G.O.D.

Relative wealth, the art of comparison

2011-04-19T12:49:00.001+02:00

We all have millionaire plans, don't we?

Nothing weird about that. After all money plays a certain roll guaranteeing ones life standard (…and girls get attracted to it). Even though sociologists say money have diminishing effects on happiness with increased fortune, a larger fortune also increases independence. It really feels nice to do whatever I feel like doing without bothering about the cost.

I just had a meeting with an apartment broker to value my apartment which I am considering selling within a not so distant future. It ended with quite some disappointment since the value hasn’t increased as much as I expected. Combined with a persistent market stagnation affecting some other investments I can only conclude that my fortune is growing slower then planned.

Now, to the point. What does this realization mean. Lots of personality coaches and self help gurus suggest you should look into yourself rather then comparing yourself to others. This issue was also well described in an article in “The Economist” considering depressed millionaires. Despite having an impressive fortune seen with the eyes of common people, they didn’t consider themselves being rich since they didn’t compare themselves to the poor but to the other parents in they children’s private schools.

But I still disagree with the life coaches saying comparisons with others are bad fore you, since in my situation it is the look inside that created the discomfort of lower results. As a normal competitive person i intend to advance from my current level to a higher one disregarding other people (I have a large ego).

Perhaps a comparison to others wouldn’t be so bad after all. As most people I wouldn't describe myself as rich, but I have to admit that my life is free from economical problems. So what does that mean in a wider perspective. Well, the key is to choose the right group of reference for the comparison.

So I analyzed the statistical income distribution for the entire nation and as a matter of fact I found out that my current income hit spot on the 90 percentile, and taking my, in this context, low age into account it looks even better. In this new light it feels somewhat ridiculous to complain about private economy.

A new lesson learned after those considerations is to stop looking so much into myself and to start noticing ALL the others.

Praise for an Evening Walk in London

2010-07-02T01:21:00.001+02:00

It is rare that I find myself without company in a town I know. But tonight – there are no dinners, no presentations, no easy women and no work to do. I am all on my own – in the dead center of London W1 an W2.

I decide to walk, just cruise the streets of this fantastic city. I walk alone, mind in the present and body in a good suit – dressed up like someone from an old time, before London turned cosmopolitan. I walk, a nostalgic stranger in a town that has outgrown the history I know about it.

My journey begins at my hotel in Paddington Station. Some may say that Greece, maybe even Egypt, is the cradle of civilization. But I beg to differ – England is where what we know as western civilization was born. In these steel buildings of Brunel the first trains stopped to pick up passenger to bring the world together. It is in this country that flight was invented. And modern healthcare, doubling our life expectancy, was founded here. Newtonian physics was discovered, along with electricity, refrigeration and the steam engine. And this city, magnificent London, is where it all came together.

My feet take me down Edgeware Road. Past the Lebanese cafes, where people sit outside and smoke the hashish. I walk past the veiled women, and though they cannot show anything but their eyes – I see that they are wearing makeup and have plucked their eyebrows. On her burka clad arm hangs a Gucci bag and her gait clearly shows that stiletto heels hide under that dress. What has London’s transformative power done to this Islamic culture? Truly a place where you renew yourself.

I pass Marble Arch and Park Lane. Home of the rich Russians in exile from Putin. From there, I slowly approach the chaos of Picadilly Square. The wall of noise and visual impression stun me for a moment. But I quickly shake it off – shutting it out. Picadilly Circus was never for me – yet I know what awaits me just around the corner.

A short while later, I walk though the gates of Chinatown. Chinese”medicine” men peddle their cures with before/after pictures of women in colourful dresses. Strange massages with names I cannot pronounce are advertised in the windows – I briefly consider getting one. Mr. Wu sells his noodles soup with ingredients I can only guess at (do they truly eat dogs in China?). But I love it still – I suck in the atmosphere and savior the utter foreignness of it all. Even here – London has wrecked it’s transformative powers. The men wear well made suits – and they are not black and white like most Chinese businessmen clones. The petite women walk around in their Karen Millen dresses. The small, strange stores fade away – Chinatown is behind me.

And this of course means that I am now in Soho. Home of alternative bars, musicals, strip joints and gay porn stores. I walk the narrow roads of sin, just experiencing it all. An observer from a lost time, time travelled into the future. I let myself be filled with wonder at the sheer madness and joy of my environment.

My aimless wandering takes me to Leicester Square. The young, scantily clad, pale English women walk past me. Youngsters in search of the that mythical night club, where you can have fun without bringing it yourself. The “facers” of the street give me one look, and decide that I will not be buying the latest musical based on some half famous movie (What’s next? “Avatar the Musical” – featuring blue painted actors singing new age songs and shooting arrows at the audience for full immersion effect?).

It is late, time to go back to Hotel. I am inspired to write this blog. I walk back to Picadilly to the Bakerloo line. Into the infernal heat of the tube in this summer night. But I don’t mind the heat – for I find myself in one of the oldest public transportations systems in the world.

After short stop at the hotel, the porter hails me a black cab. Another London tradition. I return to the Lebanese bar, Salt. A fusion place where I can enjoy the strange combination of the hashish and whisky (and hey, I just noticed: they heated the whisky to body temperature for me). The nicotine is working its way though my blood – I am relaxed and immersed. another cosmopolitan, anonymous stranger – how very typical London.

The Trap of Working to Escape Reality

2010-06-28T20:14:00.001+02:00

Lately, I have observed a highly unbalanced state inside myself. The symptoms have been as unpleasant for me as they have for those I hold closest. In response to a series of emotionally painful events – I have fallen into a trap. One that I was too late to notice – or perhaps unable to escape.

It started innocently enough – with a very long streak of travel. Much, much longer than normal. Sitting here at the end of the period – I realize that 4 months on the road has done nothing to ease my struggles – even made the symptoms worse. There really is no way to run away from the workings of your mind in this world – no mountaintop too high to dampen the sound of your inner voices screaming.

During my travel, it is usual for me to slow down communications with my private life. I am after all on the road to get a job done. But this time, it was different. With fear, seemingly unable to act on it, I saw myself shutting down communication with even my closest friends. I would look at the phone ringing – and simply not be able to pick it up. Instead, I would dig even deeper into my job – hiding from who knows what – always finding an excuse to get something more done. I can guarantee you – if you work for a US corporation – they will keep taking your time until you stop them.

It took me weeks to realize that I had cut off people I normally spoke to very often. I felt a constant guilt of not returning calls and leaving very little signs of life. Somehow, this state was acceptable – or at least stable. I sought silence from the world outside.

But of course, this is also the road to depression, or at least introvert behavior. Neither desirable to me. I have felt a constant anger inside – a defensive stance to the world (more so than usual, for those who have read my previous posts). Only this time the anger was different. My usual mental state is that of a predator – ready to fight fairly for survival in a US corporate world of idiots. In battle stance for any verbal challenge thrown at me. But no, this other anger was different. It is the anger of a caged animal – uselessly gnawing at the bars of its cage. Looking at its captor with teeth barred – yet without a fair change of winning. It is this anger, prodded forward by passive/aggressiveness – that eats you up inside. It has no outlet – and it turns its destructive fury on your very integrity. It is what you get when you put your hope in the world around you – and feel let down by how the world returns the favor.

And what is one to do when disappointed by the world or people in it? I know of only three answers: Either walk away, stop hoping or find something else to focus on. I do not give up hope in the world – I believe in people! But before you can see those bars of the cage – before you realize they will not budge to your strength – what do you do? In my case – I work. Too many hours. I get on yet another plane – see another amazing sight. I eat the wrong things, forgetting my body. The smile on my face fades – my wit goes dull. Instead, I snap at the people around me for any insult – perceived or real. I stop defending what is right – and instead spend my strength barring my teeth (uselessly so) at my captors and all the things that are wrong (somehow, the world never runs out of things that are wrong). I grumble, become introvert and stop contributing to the natural order of things.

As I sit here – realizing what has held me captive – one question creeps into my mind: “What if this is the way most of the world feels, most of the time?”.

Shirt Essentials

2010-05-31T22:25:00.003+02:00

Last week I visited London, partly for having some great fun and partly for doing som shopping. Amongst others I needed some shirts and therefore went to Jermyn Street in Westminster (London). Jermyn Street is to shirts what Savile Row is to suits.

In 1898 gentlemen's shirt retailer and manufacturer Thomas Mayes Lewin opened his first shop in Jermyn Street, and today he has 75 shops all over the United Kingdom. T.M. Lewin also now boasts a fine website (http://www.tmlewin.co.uk/), with a large community and some very good videos, which is of very good help to the upcoming gentleman (or other shirt wearers).

The first video will tell you how to tell the different collars aside.

The second teaches you how to iron.

After ironing folding the shirt comes next.

Finally pick the right tie.

Mediocrity – the Perfect Way to Spoil Beauty

2010-03-19T10:49:00.001+01:00

I am sitting in the Maui airport after 5 days here at this tropical island. It has been a time of realization and also of some spectacular beauty.

For anyone going here – I highly recommend driving on the Hana road. The waterfalls, beaches and lava formations are humbling. Nature at it’s wildest. Pick up a handful of pebbles at Black Sand Beach smoothed by years of wild waves crashing on that shore. Walk in the lava tunnels and climb up the volcano Hanealuka. This is nature at its wildest, mountains pushed out of the sea by plate tectonics. Massive rock thrown around on the ground, as if strewn by some giant baby, by pressure from the core of the earth. The crashing waves of the pacific on the coastline – an ocean view so wide you can see the curvature of the earth.

Why am I then so sad as I sit here in the airport? Because I find myself happy to leave this place. I’ve never quite understood what the compulsive traveler meant by a place being spoiled by tourism. No matter how many places you have gone to escape your own shadow and “find yourself” – you are still a tourist when you arrive at another culture. Who are you, to think you have some unique privilege of being their before the “other” tourists.

But now I understand what it means for a place to be spoiled by tourists. Is has something to do with ambient noise and choice. And it happens when the American middle class discovers the location.

It is immediately obvious on arrival at the hotel. The bars have TV-screens going at high volume, showing sports and CNN. And the noise from the people! The chatter of irrelevant “how are yous”, the excessive use of: “Like”, “You Know”, “Kinda” and other fill words. The content-free conversations you overhear. I have been in the craziest streets of Istanbul, the cafes of Soho, the pubs of Dublin and the rave discos of Amsterdam. I have even been on the charter locations of Gran Canaria and Tenerife and the snobbish coasts of the French Riviera. But nowhere in the world have I found such irrelevant chatter of pleasantries, background noise, too loud muzak and political “non confrontational” correctness as on Hawaii. Even out there in nature, where the stunning beauty should just leave you silent in awe, you hear the uncaring “how are you?” and the gold digging “so what do you do?” blah blah.

Now, it does not end at the noise and the children who of course, poor souls, pick up that behavior from their parents. The mediocrity runs deeper.

It all starts with morning coffee. At the sign on the hotel coffee cart it said: “We are proud to brew Starbuck coffee” – of course backed by muzak that is just that little bit too loud. Folks, let’s get this straight: NOONE is proud to brew Starbucks – the lowest common denominator coffee. America: Proud is not the same as “won’t kill you if you drink it”. There is nowhere on this island that you an get a decent cup of coffee. The locals, when asked, just shrug their shoulders and tell you they share the pain.

The food is fatty, the prices are high – but it is “good value” because you get a mountain of food for your USD. The big chains take over to serve the 80% population: the fat, “entitled”, irresponsible, gladiator watching, pale, lipo-suctioned and uneducated masses. In the process – all local dealers close shop – having been offered a great retirement plan for their little spot on the beach. Who wouldn’t take that offer? It makes money, it’s optimized and popular, so it has to be good – right?

And then there is the irresponsibility. At the valet parking (25 USD / night – “don’t want you to have the discomfort of walking the 50m to the parking lot – no sireee”) I asked the parking guy to put the GPS in the glove department for me. Response: “Sorry sir, I cannot do this. I do not want to be responsible if it breaks”. Poor guy – probably afraid there will be a lawyer on his tail in case I (or the hotel) do not feel I can handle or forgive such an event – should the extremely unlikely happen.

The culture of greed and irresponsibility seems to have no limits. Once the big consumption driven money arrives – silence, sanity and peace of mind goes away. We are left with an invading, moaning, zombie army crawing entertainment and comfort – out to destroy real life quality and bring us all into the realm of the undead. I have sworn to myself that from now on – I will research my vacation destinations more thoroughly – and if there is an abundance of American middle class there – it is “no thanks sireee” for me.

America – you have a large part of your population that is a disgrace to the human race and a disease to this planet. Please, please become the great nation you once were. Greed is not the solution.

And for the rest of the world – stop buying from the mega corps of America and be proud of your culture – one not driven by greed as the only mantra. Your local coffee is great (Italy, Turkey and Saudi Arabia: hear me!) – don’t buy into the Starbucks brand. You can take the blame for your own mistakes and you can be proud that you can still discuss your political (and religious) opinions on a street cafe without being considered politically incorrect. Don’t use your hard earned cash to fill the war chest of the US mega corporations – just say no to America. That is the only cure and every dollar you spend is a vote in the global economy.

Energy as source of attraction

2010-01-17T15:12:00.001+01:00

During the past few weeks I felt a substantial variation of energy in me. I am talking about the energy that is conveyed by attractive, happy, extrovert, value-giving people. The kind of energy that characterizes a person who enjoys his time and makes everyone enjoy it with him. That is how I felt on New Years Eve after a week of Christmas vacation. After a great night out MindGame pointed out to me “Man, you really looked glad that night”. Quite a difference from last weekend when I almost fell asleep in the bar.

Fatigue caused by excessive workload and stress has repeatedly been classified as a main reason to an unhappy life by many psychologists, health coaches and self help gurus. In a modern society full of deadlines and result expectations trying to cut down sleep sometimes is the only way to get spare time. But the necessity to fulfil your primary needs impedes the joy of whichever activity causing even more unhappiness.

I suppose everyone has experienced the frustration of hearing the alarm clock. The sound that every morning initiates a tiring conflict within your brain between the frontal lobe (the more sophisticated part of the brain responsible for long term planning) telling you to get up and go to work to grant your income and thereby your survival, and the primitive core shouting: SLEEEEP!!!! After a while these two come to a compromise. You press the snooze button…

And the snooze function works. During a night you oscillate between deep sleep and a stage of awakening. The above mentioned conflict occurs when you are in a phase of deeper sleep. After pressing snooze you fall asleep again but you will not reach the same depth of your sleep pattern before the alarm goes next time which gives the frontal lobe an advantage.

The sleep pattern is systematic. It is possible to trace your rhythm so that you adopt to get up when you are in a shallower phase of your sleep. That will make all the standard good- morning procedures easier but it will not limit your need for rest. A normal adult should have around eight hours of sleep every night to be in a state of mind that gives him a possibility to enjoy his entire day.

I have tried different methods to increase my awaken hours. From systematic reduction of sleep time to trying to increase vitamin production by exposing myself to UV-light of a solarium (scientific method, a hypothesis has to be tested). But nothing worked. If you want to become more attractive, alert and able to project your happiness on your environment, forget all about vitamin pills, meditation etc… Get some rest.

Grow by travelling

2010-01-10T15:01:00.001+01:00

Earlier this autumn I went on on a backpacking journey to Asia visiting Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Persuaded that it will make it easier for me to meet new people, I went alone.

It gave me a lot of experiences, growth of self confidence and change of mindsets. It took me a while to sort it all out in my brain to put it in short form down on paper. I will here focus on the ways I have developed my personality rather than on experienced events and I will start at the moment when the changes of my views of the world first became clear to me, after coming back home.

Seeing my living room for the first time in a month it was far bigger then I remembered it. The excess of Nordic low intensity light gave a feeling of cold vastness, contrary from small and dusty Asian hotel rooms where intense sunlight through a small window filled the room with heat. The room has not changed I have. The change was of the kind earlier described by Shastar in War of the World Models.

My model expanded by seeing that in real life different culture, different perception of time, different ambitions among people and different social norms work in an organized society. Even if the kind of organization differs a lot from the western world, there normally are logical explanations to the differences. Sometimes the bus gets delayed by two hours, but in some regions buses are the only means of transportation used not only for passengers but also for mail. Every now and then they take a different road in order to deliver a package (i.e. seven 50 kg-bags of rice). Like most stressed westerners you could, to the locals great contempt, find somebody to yell at, or you could just accept the fact that you are in Cambodia. After all, you are experiencing the normal life of that country.

Getting to understand other ways of life made it easier for my to challenge my own views and disobey the social norms I have been taught during my childhood, which I have found limiting to my personality. Also it has become easier for my to avoid being upset about lots of those annoying incidents we are subject to every day (such as delayed buses).

The nervousness I initially felt about going alone was rapidly gone. To my great relief I found that there were thousands of people like me travelling alone, only hooking up with someone for short periods of time which sometimes led to longer friendship. Actually it was harder to avoid meeting anyone then to meet someone. If you do not start to talk to anyone, someone will initiate a conversation with you.

People are generally friendly as long as you are being friendly to them. That realization helped me to be more confident in social situations and to avoid the feeling of loneliness.

In my opinion, travelling like this is the ultimate way of enriching ones personality. On the inside you gain self confidence and motivation to do what you want even when your will conflicts with all the others. To the outside your model of the world grows to cover more views of life. It makes you more tolerant to other peoples ideas and you on the other hand get more respected among them. What you have to say gets paid more attention to since your stories are actually based on real experiences that the others might not have.

Laptop on the go – Experiences after two months

2010-01-05T18:47:00.001+01:00

Since my previous blog entry about going lightweight I have acquired some experiences. I have also bought myself a kitchen scale – to tally up the total weight of my portable office.

Power adaptors and converters:

I have located very nice solution to power the laptop. Kensington produces an nice universal laptop adaptor. It comes with the small “number 8 shaped” power cable – for quick resupply if you happen to forget the cable (which I sometimes do). As a neat extra, the power adaptor has a USB power port – allowing quick iPhone charging without plugging in the laptop.

The iPhone charger from Kensington solves a common problem with this Apple Device: Running out of battery. Even with wireless and bluetooth disabled, I rarely survive more than 24 hours on a single charge. The Kensington charger, apart from being usable from a standard USB cable (which the standard iPhone is not) will give me double the charges on the go. This has saved me from call disconnects several times already.

Power Adaptor: 220g
iPhone charger and battery adaptor: 36g
USB foldable cable: 6g
Universal Power Converter: 52g

For the frequent Europe traveller: Kensington utilities are available from Heathrow Terminal 5.

Bonus programs and travel documents

I am now member of 5 different bonus programs for hotels. Each of them supplies me with a credit card sized plastic membership card. It has become too much to carry this around in my tiny metal wallet (I never carry cash around – so I can do with a credit card holder).

The realization is simple: I only need my membership cards when I have my laptop on me (which I always do when I check into a hotel). Hence, the cards belong in the laptop case – I have acquire a little light weight leather wallet for them. It will also hold my passport and any visa documents I may need.

Membership cards and wallet: 75g

I could probably reduce this weight a bit…

Laptop and bag

It turned out that my choice of a messenger bag was just right. The flap covering the laptop help keep it dry, even when it is pouring down (Which is has been several times since I last wrote about this).

A neoprene cover give me the flexibility to quickly and safely carry the laptop between buildings during rainy days, without the need to carry the entire laptop case. Flexibility is good.

I have now used my new Sony VAIO for more than two months – and I am loving it. It is quick, predictable and powerful. They keyboard is a pleasure to type on and the battery life is at least 6.5 hours.

There are however a few bad things to be said about the VAIO: Sony’s support is miserable and I loathe their driver download system – getting Win7 running stable took a few tries (and in this case, Windows cannot be blamed). Sony DID supply the right drivers from their website, but getting them installed was not as easy as I would wish for. But since I updated the display driver – things have run smooth.

The VAIO, unlike the MacBook Air, is for experts that will not compromise on functionality. It does not have the the “I am a designer with a sense of aesthetics” look of the MacBook – but it has the power you need to use it as a professional work tool.

Laptop Messenger Bag: 475g
Sony VAIO Z-Series: 1.550g (with extended battery)
Neoprene Cover: 220g

Miscellaneous

I always carry a pen (for signing documents), a pile of business cards and some medicine for emergencies (Anti-Histamine and Ibuprofen).

Pen: 20g
Business Cards: 25g
Medicine: 6g

Summary

After two months of testing, I am quite happy with my new travelling office. I think it is still possible to reduce weight more – for example, I can shave off a few gram here and there on the extras, perhaps get a lighter laptop bag too.

My only concern is that I sometimes panic shortly when carrying my laptop. I stop to ponder if it has been stolen or I just stopped noticing the weight.

Books That Influenced our Thinking

2009-12-24T02:09:00.001+01:00

(By MindGame and Schastar)

Throughout life, you read books and watch presentations that deeply influence your thinking. Classic works of art and science that touch a certain note in your soul and help you understand yourself and the world better.

Today, this information is so readily available on the web that we can now link you directly to it. So here goes – our list of recommended reading and watching

Ethics, morality and Human Interaction

William L. Ury, Roger Fisher & Bruce M. Patton: “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In”, ISBN: 978-0395631249
Steven Pinker: “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, ISBN: 978-0142003343
- One of the best arguments against post-modernism
Barbara Pease & Allan Pease: “The Definitive Book of Body Language”, ISBN: 978-0553804720
- Teach yourself to control your own body language – and read what others are not telling you
Frederick P. Brooks: “"The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering”, ISBN: 978-0201835953
- An enlightening memoir of how humans collaborate on large projects. And about what goes wrong when they do
- While this is about software engineering – the lessons learned here apply to all complex projects
Carl Sagan: “The introduction to Pale Blue Dot”, YouTube clip with a beautiful introduction to earth

Atheism

Bertrand Russell: “Why I Am Not A Christian And Other Essays On Religion And Related Subjects”, ISBN: 978-1409727217
Richard Dawkins: “The God Delusion”, ISBN: 978-0618918249
Christopher Hitchens: “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”, ISBN: 978-0446697965
- Nothing new, but no one puts it quite like “the Hitch”

The Human Mind

Daniel C. Dennett: “Freedom Evolves”, ISBN: 978-0142003848
Daniel C. Dennett & Douglas R. Hofstadter: “The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul”, ISBN: 978-0465030910
Douglas R. Hofstadter: “Gödel, Escher, Bach – An Eternal Golden Braid”, ISBN: 978-0465026562
Bertrand Russell: “The conquest of Happiness”, ISBN: 978-0871401625
Steven Pinker: “How the Mind Works”, ISBN: 978-0393334777

Style and Women

Alan Flusser: “Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion”, ISBN: 978-0060191443
- The only guide you will ever need to dressing yourself like a classic gentleman with style and flair ( The writing style can come across as obnoxiously snobby)
Neil Strauss: “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists”, ISBN: 978-0060554736
- The introduction on how to pick up woman. And a moral lesson on how to behave when you do
John Bridges: “Gentlemanners Collection”, ISBN: 978-1401601232

The essential guide to manners and proper behavior for the gentleman to be

David Deida: “The Way of the Superior Man : A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire”, ISBN: 978-1889762104

Understanding the World

Stephen Hawking: “A Brief History of Time”, ISBN: 978-0553380163
- One of the best descriptions of our place in the cosmos
Richard Dawkins: “The Selfish Gene”, ISBN: 0199291152
- A beautifully written story about how evolution works
Richard Dawkins: “The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution”, ISBN: 978-0618619160

A history of the species that have come before us on this planet

Carl Sagan: “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark“, ISBN: 0345409469
- A guide to the explorer of the world. Contains the famous baloney detection kit
Peter L. Bernstein: “Against the Gods – the Remarkable Story of Risk”, ISBN: 0471295639
- An easy and accessible introduction to statistics and probability theory

War of the World Models

2009-11-27T17:10:00.001+01:00

Whether we are conscious about it or not – we all have it: our model of the world. Inside our heads – our brain, eager for patterns and knowledge, build rules and principles on how the world around us works. For the purpose of this blog entry – let us just call it the “mental model”

Without the mental model, we cannot interpret events. It tells us how to cross the road, which people we like, what we have achieved, how to eat and sleep and it forms the foundation of our values and inner beliefs about what is true. It does not take much imagining to picture how this simulation system helps tremendously on our survival and evolution.

I know it has become fancy to disregard absolute truth. Today’s rhetoric allows stating your personal truth – no facts supporting it - as a viable argument. Even the very idea of facts and the existence of them is contested in some circles. But this is dangerous thinking.

The fact remains, each of us build a mental model that allows us to make decisions – even the simple, everyday ones. What makes a good model of the world? In my perspective – a good model is a model that makes true predictions (that can be validated by others) and which support happiness of myself and others.

Wikipedia has a nice entry about scientific models of the world. Under the section on evaluation of a models we find this fascinating sentence:

“A model is evaluated first and foremost by its consistency to empirical data; any model inconsistent with reproducible observations must be modified or rejected”

A lot is said here – and not all applies to our somewhat more fuzzy “real life” mental model. But one thing in particular strikes me as true, even for mental models: A model should be consistent with empirical data. This is where things get really interesting…

What do YOU do when you discover that your mental model does not match your experiences? When your idea of what another person is like does not match that persons behavior. When you realize that you are not as good at your job as you think. Or if you just discovered that people don’t act as nice and friendly as you believe is the nature of humans. Or what about discovering that he political view you hold to be true simply leads to human suffering. We all carry beliefs about the world – many which are simply not confirmed by facts (if they were, they would have been knowledge – not beliefs).

Recently (as my previous post probably indicates) I have observed that my model does not serve me as well as I would like. My first reaction was to flee from this fact – I tried to reject empirical observation. I am very poor at doing this, it makes me feel sulky and breaks my integrity. The next step my brain took was to use my old mental model to make predictions that are simply not true – or at least have no basis in observation. Is it just me – or does anyone else run strange “worst case” simulations in their head when they lack enough information to guess what other people are thinking?

I know I do!… If there is one thing that drives me up the wall, it is silence and lack of communication – my own and other’s. My brain is so good at obtaining new information that the lack of it drives my frontal lobes crazy with simulating the future. The worst part of it: I KNOW this happens – but yet I cannot help spending time thinking about these guesses (for guesses are what they are) about what other people think about me or how the world “should” be. I have certainly got better at suppressing, even defeating it – but it is not gone yet. Who is really in the drivers seat in my mind here?

When I realize that guessing leads nowhere and just wastes time – I go into denial. This normally includes fleeing into the (nicely predictable) world of computer games, getting drunk or just hanging out with friends that talk about something different. Of course, this has absolutely no effect on the mental model being inconsistent – it just drives the fear of facing it even deeper into the subconscious mind. The final step of this denial is apathy – where I no longer can motivate myself to think. Not only do I loose the ability to think about the inconsistent mental model – I cant think about anything complex at all. This is when it starts affecting my work and my close friends – and this is when I need to take action.

The behavior just described comes naturally, almost instinctively, to me. And I am beginning to understand how religious people remain believers – in spite of the world not living up to their “model”. The silence from the world is where jealousy and stress comes from. The continued unwillingness to admit that you are wrong is where bad science and strange beliefs comes from – it is our way of fleeing into another world. The denial, and the dissonance following it, is how you become an addict and how some people end up depressed or too filled with apathy and self hatred to treat others well.

I am gaining a much deeper appreciation about what it means to be brave – to boldly admit to yourself that you are WRONG and need to change parts of your mental model. While there is comfort in fleeing, simulating and denying – it is short lived and amoral to others. Eventually – holding on to a broken world view will destroy your integrity, leaving you untrustworthy. There is no shame in admitting defeat – but our tiny little brains just don’t like to loose. Staying brave when looking in the mirror is our only defense against ourselves and civilization.

What Goes Up(hill) Must Come Down

2009-11-23T19:27:00.001+01:00

Overcoming fear and bringing yourself out of the comfort zone has been a major theme of many of my blogs. I find that facing fear and taking on near impossible challenges has not only strengthened me– it has been a major motivational factor too.

Unless you are from a unusually spoiled background – life will to some extend be an uphill battle. It simply is not easy to follow your purpose and remain a morally good and strong person. A great many of my friends and colleagues wonder why I have remained standing in the face of the challenges I have overcome – especially at work. I am asked why I insist on fighting every battle – instead of picking the “right battles to fight”.

I have never been one to give up – or run away from a battle. But lately, life is beginning to teach me a lesson – about what it means to have a history of overcoming challenges. If you insist on developing yourself like I have – you risk gradually changing your outlook on life into the perspective of: “Me against the world”. Inevitable, I know the world will win – but I intend to go down fighting – claiming every little inch of success in spite, not because, of the world.

As with most outlooks of the world – there is a fine line that must be walked to remain balanced. Recently, I have found myself slipping into defensiveness as my default stance on the world. I behave as if people are fundamentally good and want to do the right thing – something I truly believe. But, I go into every interaction expecting to fight for that goodness.

A good friend of mine, who has lived a rich life, could not understand why I expected everything to be so hard. To her, things come easy: beauty, intelligence, wit, manners and even love. All of this, I have had to fight for. Of course, her upbringing has an effect on her view – but I think there are more things at work here.

People around you can feel the “fighting spirit”. To some, it is seen a a challenge – and those people end up as yet another obstacle for me on the long, bumpy road that is life. But there are people who do not WANT to fight you – and what do you do with them? They either end up fearing or respecting you. I sincerely hope respect is what I trigger the most. But what about love? Would you dare to let love grow if you met someone that sees everything as hard?… The fighting spirit does not lend itself well to being loved. While love is (sometimes) hard – it should not be expected to be.

On Clothing and How to Apply Less is More

2009-11-23T18:21:00.001+01:00

No, this little entry is NOT about stripping down. But, we will be applying the previous principles of reducing and optimizing your life. Unlike many of the previous entries, the skill I will seek to teach here has an immediate benefit – also on your surroundings.

We live in an age where the fashion industry is constantly renewing itself. Some say it does so in cycles – but whatever you do, do NOT bring back the 80’ies again – never ever. Why do we continue to buy, why does fashion change so often.

As I study literature, I never cease to be amazed by how much wisdom we have amassed, and how little we remember of it. Oscar Wilde put it wisely:

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months”

Good old Oscar dismissed fashion on the basis of aesthetics – a noble, and one would think, sufficient reason not to follow the trend of time. The fashion industry is NOT there for your viewing pleasure. But if you are not convinced, consider how the industry would survive – and as capitalism demands: grow revenue with a two digit percentage every year? If people decided to buy good quality cloth and shoes – how would they keep selling? No, the only way for the megabrands to survive is to keeps us citizens consuming. To do this, they need to instill in us the belief fashion is fungible, in a state of constant flux.

Art in the middle of 20th century became disgusting and provocative, instead of aesthetic. The clothing industry, a form of art itself, followed suit (no pun intended). And they were helped along nicely but the increasing laziness of the western world. We have been spoon fed with images of metro sexual males, women in jeans, trumpet pants and clothing done in low quality material produced in Chinese sweat shops. We gulped the ugliness down in big, steroid filled portions. As we lost our sense of personal style, we were forced to swallow the idea that individuality is achieved by buying mega-branded cloth. So that you can express your individuality by looking like everyone else and “following the trend”!

We filled our souls with this poison until we looked ourselves in the mirror and saw an androgynous non-human. Have you ever wondered why the women in the fashion industry are so skinny and look like men from behind? Have you wondered why the men dress as metro sexuals - exposing their butts to the world and wearing colours normally reserved for women? Think about it. What sexuality does the men who work in the fashion industry have? Not a bad word about gays – many of them are the best styled men in the world. But, if you are heterosexual – the gay mans style may not be for you. And if you are female trying to make yourself irresistible to the opposite sex – being dressed by a gay man may not be a winning strategy.

The time has come to reclaims our sense of style from the greedy hands of the fashion industry. I have gone through this process myself. My clothing is now cheaper, better looking, higher quality and cool. And the very best thing: It attracts the opposite sex consistently.

This path is not for everyone. I WILL be recommending tailored cloth and high quality fabrics. But, the monetary investment is smaller than you might think. The difficult part is not related to money at all. To become a classically dressed man with a sense of style – you need to think for yourself. THAT is the hard part – admitting that you look like shit and then taking the steps to remedy it requires courage. But it also builds confidence - so

How will you know that you got it right? When people spontaneously give you compliments on your style. Those compliments, while coming from outside yourself – is the only way to measure that you have expressed yourself through your clothing. Stay tuned…

Laptop on the Go – Minimalistic Style

2009-11-08T22:38:00.001+01:00

Just acquired a SONY VAIO Z-series laptop. Being a frequent traveler, I figured it was about time to go lightweight.

This beast of a machine is 1.5kg and comes with a 128GB Solid State Device. I am currently testing the portability of it, dragging it around in a shopping mall and trying out different setting on it. Hibernation mode is a pleasure on this machine, it comes back to life after only about 20 seconds. Sleep mode takes 1-2 seconds for the laptop to be fully operational in Windows 7.

Even going lightweight, I still have 2 CPU cores at 2.5GHz and 4GB of RAM. Pretty much the bare minimum for anyone who need to run programs a bit more advanced the the MS Office Suite. There is also a lower limit to how small the laptop can be, the keyboard must be able to fit my 10-finger typing style. I have big fingers, never one to play the violin, so I need my keyboard space. The VIAO is unique in the sense that it has a strong tactile feedback, which I have found boosts my typing speed with around 50%.

So it looks like I have now reduced by bare essentials to this:

Lightweight laptop

Sony VAIO Z-Series
Stick charger accessory – takes a few more gram off the weight
Extended battery. Adds around 100g, but more than doubles battery lifetime. I am not one to run out.
I am using the US power plug, it is slightly smaller than the EU standard, every bit helps.

A universal smartcard reader

Also Sony, credit card sized

A standard, extendable USB to mini USB Cable

For smart card reader and iPhone

A 3G USB Modem

The VAIO comes with a build in modem – but I need it to be external. When I arrive at home, I simply dock the USB modem in my router, and voila: My home wireless network is now connected
The modem doubles as an 8GB USB Memory stick

iPhone 3G

Because lets face it: Nothing else comes close

An Kensington iPhone USB Charger and battery pack

This allows me to charge the iPhone using a mini-USB cable
It also has a small built in battery. This allows me to recharge the iPhone on the go.

Money clip to hold receipts
A credit card sized aluminum valet to hold credit cards

Fits in a suit jacket without adding an ugly bulge to it.
Will even fit in tight jeans (not that I ever wear them)

Universal power converter

The smallest I have been able to acquire is around 3x5 cm

In this shopping mall, I located a nice bag for it all - A Tumi messenger bag with a neoprene laptop case. Later today, I hope to tally up the total weight of this configuration. Perhaps I can reduce further. Once you have carried a laptop on your shoulder all day, you realized that every gram matters.

Just now, my battery level is 50%. According to the Windows Power interface, I have more than 3 hours left of battery time. Neat! Let us see if this battery will last me most of a transatlantic flight.

Altruistic acts or polishing the shiny brass that is one's ego

2009-09-28T22:19:00.005+02:00

How hard can it be to help one single person a day for one short week without thinking of the benefits one might possibly derive from these acts of kindness? One really should not expect that one tiny altruistic feat a day would be a problem for any person, but I actually found this to be harder then it sounds. This might in retrospective just be, because I was over-analyzing the minute task this in reality represents and having one of those weeks, where one just goes through the motions of daily life like a guinea pig in a wheel. I fear, however, that it goes a little deeper then that, but more on that at the end of the post. Let us first take a closer look at my new-found role as the Good Samaritan.

Monday: Called my mother, who I had not spoken to for a month.

I can’t really say that my mother and I share a close bond. She has, however, always in her own way tried to support my decisions in life, even though she often did not understand them, to put it mildly. The differences in our world view and interests, however, often results in us having short conversations about trivial matter such as the choice of color for the paint in her living room. This lack of common ground also results, not surprisingly, in an utter lack of communication for longs periods of time. This fact, let’s be honest, seems to pain her slightly more then me. Thus I, the long-lost son, decided to give her a call Monday evening just to talk to her for an hour and reassure her that I was still alive and doing well. I know without doubt that this made my mother feel better, and it really did not take much of an effort on my part.

Tuesday: Gave away my umbrella on a rainy day.

This one was maybe the easiest random act of kindness of the whole week. That Tuesday when I was passing a super market on my way home from work in the heavy rain I noticed a woman walking home from the store. Seeing as I was wearing a rainproof jacket I kindly asked her (and no she was not an HB10), if she would like to have my umbrella. She gratefully accepted, and we both went our separate ways.

Wednesday: Helped a colleague at work.

This is such a minute task that one has to wonder, why we don’t reach out to other people more often. But we just don’t seem to do! Sitting at work I noticed that one of my colleagues was having a bad day. Thus I decided to reach out and cheer the person up. It’s amazing how a short conversation about something funny and trivial can change a person’s mood within a couple of minutes.

Thursday: Helped a new neighbor move into my apartment building.

When I can home after work Thursday I noticed that a new person was moving into my apartment building. I offered to help, and the person was very happy to get a helping hand.

Friday: Gave my seat on the bus to a random person.

Friday I had a day of work and went into the center of town to do a little shopping. On my way home after my light shopping spree I was feeling lazy, thus I decide to take the bus, which turned out to be quite packed. I was, however lucky to find an empty seat, but right as I was about to sit down I noticed that another person had seen the very same seat. I polity offered the seat to the other person; my offer was accepted without a kind word.

Saturday: Helped my old man.

My father called me last week to ask what I was doing this weekend, since his girlfriend was away and he had not seen me for a couple of months. The plan was that he would take the train to the city where I live and then take the train back on Sunday. However, he then called me Saturday morning to ask, if I would not come over to his house to help him with a delivery of wood that needed to be chopped and stacked. I accepted and spent the day playing lumber jack. It was a nice experience and he seemed truly gratefully for my assistance, although we hardly spoke more then ten sentences the whole day (a man of few word is an understatement, when it come to my old man).

Sunday: An utter failure to perform a single altruistic act

Sadly, I failed on Sunday to do anything for anyone, since I did not leave my apartment or talk to anyone (what a poor effort, shame on me, bad man!).

Although all of the above mentioned acts helped every single person in question, I did notice a grain of salt in the little project. Having paid attention to my mental chatter lately, I did not fail to notice that my brain seemed to be hell-bent on flooding me with random injections of ego validation “you really are a nice person”, “what a good thing you just did” and so forth in the time period just after performing the act. This really upset me, since the essence of the undertaking was to perform an altruistic task, but my brain seemed to be “putting me into the picture” all the time, finding sneaky ways to stroke my frail, little ego. Why am I not able to commit an act of kindness without being concerned with how this relates me? My guess is that we are just so used to living in a “me-centered” universe that our brains can’t help but to inject us into the equation in some form. The scary thing is just that we hardly ever notice how deep our point of view runs.

Surround yourself with the right people

2009-09-27T19:28:00.001+02:00

In my introduction I mentioned the importance of having a group of friends supporting you in your struggle to change your habits. Last weekend when I visited my mother (divorced , lives in a small town) and sister (married, two kids, lives in a small village) I realised that it is equally important to spend less time with people who have a limiting impact on your lifestyle.

After telling them that I am planning a backpacking tour to Asian jungle on my own, my mother got half hysteric because of the risk I am taking. Not only I might get robbed or beaten up, it is also possible I could get swine flu far away from a good quality hospital.

So far two persons died of swine flu in Sweden (pop. 9 million). The media coverage of those two cases has been intense so for those who mostly see the world on TV it might seem that humanity is going under due to the pandemic . Just to put it in a perspective I can add that on average 2000 people/year die of normal flu in Sweden.

My sister, who for many years now has endeavoured to isolate herself and her family and form a secure zone independent of the rest of society, came up with an innovative solution to the problem. Somewhere she heard that a kind of penicillin normally used for HIV patients is supposed to strengthen the resistance to diseases in general. If I could convince a doctor to sign it out for me for that one month I am planning to travel, I could perhaps avoid swine flu while visiting Cambodia.

First it took me a while to understand she was serious, then I got stunned. I was unable to formulate an answer. It seemed that her mind pattern so far away from mine, I could not find a way to get a message through. And they really put some effort to convince me that backpacking alone is foolish.

What struck me then was that surrounding oneself with people who support your changes not only means that you should get new friends but also that you should leave people who have a limiting affect on you behind. Normally the ones who struggle the most to keep things from changing are the ones who will point out for you how important it is to stay in touch with distant relatives an childhood friend with whom you nowadays have nothing in common. Before you accept an invitation next time consider how much they can bring to your life, if anything at all, to avoid spending time in a way you dislike. Life is to short for that.

Comments now Enabled

2009-09-26T17:23:00.001+02:00

Bob kindly informed me that comments on this blog were not enabled. Getting feedback is a major goal of this blog – so that is of course a mistake.

The mistake has been correct, everyone may now comment here. For now, we will run without comment moderation – please behave!

Less space, more comfort please

2009-09-25T23:36:00.001+02:00

I am sitting in the final airport after 14 days on the road. Next destination: Home! Being a frequent traveler, I tend to get upgrades on the hotels that I stay in – yep, I am a member of half a dozen bonus programs. And this leads me to the subject of today’s blog: hotel rooms.

I have stayed in 6 hotels in 5 countries the last two weeks. Three times I have been upgraded. Every time I walk into the “president suite” or “luxury business room” – I get disappointed. I really don’t appreciate a room that is about three times larger than my apartment and will hold 5-6 London sized hotel rooms (where as they say in London, you cannot swing a cat).

What then is it, that makes me complain about this obvious luxury life of mine – am I turning into a grumpy old man? No, I just want simpler things in life. I want a good bed, a desk and a bathtub - that will be all thanks. 20m2 will easily accommodate my needs. If the place is clean too and does not look like a German whorehouse – all the much better. Seriously, I have no use for a sofa arrangement for 5 people or a 8 person dining table (which I may add, comes without a kitchen). I just want to sleep, perhaps have sex with a another hotel visitor and take a shower. Can we just forget the Ikean decorations, the four French doors, the bar area and living room I will never use?

Instead, could I have a complimentary massage? That would be nice for a change. Or how about not charging me 3 EUR for that Mars Chocolate in the snack basket? What about free use of the mini bar or a bottle or wine. Now that we are at it, a nice looking house maid to press my shirts and polish my shoes would really increase my checkmarks on guest satisfaction survey. Taking into account the space taken up by those presidential suites and the amount of rentable space that would fit in them – I think it would be cheaper to serve my needs of comfort for free and forget about that space upgrade.

But today, Hotels just seem incapable of offering a service that does not have a price tag associated with it. Except for extra space of course – which the frequent traveler really does not need!

Hello World

2009-09-17T22:55:00.000+02:00

The above line brutally stolen from Wordpress, which again got it from a book about The C programming language. Hmmm. 131 characters and I am already heading in the wrong direction. Back to basics.

Introducing Bob
I am 35 years old, male, working in a small company with responsibilities in the fields of higher management. I am or I was a company man. I would sacrifice anything or everything for my job, and not even look back at whatever I chose to leave behind. I do not see this as a bad thing, but it is not completely good either.

About two years ago I took the decision to become the Commander in Chief of my own life. Meaning that I was the one to plot my goals for my future, but also I was going to be the one that had to put in the work needed to get there. I created a short list for the personal skills and training I would need to get me going.

The personal skills list included:
* Leadership. Experience and formal education
* Self-confidence
* Energy
* Small talking
* Extrovert

I have studied the gaming theory to learn some of the above skills, though not totally successful it has given me some tools of trade, that I am now trying to master. But I am not going to give up. Practice makes perfect.

In short: My road is mapped, and I have already taken the first steps toward the rainbow in the horizon. And I am happy to walk of with a few good men, such as my friends from G.O.D.

Introducing Sync

2009-09-17T21:49:00.001+02:00

Hello
I am a 25 years old man who approximately two years ago decided to change some aspects of my life and improve in fields where I considered myself not being good enough. I am a considerably successful person; I have a master degree from a major university, an exciting job and a solid private economy. In these times of crisis I have what a lot of people dream about. But at a point in life when I looked back on my development, I became afraid of the future I was heading towards. I felt that I was slowly getting caught in a spiral of everyday routines from which I would not be able to escape if I allowed it to go just a little bit further. I was still not ready to settle down, there were still a lot of dreams to fulfill.

Instead I started to work on getting possibilities and knowledge necessary to achieve my goals. In my opinion, the freedom of choice and the possibility to make something out of an opportunity are the two most important characteristics of good life. Most people can either not see their abilities or lack the knowledge to turn an opportunity into success which makes them unhappy. I wanted enrich my life by gaining knowledge and experiences and by that become a more self confident person in a greater variety of situations where I earlier had no idea of how to act.

I realized that the greatest obstacle to a change of lifestyle were the social norms of the environments where I used to belong. And I was unsure of how to drive major changes through on my own. That is why I set my first and most important goal to find a group of friends with the same interest to develop themselves, and so I joined G.O.D.

Surviving and Optimizing Email

2009-09-08T22:14:00.001+02:00

Let us face it: email is a blessing and a curse. When it works, it is a great way to stay in touch and run business. When it overwhelms you, productivity drops to a total halt.

How annoying email is to you, depends a lot on the organization you work for. If the email culture is good – it is at best survivable. If it is not, may someone have mercy you – because your email inbox will not. Let that someone be me!

I work for a large IT-organization – and let me tell you right away: we do NOT have a good email culture. On a typical work day, I receive somewhere between 100 and 300 emails – most of which are irrelevant.

Mail rules are your friends! Let me give you a deep look at how I survive my email using the power of mail rules. This example will use Outlook, but will work for most mail clients. The system I use is very simple to set up and works great for me – even for handling large amounts of email traffic.

Folder structure

I use a very simple folder structure for my email. Too many folders and things just get confusing. It looks like this:

Inbox
- CC
- Team Mail
- Wide Audience
- Category 1
- Category 2
- Category 3
- Category 4
- Category 5 (yes, just 5)
Trash
Junk E-Mail (Auto handled by my mail server)
Sent Items
Search Folders
- For Follow Up
- Daily Mail (Optional)
- Weekly Mail (Optional)

Let us see how my mail rules distribute things into these folders.

Rule 1 – I don’t want your email!

This is electronic survival at its most primitive, and it forms the basis of my entire mail system.

The first rule of my mail client says this:

where my name is not in the To box
move it to the Wide Audience folder

Sounds too aggressive? Not at all. Most people I have spoken with create rules for mail they DON’T want to receive. That is an eternal, uphill battle. The number of things that are irrelevant in the world keeps growing at exponential rate, the number of things that are relevant – don’t. This rule also guards against me being spammed on mailing lists that I did not ask to be a member off.

Just say no - automatically! Basically: Unless I say it is relevant, don’t bother me.

Sounds crazy so far? Read on…

Rule 2 – Don’t CC me if you want me to take action

People don’t know how to use CC. If I am CC on something, it means that I am NOT supposed to take action – if you fail to grasp that: learn email culture. I teach people the hard way: I only read my CC mail once a week. The rule says this:

where my name is in the Cc box
move it to the CC folder
except where my name is in the To box
stop processing more rules

It does happen that people send a mail both as CC and To – often as a mistake. As you can see, I guard myself against that above. The “stop processing more rules” prevents rule 1 from kicking in for CC mails.

Rule 3 – Boss rule

I don’t want to miss mails from my boss, my boss’ boss or the CEO – no matter if they are for me or not

from Boss or Boss’ Boss or CEO
play ding.wav
and flag the message for Follow up Today
except where my name is in the Cc box

But, notice that even the people higher in the food chain better learn about Rule 2 to get in touch with me. Another thing to notice about this rule is my use of the follow up flag. The other mail rules will still sort mails from my boss and throw them into the correct folders, but the follow up flag will make sure I check the mail today, even if it gets sorted to a folder that I only check occasionally.

In other words, I retain the sorting, but I also need to take action.

Rule 4 – High importance

This is the way to ninja yourself into my mailbox. My reason for this rule is: I should probably at least look at a mail that is marked high importance, no matter how it arrived to me. Just like the Boss Rule, I use the follow up flags to keep track of this:

marked as high importance
play ding.wav
and flag message for Follow up Today

Rule 3 and Rule 4 together are the only time that I want email to interrupt me. In all other cases, replies can wait.

Rule 5 – Travel

This rule basically moves all mail from my travel agency and booking agent to a Travel folder in my inbox. I sync these mails to my phone to make sure I always have my itinerary handy.

from Travel Agency or Booking Agent
move it to the Travel folder
and stop processing more rules

My Travel Agency sends me all sort of scare mails about the 0.0001% chance I have of dying from H1N1 when visiting Northern Europe and the 0.0002% chance that I will die horribly from Ebola Zaire when going anywhere south of Sahara. I have a special rule to get rid of those mails – you may want to do the same.

Rule 6 – Team mail

The team I work for has a few mailing lists that are always relevant. Inside the team, we have a good mail culture (it must have taken some good gardening, considering the overall company culture).

I have a rule to capture team mail, since I normally have to at least stay in sync with it. The rule is simple

sent to Team Mailing list 1 or Team Mailing List 2
move it to Team Mail folder
and stop processing more rules

Rule 7 – Smart people I trust

There are people outside my team that write really good, relevant and smart mails. I don’t want to miss their great mail and enjoy reading most of the stuff they write. This rule is to make sure this ends in my inbox:

from Smart Guy 1 or Smart Girl 2 or …
stop processing more rules

This rule, while deceptively simple, keeps the other rules from kicking in and just keeps the smart peoples email directly in my inbox.

Rule 8+ – mailing lists I want to read

In my company, we have LOTS of mailing lists that you can join. I want to read a fraction of them. Sometimes, we even have two mailing lists with the same subject.

For each list I want to read, I have a rule that says this:

sent to Mailing List
move it to Category folder
and stop processing more rules

Notice that the other rules will still apply to mailing lists. For example, if someone sends a high important mail – I will be notified and the mail will be correctly sorted at the same time.

I have a small taxonomy (typically no more than 5 categories) that I use to group mailing lists in. The mail rules sort the right mailing lists into the right categories for me.

Summary and work habit

With the 8 above rules, I easily manage hundreds of email per day. My routine is this:

Morning: Check everything in my Inbox root folder, the Team Mail and the For Follow up Folder
- I know that these are only things that were explicitly sent to me or that I need to read right away.
- Recently, I got lazy and just created a search folder for these three
During day: Get interrupted only by the “ding” sound when my bosses mails me or when someone sends a mail with high importance
Evening: Repeat morning check.
- Potentially skim through CC mails
Monday: Have a look at the category folders and follow mailing lists.
Monthly: View the Wide Audience Folder in the threaded view.
- Using the threaded view I can quickly see which mails “sorted themselves out”.
- It is amazing how many mails become irrelevant if you just let the sender (spammer in this case) linger a bit. Often, at the time I see this mail, someone will have written one of those RTFM mails

I have found the “default throw away” system described here a highly efficient way to manage my email. Try it out and let me hear your feedback.

Removing Useless Words From Your Speech

2009-08-24T10:46:00.001+02:00

In this next is the series of bad habit blogs we will look at your speech. Have you notice how some people, almost at the moment they open their mouth, sound somehow intelligent? Even if you are not a great philosopher, you can mimic that – getting rid of this bad habit is a major step

The Problem: When they talk, most people will pad their sentences with useless words and sounds. These words come in three types

1) Brain farts, these are the meaningless sounds that appear at any place in the stream of speech, sounds like: “Uhh”, “Ehhh” and “hmm”. If you do too many brain farts, your speech can become annoying and in the worst case incoherent as people “tune out” when you open your mouth.

2) Fill words. These are words that add no additional meaning to a sentence. Americans, Californians in particular, are prone to using these words. Good examples are:

“Like” – The word: “Like”s mean to “resemble” or to “prefer”. It is NOT be be used a spoken period or comma in every sentence.
“You Know” – Very approval seeking. Shows neediness and is highly annoying to the listener
“Totally” – A highly annoying fill word that has recently become widely used in the states.
“Sort of” and “Kind of” – Both lazy ways to avoid expressing yourself elegantly
“I am gonna go ahead and…” and other figures of speech that add nothing to the sentence.

3) Skip words. People who are nervous or afraid not to get heard tend to use these words a lot. Often, they will also speak very fast. The words serve as place holders for a longer, more elaborate description of the subject being debated. Examples:

“etc etc etc”
“or whatever”
“And stuff”
“And so and an so forth”

These words speed up communication with close friends and other people who share a large part of your context. But when addressing strangers – you cannot expect them to understand what your skip words are hiding. You risk confusing the listener or sounder eager to be heard.

The Solution: Some people are eloquent when they speak – naturally it seems. Their words are like soldiers marching nicely on parade out of their mouths. Somehow, their speech is more captivating, more suave.

How do they do it?

First of all, they speak slowly, pronouncing every syllable in every word. This gives their brain time to enough to plan the sentence – which will make more brain farts go away. Try recording your own voice and notice how many farts you do… Now, try slowing down your speech to a crawl. Speak SLOOOWLY, carefully pronouncing every single syllable. Practice this way of speaking, overdo it in the beginning until your have eliminated brain farts. If you worry that speaking slow will waste time, think about how much time you can waste by net being listened too in the first place.

Secondly, get rid of fill words. Many people feel that they become more “black/white” in their statements when they remove fill words. They feel uncomfortable with their speech becoming sharper and less ambiguous. Speaking without fill words does mean you will have to hedge your statements more eloquently – but this is a good thing. As you sharpen you speech – you will sharpen your thinking. Remember: Action is thinking.

Take this example (almost literally adopted from a real world conversation I recently had):

“I kind of think that John is like, very much kind of sort of totally into Amy, you know what I mean?”

What is REALLY being said here? Try this for a change:

“I think John may be falling in love with Amy”

You have hedged your statement (with the “may”) and expressed your opinion clearly and without seeking approval. If you wanted the other persons opinion too, you would add: “What do you think?”.

Thirdly, eloquent people will err on the side of over elaboration. Rather state your point with sufficient context, than risk being misunderstood. Admittedly, this is a delicate balance. No one likes being treated like a child and having a simple point explained in too much detail. If in doubt, just ask:

“I am sorry, am I over elaborating this point? Please ask me to skip ahead if I am – I intend no disrespect”

Be a man - be responsible

2009-08-19T16:16:00.001+02:00

This weekend was a real manly weekend. I ate lots of rare meat, drank quality whisky and caroused with pretty women. To wrap it all up, I spend Sunday applying a very large hammer to break down a brick wall... I even saw GI Joe (very bland, but also typically malr movie) All in all - i was very much in touch with what makes us males so well, male-like.

But most importly, I did the thing that really defines the alfa dog of the pack - I took tesponsibily. This weekend, it was in the form of learning first aid - kindly taught by another GOD member. It takes so little to learn it, it can make such a huge difference - you could save a life Think about it... Chances are you will never use it - but if you find yourself in a situation where you need it - would you be able to forgive yourself for not spending one day of your life learning how to breathe air into an injured fellow human?

This is one easy move of proactivity!

Being Ready for Life – as Much as Possible

2009-08-19T13:46:00.001+02:00

I am currently reading some poetry by Felix Dennis – the rich publisher who has lived a life as many sins and vices – and of philanthropy.

It is fascinating reading – a modern and relevant piece of poetry, but without the horrible sting of post-modernism.

Life is about being ready for it. Felix Dennis has a particular verse, one the keeps ringing in my head, about being ready for love:

Love came to visit me, shy as a fawn.
But finding me busy, she fled, with the dawn.

You can find the rest of the poem in the book: A Glass Half Full.

Action IS Thinking and Vice Versa

2009-08-19T13:37:00.001+02:00

After a very long time on the road – that emotion kicks in: I am full of humanity. Too many people, too many planes, too many places, too many impressions. I walk the street of my home town, dressed in my nicest suit, strolling along with no particular destination in mind. But things are not the same – my mood is grumpy my mind is not in the Now.

How do I know that I do not project my usual image to the world? My body language is nervous – I check my phone a bit too often. As I walk down the street, the women I pass do not give me their usual, flirtatious looks. When I talk to a friend at a cafe, she breaks eye contact more often than is normal. My voice is not as deep, my speech is just a little too fast. I interrupt others when I talk with them – impatiently waiting for my turn to speak…. I am in other words an annoying and annoyed human being.

I isolate myself. I even put on a movie – alone, a very unusual behavior for me. At this point, most people I know would start rationalizing their grumpy mood. I am no different. But then again, maybe I am – I observe myself doing it now. My history writer, aka: Consciousness, is already busy trying to create a consistent image of what is happening. The only matching story is that my new personality is just a mask – and for some hours I get hauled into the old and bitter ways. The “this is your true self” rings in my ears - “resistance is futile – stop being that new you”. Like a bad friend, History Writer demands much but gives nothing. Creates an illusion of pain to remain in control – taking advantage of my weakness. I force myself to walk, to do the things I like to do. But I feel no pleasure doing them – History Writer wins a battle – Now is lost. For a moment, I feel anger, rage that I am not here. But the war is not over.

I force myself to just do things, even though there is no pleasure in them. I sit at my local cafe with a glass of wine, I small talk with the pretty waitress (while feeling annoyed instead of happy), I chat all night (even when sleep tries to steal me away).

All that time, History Writer blabbers on with it’s incessant chatter – I ignore it. And slowly, History Writer lets go – and there is silence in the head again. The depressive state cannot be maintained. The actions I perform, create no empirical support for the silly story History Writer tries to create. Action is thinking.

I wake up this morning after a deep sleep. I go to find breakfast. The sun shines just like yesterday, but it feels different, somehow warmer. I am in an old pair of jeans and a shirt – but my eyes are beaming again. I go for breakfast and my morning coffee – the Italian girls in the coffee house send their flirting smiles at me – the barista greets me a with a cheer. Nothing on the outside is different than yesterday, it is in many ways worse. But the world acts different, better – thinking is action.

The meaning of life

2009-08-19T01:01:00.001+02:00

"What is the meaning of life?" - the essential, elusive question.

We have plenty of answers (42 is one of them) but very little agreement. Tens of the thousands of years (sorry creationists) man has gazed into the sky, to the ground, to other people, to society, psychology and in desperation, even in dusty old tomes.

Why is it that with so many man-years of study we have not found this meaning?

I believe it is because we are asking a non-question that is fundamentally unanswerable. How can so many people, each with the own agendas, ever assign a common meaning to something as subjective as life? Looking outside yourself is the first misguided step.

So, the meaning of life is subjective (no big surprises there). But when you look inside yourself you hit upon an interesting enlightenment: "If I am the only source of my life's meaning, then which authority defines the answer?"

This leads to the logical conclusion:: "It is up to YOU to create meaning in life". You, and you alone are responsible for meaning and for the creation of the conditions that guide your life.

Daniel Dennett has something quite interesting to say about happiness that I am now pondering over:

"The secret of happiness is to find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it"

Daniel Dennett (TED talks, July 2007)

If we are to create meaning of our own lives, certainly happiness would be a desired property of this meaning.

So, the question is reduced to finding a worthy cause - sounds like a solvable problem.

Be a Man - Be Responsible

2009-08-16T19:40:00.001+02:00

This weekend was a real manly weekend. I ate lots of rare meat, drank quality whisky and caroused with pretty women. To wrap it all up, I spend Sunday applying a very large hammer to break down a brick wall... I even saw GI Joe (very bland, but also typically male movie) All in all - i was very much in touch with what makes us males so well, male-like.

But most importantly, I did the thing that really defines the alfa dog of the pack - I took responsibly. This weekend, it was in the form of learning first aid - kindly taught by another GOD member. It takes so little to learn it, it can make such a huge difference. You could save a life - think about it... Chances are you will never use it - but if you find yourself in a situation where you need it - would you be able to forgive yourself for not spending one day of your life learning how to breathe air into a mortally injured fellow human?

That is one easy move of proactivity!

Don’t Touch (yourself)

2009-07-28T06:27:00.001+02:00

Body language is a strange thing. Some authors I have read claim that more than 60-80% of your face to face communication is mediated through the way you use your body and voice. Considering how much time some of us spend on trying to say something intelligent in a conversation – that is certainly stuff for thought. I have personally had to adjust my body language at lot – and the effects are quite stunning. People are visibly more comfortable around you.

Things bring us to the interesting subject of “bad body habits”. You should build a habit to touch other people more, non-sexually in most cases, while you talk to them. Seduction specialists call this touching of ohers: “Kino”. But ironically, you should not touch your own body while you communicate. Touching your own body can signal many things, but all of them are negative. Furthermore, there are other disadvantages of letting your hands wander on yourself.

There are some pretty obvious habits you want to get rid of – and some not so easy to spot. Here is my short list:

Touch Location	The Problem	The Solution
Eyes	Allergies cause you to scratch you eyes. It helps, for about 10 seconds and then you get an eye infection	Use anti histamine eye drops. These act only locally and you avoid the usual problems with anti-histamine making you tired
Nose	Touching your nose is often interpreted as lack of comfort. To some people and cultures it even signals that you are lying. Don’t even get me started about picking your nose.	If you suffer from allergies, you are out of luck. Keep a napkin handy is my best advise. A stuffed nose can be fixed with a nose spray such as Otrivin and kleenex.
Pockets	Having your hands in your pockets signals either lack of interest or laziness	Practice keeping your body language open. You will find it very hard in the start as you continually curse yourself for not doing it. Keep your wrists visible or your hands along your sides… This will probably feel uncomfortable until you learn it
Chin	Unless you want to sit at a stone and pose as a deep thinker for statues, you are better off letting your head hold itself up	As you practice having you hands at your side or on the table in front you you – this habit will go away. If you frequently find yourself leaning you head on your hands – try leaning back and putting your fingertips together instead – this signals confidence in a conversation.
Groin	Do I need to tell you? Michael Jackson is dead, don’t imitate	Just don’t!
Front of chest	Folding your hands in front of your chest signals defiance and rejection. It is the most closed body language position you can adopt	Hold you hands out wide and show your wrists instead. Like this, you will become much more approachable
Ears	Yuck!	Use a cotton stick in the morning to clear out ear wax if that is your concern.
Scratching in general	I suffer from allergy a lot, scratching is annoying both to me and to people looking at it. It makes your body language very nervous	Carry a small tube of Hydrocortison cream with you and apply it to allergic spots. Don’t overuse it though – it can damage your skin.

How many days do you spend on planning life?

2009-07-15T10:53:00.001+02:00

Here I am at Santorini. Probably one of the most beautiful places on earth. I went here to set new goals. Every goal I set since we started GOD will be reached within the next two weeks. Thank you guys - the support has been awesome.

Here I am then - looking at view that is breathtaking. I have 8 nights reserved to think about where I am heading now. 4 nights have passed so far - and frankly: I am done. When I sit down to think, my thoughts just keep wandering back to the same again and again.

Largely, this is what I want the next year;

- learn how to sing in opera quality (and read notes)
- fine tune my habits and wardrobe. At the end of 2010 I want to have a "stable" habit set that will serve my looks, health and wealth for life - checkpoint is: nothing more to worry about on those fronts)
- keep doing what I do at work
- blog here and share my knowledge. I want to help others achieve what I have reached.

MindGame: up for a series of small blog and and habit change challenges?

8 days is too much - stop thinking, start doing. Reduce the clutter in the head.

More about drinking....

2009-07-10T11:49:00.001+02:00

According to British Journal of Nutrition, drinking sparkling water instead of still water should increase your feeling of being full.

Sounds plausible I guess - some of that CO2 is bound to be released in the stomach - increasing pressure on the belly.... and the calorie intake is the same...

I would have to try it to believe it. Wonder exactly how you test that?

Stop Drinking Calories

2009-07-06T22:41:00.001+02:00

Calories are easy enough to get – the hard thing is getting that “full” feeling in your stomach.

Your feeling of hunger is a combination of several factors. At low levels of blood sugar drops and you feel tired, unfocused and may even feel a desperate urge for food – it is at this point that the body really signals: “Give me food NOW”. But other factors contribute too – and at a much earlier stage.

Have you noticed that chewing gum makes you hungry? When you chew, your mouth produces saliva and it also triggers enzyme production in the stomach. (The saliva also helps clean your teeth and tongue, reducing bad breath – but that is different story). When these processes are triggered in the body, our brain associates the feeling with hunger.

The stomach itself measures how much food you take in. I guess every real man has felt the effects of 200-500 gram of red meat in the stomach. That stuff really makes you feel full. But also notice that the TIME you take to eat affects how full you get, if you eat fast, you can eat more than if you eat slow.

These body systems have probably evolved over millions of years to be a reliable indictor of hunger in a hunter gatherer society where the main diet is meat, berries, nuts and water.

The problem: Have you tried comparing 250g portion of lean, Fillet Steak with 100g of Orange juice? If not, here it is:

Fillet Steak (a good serving): 1800-2000kJ
Orange Juice (About a glass): 360 kJ

Whau!.. Good argument for being a vegetarian you would think, at least to loose weight? But think about this again. How full do you feel after 1 glass of orange juice? How about 6 glasses? And if you work out – the matter gets worse. You need to proteins, they either burn or become muscle mass (good for you).

Now, have a look at a typical 1L of orange juice. Typically, in a good juice, around 20 oranges are used to make it. How would you compare eating 20 oranges with drinking 1L of juice? Personally, I can easily drink 1L of juice over a few hours, but I would be hard pressed to peel and eat 20 oranges.

Don’t even get me started on soft drinks like Coke (450 KJ) or beer (Comparable to orange juice – unless you drink Guinness, which has about twice the calories).

Drinking calories is simply a bad way to control yout hunger. You are giving your body the wrong signals. Nature did not predict soft drinks or pasteurized, easily available fruit juice.

The solution: Stop drinking calories! Always keep fresh water handy. An air tight container in the fridge, bottles of sparkling water and if you live near a large city: Fresh water that does not taste like chlorine. Remember, calories you drink only makes you feel full very shortly. Get a protein bar if you need that emergency sugar kick.

Low fat milk (especially with protein powder after a training session) is the possible exception. Low fat milk today have almost zero calories from fat and typically contain a few gram of protein for every serving. Not too bad. Also, for some reason, milk makes you feel full (have you ever tried drinking one liter really fast?).

I have tried this experiment the last week, and it works very well for me. I find it easier to control my hungers and I feel more full when I DO take in calories.

Introducing the Bad Habit Reduction Blogs

2009-07-05T13:01:00.001+02:00

This weekend, MindGame paid me a visit to celebrate the “end” of my new diet and fitness program. Though I must admit to missing a good glass of wine – I no longer feel the urge to drink or eat unhealthy.

I put this curious fact to the test, by overindulging in food and soft drinks – driving my sugar level through the roof. It turns out that I am simply not able to consume as much sugar and fats as before – I become full and disgusted from it.

Two days of drinking and eating have already brought back some of the old “urges”. Isn’t it curious how quickly we can change our habits? Four weeks it has been, and I have already managed to program my body to dislike fats and sugar – to find a more healthy balance and to build muscle mass. My dopamine receptors still remember the old “overindulgent” life – but only barely so. They are not completely gone though, a few days of “sin” will quickly bring back the old, bad habits. My program is not over, it has just begun.

It is all about habits. MindGame and I have discussed this intensely during the weekend. Living a life of purpose and goodness is about taking things AWAY – not about adding them. Reduce, reduce, reduce.

Get rid of some types of food, get rid of annoying words in your speech, get rid of bad attitudes, eliminate your expectations of the world, get rid of the “History writer”, get rid of superfluous stuff in your apartment… reduce the clutter and start living – get back in the “now” (which we will from now on name: Now (without the quotes, but with uppercase “N”) as opposed to the way we write “now” now)

MindGame and I have identified a lot of bad habits we either have removed or are in the process of removing. So many in fact, that we will start blogging about them – along with advise on how to get rid of them. Look out for the “Bad Habits” tag on this blog.

All good things in life come in units of three

2009-07-02T23:33:00.002+02:00

Sometimes one really has to wonder why some things ever went out of fashion just to become trendy again. Take the three-piece suit, why did that ever go out of fashion? Is there any question that a slim-cut three-piece pinstriped suit or an ultra trendy gray three-piece suit simply adds a touch of class to any man, when worn in the right way? Even the good people of Manila know that!

One thing is for sure, it will really make you stand out from the crowd. But I guess that is the “problem”. They are only for men who want to live by their own standards and who are not afraid to stand out.

Useful Delusion – with a Backfire

2009-07-01T23:32:00.001+02:00

In my previous post I talked about playing the numbers game to find good people in your life.

Even after more than a year of mental training, I still forget to watch out for that nasty side effect of consciousness: The need to tell a consistent history. Remember that the idea that “there is someone in there” is a an illusion (read: Dennet: “Consciousness Explained”). The illusion of “self” is an emergent phenomena from our brains wiring.

Let me explain a bit more: Our brain is receiving a constant flow of information. The processes that create what we call “consciousness” are continuously editing this information – trying to make sense of it. Unfortunately, this “making sense” also include a process that tries to consolidate our experiences with the actions our historical “self” (which is of course, itself an illusion). I have given this “post the fact rationalizing” process a pet name: “my history writer”.

My history writer has been very busy recently. Trying to consolidate events around me with a me-centered universe. Everything has been interpreted as something that directly involves me and has meaning . Sometimes the history writer is so busy that I end up over thinking my own actions before they even happen. The net effect is all to predictable: Inaction and apathy. A vicious cycle of non-action with lots of useless thinking.

I thought that this “small chance game” was a useful illusion. I even started thinking about giving value but only when getting value back. All this is the history writer speaking. This idea that I have some privileged place in the world – that the world, and interaction with other people, lends itself to perfect predictability. I was of course wrong – this was a silly, useless, over-thinking of the problem. I was too much inside my head – instead of out there playing and having fun.

No, the useful illusion is to pretend there is no history writer. To stop thinking that the world is all about me – and to stop demanding I get something back from it. Perhaps there is a free lunch every now and again – I happily accept that. But I have to stop expecting it – I have to stop listening to the history writer who is continually judging the world around me. I loose nothing from not getting anything back – if nothing is returned, there are other to give to.

Again, I have my friends to thank for getting me out of this delusion of self pity and self centeredness. These people, who are just there to support me, demanding nothing and being brutally honest, well knowing that I like them for it.

Week 3 - Workout Status

2009-06-29T19:00:00.001+02:00

Another measurement. I have done 10 workouts and been on the diet for 3 weeks. The results so far:

Weight: 82kg (gain: 3 kg)
Chest: ~~106~~ (see below)
Belly: 90m (loss 1)
Ass at widest: 96cm (loss 2)
Arms: 31cm (gain 1)
Thighs: 55cm (loss 4)
Neck: 41cm (no change)

A new measurement of the chest was done – this time by a another person. There is NO WAY my chest has been 110, or even 108 as originally measured. So we strike this data point: measurement error.

My fitness training log shows a significant improvement in the weights I am able to lift. I will do another picture next week (at the end of the workout) to see if there is a visible improvement.

I have also increased my intake of water – the feeling of dehydration is almost gone.

There is another benefit of the workout and change of diet: My tolerance for fat and sugars has dropped. I have allowed myself one day of sin per week (to avoid my body going into starvation mode). Even on that day, I feel truly disgusted about taking in too much fat. I simply no longer feel like eating unhealthy.

But damn, I miss a glass of wine…

Playing a small chance with a big hope

2009-06-26T13:13:00.001+02:00

Recently, I have found myself in an unusually strong streak of weltschmerz.

This is most strange - since it began with the realization that there truly are women out there that I could imagine spending a lifetime with.

My experience has told me they are rare - very rare. Empirical evidence (own research) suggests that around 1% of the women I date has the potential to become life partners (and that assumes that the timing is right too). I am also realizing that there is no way to tell in advance if you have stumbled on that rare candidate - you just got to give her a chance.

So what is one to do? Play the numbers? I believe that destiny is taken, not given. And that makes dating a numbers game to me. Meeting women (and life partner) requires initiative -I am no rock star.

And herein lies the pain. I grow weary of meeting new people. I am tired of investing time, happiness (I try to remain positive in a conversation), bad sex (yes, women can be bad in bed) and my hope in others.

And this is why I feel weltschmerz. I am wise enough to realize that there is only this path. I must find the energy and play the numbers game.

In a later post : useful delusions?

Week 2 - Workout Status

2009-06-21T11:13:00.001+02:00

I did a new measurement today. I have done 7 workouts and been on the diet for 2 weeks. The results so far:

Weight: 78kg (loss about 1)
Chest: 110 (gain 2)
Belly: 90m (loss 1)
Ass at widest: 96cm (loss 2)
Arms: 30cm (no change)
Thighs: 57cm (loss 2)
Neck: 41cm (no change)

I was actually expecting to see some gain on the arms (I have been able to increase my weight steadily), but looks like only chest has gained size. There is definitely some visible weight loss on the belly.

The program is not working as well as intended, what is going wrong? One guess would be dehydration – I feel an enormous thirst these days – and I think I am not feeding my body enough water. This is something to be corrected for the next 2 weeks.

Morning Ritual

2009-06-18T20:09:00.001+02:00

I have started my detox of email. Today I counted it: I am down to checking work email 5 times and my home email 3 times. Close, but not there yet.

I am beginning to zoom in on my morning ritual and optimize it. Getting the right start of the day makes it close to unnecessary to worry about what how you treat your body the rest of the day. Unless of course, you are on a He-Man diet like me.

Here is where I am heading with my morning chores:

Get out of bed (more about sleep patterns in another blog)
15-30 minutes of yoga training
Prepare oatmeal, eat in front of computer
Shoot up with substances:

Ginseng Root. Panax Ginseng is the type I use. Effects on me: Decrease stress, increase sex drive (even more)
Omega-3 Fat capsule. I am going for Krill Oil next week
Multi Vitamin – Contains 100% of required daily dosage of pretty much everything that has been clinically tested to work. Tastes like monkey urine. I am thinking about quitting…

Check email and Facebook. Mark items required for follow up
Check nails – cut if needed

Get a good nail cutter, it will last the rest of your life – well worth the money.

Shower

While I shower (and sing in it) I start forming a mental map of where my day is going

Floss, Brush and Shave

Don’t skip flossing. I timed it – it takes about 30 seconds every morning… You deserve it!
I use TheraBreath toothpaste and mouth wash. I used to suffer from bad breath – this cures it. As a side effect, it feels nice in the mouth
I try to focus on the rituals here – thinking about the day while shaving nicks my chin. I have a nasty scar under my nose to prove that men can’t multitask.

Double espresso at my local coffee pimp

Yes, I am an addict and proud of it
This takes me on a small 100m walk, in which the day falls fully in place

Boot up laptop, start working

Mail and Facebook Detox!

2009-06-18T01:25:00.003+02:00

Recently, I have noticed that my brain will often slip off and read my email or just quickly check Facebook. My estimate is that I check mail at least 30 times a day and probably log into Facebook around 10 times… Getting my iPhone set up to check mails has only made this worse.

This bad habit is seriously spoiling my effective time – both at work and in my spare time!

WHAT A WASTE!

So here is the new habit I want to build:

Facebook, check in the morning
Check personal email once in morning and once in the evening, after dinner
Check work email in Morning, at midday (12.00) and at (14.00)

I will not check work email before I log of for the day. There is nothing I can do about the mail anyway, so no reason to leave it lingering.

One of the excuses my brain comes up with, is that I may “forget” to check mail – unless I do it regularly. Quite neurotic isn’t it?

Mail rules are there for a reason. I am getting pretty good at using Outlook to filter mails. Last week, I reconfigured my filters and they have been quite efficient. More about this soon… stay tuned…

Two Pints of Milk, Six Eggs and a Kind Word

2009-06-18T01:12:00.005+02:00

I’m starting to wonder if people really believe that the men and women working at the cash register in supermarkets and elsewhere are vending machines in clothing.

I can’t remember ever having heard a kind personal world spoken to these people. Sure one hears a “thank you” or a “have a nice weekend” spoken to the person behind the cash register at the local supermarket once in a blue moon, but never once have I heard anyone say their names. It is as if people don’t really regard them as whole human beings with mothers, children, feelings or, dare I say it, names. And there really is no excuse, since they all wear name tags.

This simply will not do! Hence I have taken it upon myself to start a new trend. I will from now on always refer to the person who helped me pay for my skimmed milk by name (okay, so I have a milk fetish - shoot me!). No more “have a nice weekend” it’s “thank you, Louise, have a nice weekend”.

If you choose to follow in my footsteps be careful though! Sara, the nice young woman at my local McDonald’s almost ran in to Paul, the manager, the other day just because I said goodbye in a friendly and personal way.

Status: Week 1 of Training Program

2009-06-15T23:58:00.002+02:00

So far, I have been running one week of the Tim Ferriss workout program.

I have done four workouts lasting half an hour each. The program I do is slow reps until breaking point. I do these exercises:

Triceps Kickback
Biceps Curl (45 degree bench)
Hanging Leg Raise
Machine Leg Press
Ab Crunch Machine
Machine Lateral Raise
Machine Lateral Pull
Machine Chest Press

It takes about 30 minutes to do the program, 1 set of each…

The results are pretty stunning, but not what I expected. So far, I have not gained weight, but lost it (1.2Kg). My protein intake is super high – consistently above 100g per day (And sometime even more). So I do not think my muscles are starving for building blocks.

Even though I have lost weight, there is some evidence that I have gained muscle. After every training pass I have been able to life more weight than on the previous pass.

Looking at myself in the mirror, it LOOKS like I have better muscles. There is definitely some weight loss at the belly too and the side abs are beginning to show slightly. And remember this: I have trained for just a bit more than a week.

Next week, I will be doing a new measurement of my arm sizes – to back up the observation with numbers.

By the way, the application: iFitness for iPhone is pretty amazing for tracking your training progress. I highly recommend it

Mission: The Tim Ferriss 4 week Muscle Building Exercise

2009-06-06T09:35:00.003+02:00

I, Schastar, have accepted my first, long term mission.

I expect this mission to get me fully into the “now” by reconnecting with my body and resetting my diet. It is my last “cleanup tasks” before I fully engage in my goal to find companion for life.

I have made a bet with MindGame that will give me extra motivation. The contract I have agreed on is this:

Before:

The before measurements

Weight (according to my WII): 78,9kg
Chest: 108cm
Belly: 91cm
Ass at widest: 98cm
Arms: 30cm
Thighs: 59cm
Neck: 41cm

The before pictures (avert your eyes – IT consultant body coming up)

Training program

Training is done every second day for between 30 and 60 minutes. All exercises are done with just one set.

Each repetition lasts 10 seconds, 5 seconds to raise weight, 5 seconds to lower.

The reps are done until breaking point (i.e. when you cannot do one more)

I will be blogging about the program in the following days.

Diet:

Allowed food:

Eggs (but only the egg whites)
Oatmeal with milk (but only for breakfast)
Beef, Chicken, Fish and Shellfish
Black bread (made of rye) - 3 slices a day
Protein milk shakes
Any fruit and vegetable
Beans and Lentils

Everything else is not allowed. White bread, rice, pasta and other products heavy on carbon hydrate products will be avoided as much as possible.

I will have to drink plenty of water too.

Alcohol is strictly disallowed. The bet with MindGame is lost if just one unit of alcohol is taken in the 4 week period

Length of experiment:

The experiment runs from 5th June to 3rd July

Getting Rid of Stuff – Cleanup Tasks in the Brain

2009-05-31T06:23:00.004+02:00

I just came home from a nice concert by the Eagles (The band that refuses to die). It has dawned to me how much I have lost my “now” recently. My enjoyment of the concert was nowhere optimal – my mind was busy on cleanup tasks.

I will probably blog about “the now” later, but the short story is that your “now” is the feeling of being present in the room and focused on what is happening around you. Obtaining the “now” feeling is crucial to you interaction with other people and for appreciating your own day.

Why have I lost my “"now”? My theory is this: I have kicked off too many activities – my brain is in interrupt mode and I forget to take pleasure in doing the things I do. My mind uses all these activities as and excuse not to be present, my frontal lobes and their planning functions are taking over.

That being said, I have achieved some minor goals lately. I have begun the quest for cleaning up my home. I am preparing for more change.

It really is true that the things you own end up owning you. I have been throwing away stuff to reduce my home the bare minimum. Among the things I threw away or send to eternal storage (my basement):

Lots of cloth that looks bad on me.
- The mere ownership of it might tempt me to if I should find my laundry low one day
My ADSL router
Three pairs of shoes.
- I only have five pairs left
- Call me a bitch – I have a things for shoes
Lots of cables, screws, nails and other misc. stuff that I will probably never need
I sold my old sofa and bought the sofa I always wanted
My old IBM M13 Stealth Black keyboard
- Killed in action (Coffee spill)
- This one goes to the basement, it is a rare item, even when broken

I also did some financial house keeping:

I rerouted my bank transfers so that I automatically save up money every month – this is one of my goals, I am automating it
I paid of my student loan
I quit my land line Internet
- The only cable going into my house is now the power
- 3G broadband is fast enough
- .. and there is one less bill to pay
All my bills, except one, are now automatically paid by the bank
- The single one still annoys me… must fix soon!

Cleaning up things like this is extremely helpful. The brain cycles I normally use for this are now gone. But there is a drawback, once I decide to do such a house cleaning – my brain won’t leave me alone until EVERY task on the list is done. Until that is so, I am loosing my “now”.

Reduce, reduce, reduce… I am very surprised at how little I actually need in my house. Example: My wardrobe is down to this:

10 high quality dress shirts
1 tuxedo
4 suits of varying colour and cut
3 pairs of nice leather shoes
1 pair of trainers
1 pair of sandals (strictly for use on the beach)
2 martial arts pants (for workout)
5 T-shirts
Tons of accessories, put nicely in order in a drawer and tie rack:
- Cufflinks
- Ties
- Handkerchiefs
- Bowtie
- Rings

It has taken me years to find my style, but now that I have found it – shopping has become easy. I encourage everyone reading this to experiment with your style. When people spontaneously give you compliments for the cloth you wear, you know you have it.

With my style pretty much nailed down, it is about time that I take the full consequence and throw away the stuff that does not fit me. I do not plan to extend my wardrobe from now on (ok, maybe one more suit), only replace items that become too worn to use.

I am removing excuses and taking away my dependencies on material goods and money. The only “thing” I invest in, is myself now. When I learn a new skill – no one can take it away from me. Material goods can be lost, and protecting them is just a time sink. Life is short!

Next week, MindGame and I will be starting new missions. Mine will force me back to the present. Your brain is your best friend and your worst enemy – and sometimes you have to force it to change.

I am enjoying one of my last beers for some time – cheers everyone!

Two Posts and an Introduction Late

2009-05-13T22:43:00.021+02:00

Hello, I’m MindGame, and I’m late as always. I would like to call it fashionably late, but frankly that would just be a poor attempt at frame control. The truth is that I’m just one of those people who always gets caught up in something, the thoughts start to flow and I lose all sense of time – I might even start to contemplate why my mind started to wander in the first place, and then time gets really warped. See, there it happened again! Tricky thing the mind, is it not?

I’m 30 years old. That’s what my birth certificate says anyway, although it’s kind of hard to tell because of the coffee stains. At least I hope that they are coffee stains, but one never knows. I’m one of those people who believe passionately that you can be anything you want to be; personally, I just never got around to it. Did I mention that I have a dislike of authority? Apparently the first sentence I uttered on the first day of kinder garden was: “why is there a fence?”, or so I have been told.

I have always had a love of languages and have spoken three almost as far back as I can remember. To be honest, I find any kind of communication fascinating – verbal and nonverbal. It would also be fair to say that I can be quite blunt at times, but in my defense, it’s only when people ask me silly question such as the following: Did you seen the shoes that Carrie wore on yesterdays episode of Sex and the City? And yes, someone did ask me that question at work once.

This brings me to what currently puts food on the table and milk in the fridge. Simply put, I make people experience the extremely unpleasant feeling of not living up to their self-image to such a degree that they donate money to whichever charitable organization that I happen to represent on that day (guilt for hire) - I think management at work refer to it as fund raising. But hey, it’s for a good cause, no really, it is!

Since Schastar, as always, was faster on the trigger then me, I won’t bother mentioning what this blog and G.O.D is all about. You did read the other posts, right?

In short, I'm MindGame, this is our blog and I hope you enjoy it.

Writing as a Natural Extension of the Mind

2009-05-11T21:57:00.002+02:00

I write for myself, not for others.

I used to tell myself that everything I needed to think, could be done quite nicely in the scratchpad inside my head – this is no longer true to me. There are only so many things the human brain can focus on at once.

I used to claim hat my thoughts were clear and well described -that I at any given time knew what I was thinking. This is no longer true to me. Even as my fingers type this sentence, I find myself crystallizing my mind patterns in new ways. The very act of writing creates new thoughts and reorders old ones.

This brings me to one of the most useful skills I have ever learned: 10 finger typing. I used to hate 10 finger typing – thinking it too hard a learning curve for me. Today, I feel happy that I took the time and effort to learn it. The gap between my internal thinking and the words that come out is narrowing. Having mastered 10 finger typing allows me to write different content, not just type the same content at higher speed.

Writing also forces me to make my thoughts accountable. The brain is a very complex machine with many agents screaming for attention. The very fact that we come out anywhere NEAR consistent is an amazing fact. By writing, I am forcing a further alignment of my mental processes – it is method for focusing.

By writing, I make my thoughts eternal – assuming the Internet is around for eternity (unlikely I guess). Anyone in the future can potentially (and quite pretentiously) pick up my focused thoughts of this moment. That puts a certain responsibility on me – another good reason for writing.

Breaking the Glass

2009-05-09T16:38:00.001+02:00

I am sitting here in my comfy chair. Finally a home after almost two weeks in the States. Jet lag has not yet fully kicked in, though the slight confusion is nagging somewhere in the back of my brain.

Airports and large cities do strange things to you. Walking around in the advertisement polluted communities makes me feel like a dirty window has been put in front of my instincts. My critical thinking works overtime to see through the idols, fashion ideal, beautiful hourglass (or in my own case V) shaped bodies and Rolex (tm) watches that are all required for my happiness as a civilized person on this mote of dust hurtling through space. As I walk through this anti-jungle of urban colour schemes, one thing in particular shocks me: It takes a conscious effort for me to see through the sex steaming windows put up by of adverting. Don’t get me wrong, I am ALL ABOUT sex, basic instincts and human nature – I ENJOY being in touch with my primitive instincts.

But here is my concern: I am able to see these buttons being pressed with little, but not zero, effort. Am I unusual in my self insight and reflection – or am I really, as I feel it, a stranger in a strange land of advertising? The numbers speak their own clear language: our consumption, political opinion and even self worth can ALL be swayed by the immense power of marketing.

What will we think a hundred years from now about advertising and marketing as we know it today? “How cool, we found this amazing technology that allows us to manipulate human thinking on a mass scale”… And what did we use it for? To make this world a harder place to live, to discourage rational thinking and play on peoples fears and self image to make money.

No one will save us from the manipulation, it seems to be yet another aspect of human nature – another way to crave power. We must learn to be self sufficient, learn the tools of the skeptic and rely on our inner state to guide us through the web of fear spun by society.

Unless…. Unless we can fight fire with fire, is there a way to turn advertising to a better use?

Introducing Schastar

2009-04-25T17:46:00.001+02:00

Hello everyone. I am Schastar and together with MindGame, I am the founder of G.O.D.

About me:

I feel honored to be in the company of such great colleagues and good friends in my network – my life is a privileged one. I do not watch TV – sorry, too boring. I try not to read tabloid magazines (though I admit to occasionally picking one up when my brain is really fried). Instead, I love philosophy, riddles, new information (including a lot of useless facts), meeting people and other things that teach me about this strange thing called life.

I am in the highly enviable position of having a job that I simply love. It allows me to travel the world, giving me much stimulus. And, I can quite confidently say that I am also pretty good at what I am doing. Somehow, critical thinking and problem solving has always come naturally to me – I make no excuses for blatantly abusing this talent to rise quickly to fame in my industry.

I am 34 years old and the last 1 year has been the most crazy year in my life so far – I have transformed myself. Before my transformation, I felt quite awkward around people – I never really understood the hidden signals people send (thought they expect others to see them) or the mechanism (pardon the choice of words – I am a scientist by heart) of human interaction. But today, it is different.

Through rigorous study and forcing myself into many awkward situations, I have learned how to be comfortable interacting with other people. I have read psychology and negotiation technique. I have studied personality archetypes, body language and human nature. I sought to understand mindsets different than my own – and learn to cherish the differences - or walk away from the really crazy types. And yes, I admit it, I have also tasted the forbidden fruit of game theory – the art of picking up women. In the process, I have become a more sociable being, more tuned to the feelings of others. Though I still makes many social blunders around others – I know how to correct them now and how to improve. I feel comfortable apologizing, giving and receiving compliments and socializing. In other words, I no longer feel clueless or “geeky”.

It wasn’t easy. In the process, I have been doing many strange things. I have met many interesting people (including a good amount of sexy women) - and generally socialized a lot. About a month ago, I decided that I had learned enough and changed enough to feel comfortable and worthy. Yes, there was a social stigma that had to be overcome. We all carry emotional baggage around from our early years. But, unlike most people I have met, I believe it can be dumped and replaced with better behavior.

I feel comfortable around pretty much anyone and can small talk with most people – though I am still picky about the ones I really make sacrifices for. I am fundamentally a “giver” – I love being good to people I like.

The time has come to put my new skills to another use. I am sick and tired of one night stands, single serving friends (see Fight Club) and bickering men and women sucking up my life energy. Fortunately, I have kept (and met) good friends during my transformation – the time has come to pool our resources and improve our life quality together.

During my year of change, I was part of the Gamer community – a pack of men focused on nailing down, once and for all, the secrets of how to charm and seduce women and become successful at meeting other people. It was a useful skill to acquire, but there is more to life than seduction, body language and small talk.

The Gamer community taught me that support from people who dare to challenge each other, really help you learn and develop as a person. But I needed to leave the Gamer community before turning into a pure Casanova. I needed a new way to be challenged and become an even better human being.

With MindGame, I decided to start G.O.D. A small group of people that have similar goals: a balanced life of high quality – based on morals, integrity, honesty and respecting the needs of others.

This is our blog, I bid you welcome and hope our knowledge will be of use to you as well…

Guild Of Dandies Charter

2009-04-25T13:33:00.001+02:00

Goals

GOD exists for the purpose of heightening the happiness, morality and choices in life for its members.
The goal is achieved by improving the five aspects of “the good life” for all members:

Health – Keep in shape and care for your body and looks.

Mind – Study, actively seek out and evaluate new knowledge.

Wealth – Work hard enough so that you may support yourself and your goals in life.

Love – Actively seek out or keep female company and continuously improve the pleasure attained from it.

Friendship – Add value to friends, help them when down and treat them with respect and understanding.

Rules and Behavior of Members

Motivation – GOD members know that their life quality is achieved by focusing on all five aspects of “the good life”.

GOD members must seek to motivate other members with positive thinking.

Knowledge – GOD members seek out, debate and share knowledge with other GOD members.

This knowledge will also be shared on a blog common to all GOD members. (you may currently be viewing this blog0
Every GOD member will have write access to this blog

Monthly Meeting – GOD members meet monthly where they will cook and eat together, share knowledge and debate subjects.

At this monthly gathering members will agree on a group mission to be achieved by all members before next meeting

Personal Missions and goals – At the beginning of each week, every GOD member will set his goals and communicate these to GOD.

GOD members assist each other with their goals.
Assistance may take the form of moral support, debate, instant challenges and missions (see below).

Morals – GOD members must strive to live by a moral code.

The moral code should be stated to the other GOD members.
GOD members must be willing to debate their moral code and receive input from other members on it.
A GOD member may change his moral code after careful deliberation – his reasons for doing so should of course be debated with other members
If the moral code of a member is defensible, other GOD members must respect and support it, even though their own codes may be different.

Debates – GOD members shall actively seek out debate with one another about the methods, purposes and goals of GOD.

No subject is off limit for these debates.
Debates should be carried out with irony, fun and the purpose of mutual learning.
Ad Hominem argumentation is forbidden in debates.
Debates in GOD will be conducted with good manners.

Instant Challenges –Any GOD member may challenge another member to perform an act.

The act may not violate guild rules or values.
The challenge can only be issued when in the company of the challenged.
The challenge should be stated in such a way that it can be carried out within 15 minutes.
No matter the outcome of the challenge – the challenger must always provide positive feedback to the challenge taker.

Missions – As part of his weekly goals, a GOD member may create a mission for himself or accept one issued by other member

GOD members are expected to suggest missions to each other, using their knowledge of the aspects to assist with the goal.
GOD members should do their utmost the accept missions from other members.
Missions should seek to bring the GOD member out of his comfort zone and challenge his skills in living “the good life”.

Member requirements

Membership is restricted to males

Females may attend guild meetings by invitation from any members and accompanied by that member

GOD does not dictate member values. However, only members who already hold these values to be self evident are allowed into GOD:

Honesty – always tell the truth, even when harmful.
Curiosity – Seek out new information every day.
Respect – show respect towards strangers and treat them well.

Unless they have earned contempt through their actions or words.

Members must be able to both speak, read and write English.
Members must be atheists – GOD does not have the time, nor the patience, to deal with superstition

G.O.D. is here!

2009-04-25T13:21:00.001+02:00

Hello everyone. The blog site for our little community - the Guild Of Dandies – is now online.

We are a small group of men, currently three of us, that have decided to help each other improve our life quality. This is done through an information society which we have named Guild Of Dandies – after the old gentlemen of Victorian times and the French revolution. Dandyism is about living the aesthetical life and improving ones mind and life style.

The members will be blogging here at somewhat regular intervals – sharing our insights, frustrations, musing and experiences.

Next post: Our charter…