WOW: Multiply Excellence and Chutzpah

WOWOW: Dangerously Cosmopolitan

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.

Labels: chutzpah, education, excellence, google, hugh+macleod, insanity, learning, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+development, productivity, seth+godin, success, vanity

WOWOW: Kinetic Trashbags & Names

by Alexander Becker

Kinetic, trashbags, and names that is. Enjoy and galvanize.

The BMW Museum's kinetic sculpture takes your brain to another dimension --

A kinetic sculpture comprising 714 metallic balls suspended in air will soothe your weary mind. It's one of those things that's better seen than described, but if you can imagine a wave of undulating orbs that appear to weightlessly float, you'll start to get the idea.
Shapeshifters and the Art of Seamless Tailoring --

Instead of steel, aluminum or even carbon fiber, the GINA Light Visionary Model has a body of seamless fabric stretched over a movable metal frame that allows the driver to change its shape at will.
Inflatable Street Sculptures --

Joshua Allen Harris has created some fantastic New York street art in the form animals made out of shopping bags positioned on subway street grates that cause them to periodically inflate and animate.
GoogleUnique Names --

Recently I've noticed two new strategies in naming children. One I call the global brand naming strategy. The object is to devise names that work in as many languages and regions of the world as possible. The other recent strategy is to find GoogleUnique names.

There you have it. Dangerously cosmopolitan.

Labels: art, books, chutzpah, cosmopolitan, excellence, insanity, kevin+kelly, kinetic+sculptures, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, names, personal+development, productivity, success, vanity

WOWOW: Profit, Independence, & the Kill Switch

by Alexander Becker

Independence day, profit margins, security -- this is important, don't skip it, pictures from the sky, 3D art, and cultural immersion in Europe. In random order.

The Margin Manifesto: 11 Tenets for Reaching (or Doubling) Profitability in 3 Months --

Remember, more customers isn't the goal; more profit is.

Perfect products delivered past deadline kill companies faster than decent products delivered on-time. Test someone's ability to deliver on a specific and tight deadline before hiring them based on a dazzling portfolio.
I've Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch
Digital Manners Policies
Designing devices to be remotely overridden is a bad idea
10 of the World's Most Amazing 3D Street Artists: From Sidewalk Sketches to Awesome Wall Murals --

3D graffiti, whether it's in chalk or paint, on walls or the street, represents a new way of combining the mastery of Renaissance art techniques with the gritty, ephemeral qualities of amazing street art.
Pictures From the Skys!
10 Things To Do In Europe That Will Make You Smarter --

Combining academia with cultural immersion: surely this is the ultimate education? We strained our brains and came up with a list that balances lessons and leisure to turn you into a European scholar du jour.

Happy Independence Day -- independent from anything, that is.

Labels: art, chutzpah, excellence, independence+day, insanity, language, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+development, productivity, profit, security, success, vanity

WOWOW: Believing in the Improbable

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.

Labels: books, brian+eno, chutzpah, excellence, improbability, insanity, kevin+kelly, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, naming, personal+development, predictions, probability, productivity, success, vanity

WOWOW: Education × Curiosity

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.

Labels: business, chutzpah, curiosity, decisions, education, excellence, insanity, language, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+development, productivity, quantum+physics, success, travel, vanity

WOWOW: Optical Illusions, Math and the Singularity

by Alexander Becker

The power of optical illusions, magnetic fields, the singularity, maths, and food portion sizes.

Key to all optical illusions discovered --

Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur. And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions.
NASA scientists make magnetic fields visible, beautiful --

Magnetic fields are invisible, at least usually. But Scientists from NASA's Space Sciences Laboratory have made them visible as "animated photographs," using sound-controlled CGI and 3D compositing. It makes the fields, as explained by the scientists, dance in an absolutely gorgeous movie called Magnetic Movie.
The singularity
Math for the layman
300 calorie food picture gallery

Take a look at the above, have a nice week and play it where it lies.

Labels: business, chutzpah, excellence, illusions, insanity, lifehacks, lifestyle, magnetic+fields, marketing, maths, personal+development, productivity, singularity, success, vanity

WOWOW: Fibonacci, Plants and Rules

by Alexander Becker

Some pure gold this week: the Fibonacci sequence; if you never heard about it, study it now, this is required knowledge. Herbs help, also, that quote, enjoy.

The Fibonacci Sequence in Nature --

In mathematics, the limit of Fibonacci series is called as Golden Ratio. This ratio is approximately equal to 1,618. In nature, one can come across this ratio in many areas of art and science.
20 Common Cooking Ingredients that Act Like Medicines --

The use of herbal treatments for everything from sore throats to cancer has become more and more common with every passing year. We all know about the herbal supplements like St. John's Wort that can help you with chronic health problems, but did you know that many common edible herbs, spices and vegetables can provide impressive health benefits?

While you probably already use these ingredients in your home, you may not realize that they can do much more than just making your meals tasty and interesting. Here are some common foods that do double duty as effective herbal treatments.
How to Break All the Rules --

Tell me, Rabo- said Slazinger, if I put on that same paint with the same roller, would the picture still be a Karabekian?

Absolutely, I said, provided you have in reserve what Karabekian has in reserve.
Like what? he said.

Like this, I said. There was dust in a pothole in the floor, and I picked up some of it on the balls of both my thumbs. Working both thumbs simultaneously, I sketched a caricature of Slazinger's face on the canvas in thirty seconds.
Jesus! he said. I had no idea you could draw like that!

You're looking at a man who has options, I said.
Compulsories vs. Freestyle
How to Legally Apply The Rules of Con: Guy Ritchie's Revolver
Two Ways of Owning a Law

Have options. Always.

Labels: business, chutzpah, creativity, excellence, fibonacci, herbal+medicine, insanity, lifehacks, lifestyle, personal+development, productivity, rules, success, vanity

Get Uncomfortable, Finally

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 --

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

Are you uncomfortable enough?

Labels: business, chutzpah, complacency, decisions, escalation, excellence, insanity, lifehacks, lifestyle, personal+development, productivity, success, vanity

WOWOW: Jazz and Entrepreneurship

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.

Labels: branding, business, chutzpah, decisions, entrepreneurship, excellence, insanity, jazz, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, music, personal+development, productivity, startup, success, vanity

WOWOW: A Higher IQ and Less Fat

by Alexander Becker

Brain exercises and fat loss, nothing more.

Simple brain exercise can boost IQ --

The exercise involves tracking small squares on a screen that pop into a new location every three seconds. Volunteers have to press a button when the current location is a duplicate of two views earlier.

At the same time, consonants are played through headphones and a button is pressed if the letter is the same as that heard two "plays" earlier.

If participants perform well, the interval to be tracked (n) increases to three or more stages earlier.
Fat burning 101 --

How do we actually lose fat? What do we mean by fat "burning"? Here's a very simple, (dumbed down) explanation of what actually goes on to create a fat loss effect.

High levels of fat mobilization + High levels of fat oxidation = Accelerated fat loss.
The Top 5 Reasons to Get Even Leaner --

A leaner organism is a more effective organism. Come with minimal luggage. Don't bring more than you really need. Lean determines the ratio between work and rest, between production and administration, between muscle and fat. The more muscle that is at work against less and less superfluous weight -- as opposed to specific workload -- the more effective is the whole system. Think bureaucracy. Think governments.

So, exercise that mind and that body and let the summer come. Now.

Labels: chutzpah, diet lifehacks, excellence, fat+loss, insanity, intelligence, lifestyle, personal+development, productivity, success, vanity

WOWOW: Survive a Plane Crash while Refining Your Learning Skills

by Alexander Becker

Now that pseudo-productivity is declared dead, let's go back to the drawing board. Start with art, disaster prevention and recoevery, some interesting research projects, and the latest news on how your memory works.

The impossible art of Li Wei --

Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help of props such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.
How to survive an airplane crash --

According to the statistics, two-thirds of the people involved in air crashes survive. Approximately one-third of the third who do die could have survived if they had known what to do and almost all of these died from smoke or fire. If it seems certain the plane is going to crash, here's what to do while the plane is going down.
25 leading-edge IT research projects --

While universities don't tend to shout as loudly about their latest tech innovations as do Google, Cisco and other big vendors, their results are no less impressive in what they could mean for faster, more secure and more useful networking. Here's a roundup, in no particular order, of some of the most amazing and colorful projects in the works.
The world in 2058 --

The consensus view is that we'll muddle through many of the issues that vex us today -- including climate change and terror threats. And we'll hit upon so many medical and technological wonders that today's 50-year-olds will have a fair chance of finding out firsthand how the world will look in 2058.
Want to remember everything you'll ever learn? Surrender to this algorithm --

... there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they?

Make this week yours. Even art is not impossible.

Labels: art, business, chutzpah, disaster, education, excellence, insanity, lifehacks, lifestyle, memory, mnemonics, productivity, research, success, the+future, vanity

WOWOW: Productivity Killed by its Own Worshippers

by Alexander Becker

The perversion of productivity, intuition, and 27 thoughts on blogging for the artist, don't miss this one.

None of this is brain-surgery. In fact, nothing is brain-surgery except -- brain-surgery.

Intuition. The problem with infinitely optimized and worshipped productivity is that it's all too easy to cover up coincidences, synchronicity, and serendipity out of fear of becoming less than serious.

In the same spirit of bringing things back in perspective, consider these 27 thoughts on blogging for the artist --

If you're the real thing, you'll be around in 30 years, still working. Most of these services and sites you now admire will not.

You do not need a signed letter from The American Academy of Arts and Letters to begin.

Blogging is easy. Art is not.

Exactly. Each and every one of them. Read them all.

Now, go out and please don't let things happen to you but instead, make sure that you happen to things.

Labels: chutzpah, excellence, insanity, intuition, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+development, productivity, success, vanity

Finally, The Shortcut to Excellence and Chutzpah

by Alexander Becker

Excellence is hard. Very hard. You have to refine, improve, analyze, redo, ... all the time and with everything you do. In short: You have to work. But compared to chutzpah, excellence is easy. Chutzpah is where it's at. You need some basic charisma for anything even remotely resembling chutzpah. You have to be creative and bold at the same time. Even more so, you have to constantly deliver peak performance, even on short notice. Otherwise, you reputation suffers.

Now, after years of research and weighing the pros and the cons, there is a shortcut, here is the solution for experiencing the multiplication of excellence and chutzpah.

Try excellence × chutzpah on for size in a holodeck-like multi-dimensional and multi-sensational simulation. It won't last all too long and you aren't going to feel all too good afterwards but trust me on this one -- after giving it all in real life, after going all out, all the way -- do you think you'd feel fine with the tension over and the climax gone? Not exactly.

The shortcut: Cocaine. No hard work, no struggle with timidity. Peak performance on demand. Reputation protected.

Its possession, cultivation, and distribution are illegal for non-medicinal and non-government sanctioned purposes in virtually all parts of the world. Although its free commercialization is illegal and has been severely penalized in virtually all countries, its use worldwide remains widespread in many social, cultural, and personal settings.

But you know what? We're trying to accomplish something here. There are no rules.

Change the rules and make them yours. Bend them until they break. Any rule that can be broken is worthless anyway. As a rule at least.

April Fools Alert

Of course. But once a year it is OK. The joke that is, not the coke. 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.

Again: Constant and never-ending improvement. Nothing else works.

Labels: april+fools, chutzpah, cocaine, excellence, humor, insanity, kaizen, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+development, productivity, rant, success, vanity

WOWOW: Information Superpower Vampires

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.

Labels: belief, chutzpah, energy, excellence, information. info+diet, insanity, intelligence, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, news+fasting, personal+development, productivity, success, vampires, vanity

Cascading Diet Recommendations

by Alexander Becker

Improving your health through your diet isn't an all-or-nothing game.

The two general directions -- exercise × nutrition -- apparently weren't enough.

Try it this time with some structured and even more importantly, cascading recommendations, meaning you start with the first and work up the ladder with each adhered-to point making your diet more and more healthy and your body more and more lean.

Let's set up a baseline to work your way up from --

Each one of the following nos works almost equally as a less. In other words, you don't have to go strict, instead you can go slower on these items and benefit as well -- albeit slower. It's a simple progression. Please note that, the higher on he list, the more important it is to say no rather than less.

What to avoid

Transfat; therefore no fried foods.
(Even partly) hydrogenated fats; therefore no margarine, no peanut butter (except natural) -- eat regular butter if you like.
Refined, white flour; that's no cake.
Simple or added sugar; no candy, that is.

What to eat

The goal: Eat as much "whole and natural, fresh food" as you can.

Note that this is no advice to go low-carb, eg. on a diet low in carbohydrates. In fact, it is nothing more than trying to get you to eat as healthy as possible.

How much?

As much as you want. Chances are you don't eat enough anyway.

And no. A calorie is not a calorie. Or do you really think that a five-hundred-calorie cake is worth the same, nutrition-wise, as five-hundred calories in vegetables or meat?

That's it. Again, eat as clean as possible and move as much as you can. Everything counts.

Labels: business, chutzpah, decisions, diet, excellence, insanity, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, nutrition, personal+development, productivity, success, vanity

Intensity and Excess, Forever?

by Alexander Becker

Intensity vs. forever, that is.

I don't want to be with you forever -- do you know why? Well, first, forever is quite a long time, where some of us, at least temporarily, might get bored or boring, second, almost nothing is forever; and this comes from the guy who once invented forever...

What I do want is being with you right now, in person, in practice, as intense as it gets, forever is just theory and you nor I can't hold that kind of intensity for this long.

That is quality over quantity. Let's try to take quality over quantity as often as possible. The result is even more quality.

You can't endure and enjoy excess forever either.

Right now

The rest of time -- beyond now -- isn't supposed to be out of the mind at all. We are still responsible for our future and since we strive to have many more moments of intensity and excess to come, we'd do best to behave as sustaining and responsible as we possibly can.

Self-destruction is not the most elegant way to appreciate excess, intensity, and that moment.

Sure, it is not going to be the last moment but if it was, it would be great nonetheless. And since it is not the last moment, you just have to repeat it. Again.

And again.

What about that kind of forever?

A series of nows instead of a extended then.

A repetition of quality moments, as long as it lasts.

Labels: business, chutzpah, excellence, excess, forever, insanity, intensity, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, productivity, quality, success, valentines, vanity

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

by Alexander Becker

Self-promotion, incubating projects, faster, better and easier; the ballsiest cons, and the worst one.

Building relationships: 11 rules for self-promotion --

Be confident: If you are telling people something that adds value to their lives, there’s no reason to feel as if you're intruding. Stand up tall and show that you have faith in yourself, your abilities, and your work. After all, if you don’t have confidence in yourself, why should anyone else?
How to grow your ideas with a project incubator --

The concept of a having an idea "incubator" is the same as the real ones used in 3rd grade classrooms. A place where you can toss your ideas, give 'em some heat for a few months and let them grow. Here's how to set up a project incubator, with all the steps needed to make sure your ideas eventually hatch.

In other words: Capture, prune, and review.
50 tricks to get things done faster, better, and more easily --

A collection of 50 hacks, tips, tricks, and mnemonic devices.
The 5 ballsiest con artists of all time --

Let's give the devils their due. Yeah, they've screwed over thousands of innocent people. But some of them had balls the size of hot air balloons and for that, we must salute them.

In the context of promoting chutzpah, it could be inferred that I encourage con artists and their hacks. I don't. Although, the lessons you learn from being conned are priceless. Then again, most people con themselves, this is by far the worst con.

You can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent. Happy weekend and good luck finding an opponent.

Labels: chutzpah, confidence+trick, decisions, excellence, insanity, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+development, productivity, project+management, revolver, self-promotion, success, vanity

WOWOW: The Artists Edition [Links of the Week]

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 --

Where problems go away with time.

Where problems are best ignored.

Where you have good back-up and support systems in place.

Where something more important comes up.

Where you are getting into a deal.

Where you are tired, hungry or angry.

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.

Labels: art, business, chutzpah, decisions, education, excellence, insanity, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+development, procrastination, productivity, success, vanity

What is your Default Mode?

by Alexander Becker

What is your default mode, how do you act when it's over, when you're done? Finally idle again? How does it feel?

You're idle, in between projects or right after a show. You've just completed the big project. That is exactly where the potential to do something really stupid is the greatest.

The best way to prevent a potentially negative aftermath to any accomplishment is to set up some idle-time protocol.

Raw idleness tends to be -- especially between bouts of higher achievement -- relatively negative. You can't be high all the time. Also, to really feel the high, you need, by definition and for comparison, the corresponding low. What follows is, that the higher the high, the lower the low.

Try to establish a baseline or maintenance program that will prepare you for the next project, restore your physical and mental energy and backup your intellectual resources. Start immediately upon exhaustion to appreciate and use the void, as long as it lasts.

This void, this emptiness does indeed exist and it infects potentially anyone. Creating some routines prevents the "hole" that opens up after finishing any kind of creative work from becoming all too deep.

My protocol, for example, consists of a strict diet, exercises and -- to contain and to enforce -- discipline. Whenever I become idle, which isn't all too often but especially at the crossroads between projects, before and after, I quite literally fall back into a set of default habits of eating cleanly, exercising hard and absolutely regular, and so on...

Debriefing; analyzing the finished project is often hard since it's all over and done and you can't change the outcome anyway, but it is an important conclusion of anything you worked so hard for. Just recount what you will be proud of and note what and how to improve when trying next time.

Research, study, and refining skills are part of my strategy. The more unrelated the better, seemingly unrelated that is, inspiration comes best when the field of research seems way too remote.

Enjoy the low and appreciate it, for the greater the difference, the more pronounced the reward will be. Live both the low and the high as deeply as you can. Just make sure and try to establish a default mode somewhere in the middle between high and low, defaulting to either high or low makes the respective opposite state unbearable.

Revise your resume or CV. How does your new perspective affect the way you describe what was important about your previous experiences?

Labels: business, debriefing, decisions, excellence, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+branding, productivity, recovery, success

The Best In The World: What's the Point?

by Alexander Becker

Once in a while the question comes up: Why?

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. --Chuck Palahniuk

I hope this helps.

Even more interesting is the point itself: Everybody is best-in-the-world at something. The trick is to find out what it is and to find it out in time. This brings up the next question: Why does it take so long for most people to find out what they are here for?

Excellence × Chutzpah = Irresistible + Invincible

Multiply excellence and chutzpah to achieve peak performance, become irresistible and invincible and look even better in business, fitness, on stage, and beyond.

That's what it says, at least.

Why does anyone would not want to look better, in any sense of the word?
If it is possible to improve, would you? Would you want to?
The best in the world? Do you want to be the best at anything?

It is not merely about "accomplishing something", not about "getting things done" and out of the way. The best way to get things out of the way is by getting them out of the way. What it is about is getting things done the best way possible, the most elegant, beautiful, effective, whatever, way there is...

Accomplishing nothing but the best, whatever it takes. Yes, that's elite. That's real performance. Why not? Courage. Advocating insanity? Probably. Endurance? Doing things anyway. More and more. Faster.

Maybe you need hardcore, dirty, hacks to get the best out of what you have.

Attack common sense, because, by definition, common sense is average. Make decisions as fast as possible.

Do everything as good as you can, if you know someone to do it better, get him to do it. Doing everything the best you can is not the same as doing everything the best way possible. That is what it is about. Exceed expectations.

Doing the best you can might imply finding someone else to do and complete the job.

Doing the best you can is always doing more than you are expected to do. It's a little more than you planned to do.

Immortality is a collateral of best-in-the-world. You are not going to care, though.

Labels: best-in-the-world, business, chuck+palahniuk, chutzpah, delegation, elite, excellence, immortality, leadership, lifehacks, lifestyle,

Recommended Sites

Most Popular

Starred Items

Handpicked Quote (more)

WOW Search

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items

Unhappy Enough

Your Mind is Playing Tricks on You

Make it Worse

Avoid Rationalizations

Set a Deadline

The Process

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items

April Fools Alert

Related Items

Swimming Against the Stream

Maintaining Precious Energy

One Mental Superpower: Belief

Related Items

What to avoid

What to eat

How much?

Related Items

Right now

Related Items

Related Items

Insanity

Art

Education

Procrastination

Related Items

Related Items

Related Items