen) in certain chosen areas of your life, and one big rapid improvement (kaikaku) in one area of your life, when the time is ripe. At the same time, you should maintain all areas that are currently not your priority.

    Out of the ten life areas, you should choose, best in one year time frame:

    • One area where you plan to do a rapid improvement (that is your focus area for the time being)
    • Two to three areas where you will implement a few linear improvements
    • In all other areas, you try to maintain the current level (of course improvements on other levels will, in most cases, also positively affect the areas you are maintaining)

    You cannot implement too many changes in your life at once. You only have a strong enough will to do a few linear changes, and you can only implement one really big change in your life at a time, provided there are foundations strong enough for it. Therefore you should do only a single rapid improvement at a time.

    If you want to live a happy and successful life, you have to optimize your life from all ten perspectives. Of course all the areas are interconnected and consequently improving one area leads to improvements in other areas. The important thing, however, is to not only think about money, sex, fun, career or any other isolated area, but rather look at your life as a whole. First see the woods, then go and cut down trees.

    You should always thoroughly think about how every major decision influences all ten areas of your life. That is the principle number three, and the additional thing you should find out in the search phase.

    You can decrease the quality of your life or even destroy it with:

    • One or several big wrong decisions (for example choosing your spouse, industry, career…)
    • A series of small wrong decisions (unhealthy diet…)

    For every big decision you make, and for all the small decisions you are making almost every day, you should ask yourself where they are leading you and how they impact all ten areas of your life. Short-term history is a good predictor for short-term future. Ask yourself where your past decisions and current behavioral patterns are going to lead you in one year’s time in all ten areas of your life. That is the best technique to use for determining priority areas of your life: where you should be doing rapid changes and linear improvements.

    4. Visualize, simplify and make a move

    Brain neurons for our visual perception account for approximately 30 % of brain’s grey matter. When we look at pictures, our brain can process several pieces of information simultaneously, which means it is processing around 60,000 times faster than when reading a text.

    Therefore you first have to “see” what you want from life before you can have it.

    A very important rule of an Agile and Lean Life is to visualize everything. In the future, we will talk a lot about the fact that in an Agile and Lean Life, you have to do all kinds of creative stuff, from Kanban boards, “want-to-have experience” boards and master list visualizations to outlining mind maps and constantly drawing, sketching and sticking pictures together. Even if you suck at it, like I am.

    Much like the business model canvas is a much more fun experience in the business planning phase compared to a dull business plan, boards and visual materials are similarly a much better and more fun tool in a personal life compared to writing down goals. And they work so much better.

    This rule of an Agile and Lean Life is pretty simple. You must have extreme fun when outlining your life and designing what you want to experience.

    For your better performance you have to visualize everything.

    Besides better clarity and comprehension, you should get two more answers by visualizing and sketching your desired life experiences:

    • Scenario-based thinking: What are all the potential moves I can make and which ones will I try first? With more options, you get a feeling of more freedom and personal power.
    • Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication: What is the simplest thing that would work for every move I can make? You can take action only if you don’t feel overwhelmed.

    Having everything visualized and outlined makes it become obvious to you. There is always a move to make towards a better life. There is always a way to live a better life by implementing simpler and faster solutions. That should give you a feeling of inner security.

    Let’s review

    The next, fifth, principle is a step further from the search mode to the first execution step. So let’s look back at the first four principles we had covered so far:

    1. Get to know yourself by searching, experimenting and trying. Don’t execute and invest yourself strongly before you find your perfect fit. Don’t have any commitments and expectations in the search phase. There is no failure in the search mode. Only playing. That should free your mind of pressure. You should do regular reflections in order to acquire knowledge about yourself and the World.
    2. You have to go out and see for yourself. You have to try things and experience them in order to gain knowledge. Don’t talk about it, experience it. Don’t judge if you haven’t tried it for yourself, don’t assume if you don’t know how it feels. You are here on Earth to experience as much as possible. Do it. Test, try and experiment.
    3. Think about how every action you plan to do influences all ten areas of your life. You have to optimize your whole life to be happy and successful, not just a few isolated parts.
    4. Visualize everything you are doing or planning to do in your life and want to experience. Pictures, sketches, mind maps, boards and so on are the best tools for our brain. Use them and have as much fun as possible while visualizing it.

    5. Move fast and with focus in the execution phase by using the flow

    In the Agile and Lean Life, interested does not equal committed. “Interested” and “interesting” are the two main enemies of real progress in the execution mode, after you have conducted the search mode. No. Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. After the search mode.

    When you find your fit, you have to make more than a hundred percent commitment. You have to move fast, be focused and learn more about which innovations work and which don’t. The more energy you put into a few of your key goals (one major, a few minor ones) the faster your progress will be. In the execution mode it’s all about speed.

    In the Agile and Lean Life, the following is strictly forbidden in the execution phase:

    • Multitasking and other bad time management practices (read The best time management guide ever)
    • Doing too many things and having too many goals at once
    • Not having a place where you can work without any distractions and be in the flow at least once a day for a few hours (you can help yourself to achieve that with No interruptions day)
    • Losing focus because of distractions and urgent tasks, instead of working on the important ones
    • Not working on your goals on a daily basis
    • Not regularly measuring your progress in the intervals you have set with visual elements

    The key point in the execution phase is to work on your goals on a daily basis, and measure progress at regular intervals. An example of the right mindset would be: if your goal is to live a healthier life, there is nothing that can get in the way of me doing my daily exercise.

    Most of the work should be achieved in the flow. The flow is a superior creative and execution phases. The flow is a divine experience that enables you to create, deliver and capture real value added quickly and efficiently. The biggest killers of the workflow, the most productive state for a human being, are distractions. Therefore you need a place for yourself where you can get real work done.

    Laser focus by eliminating all distractions and being in the flow as much time as possible is the formula for good execution results. Use it.

    It’s also very important to break down your “life vision” with all the desired experiments into small steps you can easily take. You should break down all the goals to extremely small tasks that you can perform immediately, and gather feedback to do reflections.

    6. Plan regular intervals for reflections and adjustments

    When living an Agile and Lean Life you don’t just do work and execute tasks. You have to think regularly about why you are doing it and how you are doing it, and whether you are making real progress – the progress that brings value to your life. Being strong and passionate about the reason why is the best motivator you can have in life, and there is always a way to do things better.

    You need regularly planned introspection intervals for:

    • Reviewing the tasks done in the previous interval
    • Connecting with yourself and straightening out your life vision (and whys)
    • Measuring your real progress
    • Adjusting the strategy and plan
    • Reflecting on new things that were learned
    • Gathering new ideas
    • Identifying potential improvements
    • Setting new tasks for the upcoming interval

    First of all, in life things will never go as you assume, think and plan. Even less so in the future, since the environment is becoming even more complex, turbulent and unpredictable. Be prepared to change your strategy frequently and constantly. Your goals will be constantly changing in the Agile and Lean Life. You have to constantly adapt to the fast changing environment.

    The best way is to have reflection days at 14-day intervals. Every two weeks, you take two hours to reflect on your life. You look at all ten areas of life, determine your progress and do strategy and goal adjustments.

    In the 14-day reflection intervals, you also set tasks for the following two weeks (the so called sprint) based on your strategy adjustments. You should visualize your two-week execution sprint on the Kanban board.

    • In the Agile in Lean Life you have so called Sprints – 14-day intervals
    • Every single working day within a Sprint you should be working in the flow as much time as possible
    • You start your working day with a short morning meeting with yourself

    The sprint and the flow are your execution techniques in the Agile and Lean Life.

    Let’s review

    After the search phase, you enter the execution mode. We have looked at two principles you have to follow in the Agile and Lean Life execution phase:

    1. In the execution phase, you fully commit. You laser focus yourself. No excuses are acceptable. Most of the work you do is in the state of flow.
    2. You set 14-day intervals in your calendar. Every two weeks, you take two hours to reflect, adjust your strategy and set activities for the upcoming two weeks (sprint). You use visualization tools to have a clear picture of your progress during every sprint.

    Now let’s look at some other important rules that aren’t in the scope of search and execution, but are very important for living a happy and successful Agile and Lean life.

    7. Believe in yourself over looking for outside safety

    If you want to live an extraordinary life, you have to do extraordinary things. If you want to do extraordinary things, you have to extraordinary believe in yourself. You must find your inner security and be aware of your personal power. You must find safety in knowing that there is always a move you can make towards a better life, no matter what kind of a situation you find yourself in.

    The path to an extraordinary and awesome life is full of little risks, experiments and failures. If you cling to your current relationships, especially the bad ones, if you seek job security, if you are not willing to try new things, you will get what most people get: an average life. An average job, an average paycheck, an average relationships. But being average is not awesome, it’s boring and dull. You may even become a zombie.

    Don’t get me wrong. There is a big difference between stupidity and doing extraordinary things. Being certain that you are more productive if you are texting while driving is completely stupid. The probability of causing an accident if texting while driving is pretty similar to the probability of causing one if you were driving drunk. The latter is also very stupid. And you don’t want to do stupid things that can ruin your life. That is forbidden in the Agile and Lean Lifestyle.

    What you want to do is firmly believe in yourself by developing and executing a superior life strategy, as well as taking smart risks (opportunities with low risk and massive potential reward). For that, you need courage, self-esteem and knowledge for mitigating risks and scientifically measuring progress.

    For example, you must have the courage (trust yourself enough) to speak the truth, regardless of how unpleasant it is. Honest communication builds trust. That doesn’t apply only for communication with others, but also with yourself. Lying to yourself and making compromises merely brings hardship in life later on. There are many cases like that in Agile and Lean Life where you need courage and where you have to believe in yourself.

    If you don’t believe in yourself, you will never make a move towards a truly better life. You may make small linear improvements, but you will never gather enough courage to make a quantum leap in the quality of your life. Doubt kills more dreams than failure. Therefore the rule of the Agile and Lean Life is to look for safety in yourself (your inner assets like knowledge, skills, competences…) and not in external things, like relationships, money and contracts.

    In an Agile and Lean Life, there is no external security (although it’s of course good to have safety nets in assets, loving relationships etc.). There’s only the World you must experience to the full. For that, you need to free yourself by believing in yourself. It’s the key enabler for executing a superior strategy for better life quality. Forget about social pressure. Forget about expectations of other people. Forget about rotten compromises. Live life true to yourself.

    Two important mindsets that can help you to believe in yourself better are:

    8. Relationships and environment over work and tasks or money

    The two most powerful influencing factors on your life are your relationships and the environment you work in. They can either drag you down or empower you, thus helping you achieve your goals. The more ambitious your goals are, the more empowering relationships you need, with less room for compromises.

    You can have ambitious goals and high expectations for life, but if you are not in an environment that supports you, you will never thrive. You will never achieve your goals without an adequate support system. You are more a product of the environment than you might think.

    The rule of an Agile and Lean life is to surround yourself with motivated individuals who have goals similar to yours. People you spend time with, including your spouse, are the most important decision in your life. Choose your environment very carefully. Much like your mindset should not be fixed, your environment should not be fixed either. You are the one who chooses your own environment.

    Make sure that the following environmental elements are supporting you in achieving your goals:

    • Market (chosen industry trends, occupation potential, structural changes, market size…)
    • Country (political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental factors)
    • City (logistics, culture, fun, nature, food, education, kids…)
    • Office (possibility of working with no distractions, no need for a long commute…)
    • Home (quality of sleep, room for visualization of goals…)

    Look for environments with 5T: Talent, Technology, Tolerance, Transparency, Transcendence.

    Make sure that the following relationships support you in achieving your goals:

    • Spouse
    • Friends
    • Family
    • Acquaintances
    • Coworkers
    • Business partners
    • Other people in your life

    There are two important things regarding relationships that are a part of an Agile and Lean Life.

    • The basic foundation for good relationships is outstanding communication. You have to communicate honestly, frequently and deeply with people you want to have good relationships with. You need to learn how to be a good communicator. It’s an enabler for the Agile and Lean Life.
    • Coaches and mentors, because no one can succeed alone. You need other people who empower you and help you. One segment are people who surround you, and another are people whom you hire to help you or who you have mentoring exchanges with. In an Agile and Lean Life, you accelerate your progress with your personal mastermind group and coaches for different life areas.

    9. Continuously improve yourself and your environment

    You must never forget that there is always room for improvement, there is always a way to do it better. You should always look to improve yourself and grow. The foundation for an Agile and Lean Life is the growth mindset. You can always change yourself and by changing yourself, you can change your environment and the situations you are facing.

    Don’t be afraid of problems and challenges. Problems and challenges only present opportunities to learn and change. Don’t try to hide your mistakes. Expose them, talk about them and learn from them. But don’t make the same mistake twice. That is a big waste in life. Make sure you learn from mistakes the first time you make them.

    When making changes, knowledge and insights are your greatest assets. You can learn from your own past experiences and experiences of other people by reading, talking, watching, observing, listening etc. When using knowledge and insights of other people, go straight to the best knowledge and learn directly from the best people who achieved what you want to achieve. With the information overload, there is just too much crappy information and too many cheap copies. It’s better to read one really good book than 1000 average blog posts.

    To get the best out of life, you have to learn from the best or in other words learn from the best, forget the rest.

    Linear and rapid improvement

    You change yourself when you find a way to do something better. Self-improvement in your life can be either linear or rapid. When there is no more room for linear improvement, rapid improvement takes place, if the foundations are strong enough and if big enough motivation is present.

    You can only improve your current practice to a certain point. You can optimize your current behavioral patterns only to a certain level. Your current actions will only lead you to a specific level of success (it’s called a local maximum). You know you have reached a plateau when every new improvement experiment leads to an inferior performance.

    If you want to achieve more in that kind of situation, you have to do a dramatic (rapid) improvement. Painful situations and setbacks usually lead you to these kinds of more dramatic changes in life.

    The key questions to ask yourself when doing linear improvements:

    • What are my current values and behavioral patterns?
    • How can I make things faster or better?
    • How can I get the same result by using less resources (money, materials…)?
    • How can I make things simpler?
    • How are other people doing it more efficiently?

    The key questions to ask yourself when it’s time for a rapid improvement in your life:

    • What are my current values and behavioral patterns?
    • What is the best result that this kind of behavior can get me? Is it enough for me?
    • Why do I work like that? How should I work to achieve a quantum leap in productivity?
    • What is really holding me back from changing dramatically? Which values are holding me back?
    • How are other people doing it differently and being much more efficient than me?
    • What knowledge and skills am I lacking to do rapid improvement?
    • How and what would you work if you were totally free of your problems?

    You should also use the 5 Whys Technique when doing a specific linear or rapid improvement. It’s a technique where you ask yourself “why” five times, with the final goal of tackling the cause not the effect. Describe the situation you are facing. And then ask yourself five times: why?

    Question everything. There is always a way to do it better. Constantly push yourself to improve. Try new ideas. Never stop.

    There’s one more important thing for an Agile and Lean Life, regarding improvement and trying new things. It’s easy to be different. But it’s hard to be different and better. Different doesn’t always mean better. Try all the options, even the mainstream ones, and find the ones best suitable to you.

    10. Create value, be flexible and modest over having an ego

    In the Agile and Lean Lifestyle, your ego is the biggest obstacle on your path to a better and more successful life and personal growth. If you don’t believe that you can improve yourself and achieve your goals in a smarter and better way, you are driven by your ego. If you are driven by your ego, you are drawn towards exploitation and dominance. Both principles are short-term survival strategies, which are forbidden in the Agile and Lean Lifestyle.

    There are two options for how to act in life:

    1. You create, deliver and capture value, by serving and solving people’s problems (people pay you for solutions, skills, creativity etc.)
    2. You exploit, meaning that someone else has to create value for you (you take by fraud or force)

    There are two approaches for achieving social status in life:

    1. Prestige, meaning sharing expertise and knowing how to gain respect
    2. Dominance, which encompasses using force and fear over others

    The Agile and Lean Life is about creating value and achieving social status with prestige. You need to have a modest ego and trust yourself to live that way. You should never try to look superior in favor of learning something new and doing well. You must create value for people by using prestige.

    It is also very important that when you are creating value, you are market-centric not ego-centric. Markets always win, therefore you always have to count market structure and trends into your decisions (choosing a career, investing money etc.). You have to be flexible and not fixed in your assumptions about markets.

    The world will not change to be more to your liking. You have to be flexible and change to the point where you find common ground with markets, and then start making the world a better place.

    11. Life Accounting – measure everything

    On the one hand, the Agile and Lean life is all about creating, visualizing, testing and playing, but on the other, it’s life in spreadsheets. You have to very carefully and closely measure the progress you make in all areas of life.

    The most important thing is to avoid vanity metrics and the fake feeling of progress. If you are using olive oil, that doesn’t yet mean that you are living a healthy lifestyle. If you are driving a good car on a lease, that doesn’t mean that you are financially prospering. You want to be rich in life, not only look rich.

    There’s a simple reason behind the need for metrics. Numbers don’t lie and you can manage only what you measure. You should not talk about your progress in life at all, if you don’t have the metrics to show it.

    In the search mode, you should have sufficient insight and gather enough Intel and knowledge to set up basic metrics that need to be monitored. You should also know a few priority metrics and one metric you should focus on the most (the metric that matters). In the execution mode, the more experience you have, the more advanced and detailed metrics you can set and follow.

    12. Live life with love and respect

    The final foundation and the last principle of an Agile and Lean Life are respect and love. Respect yourself by believing in yourself. Respect other people you have chosen to be with or work with by empowering them and learning from them. Be humble and grateful for the relationships you have chosen in your life after the “cleaning” had been done. Lead, follow or just go away.

    Respect Mother Nature. Respect markets. Respect the global flow. Don’t expect them to change. You will have to change yourself first. You can change the world only after changing yourself. Never get cocky, never get full of yourself no matter how well are you doing.

    Besides respect, never forget about love, as it is the strongest force in the universe. The opposite of fear is not courage, but love and understanding. Courage is just a tool for managing fear. You cannot have positive and negative emotions at the same time. You cannot live a positive life with a negative mind. Life and happiness can’t occur where death and sorrow take place. Therefore do all things with love and respect. Love is the most powerful positive emotion in life.

    The moments you most remember in life are the moments filled with love and passion.

    It’s not about being happy at every single moment, but about doing things in a positive way for a positive cause. For yourself and for others. Do no evil. Be a good person. Create value. Share. However don’t expect that just because you’re a good person, life owes you something. You will still have to fight for a better career, a deeper relationship, a pay raise or anything else you want in life. Love doesn’t mean being soft and naïve.

    The final question at the end of this manifesto is how to start living an Agile and Lean Life. You simply start with your “life vision” – a list of everything you want to experience in your life. Continue now to the Agile and Lean Life productivity framework.

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    Reference:

    • Liker, J. 2004. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from Toyota. New York: McGraw-Hill.
    • Blank, S. 2013. The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Second Edition. Amazon Kindle Books.
    • Ries, E. 2011. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Publishing Group, Inc.
    • Cheng JT, 2013. Two ways to the top: evidence that dominance and prestige are distinct yet viable avenues to social rank and influence. J Pers Soc Psychol
    • Dweck, C. 2006. Mindset: The new Psychology of Success. Random House.
    • Agilemanifesto.org