Sometimes, a few words is all it takes to express a thought.

No more. No less.

When you don’t know what to do, or write, a few words is always better than none.

When you feel bad or start going down a negative thought spiral, shift your focus.

This is something I do regularly. I did it today because I was in a bad mood. When I catch myself being negative, and  I don’t want to stay in that state,  I shift my focus.

To do that ask different questions.

I like to focus on the beauty of mundane things. Of the simple things we take for granted. The smile of a stranger, the feeling of warm sunlight, silence. Shifting focus towards appreciating these simple everyday things is much more fun. The speed at which you state changes is impressive.

What are those little things you take for granted?

What is something you could appreciate right now, if you wanted to?

Remember, your focus is controlled by questions. If you don’t like your focus, change your questions. It’s in your control.

Here are a couple changes of perspective I found interesting:

Half your stuff is below average

If you write one hundred books half of your books will be below average. Always. Mathematically, you can’t make everything perfect every time you do it. You can only strive to improve.

How long is a billion?

How much is a million? How about a billion? If one second is one number, how long is a million? Take a guess. It’s over eleven days long, counting non stop. Now, how about a billion? How long is that? Three-hundred days? A year? Two years? Ten?
No. In fact, a billion seconds is over thirty-two years. Thirty-two ! Do you know how long that is? I know I can’t. I haven’t even lived twenty. I can only imagine. And that is only assuming you count one number a second. If you were actually to count to a billion it would take you longer. Try saying this in a second: four hundred seventy-five million, two hundred thirty-one thousand, nine hundred and sixty-six. Now try saying the number sequential to that.

We often underestimate how big numbers really are. After all they’re just numbers on paper or a screen. But when you try putting them to a scale you can feel, then you appreciate it for what it is.

They won’t remember YOU

When you die the world will continue one as if nothing happened. A couple people will morn, maybe more. In time they will forget and die too. The people they told stories of you to will soon forget and die. With time you will disappear. And it will be as if you never existed. Maybe your name will linger, at best a couple pieces of work. But, they too, in time, will disappear.  Think about it. What do you know of those that lived two thousand years ago? What happened in year 521? Who do you know from then? Do you even care? Probably not. What about 1900. It’s a lot closer. What about the year before you were born? Do you really care? It’s the same with those around you. How many have lived before you? How many do you know? Some you hear of through their works, mostly incomplete, some only by their names. Your person will be forgotten. Only what you do might linger a little bit. Seeking to be remembered is a futile goal. Living while you can is much better one.

Have you ever done anything where you kept talking yourself out of it or had a negative self-talk tape that was running, keeping you from staying focused on where you wanted to go?

Today I’ll show you how I keep these thoughts out of my head and focus on what I want.

When I run, I occasionally do intensive sessions and try to beat previous times. During these sessions you want to go faster and keep going, but at some point your body starts saying it’s hard and wants to stop. You push through it, because you know your body starts whining long before it’s actually attained its limits. But when it’s the mind that starts complaining, what do you do? I know my mind is starting to complain when my focus and attention start wandering and make me think about the meal I had a couple hours ago, or start worrying about some future improbable event, or it starts questioning the utility of what I’m doing.

How do I deal with this and get back on track?

I focus on my desired outcome. Say I’m 2 kilometers in and I’ve got 3 more to go. I’m not going to focus on the finish line. I focus on a point just beyond where I am. A concrete step I can clearly see, not some abstract notion of a finish line I cannot see. Even though I know there is a finish line, it doesn’t help to focus on that. You can’t see the progress if you move one meter compared to five thousand. But a meter in relation to ten is something you can see and feel.

So to keep your focus on your main desired outcome, decompose that outcome into smaller steps. And each time you achieve one step, reward yourself  for having achieved yet another one. Then focus on the next step immediately. If you repeat this long enough, before long you’ll be at the finish line.

When you focus on a concrete thing you can do, your brain doesn’t have space to distract you. I just can’t. When it starts drifting, it will always drift at some point, you simply bring your focus back to your mini goal.

Essentially you are creating mini challenges to achieve a bigger one. Don’t focus too much on the end goal. Focus rather on the steps that will get you there.

The brain is amazing. Perception is everything. What I see over there is actually in here, in my head. Everything I perceive is in my head. Every experience I ever have, is in my head. However exterior an event may seem, it’s all happening inside of me.

Every emotion, every reality. Everyone is the same. A creator of worlds. We imagine scenarios in our head. Fear is imagined. As Sadhguru said, we make horror movies. And they’re not making money. Nobody is willing to watch them. That’s not good for the producer. Make love movies. Enjoy it. Choose to make a love movie instead of a horror movie. Make one you enjoy at the very least. Why spend time watching something you don’t like?

I know nothing. I don’t know what I want to do. How’s my life gonna turn out? There are so many expectations. You finish high school and you’re supposed to know what you want to do for the rest of your life. You’re supposed to have it all figured out. You go to college and you keep asking yourself what am I supposed to do? Is this a good choice? When you look at people around you, they seem to have it all figured out. But not you, you’re lost, you don’t have a clue. You don’t have it all figured out. You start thinking something’s wrong with you.

You see everybody’s PRed version of themselves, the face they want you to see. The happy stuff, the fun stuff. You see it everywhere and start thinking it’s supposed to be all rosy all the time. But that is not the case for you. You live with yourself 24/7/365. You see your struggles that no one else sees, you feel how overwhelming it can be. You know it’s not rosy all the time. You’re comparing yourself to everybody else’s highlights, and then you expect to feel good? How can you even think to compete? You can’t. Stop comparing.

Your perception of the world around you is that everything is supposed to be fine. Society sets expectations, you’re supposed to follow. But you disagree. Some rules are plain stupid. You’re constantly told what to do, how to behave, what to think, and how to look. But what if that’s not you? What if you disagree?

What if you want to try something, unusual? Something a bit risky? Uncertain? Do you do it? Or do you stay where you are knowing it’s safe, contenting yourself with mediocre or average the rest of your life?

Cut the expectations and make your own, test them and adjust. Don’t gobble up expectations made up by other people, often people who lived centuries ago.

No one knows everything. Everybody is trying to figure it out as best they can. The world around you was made by people no smarter that you. You can affect it. You can change it.

Stop feeling bad because you compare yourself to others. Don’t. Most people probably experience a version of what you are experiencing. Be careful what you focus on.

I believe life is meant to be experienced and that you are here to make memories. Because at the end of the day, memories last and they make great stories.

Short-term pleasure is not often what is most profitable in the long-term. Usually it is easier to give in to the easy thing and have the instant gratification and chemical discharges that makes it feel good. This is what I call the Ultimate Challenge of Human Nature.

We often choose the path of least resistance, meaning we choose and do the things that are the easiest and avoid what is difficult or requires effort.  This has some evolutionary advantages, because it keeps us safe. We keep going back to the same seat in class, because we’ve been there before, we know what it’s like. We take the same path to go from A to B, because that path is sure and tested.

But often, short-term rewards keeps us from achieving our goals, and sabotages our work. Like checking social media or email, instead of working. While delayed gratification is beneficial in the long-term. Passing over distractions to get our important stuff done.

Here’s a good question to answer when faced with a choice between instant gratification and delayed gratification:

Would you rather be satisfied right now, and not remember this in a week, or, would you rather have to work for it, wait for it, anticipate it, experience it, have a vivid memory of the best parts and remember it for the rest of your life?

Which one is easiest? The first.

Which one feels good in the short term? The first.

Which one is more demanding and potentially painful in the short-term? The second.

Which one do you remember? The second.

Were you put on this Earth to have it easy all the time? Is life supposed to be a smooth ride?

So what will it be? Working on your goals and making memories or instant gratification and no memories?

• What is a thought?
• What is a dream?
• Can you record dreams?
• Can you perceive things beyond your senses?
• What is consciousness?
• What is a memory?
• Can you read a persons brain after he dies?
• What does belief do to the brain?
• How do you feel?
• Can you create new senses?
• Why does color have a feeling?
• How can you reflect upon a thought?
• What is spirituality?
• Can you perceive someone else’s world?
• How far can virtual reality go?
• How much of our brain can we actually leverage?
• How does thought affect our surroundings?
• Can you cure a disease by making someone believe he’s cured?
• How do you tap into your unconscious?
• What does boredom do to the brain?
• How do you tap into creativity?

Habits and routines, the automatic thought patterns you have are important. You can choose to consciously create them and have them serve you. These are precious tools and must not be left to chance. I have been particularly interested in morning routines and figuring out my own. I believe everyone has a unique one and that copying the routine of someone else without adapting it is foolish.

Here I’ll be giving some examples from my own morning routine and showing how it has evolved and how I have changed it. It will continue to evolve. I am in no way recommending you do what I do. I do however recommend a morning routine.

Morning routines I find give you some predictability in your everyday life and allow you to prime yourself. To get yourself started and plant ideas in your mind and build small disciplines, and thought patterns that you can build off of. Since you wake up everyday, waking up is a powerful cue you can use to implement the habit loop: cue-action-reward.

My routine is mostly centered on the mind. I am shaping how my mind works so that it can in turn shape me. It is a process.

Here is what my routine looks like as of the writing of this article.

• Alarm goes off.
• I stop it.
• Lay on my back a few moments and assess how I’m feeling. Feel the inevitable Resistance and push through it.
• Make my bed.
• Take a cold shower.
• 5 J-curls.
• 10 minutes of meditation.
• Write 3 things I’m grateful for.
• Note my bed and wake times.
• Write two morning pages.
• Write a blog post.
• Have breakfast.

This has gone through a lot of change and I’m constantly experimenting with it. I have found some consistent elements that I will always do my best to integrate. Those are: Getting out of bed quickly. Making my bed. The cold shower. Meditation. Gratitude.

Everything I do I do it for a particular reason. Usually it is for mental discipline and mental strength.

Getting out of bed quickly, has the use of stopping procrastination and making me get things done.

Making my bed. This I’ve been doing for a while, but then I saw this video where Admiral McRaven explains the psychology of doing it and I integrated it as an integral part of my routine.

The cold shower, though it has great physical benefits, it wakes you up in a way that’s unimaginable if you’ve never done it, is mostly something I do for what it represents to me: If you can’t do something uncomfortable for two or three minutes in your day, how can you ever expect to do anything uncomfortable for any longer.

Every time I go to take it, every single time, I have that little voice that says, “come on, is this necessary?”And every time I reduce the amount of time between that question and me getting under the water. Sometimes I let that feeling linger, knowing very well that I’m going to take the shower anyway. It’s fun to observe how you feel.

Meditation serves to calm my mind and help me focus. Learning to keep away distractions. Observing thoughts and dismissing them, or looking into ones that are of interest. This has been one of the most interesting elements of my routine. I highly recommend it.

Gratitude is to get me to focus on what I am grateful for. I do my best not to say the same thing over and over again. It’s like a muscle; the more you train it the stronger it gets. It also primes me into having positive thoughts and focus on the good instead of only perceiving the bad.

I’ve also experimented with over a year of doing 100 push ups right before my cold shower. That was something special. First getting to do the 100 then doing them repeatedly, every day, whatever I was feeling. I could do them in however many steps as I wanted, but I had to do them. This element I regarded of great value in terms of mental discipline and pushing through Resistance; that force that wants to stop you from doing what you want to do. The satisfaction of pushing through and beating Resistance every time you finish the 100 is very valuable. It has the added benefit of building up your strength and muscles. As of the writing of this article I have stopped doing this. I had experimented with it sufficiently and wanted to try out other elements in my routine, to figure out what works best for me.

Writing morning pages, is something I’m doing that is quite fun. It consists of writing two pages of whatever comes to mind. And I call it continuous writing because I force myself to write continuously even If I think I have nothing to say. You’d be surprised what you can write when you force yourself to write. Even when you have nothing to write, just write “I don’t know what to write”, or “this is getting weird”.

I believe my mind is my greatest asset and that I must train it to do what I want. This mental discipline is precious. When you tell people that you do 100 pushups every morning they look at you like your amazing and have superpowers. This is nice for your ego, but they only see the number. You see the work that you put into getting there, what it represents and the discipline you had build to get there.

Everything in this routine was built incrementally. I didn’t wake up one day and say, as of now on I’m gonna, get up on time, do 100 push ups, take a cold shower, meditate and be grateful. I woke up one day and said, I want to get up when the alarm goes of. Then another day, I said I want to be able to do 100 push ups every day, because it sounds cool. So I started by doing 20 every morning and increased that by 5 every week, until I reached 60 and though I wasn’t getting there quick enough so incremented by 10. I didn’t start with 10 minutes of meditation. I started with 5. I experimented with 7, 10, 15, 20. I found that 10 works well for me. And don’t even think for a second that I got to doing cold showers just like that. It was painful getting to do it. But the reward is worth so much more than the effort needed to get there.

What I’m getting at here is that there is no fixed routine that works for everybody. You make your own. I have no Idea what my routine is gonna look like in a year. But, I can guess some elements will still be there. I pick things up from other people and try it out. It’s a good idea to keep experimenting with it. Routines set you up for the day and get you rolling. And as it’s been said:

The way we spend our day, is how we spend our lives. —Annie Dillard

Now I’m trying to get into setting up an evening routine, and I’m going through the struggles of being consistent. If you want to start something, you need easy steps and time. What does your routine look like? What has worked for you? Go ahead and start something and do it every morning. Try it for 30 days and if it doesn’t work for you, you can always go back to what you were doing before.

I like experimenting with new things. On walks I take in the evening I started trying this thing when I come to a straight line. I know it is a straight path. I see it before me. Then I close my eyes, and keep walking. I’ve done this a couple times and each time I notice something new each time and discover what I can do with my senses and how I react when faced with new situations. There are some surprising similarities with everyday life.

At first, I have a feeling of ease. “This is easy, all I have to do is keep going forward.” Then a sense of disorientation sets in: “Am I drifting to the left or the right?” I start worrying trying to correct my perceived errors.

Unmistakingly, every time I feel I’m going a little too much to the left, I end up on the right of the path in a matter of steps, without even noticing my drifting. And vice versa.

I go back home and think about it.

Then next time I go take my evening walk, I repeat the same thing. After I open my eyes, I look where I want to go, close my eyes, focus on where I want to go, and keep walking. I maintain this focus for a couple seconds before another sense of disorientation arises and overwhelms me. I am focusing too much on what I’m used to: my sight; of which I am deprived. I’m so used to using my eyes that I forget I even have other senses.

After realising this, I decide to focus on my other senses. Which, after a little thought is the obvious thing to do. Though, when we are used to certain ways of doing things we can easily overlook the obvious.

So, now, I feel the ground through my shoes. Hear the surrounding noises and soft crickets singing. I smell the fresh air. I can even taste the saliva in my mouth. How different the world seems when you consider your other senses.

The path makes a particular crunching sound as my shoes land on the ground. A regular pattern of soft slow steps. I wouldn’t want to hurt myself by barging into some obstacle.

It’s a weird sensation to know there is no obstacle yet still be scared to hit something. Despite you telling yourself there is no obstacle  it takes a bit of persistence to overcome this instinctive fear. That fear never really disappears but stays in a corner of your mind, to keep you safe. It’s what I do about it that changes. I don’t let it stop me.

By paying more attention to my other senses, I can feel with my feet when I am at the edge of the path and correct my position without much effort. I can listen to the surrounding wildlife to give me my relative position. If a bird is on a branch chirping I can hear the noise moving, indicating that I am moving. I don’t have exceptional senses, and I rarely use them, but the feeling I got when realising I could use my senses quite accurately to orient myself was very interesting and reassuring.

Then I came to the lamppost.

With my eyes closes when approaching a source of light, I felt a fear. Like you get if you know some obstacle is coming. Though I know that the light is on the side of the path, I feel drawn to it. It is a distraction from my path. The first couple times I came to this lamppost I was distracted and was drawn to it. Then I was able to stop where I was. Assess the situation and keep on going walking the path. It took a bit of practice, but it is doable.

Every time now, that I start getting disorientated, I stop. I feel with my senses, assess my position, acknowledge the distraction and keep on trucking. It came to a point where I could confidently walk past the lamppost without deviating from my path.

I find this is a great metaphor for life. The path is our life’s path. We cannot see it. But we know it’s there. There is always fear and instinctual reactions to unknown situations that are rarely of any real danger. We often are distracted. But we can learn and practice staying focused and keep on trucking. I still have to deal with distractions every day, but I get better at doing it, the more I do it.

How does walking your path feel?

A constant struggle with yourself. How do you start? Do I do it or not? Is it a good idea? How do I write something of value to others? Well you have to start with stories from your own life. And you have to leverage the power of necessity. Well, you say,  that’s easy to say. It is. Here’s how you can do it.

Starting

The hardest part is starting.

Well, if truth be said, that’s a half-truth. It can be extremely hard to start, because we perceive the start as some giant task. I want to write a book, make a movie, become a professional photographer. It seems daunting.

The way to overcome this is to make starting something low-risk and make it very easy to do.

Write one word on a piece of paper. Just one. It starts with one. Can you do that? Any word?

Film one scene, or shot, it can be one second or less.

Take one picture. Only one.

Put on your running shoes. Just do that.

Dissect your goal into it’s most basic component and go do that. One step. One thing. The hard part is not starting, once you understand that starting, actually, only means doing the most basic element of your goal. The hard part is being consistent, following through and showing up again and again.

Leveraging Necessity

To facilitate that, you don’t want to have to make a decision as whether or not to do it every time. Because inevitably, it’s human nature, you will quit the moment it becomes hard and you don’t feel like it. So, rather, you make it something that is necessary.

Necessity breeds action in ways that you can’t imagine. That’s the power of deadlines. You have to get it done by that time or date you set and you don’t have a choice of putting it off.

For instance these 30 days of daily posts are just that. A structure that forces me to write stuff. It doesn’t matter that what I’m writing is good. What matters is that I’m writing stuff. Making content. If I write enough my writing is going to get better over time. I’ll be more effective at it.

You need to do. I need to do. To practice. To make. That is the only way you are ever going to get to where you want.

Do.

So create deadlines and structures that force you to put out content. The quality of the content is not as important as the act of creating. This forces production, reduces the fear of performance because you don’t care whether what you do is good. You simply care that you put in the work, and showed up.

This is something I struggle with every day. This is what Steven Pressfield, in The War of Art, calls Resistance.

Force yourself to create and you will improve because that is the only way you will. Force yourself to create and you will be forced to improve because you will learn to be concise and more efficient. That is how journalists become journalists. They must write something every day. A story. Anything. But it has to be done.

Make deadlines for yourself. Realize your future self will not be more likely to take action than you are willing to take right now. Force your future self’s hand. Get him to produce.

Start a 30 day trial, a daily challenge. Force yourself to create. Do that one simple thing and repeat it for 30 days. See how better off you’ll be. Go ahead do it. Plan. Execute.

How to ask questions? This is the sort of mindset I adopt when I have a question.

Short version:

1. Have a question.
2. Ask your question.

Long version:

1. Have a question.
2. Realise that your question could help other people.
3. Be willing to look a little foolish in the eyes of people who’s opinions don’t matters to you.
4. Recognise that the worst case scenario is generally for the other person to say NO.
5. Recognise the other person always has a choice as whether or not to answer.
6. Be prepared to hear a no, and not get your question answered.
7. Muster up the courage to ask.
8. Recognise that the longer you ponder whether to ask or not the less likely you are to ask, and that while you do that you are wasting your precious time.
9. Recognise that asking  a question is never as bad as you imagined it would be. And that your perception of great risk usually dissipates once you ask.
10. If you catch yourself pondering whether to ask or not, ask immediately or forget your question altogether, continue listening or move on.
11. Ask.
12. Listen.
13. Thank the person for answering, and or respect the person’s choice not to answer.

Today’s post is going to be a bit awkward. It’s parts of the two morning pages I wrote just this morning and that I found pleasant to write. There is no purpose or clear story but it shows how weird my mind can flow if I let it associate and do it’s thing without any restrictions, maybe some fun images will spring into your mind and give you some inspiration.

I put in links that made me think of specific things you could go check out. Oh and just because there is two times the same word linked doesn’t mean it’s the same link.

Twinkle breakfast dreaming sunset. Craving caving braving bathing seething stool. Pool. table billard. Billiard Billion Milliard Million. Trillion Quintillion. Octillion, frenzy Feynman technique. Image creation crafting paper dalmatians in salvation army crenelations of sinew fortifications.

Of all creativity, imagination is the best tool at your disposal. Free singing and gift giving. Care giving and wish singing birds in the green blue horizon of summerset hall to christen a baby of Tringamur Djin in flyby mode after jetlag space. These words of randomness, association, sounds, are pleasing to write and hopefully pleasing to read. Sing a song, sing along in your tong with your tongue and tang around while we dance the hell out of yee all. Pang yang and ying jingle in the jungle of my mind. In the jumble of my mind there’s a jungle jingling just like that. Can you hear it?

A soft roll of Rs ruffling rosey red rafters right, loosely lit lightbulbs left, while whistling white wayward women on writing stories. Rub a dub step in rosemary glasses, chicken ’em in twinkles of dingo crap flowers. In these melodies I hear in my mind that seem to flow forward onto the pressed paper through my straight stylus. Sylvie Sylvia a forest of trees, a forest of thoughts in a forest of people. Purple paper people pressed in paper places of patterned candle chandeliers and chocolate interspaces.

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to do something, say, speak to someone, but then somehow convinced yourself you’d do it later when you got back in 5 minutes? Well, I have many times. And have you noticed that somehow, almost every time, that person isn’t where you left them after 5 minutes, or is gone or is talking with someone else and so you don’t go talk to them?

I get this often. I procrastinate on acting on an opportunity just to find out that later the opportunity has vanished. In fact, this happened to me so many times that I now pay real close attention to these kind of situation, to the thought patterns they elicit.

I’ve even experimented with recognising my thoughts in these situations and intentionally not doing anything and moving on, to see if when I came back I still had the opportunity to do what I had wanted to do moments ago.

For example I was once running on a Saturday morning and I saw this man on a hammock with a sleeping bag. It intrigued me and I wanted to ask the man what he was doing. I didn’t, but recognised that I was debating whether to do it or not. I kept on running. And lo and behold, minutes later when I passed by the same path, the man and his hammock was gone. My opportunity to ask him what he was doing disappeared.

Through enough of these observations, with consistent results, I’ve come to the conclusion that every opportunity I have is unique and that if I don’t take it while I can, I can be 100% sure that I will never again have the same opportunity. Realising this has been a source of much more effective action. I know this is common sense, but knowing something is not the same thing as feeling it and acting on it.

How many times have you said you’d do something later and never done it? How many times have you wanted to do something and rationalised your way out of doing it, only to find out you can’t even do it anymore?

If I want to do something that is dependant on external situations and I want to act, I tell myself that I have to do it now or not do it at all. Because the opportunity I have now is unique and I will never have the same exact conditions in my life. This may seem extreme but it is a fact that every situation is unique. Why would you waste your time, your most precious resource, procrastinating on something you can do now and not have to deal with later? I often tell myself that my future self will want to deal with it. But that is just me misleading myself. My future self will deal with it in the same way I deal with it now.

So when you want to do something and the opportunity to do it is here, do it now, act!

Opportunity doesn’t wait for you to be ready, it’s now of never, later is too late, she’ll be gone.

As I’m writing this I’m asking myself what I should write about. But there is no should. I can write about what I want.

Here is an interesting experience I have occasionally when driving. I got my licence at 18 and have driven around a fair amount. When driving alone, at some point I have this realisation and weird feeling: “I can kill myself just by turning the wheel.” Now to be clear I don’t want to kill myself, but when that kind of thought comes up in your mind, it’s weird.

You realise how fleeting everything is. How fragile it is. There is this morbid curiosity of what if? What if I tried? What if I turned the wheel to see what happens? All I have to do is drive into another car head on and the impact would surely kill me. But that would kill someone else. And what if you didn’t kill yourself?

But then … I don’t want to do it, because if I do it’ll probably be the last thing I ever do, and that isn’t something I want. You appreciate what you have more when you realise just how fast it can all go away.

It’s terrifying and deeply calming at the same time. You have this feeling of control but then you realise everyone else can have the same thoughts as you and you are grateful for what you have.

A phrase I often hear is: “If it were easy everybody would do it”. You have probably heard it and even said it, I know I did. I no longer say it. Here’s why.

I disagree and I believe it doesn’t serve us. Not everyone would do it if it were easy.

It is not because something is easy that everyone will do it. I first came across this idea when reading The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson.

From what I understand this sentence is often used to imply it’s opposite, that is: “If it is hard not everybody will do it”. We say this to explain why so few people do the hard things. Many motivational speakers employ this phrase.

But we don’t say it directly. Rather we prefer to use it’s opposite, implying the direct version, without ever stopping to consider if what we are saying is even true.

If something is easy to do it is often also easy not to do, if not easier.

To be sure we’re on the same page, the definition for easy that I am using is that something is easy if it requires little effort to do.

If it is easy to clean your dish when you put it in the sink, it is also easy to leave that dish in the sink, go do something else and let the dishes accumulate.

Inaction is often easier than action. Even if that action is easy to perform. It is easy to eat an apple for a snack. But how many of us actually do it? Thus, saying that if it were easy everybody would do it, is totally false and underlines at worst a lack of thought as to what one says and a lack of understanding of human nature and at best a mere repetition of some phrase we heard somewhere without thinking about what it meant and decided to repeat it, further increasing the chance we’d hear it again.

So now, understanding the nuance, I feel an obligation to say what I mean. The power of words must not be underestimated. The ordering in a sentence, the syntax, is also important. We all know that “The dog bit Johnny” and “Johnny bit the dog” don’t mean the same thing, especially for Johnny, despite there being the same exact words in the two sentences.

Saying that if it were easy everyone would do it, though initially  intended to show the recipient of this phrase that what is hard is not done by everyone and that it takes work to achieve what is hard, ends up misleading people.

If I start believing that everyone will do something if it is easy, then when I don’t do something that is considered easy or that I find easy I will feel bad. Or inadequate. I could beat myself up over the fact that I can’t do something easy.

All this of course is non-sense because the initial proposition that generated this is incorrect. We neglect to address the fact that easy things are also easy not to do. Meaning that many people will actually prefer not to do it because it is easier not to than to do it.

We could benefit from keeping this in mind more often. And recognising that there are no single big moment that lead to success, but only an accumulation of little disciplines and choices. Many of which are easy to do and easy not to do. The choices you make repeatedly over time are the ones that will determine your outcome. Being aware of this is a first step to getting where you want.

I have to make a commitment. I want to tell stories. I want to learn how to write. It’s gonna take time. I have to start. So I’m committing to 30 days of daily posts on this blog. I intend to do it for longer than 30 days but I need to start somewhere. So 30 days it is.

One post every day, first thing in the morning incorporated into my morning routine.

I think I have nothing to say, but the fact is I do. I can write about anything and everything. The only thing I need is to write. To get used to the deadline and be forced to create.

The format is daily blog posts. I have to find a way to produce. Whether it is good or not is irrelevant. What matters is that I do something instead of thinking about someday doing it. I am writing for myself and want to make stuff. I want things to be perfect from the start but they can’t. That’s not how things work. You make, you remake, modify, scrap the idea, start again, make, remake and iterate until you die. And along the way some ideas may stick and produce results while other may not. What matters isn’t the result it’s the process of getting there. My process is to create. So now it’s time to cut the bull shit and start making.

Here are the values I hold dear to my heart. If you wish to figure out your own values you can check out my post on How To Discover Your Values.

I have them written out in two different ways. The first illustrates the core value and all the sub-values I put in the same general category. Then I have my values detailed into actionable values; my way of making the values more meaningful.

Values

1. GROWTH: Continuous Learning, Curiosity, Understanding, Improvement, Personal Development
2. DISCIPLINE: Self-control, Self-knowledge, Health, Simplicity, Diligence, Freedom, Patience, Ambition
3. LOVE: Play, Kindness, Compassion, Generosity, Courage, Vulnerability, Brutal Honesty, Trust
4. CONTRIBUTION: Helping Others, Altruism, Creating Value, Giving, Sharing, Teaching
5. TRANQUILITY: Peace, Mindfulness, Clarity, Stoicism
6. ADVENTURE: Discovery, Novelty, Exploration
7. PROSPERITY: Wealth, Abundantly enjoying the rewards of life.
8. JUSTICE: Respect, Fairness, Equity, Integrity, Truth

Actionable Values

1. GROWTH: Stretch continuously. Learn with passionate curiosity. Constantly seek to become your better self. Assume humility and Ignorance when in doubt. Remember Ygritte’s words: “You know nothing Jon Snow.”

2. DISCIPLINE: Master Thyself, Know Thyself. T’is the only way to be free. Neglect neither body nor soul. Stay true to yourself.

3. LOVE: Give abundantly and without restraint. Love unconditionally and compassionately. Remain Playful Cheerful and have Fun. You will only pass this way once.

4. CONTRIBUTION: Act in the best interest of others. Give, Share, Help, create value. Be selfless.

5. TRANQUILITY: There are things you can control and there are things you cannot control. Learn to tell the two apart. Accept that which you cannot control; Act upon that which you can. Remember the effects of Time. Remember Death.

6. ADVENTURE: Seek new horizons. Discover, wonder and wander. Meander. Lose yourself. Get lost.

7. PROSPERITY: Abundantly enjoy the rewards of life.

8. JUSTICE: Treat all with Respect, Fairness, Equity and Justice.

Values are a great way of gaining much needed clarity in this information age. They  can help you make better decisions by sifting through all the clutter and getting to what is important quickly. In this post I’ll be showing you how to determine which values are most important to you, how to prioritise them and how to make them actionable.

This is the way I discovered My Values. It’s a tested and proven method that’s been used again and again by people at different times. It is a process that if done thoughtfully can lead to many insights into what is truly important in your life. If understanding yourself is important to you, going through this exercise will be well worth the effort needed to do it.

What are your values?

The first step to determining which values are most important for you is to understand what values are. I see values as guidelines. They are principles you live by, standards to which you hold yourself accountable. They embody certain characteristics or feelings and your ideal self would have. They are a something you strive for. Benjamin Franklin had a list of 13 values he would strive to embody and he used them to correct course constantly. Your values are like a compass in that sense, they help you get to where you want to go.

Now that we understand what values are, let’s get into the nitty gritty of it all : Actually figuring out what your values are.

You’re going to need an overview of the major values that exist. You can use the Values List, I published last time. It isn’t exhaustive but it’s a fairly good place to start.

What you are going to do is to pick out the values that stick out the most to you. To do this you can take a sheet of paper and jot down the values that stick out, or simply copy/paste the whole list into a text file and sort through the values there. The ones where you think, “hey, that’s me”, or “this is really important to me”, are the ones you should mark. (Use color, bolding or anything else to fit your needs and preferences)

I prefer the copy/paste method as it allows for greater flexibility in moving the words around and grouping synonyms.

Once you’ve gone through the list you, should have noticed that many values are similar or fit into the same category. I’ll call these clusters of values. These clusters of similar values will help you later on when you get on to fleshing out your values.

Now do your best to get down to ten or twelve clusters of similar values. You can have more, if you want. Personally eight works well for me. Eliminate the least important ones, if you are having trouble deciding which ones to get rid of.

Once you have a general idea of the main groups, you want to find a value and make it the head of the group. That would be your core value.

Say I have a cluster of values I judge to be similar: Learning, Curiosity, Understanding, Growth, Improvement, Humility.

I find Growth summarises this cluster fairly well. Thus Growth would be the core value, of the cluster composed of Growth, Learning, Curiosity, Understanding, Improvement, Humility. A core value can be all by itself in a cluster.

Once all your core values are detailed you might have something like this:

• Growth: Learning, Curiosity, Understanding, Improvement
• Discipline: Self-control, Efficiency, Freedom, Diligence
• Love: Play, Kindness, Compassion, Generosity, Courage
• …

Now that you have determined which values seem the most important to you, it’s time to prioritise them.

Prioritisation

Prioritisation can seem particularly difficult, even though it is quite straight forward. It’s all a matter of how you do it. Let me walk you through it.

Since you have about 10 values are going to compare them and see which ones are most important.

Say you have the following list:

• Growth
• Health
• Love
• Contribution
• Tranquility
• Prosperity
• Discipline
• Justice
• Dependability
• Adventure

Take the first item and the list and compare it to the others. For instance Growth might be more important than Health to you, so now you know that Growth > Health. Now you check Growth against Love. Which one is more important? Sometimes it might be tricky to determine which one is more important. In that case you have to ask questions. If you had to choose, which one would you pick? If you could only live with one which one would you discard? It might help to imagine an example to facilitate the decision. This is where the synonyms you wrote down before come in handy. Would you prefer always learning new things, improving and understanding, or would you rather have a life filled with love, compassion, intimacy? This is a personal choice. For the sake of the example let’s say Growth > Love. And, you also happen to think that Love > Health. So now you have by order of priority Growth > Love > Health. You go through this entire list this way, and before you know it you’re done. It’s pretty straight forward.

Once you’re done you should have a pretty accurate overview of what your core values are, by order of priority. Now it time to get a little more practical.

Making values actionable

Now there are a couple more steps you can take to make these values meaningful and practical.

By themselves this list you have made is quite nice to have, but frankly it’s only a list of words. It’s not very exciting, and you can’t do much with them. The values aren’t very actionable, they are simple nouns, they aren’t verbs. Things that you can act upon easily.

So lets verbify these nouns ! (yes, this isn’t an error auto-correct, verbify is now a new word)

It’s up to you to explain your value to yourself, and give yourself guidelines, things you can act upon. Define the value. What does it mean to you? What do these words represent? What can you do to embody them?

Here are some examples of my actionable values.

Growth: Stretch continuously. Learn with passionate curiosity. Assume humility and ignorance when in doubt. You know only that you know nothing. Remember Ygritte’s words: “You know nothing Jon Snow”.

Discipline: Master thyself, Know thyself. Be true to yourself. T’is the only way to be free.

Love: Give abundantly and without restraint. Love unconditionally and compassionately. Remain playful, cheerful and have fun. You’ve only got this life.

A word of warning, when I first tried this exercise I simply copied the values of the person I was learning this exercise from, as did not want to go through the mental work needed to come up with my own meanings and wording. That was frustrating and not very effective. I even felt it didn’t work very well. It wasn’t until I actually, honestly gave myself a shot at doing it that I felt a difference and a great satisfaction.

Constant Reminders

I believe it is very powerful to remind yourself frequently of what is important to you. So to do that I hung a sheet of paper on a wall at my desk and wrote my values on it. Now whatever I do I have them in the corner of my eye.

It also allow for fine tuning. As sometimes, especially at the beginning, I would find that the ordering wasn’t that precise and need to be changed.

Changing Values

Change is ever-present in our lives. We always evolve. We always change. You are not the same person you were 5 years ago, nor are you exactly the same as you were yesterday. As you change so will your values.

The advantage of seeing your values all the time allows you to feel when there is something that is bugging you. For instance, when I first set up my values, Contribution kept bugging me. It didn’t feel right the way I had prioritised it. I let it be for a couple days, and the feeling persisted, after two weeks, I sat down, thought about it and realised it was more important to me that I had thought at the time.  I also felt that Health and Discipline could actually fit in the same general category. So I decided to just integrate Health into Discipline.

These are normal changes that will come. When you have a feeling that is bugging you, or something just doesn’t feel that right, investigate. You might find something interesting and add clarity to your values.

You may also decide to focus more on specific values or may even find that something that was important to you now may be totally unimportant to you in a few months or years.

After this long post, I want to thank you for hanging in there. I really recommend this exercise. The clarity and insights you gain on yourself and what is important to you is very valuable and will help you become your better self.

If you would like an examples you can look at My Personal Values.

If you haven’t yet started, go ahead, here’s the List of Values.

Knowing your core values, your most important ones will help guide you and help you make better decisions, that are aligned with who you are.

This list is here to aid you in Discovering Your Values.

Simply copy or print the values and go through them, marking the ones that resonate with you, then order them by priority.

Pick out the ones that stand out to you the most. The ones where you think “Hey, that’s me”. You might find some of these values to be negatives, it doesn’t matter. What you want is to find your core values.

Keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive. If you come up with values that are important to you but absent from the list, by all means add it. You will find that some of these values are synonyms or fit into the same category. That will help you later on when defining your values clearly.

Values:

• Abundance
• Acceptance
• Accessibility
• Accomplishment
• Accountability
• Accuracy
• Achievement
• Acknowledgement
• Activeness
• Adaptability
• Adoration
• Adroitness
• Advancement
• Adventure
• Affection
• Affluence
• Aggressiveness
• Agility
• Alertness
• Altruism
• Amazement
• Ambition
• Amusement
• Anticipation
• Appreciation
• Approachability
• Approval
• Art
• Articulacy
• Artistry
• Assertiveness
• Assurance
• Attentiveness
• Attractiveness
• Audacity
• Availability
• Awareness
• Awe
• Balance
• Beauty
• Being the best
• Belonging
• Benevolence
• Bliss
• Boldness
• Bravery
• Brilliance
• Buoyancy
• Calmness
• Camaraderie
• Candor
• Capability
• Care
• Carefulness
• Celebrity
• Certainty
• Challenge
• Change
• Charity
• Charm
• Chastity
• Cheerfulness
• Clarity
• Cleanliness
• Clear-mindedness
• Cleverness
• Closeness
• Comfort
• Commitment
• Community
• Compassion
• Competence
• Competition
• Completion
• Composure
• Concentration
• Confidence
• Conformity
• Congruency
• Connection
• Consciousness
• Conservation
• Consistency
• Contentment
• Continuity
• Contribution
• Control
• Conviction
• Conviviality
• Coolness
• Cooperation
• Cordiality
• Correctness
• Country
• Courage
• Courtesy
• Craftiness
• Creativity
• Credibility
• Cunning
• Curiosity
• Daring
• Decisiveness
• Decorum
• Deference
• Delight
• Dependability
• Depth
• Desire
• Determination
• Devotion
• Devoutness
• Dexterity
• Dignity
• Diligence
• Direction
• Directness
• Discipline
• Discovery
• Discretion
• Diversity
• Dominance
• Dreaming
• Drive
• Duty
• Dynamism
• Eagerness
• Ease
• Economy
• Ecstasy
• Education
• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Elation
• Elegance
• Empathy
• Encouragement
• Endurance
• Energy
• Enjoyment
• Entertainment
• Enthusiasm
• Environmentalism
• Ethics
• Euphoria
• Excellence
• Excitement
• Exhilaration
• Expectancy
• Expediency
• Experience
• Expertise
• Exploration
• Expressiveness
• Extravagance
• Extroversion
• Exuberance
• Fairness
• Faith
• Fame
• Family
• Fascination
• Fashion
• Fearlessness
• Ferocity
• Fidelity
• Fierceness
• Financial independence
• Firmness
• Fitness
• Flexibility
• Flow
• Fluency
• Focus
• Fortitude
• Frankness
• Freedom
• Friendliness
• Friendship
• Frugality
• Fun
• Gallantry
• Generosity
• Gentility
• Giving
• Grace
• Gratitude
• Gregariousness
• Growth
• Guidance
• Happiness
• Harmony
• Health
• Heart
• Helpfulness
• Heroism
• Holiness
• Honesty
• Honor
• Hopefulness
• Hospitality
• Humility
• Humor
• Hygiene
• Imagination
• Impact
• Impartiality
• Independence
• Individuality
• Industry
• Influence
• Ingenuity
• Inquisitiveness
• Insightfulness
• Inspiration
• Integrity
• Intellect
• Intelligence
• Intensity
• Intimacy
• Intrepidness
• Introspection
• Introversion
• Intuition
• Intuitiveness
• Inventiveness
• Investing
• Involvement
• Joy
• Judiciousness
• Justice
• Keenness
• Kindness
• Knowledge
• Leadership
• Learning
• Liberation
• Liberty
• Lightness
• Liveliness
• Logic
• Longevity
• Love
• Loyalty
• Majesty
• Making a difference
• Marriage
• Mastery
• Maturity
• Meaning
• Meekness
• Mellowness
• Meticulousness
• Mindfulness
• Modesty
• Motivation
• Mysteriousness
• Nature
• Neatness
• Nerve
• Noncomformity
• Obedience
• Open-mindedness
• Openness
• Optimism
• Order
• Organization
• Originality
• Outdoors
• Outlandishness
• Outrageousness
• Partnership
• Patience
• Passion
• Peace
• Perceptiveness
• Perfection
• Perkiness
• Perseverance
• Persistence
• Persuasiveness
• Philanthropy
• Piety
• Playfulness
• Pleasantness
• Pleasure
• Poise
• Polish
• Popularity
• Potency
• Power
• Practicality
• Pragmatism
• Precision
• Preparedness
• Presence
• Pride
• Privacy
• Proactivity
• Professionalism
• Prosperity
• Prudence
• Punctuality
• Purity
• Rationality
• Realism
• Reason
• Reasonableness
• Recognition
• Recreation
• Refinement
• Reflection
• Relaxation
• Reliability
• Relief
• Religiousness
• Reputation
• Resilience
• Resolution
• Resolve
• Resourcefulness
• Respect
• Responsibility
• Rest
• Restraint
• Reverence
• Richness
• Rigor
• Sacredness
• Sacrifice
• Sagacity
• Saintliness
• Sanguinity
• Satisfaction
• Science
• Security
• Self-control
• Selflessness
• Self-reliance
• Self-respect
• Sensitivity
• Sensuality
• Serenity
• Service
• Sexiness
• Sexuality
• Sharing
• Shrewdness
• Significance
• Silence
• Silliness
• Simplicity
• Sincerity
• Skillfulness
• Solidarity
• Solitude
• Sophistication
• Soundness
• Speed
• Spirit
• Spirituality
• Spontaneity
• Spunk
• Stability
• Status
• Stealth
• Stillness
• Strength
• Structure
• Success
• Support
• Supremacy
• Surprise
• Sympathy
• Synergy
• Teaching
• Teamwork
• Temperance
• Thankfulness
• Thoroughness
• Thoughtfulness
• Thrift
• Tidiness
• Timeliness
• Traditionalism
• Tranquility
• Transcendence
• Trust
• Trustworthiness
• Truth
• Understanding
• Unflappability
• Uniqueness
• Unity
• Usefulness
• Utility
• Valor
• Variety
• Victory
• Vigor
• Virtue
• Vision
• Vitality
• Vivacity
• Volunteering
• Warmheartedness
• Warmth
• Watchfulness
• Wealth
• Willfulness
• Willingness
• Winning
• Wisdom
• Wittiness
• Wonder
• Worthiness
• Youthfulness
• Zeal

Be sure to read How To Discover Your Values, for a walkthrough of how to use this list to discover your own values.

And if you’re curious, here are My Values.

This list of values is the same Steve Pavlina used to help find and prioritise his values.

Everything we do is a matter of perception. It all depends on how we see things, how we perceive them.

Is it good or bad? Big or small? Safe or dangerous? Comfortable or uncomfortable? This is all done through our senses of the real world around us — our perception.

I marvel at the fact that the thing that controls all this is a squishy organ, trapped in a box, blind and hidden from the world, relying on electrical signals from various sensors to tell it what reality is.

This squishy organ, forever in darkness, is our black box. Both in the sense that it is literally in darkness, and in the sense that it records everything you do (although we can’t access all it records). Our sense of reality comes only through our nervous system, from receptors that are constantly distorted, tricked and only give a representation of reality.

Our senses — what we see, hear, feel, smell, taste — literally give us our “sense” of reality.

This has lead us to say things like “There are as many realities are there are humans”. For everyone’s perceived reality is their reality, although they are just representations of reality.

What one calls blue may in fact be what another would perceive as orange. Yet we have learned to call blue, blue and orange, orange. Communication would otherwise be impossible.

There is one logical observation that follows. Our senses are not perfect. They can be deceived or be faulty. Take for instance this famous experiment. If you have 3 buckets of water. One with cold water, one with hot water, and one with an equal mix of both. If you put one hand in the cold water and the other in the hot water, for a couple seconds, and then, put both hand in the mixed water at the same time you will not feel the same temperature on each hand, although the water is the same temperature. You perceive a difference when there is none.

We have all experiences optical elusions. Have a look at the following image. Is the man looking at you or to the right?

Can we not trust our senses? Is there no way to see reality for what it really is?

How would you feel if you were trapped in a room and everything you were told about reality came from exterior sources. Right now your probably telling yourself you would feel bad or that you wouldn’t accept it. But if that were all you knew you would assume everything was true. That is exactly how we behave in regards to our senses. We assume they are telling the truth. But as we’ve seen, it can be a distorted truth, and have multiple facets.

We have an expression that illustrates how heavily we depend on our senses. You have probably also used it many times, as I know I certainly have: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” “I have to see it with my own eyes, to believe it.”

Yet magicians are known to exploit this to their advantage. Using misdirection. Making a big move to cover a small one. Telling you to look here, when the “magic” is happening there.

One must keep in mind that our senses are all we have to get a sense of reality. We must do with what we have. If you start cursing all you have, you don’t have much left.

Your senses are your only way of assessing the world. One must also keep in mind that what we perceive is not always how things are.

If someone speaks a little harshly to you, do not take it personally, it is much more likely that you don’t perceive everything that is going on. You don’t have the full picture. It is impossible to have the whole picture. It would be too much information for you to handle at once. This person may simply have had a bad experience just before speaking with you.

Everything is perception. No thing or action is inherently good or bad, we are the ones who decide and perceive it to be so. Death can be seen as a curse and something to be afraid of. Or, it can be seen as a natural step in the cycle of life. You can even look forward to death. It is only a matter of how you perceive a thing to be.

It has been wisely said that “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”.

What has helped me best, is recognising that we aren’t perfect and that we are prone to making errors. If I feel bad about something or am angry, I gently remind myself that it’s all a matter of perspective. I am in no way perfect, and I do not mean to say I don’t get angry or ever feel bad. Rather thinking in this way has helped me take things a little less seriously and enjoy things more.

I hope this has helped you in some way.

Understanding how we think is key to taking effective action. In this post I’ll cover how our self-centered attention limits our action and how to go about using this to our advantage.

Everyone at some point thinks they are unique and at the center of the world. This is understandable as all our life we life we’re at the center of our own world, in our body and our mind. We are not, though, at the center of the world. This is like thinking the world is at the center of the solar system. This is why we thought for hundreds of years that we lived in a geocentric system – centered around the Earth. Even after Galileo Galilei, assured us it must be a heliocentric system – centered around the sun. He was tried by the Inquisition for such a belief and accused of heresy. It took many more years for this to be accepted as fact.

We think everything revolves around us. The planets, the moon, the sun. But it simply isn’t true. It is not possible, as everyone is at the center of their own world, and, like us thinks in a similar fashion, that everything revolves around them. If everything revolves around everybody it revolves around nobody.

So, most people are self-absorbed and never even consider you. Most people never pay attention to what you do, most people never will. This is not to be a depressing thought, rather we can see it as a positive thought, helping us take action.

If you hold a coin palmed in you hand and go walk in a mall or among a crowd, you might experience the following thoughts. Since you feel the coin and know it is in your hand, you believe everyone must see the coin and everyone must be looking at you. To you it is self-evident. The coin is in your hand. You are hyperaware of it, and of yourself. Can’t these people see I have something in my hand? No they can’t they are self-absorbed or do not notice you.

You’re hyperawareness about yourself gives you the feeling that you are being watched by many people, when in fact, you are simply being watched by yourself more carefully.

Don’t flatter yourself by thinking everyone would take some of their precious attention and give it to you just like that.

You can do virtually anything and nobody will notice, at most only a few. Of these few they’ll think either that you’re a weird person, at worst they might even say something if so inclined, or they’ll shrug it off and go back to their own egotistical thoughts.

If you have long hair, and you trim and inch, how many people notice it? Not many? How surprising. But my partner didn’t even notice, my colleague at work whom I see every day didn’t even notice. What does it matter? Do you really need someone to brush your ego all the time? Be content with the fact that you notice the difference.

When I explain this to someone and advise them to do something they consider weird in public, they cringe, and act as if everyone were going to see. The truth is most people are too occupied by themselves, their problems, their thoughts, to notice or even care about you. This may seem a bit, crude and insulting, but it is true.

To feel the truth of these words, consider what you do when in public. What do you think about? Are you constantly noticing everybody around you, paying very special attention to their every words, gestures, clothes? Do you not tend to think of yourself?

Do not think you are the only person who does this. It is inherently human. Everyone does it. It also explains why we cherish the attention of others. We don’t get it very often so when we do we enjoy it and it makes us feel good about ourselves. If you want someone to feel special, all you have to do is often to give them some of your attention.

What use is this? How can this help me?

It can help you in the following ways. The next time you want to do something and your excuse is “Well, a lot of people are going to notice”, “I’m going to look funny”, “It’s embarrassing”, it means you are thinking too much of yourself, you think you are super important. Come back down to reality. You’re not. Whatever you might be told, you’re not that special, don’t flatter yourself. Stay humble and recognise this truth and you will be free of the judgement of others, realising it is often only your own judgement you hear. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. This will help you take action. Go ahead and test this out for yourself as a fun little experiment. Do something different, something you deem bizarre and pay attention to the reactions you get around you. The results will be interesting.

Have you ever wondered how to effectively learn something? How to remember something effectively instead of forgetting it 3 days later?

Well in today’s post I’ll be going over a concept introduced by Edgar Dale in 1969 as the Cone of Experience. I’ll be referencing to it as the Cone of Learning, which is basically the same thing.

This Cone of Learning helps us understand how we learn and gives us hints as to how we should utilise this to our advantage. At the end of this post I give you steps you can take to immediately improve your retention and learning abilities. Before we get to that, let’s understand what the Cone of Learning is about.

The Cone Of Learning

After 2 weeks, the amount of information you remember – depending on the kind of stimuli you used to acquire it – is  estimated as follows:

You remember 10 % of all you read. Be it news articles,  books, notes, text books you spent hours reading and re-reading to prepare for a test. That isn’t much. That makes me reconsider reading stuff over and over as an effective learning method.

You remember 20 % of all you hear. Something you heard on the radio, an audiobook, music.

You remember 30 % of all you see. We are visual beings. We constantly use our visual input to assess our environment and thus we tend to remember it better. This could be a landscape you saw. A face. Observing someone doing something.

You remember 50% of all you hear and see. This ties into watching movies, watching someone demonstrating something, watching a presentation, going to a talk, or a seminar, or course.

You remember 70% of what you say. This involves speaking with friends, giving a talk or expressing yourself and explaining things to someone.

You remember 90% of what you do and say. This means doing the thing, simulating an experience in your mind, giving a presentation. This is why we say doing something is such an important part of any learning process. You are actively engaging all your senses when you do something yourself. You have to think about it. It is more demanding cognitively than reading or just listening to something. In the end it is much more rewarding, because you learn it better and remember it better.

The first four parts of the cone all represent passive learning. You are simply reading, hearing, seeing or combining these different inputs. The last two, however, a more effective because they involve active learning. You have to actually do something; you have to think.

This is why reading something over and over generally leads to poor results. Whereas preparing questions and answering them, or explaining a concept or method to somebody generally forces you to reformulate the knowledge and helps you adapt it to what you know. You integrate the knowledge better. This is key to concepts such as active recall and spaced repetition.

I would argue that the percentages given in this cone are actually overestimations. I think we remember less that 50% of visual and auditory input when they are mixed together. After 2 weeks for example, I don’t think I recall 50% of a movie I watched. Sure I could recall a general sense of the story and timeline, the main characters, but saying that I remember 50% of the script would be really impressive, and quite improbable. That said when I watch a movie I do not have the intent of memorising it and remembering it. I seek to appreciate it and immerse myself in the experience the director has created.

Even if the percentages are not correct the underlying message is the same – you learn better if you combine audition and sight. As a general rule, we can safely deduce that the more senses you actively engage the more memorable something will be.

Thus when we want to learn something the best thing we can do is to actively engage as many senses as possible and take action by doing the work. We learn best by doing. That is why apprenticeships were so popular and effective back when books, recordings, movies and the internet weren’t so popular.

Practical Application

So, how are you going to implement this idea to improve your retention and learning?

• Take something you are learning right now, or want to learn.

• How you are learning it? Are you using passive learning or active learning?

• How can you make your learning process more active and engaging?

• Could you explain it to a friend? Could you  help a friend? Can you ask someone to ask you questions on the topic you are learning?

• Come up with at least 3 ideas and start implementing the one you find the easiest to apply right now.

Have you ever been in a situation where you simply wanted to know something, out of curiosity. You have this question you want an answer to. You’ve prepared the question in your head for the last five minutes. All you have to do is ask your question. The teacher/friend/stranger is 10 feet away from you. Oh, but there are people around you. They might think your question is stupid. The teacher might think you question is stupid. You finally decide it’s not worth asking. And, you don’t ask. Then later you regret not having asked.

Today’s post is about overcoming this and simply asking you question. It’s about creating the mindset appropriate to asking questions and getting comfortable doing it.

Questions Aren’t Stupid

First of all, no question is stupid. Not a single one. It may be inappropriate or out of context, but no question is ever stupid. If you kill questions you kill curiosity. 

The Spotlight Effect

OGM, if I ask a question everyone is going to be looking at me ! This is believing you’re always the center of attention, and that you’re every move is watched very carefully. This comes from you being constantly at the center of your own world. It is normal, but you have to recognise that nobody really cares about what you do.

Think about it: When you see other people around you do you watch them very carefully? Do you pay attention to everything they do? Of course you don’t. First of all, it’s not possible to pay attention to everybody. Second, you are often thinking more about yourself and don’t care whether John has a pink sweater, Julie is sleeping or Jessica isn’t paying attention. Everybody does this. If you want to test this and see for yourself, you can do something that is out of the ordinary for you. You will find that few people ever notice, let alone say anything about it.

You’re Not Alone

You’re not the only one who has questions. You asking questions implicitly gives permission to others to do the same. Be a leader, that means going first. It may be awkward, but you’ll be fine. Odds are, you’re not the only one to have the same question. In class, I occasionally get people who come up to me later and thank me for having asked my questions, because they themselves were wondering about the same thing but didn’t have the courage to ask.

The Worst They Can Say Is ‘No’

This is something I learned from my dad. When you want to ask for something, ask for it. The worst they can say is ‘No’. Don’t go over the hundred reasons why you don’t what to ask it? This is the thing I have found to be most practical, because it reduces the risk and puts things into perspective.

When I was little, if I saw a stranger playing with a ball, I would want to play with him. My little brother would want the same exact thing but the difference was that he would go ask if he could play, while I stay put going over reasons not to ask. Almost every time he would end up playing with someone else and I would end up watching because I was scared to go over and play. After, going through this many times and seeing what I was losing, I finally began to ask. It was terrifying but I actually got to play or try something new. Over time this got easy. Now I can go over and ask without, going over a thousand reasons not to act.

If someone is playing with a football and you want to play with them. Go ahead ask. Worst case scenario they will say no. If they say no, no problem just go on doing what you were doing, or ask someone else. However if you ask, it is likely they will say yes. Try it, have fun with it.

Always remember: If you do not ask the answer is always no. Only by asking can the answer be yes. So ask, and don’t apologise for asking. To put it another way if you don’t ask you you have a 0% chance of ‘yes’. If you ask, though, the chance of ‘yes’ increases exponentially.

I hope you got something out of this post. It’s easy to not do anything. If you want something you have to go get it, ask for it or take action. The next time you have a question, remember, the worst they can say is ‘No’.