WOW: Multiply Excellence and Chutzpah

Reload Your (Abandoned) Resolutions

One goal, three to-dos, and a trick, each day.

Or...

1000 tasks and a gun to your head.

This post is not too late. Quite the opposite is true. By now, most resolutions have been abandoned and life goes on. Let's see if we can reanimate one of them. Actually, the calendar year is just another occasion. You can just as well start on any given day and work the plan.

I read so many make-2008-the-best-year-ever articles (no links here) these days by everyone remotely concerned with hacking life... yet it is so easy.

One Goal

Did you achieve your primary 2007 goal?

Did you set a primary 2007 goal in the first place?

We all know the distinction between urgent and important -- have-to-do and should-be-doing.

I want you to pick one goal for this year. One primary goal and only one that has absolute priority in 2008. Choose wisely because you will have to stick to it.

Obviously, we're looking at the should-be-doing stuff. What is it that you know you should be doing but for whatever reason you never really started. Pick an important goal that will advance you and you life towards the fulfillment of your dreams -- or one of your dreams for now.

Now, list your potential should-be-working-on goals and sort them and make one a priority. Make one of them your resolution. Everything else is and remains secondary for the current year.

Three To-Dos

Alright. So you've set your goal. What now? Of course, you already expect the answer: To-dos. Please note that you will have lots of unrelated to-dos of the have-to-do variety each and every day so we are going to add just three more to-dos -- the voluntary ones, you know, the sexy ones -- and we resolve to set them every night for the following day and we further resolve to execute, to really do them -- whatever it takes.

Make small, small, small to-dos at first. The smaller the better. Set up three babysteps for each day and do what it takes. The trick is do make the tasks worthy, manageable and doable because we resolve and make a contract with ourselves that we are not going to break. Again, plan small tasks, three of them and do them.

The Trick

To make it even easier for you, set your list of three up for the next day and what you don't manage to do; cross it off the list anyway. It's gone. No second chances. No 2 items today and 4 tomorrow. If you don't do it today you're not allowed to try again tomorrow. Realize that you will lose your task when you don't do it today.

Since all your tasks are important -- otherwise they wouldn't be scheduled for an important goal -- you definitely don't want to miss even one of them. Three tasks a day are hard enough to determine, don't spoil them without a reason -- and there is no reason.

Imagine today as your last day and it'll become even easier to get up and just do it.

That's why we start with small tasks. The point is to not break your contract. Don't be afraid to plan ridiculously easy tasks, remember, as long as you move, you will eventually arrive.

That's it. Choose one priority goal. There can only be one priority. Test it and make sure you have what it takes to stick to it.

Start and set three to-dos for each day. Start small but steady.

Remember, it is not important to achieve something big every day. What is important though is persistence, that you do something -- three things -- every day. Think up three pathetically easy to achieve tasks and just do them and see your motivation ask for more...

1000 Steps are Enough

Don't overdo it. Sometimes it feels like three is not enough. Don't think about it. It is enough. In fact it is 3 × 365: A good thousand tasks. Instead of asking for more tasks, make them bigger.

1000 steps should be sufficient. The beauty is that you don't even have to come up with a thousand tasks. Once the goal is clear, improvise and play it where it lies.

Did I already mention to progress slowly? There is no going back. If you expect the next day to be packed with urgent have-to-dos, schedule three lightweight items that reward your mind instead of stressing you even more.

A Variant

Sometimes it is hard to find three tasks for that one goal on a given day. This is where your other, non-priority goals come into play. You still have to do three tasks each day but you advance your secondary goals as well. This requires you to at least determine and tackle one task for your primary goal; allocate the remainder for that day to other should-be doings. This leaves you with still three important steps each day and one excuse less in case you lag behind your scheduling skills.

Summary

Commit to your resolution in writing and post it where you can see it.

Determine and remember your one goal. What should you be doing?
Schedule three to-dos every night. Easy or hard but three.
Yesterday's to-dos are not allowed to be finished today. If you didn't do it, it's gone, no matter how precious, important, or beautiful it was supposed to be. If it was that important, you'd better done it.

Labels: business, chutzpah, decisions, excellence, goals, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, motivation, persistence, personal+branding, resolutions, success

WOWOW: The Fighting Unpopularity Edition [Links of the Week]

edited by Alexander Becker

This week's links come somehow math-centric, with tips on subscribing, making money, latkes and the problem with becoming EX-WOW. Also, impressing your friends (hey!) and the art of taking notes.

Subscribing... I think I quote the whole thing except for the feed-URL which I replace with this blog's feed --

If you're not currently reading your blogs through a reader, I highly recommend it. It's possible to go through a hundred blog posts in four or five minutes once you get good at it. When you click on the Subscribe link (in the ~~left~~ right column on this blog) you will see a list of available readers. Google Reader and Bloglines are quite popular.
6 Steps to Making Money Because of Your Blog ... where the word because is the focus of attention --

4. Give away the principles and Sell the Personalization -- I spoke with an author and business coach recently who does a fair few Media appearances to promote his work and he told me that his strategy is to give away as much general advice as possible when he's on TV or Radio in the hope that people will buy his books and come to him for coaching when they want to know how to apply it to their own lives. I think that this is a great strategy for bloggers also. A blog is a great place to spread the word of what you have to offer. Teach people the principles of what you know -- but make yourself available to those who want to take it further and apply it to their own situation.
Impressing your friends with mental Math tricks, how cool is that?

Nine ideas that will hopefully get you to look at arithmetic as a game, one in which you can see patterns among numbers and pick then apply the right trick to quickly doing the calculation.
While on the subject: What is Lifehack x 2?

One: How to Move Forward Once You Achieve a Big Goal ... or how to avoid becoming EX-WOW --

What do you do once you achieve your big goal and make it to the top? This can become a big problem if it looks like the only way you can go is down. Professional athletes and aging celebrities all face this issue. The problem can be one of maintaining the position if this is what you want or figuring out where to go next while avoiding a big let down.

Two: The Top 4 Misapplications of the 80/20 Rule --

1. 80 + 20 = 100

The 80/20 rule argues that 20% of the input creates 80% of the output. Inputs and outputs aren't the same thing, and therefore can't be made into the same pie chart. The 80/20 Rule could just as easily been called The 55/3 Rule, if 55% of the results were created by 3% of the inputs.

Don't get caught up on the numbers. Both 80 and 20 are just examples of one type of uneven balances. The fact that they add up to 100 is a coincidence.

See also The Pareto Principle vs. the Necessity of the Unnecessary and a review of The Dip by Seth Godin.
How do you counter the threat of unpopularity? The EX-WOW issue is an issue for you too: Want to become famous? Then stop trying! --

Be yourself -- the most important part about creating your personal brand is that it represents you. If people don't like who you are or if they have a problem with you, then that is their problem and not yours.
How to Take Notes Like an Alpha-Geek or Ferriss-notes, if you want to. The key to taking notes is an indexing system you can rely on --

Information is useful only to the extent that you can find it when you need it. Most of us have the experience of note proliferation—notes on the backs of envelopes, billing statements, hotel paper, etc. -- that somehow never gets consolidated. Consolidate and create an index.

The culprit of taking notes is that you dump the information from memory to paper; you are able to memorize hundreds of telephone numbers but when it comes to remembering the ones you saved directly to your cellphone you're stuck: It's either/or; once it is on paper, it's off your mind, good or bad?
Also, what is the secret to making great potato latkes?

We found that the starchier the potato, the crisper the latke.

Happy holidays and enjoy your vices....

Labels: ex-wow, goals, latkes, lifehacks, lifestyle, linking, marketing, math, note-taking, pareto+principle, personal+branding, popularity, seth+godin, subscribing, success, tim+ferriss, wowow

Are Your Goals Mutually Exclusive?

edited by Alexander Becker

What are your training objectives? The question highlights the problem. The next one is harder: What is your training objective?

You want peak performance, beauty, aesthetic body composition with minimal fat and maximum muscle, superior mental sharpness, raw strength and endurance and speed. Overall health and longevity. Me too.

While those objectives aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, by trying to achieve all these goals simultaneously, you will end up achieving nothing more than average, lowest common demoninator results inspired by too broad objectives and lack of priority.

Peak performance in what activity exactly? Minimal fat and maximum muscle mass, an ideal for looks, may not be the best foundation for raw strength; more overall mass and, yes, bodyfat, will yield more strength.

So at the very high end of the scale -- and we're talking about nothing else here -- it is less fat vs. more strength.

Endurance and speed? Choose one. The two are completely different animals. After establishing a foundation training both endurance and speed you must decide which one to pursue even further.

Aesthetic and healthy? Sure it's possible but it quickly becomes a compromise; there are various tricks involving water and salt for example that will make you look even better yet, from the perspective of best health and longevity you'll want to leave the tricks alone and eat in moderation, light and balanced.

Again, the high end decision, even leaner, -- mind you, this is true perfectionism -- is between extreme beauty vs. optimum health.

Set priorities and determine the pros and cons of the goals in the big picture. You can always have it all today and pay later, the question is: Is it worth it?

What about drugs? What exactly do you want and how bad? Certain drugs will make you look better in the short term. Certain other drugs will increase you concentration and decrease your need for sleep while making you more alert -- for a short time. If it's necessary, make a decision.

The more clear your priorities are, the more mutually exclusive the various objectives become. You're not going to be #1 in every game. On the other hand, you can be #1 in any game.

Choose your game, pay the price, and win.

Labels: beauty, business, decisions, doping, elite, exercises, fitness, goals, health, lifehacks, lifestyle, longevity, marketing, personal+branding, strength, success, training

Develop in Public, Refine Later

edited by Alexander Becker

Do something, do anything. Everything you ever do is always under construction. Everything is work in progress.

Why not publish your new website under its working title on a makeshift domain? Not having decided about the final name and title is not an excuse.

Develop in public, redirect and refine later. It works not only with domain names, website content, or actual product prototypes. To get started, nothing works better than output. Publish, release, deliver, make something real and let the customer, recipient, beneficiary, have at it.

In fact, that's what the scientific method is all about --

The scientific method relies on the hypothesis. What's more intuitive than an initial hypothesis? Everything follows the scientific method, after all.

Determine a goal, make a plan, follow the plan, evaluate, improve the plan, follow, evaluate, ... is there anything which or anyone who doesn't work this way?

Scientific researchers propose specific hypotheses as explanations of natural phenomena, and design experimental studies that test these predictions for accuracy. These steps are repeated in order to make increasingly dependable predictions of future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry serve to bind more specific hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn aids in the formation of new hypotheses, as well as in placing groups of specific hypotheses into a broader context of understanding.

Setting up a hypothesis, testing it and replacing it with a better one. If real progress is involved, is there any one thing which works differently in the first place?

What about starting from scratch? Without a hypothesis?

Sometimes -- and only sometimes -- you have to start all new, start all over from scratch and tear everything which already is, down.

Where exactly does the act of creation take place... Is it the letting go? Is it the pristine ground?

It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.

Let's pretend to lose everything and examine the difference it makes -- compared to adhering to structures, conventions, and rules of existing systems.

That, in part, is the beauty of remixing: You start from scratch without holding on to any weights from previous structures yet you make use of the best parts of what's already manifested.

Thus, the act of remixing in public, recombining elements which are already tested and trusted, is a virtually guaranteed way to successfully create something more than the sum of its parts. Every subsequent remix will be better and better than its ancestors, hypothesis is being built on top of hypothesis.

The key is initial output.

Labels: analysis+paralysis, business, decisions, goals, gtd, lifehacks, personal+branding, productivity, remix, scientific+method, wow, wow-bits

Make Exclusive Decisions

edited by Alexander Becker

Divide et impera, divide and rule: separate your thoughts, each from the other, sort through, be painfully selective about your longings and your objects of desire.

You want it all, I know, but don't you want it all, only to avoid making a decision in favor of the definite outcome, the one thing you really want?

Separate the goals you must accomplish from the objectives you merely hesitate to discard from your list of wanted achievements. Triage indiscriminately, not only your obligations but also your desires. Focus on one target at a time. Only this way, you will eventually have them all.

Do not set up three top-priority goals in order to triple your happiness and your satisfaction. Is it even possible to be three times as happy, measurably? Resolve to concentrate on that one major project. Choose one and appreciate the satisfaction that comes from having decided and being gratified with just the right one. Trust your choice. Choose the one you really want. The chosen one itself will be happier being the only one and will show you great appreciation for your exclusive choice.

The main objective of your experience is quality, not quantity. Do not give in and participate in the race for more and more at the expense of better and better. Instead, try to cascade towards the best that is achievable with the means you have at any one time. Always trade in the inferior for the superior. Always discard the good in favor of the better. You will end up having the best experience possible. You have to refrain from collecting the stuff that amasses along your way towards material enlightenment and let it cloud your wonderful presence.

It is your indecision that makes you unhappy. Do not change your plans on a daily basis. Decide, stand up, and stand by your intent. Your decisions will bring clarity into your life. You will receive unexpected help from the people around you, they will surprise you with their support, now that they know what you stand for.

Make your decisions and rule your own, personal kingdom.

Buy only one car at a time. How many favorite cars are in your garage? Is it possible to have more than one favorite in any one class?

You decide.

Tags

Labels: anticipation, behavior, decisions, desire, discipline, divide+et+impera, goals, lifehacks, mind, motivation, obligations, personal+development, triage, wow

Moderation in All Things?

edited by Alexander Becker

One of Benjamin Franklin's virtues was to: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

I am always a proponent of pursuing extremes, if not for the outcome then at least for the value of the experience. Yet recently, I discover moderation as a concept. There are many events in life that benefit greatly from a moderate approach. Selective moderation leaves time and energy for the really important, for the high-priority issues to be tackled in extreme ways, excessive in single-mindedness and with overwhelming determination.

With the overall concept and pace being moderate, as moderate as possible, resources are shifted towards the high-leverage objectives that are treated with all the power available, with utmost persistance and through exaggeration and escalation of circumstances whenever possible, even beyond the likelyhood of success.

Moderation adds variety and promotes diversity since active moderation is capable of breaking repetitive habits -- the prevention of having too much of the same too often, for example -- allowing fresh input into your life.

It may seem to conflict with the issue of discipline and exceptions, but you can benefit from moderating discipline itself for too much restriction -- and that's what a good part of discipine is about -- is detrimental to your success and your well-being.

Moderation is important to break up black-and-white thinking since nothing is perfectly black nor white. Moderation is the complete scale from black to white and so is life which is -- to stay with colors -- taking continuously and simultaneously from the whole spectrum, including the extremes, incorporating every color that is imaginable, all side by side.

Moderation precludes -- by definition -- the effects of excess.

For good measure, take a look at extreme moderation which seems to be a contradiction in terms. You can exaggerate everything, just apply the concept of excess to the idea of moderation.

Contemplating the reasoning behind moderation does in fact temper the extremes by itself through showing the nature and the evident advantages of moderation vs. excess; variety vs. uniformity; diversity vs. similarity; &c.

I still feel the urge to take moderation to the extreme...

Labels: benjamin+franklin, discipline, excess, extreme, goals, inspiration, lifestyle, mind, moderation, motivation, personal+development, productivity, willpower, wow

Why You Should Seek Inspiration Instead of Motivation

edited by Alexander Becker

Motivation makes you want to do while inspiration tells you what to do.

Motivation is unspecific. You are motivated or you become motivated through external stimuli and you get ready to do something. Once you are motivated, i.e. stimulated to a sufficient extent, you can and do start whatever task is offered or would offer itself to you.

To sustain motivation, it has to be kindled and rekindled and carefully guarded while, on the other end of the scale, the overwhelming force which inspiration creates, is hard to disturb and even harder to resist.

Inspiration starts with an idea or the seed of an idea, call it a hunch or an intuition, with only the slightest hint of motivation. Once picked up, the idea will immediately start to unfold and pull motivation towards itself until completion, until its full manifestation.

Inspiration-invoked motivation is invincible and divine, it is not comparable to the externally aroused, raw, almost crude, give-me-something-to-do kind of motivation.

The trick is thus, in order to achieve maximum and real motivation, to work on and take care of inspiration. Inspiration is the shortcut to motivation and it is much harder to induce since the reception seems to be a very delicate and subjective process without the physical means that trigger motivation.

Inspiration takes place in the mind, via emotions and evaluation of the effects of sensory input. Motivation, on the other hand, is a matter of tangible cause-and-effect events that function via direct sensory input. You can become motivated through physical activity -- inspired you won't become, not necessarily though.

I may motivate you with passion and with the influence of physical power but without actual inspiration and you will ask me for a task to complete... any task, you will be eager to use your instilled energy no matter how. I may do the opposite and give you inspiration; you will instantly and effortlessly motivate yourself and find and complete, all by yourself, the exact task for that very moment.

Always look for inspiration and motivation will take care of itself.

Labels: creativity, discipline, goals, inspiration, mind, motivation, productivity, willpower, wow

Willpower: Let Go of Everything

edited by Alexander Becker

You have a strong will. People fear your willpower, you even celebrate it. Yet, against popular belief, you cannot change other people's will with your own will, no matter how strong or terrible it is.

You may use seduction or force to get what you want, but you cannot put up willpower against willpower. Try to recall such a situation -- did it work? What were the consequences?

Get rid of the belief that you can control everything, because you can't. In fact, you are not even able to control anything, what you can and do control is your perception of things and events. You control and set up your expectations and your evaluations of events and their particular circumstances -- this is the mechanism to influence reality itself. Your subjective perceptions do objectively change your realities. You change your point of view, you walk around the object of contempt or desire and start to see it from different perspectives.

Putting up your will against an undesirable situation causes frustration and resent, your own frustration and the situations' resent. You may use or leverage some hierarchical power to change the situation but this is not your will. The moment you're trying to control your environment through your will, you do in fact force that very will upon your own mind. Your ability to create suffers as a consequence.

Change the situation using your will for good, not going against any other person's will and you are going to employ willpower for the first time in an economical and successful manner. Use that powerful will of yours to enhance and enforce your discipline, for example.

Let go. As an exercise, let go of everything. How does that feel? Let go of everything and consciously select the few things that you actually desire to productively take care of. Let go of everything else.

Now you are free. Free to create and free to succeed.

Labels: acceptance, discipline, goals, how+to, inspiration, lifehacks, mind, motivation, personal+development, productivity, society, tips, willpower, wow

A Simple Technique to Experience Amazing Productivity Gains

edited by Alexander Becker

You plan your objectives in written form. You live Getting Things Done and the accompanying struggles.

That is the easy stuff; mindsweeps, making lists of things, organizing and structuring the always up-to-date lists into contexts and working according to the circumstances, the environment, and the available energy. You will most likely end up with lists that grow longer and longer without even the slightest chance to ever satisfactorily complete any one sub-list.

Enter the advanced stuff.

Since you're working with and alongside intentions anyway, let's try to build a somewhat idealistic, but nevertheless fully functioning, productivity model based on only the best intentions.

Start with the ubiquitous mindsweep.
Recognize and accept the Must Do tasks.
Collect your intentions for the desired outcomes of the Must Do and the Want-To-Do Really Badly stuff.
Inject as much positive thinking as possible into your mental process. Sanitize every thought of potential auto-sabotage.
Feel the synchronicities and the manifestations show up in waves depending on your faith in the actual reception of the intended goal or subject of desire.

It is as simple as reaping what you sow, only more elegant.

You act in accordance with your intentions, you set out your intentions and everything flows naturally, almost effortlessly, you take occasional glances at your plans and lists and you select instinctively, without much conscious thinking, the most appropriate and highest value-yielding task to subsequently accomplish in your sequence of events.

Now that is productivity, where the world seems to run in slow-motion while you are, in high-speed mode and fully alert, observing the fulfillment of your laid out plans and the arrival of your results.

The next -- and the last -- project you are going to tackle the old-school way will be the raising of your consciousness to the level where the magic becomes possible in the first place.

Labels: discipline, goals, gtd, how+to, humor, intention+manifestation, law+of+attraction, lifehacks, mind, motivation, personal+development, practice, productivity, subjective+reality, tips, willpower, wow

11 Ways to Improve Clarity and Start Getting Results

edited by Alexander Becker

Once you have found your purpose in life, you will have more than enough to do in never enough time. Here are some ways to make your experience even more joyous:

List the top three objectives of your current endeavour. To do this, weigh the most important goals and assign them relative importances. You obviously have to decide which ones are not in the top three. Can you see where this is going? No two things are equally important.
Be sure and confident about what you are doing and why and pursue exactly one project, single-mindedly to the end, until completion. This means you have to make decisions. Do not stand in your own way. Concentrate all your efforts and energy on one target at a time.
Be able to present a written list, at any time, with your top priorities. Practice and pretend to be pitching your services and your goals every day.
Define your #1 goal, its #1 project and its respective #1 task and start working on it, once you understand that this is the only thing there is, right now.
Do not worry about the future. Stop worrying altogether. Apply your rage to the present moment. Transform rage into vigor. Do not fight the future and do not fight in the future. Be clear about the present, about this very moment.
Your rewards are nothing to worry about either, they will come to you when their time has arrived -- worrying will only delay them and prevent you from receiving what you deserve.
Realize that you do not have to suffer to achieve what you want. You decide whether suffering is part of your experience or not.
Drop any goal that isn't worth pursuing anymore; do not let your countless started, semi-finished, and never followed-up upon projects divert your focus. They are worth nothing and only add to your sense of failure. Get rid of the clutter.
Set up a hierachy of time and desire. You cannot have everything you dream of immediately. Even if you skip sleep and eating, you are not going to accelerate the pace with which your dreams are made real.
Set yourself up for success by accepting what you have, as the ground in which to plant the seeds. Do not resist the situation you're in for you set up your future failure as long as you fail to accept the present.
Do not break down and destroy your previous achievements in order to follow a new idea. Recognize the foundations that are laid out for you and your creation. Build on top of what you have -- whatever that may be.

There is another way that runs parallel: see and set your goals as plans to improve your current experience of the present, whatever their outcome may be, regardless of the time it takes to successfully complete them, if they are ever going to be completed, that is.

Labels: clarity, discipline, education, goals, gtd, how+to, inspiration, lifehacks, lists, mind, motivation, personal+development, practice, productivity, tips, willpower, wow

Reality Check: The Implications of Elite Training

edited by Alexander Becker

Is it possible to be in top physical and mental condition while at the same time participating in life with all its seductions, influences, and an environment that is, if not negative by definition, at least neutral, neutral as opposed to the maximum goals and achievements that are so not-average and pursued while training for life?

Coming out of a controlled environment, mind and body, discipline and willpower are finally allowed to show what they are really able to achieve.

Yet it seems that only in a controlled environment, it is possible to train and prepare yourself for heights formerly unknown. This creates a dual environment problem, where you train for the outside world but not within that world. I'd love to promote training for the real world in the real world but it doesn't work this way.

You train with amazing results, you eat perfectly healthy, your thinking is positive and untainted, only to emerge from your laboratory immediately starting to effectively de-train your mind and your body. Life is cyclic.

I'm still striving to attain the heights of the monk, always, and continuously, although I do not recommend living completely ascetic. Life has to be instinctual -- to a certain degree at least -- it encompasses ups and downs, exceptions, successes and failures.

After a certain point, after accomplishing your goals for yourself, to go even further, to reach for the next impossible, the unreasonable, you have to decide whether to drop everything incompatible or accept satisfaction with what you have within easy reach.

This is what is meant when the best is being defined as the enemy of mere good.

WOW! You look like you're not from this world is not an exaggeration but a perfect truth.

We're talking about the training of elite athletes here, with goals hard to attain, training levels hard to maintain, and rewards hard to believe but why not adopt some of the methods and include them in your everyday mindset.

Labels: athletes, conditioning, education, elite, fitness, goals, health, how+to, integrity, lifehacks, motivation, practice, productivity, reality, sports, training, wow

How to Motivate Yourself with One Word

edited by Alexander Becker

Your own word: give your word. If you are a person of honor and integrity, you know what it means to give your word.

One method is emotional motivation, pumped up at seminars or at group meetings where the participants leave with that smile on their face, only to have their motivation literally fade away over time, another method is Steve Pavlina's "sans chest-pounding motivation for smart people," intellectual motivation with the main idea to always set unreasonably big and thus intellectually challenging goals.

There are ends to achieve that are important and may be emotionally lit brightly and furthermore intellectually founded and held up by logical reasons and even some scientific evidence... Some goals, the really big ones, can't get enough motivational support to be pursued and focused on, no matter what.

Give your word to someone in order to complete and deliver on the promise whatever it takes. There are not many events that would make an acceptable excuse for yourself showing up with empty hands.

This goes beyond intellectual or emotional motivation. If it is promised, it has to be done. Motivation through honor.

Now, if you develop a similar sense of integrity in dealing with yourself, you may give your word to yourself in order to accomplish any given task even after emotional or logical motivational means are not available for some reason. The emotional momentum may be long gone and logic is hard to employ under certain circumstances.

It doesn't matter why exactly you have to do it, you gave your word and that is more than sufficient to change the world around the issue at hand.

Develop that sense of integrity and give your word to guarantee that things get done. Just make sure to be absolutely convinced that you are not going to give up before the defined and promised goal is achieved. Do not give your word if you are not willing or able to invest whatever you have in order to succeed.

The beauty of this approach is that you do not have to continuously invoke the whole array of "whys" and "what ifs" and "what if nots" in order to stay focused. Your word is a shortcut that let's you switch to autopilot and enables you to work without any doubts or any further questions on the current obsession.

The phrase because I said so now takes on a completely new meaning.

Labels: goals, honor, how+to, inspiration, integrity, lifehacks, motivation, personal+development, procrastination, productivity, promise, tips, tricks, wow, wow-diet

Always Question Everything You Do

edited by Alexander Becker

You get up early. Question that. You start your day with a light workout. Before you leave the house you eat a light breakfast. You work during the day to the best of your abilities. In the evening, you workout heavily. You prepare your meal and you enjoy it before getting back to work at night, to the best of your abilities. You go to sleep after planning the next day. Question all that.

There is no chance to improve anything without questioning everything.

The time you get up -- is it possible to get up earlier or is it favorable to sleep a little longer in order to squeeze some more out of the evening hours?

That light workout -- is it optimal or would you be better off with doing the hard workout before breakfast? The breakfast itself, what can you alter in order to stay more alert until your next meal?

Are you really working to the best of your abilities? Question that.

How is the quality of your evening workout? How do you feel afterwards? If the workout doesn't leave you feel like a million dollars, change it or shift it around on your schedule until that million is yours.

What do you eat, how is it prepared, and when exactly is the absolute best time to peacefully eat and digest?

Do you really plan your next day or do you simply copy the day you've planned once, years ago?

Question your sleep. Do you sleep well? Always? Why not?

Never accept anything simply because it repeats the same way over and over. Even the most basic tasks and functions should be subject to thorough questioning.

You breathe. Well... let's take a look at the way you breathe, do you breathe deeply or rather shallow?

Question it all.

Labels: acceptance, goals, inspiration, life, motivation, personal+development, questions, reward, wow, zeitgeist

Exceptions Create Variety

edited by Alexander Becker

To make an exception or to deviate from an established discipline, often induces guilt or the feeling of failure.

Yet by deviating from -- not giving up -- self-imposed discipline, the discipline itself is trained in its flexibility, not in its strength.

Exceptions expand situations. Exceptions weaken the impact of resolutions but they also uncover hidden facets of otherwise known circumstances. Exceptions lead to conclusions that would never surface by sticking to all too perfectly executed, robotic routines in any area of life.

It is important to accept that exceptions have to remain exceptions. There is no reason nor sense in declaring any exception the new standard -- that is taking the path of least resistance. It is the continuous tension between discipline and exception that acts as a creative force and reflects what being human is about.

Exceptions are means to creation, they divert attention, and create variety, they are seeds for events yet to unfold. Embrace and live each exception, indulge in it, and honor and appreciate it for what it is: a gift.

One exception... when the goals are clearly set and agreed upon, exceptions are not permitted. Some paths have to be followed without exceptions.

The mind, like any muscle, has to be moved in as many ways and in as many angles possible. Exercises have to take that into account.

Labels: discipline, exceptions, exercises, goals, lifehacks, mind, theory, training, wow

Resolve to Improve

edited by Alexander Becker

As with most human issues, healthy eating is not about being perfect. You won't be able to eat perfectly anyway. Yet most people set the threshold too high and keep eating what there are eating, reasoning that they are not going to be able to keep up their discipline anyway.

So what? Eat one apple as soon as possible and ideally eat it instead of something unhealthy. Too hard? Eat it in addition.

You not only make the first step but you improve your health in a practical way that you can build upon. Every little thing, every decision in favor of good health is great. You don't need to change any habit -- at least not for now -- eat exactly what you always eat but add that apple and you will end up healthier than ever before.

The idea is, of course, to raise your awareness but you don't need an elaborate diet plan or starvation routines or a mean workout program to get that beautiful life started.

Eat an apple today, add a glas of water and a walnut and you are better off than yesterday. That apple will have a hard time counterbalancing the junk food that you may be addicted to, but it won't travel unnoticed through your body either.

Resolve to improve something. Everything accumulates over time.

Labels: apple, diet, discipline, goals, motivation, nutrition, personal+branding, personal+development, wow

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