• WOWOW: Embrace Novelty and Resubscribe

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Please resubscribe; no meat in the 21th century? Maths, again and again, more maths, novelty, creativity, and no reason to hide.

    • What the 21st Century Will Taste Like --

      So it really chilled me when he said, "America better prepare for some uncomfortable changes. Things might get really ugly."

    • 9 Mental Math Tricks --

      Math can be terrifying for many people. This list will hopefully improve your general knowledge of mathematical tricks and your speed when you need to do math in your head.

    • Project 10 to the 100 --

      May Those Who Help The Most Win

    • Novelty Makes Brains Creative --

      Discoveries by neuroscientists studying the brain say that novel experiences are key in increasing brain power and creativity. When the brain experiences, or imagines a familiar situation, it already has a shortcut to understanding -- it's got that categorized in a neat little mental box. Novelty, new experiences and stretches of the imagination keep the mind limber, and more creative.

    • Looking for a reason to hide --

      Inc. magazine reports that a huge percentage of companies in this year's Inc. 500 were founded within months of 9/11. Talk about uncertain times.

      But uncertain times, frozen liquidity, political change and poor astrological forecasts (not to mention chicken entrails) all lead to less competition, more available talent and a do-or-die attitude that causes real change to happen.

      If I wasn't already running my own business, today is the day I'd start one.

    OK. LETS DO THIS, THEN............

    Now, please resubscribe for a continuous stream of links to interesting and diverse material, under the working title --

    Are you a scientist, an artist, an athlete, or a businessman? All of these? Me too.

    Thanks for reading so far.

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  • WOWOW: There!

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Philippe Petit, Lego, Fructose, Third-World-Workouts, Chernobyl, and the 10 Skills you don't want to miss teaching your kids.

    • Inspiration: Philippe Petit, Man on Wire --

      In 1968 I was 18 years old and I saw an article about those towers. There was a photo of a model, and the article said that they would be built one day, and they would be the finest in the world. And here I was, a completely new self-taught wire walker, and I thought, "What a fabulous thing to transform the top of those towers to a theater for one morning." And that's how the idea came.

    • Toys: LEGO Mini Sport City 2008 --

      ... currently one of the most amazing LEGO productions ever in China. The theme of this city is the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Swimming Cube, Nest Sports Ground and Sport Village were built as a landmark of this LEGO city. 300,000 bricks and 4,500 mini-figures are used to construct a 3m x 8m artistic show.

    • HFCS: How High Fructose Corn Syrup Makes you Gain Weight --

      "The message from this study is powerful because body fat synthesis was measured immediately after the sweet drinks were consumed," Dr. Parks said. "The carbohydrates came into the body as sugars, the liver took the molecules apart like tinker toys, and put them back together to build fats. All this happened within four hours after the fructose drink. As a result, when the next meal was eaten, the lunch fat was more likely to be stored than burned."

    • Testosterone: The Evils of Fructose --

      Unlike glucose, fructose can only be metabolized in the liver, whereas glucose can be passed to other body tissues, like your muscles.

    • By any means necessary: Third World Workouts --

      In my world, the equipment is always there. You just have to teach yourself to recognize it. If you see something you can lift, push, pull, or throw, you can build a workout around it.

    • Foundations: 10 Skills You Need to Succeed at Almost Anything --

      Success, however it's defined, takes action, and taking good and appropriate action takes skills. Some of these skills (not enough, though) are taught in school (not well enough, either), others are taught on the job, and still others we learn from general life experience.

      Public Speaking, Writing, Self-Management, Networking, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Math, Research, Relaxation, Basic Accounting.

    • Fungi: Deep in the radioactive bowels of the smashed Chernobyl reactor, a strange new lifeform is blooming --

      The exclusion zone is teeming with wildlife of all shapes and sizes, flourishing unhindered by human interference and seemingly unfazed by the ever-present radiation. Most remarkable, however, is not the life buzzing around the site, but what's blooming inside the perilous depths of the reactor.

    Let go.

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  • WOWOW: Cognition Nutrition

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Food for thought, very elaborate, circular visualizations, cable ties and ghost towns, Knol and as always, ... things to do before you die.

    • Cognition Nutrition --

      Children have a lot to contend with these days, not least a tendency for their pushy parents to force-feed them omega-3 oils at every opportunity. These are supposed to make children brainier, so they are being added to everything from bread, milk and pasta to baby formula and vitamin tablets. But omega-3 is just the tip of the nutritional iceberg; many nutrients have proven cognitive effects, and do so throughout a person's life, not merely when he is a child.

    • Circos: Visualizing the genome, among other things --

      Circos uses a circular composition of ideograms to mitigate the fact that some data, like combinations of intra- and inter-chromosomal relationships (alignments, duplications, assembly paired-ends, etc) are very difficult to organize when the underlying ideograms (or contigs) are arranged as lines. In many cases, it is impossible to keep the relationship lines from crossing other structures and this deteriorates the effectiveness of the graphic.

    • Art Students Build Massive Environment Using Only Cable Ties --

      Students at the Academy of Arts in Munich spent over 16,000 hours weaving together an impressive environmental installation made entirely out of cable ties. The space was made using 1.3 million ties and has the look of a highly advanced plastic spider web.

    • Knol is open to everyone --

      Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we're making Knol available to everyone.

    • 10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns --

      The Kowloon Walled City was located just outside Hong Kong, China during British rule. A former watchpost to protect the area against pirates, it was occupied by Japan during World War II and subsequently taken over by squatters after Japan's surrender. Neither Britain nor China wanted responsibility for it, so it became its own lawless city.

      Its population flourished for decades, with residents building labyrinthine corridors above the street level, which was clogged with trash. The buildings grew so tall that sunlight couldn't reach the bottom levels and the entire city had to be illuminated with fluorescent lights.

    • Things to Do Before You Die ... Yes, I know, but you too know what and why --

      At least once in his life, a man should...

      There is no checklist. Nothing on this list is that automatic. Every element here is a matter of the choices you make, the chances you take, the courage you are willing to show. You can trick yourself into thinking bungee jumping somehow satisfies those criteria, but willfully falling off a crane in a mall parking lot is more or less a rite of passage by now, isn't it? Maybe you call that a big moment. The trick is choosing to experience them all that way.

    Once you participate in life, it really works. I'll see ya.

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  • WOWOW: Dangerously Cosmopolitan

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Writing better, whining and learning, and reinventing those corporations.

    • Kurt Vonnegut on Writing Better --

      1. Find a subject you care about
      2. Do not ramble, though
      3. Keep it simple
      4. Have guts to cut
      5. Sound like yourself
      6. Say what you mean
      7. Pity the readers

    • Should small businesses whine? --

      Thank you for your inquiry. To answer your question we are NOT an big company like Amazon we are actually a small company, That is why it does take us a little longer than others.

    • Anti-Hero of the Day: The Constantly Whining Business Man --

      In the end, the always whining business man is probably ignorant and incompetent. It's a matter of honor to stop complaining, otherwise quitting is an option to consider -- for vendors, employees, and ultimately, for the poor man himself.

    • Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning --

      Management guru Peter Drucker noted that companies attracting the best knowledge workers will "secure the single biggest factor for competitive advantage." We and other forward-looking companies put a lot of effort into hiring such people. What are we looking for?

      • ... analytical reasoning.
      • ... communication skills.
      • ... a willingness to experiment.
      • ... team players.
      • ... passion and leadership.

    • Learning? Try Polyhedral Maps --

      Intuitively, distortion in polyhedral maps is greater near vertices and edges, where the polyhedron is farther from the inscribed sphere; also, increasing the number of faces is likely to reduce distortion (after all, a sphere is equivalent to a polyhedron with infinitely many faces).

    • Corporate re-invention --

      How do large tech companies like Dell have to re-invent themselves in order to make the grade? To keep their ever-growing army of customers and shareholders relatively content?

    Cosmopolitan cosmopolites. Dangerous freedom. Play it where it lies is just that.

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  • WOWOW: Believing in the Improbable

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Bugs and books, naming names, and the improbable improbable from Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno.

    • Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol --

      Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'.

    • Books that changed my life --

      I don't mean merely great books, or memorable ones, or favorite ones. I mean books that altered your behavior, changed your mind, redirected the course of your life. Books as levers.

    • Unthinkable futures --

      Improbability is still a strong bias to overcome. Much that is happening today would have been dismissed as unbelievably bad science fiction only 15 years ago. The US with secret prisons torturing Muslims? Street sweepers in India with their own cell phones? Obesity a contagious disease? A trusted encyclopedia written by anyone? Yeah, right, give me a break.

      [...]

      This list of unthinkable futures -- probabilities we tend to dismiss without thinking -- was published 15 years ago in the Summer, 1993 issue of Whole Earth Review. Our intent was less to correctly predict the future (thus the silliness) and more to predict how unpredictable the actual future would be.

      Believing in the improbable is quickly becoming a survival skill.

      • A new profession -- cosmetic psychiatry -- is born. People visit "plastic psychiatrists" to get interesting neuroses and obsessions added into their makeup.
      • A new kind of holiday becomes popular: you are dropped by helicopter in an unknown place, with two weeks' supply of food and water. You are assured that you will not see anyone else in this time. There is a panic button just in case.
      • Seed companies start selling packets of unpredictable mutants produced by random genetic engineering programmes: "JUST PLANT 'EM AND SEE WHAT COMES UP!" Suburbia is covered with exotic new blooms and giant cucumbers.
      • The first Bio-Olympics, where athletes can have anything added to or subtracted from their bodies, take place in 2004.
      • A microbe engineered to eat oil slicks evolves a taste for rubber. [Ed.--See above.]
      • Traveling as a process enjoys a revival. People abandon the idea of "getting from A to B" and begin to develop (or re-discover) a culture of traveling: semi-nomadism. Lots of people acquire super new faxed-and-modemed versions of the mobile home. It becomes distinctly "lower-class" to live in a fixed location.

    • A two-part rule for naming your Startup --

      Our minds are built to make connections, mostly at a subconscious level. When a metaphor is detected, it triggers a process in our brains that associates the metaphor with the next object or reference. This naming system forces the mind to take the cognitive step of associating the metaphor to the product it represents, thus forming a positive association to the brand. And once your brain has woven the connection, it sticks, so there’s a great chance your company name won’t be forgotten.

    Where nothing is improbable, nothing is impossible either.

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  • WOWOW: Education × Curiosity

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Education × curiosity. Continuous education × insatiable curiosity. Learning is important, it is hard and you need it to maintain excellence. In this spirit, travel, language, and quantum physics, again.

    • 7 Websites You MUST Check Before You Go On A Vacation --

      Since there are different needs for everyone planning to go on a vacation, there are huge number of websites on the internet offering different solutions to those needs.

    • I wanna go there --

      ... where independent travellers can share up-to-date information and recommendations with other independent travellers – organised in a practical way to help us planning our trips and discovering new destinations.

    • 100 Helpful Web Tools for Every Kind of Learner --

      Many people understand material much better when it is presented in one format, for example a lab experiment, than when it is presented in another, like an audio presentation. Determining how you best learn and using materials that cater to this style can be a great way to make school and the entire process of acquiring new information easier and much more intuitive.

    • Best Online Language Tools for Word Nerds --

      Beside the standard-issue dictionary and spellchecker offered by most word processors and operating systems, there are several web-based language tools at your disposal that can get you just the information you need.

    • Visuwords --

      Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

    • Quantum Physics Revealed As Non-Mysterious --

      Quantum physics shows that reality doesn't exist apart from our observation of it, or Science has disproved the idea of an objective reality, or even just Quantum physics is one of the great mysteries of modern science; no one understands how it works.

      There was a time, roughly the first half-century after quantum physics was invented, when this was more or less true. Certainly, when quantum physics was just being discovered, scientists were very confused indeed! But time passed, and science moved on. If you're confused about a phenomenon, that's a fact about your own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself -- there are mysterious questions, but not mysterious answers. Science eventually figured out what was going on, and why things looked so strange at first.

    There. More education to come. Much more. Be well, know where you are, know where you want to go, and enjoy everything in between. Everything.

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  • WOWOW: The Comfort Paradox

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Your too comfortable discomfort, your (Google) health, your habits and your finances.

    • Get uncomfortable, finally --

      You may be unhappy. You might be miserable. But are you unhappy enough, miserable enough to get you moving, finally?

    • Are you a comfort junkie?

      Yep, being addicted to comfort can be somewhat problematic, if not catastrophic, for the wanna-be, modern-day success story. The truth is, if you’re not experiencing and dealing with pain, discomfort and fear on at least a semi-regular basis, you’re probably not learning, growing, changing, adapting and exploring your potential as you should be.

    • Google Health: A quick hands-on look --

      Google has also created specific in-depth pages for hundreds of health topics. When you enter a condition into your profile, there is a reference link to one of these pages where you can do more research. These are really helpful. They give a summary of the symptoms, treatment, causes, and prevention of different conditions; illustrations where appropriate, as well as links to related news, Google Groups, and search trends.

    • Can you become a creature of new habits?

      HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative connotation.

    • Five basics for building a solid financial future --

      The stark truth about managing our money these days is that we are mostly on our own.

    Once you solve the comfort paradox, everything changes. Have an uncomfortable enough week.

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  • Get Uncomfortable, Finally

    edited by Alexander Becker

    The situation: Complacency. Complacency on even the lowest level: A feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

    Homeostasis. The human body and the human mind resist change as hard as they can.

    Unhappy Enough

    You may be unhappy. You might be miserable. But are you unhappy enough, miserable enough to get you moving, finally?

    As long as it isn't that bad, there is no real reason for a change. After all, the change is endangering the status quo.

    The resolution: Get uncomfortable with the status quo. Escalate the status quo to the point where it gets really uncomfortable and you are ultimately required to get up and finally move.

    Your Mind is Playing Tricks on You

    Please note that you are already unhappy with your situation. Do you really think that an eventual change will make things worse? Could it be remotely possible that your mind is playing tricks on you, tricks to prevent change? Any change? Even the change to something better?

    Something better. That's what is almost guaranteed. What do you think is going to happen after a long stretch of discomfort? The mere change, change itself, will make you feel better, once you overcome the inertia that your mind builds up to save itself.

    Make it Worse

    How? Do something stupid. Something stupid that will turn out to be ultimately intelligent. Break that situation by doing something against your values that will literally make you want to run away. Of course, stay somewhat sensible but -- you have to break that situation by going just far enough for yourself. You don't want to destruct other people's life and lives when all you need to do is to break your own mindset. The usual disclaimer applies here.

    Drive that car into the ground, quit that job, and leave that relationship. Do you really think that anything will be worse that it is now? Make it worse now and expect nothing but the best in return.

    Again, the plan is not to blow up the situation in a negative way. I do not suggest to provoke getting fired for bad performance; instead, get fired for excellent work; get too big for your current situation.

    The decision is made. Right? That's the part where thinking can pause and step back for doing. Think up the plan to quit, to change the situation and then do without further thinking. Let go. Avoid rationalizations like the plague.

    Avoid Rationalizations

    I can't stress this enough: Fight rationalizations. Dismiss them once the decision is made. The beauty is that you don't know yet what is to come. The trick is to move on anyway. How? It doesn't matter. One thing is for sure, though: It will be better, especially since you don't know what it is. Don't you love surprises? I know that you don't, by the way, but you will love this one.

    Enjoy and embrace your discomfort and move now, finally.

    Set a Deadline

    Set up a deadline, a really outrageously tight, deadline. One that is so tight, it isn't possible to linearly achieve. Set a goal of quitting in 4 weeks, whatever it is. That said, what about tomorrow? Today?

    The Process

    To sum it up, the steps are roughly as follows --

    1. You are comfortable and complacent.
    2. You set a ridicoulously tight deadline to end complacency.
    3. You get really uncomfortable with the little you have.
    4. You realize that it will be better.
    5. You fight rationalizations.
    6. Your mind is playing dirty tricks on you.
    7. You have your mind in check and your actions are pursuing the deadline.
    8. Quantum leaps happen.

    Are you uncomfortable enough?

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  • WOWOW: Jazz and Entrepreneurship

    edited by Alexander Becker

    The right mix between laid-back and fighter-pilot focused; Jazz and the art of continually starting up.

    • 100 essential Jazz albums --

      These hundred titles are meant to provide a broad sampling of jazz classics and wonders across the music's century-long history. Early New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, and fusion are all represented, though not equally.

    • 100 ways to be a better entrepreneur --

      Need help reenergizing your business? Out of creative ideas for reaching your business goals? We've compiled a list of the top 100 tips to improve your business. Consider it your checklist for maintaining a successful business.

    • How to start a startup --

      You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.

    • Brand Tags --

      The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people's heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is.

    • Are You in Personal Branding Prison? --

      Too much personal branding can be damaging to a professional. If you brand yourself too strongly, you can’t take a break, because there’s no one else to fill your shoes. Without you, your business has no value.

    That said, mix right and mix wise, and have a successful week.

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  • WOWOW: Picasso X Riemann X Kurzweil

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Kurzweil talking about going all the way, Riemann hunting maddeningly capricious primes, Picasso on yellow spots, while your kids get stronger and smarter throwing spears and breaking the DMCA.

    • Can the lifehacking concept help you live until the Singularity?

      If you want to lose weight, then forget the fad diets. Cut out all (there are no alternate interpretations to the world all) the crap in your diet, and don't put a time limit on it either. Don't decide to do it for a few weeks or "until I lose the weight" -- do it from now until the day you die. Exercise as much as you need to each day so you can burn more calories than you take in. There is utterly no point in going half-assed, other than to make it more difficult next time you try.

      Sounds familiar. Multiply Exercise and Nutrition --

      1. Eat as much unprocessed food as possible and cut everything processed or refined. Food is fuel.
      2. Move your body and your mind as much as you can in as many directions possible. Stagnation and inertia mean death.

    • Creeping up on Riemann --

      Prime numbers are maddeningly capricious. They clump together like buddies on some regions of the number line, but in other areas, nary a prime can be found. So number theorists can't even roughly predict where the next prime will occur. The distribution of primes is the great motivating question of number theory.

      You may or may not understand the potential impact of the predictability of the distribution of primes, but one thing is for sure: It makes you think.

    • Picasso's Top 7 tips for creating an exciting life --

      • See the hidden beauty by not judging.
      • If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
      • Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
      • Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

      The trick is to transform the yellow spot into a sun, then transform the sun back into a yellow spot. This makes you believe.

    • Five dangerous things you should let your kids do --

      1. Play with fire
      2. Own a pocket knife
      3. Throw a spear
      4. Deconstruct appliances
      5. Break the DMCA / Drive a car

      ... will make them stronger and smarter and actually safer.

    That said, have a great week and appreciate the yellow spots.

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  • WOWOW: April Fools, Cocaine, and Your Younger Self

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Once a year, everybody attempts to present his or her version of funny, true, or outrageous in order to gather valuable feedback and later on tell anybody that it was just kidding.

    Here goes --

    1. Cocaine? Just kidding; here is the real deal --

      The only thing that works is kaizen -- constant and never-ending improvement. There is no substitute, no shortcut, and definitely no magic pill nor powder.

    2. 34 tips for your younger self. No kidding there --

      • Don't stress about relationships. If it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't.
      • Don't be afraid to ask people for things you want if the worst outcome is that they say no.
      • Do all the crazy stuff. Take the risks. They're totally worth it!

    3. AdSense for conversations. Hilarious. But... I'm just not sure whether they are kidding or not --

      Now, in just a few simple steps, you can begin displaying ads that are relevant to the topics you're discussing -- in an unobtrusive screen above your head.

      Anyone taking part in the conversation can hit the ad with their hand to immediately take advantage of the product or service being offered. With our new Teleportation Technology(TM), you'll be transported directly to the site where the service is available, or have the product appear instantaneously in your hands.

    As highlighted above: Do all the crazy stuff. Take the risks. They're totally worth it! Have a nice weekend and a great week.

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  • WOWOW: Managing Urgencies with Compounded Bodyweight

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Three things.

    1. Managing urgencies --

      You can have grand visions for remodeling your house or getting in shape, but if there's a fire in the kitchen, you drop everything and put it out. What choice do you have? The problem, of course, is that most organizations are on fire, most of the time.

      [...]

      I guess the trick is to make the long term items even more urgent than today's emergencies. Break them into steps and give them deadlines. Measure your people on what they did today in support of where you need to be next month.

      If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent.

    2. The importance of bodyweight training --

      You should include a bodyweight exercise and a lifting exercise for every major pattern you train. Horizontal, vertical, push, pull... the whole deal. The major bodyweight exercises include the push-up, inverted row, pull-up, handstand push-up, squat, split squat (Bulgarian squat) or lunge, and calf raise.

    3. A slight edge... --

      There's an interesting fact about investing a penny, and doubling that investment every day. So -- day one -- you have one cent in the bank. Day two -- two cents. Day three -- four cents. Day four -- eight cents etc. By day 30 -- you'll have over $5 million saved (go ahead -- do the math). The idea is that major change starts with a small investment.

    Make the most out of it.

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  • WOWOW: Information Superpower Vampires

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Information-deficits, energy vampires and the one true mental superpower.

    Swimming Against the Stream

    Go on a high-information diet --

    Everyone seems to think that if they could just reduce the flow of information into their lives, everything would be all better. They could finally relax and take a minute to catch up.

    My advice is the opposite: you don’t need less information, you need more information. What you need less of is input — all the crap that flows at you masquerading as information.

    Listen: in order to be information, an input must make you better informed.

    By definition, you can’t have too much information; when an input, no matter how good, ceases to inform you, it is no longer information.

    Use news-fasting as an only temporary solution to increase productivity, for example --

    If you want results and you want them fast enough, you have to go extreme ways. Don't expect a balanced approach, we're going all out here. This is no moderate diet, no zone, this is the no-carb, guaranteed fat-loss, whatever-it-takes solution.

    It comes down to collecting news vs. gathering useful intelligence. You do not want to deprive youself of real information; see above.

    Even more important is the approach of doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing. Especially when it comes to "hacking life": Mass-hacking life anyone?

    Maintaining Precious Energy

    Protect yourself against energy vampires --

    • They are often bitter, angry and resentful... and they want you to share their pain.
    • They don't want solutions, they want pity.
    • They don't want constructive feedback, they want attention.
    • They don't want to take responsibility, they want to blame and vent.
    • They seem to revel in their own misery.

    [...]

    This sounds harsh, but some Vampires need to be avoided.

    Choose your friends and acquaintances wisely. Make sure you spend (lots of) time with people who will drag you up, not down. You need to keep your tank full.

    One Mental Superpower: Belief

    Nothing more, nothing less, and nothing esoteric.

    Mental superpowers: How to unleash the full potential of your mind --

    So, what is it that will unleash the superpowers of your mind? It is belief. You have to believe without doubt in the deepest recesses of your heart and mind that you can and will fulfill your desires. You have to believe so deeply that it creates a level of intensity in your thinking so that your desire becomes a burning obsession. You have to be able to visualize it and emotionalize it vividly. It has to consume you. You have to believe at the level where you know that you can overcome any obstacles that may arise. That you will pay any price. You will give and do whatever it takes to achieve your goal. When you believe like this, you invoke the superpowers of your mind and you will alter reality.

    That's it. Keep and defend your energy as good as you can, make use of the one true superpower, finally, avoid collecting news or raw information but instead actually employ real intelligence. And have a nice weekend.

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  • WOWOW: Functions, Wonders, and Phenomena

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Copyrights, more autism, evaluating web content, overused words, maths, castles, and various Déjàs.

    • Autism: The truth about autism: Scientists reconsider what they think they know --

      But then the words "A Translation" appear on a black screen, and for the next five minutes, 27-year-old Amanda Baggs — who is autistic and doesn't speak — describes in vivid and articulate terms what's going on inside her head as she carries out these seemingly bizarre actions. In a synthesized voice generated by a software application, she explains that touching, tasting, and smelling allow her to have a "constant conversation" with her surroundings. These forms of nonverbal stimuli constitute her "native language," Baggs explains, and are no better or worse than spoken language. Yet her failure to speak is seen as a deficit, she says, while other people's failure to learn her language is seen as natural and acceptable.

    • Education 1: Evaluating web content --

      This guide offers tips for evaluating the quality of content on the Web. In recent years, the Web has become a rich environment of Web pages, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, free research services, media types and more. It can be a challenge to figure out which content to trust. This guide will help you to identify the type of site you are visiting and to evaluate its content.

    • Education 2: Commonly overused words --

      When you write, use the most precise word for your meaning, not the word that comes to mind first. Consult this thesaurus to find alternatives for some commonly overused words.

      Overused? I thought we were making use of keywords... Here are the alternatives for --

      Excellent: superior, remarkable, splendid, unsurpassed, superb, magnificent.

      Nevermind.

    • Education 3: Handbook of Mathematical Functions --

      An electronic copy of the tenth printing of this famous reference.

    • Copyright: Copyright this --

      Intellectual property's social value may trump copyright law.

    • Architecture: 7 abandoned wonders of the European Union: From deserted castles to retrofuturistic factories --

      The rich stories of individual European nations can be read in part through the amazing abandoned buildings found across the continent. It is truly remarkable how intact some of these structures are even after centuries.

    • The Mind: Top 10 strange phenomena of the mind --

      We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances -- of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it! --Charles Dickens

    • Your Life: It's march folks, how about reloading some abandoned resolutions --

      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.

    Expect more than others think is possible. Always.

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  • WOWOW: The Artists Edition [Links of the Week]

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Something for my beloved artists -- papercuts, teaching effectively, and procrastinating successfully. Also for the attention-span impaired; then again, we're not after sheer count of items.

    Insanity

    Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are, accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves. --Henry David Thoreau

    Art

    The papercuts of Peter Callesen -- Strange and beautiful.

    Education

    The movie director’s guide to effective teaching --

    Research has shown that learning most frequently happens at the start and at the end of a message. Your message could be a presentation, advertisement or a lecture, it doesn't matter -- people remember the beginning and ending more than the middle. It's called the primacy-recency principle and was first studied in the 1920's. Movie directors understand this to well -- that's why in most movies something big usually happens within the first couple minutes and the best song is left until the end. They want you to remember the start of the movie and feel good at the end. We can apply this concept and provide a better learning experience for your audience.

    Procrastination

    Seven ways to procrastinate for better results --

    1. Where problems go away with time.
    2. Where problems are best ignored.
    3. Where you have good back-up and support systems in place.
    4. Where something more important comes up.
    5. Where you are getting into a deal.
    6. Where you are tired, hungry or angry.
    7. Where people are on your back because you are known to be a doer.

    As always, creating a significant difference between work and play heightens the sensations of both. Feel, appreciate, and enjoy your weekend and your week.

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  • Common Sense: Friend or Foe?

    edited by Alexander Becker

    If there is one enemy to what we're trying to do here it is common sense.

    Really? Attacking common sense? Isn't common sense an ideal to strive for, something you attain at some point in life? Isn't common sense even a sign of maturity?

    Let's see what we've got --

    Common sense is sound judgement not based on specialized knowledge; native good judgement. That which is believed to be knowledge held by people "in common".

    Common sense is a good starting point, nothing more and nothing less either.

    There really is nothing negative about common sense. It's just that there isn't anything special about it either. Common sense is the lowest common denominator. It is the average. And that's the issue.

    On the other hand --

    Common sense is judgement without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race. --Giambattista Vico

    Judgement without reflection is a shortcut with judgement ultimately substituting experience. Short-circuiting common sense itself creates actual experiences.

    WOW, that is so -- common sense... Ever hear that? No?

    Extraordinary and common sense are mutually exclusive. The antonym is insanity, if you get my drift... Don't worry, not that kind of insanity.

    So what are we going to do about it? Ignoring the enemy?

    Ignoring common sense in the absense of something better? Half-knowledge and intellectual weakness is the result of ignoring common sense. Don't let common sense replace education, instead replace common sense with original experience.

    Here is the problem --

    Common sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant. This ideology is compounded from different sources: items that have survived from religion, items of empirical knowledge, items of protective skepticism, items culled for comfort from the superficial learning that is supplied. But the point is that common sense can never teach itself, can never advance beyond its own limits, for as soon as the lack of fundamental learning has been made good, all items become questionable and the whole function of common sense is destroyed. Common sense can only exist as a category insofar as it can be distinguished from the spirit of inquiry, from philosophy. --John Berger

    You first have to master the rule -- master common sense -- in order to intelligently and successfully break it.

    This obviously, does not imply to ignore common sense, quite the opposite is indicated and the way to go. Study common sense, master it and be aware of it, all the time, for it is changing and evolving the same way -- though not necessarily in the same direction -- you are evolving.

    There is no substitute for common sense except for the lessons you draw from going against it. Common sense itself is a substitute for experience. Again, the key is to closely follow the common in common sense, only to do the exact opposite and replace common assumptions with real experiences.

    Do not abandon common sense but instead become highly aware of it and approach it from the other side, fight it from the inside, if you want to.

    Do not rebel unreflectedly and against everything. Look through the common and determine uncommon sense instead.

    The trick is to not --

    Resist and defy a generally accepted convention.

    ... but instead to turn the convention upside down, not for the sake of rebelling but for the sake of doing the uncommon in order to create original experiences.

    Make use of common sense as a temporary placeholder to be filled with your own experience, it is neither friend, nor foe.

    It is the individual against the common. You cannot really collaborate and fight together against common sense. Joining forces means, implies, and requires defining common ground, a mutual understanding, it means determining the lowest common denominator. See above.

    Set yourself apart from common and bring out your individual best -- without anything common.

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  • Pay What You Owe

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Everyone has to pay what they owe.

    Whether you pay first and receive later or you receive first and pay later, one thing is for sure: You're going to pay, no matter what.

    Please review the suggested protocol, which is obviously not set in stone --

    1. What? Know what you want.
    2. That. Accept that you have to pay a price.
    3. How much? Determine its exact value for you.
    4. Really? Determine whether the price is worth paying.
    5. Close. Pay and receive or vice versa.

    You wouldn't walk into a store, ask for something, and just take it with you without paying. You want something, you give something in exchange. You want more, you give more. How much is it worth paying for? How badly do you want it? Of course, the more you want it, the more you're prepared to pay. If it's worth having, isn't it worth paying for?

    What about bargaining? Isn't bargaining a sign of less wanting within the pay-for-what-you-want sense?

    Bargaining is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service dispute the price which will be paid and the exact nature of the transaction that will take place, and eventually come to an agreement.

    Referring to #3 of the above outlined protocol, you determine the exact value for you. Ultimately, you bargain exclusively with yourself.

    Negotiate solely with yourself and know that and what you are going to pay.

    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?

    Now, pay and receive.

    A simple negation, yet, a quality of its own: Do not pay what you do not owe. Very simple indeed but you and only you decide what it is and how much of it you really owe.

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  • Review: The Dip by Seth Godin

    edited by Alexander Becker

    The best in the world.

    Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can't deal with the stress of the moment. (The Dip)

    Seth Godin of Purple Cow and Squidoo and Seth Godin fame once again adds some required reading to your list (and mine). The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick).

    A book mentioning its typefaces in the imprint has my full attention, Janson Text with Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk, not just as a designer. A small, perfect bound book with nice paper and Hugh's drawings. That alone makes it the best book in the world -- at this exact time, at this very place, between and among the laser-printed, spiral-bound manuals and ebooks -- one of the few real books of the moment.

    Seth says being the best in the world is seriously underrated. Being the best in the world is hip again.

    The best in the world. I wonder how many people actually do quit -- recognizing and quitting their personal cul-de-sacs (or culs-de-sac?). I'm sure there are many who follow the recognizing part and even some who consider the quitting itself. Case in point, it's the Dip in action: scarcity and the value created by scarcity.

    I wonder how many people actually do quit, the question proves Seth's every point, the best in the world is not exactly about doing what everybody else is doing. Common sense is counterproductive here.

    The Dip sets up the best in the world vs. moderation --

    ... 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.

    I still feel the urge to take moderation to the extreme... (WOW)

    Moderation is common sense, where common determines the exact amount of moderation -- average. Everything else is extraordinary -- and therefore worth pursuing.

    The best in the world goes against the Pareto principle --

    80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes. It is usually implied and recommended to focus on the 20% since this is where the return on investment originates. In our eternal quest for optimization, let's take a look at the dark side, the apparently unnecessary, the 80% of causes as determined by the Pareto principle. What about those non-vital many? (WOW)

    The Dip is the remaining 20% of consequences. The Pareto principle boosts productivity and works like magic in average settings, but, to conquer the Dip, you have to go all the way. 100%.

    Here is the Dip in the context of Zero-based thinking --

    Apply reversed zero-based thinking: Knowing what you know now, would you again get out of that situation? What could have changed your decision? (WOW)

    Obviously, realizing that the cul-de-sac was actually a Dip should have changed your decision.

    To sum it up, the idea of leaning into the Dip and coming out the best in the world is taking us beyond moderation, certainly beyond the 80/20 principle, and in a way beyond zero-based thinking -- dip or dead-end is a rather binary decision. Yet, I can relate to that best in the world thing a lot. It instills a certain hunger, and hunger doesn't know about cul-de-sacs.

    The concept of sticking with strategies and abandoning tactics is particularly useful. It takes the guesswork out of motivation issues, shortcomings, and temporary failures.

    The one missing ingredient is talent. The problem is that talent doesn't play any role. Maybe it's a lack of talent when quitting is the best you can do. Maybe -- in the end -- talent is what makes you the best in the world and prevents you from quitting when it just starts to hurt a little.

    The Dip is a definite recommendation, stuff to read, live and quit through.

    Now, get your name on that list already.

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  • Constrain Yourself, Your Time, and Your Tools

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Some concepts keep recurring, again and again, less is more, for example.

    Of Ririan Project's 33 New Ways To Overclock Your Brain, one is particularly powerful --

    Constrain yourself.

    You need structure in your life. And by constraining yourself -- say giving yourself deadlines, limiting your time on an idea in some manner, or limiting the tools you are working with -- you can often accomplish more in less time.

    Use deadlines and short time frames. What do you do with your time and sharply defined increments?

    Let's take a look at relativity -- what do you accomplish within an hour?

    Exercises, for example
    100 bodyweight squats: 3 minutes.
    10 intervals of 15 seconds all out sprinting and 45 seconds recovery jogging: 10 minutes.
    Four ridiculous minutes of dumbbell thrusting.
    Full body workout using free weights: 30 minutes.
    Writing
    One such article: 20 minutes.
    Food preparation
    A big omelette with vegetables and some chicken, all freshly chopped: 15 minutes.

    Now, what is it, what single activity takes a full hour? Is there anything taking one full hour? Sure, but cramming those activities within the available 30 minutes makes them even more intense, more dense, and more fun to begin with.

    On the other hand, try to limit tools and get your ideas out, with whatever's at hand.

    Pencil and a notebook instead of the computer anyone? The medium makes the message. Leave the notebook at home and write your million-dollar-idea down, on the next best surface. Do not let the medium or the brand of your beautiful sketchbook dictate your message.

    In other words, do you need a certain, specific, tool to get the job done, a piano made out of glass, for example? One of my favorite quotes from Hugh MacLeod's How to be Creative, is about pillar management, and the props used to hide behind --

    There's no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.

    There you have it, etc.

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  • Free ebook: Celebrate Your Beauty

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Peer pressure, vanity and behavior, motivation tricks and hacks, success and pain, and how to excel, Celebrate Your Beauty -- whatever it takes.

    Whether you work on stage, or walk the runways, whether you make things real on the big screen, behind the scenes, near a microphone, or in the proximity of a camera, this little book is for you.

    Also, producers, can you hear me? Make your artists happy with this book. Celebrate Your Beauty provides targeted and clustered content, a well-readable, pre-selected set of articles written to help promote beauty and maintain motivation on and off stage. Share it, mail it, give it away, and make them love you even more.

    This book will make you look even better.

    Celebrate Your Beauty is a long tail edition, a small, topical ebook, 26 pages, remixed and arranged from articles appearing on WOW. As much as with a delicious dinner, all the ingredients are readily available -- yet, you still let the chef do the work, don't you?.

    Celebrate Your Beauty will never go out of print -- it doesn't have to. You print it if you want to do so, I may even print it, but no one is going to stock this one.

    With no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

    The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

    Like I said before: Everything has its moment.

    Download the free ebook: Celebrate Your Beauty, written to help promote beauty and maintain motivation in the world of looks.

    One last thing -- from now on, comments are open, I invite you to tell me what you think, what you feel, and whether you strive to leap forward and show the world that it is possible.

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  • Savor Your Moment

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Replace self-consciousness with self-awareness within one moment.

    When you waste a moment, you have killed it in a sense, squandering an irreplaceable opportunity. But when you use the moment properly, filling it with purpose and productivity, it lives on forever.

    Menachem Mendel Schneerson

    Every valuable thought, each memory, any emotion, is tied to one, ever so short, single moment.

    You don't get any more than that moment. Don't miss it, trade it, or give it up for the next one.

    Every moment is unique and if you have a perfect one, enjoy it, savor it, and expand it -- for once it is over, it is over, it will be gone for good.

    Do not wait through a moment in order to expand it -- instead, do the exact opposite: Live that moment as fast as you can and fill it with as much life as possible. Do not live it as if it was the last one, live it as if it was the only one. This moment will be eternal.

    Do not merely observe your moments, ... take part in your moments and observe yourself. This is the only way to extend that one situation and make it last forever. Observe yourself within the present moment, experience life most purely and at its best.

    Unlike the unpleasant feeling of self-consciousness that occurs when we realize that we are being watched or observed, the feeling that everyone is looking at us, we are after self-awareness. More specifically, becoming aware not of your actions but of your thoughts and emotions, your body and mind, leads to appreciation of the current moment. It's not you, it's now.

    Make that moment exclusive, whatever it is to distract you, if you can't change it within this very moment, exclude it and do not let it dilute this precious now.

    Everything has its moment.

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  • Question: What's the Difference between iTunes and Life?

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Playlists. To be more specific, the human interface that makes playlists so easily usable. In iTunes. Let's take a look at real life's playlists.

    There is this software -- iTunes -- that let's us create playlists, our own mix du jour, we listen to what we want and when we want, we schedule our music.

    Enter the shuffle mode. Random playlists and random sequences. There is no such thing as random, there are no misunderstandings either.

    We have the option to control every second of our listening experience, yet we, you, most of us, consciously opt for the delivery of a surprise.

    You could, but you prefer the random playlist. You could control everything but you don't. Why?

    Now, how does this relate to life? Is iTunes somehow related to real life? Isn't iTunes even modeled after real life? Is it not possible to create your own playlists and plans and set up everything in great detail?

    You say it is not? What if it was?

    Say it is possible to not live at random. Would you choose the party-jukebox anyway? Would you consciously choose the random mode just because it's possible?

    What if life is too easy and you need the excitement of the unknown?

    Is true mastery the balancing of preset playlists and the jukebox?

    (...)

    And then you find yourself on shuffle, only to be crazily hitting next, next, next, to get the one you want, the one you hope to recognize by the time it is presented to you. You're asking for more options when in reality, even in your reality, the same options, presented in ever changing contexts are more than sufficient.

    How would the shuffle function know what you want, when you yourself do not know it in the first place?

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  • The News Diet: Less News = More Productivity

    edited by Alexander Becker

    News Fasting. The deliberate avoidance of all forms of news media, particularly to relieve stress and relax the mind. Also: newsfasting.

    The concept is tried and trusted. Achieve moderation through deprivation. Go on a controlled fast and recognize the difference it makes.

    If you want results and you want them fast enough, you have to go extreme ways. Don't expect a balanced approach, we're going all out here. This is no moderate diet, no zone, this is the no-carb, guaranteed fat-loss, whatever-it-takes solution.

    Try and temporarily avoid the news and see the difference it makes. Do not ignore but screen out the news altogether -- without even attempting to keep track of what's going on through blogs -- for a specific time.

    Think fasting, in the dietary sense. Go on a controlled news fast for four weeks, no local news, no global issues, no foreign politics allowed. Schedule one cheat day each week and indulge in the weather channel. Make sure to stay with your local weather and avoid the world weather binge fest.

    Potential benefits include less TV time, less newspaper expenses and therefore less waste, a better mood and a greater sense of control since you cut out the things you can't influence anyway. The double effect on productivity is a relative increase in actionable information and an absolute increase in time to take action.

    Focus exclusively on your business (supposed you're not in the news business, in which case this diet isn't for you) and monitor the time you save and the decisions you make -- unbiased from and not influenced by daily news events.

    After completing this special diet, start to participate in news-inspired discussions -- freshly resetted and devoid of all too current facts, you'll find yourself perceiving -- ideally without judging -- the assumptions and influences of world news on your peers.

    No, there is nothing wrong with it, news are no evil, nor are they bad per se, just as carbohydrates aren't bad as part of your diet. The reason for going on a total fast is the occurring break and the experience of the difference. Just as with carbs, we slowly and moderately and consciously reintroduce news into our information diet. Start by gradually adding section by section of your newspaper or news aggregator of choice to your reading schedule. Deliberately include them in your diet, choose one, two, or three sections, and deliberately exclude the rest. What can you do without?

    Please note that the four-week duration is capable of breaking the habitual news consumption once and for all. Appreciate and enjoy your extra time.

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  • There Are No Misunderstandings

    edited by Alexander Becker

    This essay is part of The Subjective Reality Series.

    A misunderstanding is a failure to understand or interpret correctly. The theory is that there is no failure involved and each and every subjective interpretation is inherently correct.

    A misunderstanding is a disagreement. Then again, if both you and I were talking about the exact same thing, there would be no disagreement. But we're not. Instead, we are talking about your interpretation of what's going on and mine.

    We are describing different sides of the same coin with different, conflicting terms and the mutual assumption that both sides look alike. The ultimate argument deals with the surprising fact that the sides are not equal -- despite our best efforts to match our communication. Please note that we never argue about different things, we always argue about -- apparently -- one and the same thing. Once it becomes clear that both sides of the coin do in fact differ from another -- the fight is over.

    Don't get me wrong because you can't -- there are no misunderstandings. Only asynchronous thoughts. Consider the déjà vu situation from the matrix.

    [Neo sees a black cat walk by them, and then a similar black cat walk by them just like the first one]
    Neo
    Whoa. Déjà vu.
    [Everyone freezes right in their tracks]
    Trinity
    What did you see?
    Neo
    A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.
    Trinity
    A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.

    Something has changed. That's the point. Something has changed and isn't -- yet -- communicated to everybody involved. Misunderstandings are indicators of unfinished, incomplete communication. Misunderstandings are the expectation of linear development based on prior, obsolete knowledge while current knowledge has already advanced. You misunderstand because you're not up-to-date, you're not in the present.

    It's not that you know less than I do nor do I know less than you do. You and I know different.

    But I thought you meant, ...

    Apparent misunderstandings are born when one and the same situation, scene, or outcome is perceived and eventually analyzed and compared from different perspectives, through different lenses. Prior knowledge and experiences result in unique expectations which in turn lead to unique conclusions. Misunderstandings are the exchange and forced comparison of different levels of progress, quality, and contextual truth. Yes. It's exactly the way you think it is.

    On a sidenote, if there are no misunderstandings, is there any chance that there is no paranoia either?

    The paranoid person blames and/or fears intelligent beings for their supposedly intentional actions. The question is whether the supposedly intentional actions are in fact intentional and this again is a matter of perspective. Suppose I, myself am not aware of my intentions but instead you are. You make my actions intentional. Whose paranoia is this in the first place?

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  • The State of Flow and Becoming Addicted to Action

    edited by Alexander Becker

    There is much said about the state of flow. If you want to achieve genuine and non-esoteric flow, try action. Cascading action. Action which builds on top of preceding -- action. Action as in progress. Action as in creation as well as in evolution.

    Become addicted if you aren't already. More and more. Create. Evolve. Whatever it is but let it move and it keep it ever new. Progress. All the time. There shall be no single day without any -- even the smallest -- step towards the current and the next goal. Action.

    What did you do today to achieve immortality?

    As with publicity, almost any action, good or bad, is preferable to inaction and static being. Positive progress is obviously favorable -- though when in doubt, have it move in either direction, as long as it moves to begin with. If and since you work -- you do, don't you -- under the premise that each and every time you perform at the very best of your ability, that at that particular time, you can only excel and ask for more and more tasks to crunch.

    By following and cultivating this attitude it will be easier to do only one thing, that nobody will ever forget -- every day. Which, by the way, is just the minimal answer to the immortality question. What if you accomplish that one thing early in the morning, even before breakfast? Would you try and get done one more thing towards immortality? What about an entire series of things?

    Once you start a series of cascading actions, the addiction part is taking care of itself. This is flow. This is the point where it is commonly said that success is inevitable. It just doesn't work any other way because each event triggers -- almost domino-like -- the next and the following ones with the result becoming inevitable because of cause and effect.

    Please note that while some effects certainly do not require specific causes, and some causes produce no effects at all, it is equally certain that inaction -- unless no action is the desired cause -- is not going to cause any significant effect. In other words: No cause doesn't cause anything.

    One last thing: The use of the term addiction hints at some negative implications. While the focused, conscious obsession definitely helps with achieving your goal, the addiction has its downsides: Laser-like concentration tends to utilize other system's vital energy and you may destroy on one side as much as you are trying to build on the other side. Get rid of your addiction as soon as the negative issues outweigh the positive ones -- and yes, there are positive aspects with any addiction. Otherwise it wouldn't be such a problem in the first place. Remember that you're after the rewards.

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  • Single-Handling vs. Missed Opportunities

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Single-handling is the high-speed, high-performance productivity concept of dealing with tasks, material or immaterial, on first sight, encounter, or touch. Get it out of the way as soon as it comes up, without ever looking back again.

    Here is a short exercise: Analyze your missed opportunities for a given timeframe, say last year, and determine how much stuff you wanted to get back to. How many interesting things, creative hooks, and potential successes piled up in order to be forgotten and later purged, ironically handled for a second time only to be discarded since their best before dates had long expired.

    The intention of building an archive containing reference material, material dedicated for later, unspecified, potential use, will leave you with constructive insights -- you will find things you long thought lost, only to notice that you manage to live without them, leading to the eventual, logical consequence to finally throw them away.

    Deal with everything immediately, as soon as possible and do not attempt to preserve anything for later. It will be too late. Everything which you do not act upon immediately gets never acted upon at all. Yes, there are exceptions but considering the results of the exercise above -- the list of missed opportunities is long and the ratio of exceptions to misses indicates a negligible count of exceptions -- you have to triage for ultimate productivity.

    If you can decide to deal with it later, whatever it is, you can as well take an additional moment and get it done on the spot. Yes, that's similar to the 2-minute rule from David Allen's Getting Things Done. In fact, it's even easier because it focuses on the yes-or-no decision of acting upon or discarding really fast.

    • If you have to read it anyway, read it now.
    • If you need to make the decision, why not make it now?
    • You first want to prepare ... in order to ... Do it now!

    The advantage of trashing over burying is that, when the time comes to go through the archives, you are not confronted with missed opportunities anymore. Instead, your missed opportunities are, from now on, conscious decisions to not participate.

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  • Assess and Improve Your Trends

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Now that you measure your data regularly, it's time to analyze and see if we can derive some meaningful information from the amassed figures...

    Measure and compare your key data over time. Compare your financial data, weight, health, ... recognize and determine the trends and make sure that each trend goes in a -- meaningfully -- positive direction.

    Everything you do or are responsible for is measurable and comparable. To keep things going or to bring things back on the right track, make sure to monitor and -- if desirable -- change trends that are possible to monitor and observe with little effort. You need at least five measurements over time and, sometimes after eliminating the extremes, you can read a general direction of progress. Do not go crazy about spikes and weird, single instances, it is the general trend that we're after.

    Getting better, staying the same, and getting worse. There are only three general, observable directions for any given, measurable, progression. By the way, in order to avoid the trap of interpreting stagnating figures as positive inactivity, try to always get on a track of -- ever so slightly -- increasing quality.

    Look at your weight, three years ago, last year, six months ago, today: Is it staying the same? Congratulations. Your net worth. This should go up. Is it increasing over the course of the key dates measured? What about inflation? Do not forget to normalize your results.

    Determine a number of key indicators and monitor them religiously, set goals to improve each one of them, ad infinitum. There is no need to stop making progress once a certain amount of growth is achieved. Do not settle for a perfect figure. The only perfect figure is the next, better one. Continue and go on and on.

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  • The Aficionado's Guide to Appreciation

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Use intentional and controlled deprivation of that which you love most -- be it food or any material good that you don't want to live without, or an abstract, positive addiction that you usually follow -- to vastly enhance your sensation of abundance.

    Deprive yourself through deliberately avoiding your object of desire for as long as you like -- or for as long as you want to enjoy the craving, for that matter. Watch yourself developing and executing the most arduous plans to actually get what you now really want.

    This makes for an interesting experience in conquering discipline from both sides, you will try to keep up the discipline to continue the experiment while at the same time, you'll want to satisfy your need, often a conditioned habit, a negative discipline.

    You will learn a lot about the energies hidden within you, only waiting to emerge and strike at the perfect moment. You are going to expend energies that just weren't there, or so you would have thought.

    You will experience real-world adventures and have amazing tales to tell about serving and satisfying nightly cravings, about exploring levels of creativity and ingenuity that give you a glance of your true capabilities. Then, compare your usual levels of productivity to these peak states of potential productivity.

    Observe the mixed feelings of satisfaction, when actually depleting the resource, the act of finishing until the last bit, only to replenish and start all over. Particularly noteworthy is the way you treat that last bit of what's left. Do you prepare to appreciate the final bit in a special way? Do you finish the remainder of the abundance like any other piece or do you throw it away, to avoid having to deal with the moment of absolutely nothing?

    What can we learn from these traits, the description of nothing less than classic addictive behavior, to make us even more happy and more beautiful?

    If you would only appreciate what you have while it lasts, you wouldn't have such a hard time when finally parting with what you never consciously enjoyed. The least you can do is to try to enjoy and celebrate every bit as if it were the last one.

    One more thing... this is an experiment designed to stimulate the mind. Please think chocolate or some rewards to use as the trigger for the craving reaction. Do not think oxygen, or any other vital supply.

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  • How Your Mind Benefits from Cleaning Up Your Physical Workspace

    edited by Alexander Becker

    After you resolve to clean up that mess, you are forced to make yes-or-no decisions and, as a result, you will enjoy an unexpected, long forgotten peace of mind, in return for your physical efforts.

    Get rid of the clutter, take a look at your files in the drawers, at your clothes in their closets, at the too many items on your homepages, ... finally look at the stuff that piles up in your brains, occupying valuable working memory.

    No, you won't use any of it at some later time. You will, and neither will no other human being, never ever look again at the so called reference material, the results of your organization efforts to get things done.

    Organizing your physical world is an important step on the path leading to clarity, purpose, and success. The sorting through files and paperwork will reload the essence of all these things into your mind. Use this special occasion to handle everything only one single time and immediately make your decisions to either keep or drop. When in doubt, choose the latter.

    The intention of building an archive containing reference material, material dedicated for later, unspecified, potential use, will leave you with constructive insights -- you will find things you long thought lost, only to notice that you manage to live without them, leading to the eventual, logical consequence to finally throw them away.

    A positive side-effect is, that once you free your physical space from the clutter, you also free your mind. You do not even have to touch your cluttered thoughts to benefit from the cleaning, the newly won space in the physical world will simultaneously widen and expand your mental world. You will even notice the relief from stress, unrecognized stress resulting from long built-up heaps of stuff that is increasingly clogging up your productive system.

    Resolve today to get rid of something, everyday.

    An extension of this method is to continually and consciously make room for something new. In the same manner you stop old habits or activities in order to find time to start new habits and activities, make physical space for things you wish to acquire. Think of every acquisition as a replacement of something old with something new. Everything you buy, every item or abstract concept or idea you adopt, is in fact a renovation of all that you have -- once you stick to the giving away of something in exchange for anything which you receive. Live life, light.

    Peter Drucker would say: Before acquiring something new, give away something old.

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  • Quick Motivation: You Live in Paradise

    edited by Alexander Becker

    The first moment you spent on earth was the beginning of a new world, the world at your fingertips. You grew up and you noticed the nature of the nature of every living thing.

    You have the most beautiful life imaginable. You have it all. Everything is coming to you. Everybody adores you. You have, at your disposal, some unique, natural gifts that are waiting to get explored.

    You indulge in whatever passion you want. You have the capabilities and the potential to achieve it all.

    Your mind is more than able to handle even the most demanding questions and to produce answers comprehensible to anybody who would ask.

    Your presence is shining brightly and your glow illuminates the ground you walk on. In whatever guise you appear, your light is impossible to dim.

    Your talents are unique in their realm. You walk on paths that nobody else has ever touched.

    You can have it all. Reach out and grab what is rightfully yours. You deserve it and you won't take it away from anyone else because there is enough for everyone.

    You are special. You have the means to have everything you ever dreamt of.

    Deal with it. Accept your responsibility.

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  • Despair: A Shortcut to Bliss?

    edited by Alexander Becker

    You want to improve your well-tuned productivity? You look for ways to lose the last two pounds of body fat? You want to squeeze even more energy out of your already fine-chiseled, self-designed body? Most of the advice and tips and useful how-to guides are usually targeted at the eager and the curious and at the ones who are willing to improve their own situation and lives.

    Now, what about the people who are lost, often at the lowest end of consciousness. The people who are without hope and far from curious about optimizing their average productivity level from 80% to 85% efficiency?

    We're talking about the very first step to get someone out of absolute misery into conscious misery with a possible exit. What's the first step necessary in order to get you up and running again? What has to happen to make you want to come back?

    Analysis of your self results in what you already know, you are down, at the bottom of your experience. How to proceed from there? Sure, the second and every subsequent step are comparably easy once you get going. Where is the first step? How is it made? Is it even possible to make that first step alone, on your very own?

    What about the possibility of bliss being found even below the level of despair, the level from where you don't want to evolve. What if you refuse to come back because you have found bliss -- beyond all that external misery? What about absolute despair as a shortcut to enlightenment?

    Why would you want to traverse all the painful levels of consciousness when there is a perfect way, you take the opposite direction, you dive deep and deeper, through the dark, only to finally emerge as a new, enlightened being.

    The beauty of this approach is that even the well-tuned, the fine-chiseled, and the self-designed may benefit from such kind of thinking. See what you can find at the very bottom of your spirit, explore it, and make it your personal shortcut to bliss.

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  • Learn to Trust Your Inner Voice

    edited by Alexander Becker

    How old are you? Aren't you old enough to finally trust yourself?

    You feel like not exercising today? You feel like really overeating? Maybe there is a big project that is labeled important and thus would have to be treated first, with top priorities... but you feel like not touching it today?

    You are old enough. Listen to your instincts and do not always assume that your inner voice is a lazy one. Your inner voice, your instincts are guiding you. Why would you accuse yourself of attempting to cheat? Do you really think you are that bad?

    On the other hand, you may fear your inner voice could tell you to double your efforts -- how would you react to that?

    How many times did you give in to your feelings of not doing something at that particular time and on how many of these occasions did you beat yourself up, drowning in guilt, only to later realize that it was just right to not pursue that project on that day. Funny how the day after came along the last bit of input that I would have ignored if it hadn't been for my day off... and I thought I was lazy...

    The amazing thing about instincts is their effectiveness, they work... instinctively. It's like an additional sense -- but only when carefully observed and trusted.

    Take advantage of your inner voice and test it with minor issues at first. Act according to your instincts, preferably on difficult decisions where your conscious mind would suggest doing the exact opposite. Go with your instincts and evaluate what turned out to be different compared to the conscious-mind-only method. You will notice how your instincts contribute to your sensory input and -- once trusted -- are an important way to achieve clarity and stable decisions where the mind-only way would be still guessing.

    Respect your instincts and learn to trust your inner voice. Why would you assume that your inner voice is wrong? Why assume that your inner voice is bad in the first place?

    It is easy to ignore the inner voice, sometimes it is even easier to keep up the discipline than to break it. You have to constantly evaluate your actions. Do not let your habits run you and prevent you from optimizing your environment and your decisions. Do not stick to a habit because of the guilt that is associated with taking a day off. Stick to your habits because your mind and your instincts tell you to do so.

    Listen to your inner voice. Trust your inner voice. Rely on your inner voice.

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  • 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.

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  • Positive Peer Pressure

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Peer pressure is usually associated with negative behavior and the social dynamics of youth and growing up. Adopt and employ the concept of peer pressure to make a positive difference. Get your tribe to follow your positive lead just as they would follow you blindly in decadence. You are highly responsible for your fellow adventurers, the people around you who read your lips and do exactly what you do. Take good care of them.

    Live the best way you can under the best circumstances you can create and do not let your tribe in the dark. Strive to be an idol and carefully monitor every step you take in public; you are always watched and adored for what and for how you are. You are a role-model whether this makes you comfortable or not. Accept being cited as an example.

    This is by no means an abstract advice. Look around and observe the people you are with on a regular basis. Everyone influences everyone else. Even the most negligible action can have vast effects when, evaluated in hindsight, through your initial cause someone got inspired to do something not so negligible -- be it good or bad.

    Your network of influence, how far does it reach? How far do you intend to reach out? As a rule, the most freakish actions are the ones emulated the most and with great passion. How do you move? Do you eat in certain ways? Do you exhibit any weird behavior that supports your public, your stage personality? People will copy exactly that. Use the power of being an example to spread positive and meaningful actions, thoughts, and emotions. Sort through what is expected from you and live up to people's well-meant anticipations. Make sure to only meet positive expectations; everyone will wait for and prey on your negative output -- do not give in to lower instincts.

    The goal is not to create a uniform, synchronously-dancing, equal-looking tribe which would resemble an army more than anything else -- the ideal is the exact opposite, open-eyed, loosely connected, independent and free individuals, given their own, true voice, aware of their abilities and their purpose. You act merely as a catalysator for the people who look up to you.

    There are many who strive to become like you.

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  • Autopilot and the Advantages of Flying by Yourself

    edited by Alexander Becker

    You can work either creatively or you can work reactively, closely following a fixed plan that doesn't allow too many deviations in order to get fulfilled.

    Once a basic system is up and running, working on autopilot, pursuing one laid out path according to preset instructions and requirements, seems to be the way to go. Grinding away at the work that shows up is the perfect application for the autopilot, you could substitute a robot for your labor, and that's exactly the problem.

    The required and expended mind power depends on the phase of the project you're in. In the planning and developing stages of any project, you obviously don't want to give up control or flow nor would you want to bypass your own brain.

    Pragmatical exceptions are of course settings which are worth the effort in terms of fast results, for example. Mindless, robot-like work is the way to go to get things done effectively, for short, discrete periods of time that is. Don't ever feel -- nor dare to express -- that you are too good for any kind of work.

    Working on autopilot robs you of any emerging, synchronous incubation tracks which would offer themselves spontaneously if you were consciously present and fully alert, working as if you'd still be enthusiastically conceiving.

    You can use the fact that you feel yourself like working on autopilot as an indicator that you have to change something about your system. You work on quantity instead of quality, on stuff instead of making any real progress. It's like moving laterally on a ladder. You are exploring the width of the field while it would be so much more rewarding to move up, step by step, and leave the lateral field-scanning to the robots.

    Your autopilot is not a creator. You are. Using the human mind and its power to run like a, however complex, machine is a tremendous waste of resources, it's overkill.

    Setting up, programming, and training the autopilot is an exciting task only to have it up and running on its own without your continual input needed. Just make sure to not program yourself to become the autopilot.

    Fly by yourself. You are no robot.

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  • Employ Your Instincts Against Overtraining and Burnout

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Plato has Phaedrus say: You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched.

    When the initial motivation is extremely high or the external and internal, personal expectations are too demanding, often physical and mental burnout are observable. What is happening in management can be compared to a similar phenomenon in sports: overtraining, plateaus, physical burnout, and fatigue are the results of the triumph of will over sensibility. The cure against burnout and overtraining is very simple: stop immediately and rest.

    Excessive training, trying too hard, or monotonous routines that don't challenge the mind or body lead to overtraining syndrome with symptoms that are hard to recognize and differentiate from mere temporary exhaustion or psychological causes instead of effects.

    Overtraining may lead to training plateaus, the body cannot catch up regenerating itself and gets stuck on a mid-level that is achievable without adequate rest. Overtraining is the result of weeks or months of wrong training, you're not going to burnout after a couple of days or some high intensity training.

    An effective strategy to avoid and to prevent overtraining is to listen to your body's needs and its instincts. It's all too easy to override pain in order to achieve the next promising and potentially rewarding goal. The body as well as the mind need rest. Growth and improvement take place while not training, while at rest, between workouts and after work. Hard work is definitely necessary but the moment it becomes mindless it is a sure sign of becoming insensible and therefore against nature's requirements.

    It is vitally important for eventual success to balance and level the eagerness in the beginning and focus on maintaining the discipline through the initial motivation and the lows and the highs and the plateaus.

    Consciously relax and release all the tension from time to time. Make no exercise a dedicated exercise and count the non-reps, e.g. try to statically hold nothing for the intended duration. This special exercise is the only exercise that let's you grow while still working on it...

    The same holds true for corporate executives: rest consciously without working at all. Schedule an amount of time where you absolutely do not work. Consciously dedicate this time to not working at all. As a side effect, you will notice how, perhaps unexpectedly, your productivity will go up. Your energies will replenish and you will gain new clarity.

    Enjoy every moment of your recovery, as much as you enjoyed, with all your heart, work until crashing.

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  • 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...

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

    1. Start with the ubiquitous mindsweep.
    2. Recognize and accept the Must Do tasks.
    3. Collect your intentions for the desired outcomes of the Must Do and the Want-To-Do Really Badly stuff.
    4. Inject as much positive thinking as possible into your mental process. Sanitize every thought of potential auto-sabotage.
    5. 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.

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  • 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:

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Realize that you do not have to suffer to achieve what you want. You decide whether suffering is part of your experience or not.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.

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  • Understand Pain to Train More Efficiently

    edited by Alexander Becker

    It doesn't have to hurt in order to work, especially not on an everyday basis, but an always and infinitely comfortable workout is no guarantee for success either. There is no reason to run away from the slightest air of pain, as much as you don't need to run away from hunger. Enjoy your pain as long as it lasts.

    Have you ever trained to accomplish full splits? This hurts and it has to.

    You can choose from three different kinds of pain.

    First, there is the pain of muscles that are brought to their maximum in a controlled training situation. Your workout is breaking up the muscle fibers which subsequently heal and grow bigger and stronger as a result. You want that pain.

    Then there is the pain of injury: it hurts and at the same moment you know that you should stop your workout immediately. You certainly don't want it but you need that pain in order to prevent further serious damage to muscles, joints, or ligaments.

    Another form of pain, the most stressful and the most desirable one, while at the same time the hardest, is the pain of endurance, where the mind offers to shut down the muscles long before they are technically due. Your body would thankfully give in. It is an art in itself to signal the mind that you understand that there is still a long way to go -- sometimes literally, think marathon -- and that the body is physically capable of working the load. You convince the mind that its efforts in telling you to stop will be ignored.

    The pain stays the same, whether you run the double or the quadruple distance, the trick is to surrender to the continuous pain and to proceed anyway. The reward is a solemn state, which is achieved when this royal pain is conquered with marathons for example, with wall chairs, with willpower plus discipline. Nothing more.

    It is this pain that you don't really want nor need, in fact it is -- to a certain extent -- a game that your mind is playing with you. The more you resist and endure, the more your mind will respect you and finally cooperate with you in your effort to excel.

    You need willpower to successfully finish heavy, painful workouts, you are even able to overcome the pain of injury with sheer willpower -- take care though -- but in order to conquer the pain of endurance you have to combine willpower and discipline. This is where real training with massive results begins.

    Pain is weakness leaving the body. Mental weakness, that is.

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  • Succeed through Synchronizing Your Behavior

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Behave, when you are alone, exactly the same way you behave on the big stage. Avoid splitting your personality.

    Will it be harder to adapt your stage personality to everyday life or to try and maintain the everyday personality and translate it to the big screen?

    Imagine preparing your food the way you present yourself in public... you do that already? Now imagine a public appearance reflecting the way you relax inside the safety of your home...

    Synchronize your public and private sets of behavior and you'll notice a more peaceful life, a life that is more centered and with less opportunities for inner conflict expressing itself as anger, accident-proneness, or simply self-propelling, ever perpetuating stress.

    You split your behavioral routines, forced to act very disciplined throughout your public day with rules and guidelines for even the simplest of actions. Acting out the opposite side of behavior when finally being alone is a very comfortable form of compensation.

    You may find some peculiar manners within your repertoire of expression that are apparently not suitable for the world. You may also find that your public appearance is somewhat inhibited and for certain reasons you feel that some traits of your inner personality are not congruent with your public image.

    There are great opportunities in matching public and private expressions. Opportunities for growth, for overcoming inhibitions, and for building higher self-esteem. Do you ever wonder why success in certain areas of your life seems to be so hard to achieve? Release that fear of being recognized, uncovered, and discovered the way you really are, because everybody is able to see the real you right now, regardless of how you behave.

    Do you still dance in solitude? Come out of the closet already. The streets are waiting for you, dancing...

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  • Question Everything You Believe In

    edited by Alexander Becker

    After questioning everything you do, you may want to start from scratch with your beliefs as well.

    Question everything you believe to be true. Everything you believe in. Question the effect that each of your beliefs has on you. Is it good for you? For the success of your actions, for your mind, for your soul, for your emotions. Finally, what do your beliefs do to mankind? Do your beliefs help or hinder humanity?

    Why would you hold on to a belief that you know isn't perfectly beneficial to its believers? Why in fact, do you call it a belief? If you are convinced and know it for sure it is knowledge and there is no reason for any doubt. Make that belief knowledge or drop it. Knowledge as in you are absolutely, positively convinced -- not necessarily as in scientifically proven.

    What about beliefs whose primary purpose is to explain shortcomings? Beliefs that cover a lack of courage, beliefs decorating fears with colorful legends.

    A good way to start is to rid yourself from any belief whatsoever... Why believe at all? Please note that this is an exercise in using your own mind, not a contest in offending anybody else's emotions nor thoughts. There are subtle differences to pay attention to.

    So, do you merely believe in God or are you absolutely, positively convinced about the existence of God? Can you see the difference?

    Let's take a look at the inevitable objections to the questioning of belief itself: Isn't any objection somehow rooted in fear? Isn't the fact that you are not convinced based on a fear, that possibly, maybe, the belief could be wrong? Not so with knowledge. Either you do know or you don't.

    There is a very particular audacity in knowing vs. believing. That's the difference.

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  • 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.

    Alcatraz Revisited

    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.

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  • 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.

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  • Remember Today

    edited by Alexander Becker

    The most beautiful day in your life. When was it? How was it? What made it so special and different from any other day you can think of? How did that day feel and what was the reason for that feeling? Is it likely and realistic to induce that feeling again, to repeat, if not the day, then at least the feeling?

    Although that one day is long gone and it won't come back anymore, the memories and the accompanying emotions will never fade away. Take a look at all your beautiful days in your life so far. What do these special, outstanding days have in common? They are perfect, they are unplanned, unexpected things happen, yet everything feels easy and like planned and executed by a divine hand.

    What do you expect to experience today? Do you expect an ordinary day or do you want a special one? You work today and you have a packed schedule and there is no time for any special moment? You plan on spending a perfect day on the weekend, your schedule will be free of stress and obligations, there will be plenty of time and everything is setup to accomodate future memories... How come that -- that day, the supposedly perfect, prepared, and predetermined day, turns out to be not special at all? No memories to take into the future to remember another beautiful day. Why is that?

    Let's go back to that day full of work. Full of decisions. Now, decide to make every moment special. Have a meeting? Make it special by chosing a different location, the most perfect location you can think of. Going to introduce yourself to an audience? Make it perfect by presenting yourself in the most special way possible.

    Since every moment you are going to encounter will be there for you exactly once -- decide and resolve to invest everything you have into every moment. Accept time and the present instead of resisting it, waiting for a better future. You'll end up waiting forever. Make the most out of every second you have because it will pass no matter how you spend it. Time passes anyway so why not enjoy it in its present, while it lasts?

    The most beautiful day? Today.

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  • Matching Levels of Energy to the Tasks at Hand

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Time management is no rocket science. Do you work in accordance with your energy level at each moment? Anybody does this without even thinking about it but you can do it consciously and thus more effectively when deciding beforehand how energy-intensive the tasks are going to be and then mapping them across the day.

    In the morning, you may be calm and able to concentrate deeply, so why not shift your high-concentration tasks to the morning hours and do the easy, not peak-performance requiring jobs to the end of the workday where you can afford to work on autopilot?

    High-level planning for example, is often done best early in the morning, within a quiet hour or two.

    Levels of alertness are naturally depending on when and what you eat. Mind-taxing tasks that are due before lunch get automatically more high-quality attention than the after-lunch, digestion-influenced and impaired, heavily diverted focus, is able to provide.

    Another excellent time to function with maximum abilities is during the late evening, depending on when you go to sleep, the hours before crashing can be very productive when sensibly filled with the proper tasks.

    Monitor and lay out your personal energy map over the course of a typical workday and try to exchange the to dos according to your available mental and physical energy schedule.

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  • Questions and Answers from the Editor

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Q: Why WOW?

    A: WOW is a blessing and blessings are, in my experience, a subtle, yet very powerful way to change realities.

    Q: What is this all about?

    A: It's about a healthy diet, fitness, and beauty and the mindset to achieve and maintain these goals.

    Q: Why are you doing that?

    A: I am experimenting with diets and keep getting great results. I research about nutrition and exercises and I want to share my findings and my inspiration with you. Many people don't know where to start or how to make progress after a certain point; I am here to help.

    Q: How do you train?

    A: I am doing bodyweight exercises exclusively for half a year now. I never lifted weights and I never went to the gym to pretend lifting weights either. My seven days a week routine consists of 20 - 30 minutes of high repetition calisthenics like hindu squats, hindu pushups and variations, handstand holds, wall walking, and pull ups. I occasionally run and I start my days with breathing exercises and an abdominal workout as assembled by Matt Furey.

    Q: Bodyweight means...

    A: No iron. Believe me -- your bodyweight is more than enough to lift at various angles and for slow, high intensity repetitions.

    Q: What's your workout goal?

    A: To be able to handle my bodyweight in any position.

    Q: What's your current diet?

    A: I am on the warrior diet which is about almost fasting during the day and eating big -- really big -- at night. Make sure to read my review and recommendation of the book The Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler. In addition I am eating vegan. I am constantly experimenting and I consider eating fish for a while now.

    Q: What else?

    A: You are beautiful!

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  • 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.

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  • Tracking and Evaluating Progress

    edited by Alexander Becker

    The habit of regularly recording and comparing specific data -- as much diverse, significant data as possible, is an easy to implement measure and the most efficient tool to use while working on your goals.

    • You want to lose or gain weight? Start by measuring and recording your weight once a day, at a fixed time. As a note, I always suggest not to count calories but you may want to count your calories and are free to write them down too.
    • Keep your financial goals in front of you and make sure to update and track the progress and evaluate the development over time regularly and often.
    • Workout: Make sure to log the number of repetitions for each exercise you do. Try to ignore people making fun of your training journal, success is much harder to achieve without clear, measurable, and visible goals and subgoals. Besides, how would you ever be able to improve your marathons without being able to compare your runs over time?

    The mere sight of comparable records and the recognition of often obvious trends -- ups or downs -- is a great motivator. You don't want to write down a higher weight than yesterday, or a lower balance on your account for today. Just make sure to be brutally honest with yourself.

    Archive your data! You may motivate yourself with past achievements in different, measurable fields by looking at your goals' and eventually your life's statistics. You can archive your files in basic ways or you can go creative with printing out graphical charts, pies, or whatever technique suitable for visualizing your progress.

    The medium you use to keep your records is not important, you can use pen and paper, your computer's text editor, a spreadsheet program, or one of the various online tools like Backpack or the convenient Google Spreadsheets which lets you import and export your data in various formats.

    For fitness-related data, I use a pen and paper solution with custom forms printed out and neatly kept in a binder. This way, the records are always accessible without the need for a computer or internet connection. I do transfer some data into a spreadsheet on the computer to have progress automatically calculated but the initial recording is tree-based.

    If you can measure it, you can improve it.

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  • Diets and Exceptions: One Day Off?

    edited by Alexander Becker

    While I definitely get pleasure and satisfaction from cycling between extremes, I do think that the weekly binge eating excess is a worthwile target to knock down and leave behind for good.

    Many people say they need that regular day off and that it would be impossible for them to completely avoid their sweets, candy, and pastries.

    Could you tell when you'd arrived at your naturally healthy lifestyle? Would you know when you were really there?

    The day you don't crave those sweets anymore will be the first day of that conscious, healthy, beautiful life.

    One more thing. Exceptions are just that: exceptions. They are surely permitted, even desired occasionally to maintain that sense of freedom, while regular, weekly, scheduled exceptions are nothing more than excuses.

    Let's try to get over excuses.

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  • I want you to be Happy, Healthy, and Beautiful

    edited by Alexander Becker

    You are beautiful. I want you to be at your best. Because you rock.

    People keep coming up to you, exclaiming: WOW! You are beautiful!

    The purpose of this site is to help you and inspire you in achieving and maintaining being WOW. It's about your happiness and your health and your beauty. We are talking about fitness and mind and health. About nutrition and about diets. About hard work and about amazing results.

    The difference between WOW and other helping hands is that I will never tell you that you don't have to work for your goals. In fact, you have to work as hard as you can -- by definition -- to achieve as much as you want.

    I want to bring out the best of you. Nothing more. It is a journey and it will be the best there is.

    WOW is a blessing and a gratification, an indicator that you are on the right track.

    You rock. That's it.

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