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  • Markets always win

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

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

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

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

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

    Supply and Demand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Monopoly game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    So start learning about the markets. Here’s a nice set of videos with all the basic information: https://wetheeconomy.com/films/cave-o-nomics/

  • How to get a good night’s sleep

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

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

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

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

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

    1. No food four hours before sleep

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

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

    2. No screens two hours before bed

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

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

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

    3. Go to sleep before midnight

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

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

    4. A sufficient amount of sleep

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

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

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

    5. Oxygen and temperature

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

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

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

    6. Regular exercise

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

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

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

    Sleep Like In Nature

    7. Investing into a high-quality bed

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

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

    8. Bed location

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

    9. No coffee, alcohol or drugs

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

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

    10. Dark and quiet

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

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

    11. No skin-tight underwear

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

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

    12. Let your worries flow away

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

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

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

    13. No work two hours before sleep

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

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

    Sleeping Family

    14. No liquids two hours before bed

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

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

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

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

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

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

    16. No annoying alarms

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

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

    17. The bed is (almost) exclusively for sleeping

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

    18. Fresh bed sheets and a shower

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

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

    19. Dream diary

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

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

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

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

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

    21. Set sleep schedule

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

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

    22. Catch up on lost sleep

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

    23. Be careful with naps

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

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

    24. So little is needed

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

  • Positive orientation towards your past

    We know three time zones – the past, the present and the future; all three time zones very much define your life, from who you are to where you were, where you are and where you’re going. The renowned psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who was also responsible for the (in)famous Stanford Prison Experiment, found that the way you orient yourself towards your past, present and future defines your level of success and happiness. His suggestion is that you calibrate your outlook on time to improve the quality of your life.

    You have two options for your orientation for every time zone (past, present, future). You can focus on the positives or the negatives from your past. You can be a hedonist or a fatalist in the present. And for your future, you can be goal-oriented or oriented towards post-life rewards, like going to heaven.

    The best combination for improving your life is having a positive orientation towards the past, being a moderate hedonist in the present and being goal-oriented towards the future; but not so much goal-oriented towards the future that you also live in the future and forget to enjoy the present. That way, the past gives you strong roots and foundations, your present gives you feelings of personal power and proactive behavior, and your future gives you the wings to seize all the things you want in life.

    Past Present Future
    Positives

    Negatives

    		 Hedonist

    Fatalist

    		 Goal-oriented

    Post-life rewards

    Any other combination gives much worse results. If you’re focused on the negatives from your past, you hinder yourself with anger and depression and can’t act in the present, if you’re a fatalist in the present, you never act and you place all your freedom and personal power into the hands of others, and being oriented only towards post-life rewards doesn’t give you any ambition to fulfill your own desires and needs. You must also be careful to not be too big of a hedonist in the present, not thinking about the future at all, or be too goal-oriented, not enjoying the present at all. The latter only brings anxiety and a potential burnout into your life.

    If we focus more on the past now, the question is how to switch your orientation towards your past (from negative to positive), especially to see all the positive things that happened to you, not only the negatives.

    There are four things that can help you have a more positive orientation towards your past, if you have any struggles with that (I hope you had such a nice past that you don’t, but many people do have struggles). Here they are:

    1. Accepting your starting point and being honest with yourself about your limitations
    2. Having a list of personal strengths
    3. Having a list of your past accomplishments
    4. Having a list of things you’re grateful for

    Accepting your starting point

    If you had a good starting point in life, accepting your starting point is the easy thing to do. The shittier the starting situation you had in life, the harder it may be to accept it. The most important part of your starting point is how much sense of emotional security you have and how much love and affection you received, especially from your mother from when you were born to up to five years of age or so.

    Well, it all contributes to the feeling of emotional security – the relationship with your parents, the relationship between them and other primary family members, how stable your environment was at an early age, and so on. Let’s also not forget about the quality of the genes you got and the intelligence level you inherited (nonetheless, this can be developed to a certain extent later on with hard work).

    Then we have upbringing. There’s a strong correlation between how much energy your parents invested into your upbringing and your potential for success. The more they read to you, took you to museums, music festivals, art shows, sports games and the more they encouraged your hobbies and confidence, the more talents you could develop and the better picture you got of how the world works and all the possibilities.

    If they were too critical, they may have hindered your self-esteem forever; if they never let you overcome challenges completely by yourself, you may feel that you always need someone to push you to do something. Their behavioral patterns for money, running a household, diet and so on, their values and beliefs more or less became a part of your personality, also influencing your destiny.

    On top of that, we also have your family’s wealth and their social network, the quality of formal education, the country you were born in, market and social trends, political and economic stability, the technological development level of your country, demographic trends, cultural inheritance and many other factors that define your starting point. Where you were born and to whom are two of the biggest advantages you can have in life.

    You starting point may be great, it may be average or it may suck. You can’t change your past, the only thing that you can do is accept it. The good news is that in your adult life, you have the power to change many things. Your starting point may somehow limit your potential, but only to a certain extent. If you take full responsibility for your thoughts, words, emotions, attitude and actions, you can achieve a lot in life, no matter how tough your starting point was. But how can you accept your starting point?

    If your past was really traumatic, one way to deal with it is cognitive psychology. With emotional accounting, you can identify cognitive distortions or negative thoughts that influence your dark perception of life and yourself, and correct them. Besides that, there are many other tools for building emotional stability that are more or less scientific, for example psychotherapy, meditation, transactional analysis, trauma release exercises, yoga and many other methods. You have to search and try different options and find the right tool, the right fit that can help you the most with managing your emotions.

    If you hadn’t had such a harsh and traumatic past that you need to deal with it with professional help, but still have a hard time making peace with it, let’s look at some less scientific and lighter tools and techniques that can help you see your past more positively.

    Seeing what you did get, not only what you didn’t

    The first step you can make is focus on the positives. You cannot change what happened, only how you view it. Your past cannot be changed and it may never be forgotten, but it can always be used. No matter how bad your starting point was, there must be positive things you got, be it on the physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual or material level. You should be focused on the thing you did get, not only on what you didn’t. There are, of course, big differences in starting points, but nobody gets everything and nobody gets nothing. Try to find the things that you got, the things you’re proud of, the lucky parts of your past that you’re grateful for. Add them to your gratitude list (more about that at the end of the article).

    Your job is to diminish the gap

    You have three missions in this life. One is to enjoy life, the second one to contribute (create value) and the third to personally grow, to become the best possible version of yourself. Personal growth is nothing but diminishing the gap between your starting point and who you want to become (your ideal self). Obviously the worse your starting point and the bigger your ambitions, the bigger the gap. But that’s the job you have to do, that’s your mission.

    The bigger the gap, the bigger the opportunity for you to grow. The bigger the gap, the more demanding the level you’re playing the game of life in. Consequently, you can become much more skillful and resourceful.

    At one point, you realize that you only have two choices in life – the blue or the red pill. You can either feel sorry for yourself for the rest of your life or you take full responsibility for your life and how things are. If you have emotional issues, you talk to a therapist, if you want to progress intellectually, you read, do math or whatever, if you have bad relationship patterns, you read everything about relationships and commit to becoming an authority on how to excel in relationships, if all of your ancestors were fat and you inherited genes that make you gain weight faster, interrupt the unhealthy pattern and become obsessed with being totally fit and living a healthy lifestyle. Whatever it is, you have to take responsibility and deal with it at some point. As I’ve already mentioned, that’s one of your missions in this life, something that life expects from you.

    You also have to know that accepting your past is not a one-time event, it’s a process. It’s a process of ups and downs; the harder the past, the longer the process with all its highs and lows. But it can be done. If we look at the bottom line, your past may shape your present, but it can’t control it.

    Having a realistic perspective of wealth

    Your family’s wealth is, of course, a very important part of your starting point. But you must have realistic perspective of where you stand. Usually people are in a much better position than they think. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have ambitions to earn more and acquire more wealth in the future, but when we’re talking about the inherited wealth and your family’s wealth, you should know where you stand.

    These figures may not be totally accurate, but just so that you get the general picture and a feeling of how poor the word really is. If you have around 2,200$ in the bank, you’re in the top 50% of the wealthiest people in this world. If you have 60,000$ of assets, you’re among the 10% of the richest adults in the world and if you earn 25,000$ or more annually, you’re in the top 10% of the world’s income-earners. If you have more than 50,000$ of income per year, you’re in the top 1% of the world’s income earners and if you have more than 500,000$ in assets, you’re part of the richest 1% of the world (source: MSN Money).

    GlobalRichList may help you see your more exact wealth position. The point is: it doesn’t matter if your parents helped you financially or not, you’re probably the lucky one from the macro perspective, and you should be thankful for that.

    List of your personal strengths

    Your past is the reason behind who you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses. You may not like certain parts of your character, but you should definitely be proud of your strengths. And let me repeat that again: your strengths are a consequence of your past.

    A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor. Good times are only producing soft people. So your strengths more or less developed from the tough times in your past. The stronger you are, the more difficult situations you probably had to encounter.

    Therefore you should definitely perform a personal SWOT analysis, in which you list all your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; you should see all the strengths you acquired as the aftermath of the battles you fought in the past.

    Last but not least, you mustn’t forget. Strength aren’t only muscles and power and being better than others at something. The strengths also mean admitting all the limitations you have, being humble and knowing also how to be interdependent relationships, and being loving and caring towards others. Love and tenderness are the biggest strengths you can have in life. To act out of love is not the same as being soft and naïve.

    List of your past accomplishments

    Your brain has a function that can sometimes protect you from dying, but often also clouds your self-image and self-esteem. What am I talking about? Your brain functions in a way that you remember bad events that happened to you much better and vigorously than good events from your past. Delivered a good speech on a stage. Okay, whatever. Delivered a bad speech. Oh, let’s really remember it, especially before speaking the next time.

    Back when humans were still living in a jungle, your brain had to make sure you really remembered everything dangerous – from meeting a tiger to touching fire. The more the world we live in develops, the fewer times you encounter life-threatening situations. Despite that, the same biological mechanism still applies, but instead of meeting a tiger you really remember all the times when you’re in a really stressful situation (like public speaking or whatever) or you failed at something that caused you a lot of emotional stress. Your brain, together with all the strong negative emotions, remembers those moments very well and tries to protect you from doing the same thing again. That is also why comfort zone is so cozy.

    On the other hand, all your achievements, moments of success and victories are not that special because they aren’t life-threatening. So there’s no need for remembering them. You tend to quickly forget about all your past victories, especially in the long run. In the short term, victories encourage you to achieve even more and boost your self-esteem, but when the first failure comes, you can quickly forget about all the past victories you achieved and see only your past failures.

    A good solution for focusing your brain on the right things is to have a list of your past accomplishments. When your self-esteem goes down or you feel bad after a failure, you should look at the list, just to remind yourself that you’re a winner and that you have many past accomplishments. Every single person on the planet has bigger or smaller accomplishments in their lives that they can list and that can definitely help them see the past in a more positive way.

    Gratitude list

    Gratitude list

    The last technique that can help you to see your past more positively is a gratitude list. Many times, you simply forget how much you already have and all the things that you can be grateful for.

    Gratitude shifts your focus from what your life lacks to the abundance that’s already present. Research in psychology has shown that being thankful makes you happier and healthier, it reduces stress and makes you stronger and more resilient. If you remind yourself what you are grateful for every morning, it will definitely increase your level of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy in everyday life.

    If you don’t know what to be grateful for, here are some ideas. You can be grateful that you woke up this morning, breathing and with a heartbeat. Life itself is a precious gift. You can be grateful for your health, spouse, family, friends, the employment or business you have, the value you’re able to create, your genes, looks, the outdoors, the technology you can use, the things you own, food and shelter, free time, things you enjoy and so on. If you need additional ideas, you can find many good ideas online, simply search for things to be thankful for in life, although it’s much better if you write them down straight from your heart.

    By practicing everyday gratitude, you’ll put your life into a more positive perspective, you’ll realize how much you already really have and you’ll definitely accept your past more easily. With your personal gratitude list, you’ll constantly be aware of the wonderful things in your life.

    It may be hard to begin, but you should see gratitude as an emotional muscle that will grow and strengthen with use. There’s always something to be grateful for, so make your list. Last but not least, the more gratitude you have in your life, the more you open yourself up for abundance, meaning getting even more excited about your future.

    If you think successful people don’t do that kind of stuff, you’re wrong. Extraordinary results demand an extraordinary way of thinking and actions, that’s a fact. Average people only read about it, successful people really do it. Let me give you an example.

    Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, sets himself annual challenges. In 2010, he committed to learning Mandarin, in 2011 to eating only animals he slaughtered himself, and in 2013 to meeting someone new each day. And guess what, in 2014 he wrote at least one well-considered thank you note every day (Source: Bloomberg).

  • Your competence level

    Your competence level is basically an accumulation of internal resources in your past. The more internal resources that you accumulated in the past, the more competent you are. The good thing is that competences accumulate over time, and thus a potential for exponent growth and compounding exists.

    Today, in the creative society, competence is the biggest safety and advantage you can really have, and the main source of self-actualization, meaning doing work you really enjoy; and it doesn’t matter if you’re starting your journey as independent entrepreneur, freelancer or are employed.

    The higher your competence level is, the more you should be capable of converting internal resources into external resources (money, status…) and consequently you should be more successful in your personal and business life. The bottom lines of a higher competence level should be your better performance in order to create, deliver and capture value.

    The best news ever is that inner resources can’t be spent like outer resources. You can always spend money and it’s gone, but once you acquire a skill, you know it forever. That’s why inner resources are that much safer than outer resources.

    Inner Resources: Competences à Outer Resources
    Knowledge Money
    Skills Status
    Experiences Contracts
    … …

    Your competence level (inner resources) consists of the following elements:

    Psychological capital

    The pure basis of your competence level is psychological capital. In today’s turbulent world, that’s the foundation of your potential capabilities. The ability to adapt quickly, constantly overcome obstacles, stay ambitious, have a wish for developing and acquiring knowledge, have courage, break out of your comfort zone, being resilient, persistent, focused, constantly pushing yourself etc. are all important parts of psychological capital. Without a suitable measure of psychological capital, all other elements of competence are significantly less useful to you and the world.

    Possessing some knowledge or having a talent or acquiring a skill doesn’t mean anything if you don’t put it to good use. When you put your competences to use, you face obstacles, resistance, pressure, assholes, etc. and those are the real life situations where psychological capital makes the difference between you making it or not.

    Talent

    Talent means that you have a natural competence for a certain mental or physical activity. With talent, you’re gifted for a certain activity. It means that you learn and master it a lot more easily than others and you are significantly more skilful at it than your competition if you practice enough. We all have our own talents as well as areas we aren’t talented in.

    You can diligently analyse your talents by doing a personal SWOT analysis. Talents are an important part of your competence, if not even the most important part, but only if you also develop and capitalize on them. Otherwise talent is practically thrown away. The formula is simple: Use your talents. That’s why the key factor before that is psychological capital. Talented or not, you have to fight and work hard.

    Talent

    Knowledge and IQ

    Knowledge means knowing a certain field. It means you have a complete set of information that you imprint into your consciousness by learning, studying, observing or in any other way. ​It’s about understanding information about a subject that you get by experience or study. Knowledge represents the most basic skillset and qualification for a certain activity.

    The rarer and the more sought-after your knowledge is, the more you are competent and the bigger is your value on the job market. For example, everyone knows how to make photocopies, but there are significantly fewer independent accountants, and even fewer accounting software programmers. The accumulated knowledge can be a consequence of formal or informal education. Formal education brings an additional paper that holds important value added in certain sectors, especially if this paper is stamped by the best universities in the world.

    When we talk about knowledge, we should also mention the intelligence quotient as an important part of competence. IQ significantly contributes to competence, but only to a certain extent. As the book Outliers describes: if your intelligence quotient is below a certain number, you have a much more difficult time succeeding.

    But someone who is a genius and someone who reaches a point that is a little higher than the average of intelligence quotient have completely the same chances of success. Of course intelligence, much like talent, doesn’t mean anything on its own. What’s crucial is the use.

    In today’s society of information overload, there’s another important component of knowledge. It doesn’t so much encompass the ability of memorizing anymore, since information is easily accessible, but rather how quickly you can find information, analyse it and use it practically.

    Skills

    Skills are your abilities to do an activity well or in a practical manner. The more skills you have and the more they’re developed, the bigger is your competence level. The skills important for the creative society are mostly visionary and creative skills, skills of out-of-the-box thinking, leadership, sales, teamwork, fast learning and negotiation.

    For example, if you’re a good negotiator, you can definitely make sure that you get a significantly better payment for the job you do. And the skill of selling yourself perfectly can definitely make this payment even bigger.

    Emotional and social intelligence

    As part of skills, we should especially highlight emotional (EQ) and social intelligence (SQ). In the creative society, it’s these two types of intelligence that contribute to an individual’s competence as much as the intelligence quotient (IQ). Working with people is very difficult, and if you have a good sense for people and know how to work with them, that’s the basis for the development of many key skills for success. You can easily increase these two types of intelligence on your own, by being proactive (reading the books and applying knowledge).

    Experience (to a certain extent)

    Experience is the process of getting knowledge or skill from doing, seeing, or feeling things. You gain experience based on an activity, on doing, not reading or talking about something. Experiences are findings that you figure out on the basis of things you go through. Experience allows you to make better decisions.

    The more experience that you have, the more correct is probably your subjective reality map compared to the objective reality. And that’s the basis for good decisions. We could also say that experiences are your scars from different battles, helping you to make better decisions in the future. Good decisions are a consequence of experience. Experience is a consequence of bad decisions. Thus there is no experience without scars.

    There is another thing called too much experience. Too much experience sometimes leads to the phenomenon of paralysis. When you gain too much experience, you start avoiding sometimes even reasonable risks without being aware of it. This is why when gaining experience, it’s crucial that it doesn’t paralyse you.

    Values

    Your personal value system is the basis for your decision-making – what you’ll give priority to and spend time on in your life. Together with psychological capital and personal talents, values are those factors that define your potential for accumulating competences. You can be as talented and ambitious as can be, but if you don’t focus on your goals and thus suitably allocate your time, you’ll have a lot of difficulty in realizing your goals, no matter how competent you are.

    For example, if partying is higher on your value list than career, you probably won’t allocate much time to progress your career. Consequently, it doesn’t matter how competent you are.

    When it comes to the value system, it’s also important that these values are healthy and include a long-term view. If someone is a con artist, for example, they’ll have a hard time being successful in the long run. That’s why integrity also has to be a key part of your values.

    Views and beliefs

    But we can even take one step back. Your values and decision-making system are the consequences of your views and beliefs. The latter construct your subjective reality map (how you personally see reality) that you’re creating up to the beginning of puberty through primary and secondary socialization. After that, we need a lot of energy to even be able to suitably adjust this map.

    Narrow-minded beliefs can have an incredibly negative influence on you capitalizing on your competence, no matter how big or unique it is. For example, if you have the narrow‑minded belief that money corrupts people and you don’t want to be “corrupt”, it will be extremely difficult for you to get rich, even though you might have all the competences for it. But you just won’t go after money.

    Consequently, an important part of your competence level are your views and beliefs, which also make a great starting point for your personal growth. Analyse which toxic beliefs are holding you back. The good news is that cleaning up views and beliefs lasts throughout the entire life.

    Competence Level

    Social capital

    Social capital are invisible bonds between individuals, built on the basis of previous collaboration and including the key component called trust. Even though social capital is already somewhat of an internal-external resource, it’s still an important component of your competence.

    The more people that you know (or who know you), the more you’re worth, we could say simply. In this, the social capital can be given or inherited or deliberately built. You should definitely work hard on developing networking skills and building your social capital, because it’s no secret that knowing the right people can definitely help you progress much faster in life.

    Personal brand

    All the things listed above are reflected in your personal brand. It’s generally true that the more competent that you are, the bigger is supposedly the power of your personal brand. Accumulation of your inner resources reflects in your personal brand, which are your name and surname. In today’s world, the biggest part of your personal brand is seen online on all the social networks.

    However, it’s not necessary that your competence level can always help you, at least not from the beginning, when you start building your name. There are a few studies that concluded that being too competent compared to others may even decrease your performance level. But in the long run, if you have a high enough psychological capital and emotional intelligence, even this isn’t an obstacle. When you prove yourself that you are the next Bill Gates, everyone will want to network with you.

    A brand can also have more power than your actual competence level if you excel at personal marketing. We could say that empty vessels make most noise in the short-term. But in the long run, the brand evens out with actual competence sooner or later. Thus the best combination is to really have a high competence level, including you being good at marketing and selling yourself. At the end of the day, to be really successful, you have to create value (innovate, possess knowledge or skills), deliver (marketing and performing) and capture value (negotiating price).

    The conclusion

    You, and only you, are the biggest, most important, safest, most reasonable and potentially the most lucrative investment in your life. So invest into yourself and your competence. The investment will definitely pay off and you can’t lose in any way. You’ll always be able to create external resources from internal resources. In order to succeed, you only need one person to believe in you. It’s best if that person is you. So be good and thorough when investing into yourself and your competence!

  • Minimum Viable Experience

    In the lean start-up theory, there’s a very popular concept called Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The idea is that you don’t build the whole shiny expensive product and then launch it on the market and see the market response (because maybe nobody will buy it and the investment for doing that is big), instead you build the minimum set of features needed to start learning about what the market really wants. The MVP is the smallest thing you can build that tests the value you’ve promised to the market. You build an MVP to start learning about market needs and getting customer insights; or, if you want a fancier definition, a minimum viable product is the product with the highest return on investment versus risk.

    An important part of the MVP concept is that you stop thinking about the big picture and about your desired final outcome, and start thinking about immediately creating value and learning about your potential customers. You’ve probably heard Mike Tyson’s quote that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. That’s why you have to test all the small parts of your plan, regularly getting feedback and constantly adjusting. In the lean startup philosophy, that’s also called testing your hypothesis with an MVP (validated learning).

    The important emphasis is also that the MVP is not only a crappy or minimal version of your final product, but a strategy and process aimed towards making and selling a product to customers. It’s a process of idea generation, prototyping, presentation, data collection, analysis and learning.

    In the startup world, you learn the most when you have direct contact with a market – with your potential clients or customers, everything else before are nothing but your personal assumptions and assumptions from your team; and as you know, wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups and you’re usually wrong before you’re right. When you have the MVP and are in contact with your market, you can engage in the build-measure-learn feedback loop. You can test and add or remove feature by feature of your product by building it, measuring results with carefully chosen metrics and learning about market response.

    MVPs in business can be landing pages (smoke test), explainer videos, e-mail tests, crowdfunding campaigns, concierge MVPs (manual service instead of a product) and so on. A popular method is also called a Wizard of Oz MVP (or Flinstoning), where you put up a front of the webpage that looks like a real working product, but you carry out product functions manually. There are many ideas for testing and comparing your assumptions (subjective reality) to actual market needs (objective realities); the point is that you don’t fully commit and put all eggs in one basket based just on your ego and what you believe is true. Because at the end, the market always wins in business, no matter what your beliefs are.

    To summarize, the purpose of an MVP is to accelerate learning about the customers and the market, to be able to test hypotheses (your assumptions) with minimal resources, to reduce waste such as engineering hours and financial resources, to get the product to early customers as soon as possible and to have really good customer insight into which features you should actually build. An MVP is also the basis for the final product.
    How to build a minimum viable product An MVP doesn’t only save you a lot of money and energy before getting a market response and prevents you from failing big, it can also help you avoid becoming a zombie company. A zombie company is a company that finds itself in a situation where there’s no death, no growth, no progress and no moving ahead. It’s consuming an enormous amount of resources and is a terrible drain on human energy. A zombie company is a company stuck in the land of the living dead.

    It’s no different in your personal life. You don’t want to fail big in any area of life after a big investment, and you want to become a zombie even less. The MVP concept from the lean startup philosophy can help you with that. Let’s see how.

    Using the MVP concept in your personal life

    One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is committing to something that isn’t really you, investing your whole self into something that isn’t your perfect fit. One of the biggest wastes in life is doing something you don’t really want, something that you don’t really enjoy. And people do a lot of that shit. They commit to wrong jobs, wrong people, wrong diets and wrong investments.

    In order to not fail yourself and your needs, you must first know yourself and all the options you have in life really well. If you want to be successful in life, you have to know yourself and what you want out of life very clearly, and the best way to get to know yourself and your environment is by experimenting, reflecting and learning. The best way to do personal validated learning is introducing the so-called search mode into your life, testing what your best fits are by using the MVP concept.

    The core idea is that when you’re 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’re truly investing into 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, using the MVP concept, 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 only job is to test the assumptions you’ve 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.

    To do that, you need MVPs. The idea of MVPs is to not only talk about things (what you should try, what you think you may like etc.), but to go and try them. You don’t assume, you 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 keep it in your life or not (pivot or presevere). Every new experience should also give you ideas and insights into what to try next. The difference between what you think is valuable to you and what really is valuable for your life creates waste.

    Don’t assume anything, try and test everything.

    The best thing ever is that today, it’s so easy to test and try everything. You have so many options, access to knowledge and many different disciplines in sports, arts, business and other areas in life you can try and test. You can really have a lot of fun testing and trying in today’s times. The world is basically an endless pool of possibilities.

    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. The problem, of course, is that you only have one life and every experiment takes quite a lot of time. That’s why you need to use the MVP philosophy. You need to invest the minimum amount of effort possible into learning if something is your fit or not.

    MVE Concept

    Minimum viable experience and emotional accounting

    Instead of calling it Minimum Viable Product, let’s call it Minimum Viable Experience. 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.

    To really use the MVP or MVE concept, you of course need to try something new in life, but you also need a system to measure feedback. The system for measuring feedback and your progress is called emotional accounting. The simple metric is that if you like something, if you enjoy a thing, activity or person, then keep it. If you like and enjoy something, then that thing probably fits you well. You can also set more complex metrics based on your goals, values and what matters to you.

    Here are two examples from the Agile and Lean Life Manifesto:

    There’s 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.

    In this case, an MVP would be the new diet plan that you stick to for a few weeks. In addition to that, you also need a measuring system. That can be your weight, fat percentage, energy level and so on. Smart scale can be a great help with that. You can record what you eat, how you feel after a certain food and the kind of results you’re getting. You must also take into account that every change brings new stress into your life, so the first few days shouldn’t count as relevant feedback; but after a few months, you should definitely have a clear picture of what works for you and what doesn’t, where to persevere and where to pivot.

    The second example would be looking for a new career. Your emotions mirror your complete dissatisfaction in your current career. Here’s 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, you 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.

    An MVP in this case would be to execute a small project in your free time or do some additional work as a sole proprietor or whatever, just to learn about the industry and the new career you want to undertake. First you have to learn and only then can you fully commit.

    Here are some other ideas and examples:

    • You can try dozens of sports before you commit to any of them.
    • You can do the same to discover your perfect investment profile, the competences you should develop, the things you enjoy in life, the technology you should use and maybe even a religion or life philosophy you should follow.

    Here, you can find many ideas for the areas you should test and experiment in: Your life strategy

    Minimum Viable Partner

    Minimum viable partner

    The same concept also applies to relationships. You can’t just commit forever when you meet someone for the first time. It should be a process of milestones and small commitments that get bigger with time, much like the definition of an MVP states that it’s not about the product, but about the process.

    There are around 7 billion people in the world. Most of them aren’t even close to being your fit, but a few are – in business and personal life. And you have to find them. Of course people who fit you best are people who have values and beliefs similar to yours, but are at the same time different enough that they can enable you to grow and learn. But how can you find them?

    The key idea is that you first know what you want in relationships. Making personas and then testing your assumptions can help you with that a lot. Soon after experiencing a few relationships, you should know very well what your minimum viable partner is like, what are the mandatory characteristics a person must have in order for you to have a deep relationship with them.

    When you know what you like and what you don’t, and what the deal breakers are, you can further explore what the purpose of every relationship in your life is, which relationships you should persevere in and which people you should remove from your life. You should date, meet and engage with as many people as possible. Again, you should have personal metrics to measure whether a relationship is giving you what you expect, be it emotionally, time-wise or however.

    Another key point is to commit to relationships gradually. You don’t get married after the first date and you don’t form a joint venture after the first meeting. You can perform little relationship tests to see if a relationship is something you want. Usually that happens spontaneously (talking, first kiss, sex, taking a trip together etc.), but people often commit themselves to relationships too soon; and even more often, people stay stuck in relationships they don’t like (forever).

    Since you don’t want to become a zombie, you have to constantly measure the quality of your relationships – what you give and what you get. Even after passing all the minimum viable experiences and fully committing to someone, you should somehow measure if you’re surrounded by people who empower you and make you happy. If not, you’re doing big damage to yourself and others.

    Interested versus committed

    Being interested in something definitely doesn’t mean being committed. Although interested isn’t being committed, you should only be interested at first. You should be curious, playful, and eager to discover. You should not think about commitment, but only learn and try new things.

    But at one point, when you find the right thing, the right person, when you find your fit, you should commit. Really commit; and it shouldn’t be hard. Because when you find your fit, you know that this is exactly what you want and if you really want something, you’ll find a way; if you don’t, you’ll find an excuse. Now go play with the MVEs in your life.

  • Margin and taking a step back

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

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

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

    Earth level

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You need bigger margin

    Margin in life

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

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

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

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

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

    • Emotional
    • Physical
    • Time
    • Financial

    Here are some examples:

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

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

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

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

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

    Taking a step back

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

    path_to_success3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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