I've been struggling with this topic the last couple of days and needed to reoriatntate myself as well. I thought I will present my method of how I usually deal with getting my tasks done on a daily basis, what I think is important to look out for.
We also briefly talk about the risks you run into when youre too much on the 'lazy-side' of life as well as finding the right balance between making yourself work but also giving yourself well earned free-time.
This is the first video that I've put in a little more time cutting in some scenes and title-notes. I'm experimenting a bit with that at the moment so I'd like to hear if you guys enjoy seeing a bit more than my face.
I think it just freshens up the mood of watching it and underlines the important topics inbetween so I wanted to try it.
How to learn and master everything in life (theory)
This explains the fundamentals of the learning-process for pretty much any skill you want to aquire. I highly recommend you to watch this if you want to aquire new skillsets and did not yet study this topic.
Keep getting stuck at procrastinating? Are you always planning what to do but just cant get started? You might wanna take a look at this video!
To even further get into this topic, you can read this huge blogentry about it: "Managing huge amounts of work, never getting overwhelmed again, dealing with procrastination"
Understanding the basics of conversation! How to get better at conversation with strangers/friends/..
This can really start to become helpful when you get into a new social circle, making new friends, meeting women (on dates for example) or just in general socializing.
Habits - our number one tool to fulfilling our goals
"I am just not motivated to go to gym"
"I am just not motivated to study"
Do you remember the last time you admired someone for his work-ethic? And you felt like you just did not have that motivation? You just could never get to the same level of determination?
What I'm going to tell you now might seem a bit contradicting, but motivation does not get anything done. All that motivation is is a tool to fire you up. To get you started.
What actually gets things done is habits that are strongly ingrained into our brains.
Nobody that goes to gym every day or studies extra-time on a daily basis has a motivational debate about doing so every time they are going for it.
They just do it. They dont consider a no. Their brain just knows what to do and they go with that. Not doing so would feel weird. And that is exactly, what habits do. They put you on auto-pilot. Execution mode.
The power of habits
If you use habits wisely, you will never again have to debate whether or not you will start with your work. There is no debate about going to gym or studying. There is no debate about practicing for hours. In my opinion, habits is the most powerful tool when it comes to completely transforming your life.
66 Days to form a habit
The newest of studies show that it takes about 66 days to form new habits. Thats exactly the time it takes for your brain to reprogram itself and make something new a part of you. Once youre over this period, you won't forget to get your things done ever, and you won't have to make it a debate. Your brain goes on autopilot.
1 habit at a time
Before we actually go into how you create new habits for yourself, I want to mention that where most people actually fail and I personally still do some times is that they want too much. It can be really tempting to change everything about you at the same time. Who does not want to be good at university, gaming, socializing and everything else they are doing?
One of the key ingredients to master an area is to focus purely on that one area. If you want to change your nature, which you are basically doing by forming new habits or getting rid of bad ones, you will face a brick wall.
You can beat that resistence with alot of willpower, but dont expect to be able to change everything at once. There will be too much resistence and in the end, you will just stay the same.
How to form a habit and the difficulties that most people fail at
The most important rule when you're forming a new habit is consistency. If you want to change as a person, if you want to adopt new values or start a gym-routine, you have to do it right.
My tip: Before you form a new habit, decide if its really worth it for you. Are you really willing to go trough with it for every single day? For about 2 months? Because I'm telling you, it can and it will be hard.
To actually create a habit, there is only one thing you need to do. The most important rule is that you can not skip a single day of your routine. You have to pull through the entire time.
Otherwise, you will not be able to form your habit and you might as well just start over. This is unfortunately where most people fail. Everyone wants to become greater, but they only push it for a week, maybe 2. Then, they become lazy and give up.
When you struggle getting to work on your habit, make sure to remember: Reducing downtime is everything. Stop thinking, start right away!
Once you built your habit, things will be easy
The fact that most people actually give up when they are so close to inhabiting new things is actually really saddening for one paticular reason. Building a habit will cost you incredible amounts of willpower and from day to day, it will be harder to fight your way through that issue.
But the end of the road is, that once your brain learned about that new habit, willpower wont be an issue anymore. Suddenly, that factor fades away.
Do you really think that people that go to gym on a daily basis have this incredible amount of willpower and motivation every time they are going? The trick is that those people built strong habits around it and they just go. Before they can even think about it.
Useful habits to aquire
1) Making a schedule (on a daily basis)
One of the most amazing habits I started to develop in my opinion is to make yourself a schedule for every day of your life. Even when you have a lot of free-time and just want to relax, you can often still find one or two things you should really get done.
You write that on your schedule, and you will get that done. (Example: Doing the dishes, cleaning your room)
2) Getting something done every day - learn to make work a part of your free-time that you enjoy
I really like the idea of this habit. Its something that I started doing when I started doing a schedule for every day. The idea is, that there is always something you can do to work on yourself or something you should be getting done, even if the time you invest is very minimal.
By simply creating a habit of doing at least some amount of work each and every day, I really stopped caring much for 'having to work'.
I dont care anymore if I have to study. I dont care anymore if I have to work on a project. It just became normal. Of course, some days it can be a bit much, but in general, its just part of my every day life, just like sleeping and eating is.
I put my mind to it that every day, thus if I have a huge work-load, its like any other day, just a bit more of the usual. =)
(An example: Before I started going to university, I tried to form a habit of studying an hour each day. I actually went trough with studying about 35 days of maths, each day an hour+. I still pretty much follow this habit of at least using one hour of my day studying or doing something similar. Whats awesome about it? I dont care that I 'have to study'!)
3) Building a gym-routine
This one is obvious. Watch the video if you want to hear my thoughts on it!
4) Cleaning up your room every day - dont let things buckle up
Having a fresh and clean workspace can be incredibly powerful to your performance and motivation to get things started. I used to do this every day and decided to implement this as a habit again.
5) Dont let things buckle up
Not just when it comes to cleaning your room, you should get things done before they buckle up. Create a habit of getting things done as soon as possible. Do the dishes before it will take you an hour to do them. Keep a clean room before you need hours to clean it up. Sort your documents from university on a consistent basis before you have to spend hours on it, missing half of them. Do your payments right away, so you will not forget about doing so! [...]
This will make your life so easy, so sorted and you will feel in complete control over everything. Its also an incredible confidence-booster. I combine this often with my daily-schedule. Writing down the couple of things I need to get done before they buckle up and then just going for it.
6) Observe what others do well and adapt those things
Remember the last blog-entry about Adopting Useful values? If you wanna develop great character traits, learn from other people! Literally everyone will offer you something great that you can learn from.
I have friends that are incredibly good at talking to strangers, I have some that are incredibly generous, some that make you feel absolutely special when youre around them. I try to actively understand how they do that and learn from them.
There is so much you can learn from other people. Stop being so self-centered, let go of your ego and become more than what you are.
7) First comes work, then comes freetime. Build a contrast around free- and worktime
Nowadays, when I'm scrolling the internet, a lot of the times I am asking myself whether or not I could find a better way to spend my time right now.
It is okay to relax, lay back and enjoy your time sometimes. But often times, people start creating a habit of just scrolling the internet for hours, checking twitter every 5 minutes and posting on reddit.
Make sure you dont fall into that category. Develop a sense of time. Give yourself some time to enjoy the internets, but earn that by doing other things like studying before doing so. Practice some stuff you want to improve in, and then start relaxing.
You will love your free-time much more if you actually earned it.
5 ways on how to adapt useful values - become the person that inspires you the most!
Have you ever felt really inspired by a person around you? Or maybe a movie-star? Have you ever felt like you admired the drive for someones competition or the way somebody interacted with people?
Today, we will talk about becoming the person that inspires you. Today, we will talk about how important observation can be for our very own progress.
My number one tip: Difficulties to change? Try this!
1. Becoming the observer - stop being judgemental but use observing as a source of information
One of the key ingredients to becoming a greater self is to become good at observing. Usually, what we as humans tend to do is observing our surroundings. We tend to observe especially people and put labels on them.
A huge step towards your own progress is to stop putting on those labels and instead picking the right values and integrate them into your personality. We dont observe to judge or feel superior, we observe to learn.
2. Learn by the mistakes of other people - use their negativity as a reminder how you want to be different!
In the end, to learn we have to make use of our past experiences wisely. But it is not just us that can teach us such experiences, but other people as well.
The next time you see a person behaving in a rude way, observe what is actually happening. Then, reflect upon yourself. Be brutally honest how you would have dealt with that situation.
If you disagree with how this person handled this situation, think about a better solution.
Now every time in the future as you see someone dealing with difficulty and you disagree with their way of doing so, you can actually use that as a reminder for yourself.
3. Get rolemodels - adapt their great values!
"Good artists copy; great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso There is probably someone out there for you that has already reached what you want to accomplish so badly. Now for you, this means finding that person and learning from your master.
A lot of times, if we want to pursue different areas of life, this will not come down to only one person. In my case, I have several role-models that I try to learn from. A rolemodel can be anyone.
Me personally for example, I am incredibly inspired by Will Smith. The way he talks, moves, the vibe he suggests, his workethic. Another one of my rolemodels is Arnold-Schwarzenegger. Even tho I am not into body-building (I love fitness, but not that much muscle mass :P), I deeply admire his workethic. His sheer determination to get to where he wants, no matter what the price.
And even a close friend of mine is a great rolemodel for me. He has a way of talking to and taking care of the people around him that is very inspiring to me. It is like he has an incredible skill of 'breaking through' to strangers, parents, relatives and so on.
Once we found our rolemodels, we observe and adopt what is useful and make that our own.
4. Reflecting on our weaknesses and using the strength of other people where we lack
We all have our weaknesses. But because we fail, because we experience weakness does not mean we are a failure. We simply acknowledge our weakness and work turn it into a strength.
It is important that we reflect on ourselves. What are really bad values and habits that we are representing? What are we weak at?
Once we identified our weakness, we start looking for what I call 'a master'. A person that represents strength in this area. We observe and learn from our master, until we are able to turn our weakness into a strength.
I used to be really bad at social situations. I was never talking to strangers and felt weird and full of anxiety. I still am not a master of social situations, but im on the road of becoming so. How is that possible? I simply become inspired by people that are great at it and practice becoming that.
5. Impersonate someone else until you become them
It can be very hard to change the way that we are, as our nature suggests us to stay the same. (=A natural way of securing our survival, the logic is 'what kept us alive so far, will work in the future')
A great way to get around that brick-wall that is your mind telling you not to change, is to 'act'. Act as if you were someone else. Actively tell yourself that you are just acting like you were fearless. Acting like you were that person that would absolutely do a thing like that.
You put your everything into it. You give it your all. You train harder than anyone you know and focus your everything on winning. You know you deserve it, you know it deep within you.
Suddenly, one mistake. One tiny coincidence. Gone is your dream. You are facing defeat.
We all know the feeling of defeat. Whether that is losing a match of kickboxing that you dominated half-way through and put your heart and soul into or it is just another starcraft laddergame.
It does not matter what it is, losing rarely makes us feel good.
Sometimes, we put so much into winning that we forget about everything else. When we are so committed on living up to one thing, not achieving that very thing can make us feel completely worthless. We suddenly feel purposeless. Everything that used to have meaning was taken away.
We start questioning what we are actually doing. We start questioning if it is even possible for us to achieve what we are reaching out for. Maybe we are just not good enough. Maybe what we are is just not good enough to work with.
Me personally, I know exactly how that can hurt. How losing can destroy all your confidence in a blink of an eye. Heres more on my experience with competition if you are interested in that: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/481511-my-hyper-competitiveness
"However, losing is a part of life. Unless we learn how to deal with it in the most effective manner, we will never be able to reach our full potential."
When we are losing, we are usually doing so whilst developing some form of skill. Even in the face of a bad grade at an exam. Instead of getting fed up about bad grades, we can use the given information at hand to spot our weaknesses. Once we identify those, we can start working on them.
"Being good at something is very rarely raw talent."
Usually, at the very least, it is a combination of hard work and talent. More often than not, it is just massive amounts of hard work. Repetition over repetition.
A lot of people however have the wrong interpretation of what hard work actually is. Hard work is not just grinding out your activity as much as possible.
Hard work is everything that comes with developing your skills. Hard work is dealing with the obstacle, spending every second - minute and hour giving it your all, as much as it is spending massive amounts of time to develop.
"We will only become greater if we face our pain. The better we do that, the more we can use our pain as our advantage."
I used to see it in myself. I see it in so the people around me. I see it watching professional StarCraft players and I see it watching ordinary people failing at ordinary things.
People get so incredibly frustrated about losing. They are unable to objectively use the information provided to their advantage. They are unable to channel their emotions to their advantage.
I see so many of those, and I see so many of those that are incredibly talented. So close to greatness, but they are missing something. They are missing emotional control. Missing self-control.
But why are they missing self-control? Why do they not have control over their emotions? Why cant they deal with loss better? Did they not try? Do they not work on themselves?
Of course they do. I am sure that most people that are competitive thought about dealing with emotions. Dealing with such downsings.
The reason they are failing is that they dont do it properly. They dont dig deep enough. They did not find the right motivation and they did not pull through with it. Most of those, that fail, have made it work for a day or two. Maybe a week. Maybe a month. But then, they fall back into old patterns.
"Emotional control is hard. It is hard to get, harder to maintain and incredibly hard to master."
But only if we understand our emotions and are able to channel them, we can use them to strengthen us further. To becoming even better as a sideeffect.
We have to understand that our strongest emotions are incredible sources of energy, and that energy can be channeled towards our goals and dreams.
But how do we get control over our emotions? How do I channel them and what does that even do?
Channeling your emotions means that first get control over them, you catch them, redirect them and make them into something else.
Emotions such as disappointment, sorrow or anger can be incredibly powerful. Our emotions can become our greatest source of motivation. A source of motivation to work harder, a source of energy to focus more intensely.
Once we understood that the 'negative' emotions we feel are not neccessarily what they seem to be but they are something to work with to become even better, we can start looking differently at loss.
How to use your emotions to push yourself to new frontiers
Especially in those last few days, I realized that for me, anger is an incredible source of power. I am able to reach a physical potential that I could not have before without motivating myself the right way.
I tried to experiment a bit with emotions in combination with physical excercise.
When I started a workout, I thought about something that was deeply disappointing. I turned that disappointment into anger. I used that anger to push myself harder. When I was about to give up, I reminded myself about this very thing. I tried to channel so much anger into my workout that I pushed myself further than ever before. There was no giving up mentally. I was pushing myself until I broke down and no last pushup was even possible.
And that is exactly, what you need to do with your emotions. Understand that whenever you let your emotions out, you are losing this potential. Whenever you are shouting and complaining, you are losing that energy that you could have converted into something very useful.
Here's another example. Losing in StarCraft:
Oh dear, how I used to get angry over this. StarCraft is probably the number one unforgiving game out there. One mistake can easily cost you a game. And that can be incredibly, incredibly frustarting at times.
I always hated losing. But with StarCraft, I had the worst experiences. Losing was not just losing. It's not easy to describe how much anger and depresssion I felt at times. The most frustrating moments is when you lose a game that you absolutely dominated. When you know you deserve a win but a tiny, stupid mistake makes you lose this hard fought game.
And that is where it starts. You enter what I call "the vicious cycle of anger". You complain, you get angry. Your ego feels threatened. You queue the next game. The fact that you express your anger reinforces your anger. You become sidetracked by emotions. On top of everything you had to deal with before, you now have to deal with frustration as well.
Your focus lessens. You start doing small mistakes, further reinforcing your anger. Your emotional rollercoaster takes upper-hand. Step by step, your performance deteriorates, whilst your anger is growing.
For some people, they quit right there. Others take it so far until they are overwhelmed, crying and depressed. I remember these days. I ended up on my floor, punching my fists so hard at times they would start bleeding. Being so overwhelmed that I would lie on the floor for hours, crying in self-hatred. That's how bad some people take losing.
But as competitors, we have to understand that losing is as much part of competition and our progress as everything else. Emotional control, making the best use of our emotions is a skill that is very rare, but as much part of becoming great as it is to be mechanically or strategically good at something.
The fact that very few people are good at dealing with their emotions should be a motivation for you to become good at it. It should be your motivation to take an edge in life.
If you are one of the few people that can channel bad experiences into energy for something purposeful, that can channel anger into focus, disappointment into motivation, then you will have a huge edge over almost everyone not just in competition, but in life.
For very competitive people, we might have to see losing as part of another game. As you are confronted with the deepest of your emotions, the toughtest of feelings, how good are you at that game? How good are you, where most fail? Are you one of a million that is able to make use of this situation to strengthen yourself? Or are you just another one of these people that fall apart and unable to reach your full potential?
No matter how good and skilled you are at something, even if you are a professional on the higest of levels. If you will not master your emotions, you will not reach your full potential. Think about what you could be able to do if you took all the strength that is in losing.
To win, we need to simply become better than those that compete with us. How do we do that? By making use of everything that we can work with. If we are already on par with their mechanics, mental mastery might be what we need to edge out on them.
3 Steps to controlling your emotions:
1) Make it a purpose.
Understand that mastering your mind and emotions is as much part of the competition as it is being strategically or mechanically better. If you lack in mechanics, you practice your mechanics. If you lack in understanding or strategical thinking, you go ahead and research. If you lack in emotional control? ...Work on it!
2) Channel your emotions
To get not just back to your neutral state but into an even better more deep state of performance, you need to start using your emotions to strengthen your performance. Physical strength can massively profit from emotions like anger, pushing us to not giving up.
However, we can also channel emotions like anger into mental strength by channeling our focus.
The next time you become incredibly angry, understand that it is a waste of energy to let these emotions out in the form that they got to you. Collect them, decide where to channel them and use them to your advantage to reach your full potential for the given moment.
You will realize that once you learn to stop expressing your emotions but rather channeling them, you are often able to reach much better levels of performance than without emotional activity at all.3)
3) Understand that losing provides you with useful information
Losing and failure is probably your number one source of pointing out what to work on next. Sometimes we might be able to realize our weaknesses whilst we are having fun winning. But life is hard and more often than not, we have to face defeat to actually understand our position. If you are able to take out the useful information that losing provides you with, if you are able to embrace your failures and weaknesses and replace them with strengths, you can only grow. If we do not lose, we might never grow.
closing words
I truely hope that some of you competitors out there read this and take this to good use.There is already enough talent wasted by some great competitors that are unable to master this last piece to the puzzle. Dont be part of those that waste their talent, understand that mindset is as much part of your road to success as is every other skill you could think of for your very competition. Thanks for reading, as always, share this blog if you would like to see more of those articles! have a nice day and good luck! Niklas.
Managing huge amounts of work, never getting overwhelmed by sheer amount again and getting over procrastination! -Tips on managing your time and becoming massively productive
Do you know that feeling when you just cant seem to even get started? When there is so much to do that you dont even know where to start? And even if you know what exactly youre supposed to do, you keep pushing it away to the next day, the next week and eventually sometimes you never start?
I think we all have had our fair share of procrastination.
a short story of mine
I remember back in my highschool time (gymnasium) when I would literally never do my homework. It wasnt even that much work, but I just never created a habit to do so. Eventually I would loose grip of most subjects and had to learn everything 1 week prior to an exam.
Dont get me wrong, its important we have room for our hobbies and that we relax at times. But sometimes, we just need to get things done. It actually makes us feel much better when we get our things done and makes our freetime much more valuable. We appreciate the time that we can just relax much more.
Sometimes its hard to understand why we should even try to get our things done. We feel like other people have it 'easier' and are 'smarter' anyways, so we might as well just leave it alone. Or we are just too busy enjoying other things whilst we dont realize the potential fun we could have in getting our things done and succeeding in other areas in life such as school and business. Heres a short personal story of mine,thats when for me, things took a turn:
When I had chemistry in 10th grade, I sucked at it. I just did not study and it didnt come naturally to me. About to get into 11th grade, I went out with something inbetween a D and E (4-5~).
So here I was, 11th grade. Chemistry again. And then there was this new teacher. She was really cute and good looking! (haha :P). So we got this new teacher and with that, I got my fresh start. She seemed like a really nice person, and she truely was. She was really taking effort in what she did and that really inspired me to change.
"I've always felt when people showed their effort in something, I owe them my effort as well."
In the beginning of the year, she asked every single one of us what our goal for this chemistry class was. I sat in front row (prior to that I sat in the last row) and said something along the lines of "Well, I'm going to be honest, I was not the best chemistry-student. I finished last year with really bad grades and my goal is to get a B this year." (B is a 2)
From there on, I tried to focus on the class. When we finished, I quickly recalled what we learned in todays lesson and made sure I got a good bit of grasp of everything. Before the next lesson of chemistry started, I quickly looked into my folder (for like 5-10 minutes) and recalled what we were doing. "Oh yes, thats what we did, right!" Before exams, I did not even have to study. I quickly looked over what we had learned, recalled everything for some minutes and was confident in my knowledge.
And what happened? Suddenly, chemistry was incredibly fun. I understood that I really enjoy being 'good' at something. Being knowledgeable at something was as enjoyable as being the best football-player of the team or something similar.
"I became the best of my class in this course. I went through every exam with an A+ as well as in oral grades. "
I understand that this is not a very groundbreaking achievement. But for me, it teached me something. It teached me a very important lesson.
"If i just put in the time and effort consistently, I will be able to reach my goals. It showed me that it was absolutely possible to change and to reach a level that I've not thought possible before. "
This little achievement might not be very impressive in itself, but relatively speaking, coming from the worst student in a chemistry class to becomingthe very best for an entire year or two - thats what was motivating and impressive to me. It meant change and I suddenly understood opportunity.
Before that time, I thought I was just not clever enough. Not as smart as these other kids. And you know what? Maybe, in many things I am not. But they cant out-work me. And thats my life-principle. Thats my goal.
Just like Will-Smith said:
"The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there's two things: You're getting off first, or I'm going to die. It's really that simple, right?
You're not going to out-work me. It's such a simple, basic concept. The guy who is willing to hustle the most is going to be the guy that just gets that loose ball. The majority of people who aren't getting the places they want or aren't achieving the things that they want in this business is strictly based on hustle. It's strictly based on being out-worked; it's strictly based on missing crucial opportunities. I say all the time if you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready."
"On the day that I reached this little personal success, that was the day I started to believe I could do everything. I am convinced that I can do whatever I want, and all of you reading this can do so too, for as long as we just put in the time, effort and hard work."
How not to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work you have to get done
Managing yourself is not easy, and it most certainly is not easy to know exactly what to do next and what to get done right away or what to postpone.
Let me tell you that I have had this problem, where things were just so much that I could not really find the right ancorpoint to even get started. I asked myself how to fix this problem. If there was a better way, I would find it. And I did.
Here is my tips on how not to get overwhelmed by the work you have to get done, ever!:
Basically, we make use of a concept I started to learn about when I was actively trying to understand the process of learning and mastery a bit more. There is some great books out there about the learning-approach (like the Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin) and many more.
One of the concepts that most of the people that studied learning are familiar with is the concept of 'creating smaller circles'. It is basically a concept of breaking a big issue or topic into smaller chunks.
Now, I used to hate it when people only described concepts and never actually explained how to make use of it. Hence, I will now tell you how I make use of this concept so that you can make use of it too.
Step 1: Start a list of everything that you have to get done.
For me, I am currently preparing a bit for my first exams at college. I have to get projects done for photography and graphics, I have to prepare for maths and computer-science. On behalf of this example, first I listed all the things I had to get done:
-My projects
-finishing excercises for the upcoming week
-going through the entire semester of computer-science
-going through the entire semester of mathmatics
-(...)
You want to make this as precise as possible. Describe what youre actually going to do (the process), not just 'learn maths' or 'finish project'. You want to describe the very process that you have to get done.
Step 2: Prioritizing our list
This is where managing yourself gets a bit more advanced. You dont really need to do this over the simple things you have to get done, but if you really have to manage a lot of stuff, this can make or break you.
I then looked at my list and went through everything that I listed one by one. I knew there was some stuff that I really needed to get done quickly and some stuff that needed less work and attention for now. I sorted my list into priorities:
-My projects*****
-finishing excercises for the upcoming week***
-going through the entire semester of computer-science**
I marked everything with stars. This process is really quick. After that, I basically just re-sorted my list quickly and got something like:
Prio5: (highest priority/amount of stars)
-My projects
-(...)
Prio4:
-(...)
Prio3:
-finishing excercises for the upcoming week
and so futher.
Step 3: Creating lists of your list - 'Chunking your chunks'!
And here comes the true magic. Now, we start to make use even more so of this concept of creating smaller circles. We begin breaking up our list even more.
You only want to do this if the things you described in your list are actually a lot of work. Just skip this process for the smaller stuff.
In my example, I had to get things done like "going through the entire semester of computer-science". That's half a year worth of material. Obviously, thats a "bigger chunk of stuff" to get done.
So now, we start to make chunks here. With everything that we have to understand or remember later on, I create myself what I call a Skill-List.
I dedicate this point of "going through the entire semester of computer-science" its own Skill-List.
My Skill-List will list every single bit of skill or knowledge that I will have to aquire to get this point finished.
I'm writing a list like this:
Skills to aquire:
-able to read pseudocode-notation
-know about UML-diagrams: [here i could describe more precisely what diagrams exactly etc.]
-(...)
the trick is to describe each skill as precise as possible! Only then you will have an incredibly clear idea of what you want to learn and learning is just "fullspeed-mode". You will never ask yourself where to continue, what to do, what not to learn.
You have asked all these questions before. Now its just 'execute' time!
Another big big advantage you get is that when you do lists and chunks like this, you know exactly of your weaknesses and strengths.
Once you understood something completely, you wirte [DONE] behind it. If you sense some problems or need some more clearity, you specify what you need to still look into in the brackets and just go over it again.
sidenote: Writing [DONE] after you finished a chunk does not only help you see what to do next and what you already looked into, it also reinforces your brain positively. It will remind you that you did your work, this will boost your motivation to go further!
Dealing with procrastination
And here we are, one of my favorite topics. How do I actually deal with procrastination? Generally speaking, procrastination is something we all do and here's why:
"Basically, your body does not want to 'work'."
But why is that? Its because our reptile brain is constantly trying to secure our survival. Working on something is exhausting. It relies on either physical or mental ressources that later on - in a life or death situation we will not have available. Thus, our brain is originally programmed to be rather 'lazy' which is basically a process of saving energy for our survival.
Now that we know where this lazyness is coming from and why we do it, how do we break the cycle?
Well, first of all, there is no 'easy fix' for this. Getting your ass up to work will always be something you have to actively force. But I can show you some ways that you will actually get your things done if you have a strong will.
Earlier in this article, I told you about how I never got my things done for school. I never did my homework, tried to let others do the work and so on.
But make no mistake, as I'm telling you even the laziest person gets things done when it matters. It's another part of our survival-instinct. The moment we feel it is absolutely neccessary, our brain is able to kick into work-mode. When we feel threatened by defeat and feel the anxiety flowing through our body - we are suddenly ready to get things done.
Now how can we make use of that knowledge? Is there a way to exploit that?
I asked myself this question for quite a long time and then suddenly, I found a solution that works great for me. The basic idea was that I had to break the usual. As if it was neccessary to do things now!
Let me just give you a little example here. I used to not do any homework, reading or anything else. Only just today, I have done the following:
-The first thing after I got up, I was doing a work-out
-After that, I got my schedule done (this is the magic, will explain in a second!)
-I started studying for 3 hours! (actual hours)
-in between an hour of studying, I was getting things done such as 20 minutes of meditation, 5
minutes of visualization, working out again and similar things
-after I finished studying, I cleaned up my room
-In the evening, I practiced 3 hours of StarCraft 2, which I planned to do as I was unable to play my full 2 hours the day before (I am currently trying to consistently play StarCraft (2 hours a day) from 7-8PM after getting my college-stuff done
-I then took some time off, got some free time with a friend just talking and stuff
-And since more than 2 hours, I'm now writing this blog-entry, as planned for today
I can happily say that I got everything done exactly as I had planned to. There has not been a second that I did not spend the way that I was planning to.
And this is the key, planning.
To become master of your work, you have to schedule it! 2 Steps to get over your procrastination:
Step 1: Creating a list to set up your day
The first thing I do when I get up is creating myself a schedule for the day. Basically, I think about the things that I'm going to do and the things that I need to get done.
Then, I'm thinking about how long those things might take and try to see how much time I can actually plan in for each individual action until the next should be occuring or I have to attend somewhere else.
My list looked something like the following:
-Quick workout (this is to build energy for the day)
-study for X
-study for Y
-study for Z
-inbetween studying:
break 1: 20 min meditation, get some food
break 2: lunch, 5 min visualization
break 3: (...)
7PM StarCraft 2 (~3 hours)
11PM write blogentry
A lot of the times in my studying-breaks I realize I can get some other stuff done as well so I try to do that. The magic to not lose track of starting with your next goal is to not lose track of time. And here it comes:
A Whiteboard can be a cool and effective way to write down a schedule, a skilllist or similar things
Step 2: Breaking your routine, my number one tip to start doing!
Use a timer. The timer is probably one of the most crucial pieces when it comes to getting over procrastination for a lot of people, and most certainly for me. Why can a timer be so helpful?
It comes down to how you use your timer. Basically, what I'm doing is, once I got up out of bed and got my fitness-routine finished, I get started right away. That is mostly a habit as I've worked hard on that for a while now (habits are an extremely powerful topic that we will talk about in the future).
But even if that is not yet a habbit for you, you can still start right away.
The trick to getting things done is
a) minimizing downtime (time between thinking about doing and starting)
b) breaking the course
Now, lets say youre not yet that good at minimizing your downtime as you did not yet inhabit a practice to start right away like I did. Thats totally fine. Now, you want to find a way to break the course.
Usually, you just 'flow' into your day. (Whether thats after work or on a free-day that you want to get things done) Basically, what happens is you just do as you feel. You get some food, relax and at some point you might start doing your work, or not.
But now, we want to start breaking the course. Breaking the course means we want to stop you from flowing and going like your brain would love to. Why? Because your brain wants to be lazy, remember? Saving up energy.
How do we break our course? How do I finally get started with my task?
We make smart use of what we have available. We use our timer and set an alarm. If you tell yourself to get started with a very specific thing in an exact amount of time and put your mind to it, I guarantee you you will get started.
That is also part of the reason why we do need our schedule to be hyper-productive. We break our flow, we break our course. We have specific things to get done at specific times, we break a routine and force our brain to change course.
Not just the sheer knowledge that your brain will associate a change of course with a specific time is going to help you to get started, but also the alarm from the clock itself. The alarm suggests a 'change of course' as it always has for us.
Do you remember the alarm-clock from school? Or the alarm-clock at work? An alarm breaks our moment and tells our brain "Wait a second, theres a change of course!" And for a few seconds, we have the power to decide what this next course will be. (again, minimize downtime and get to work asap!)
Getting to work and getting things done however is all connected to your willpower. And willpower works like a muscle. The more you flex it, the more will it grow. As you grow your willpower-'muscle', you will get better bit by bit when it comes to excercising it. So get started now and remember, every step you take will make it easier for the next time ;)!
When youre just starting out to get your work done, you might be getting back into lazy-mode after an hour. Thats not a big deal! Thats what I used to experience too. What we need to do is just keep going consistently - and step by step we will improve and strengthen our willpower and eventually reach a higher level of control. (However, willpower is quite a topic, so this will be for another day :P)
Closing words
Thank you for reading this incredibly long and time-consuming article. I really hope that you can make use of some of the tips and tricks that I'm offering here.
If you like my work so far, please share and comment this blog! I put a lot of work into writing these articles and I'd really like to hear some of your feedback!
EGO - Understanding the most important concept about ourself.
Ego is the most important topic when it comes to understanding your self. I purposely choose the word 'self' here and you will shortly know why.
What we think about when we hear the word "ego"
"Oh, this guy has a huge ego!", "Oh, he cant let go, it's his ego"
When we hear about the word 'ego', its most frequently used as a word that describes certain behavioral patterns like stubbornness, lack of selflessness and similar behavior.
What if I told you that this word actually describes much more than that. Ego is not just that stubborn part of your personality or that thing that pushes you to not give up.
Ego is the term that describes your actual self
Now, what is a 'self'? A self is everything that is and always has been you. The self is what you think you are, the image that you have of yourself, your values and thoughts. Whatever your name is, think about your name for a second. This very person, this very person that you think you are and everything you associate with it, that is your ego - your self.
"All of that, what you think you are - that is your very self."
Okay, so there is this thing called ego. This thing that I identify with. But why is that so important to understand? What is the big deal about it?
"Because EGO is the cause for all your suffering, pain and anxiety in life."
Once we understood that pain, suffering, hatred, anxiety and anger can only truely exist for as long as our ego exists, we can finally start to adress them.
But why does our Ego do that? Why does it make us suffer? What is the actual problem? Why do we even 'have it'?
Our natural state - before the ego
First of all, I want you to imagine the following. Imagine a world where there is nothing that you would describe as bad. Nothing that you would describe as good. Things just 'are'. This very state is the a state of flow, a state where we dont judge and categorize everything but just accept what is and go with it.
And that is exactly the state that we are naturally born into. There is no such thing as bad or good, no such thing as values, anxiety or anything alike. This is what scientists usually refer to when they talk about lasting happiness. The 'good' happiness. We will talk about the different types of happiness another time in the future
"In our natural state, there is no suffering"
Have you ever heard about meditation? Have you ever heard about Buddhism and a state called enlightenment? On a very abstract level, that's what its all about. Getting back to that very state - our natural state. Total contentment. Becoming one with the world.
Why do I suffer? How did I get here?
Now that we know more about our natural state, we probably ask ourselves 'How does this all happen?' 'How do we get so far off from our natural state and become so judgemental? Why do we feel miserable?
Since we were born, we learn to label everything. We are told what is bad and what is good. We are told what to do and what not to do. We are told what directions we should go in life and learn about
'who we are'. We get a name and become someone we identify with. Someone that develops certain values. Bit by bit, we create our self-image.
We start to understand our strengths and our weaknesses. We craft our ideas and become goal-oriented. And before we know it,
"we are at a state where the world is no more part of us."
Suddenly, there is an internal and external world. There is everything we are - the image we have of ourself - and then there is everything around us. Things are happening around us. Things are happening 'to us', often shaping our self-image even further.
We start to relate to some things as 'good' and some things as 'bad'. Why? Because we start protecting our self-image. We protect our 'values', our goals.
Have you ever thought about what you were doing when you got angry losing? When you felt like you failed?
You became protective. Your ego was threatened. Your self-image was threatened to crumble. And then? You respond. A natural survival instinct. However, you have such a clear image over who you are that you were not protecting your physical existence, you protected the existence of your self-image.
And that is, where all our problems became problems. Once we developed our strong believe-system, we can get hurt. We start to doubt ourselves, become depressed as we can not live up to our self-image. We get angry as we become overprotective of our own values. We isolate our self so much from the 'outside' world that now, everything that threatens our ego becomes our enemy, our problems and fears. And everything that supports our self-image,everything that supports our values and goals - becomes what we would so describe as 'the good' in life.
So how do I get rid of the anxiety, stress, pain and suffering ?
You get rid of your ego. Obviously, that is easier said than done and only very few people have reached such a state in life. But from personal experience, I can tell you that working on shrinking your ego step by step will change your life completely.
Even just the sheer fact that you now (hopefully) have a pretty good understanding of what ego and self-image is and how it makes us suffer means that you can have a more clear and objective approach on life. That is not to underestimate as the knowledge of this can be a huge factor in itself.
What are further steps that I can take to slowly get rid of my suffering, anxieties, stress?
1. Meditation
To get more control over your thoughts (and thus your ego) and start shrinking it extremely, I recommend you to start meditating. I will write another article on that but for now you can read about it somewhere else. There is millions of guides out there.
Basically, what meditation will do is you will get a lot more conciousness about your thoughts. It will make you literally hear what your mind is currently going on about and thus you have a way better chance of catching thoughts and molding 'better' thoughts.
2. Truely understanding what is going on in your mind
Make sure you actually understood this article. Read it twice if you feel you did not quite catch up on everything and make sure to come back and re-read it once in a while. Understand that the emotions and the suffering we feel are a sideproduct of the image we created ourselves.
3. As always, repetition. Remind yourself over and over again
Remind yourself of where all these bad thoughts and all of your suffering comes from. The next time you suffer, remind yourself of this article. Remind yourself of what is actually happening. Remind yourself of what you learned about ego.
Me personally, I find myself that it is of the greatest of importance that I remind myself over and over again. Sometimes, I get off the path, my ego takes upper-hand and I lose control. But whenever I get back to this very topic, I get reminded that all that is happening is that my ego is taking control and suddenly, things look very different.
closing words
As said before, I am not a Zen-Master. But from my personal experience I can tell you that understanding what ego is and getting it under control bit by bit will do groundbreaking work for getting your anxieties, anger, emotions, frustrations and every other bit that keeps making your life miserable under control. You will learn to be more self-less, respectful, peacefull and a lot more.
Oh, and for those StarCraft 2 and competitive gaming fans out there! The next time you experience this:
Remember, the reason you get frustrated is that your self-image gets hurt and your ego tries to protect itself! Try to just go with what is happening. Dont judge whether good or bad, accept that this is part of the flow of life. Downswings happen, upswings do too! :)
Thank you for reading!
I put a lot of work into these articles, so if you like them feel free to show your support by following/subscribing/sharing and commenting! I'm always open for suggestions, new topics, critic and everything else.
Changing your life - How not to do it and 3 ways to get you started the proper way.
Imagine you had control over your emotions and thoughts. Imagine you would get things done like nobody else and you'd enjoy doing so at the same time.
When I first heard about personal development, I saw endless possibility to change. I saw possibility to change what I did not like about myself and create a better version. Whether that was beating my fears and anxieties, replacing my negativity with positivity or becoming more productive and smart about life.
"I asked myself what I truely wanted from life. "
I want to become great. Now becoming great does not neccessarily mean becoming famous and rich. Everyone has their own definition of what greatness is and what they most want to achieve.
For me, I had this picture in my mind of mastering myself. From the first day on that I heard about developing my mind, I was inspired to change so many things.
Getting rid of fears. Shrinking the ego. Controlling emotions. Creating a more positive view on life and ultimately reach a level of lasting happiness. (What exactly I mean by 'ego' and shrinking it will be explained another time)
Think about it. If you could reach a level of relentless contentment, would you try to get there? This idea inspired me.
But not just that, I imagined even more.
Get productive. Have total control over your willpower. Work hard and master your learning process. Learn to manage time and effectively getting things done.
I was so inspired to become that great person that I decided to commit myself to it fully.
However, changing ones self is not easy. Most importantly, we have to understand that there is certain things in our nature that will keep us from doing so.
Our brain is designed to go back to its old state whenever we try to change things. It is trying to get back to its homeostasis state. Basically, what our brain does by that is refusing to take risks. Our system has worked before, which is proven by the fact that we are still alive. This mechanism is trying to secure our survival. If our system kept us alive, the way that it worked, then why change it?
In todays society however, more often than not we dont have to fight for our survival day in and day out. We dedicate our time to working jobs and pursuing happiness. That is pretty much our number one objective. With how the world today works however, our very own nature and survival instincts can be a huge pain holding us back of becoming a greater self.
"Homeostasis will kick in shortly after we try to change our current self. This is where most dreams get shattered."
And that is exactly why I want to tell you a little more about my own path of changing my life. Beating your own nature and reprograming your mind is incredibly hard. Knowing about homeostatis and the fact that your mind is actively working on staying the same however, will give you a huge edge to get where you want to go.
"Making change will take everything you got and more. But it is possible."
Me personally, when I started out, I spread myself too thin. I wanted to become great at my emotions, socializing, body-language, sub-communication, productivity,.. I wanted it all. I wanted to invest into everything. I was just so inspired to change. I wanted it quick.
"One of the biggest issues that our society today has created is its dependency on rapidity."
Food has to be done in minutes, goods have to be shipped within days.
We get used to getting our quick-fix. We are so spoilt over how quick exchange of goods and other things happen these days, that we got used to it.
"We lost the virtue of calmness and patience."
And that is what I ran into. I did too much, and quickly I would hit that homeostasis-wall and would fall back into old patterns.
"If we truely want to change, we need to be willing to do things step by step."
Focusing on for example changing only one habit over changing a dozen at the same time, will give you enough room to not get overwhelmed by the brick-wall that your mind will built up to protect itself.
To sum things up, I want you to focus on one thing at once.
In the upcoming articles, I will explain you in-depth how you can reprogram your mind and build habits to become the person you want to be.
For now, let us get started.
3 Steps to changing your life and getting started the proper way.
1.
The first step is you getting in your own head. I want you to answer the following questions. I suggest to write down the answers, as that will strengthen your vision and motivation towards your goal.
Who is it, that you want to become? How do you imagine yourself, how is that person you want to become? What could you become or achieve if you got to where you want to get?
2.
Answer this honestly. Are you willing to commit to transforming your life? Are you going to punch through the obstacles and not be part of a group of millions of people that tried to change their life but gave up once they hit a wall?
If you answered this with yes, then you need to understand that difficulty is what you will be dealing with a lot. You will have to start embracing difficulty and make it your friend. Once you've successfully done that, all doors will open up for you.
3.
Let us walk this path together, let us create a community of people that share the goal of improving and growing their life. Having a group of people that reinforce you with what you need to stay on track can be one of the most important things to successfully step closer to your goals.
Join our personal growth community, follow the blog and share it with other people.
Get more people inspired to change their life and work on themselves, tell your friends and familiy about this idea and join this idea as a group.
Let us grow together. In the future I will share my thoughts on overcoming procrastination, managing your time, becoming a positive thinker, becoming relentlessly self-confident, getting over your fears, getting you motivated to stay on track, how to deal with difficulty, how to handle stress, building a gym-routine, staying on track with your diets, improving your willpower, creating good and getting rid of bad habits and endless more topics.
I hope some of you will be willing to put in their time and effort to committing themselves to change, as this is one of the greatest things to do and I cant stress enough how amazing the results can be.
Follow, share and comment to support our community! For any questions you can also follow me on https://twitter.com/shocksc2 .
Before I dedicate my time to writing this blog, I want you to get to know me a little better.
who I am
My name is Niklas Zeeb, I'm an ordinary 20 year old student. I currently study computer-science. Besides that, I love working out and learning about myself and life.
What brought me here - my motivation for change
So far so good, but what am I doing here? Why does a 20 year old student suddenly decide to write a blog? And What is this all about?
First of all, I want to tell you a little bit of my life-story. Once you understand the way that I used to look at life, you will also understand the purpose of this blog.
With this blog, I hope to help other people fulfill their expectations when it comes to themselves personally. I hope to keep growing and spread word about working on ones self as in my opinion this is one of the most important things in life and very few people discovered this for themselves.
I want to further teach myself and spread the word about how one can get total control over one's mind. How do I get things done and never forget to do them? How do I stop procrastinating? What is the best approach to understanding how I learn? How can I master myself?
The way our society works today is that we are so focused on all the things that are around us - fast cars, big houses, great jobs, beautiful men and women - that we completely forget about what is going on inside of us.
We completely forget about our own feelings - emotions because everything else seems to be way more important. And to be fair, thats the message our society is trying to communicate, so its very hard to escape that cycle.
Often times as a result we get depressed. Depressed about our live because we dont achieve the things that we think we need so badly. We seek happiness in things like sex,drugs and other external stimula because we became to believe that that is what true happiness is, but once those moments fade away, we feel empty, almost back to depressed.
My personal struggles - how anxiety-disorder destroyed my life
For most of my life, I felt miserably. Not physically, but mentally. At some point I became to undertand that I had a very bad anxiety disorder. I have always felt a bit weird when I was younger, but I thought it was just because I was unexperienced - young - and there was so much ahead of me and it would eventually just fade away.
No. It did not. When I was 18, I was facing the harsh truth. I had a strong social-phobia. I was afraid of stepping outside of the house, as I feared other people watching and judging me.
I felt horribly weird whenever I was not with a close friend or a close companion that I could rely on to take the spotlight. I felt exposed to other people.
Now, having such fears might not sound that big of a deal to some people, but for those that have social anxiety or an anxiety disorder, they will be able to relate to this. Every step you take is accompanied by fear. I remember those days when my mother told me to get some groceries the day after.
For 15 hours, I would be scared shitless. I was going through this scenario in my head. Clearly molding out a story in my mind, where I would park my car, how I would walk, how I would talk, what words I would say and so on.
Rationally speaking, of course this does not make any sense. But a person that deals with this can not just "chill out" or "think less". It was there, it is there, and it was something that still is and especially was holding me back in life a lot.
Everytime I would go out like this, I would be stressed out completely after that. Once I had to do something that I was not completely in my comfort-zone with, I got incredibly scared, my vision got blurry and i got a strong pain in my stomach.
On top of my social anxiety, I was a very negative and depressed person. I was never happy with what I had, always going for more and very rarely showing gatitude. I made a huge deal out of it when even the smallest things went wrong and I usually stressed myself out with everything on my hands. Everything was 'too much to handle', I got depressed a lot and saw negativity where there was something to judge.
What If I told you now that I got to a point where my brain automatically sees the positive in things? Where it literally is looking for a positive aspect of every event that I am experiencing?
What If I told you that I got to a point where my social-anxiety rarely ever appears in my life? Where I live a life in my own small appartment, going out alone to buy groceries and walking through the city - something I thought was impossible for me.
What If I told you that YOU can also start thinking positively, learn something from every event that you experience in YOUR life and grow towards becoming the person that you want to become?
You would probably say that sounds great. And so did I.
At one point in my life, my social anxiety, depression and negativity (and many other problems on top) turned so badly that I had to make a choice. A lot of people would have given up, but for as long as there is a way to change - and I truely believe there always is a way to change - there is no giving up. No matter how hard it would be, I decided to take the hard route and confront my problems and change as a person.
Today, I can proudly say that getting into personal development was the greatest decision I have ever made. I had no clue about this 'niche' and I am very sad about the fact that it is still such a small thing in society.
what we most need to do - take a look inside
Very few people try to live self-actualized lifes even tho the way we look at life is probably the most important component to a happy life. In the end, thats what all is for. Happiness. Thats why you want that fast car, that great job, that huge house, that beautiful lover. Its because you are convinced that those things will make you happy, even if that is just subconciously.
You think youre doing good for yourself pursuing those things, however often times we have to take a look into our mind and be honest about what we see.
Getting into personal development, changing yourself and becoming greater as a person is by no means easy. It probably is the hardest thing you can do. I have never and I will never claim that I am perfect, that I am an expert and a master when it comes to controlling my emotions, throughts and basically my mind. However, I have made progress that in my eyes is absolutely stunning.
Sure, I have invested a lot of time and hard work into this, but its nothing compared to the results that I got. And for me, personally this is very inspiring as I know, I'm only just beginning.
Sometimes these days, as I'm walking around I realize how happy I am. I cant even explain why. I do have a lot of stress in my life due to university, I have appointments and yes, some things go wrong here and there. So did my situation change a lot? No, it did not, I changed.
I decided that I would not let anything outside of my head get inside of there. I decided that I want to live a happy life, a life that I had total control over my mind. Control over working towards my goals as well as my emotions. Gaining control over anger and fears. And that is, what has changed.
And i want YOU to realize this. YOU need to make your own personal decision. What do YOU want in life and how do you get there? And that is exactly what this blog is for. Step by step, I will write about my life, how I approached some of those issues and I sincerely hope that YOU can take something from it. I hope that you will also find the way towards the person that you wish you were.
for your path - making peace
Before I end this first article, I will also note the following. Personal Development and working on yourself does not mean that you will become a person that does not do mistakes. Sooner or later, we all mess up and just so it will happen that you fall into old patterns.
Personal Development can be hard. It can be hard to be the only person thinking differently in a group of people and it can be hard being the only person thinking positive when everyone only sees the negative in a certain situation. And right now, I want to tell you that it is okay to make mistakes.
It is okay if you get off your path.
It is only human for that to happen. So instead of getting overly frustrated about falling back into old patterns, understand what actually happened. You just got reminded of how far you already made it, how different you already became.
Accept that, make peace with that and reorientate towards your goals. In the future, we will talk a lot more about understanding failure and making peace with it, but for now, thats about what I wanted to share.
I hope this sets us all up for a great journey, a journey in which we, together, will create the lifes that we want.
Have an amazing day, see you very soon!
Niklas.
