An author who interviewed 200 world-class performers discovered that 80% perform some sort of meditation/relaxation routine. “Everyone else has an agenda for your time, so if you’re in a reactive mode, if you’re playing defense instead of offense, you’re going to get at best, average results” – he says. In a  general sense, we could say that successful people are mindful about how they spend their time. So not only does it appear that meditation is a common factor among successful people, it even makes sense that it is.

There are also a lot of blogs posts out there about meditation’s supposed benefits. But there’s an agenda from the get-go which is to show how meditation is beneficial. This bias results in only showing hand-picked articles that confirm the idea that meditation is indeed beneficial. Some examples: Liveanddare, HealthLine, PsychologyToday. It might not even be consciously biased.

If you wanted to know whether meditation is good or just a waste of time, you could, for example, google search of “science benefits of meditation”. But this search is already flawed, it will mostly show results that confirm that meditation has scientific benefits.

We’re all looking for simple ways to improve our lives. But being that meditation involves a significant time investment, isn’t it better we know it is being well spent?

So for this article I focused on systematic reviews and meta-analysis (studies that study and summarize the findings of several studies). There are many studies with methodological limitations (shortcomings in the method used to draw conclusions). For example, one problem with many studies is that they don’t account for selection bias. I want to find people for this meditation study I’m doing, and I don’t want them to dropout because that means I have to include more people, and that’s more costly (because I have to pay each person to participate in this). So I go to a meditation group or only recruit people that in the pre-screening reported that they were interested in meditation (so they’re less likely to drop out because they are motivated for reasons other than making a quick buck).

This is were systematic reviews and meta-analysis come in handy, because the authors analyze the quality of the studies and try to compare the findings to see if under similar conditions the results were replicable. In fact, systematic reviews “adhere closely to a set of scientific methods that explicitly aim to limit systematic error (bias), mainly attempting to identify, appraise and synthesize all relevant studies (of whatever design) in order to answer a particular question (or set of questions)” (Petticrew and Roberts,2006). Great!

Findings from Meta-Studies

Mental Health

Let’s get our hands dirty and dive into the scientific meta-studies. The one thing most of what I read had in common is that meditation does appear to have a significant benefit in reducing experienced anxiety and in some cases depression and its relapse. On a systematic review Manzoni et al. (2008) found consistent and significant efficacy of meditation in reducing anxiety. A later review by Chen et al. (2012) however then “(…) demonstrates some efficacy of meditative therapies in reducing anxiety symptoms.” This means that meditation appears to be effective in reducing how anxiety presents itself, but it’s still unclear whether it prevents its onset (as most studies focused on measuring the symptoms only).

Another systematic review by (Gu et al.,2015) identified “strong, consistent evidence for cognitive and emotional reactivity [meaning people who meditate tend to become less reactive to external stimuli, become calmer], moderate and consistent evidence for mindfulness, rumination, and worry, [worry less] and preliminary but insufficient evidence for self-compassion and psychological flexibility.” They end the paper by stating that “Most reviewed mediation studies have several key methodological shortcomings which preclude robust conclusions regarding mediation.” Hence why a lot of studies need to be taken with a grain of skepticism.

Loving kindness meditation systematic review reports that meditation practice “was moderately effective in decreasing self-reported depression, and increasing mindfulness, compassion, and self-compassion against passive controls. Positive emotions were increased against progressive relaxation.” (Galante et al.,2014).

Another systematic review found that “mindfulness meditation improves pain and depression symptoms and quality of life” (Hilton et al.,2017). Mars and Abbey (2017), state “the higher quality studies analyzed in this review have demonstrated replicated statistically significant improvements in spirituality and positive health measures and decreases in depressive relapse, depressive recurrence and psychological distress” for the practice of mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness based therapy is an effective treatment for a variety of psychological problems, and is especially effective for reducing anxiety, depression, and stress (Khoury et al.,2013)

Jacob et al. (2012) on their systematic review stated that the existing studies vary considerably in terms of quality, but on the high quality ones “there appears to be some positive evidence (…) to support the use of Mindfulness Based Therapy for cancer patients and survivors with symptoms of anxiety and depression”

In another review, Piet (2011) found mindfulness based cognitive therapy to be an effective way to prevent relapses in people with major depression.

Mindfulness based cognitive therapy (TEDx Talk by Dr. Zingel, U. Toronto and MBCT website) was designed to help people who suffer repeated bouts of depression and chronic unhappiness. It combines the ideas of cognitive therapy with meditative practices and attitudes based on the cultivation of mindfulness (being consciously aware and accepting of one’s own present state, physical and emotional feelings and surroundings). The heart of this work lies in becoming acquainted with the modes of mind that often characterize mood disorders while simultaneously learning to develop a new relationship to them (basically Cognitive Behavioral Therapy + Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program).

Physical Health

Another systematic review reported that mindfulness meditation “decreases binge eating across a variety of samples; reduces emotional eating for individuals engaging in this behavior” but does not “consistently produce significant weight loss”. (Katterman et al.,2014). However an earlier review found no such effect… “We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight.” (Goyal et al.,2014). Ouch, this one is hard to digest. This same review, though, finds that “Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety, depression, and pain and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health-related quality of life.”

(Gard et al.,2014) “While most studies were small pilot studies, they provide preliminary evidence that a variety of meditation techniques may be able to offset age-related cognitive decline and perhaps even increase cognitive capabilities in older adults.”

Winbush et al., (2007) didn’t find any clear demonstration that mindfulness meditation improves sleep quality and duration.

Even though the findings reviewed provided initial evidence that suggests that meditation could enhance cognitive functions (namely attention, memory and motor functions), this should be considered with caution and further high quality studies are needed (Chiesa et al.,2011).

Black and Slavish (2016) found “possible effects of mindfulness meditation on specific markers of inflammation, cell-mediated immunity, and biological aging” but that the results were still shaky and needed further research.

A systematic review concerning heart disease (Dixhoorn and White, 2005) found usefulness in “supervised relaxation practice as a treatment per se and warrants the inclusion of full relaxation therapy in cardiac rehabilitation, because it enhances recovery from an ischaemic event and it contributes to secondary prevention, independently of the effect of psycho-
education and of exercise.”

Another systematic review evaluated the efficacy of stress reduction programs in patients with elevated blood pressure (Rainforth et al.,2008) and found reductions on the order of -2 to -5 mm Hg for systolic (the higher pressure) and -1 to -3 mm Hg for diastolic (the lower one) pressure for  progressive muscle relaxation, stress management training, and the Transcendental Meditation program, being that the latter one resulted in the highest values.

Findings from individual studies

Systematic reviews and meta analysis are hard to execute and they need a good number of high quality studies analyzing the same things, which limits the number of subjects that get studied by these meta-papers. Because of this I decided to include a few studies concerning other subjects. Three that I find particularly interesting and that weren’t analyzed by the meta-studies is how it impacts the ability to focus, to be creative and how it influences social relationships.

This article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation practice with the integrative body–mind training method shows significantly better attention and control of stress than a similarly chosen control group given relaxation training. (…) Compared with the control group, the experimental group of 40 undergraduate Chinese students given 5 days of 20-min integrative training showed greater improvement in conflict scores on the Attention Network Test, lower anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, and higher vigor on the Profile of Mood States scale, a significant decrease in stress-related cortisol, and an increase in immunoreactivity. (Tang et al., 2007)

One such paper (Davidson and Lutz, 2008) stated that “expert meditators also showed less activation than novices in the amygdala during FA meditation in response to emotional sounds. Activation in this region correlated negatively with hours of practice in life. This finding may support the idea that, advanced levels of concentration are associated with a significant decrease in emotionally reactive behaviors that are incompatible with stability of concentration.” What this means is that the more they found people to meditate the more non-reactive they became to emotional sounds

Meditation appears to have some positive influence on intimate relationships. The findings of a study I found interesting suggest that “couples who are more mindful appear to be more likely to enjoy greater relationship health and stability, and within that, increases in satisfaction and affectionate behavior, as well as greater inter-partner harmony on a range of life issues. Examination of several emotion skill domains in conjunction with mindfulness further suggests that at least one of the avenues to enhanced relationship functioning may be through partners’ more relationally skillful emotion repertoires. We posit that mindfulness puts one in closer contact with one’s own experience relative to the more typical mode of consciousness which, according to Buddhist thinking, is akin to a perpetual state of distraction, if not full-on experiential avoidance.” (Wachs and Cordova,2007). In other words, in mindfulness meditation we practice the act of being conscious of how we are feeling. Thus it does make sense that this results in us becoming more aware of distress feelings that may arise, which in turn enables us, for example, to prevent those feelings of spiraling out of control.

Another study expands on this ideia: “Study 1 found that higher trait mindfulness predicted higher relationship satisfaction and greater capacities to respond constructively to relationship stress. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings. Mindfulness was again shown to relate to relationship satisfaction; then, using a conflict discussion paradigm, trait mindfulness was found to predict lower emotional stress responses and positive pre- and postconflict change in perception of the relationship. State mindfulness was related to better communication quality during the discussion” (Branes et al.,2007)

To end, I also stumbled upon another study that suggests that meditation improves creativity: “These findings lend support to the notion that mindfulness involves cultivation of a “beginner’s mind”, and demonstrate that mindfulness practice reduces cognitive rigidity via the tendency to overlook simple novel solutions to a situation due to rigid and repetitive thought patterns formed through experience. [that is, improves creativity]. (…) The present findings coincide with previous findings in which meditators outperformed non-meditators in tasks such as verbal fluency, and visual perspective switching, in the respect of exhibiting an improved ability to generate varied responses to the same stimuli following mindfulness practice. (…) Our findings additionally converge with findings regarding decreased rumination in the sense of a reduction in repetitive and perseverance negative thoughts.”  (Greenberg et al. 2012)

While these claims are not as convincing as the ones from the systematic reviews, they at least point us to a few possibilities. If nothing else, we may try this and improve the placebo effect.

Meditation vs Relaxation

Maybe meditation is not that much better than simply relaxing. Maybe the reported benefits of meditation come from the fact that you’re sitting down, relaxing, not thinking about your worldly concerns for a few precious moments. If only we could compare both meditation and relaxing… And we can, thanks to a study by Jain et al., (2007).

In this study, they compared a group of people meditating with another group of people simply relaxing. They had four 1.5 hour sessions, spread over four weeks. The exercises included “(…)

• body scan meditation, in which the practitioner focuses attention on each part of the body to notice sensations that arise;
• sitting meditation, where the practice is focusing non-judgmental awareness on whatever arises moment by moment;
• Hatha yoga, where one practices gentle stretching while maintaining attention on subtle movements in the body;
• walking meditation, where one practices walking slowly, with awareness;
• and loving-kindness meditation, where one focuses attention on feelings of caring and love for one’s self and others to cultivate compassionate awareness and action in everyday life.”

The relaxation exercises “[integrate] techniques of autogenic relaxation using the six autogenic phrases used by Schultz,

• progressive muscle relaxation (using tension and release of muscles throughout the body to relax),
• simple breathing techniques (such as simple diaphragmatic breathing and breathing with counting),
• and guided imagery to give a comprehensive course on stress reduction via a focus on bodily relaxation.”

It concludes that “both meditation and relaxation groups experienced significant decreases in distress as well as increases in positive mood states over time, compared with the control group. There were no significant differences between meditation and relaxation on distress and positive mood states over time.” They continue by saying the effect was significant in terms of distress reduction for both but that the meditation group showed a larger effect size for positive states of mind than relaxation”.

In a way, meditation is basically relaxing without ruminative thoughts. If we think of meditation as an improved for of relaxation, and being that relaxation in itself is self-evident to be healthy, then it becomes obvious that meditations needs to, at least, borrow some of the benefits from simply relaxing.

Meditation as a Form to Improve Awareness

Sometimes, your body is too unsettled to sit and focus your mind. When this happens, externalizing your focus can be very helpful, e.g, focus on a repetitive task, like dish washing, shampooing your hair, brushing your teeth, etc. Here it’s important to make a distinction. We frequently read the words mindfulness and meditation together, but they can exist also separate. Mindfulness is just being in the moment, in the present. Sometimes we are mindful without noticing. If we’re playing a hard instrument that requires all our focus, we’re just in that moment and nowhere else. If we’re doing a competitive sport, practicing a skill or mindlessly washing the dishes we can be mindful. Mindful meditation is then just the combination of the two. We can also be mindful in any moment to notice what our body is feeling, what thoughts are racing through our mind, to notice our habitual behaviors (as if we were looking at ourselves from the outside as a loving friend).

Mindfulness Meditation is NOT necessarily going to calm your mind, although this can be a pleasant outcome. It really is about building the skill of noticing, and of having control over your attention. It is not about clearing your thoughts, but noticing what’s going on in a non-judgmental way. It is about noticing our default way of thinking. To allow the thoughts to be there, without judging or avoiding them. This can 1) let you build a curious relationship with the stuff going on inside yourself, body and mind, even the stuff that feels awful and that you try to push away and pretend it’s not there 2) initially lead you to notice that you are anxious, but then you can use tools to calm the anxiety The more comfort you becoming noticing the discomfort, the more it will reveal itself to you, and the better you can then deal with it. As a disclaimer, for traumas and severe feelings, it may be better to approach the situation with a therapist, because it may be too hard to look into it just by yourself.

If you have parts of you that are hurting/afraid, getting access to those parts/emotions and hopefully processing them in a gentle/effective way can be helpful. Just to let them be there… showing to yourself “I accept this, I accept you, it’s okay to feel this, it’s safe, …” is helpful.

But It doesn’t ‘resolve’ them, or answer why they are there, or help us fully understand and change the behaviors we are still doing to keep the hurt/fear alive and reoccurring in new situations and new relationships.

Also you need to feel safe/stable/be grounded for mindfulness meditation to work. If it hurts too much and you’re not ready, and you don’t feel safe, yelling at yourself to ‘do it anyway’. Forcing yourself to do it isn’t helpful. The core of mindfulness meditation is to stop trying…… to say “It’s okay right now, I’m good enough right here, right now, I’m safe right here, right now. Through that you can then simply experience what’s around and in you as it is. That’s mindfulness.

Some painful feelings may appear to be a banner of the truth. Mindfulness meditation allows you to see that even though they’re real, they may not necessarily come from a place of truth. What I mean by that is that, you’ll see the feeling is real, what is causing it also real, but not necessarily true. For example if someone in the past consistently put you down, you may feel very hurt. The feeling is real, the cause is real, but it doesn’t mean you are what they made you to be.

• Emptiness – Something is missing, that there is no point, that you don’t know who you are, the things that make you you, maybe because someone constantly criticized you.
• Fear – Something or someone is dangerous.
• Guilt – You’ve done something bad.
• Inadequacy – That you don’t fit in. That you’re not good enough, and others are better than you.
• Jealousy – Envying someone else’s good fortune.
• Powerlessness – Lack of control / influence over situation.
• Rejection – Having you and your feelings invalidated. Someone telling you shouldn’t feel as you do, or that they’re not real and only in your mind. Or that you’re not loved and lovable.
• Resentment – When you believe you’ve been treated unfairly.
• Shame – Belief that you and your feelings are wrong / bad.
• Worthlessness – That you have no value, that you deserve contempt.

For more on this subject I would recommend the book Radical Acceptance by Tara Branch.

How to Meditate

Most types of meditation follow this general process:

As for getting into a relaxed state, here’s a process that was recommended by a friend and which has worked best for me personally:

1. Diaphragmatic breathing – breathing with your belly, not your chest. When you’re doing this on autopilot, proceed to 2).
2. Progressive muscle relaxation – Start on the head or feet. Notice those muscles and relax them. As you feel them resting, move on to the next nearby muscles or body part and do the same. A slight variation is to imagine each body part with a different color (which requires more brain power, making it harder to drift from the relaxation and to start thinking about random things). At the end merge all the colors into white or black and feel yourself into a deeply relaxed state, as your mind, too, relaxes, as if it were a muscle.

Now that we’re relaxed, this is where most meditative practices tend to diverge. Let’s define X, from the table above, according to the type of meditation:

Focused Attention – Pick one thing (object, sound, breath, …). Focus on it (texture, colors, design, smell, …)

Transcendental (Mantra) – Pick a word or sound. Repeat it over and over again.

Loving Kindness – Think of someone. Wish them, from the bottom of your heart, well. Cultivate compassionate awareness and action for everyday life.

Body scan – Focus your attention on specific parts of your body and notice sensations.

Open Monitoring / Mindfulness – Monitor non-judgmentaly and non-reactively the content of experience from moment-to-moment. Recognize the nature of emotional and cognitive patterns.

To make it even more concrete, if you just want to start:

Start small and simple. And in a way that brings you pleasure. If you can get pleasure out of it, you will want to come back and do it more:

1. Focus on your breath.
2. When you noticed your mind has wandered from that, with a non-judgemental and kind voice (“That’s fine”, “No problem”, “That’s part of the process”, “If this was not happening it would be strange :)”, “As many time as it takes, I will be here, and I will not be angry or disappointed, because that’s just how it is.”) return the attention to the breath.

Conclusion

Meditation appears to have strong benefits in reducing anxiety, making us calmer, decreasing depression and ruminative thoughts. Try it for the minimum amount of time you’re comfortable doing, and if you feel good with it, slowly increase that time. Try for 30 days and note how you feel. If science was done right, you should feel better :).

Don’t waste time on fantasy world – the ideal world that we wish existed, the way the world ought to be. Thinking like this is like living in a permanent denial. We must accept that the world is what it is (unjust, unfair). This does not mean agreeing, and doing nothing, but rather, not being in denial about the cold objective truth that the world really is as it is. We must accept that the world is currently like this and move ahead. It’s not worth the trouble to ponder about it. “It sucks, yes, but that’s how it is. What can I do about it?” Just as Josh Waitzkin had to face some Tai Chi practitioners who were cheating, instead of wasting time thinking that they should not be like that being disgusted and angry, he using his energy on thinking of ways to win them (not by cheating but by using their own anger against themselves) – which he did and ended up Tai Chi champion.

“The firmer your grasp on reality, the more power you will have to alter it for your purposes.”
― 50 Cent, The 50th Law

“If you find yourself confronting an unjust and corrupt system, it is much more effective to learn its codes from the inside and discover its vulnerabilities.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

Ch. 2 – Self Reliance

Move forward towards being as independent as possible, towards being able to do the most important things on your own. Get through the phase of childhood dependency and stand on your own feet.

There’s only one like you. You are a chemical mixture of character characteristics that will never repeat itself in history. This singularity is rarely, however, so different from the others that it must be hidden. So we should not feel bad for expressing what we really are.

“True ownership can come only from within. It comes from a disdain for anything or anybody that impinges upon your mobility, from a confidence in your own decisions, and from the use of your time in constant pursuit of education and improvement. Only from this inner position of strength and self-reliance will you be able to truly work for yourself and never turn back.”

“A lower paying position that offers more room to make decisions and carve out little empires is infinitely preferable to something that pays well but constricts your movements.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

Ch. 3 – Opportunism

For the universe there are no positive or negative events, they are all neutral. It is the way you look at them that gives them the positive or negative connotation. With this perspective, you should look at the events you would consider as negative, as containing an opportunity for something positive.

“Opportunism comes with a belief system that is eminently positive and powerful—one known to the Stoic philosophers of ancient Rome as amor fati, or love of fate. In this philosophy every event is seen as fated to occur. When you complain and rail against circumstances, you fall out of balance with the natural state of things; you wish things were different. What you must do instead is accept the fact that all events occur for a reason, and that it is within your capacity to see this reason as positive. Marcus Aurelius compared this to a fire that consumes everything in its path—all circumstances become consumed in your mental heat and converted into opportunities. A man or woman who believes this cannot be hurt by anything or anyone.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

Ch. 4 – Keep moving

The universe is so full of chaos, that trying to control everything will make us crazy. It is best to accept this chaos and learn to guide ourselves through the confusion. Do not see moments of chaos with fear but with excitement of the possibility of new opportunities.

In this way you learn to be in constant motion. Walls are not barriers but only obstacles that you can work around and reveal an opportunity for improvement.

“Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic – as people give into it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

Ch. 5 – Aggression

You must learn not to be afraid to confront people and be assertive, otherwise people not only take advantage of you but they come to perceive you as weak which makes them less fearful of beating you – by offering no resistance, you’re showing that you are weak and you are opening yourself up to be beaten.Like this kid.

Moreover, in the midst of such wickedness, if you will always do good, you will be confronted by the many who use evil. That is why we must know how to use evil when it is necessary. (Hm…. these are the words of a Sith!)

“Big words and promises mean nothing, only actions carry weight.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

Ch. 6 – Authority

If you are a leader and you want to continue to be a leader you must continually prove that you deserve such a position. You continually act for a plan and you bring positive results. A leader must be a visionary with a plan. At the same time because of the human nature of wanting to share, it must have a unifying spirit, of trying to bring people together. You are able to make difficult and tough decisions, and not be afraid to be assertive. You must have a fearless attitude.

“Fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.”
― 50 Cent, The 50th Law

Ch. 7 – Connection

The public is never wrong. The public is what it is. If they are not responding to what you are doing, they are telling you something very clearly.

One way to better reach your target audience is to eliminate the distance between you and them. Feel what they feel, be in the midst of them and go through the same things. You must take a stance of radical equality with the public. This means losing the fear of having your visions of the world attacked, and of seeing someone with different views and opinions as “the other.” Hidden attitudes usually transpire through body language and are difficult to hide. Hence the importance of being genuine.

“The goal in connecting to the public is not to please everyone or to spread yourself out to the widest possible audience. Communication is a power of intensity, not extensity and numbers. In trying to widen your appeal, you will substitute quantity for quality and will pay a price. You have a base of power – a group of people, small or large, which identifies with you.”

“To interact closely with the public and get its feedback might mean having to adjust your “brilliant” ideas, your preconceived notions.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

Ch. 8 – Mastery

Take the tedium of battling the same thing until you become good at it. You need to have the ability to do tasks that are often repetitive, with effort to improve, and the boringness of seeing results very gradually.

There are two paths: 1) To let the reptilian brain make the decisions and enjoy the available immediate pleasures. 2) To create discipline and methods so that even when willpower is weak (when the reptilian takes over) we can keep on the path we planned.

Accept the reality that learning is a not beautiful process. It is boring, requires patience, stoic ability and navigating through distractions and temptations.

We are immersed in the day to day and we have difficulty managing the long periods of time to be good. In that day to day we are inundated by a myriad of distractions and temptations that at the moment are more attractive and make us lose sight of the long-term goal.

A good idea is to start with something simple and very gradually increase the size of the accomplishments so that the progress give us confidence that we are capable of doing what we want.

Finally have the end goal clear in mind to keep you motivated, for example by writing a 10 year plan.

“All human activities involve a process of mastery. You must learn the various steps and procedures involved, proceeding to higher and higher levels of proficiency. This requires discipline and tenacity—the ability to withstand repetitive activity, slowness, and the anxiety that comes with such a challenge.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

Ch. 9 – Self Belief

Make the tough decisions. The ones you’ve been putting off for a long time.

Your opinion of yourself becomes your reality. If you feel helpless in the face of adversity, if you feel shaken by the tide and that you can’t do nothing about it, then that is what will happen, because whoever does not fight against the tide is taken by it.

Your identity is not something immutable and innate. Much of it has been shaped by the opinions and judgments of people with whom you crossed, opinions and judgments that are subjective and derived from their own projections on you.

It is frightening that we cannot understand someone, so we put people inside boxes, according to our perception of them. Sometimes, even though we do not know what box the person is in, we put them there in the hopes through our judgment and them wanting our approval, they put themselves inside it. The same was done to us, especially as children when we didn’t have our critical or argumentative ability developed. Over time we have come to identify ourselves as belonging to these boxes. Thus we must hold ourselves against the pressure of others to categorize us as we lose the unconventional parts of our character that make us into a unique blend that has never before or ever will be, and come out of the lukewarm conformity. We may lose some social acceptance, but only then can we create something unique and stand out. Only then can we give the extra to the ordinary.

“The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different.”
― 50 Cent, The 50th Law

Ch. 10 – The sublime

Occasionally we get haunted by the following question: what’s the point of working so much, reaching objectives at the expense of delaying the pleasures, if later on death cancels all our efforts, making everything a nihilistic Eden?

In the face of our mortality we can do 1 of 3 things. The first two are the ones we humans tend to do when we want to avoid the pain of facing death and the nihilistic sensation that it brings us.

1) The most primitive is to imagine that it never ends – religion. It gives meaning to our actions and calms our fears.

2) Nowadays we tend to avoid thinking about it, repressing any thought related to death, and the unsettling moments that surround it, clinging to the illusion that we have too much time and burying our heads in the moment, in routines and banal worries. From time to time we are reminded of death’s uncomfortable existence when someone close to us dies and when we are very sick and we have a visit to the hospital, but we generally drown death under the daily worries.

3) The least common one, but probably the most useful: Face and accept it by converting our consciousness of death into energy that spurs us forward. It is at this point that the proportion of the importance of things is set in black and white.

Ephemeral. Imagine a time centuries in the future or what has happened exactly where you are millions of years ago. Be aware that everything is in a state of flux and that nothing is permanent. Learn to see the beauty of all things that fade away. Experiencing this can lead us to an ecstatic feeling as opposed to contemplating the morbidity of contemplating death.

A scrape with death, a visit to the graveyard, or be remembered in some dramatic way from the brevity of our lives can have a therapeutic effect. Knowing the brevity of life and of our counted days instigates us to have a sense of urgency and mission in our lives. Many fearless people often get this insight through some traumatic experience. This insight energizes them to take full advantage of all actions.

We all share the same fleeting existence. This is ultimately, if nothing else, what binds us. See death as something you carry within you and from which you can not separate.

Look forward (not in the sense of wishing, but in the sense of imagining and facing it) to the final moment of your death and look at it as bravely as possible.

Death represents an end to our days and efforts in a definitive way. It is a moment that we face alone and where we leave behind everything that is unique to us, everything we know and have ever loved – a complete separation.

Let us learn to look at other people and see in the gleam of their eyes a flame extinguishing very slowly from a reservoir of finite fuel. The countdown has already begun and is unstoppable. With a lower or higher margin, the remaining value has already been established.

“When your time to die comes, as it will someday, you will not cringe and cry for more time, because you have lived well and have no regrets.”

“If we are afraid of death, then we are afraid of life.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law

I’m an avid defender of confronting my mortality to spike myself into action. That is why I love the essay “On The Shortness of Life” by Seneca the Younger, a roman stoic philosopher. I find myself reading these quotes regularly and each time I end up focusing on one specific passage that is more directed at my current life situation. If it were up to me every child would be given this to study. The bolded parts take about 4 minutes to read, the total text about 20. The English in which this is written is not always easy to understand, so read slowly, multiple times even if you need to. This is not something to rush but to calmly ponder about. Enjoy:

“The majority of mortals, Paulinus, complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, because even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live.

(…)

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.

Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by greed that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men’s fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: “The part of life we really live is small.” For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

(…)

Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life—nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.

And so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: “I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count.

Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!” What, then, is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.” And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!

You will see that the most powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure, acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. They desire at times, if it could be with safety, to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though nothing from without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes crashing down.

The deified Augustus, to whom the gods vouchsafed more than to any other man, did not cease to pray for rest and to seek release from public affairs; all his conversation ever reverted to this subject—his hope of leisure. This was the sweet, even if vain, consolation with which he would gladden his labours—that he would one day live for himself. In a letter addressed to the senate, in which he had promised that his rest would not be devoid of dignity nor inconsistent with his former glory, I find these words: “But these matters can be shown better by deeds than by promises.

Nevertheless, since the joyful reality is still far distant, my desire for that time most earnestly prayed for has led me to forestall some of its delight by the pleasure of words.” So desirable a thing did leisure seem that he anticipated it in thought because he could not attain it in reality. He who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who determined the fortune of individuals and of nations, thought most happily of that future day on which he should lay aside his greatness. He had discovered how much sweat those blessings that shone throughout all lands drew forth, how many secret worries they concealed. Forced to pit arms first against his countrymen, then against his colleagues, and lastly against his relatives, he shed blood on land and sea.

Through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries he followed the path of battle, and when his troops were weary of shedding Roman blood, he turned them to foreign wars. While he was pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies planted in the midst of a peaceful empire, while he was extending its bounds even beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others were being whetted to slay him.

Not yet had he escaped their plots, when his daughter and all the noble youths who were bound to her by adultery as by a sacred oath, oft alarmed his failing years—and there was Paulus, and a second time the need to fear a woman in league with an Antony. When be had cut away these ulcers together with the limbs themselves, others would grow in their place; just as in a body that was overburdened with blood, there was always a rupture somewhere. And so he longed for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to answer the prayers of mankind.

(…)

Such lives as yours, though they should pass the limit of a thousand years, will shrink into the merest span; your vices will swallow up any amount of time. The space you have, which reason can prolong, although it naturally hurries away, of necessity escapes from you quickly; for you do not seize it, you neither hold it back, nor impose delay upon the swiftest thing in the world, but you allow it to slip away as if it were something superfluous and that could be replaced.

(…)

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

Of the other arts there are many teachers everywhere; some of them we have seen that mere boys have mastered so thoroughly that they could even play the master. It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and—what will perhaps make you wonder more—it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.

Many very great men, having laid aside all their encumbrances, having renounced riches, business, and pleasures, have made it their one aim up to the very end of life to know how to live; yet the greater number of them have departed from life confessing that they did not yet know—still less do those others know.

Believe me, it takes a great man and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him, and it follows that the life of such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly to himself whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle; none of it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most grudgingly, he found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time.

And so that man had time enough, but those who have been robbed of much of their life by the public, have necessarily had too little of it.

And there is no reason for you to suppose that these people are not sometimes aware of their loss. Indeed, you will hear many of those who are burdened by great prosperity cry out at times in the midst of their throngs of clients, or their pleadings in court, or their other glorious miseries: “I have no chance to live.” Of course you have no chance! All those who summon you to themselves, turn you away from your own self. Of how many days has that defendant robbed you? Of how many that candidate? Of how many that old woman wearied with burying her heirs? Of how many that man who is shamming sickness for the purpose of exciting the greed of the legacy-hunters? Of how many that very powerful friend who has you and your like on the list, not of his friends, but of his retinue?

Check off, I say, and review the days of your life; you will see that very few, and those the refuse. have been left for you. That man who had prayed for the fasces, when he attains them, desires to lay them aside and says over and over: “When will this year be over!” That man gives games, and, after setting great value on gaining the chance to give them, now says: “When shall I be rid of them?” That advocate is lionized throughout the whole forum, and fills all the place with a great crowd that stretches farther than he can be heard, yet he says: “When will vacation time come?”

Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow. For what new pleasure is there that any hour can now bring? They are all known, all have been enjoyed to the full. Mistress Fortune may deal out the rest as she likes; his life has already found safety. Something may be added to it, but nothing taken from it, and he will take any addition as the man who is satisfied and filled takes the food which he does not desire and yet can hold.

And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long—he has existed long. For what if you should think that that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.

I am often filled with wonder when I see some men demanding the time of others and those from whom they ask it most indulgent. Both of them fix their eyes on the object of the request for time, neither of them on the time itself; just as if what is asked were nothing, what is given, nothing. Men trifle with the most precious thing in the world; but they are blind to it because it is an incorporeal thing, because it does not come beneath the sight of the eyes, and for this reason it is counted a very cheap thing—nay, of almost no value at all.

Men set very great store by pensions and doles, and for these they hire out their labour or service or effort. But no one sets a value on time; all use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But see how these same people clasp the knees of physicians if they fall ill and the danger of death draws nearer, see how ready they are, if threatened with capital punishment, to spend all their possessions in order to live! So great is the inconsistency of their feelings. But if each one could have the number of his future years set before him as is possible in the case of the years that have passed, how alarmed those would be who saw only a few remaining, how sparing of them would they be! And yet it is easy to dispense an amount that is assured, no matter how small it may be; but that must be guarded more carefully which will fail you know not when.

Yet there is no reason for you to suppose that these people do not know how precious a thing time is; for to those whom they love most devotedly they have a habit of saying that they are ready to give them a part of their own years. And they do give it, without realizing it; but the result of their giving is that they themselves suffer loss without adding to the years of their dear ones. But the very thing they do not know is whether they are suffering loss; therefore, the removal of something that is lost without being noticed they find is bearable. Yet no one will bring back the years, no one will bestow you once more on yourself.

Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of the populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay. And what will be the result? You have been engrossed, life hastens by; meanwhile death will be at hand, for which, willy nilly, you must find leisure.

Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own. Whither do you look? At what goal do you aim? All things that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightway!

(…)

Old age surprises them while their minds are still childish, and they come to it unprepared and unarmed, for they have made no provision for it; they have stumbled upon it suddenly and unexpectedly, they did not notice that it was drawing nearer day by day. Even as conversation or reading or deep meditation on some subject beguiles the traveller, and he finds that he has reached the end of his journey before he was aware that he was approaching it, just so with this unceasing and most swift journey of life, which we make at the same pace whether waking or sleeping; those who are engrossed become aware of it only at the end.

(…)

Life is divided into three periods—that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For the last is the one over which Fortune has lost control, is the one which cannot be brought back under any man’s power. But men who are engrossed lose this; for they have no time to look back upon the past, and even if they should have, it is not pleasant to recall something they must view with regret. They are, therefore, unwilling to direct their thoughts backward to ill-spent hours, and those whose vices become obvious if they review the past, even the vices which were disguised under some allurement of momentary pleasure, do not have the courage to revert to those hours. No one willingly turns his thought back to the past, unless all his acts have been submitted to the censorship of his conscience, which is never deceived; he who has ambitiously coveted, proudly scorned, recklessly conquered, treacherously betrayed, greedily seized, or lavishly squandered, must fear his own memory.

(…)

Present time is very brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has come, and can no more brook delay than the firmament or the stars, whose ever unresting movement never lets them abide in the same track. The engrossed, therefore, are concerned with present time alone, and it is so brief that it cannot be grasped, and even this is filched away from them, distracted as they are among many things.

In a word, do you want to know how they do not “live long”? See how eager they are to live long! Decrepit old men beg in their prayers for the addition of a few more years; they pretend that they are younger than they are; they comfort themselves with a falsehood, and are as pleased to deceive themselves as if they deceived Fate at the same time. But when at last some infirmity has reminded them of their mortality, in what terror do they die, feeling that they are being dragged out of life, and not merely leaving it. They cry out that they have been fools, because they have not really lived, and that they will live henceforth in leisure if only they escape from this illness; then at last they reflect how uselessly they have striven for things which they did not enjoy, and how all their toil has gone for nothing.

(…)

Even the leisure of some men is engrossed; in their villa or on their couch, in the midst of solitude, although they have withdrawn from all others, they are themselves the source of their own worry; we should say that these are living, not in leisure, but in idle preoccupation.

Would you say that that man is at leisure who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes, that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of each day upon rusty bits of copper? Who sits in a public wrestling-place (for, to our shame I we labour with vices that are not even Roman) watching the wrangling of lads? Who sorts out the herds of his pack-mules into pairs of the same age and colour? Who feeds all the newest athletes? Tell me, would you say that those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber’s while they are being stripped of whatever grew out the night before? while a solemn debate is held over each separate hair? While either disarranged locks are restored to their place or thinning ones drawn from this side and that toward the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit too careless, just as if he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any of their mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not all fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not rather have the state disordered than his hair? Who is not more concerned to have his head trim rather than safe? Who would not rather be well barbered than upright? Would you say that these are at leisure who are occupied with the comb and the mirror? And what of those who are engaged in composing, hearing, and learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best and simplest movement Nature designed to be straightforward, into the meanderings of some indolent tune, who are always snapping their fingers as they beat time to some song they have in their head, who are overheard humming a tune when they have been summoned to serious, often even melancholy, matters? These have not leisure, but idle occupation.

(…)

And I would not count these among the leisured class either—the men who have themselves borne hither and thither in a sedan-chair and a litter, and are punctual at the hours for their rides as if it were unlawful to omit them, who are reminded by someone else when they must bathe, when they must swim, when they must dine; so enfeebled are they by the excessive lassitude of a pampered mind that they cannot find out by themselves whether they are hungry! I hear that one of these pampered people—provided that you can call it pampering to unlearn the habits of human life—when he had been lifted by hands from the bath and placed in his sedan-chair, said questioningly: “Am I now seated?” Do you think that this man, who does not know whether he is sitting, knows whether he is alive, whether he sees, whether he is at leisure? I find it hard to say whether I pity him more if he really did not know, or if he pretended not to know this. They really are subject to forgetfulness of many things, but they also pretend forgetfulness of many.

(…)

To think that there is anyone who is so lost in luxury that he takes another’s word as to whether he is sitting down! This man, then, is not at leisure, you must apply to him a different term—he is sick, nay, he is dead; that man is at leisure, who has also a perception of his leisure. But this other who is half alive, who, in order that he may know the postures of his own body, needs someone to tell him—how can he be the master of any of his time?

(…)

They are not unoccupied whose pleasures are made a busy occupation. For instance, no one will have any doubt that those are laborious triflers who spend their time on useless literary problems, of whom even among the Romans there is now a great number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire into what number of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, whether moreover they belong to the same author, and various other matters of this stamp, which, if you keep them to yourself, in no way pleasure your secret soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a scholar.

But now this vain passion for learning useless things has assailed the Romans also. In the last few days I heard someone telling who was the first Roman general to do this or that; Duilius was the first who won a naval battle, Curius Dentatus was the first who had elephants led in his triumph. Still, these matters, even if they add nothing to real glory, are nevertheless concerned with signal services to the state; there will be no profit in such knowledge, nevertheless it wins our attention by reason of the attractiveness of an empty subject.

(…)

Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only. They annex ever age to their own; all the years that have gone ore them are an addition to their store. Unless we are most ungrateful, all those men, glorious fashioners of holy thoughts, were born for us; for us they have prepared a way of life.

By other men’s labours we are led to the sight of things most beautiful that have been wrested from darkness and brought into light; from no age are we shut out, we have access to all ages, and if it is our wish, by greatness of mind, to pass beyond the narrow limits of human weakness, there is a great stretch of time through which we may roam. We may argue with Socrates, we may doubt with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics.

Since Nature allows us to enter into fellowship with every age, why should we not turn from this paltry and fleeting span of time and surrender ourselves with all our soul to the past, which is boundless, which is eternal, which we share with our betters?

Those who rush about in the performance of social duties, who give themselves and others no rest, when they have fully indulged their madness, when they have every day crossed everybody’s threshold, and have left no open door unvisited, when they have carried around their venal greeting to houses that are very far apart—out of a city so huge and torn by such varied desires, how few will they be able to see?

How many will there be who either from sleep or self-indulgence or rudeness will keep them out! How many who, when they have tortured them with long waiting, will rush by, pretending to be in a hurry! How many will avoid passing out through a hall that is crowded with clients, and will make their escape through some concealed door as if it were not more discourteous to deceive than to exclude. How many, still half asleep and sluggish from last night’s debauch, scarcely lifting their lips in the midst of a most insolent yawn, manage to bestow on yonder poor wretches, who break their own slumber in order to wait on that of another, the right name only after it has been whispered to them a thousand times!

(…)

We are wont to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the more persons you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open to you the path to immortality, and will raise you to a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way of prolonging mortality—nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at hand, and things that are far off we are more free to admire.

The life of the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one.

But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing. Nor because they sometimes invoke death, have you any reason to think it any proof that they find life long. In their folly they are harassed by shifting emotions which rush them into the very things they dread; they often pray for death because they fear it. And, too, you have no reason to think that this is any proof that they are living a long time—the fact that the day often seems to them long, the fact that they complain that the hours pass slowly until the time set for dinner arrives; for, whenever their distractions fail them, they are restless because they are left with nothing to do, and they do not know how to dispose of their leisure or to drag out the time.

And so they strive for something else to occupy them, and all the intervening time is irksome; exactly as they do when a gladiatorial exhibition is been announced, or when they are waiting for the appointed time of some other show or amusement, they want to skip over the days that lie between. All postponement of something they hope for seems long to them.

Yet the time which they enjoy is short and swift, and it is made much shorter by their own fault; for they flee from one pleasure to another and cannot remain fixed in one desire. Their days are not long to them, but hateful; yet, on the other hand, how scanty seem the nights which they spend in the arms of a harlot or in wine! It is this also that accounts for the madness of poets in fostering human frailties by the tales in which they represent that Jupiter under the enticement of the pleasures of a lover doubled the length of the night. For what is it but to inflame our vices to inscribe the name of the gods as their sponsors, and to present the excused indulgence of divinity as an example to our own weakness? Can the nights which they pay for so dearly fail to seem all too short to these men? They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.

The very pleasures of such men are uneasy and disquieted by alarms of various sorts, and at the very moment of rejoicing the anxious thought comes over them: “How long will these things last?” This feeling has led kings to weep over the power they possessed, and they have not so much delighted in the greatness of their fortune, as they have viewed with terror the end to which it must some time come. When the King of Persia, in all the insolence of his pride, spread his army over the vast plains and could not grasp its number but simply its measure, he shed copious tears because inside of a hundred years not a man of such a mighty army would be alive. But he who wept was to bring upon them their fate, was to give some to their doom on the sea, some on the land, some in battle, some in flight, and within a short time was to destroy all those for whose hundredth year he had such fear. And why is it that even their joys are uneasy from fear? Because they do not rest on stable causes, but are perturbed as groundlessly as they are born. But of what sort do you think those times are which even by their own confession are wretched, since even the joys by which they are exalted and lifted above mankind are by no means pure? All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers. For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. New distractions take the place of the old, hope leads to new hope, ambition to new ambition. They do not seek an end of their wretchedness, but change the cause. Have we been tormented by our own public honours? Those of others take more of our time. Have we ceased to labour as candidates? We begin to canvass for others. Have we got rid of the troubles of a prosecutor? We find those of a judge. Has a man ceased to be a judge? He becomes president of a court. Has he become infirm in managing the property of others at a salary? He is perplexed by caring for his own wealth. Have the barracks set Marius free? The consulship keeps him busy. Does Quintius hasten to get to the end of his dictatorship? He will be called back to it from the plough. Scipio will go against the Carthaginians before he is ripe for so great an undertaking; victorious over Hannibal, victorious over Antiochus, the glory of his own consulship, the surety for his brother’s, did he not stand in his own way, he would be set beside Jove; but the discord of civilians will vex their preserver, and, when as a young man he had scorned honours that rivalled those of the gods, at length, when he is old, his ambition will lake delight in stubborn exile. Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure, but never enjoy it.

And so, my dearest Paulinus, tear yourself away from the crowd, and, too much storm-tossed for the time you have lived, at length withdraw into a peaceful harbour. (…) The greater part of your life, certainly the better part of it, has been given to the state; take now some part of your time for yourself as well. And I do not summon you to slothful or idle inaction, or to drown all your native energy in slumbers and the pleasures that are dear to the crowd. That is not to rest; you will find far greater works than all those you have hitherto performed so energetically, to occupy you in the midst of your release and retirement. You, I know, manage the accounts of the whole world as honestly as you would a stranger’s, as carefully as you would your own, as conscientiously as you would the state’s. You win love in an office in which it is difficult to avoid hatred; but nevertheless believe me, it is better to have knowledge of the ledger of one’s own life than of the corn-market.

(…)

Do you retire to these quieter, safer, greater things! Think you that it is just the same whether you are concerned in having corn from oversea poured into the granaries, unhurt either by the dishonesty or the neglect of those who transport it, in seeing that it does not become heated and spoiled by collecting moisture and tallies in weight and measure, or whether you enter upon these sacred and lofty studies with the purpose of discovering what substance, what pleasure, what mode of life, what shape God has; what fate awaits your soul; where Nature lays us to rest when we are freed from the body; what the principle is that upholds all the heaviest matter in the centre of this world, suspends the light on high, carries fire to the topmost part, summons the stars to their proper changes—and ether matters, in turn, full of mighty wonders? You really must leave the ground and turn your mind’s eye upon these things! Now while the blood is hot, we must enter with brisk step upon the better course. In this kind of life there awaits much that is good to know—the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, knowledge of living and dying, and a life of deep repose.

The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labor at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world—loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.

And so when you see a man often wearing the robe of office, when you see one whose name is famous in the Forum, do not envy him; those things are bought at the price of life. They will waste all their years, in order that they may have one year reckoned by their name. Life has left some in the midst of their first struggles, before they could climb up to the height of their ambition; some, when they have crawled up through a thousand indignities to the crowning dignity, have been possessed by the unhappy thought that they have but toiled for an inscription on a tomb; some who have come to extreme old age, while they adjusted it to new hopes as if it were youth, have had it fail from sheer weakness in the midst of their great and shameless endeavours. (…)

Sextus Turannius was an old man of long tested diligence, who, after his ninetieth year, having received release from the duties of his office by Gaius Caesar’s own act, ordered himself to be laid out on his bed and to be mourned by the assembled household as if he were dead. The whole house bemoaned the leisure of its old master, and did not end its sorrow until his accustomed work was restored to him. Is it really such pleasure for a man to die in harness? Yet very many have the same feeling; their desire for their labour lasts longer than their ability; they fight against the weakness of the body, they judge old age to be a hardship on no other score than because it puts them aside. The law does not draft a soldier after his fiftieth year, it does not call a senator after his sixtieth; it is more difficult for men to obtain leisure from themselves than from the law.

Meantime, while they rob and are being robbed, while they break up each other’s repose, while they make each other wretched, their life is without profit, without pleasure, without any improvement of the mind. No one keeps death in view, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes; some men, indeed, even arrange for things that lie beyond life—huge masses of tombs and dedications of public works and gifts for their funeral-pyres and ostentatious funerals.

But, in very truth, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as though they had lived but the tiniest span.”

“It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

That… is something to really ponder. Everyday. With this, may I ask you: If you were at your deathbed, what things would you wish you had done when you were your age? What things have you done recently that make you think “Hell yes! I will be proud of myself for having done this when I’m laying down, when I’m old, with my life past me, thinking about how I lived it.” Stir up the absolute preciousness of your mortal finite ever decreasing time, and take into account of how many preoccupations are slowly, or swiftly, eating away your life instead of those Hell Yeah actions that you will NOT regret and be grateful you acted upon.

Seems morbid and unproductive to talk about death? You couldn’t be more wrong. Even Steve Jobs once said

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

There’s something about facing your life ending that clears the fog. As if it made all of those voices that aren’t yours go quiet leaving your true authentic voice able to finally speak. As if all of society pressures, other people’s wishes, concerns, opinions etc that were impinged upon you at the brink of the end not mattering at all compared to the realization that you never go to live some parts of your life, the ones that someone else kicked down into your subconscious.

Visualize your funeral and consider what you would want friends to describe as your legacy. As Richard Wiseman’s said in his book, 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute:

Asking people to spend just a minute imagining a close friend standing up at their funeral and reflecting on their personal and professional legacy helps them to identify their long-term goals and assess the degree to which they are progressing toward making those goals a reality.

Fast forward where you are and look at yourself in 10 20 years time and ask yourself “Is that where I want to be?” If you’re in a company, look at a person that is 20 years ahead of you and ask yourself “is that where I want to be?” And if the answer is no, you need to find yourself a new path.

We know this can’t go on forever. Haven’t you experience suddenly being thrown out of the course of your normal life and be given the full time job not dying or caring for someone who is. And when this happens people tend to realize they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. And it’s not always regret about spending too much time at the office or watching too TV. They also regret that they cared about the wrong things, on petty concerns, year after year, when life was normal. And we all know this epiphany is coming. But of us just try to avoid thinking about it, because it’s uncomfortable. But the day will come when you are forced to look back and think that you gave yourself away for things you shouldn’t have.

One of the most important truths is that all we have is ‘now’. The past is a construction of our minds based on our experience. The future is a construction of our minds based on our experience and our plans. The only one time we live in is ‘now’. And we spend most of our lives trying forget this truth, fleeing it. And the most horrible part is that often we succeed. That’s why we postpone doing certain things. “One day” and “sometime” are probably the most frequent scheduled days for the things we know we should do. We manage to never really connect wit the present moment because we’re continually hoping to become happy in the future. But the future never arrives. Some of us only discover that too late. When we’re too old. When the opportunity has passed. Even when we think we’re in the present moment, in subtle ways, we are looking over its shoulder. Anticipating what’s coming next, solving a problem. And it’s possible to simply drop a problem, even if just for a moment, and enjoy what is beautiful in your life in the present.

On a related note, here’s two great videos by Philosopher Alain de Botton on his youtube channel The School of Life on this same topic. I’ve also written before on this topic on the 50th law summary, if you’re interested. May these quotes that I’ve shared have a good impact on you.

And a cool music video from the Rick & Morty series when one of the characters is confronted with the unusual situation of having to bury his other self from another dimension. Can you imagine that? How would you feel?

Photo credit: John of Wirral via Foter.com / CC BY-ND

Planning Is for Losers

Here’s the best way to achieve your dreams: Don’t plan. Don’t even write your dreams or goals. Let them be somewhat undefined. That way you’ll never feel bad because you won’t know exactly what you didn’t achieve. But if you do plan goals, make them vague, non-measurable, non-actionable, irrealistic, and time undefined.

Do not define the smaller steps to the main goals. That way you won’t be bothered with extra motivation for finding that you’re succeeding. There’s never need for extra motivation, because your discipline is legendary. By not defining a timeline, you can also wait for the perfect moment to come. A possibly never-coming future perfect moment is still better than the imperfect present moment. Today, might be the closest you’ll ever get to perfect moment, or the farthest. But since you don’t know, just lean back, be passive, and let the time pass by. Don’t work on your goals, that way you can enjoy life because you’re not tired.

Imagine your life is a boat and you got sails. Don’t bother sailing that boat by yourself. Just let the wind blow and see where it takes you. Maybe you’ll go around in circles, maybe you’ll travel the world. What an adventure it can be! Maybe you’ll be happy without achieving your dreams. In fact, by the time you’re old enough to find out whether that’s true, if you recognize you should’ve achieved them, then you won’t have to suffer the pain of regret much longer anyway since you’re already near the end of your life. Yes, people at their deathbed definitely don’t look back and regret not doing the things they could’ve when they had the opportunity. Even if at the time, that opportunity wasn’t the perfect.

/s

…

If we don’t make conscious and deliberate decisions about how we want to spend our finite time – i.e. if we are living “on autopilot” – the decisions will be made for us by default, whether we like it or not.

Now that we got out of the way what not to do, let’s make it clear what to do.

Plan

By planning I mean setting goals, having in mind things you’d like to achieve: to do, to have, to be. When you clearly define what you want, the steps needed to get there become remarkably clearer.

How to plan: Start from the end and progressively get to the present. And remember: a remarkable life doesn’t need to be what others think is remarkable. It’s *your* definition that matters. No one is going to die in your place. No one else will feel your regrets for you. So do yourself a favor, and try to clean your mind from the noise. When it’s calm and quiet, and only you there, write.

The end end

How would you like to be remembered? What would you like people to say about you when you’re no longer here? What kind of mark would you like to leave in the world?

Your end

What accomplishments and actions would make you the happiest and non-regretful person just before you passed away? What experiences, when lived by you, would make you say “I’m really happy with the way I lived, with the things I cared about, with the things I spent my energy on, with the people I spent my moments with, the places I visited, what I did with the time that was given to me, and with my actions.”

10 years

A good long-term goal time frame is ten years. It seems like a really long time. But ask anyone how fast the last ten years passed by and most will complain they seemed like an instant.

Imagine what your life could be and look like if you could do anything you wanted without any fear of failure. Let’s say it’s 10 years from now. What kind of house are you in? Are you in the city? What does your furniture look like? Your car? Your career? How are you fulfilled professionally? Do you work for someone? Do you work for yourself? What is your day like? What is your health like? Who are you with? Who are your friends?  Write this whole day. What it looks like. On this day, 10 years from now. Dream big. Dream without any fear. Put your whole heart into it. Write like your life depends on it, because it does. Write the things that, if this here was your best life, you could achieve. If this here, out of all universes, was the one where you are the most happiest and successful (by your standards) what would it look like it the future? Writing doesn’t hurt, and there’s no one to look at it, so go all out.

Finished? Now write another(s) potential dreamy day(s). We can do several things in different stages of our lives. Hence it is OK to write several potential awesome lives. We might get to live more than one at different stages.

Doesn’t it feel better to suddenly have a guiding star? Read these papers once in a while and check how you’re doing.

But… but we change. The world changes. How can we know what we will like in 10 years? Look back 10 years. How have you changed? How has the world changed? Do you still enjoy the same things, have the same values, would value the same goals? What if in 10 years your plans don’t even make sense?

And how can you plan based on your limited experiences? Let’s say that in a parallel universe you experienced all the things in the world, and in that universe you reached the conclusion that what you want the most is to be a pianist. But in this world, how can you know that if you’ve never even tried a playing a piano? What if planning results in we becoming too focused on achieving this one plan, which might not be the one that would make us the happiest? Maybe by not planning, by letting the wind randomly guide us, we would have discovered something else that made us happier. This is where the next point comes.

Try New Things

This should be a goal of yours in by itself. We live a great part of our lives in echo chambers, surrounded by the same thinking. You can’t be what you can’t see. And because we have not had certain experiences, we can only try to fit ourselves in the boxes that we know. But maybe, those aren’t the right ones for us.

Trying new things include meeting new people. Meeting people that have different jobs than you have, that have vastly different life experiences. But do not just think about the end result of those people’s lives. Don’t just see an entrepreneur and think you want to have the same that he has. Observe their work ethic, their day to day life. Do I want that process? Do I want the annoying attachments that come with that lifestyle? Because that’s where you’re going to spend 90% of your time on.

The Ultimate Goal?

I feel it is necessary to introduce what might be the ultimate goal, because in the end, this might be the thing or one of the things we all strive for: Happiness. A word that means so much, yet is thrown around so much it loses its meaning. What is it? Joy, feeling content. That the purpose of life is to enjoy it.

“The only reasonable goal in life is maximizing your total lifetime experience of something called happiness. That might sound selfish, but it’s not. Only a sociopath or a hermit can find happiness through extreme selfishness. A normal person needs to treat others well in order to enjoy life.”
― Scott Adams, in “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big”

Priorities

Health and Time are the two most important parts of your life. Without health neither money nor relationships can be both easily earned or maintained. If your health declines rapidly your money goes to fixing it and your relationships will falter. Without health, time cannot be enjoyed.

But without time, no amount of health can provide an actual life. Without time to do what you really want, you don’t actually live, but merely exist. Someone who spends their time being told what to do, is like a mouse told to run in circles for its whole existence. A mouse half its age that has circled the world has lived much more.

And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles; he has not lived long—he has existed long. For what if you should think that that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.
― Seneca the Younger, in “On the Shortness of Life”

Are you moving directly towards your goals? Or are you move more or less in their direction but not really? Are your actions moving as straight as possible to your goals or just resulting in marginal effects? Or are they just big enough so you can convince yourself you’re working towards them, but we both know that’s true? Most people that I know that are doing this, are in fact being thrown around by life, but they deceive themselves by saying it is a conscious choice, part of their plan, which, when asked to be presented, is vague and clearly not well thought out.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” ― Sylvia Plath

If happiness is one of your goals, then keep reading, otherwise just skip to the next chapter.

Happiness-fostering attitudes

Savor the little moments in the present that bring you joy. The soft sound of rain drops on the window. The taste of that ice cream on the beach listening to the breaking of the waves and the calming heat of the sun on your skin. A tickle fight with your special one. Take a moment to appreciate your friends when you’re with them the next time. Take a moment to enjoy the smell and feel of clean sheets. The feel of grass in your feet when you walk over it barefoot. The sound of rustling of leaves when you go do an errand.

Savoring = happiness acknowledgement. Many (most?) times we are happy, we aren’t conscious of it. By acknowledging we are happy, it increases the feeling of happiness itself because it adds an extra layer of “this is special, let me cherish it”.

One time I was with my girlfriend on a paradisiac place and I told her: “Remember this moment now, because in the future when you look back you’ll think it was a beautiful dream”. And it was. And it makes me so happy that we were able to acknowledge that then, and cherish it for how special it was.

Be grateful for the good little things that you already have and that happen to you everyday which you take for granted. After we get a spike of happiness from a new purchase or life improvement, it takes about 3 months for the level of happiness to back to what it was previously. Feeling grateful is a way to re-ignite these little happiness spikes that have been extinguished with the passage of time. Be grateful that you are conscious, alive and can experience this world. Out of thousands of millions of unborn ghosts, it is you and I in our ordinariness that are here in this fleeting moment. Be grateful for that. Be grateful for the food that you eat, for your body working marvelously just for you, for the little things that go right. The elevator could’ve crashed. You could’ve had an accident. A friend of yours might have died. There could be war in your country.

Aspire for a better future, for things that you want to achieve. If you can’t imagine an improved future, you won’t be happy no matter how well your life is going right now. One of the hallmarks of depression is lack of optimist about the future. It’s thinking that it won’t improve, it will be always like this, or not much better. Fight that state of mind rationally. Find reasons and things you could do that would increase the likelihood of your future improving and you being excited about it.

Give, share, and think about others. Adults are starved for kind words and concern. When you understand the power of honest praise (as opposed to bullshitting, flattery, and sucking up), you realize that withholding it borders on immoral.

Though the more you give, the more you have, sometimes, to give, you need to have. A person that has never been loved will feel hard to love. So be kind to yourself. A technique that is frequently used in psychotherapy is this: Image you have a son and you love that son no matter what. You want only the best for him. And you hear that son blaming himself, feeling down with the weight of life, being caught in anger. What would you tell that son? Would you say “Hey, everybody makes mistakes. It’s going to be OK.” But do you even do that with yourself?

If you want to take your happiness building skills to the next level, here’s two resources I recommend:

One are the summaries of A LOT of papers on the science of happiness. Kudos to Happify for the work they put in there. Read a few of the summaries and you’ll start to see patterns.

Two is a course on happiness. Yeah right? Who would guess we would need to take a course to learn how to be happy… but I recommend it because it is very well put. In fact I may try to put my course notes in here later on, they have definitely made an impact on me.

And finally,

One Thing at a Time

Writer James Clear, in an article on The Buffet Principle, details a strategy Warren Buffett taught his friend Charles Flint:

STEP 1: Buffett started by asking Flint to write down his top 25 career goals. So, Flint took some time and wrote them down.
STEP 2: Then, Buffett asked Flint to review his list and circle his top 5 goals. Again, Flint took some time, made his way through the list, and eventually decided on his 5 most important goals.
STEP 3: At this point, Flint had two lists. The 5 items he had circled were List A and the 20 items he had not circled were List B.

Start working on those 5 most important goals, but chose one to be your main project. And don’t spend a minute working on the next 20 things. It splits your focus, and we humans aren’t good multitaskers.

And remember: the more you hesitate…the less time you’ll have to actually execute on your dreams. So here’s my advice. If you’re holding back from jumping on an opportunity… because you want the conditions to be “perfect”… Guess what? The timing will NEVER be perfect.

There’ll never be a better time to work on your goals… than right NOW

Success?

After you have written your plan(s) and you are putting into them the necessary actions, there is still an oversight to be had. You will not be able to achieve them if you display the wrong attitude. And part of that is the way you define success.

Do not to define success as attaining major goals, but each step you successfully take in the right direction. Each day that you do just one thing that makes you closer to the final goal, is a successful day. Each day that you improve marginally is a success. Each day that you become better than you were yesterday is a successful day. “Today I managed to do (small thing). I am having success.” Feel good. Not only will you also enjoy the process more, but you will feel more confident about being capable of doing this.

A flame that burns with double the intensity, extinguishes in half the time. Do not feed on motivation alone to keep your goals alive, feed on discipline. Do one thing each day or each week that moves you forward. And if you find that difficult, decrease the difficulty and effort until you can. If you cannot summon will to do it, then you need to reassess if you want that goal that badly, because it seems like you don’t. In that case you might want to see if there are other things that you want more, and which make you excited just thinking about the possibility of having them. Then redo the planning.

That’s it.

Now, go on, write and act like your life depends on it, because it does.

Here’s this book a friend recommended you. Or that person you follow mentioned as being a good book. Or of which you saw some good reviews. But is it really worth reading… for you? To know that you need more info.

• Read several Amazon/Goodreads reviews (read the 2-4 stars reviews, the 1 and 5 tend to be very biased or emotional).
• Read book quotes (from here you usually can get great nuggets and a good feeling of what the best of the book can offer).
• Read one or two summaries (if you’re still interested by this point)
• Watch book video summary in 1-2x speed

If you spend 1h doing this, and the book would take 10h to read, this 10% is a great investment. Not only are you getting a lot of learning going, but you could save 9h of your time. If you do decide to read, then you already get a headstart and will see the same things again (good for learning). Either way, this pre-reading time is never wasted.

Also, after doing this I usually don’t even read the book anymore, because I see most people are quoting and summarizing the same things, and the rest of the book is mostly composed of examples around those bits of information.

#2 Know the whole first, progressively get into details

Look at the table of contents to get a feel for the content, the main parts of the book and how they’re related.

Know the broad strokes of the book – What is the book about? What problems is the author trying to solve? How is it divided in chapters and the main structure of the content? Pre-skim the contents and the inside of the book to get the feel of what it is. Skim a few paragraphs here and there from start to end.

(Optional for in-depth studying of a book/text) read a first time in quick skimming speed, without concerning yourself with understanding.

Look for conclusions, and highlighted quotes. Few authors resist the temptation to sum up the chapter or book at the end.

In the book “How to Read a Book” the author divides the activity of reading a book in 3 main activities:

Inspection reading: to know the broad strokes about the book to assess whether it’s worth it to study it;
Analytical reading: to study the book.
Syntopic reading: to study a subject by comparison of books on the subject (for this it helps immensely to clarify what do you want to know, and what do you want to get from the reading

#3 Change Reading Speeds

By this I mean switching between reading carefully (i.e. focus on understanding) and skimming (skipping uninteresting parts for you) according to how relevant/interesting the information appears to be. Variable speed reading, not speed reading, is the way to go.

How many times have we started reading something because the title was interesting but after a while we find ourselves somewhat disappointed about the content? We then try to get to the end, because we don’t like to feel the icky feeling of leaving it half-read. On other occasions the text has interesting gold-nuggets juicy paragraphs, but also many filler ones.

Then there’s the fact that there’s simply too much information out there for us to consume, which means we need to be extremely selective about what to do with our time. We need to be able to come to grips with the fact that not all information is equally useful, so we might as well accept that some things are simply not worth reading, considering the vast amount of better alternatives.

Remember the 20/80 rule (finding the small things that yield most of the results). So in boring uninteresting parts practice reading only the beginnings (intros) and ends of paragraphs (conclusions), with the occasional middle just so you have a rough idea about what’s being talked about, but without really digging through the details.

To properly read something the reading speed must be adequate to the text. We should therefore, not always read at maximum speed, but vary our reading speed.

#4 Read and Listen

A trick to increase reading speed is reading while listening to the audio version at 1.5-2x speed. – You can get through most books like this in ~5-8h. However remember that speed reading ≠ speed understanding.

#5 Summarize

Method 1

Step 1: Copy the most important parts to a document. The gold nuggets.

Step 2: After you’ve read the whole book, and all the nuggets saved somewhere, color in red the crucial words which best represent the idea. – When we read we may copy the same idea expressed in different ways because we found them both interesting. The point here is to color unique crucial things. Here’s an example of when I was doing that for the summary of the book The 50th Law

Step 3: Rewrite, in your own words, those red parts, but do not limit yourself to what is there – Put things that you remember that are related to that, not necessarily from the book.

Method 2

Step 1: While you’re reading, write the parts you find the most interesting in your own words. It’s as if you were doing the previous method live, as you read.

Apply to either of the two methods: Write bullet points of what comes to mind that you can apply somewhere.

In a short paragraph, write/think what the book/text is about, kinda like a synopsis. The synopsis of Odyssey could be: “A certain man is absent from home for many years; he is jealously watched by Poseidon and left desolate. Meanwhile his home is in a wretched plight; suitors are wasting his substance and plotting against his son. At length, tempest-tossed, he himself arrives; he makes certain persons acquainted with him; he attacks the suitors with his own hand, and is himself preserved while he destroys them.”

As Aristotle says, “This is the essence of the plot; the rest is episode.”

Method 3

This is the most passive low-effort of those methods, but I must admit I’m also not always in the mood or have energy to write everytime I’m reading something, and it can become less of an enjoyable process. So in this last method you can just take screenshot of the page and highlight the parts that caught your attention the most. Later on (days, months, years) you can just read the parts you highlighted.

#6 Don’t be a tape player

The spectator, listener or reader is many times presented with a series of elements, from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics to make it easy for them to make up their mind with minimum effort. But the packaging is so well done that they never really took active part in making up their own mind. Instead, they fed a pre-formed opinion in their mind, like inserting a tape in a tape player. Then they play that tape whenever appropriate to do so, without ever questioning it.

Judge only when you understand. Someone at some point may have said to you “i don’t know what you mean, but I don’t agree.” In this case, ask them to state your position for you, the position they claim to be challenging. If they can’t do it satisfactorily, then you are justified in ignoring their judgement. As all judgement that is not based on understanding, it is irrelevant. Note that this judgement can also be positive (agreeing). This happens a lot when people are approval seeking, or when the words and argument makes sense in a superficial review. Agreeing to a position we cannon express intelligibly in our own words is as bad.

A simple recipe for (dis)agreeing

State the proposition in your own words (to make sure there’s no miscommunication and that you understood the position), then (dis)agree, stating the reasons why.

Ways a person could be wrong (and by extension the argument they’re making):

• uninformed (the person is wrong because they lack information)
• misinformed (the person is wrong because even though they have information, it is wrong)
• incomplete (the person is wrong because even though they have information, and it is correct, they didn’t analyse it completely, thoroughly)
• illogical (the person is wrong because despite having all the right information and doing a complete analysis, they made mistakes in that analysis)

Many people regard disagreement as a matter of opinion. I have mine and you have yours, and I have as much right to have it as I have to own a property. But is it so? I would argue it depends on the subject, how subjective or objective it is.

#7 Don’t treat reading a non-fiction book as a passive activity

Since reading is an activity, by definition it can’t be truly passive. We can’t read with our minds asleep and our eyes immobilized. Reading is thought of as passive in the sense that it is receiving. But reading can be more or less active. One reader can be more active in the sense that they demand more of themselves and of the text before them (where it deserves that effort). There is one simple recipe for that – asking questions while reading, explaining and summarizing what you read in your own words, giving your own examples.

• If i believed this, how would it affect my decisions/life in the next week? In the next 6-12 months?
• I (don’t) agree because … (it is important to state good reasons when (dis)agreeing because not only it helps to make sure we understood, but to make our position clear and refutable/agreeable, and that we’re not simply disagreeing based on emotion/prejudice)
• this chapter of the book was about… the synopsis of the book is…
• What are the main arguments of the author? If they’re not explicit, make them.

#8 Remember that the author is human

There’s sometimes a tendency to accept a book as superior to criticism. You are a finite mortal defective creature. And so are the creations of such creatures. All things man made are defective in a way. A book, as a creation of such a creature is by extension also not perfect. Read, neither to disagree and refute, nor to agree and believe as the truth, nor to speak and argue, but to ponder and consider.

Post date: Apr 30, 2017
Last modified: Dec 5, 2020

1. Efficacy > Efficiency. Pick the right thing to do from the start instead of efficiently doing the wrong things. (Tim Ferriss)
2. Always pick the 20% that yields 80% of the results. If you could only work 2h/week on your business what would you do? (Tim Ferriss)
3. Do one thing uniquely well, so that you are very far from the competition, leading to a monopoly. (Peter Thiel)
4. Perseverance is hard work you do after you get tired of doing hard work. (Newt Gingrich)
5. Don’t chase field mice, hunt antelopes. A lion might get a nice feeling after catching a mice, but the next expense is negative and it will die in the long run. [Analogy to make us question whether we’re focusing on the big things and setting the little things aside] (Newt Gingrich)
6.  Note every single failure you have. You can have a lot of failures. You just need to hit home once. (Alexander Graham Bell)
7. If you’re investing, diversify your investments. Whatever money you’ve got, you shouldn’t put more than 5% into one idea, and no more than 20% in any sector (e.g. energy, gold) (Kevin O’Leary)
8. Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Focus on your strengths — do things that you’re good at. [outsource or delegate the others]. (Gary Kasparov and Kevin O’Leary)
9. Read, read, read [in various interviews he says how he reads a lot]. (Warren Buffet)
10. You can’t give away what you don’t have. You can’t build a business about something where you give out knowledge you don’t have. (Wayne Dyers)
11. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. [Remember, the only world our brain knows it’s the one it constructs]. (Wayne Dyers) E.g. for you the world is a friendly or hostile place? When you see the world that way, that’s what you’ll create and foster around you.
12. When you’re in the zone of doing things that no one has ever done, if you’re not failing, you’re not taking enough risks. (Michael Dell)
13. Learn, read, observe a lot.
    • Imitate and copy success.
    • Remix. Will be garbage at the start. It’s ok.
    • Persevere. (J.K. Rowling)
14. Go and get knowledge. The money will come if you’re learning and improving your craft. After that, delegate, don’t hold on to some of that knowledge. Put others doing things. (Gordon Ramsay)
15. The customer is king. Without them, the business is history. (Gorgon Ramsay)
16. Always be questioning. It is not enough to just live in the world as it is, and to take what you’re given, follow the things that adults told you to do, your parents told you to do, society. Have the scientific mindset of taking everything you learn as provisional, susceptible to be questioned, refuted, changed. All the things around us that people tell us are just the natural ways the things are and will be — they aren’t natural at all, they can be changed, and many times are wrong and should be changed. There are real fundamental problems that you can do something to address. (Aaron Swartz)
17. The more you postpone putting your product out there, and receiving real feedback from real people (users), confronting your ideas with the test of reality the more time you’re wasting working on a idea that may actually not be successful. Instead, get it out there fast, confront it with real people with real issues and figure out what makes those people happy. (Aaron Swartz)
18. Everything is built upon something else. Recombination. (Aaron Swartz)
19. Believe that you can accomplish something. Not doing so precludes you from taking any action that can lead to you accomplishing something. (Aaron Swartz)
20. Don’t be afraid of failure. Fail a lot quickly, and eventually you’ll succeed. Healthy disregard for the impossible. (Larry Page)
21. A lot of people don’t have the courage to try stuff in business. “Screw it, just do it.” Just give it a try. (Richard Branson)
22. Delegate. Find people that are better doing things that you do during the day, to replace you at it. (Richard Branson)
23. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” (Richard Branson, Virgin Group)
24. Have a clear goal in your mind. Visualize it. (A. Schwarzenegger)
25. We don’t achieve big things by accident. Shoot for the stars. (A. Schwarzenegger)
26. Work your butt off. You will have to make a lot of sacrifices. (A. Schwarzenegger)
27. Don’t be realistic. Don’t listen to naysayers. “You can’t do this, you can’t do that. It’s not realistic.” (A. Schwarzenegger)
28. Don’t be afraid to fail. (A. Schwarzenegger)
29. Model success. (A. Schwarzenegger)
30. Believe in yourself. Visualize it. Believe it. (A. Schwarzenegger)
31. Attract great people (Elon Musk)
32. Work super hard. Every waking hour. If someone is working 50h/week and you’re working 100h/week then in a year you’ll get twice as much done as him. (Elon Musk)
33. Visualize your success. Really visualize a video of the things you want with you in it. (closed-eyes, and see the images/video, feel like you’re really there). (Jim Carrey)
34.  See challenges as beneficial so you can deal with them in the most productive way. (Jim Carrey)
35.  Risk being yourself. Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. (Jim Carrey)
36. You might fail doing things you don’t want. So might as well fail on doing things you love. (Jim Carrey)
37. Be world-class in your business.
38. To go through challenges, ask “what is the next right move?” After you accomplish it, ask what is the next. And so on. (Oprah Winfrey)
39. Luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity. There is no luck without you being prepared to handle that moment of opportunity. (Oprah Winfrey)
40. Race as hard as you can. Do not look at the other guy. It takes energy in a race to keep looking back. You need to give everything you got all the time. (Oprah Winfrey)
41. “The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’” (Jeff Bezos, Amazon)
42. “There’s an entrepreneur right now, scared to death, making excuses, saying, ‘It’s not the right time just yet.’ There’s no such thing as a good time.” (Kevin Plank, Under Armour)
43. “I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.” (Marissa Mayer, Yahoo)
44. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” (Steve Jobs, Apple)
45. “I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.” (John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil)
46. Work really hard (Matt Mullenweg (WordPress and CEO of Automattic, which is a multi-billion dollar, fully distributed startup))
47. Don’t worry about failing. It’s normal. Experts fail the most as they try the most, we just don’t hear about it. They also learn with it and are resilient to those failures. Be resilient. (Matt Mullenweg)
48. Be around great people so that you can learn about what interests you the most even if everything else sucks, e.g. being in a company where you’re constantly learning from great people. when you enter a band you should be the worst musician in the band, because that means you have that much bigger opportunity to learn. (Matt Mullenweg)
49. Break the rules, and if you don’t get in the way of somebody else getting what they want when you’re doing it, no one will get mad (Simon Sinek)
50. Take responsibility. Sometimes you are the problem (c.f. Doctor’s Plague). (Simon Sinek)

Have you ever bought a new computer with such complicated new features that you couldn’t get it to work? Complexity is a problem in our modern world because humans, like all life on the planet, prefer simplicity. Nature doesn’t choose the most complicated way to solve a problem. Rather, it finds the simplest way. In fact, it’s often the simplest species that are the most successful. Given a choice between a complex or simple way to reach a goal, people will most likely choose the simplest option. Companies that understand this make their products as simple as possible, e.g. Apple with the minimalistic decor of their shops that greet you as you enter. Your options (to buy or repair something) are clearly demarcated.

Practice Honesty.

Know what your priorities are. Know what you want from interactions. Fight for your values and feelings. Say what needs to be said not being offensive but defending your rights and opinions even if that doesn’t pleases the listener. What if I speak up and my boss doesn’t like my answer? What if I go talk to that girl and she doesn’t like me? This stops people from expressing who they really are and speaking up and standing up for themselves. The thing you have to understand is that the repercussions are not so bad. If your boss doesn’t like you, fine, move on, if the girl doesn’t like you, better that way than spending weeks wondering or worrying about what if scenarios.

Your Time. Value It.

Sucessfull people are really strict about how they spend time. They don’t waste time watching netflix, youtube videos. They’re out there making their dream happen. Grinditng. Do you REALLY want that thing to happen or do you just kinda want it to?

Excellence is an Habit.

Be a creature of great habits. Start with key habits. Those that influence other areas of your life such as making your bed, eating, exercising, meditating and relaxed thinking, vizualizing, planning, journalling.

Doing the Right Things >> Doing Things Efficiently.

Stop and think first. Analyze the project you’re thinking about before going all in with it, and mindlessly being busy doing things very well, without thinking if you really should be doing them in the first place. 80-20. Do the things that have the highest return.

Be Quick to Implement What You Learned.

When you learned something, look for ways to implement it and do it. Not only does it solidify the memories but it propels you forward so that you can move to the next step.

Motivate Yourself. Visualize.

Everyday remind yourself about the things that motivate you. Use pictures that elicit an emotional response from you. See them everyday. Clearly visualize your path and arrival, and possible contingencies.

Know What Is Normal. Now Do Something Else.

Run from normal and average. You’re going to lose interest in mainstream topics. You won’t be interested in the latest movie or reality TV show. You may have one mainstream interest but the vast majority of the things you see on TV are going to come across as cheesy or ridiculous. If all you do is normal, all you’re going to get are mediocre results.

10% Reading 90% Implementation.

Information overload is legitimate and it is taking place all over the world. Stop reading junk you don’t need. Don’t read a post on how to take a company public if you don’t even have a business. Don’t ask about “hiring a sales team” if you haven’t even sold 10,000 units. You’re wasting time. Mental masturbation. What is it that you are actually *doing*. And why are you doing it? Is it going to get you to where you need to be in a year? 5 years? A decade? If you don’t build your own pyramid, you’re building someone else’s. A Zen master once said “Yes, you can achieve what you want, just stop thinking so much about it!”

Progress Everyday.

Never confuse yourself by visions of an entire lifetime at once… remember that it is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but always that of the present alone. Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. “Nothing is particularly hard if you break it into small enough pieces”.

Eat Healthy, Exercise, Meditate.

Cruciferous: Arugula, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, collard greens, kale, radish, turnip, watercress. Fast once-twice a week. 40min. of intense workout 2-3x / week. Fidget, minimize immobilized time. Take frequent short breaks. HIIT when healthy. Insomnia is the mind’s revenge for something extremely important that we forgot to do during the day: think. Direction, purpose, values, relaxed meditative thinking. Philosophy wants us to lead an examined self-aware life. This is a basic necessity of every human life.

Get Used to Feeling Uncomfortable.

Ask more. You’ll get a lot of NOs. But many suprising YES. Practice some sort of stoicism. If I go a day without failing at something, I consider it a waste of a day. I will always be a failure because I learned a hard lesson early in life. Always take action. Always maximize your potential. The only way to do this, is to fail, fail harder and accept each failure for what it is… A learning experience.

Health --> Money --> Friends/Relationships

This order is 100% true. You can only make money and have friends if you are healthy. If you have a lot of money… you have time to make more friends and establish relationships. On the flip side… If your health declines rapidly… You will likely lose both money and friends. Your money goes to fixing your health and your relationships falter as people are *busy* and the world does not revolve around you. Period.

Work like hell. Generally speaking, the path with the least amount of suffering is the wrong decision. This law becomes more fluid as you get older since you’re no longer building your life, BUT when you are young if you choose the easier path you are likely giving up decades of your life. This is not an exaggeration. The last thing you want to do is tell someone a decade older than you that you “were not willing to work hard”. This will be a nail in the coffin. We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons. There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.

No Excuses.

Most postponements are excuses for a lack of discipline. Limited money and family obligations have never stopped a person who really wanted to do something, although they provide excuses for a person who is not really up to the challenge in the first place. Excuses never made anyone rich, and we all have them. Stop being like everyone and start taking action. Unsuccessful people suffer a mind-deadening thought disease. We call this disease excusitis. Every failure has this disease in its advanced form. And most ‘average people have at least a mild case of it.

Write Your Thoughts and Thought Process.

Having your thoughts externalized makes it much easier to analyze them. You stop having to juggle them along with the analysis itself in your working memory, allowing more space for better analysis and new thoughts and further progress.

Time

The longer we spend learning any subject, the more proficient we will be at it. The longer we study a given topic, the more we will know about it. There is no way around this. However time has 2 components that we should be aware of, one of which results in faster learning.

Quantity

Without investing time it is very difficult to get far both in learning or in any other area whatsoever.

• Ways to control time invested in given activity:
  • Chronometer – the most direct way of measuring time. Basically requires us to log the time we spend on each activity. It’s generally used to track worker’s performance and actual costs in companies, but some people also use it for their personal time, and web browsing habits;
  • Schedule – planning ahead what you’re going to do in the future, by allocating a given amount of time to certain activities;
  • Goals – ;
  • Habits – Create the habit of studying/learning something;
• How much time should we invest?
  • Life weeks – The image below? That’s your whole life right there… (at best). So, think wisely about what you’re spending your time on;
  • Motivations – If something is important enough, then go ahead and invest time in it.

Now the point is to learn faster, which means, we want to minimize this time. However, not all time was created equal. Learning at specific intervals can shorten the total amount of time spent learning.

Quality

Enter the concept of spaced learning, which you might have already heard of. Most of the forgetting occurs in the very first few hours or even minutes after the first time we tried to learn it. This means that if you want to remember something after the 1st time you learned about it, you should recall it at least once in the next 24h. When reviewing what we’ve learned, we notice there are things that we remember, others we don’t. We could skip reviewing the ones we remember for now, and focus on the ones we don’t. Some apps do this automatically, like

• Anki [Search scientific papers where Anki bases to claim it works]
• Mnemosyne

They show you flash cards based on how well you told them that you remember them. Their algorithms shows you more often the cards whose memories are weak and seldom the ones that are strong. The software uses something similar to the Forgetting Curve, image below. The forgetting curve represents how memories’ strength decay slows down with time the more times we trigger them. However there seems to be some benefits to space out the triggers in time. This is why spaced learning is better than cramming. You get to remember more with less total time invested. For example, with cramming you might need 1 hour to memorize a few words in a foreign language. With spaced learning you may need half than that. And more, you’ll remember them for longer. Generally speaking, memories that you recall many times in a spaced way, are easier to memorize and stay with you for longer.

Intensity

An intense learning session is one where you’re focused and giving 110% of your energy to learn.

How can we increase the intensity of a learning session?

• By improving the learning environment – fit lightning, sound and social environment, eliminating distractions, carefully choosing who you learn with;
• With practice – even if we eliminate all distractions, our mind will occasionally drift off. The frequency with which this happens, however, can be decreased with practice;
• By using active learning methods;
• With artificial time constraints – Examples:
  • Tell yourself you will only work on your thesis until 6pm. After that, no matter what, you will stop working on it and you will do something else not related to it. This creates a sense of urgency, and urges you work in the little time you have.

Efficiency

You can spend a lot of time learning, and with all the focus in the world, but if you use the wrong methods, it’s of little use. It’s like riding in a car for days with the throttle pedal floored but only with  5 horsepower (normal cars, for those that don’t know much, have usually above 50 horsepower).

So, how can you increase learning efficiency?

• Learn actively;
• Learn by connecting ideas  (analogies, metaphors, learn the trunk before the branches and leaves, …)

Conclusion

These are the 3 key factors that allow us to know the maximum in the least amount of total time. “Knowledge/skill” = Time × Intensity × Efficiency. Let’s do a simple analogy to better understand this with a car’s combustion engine. This formula would become Distance Traveled = Time Spent Moving × How Much We Stepped on the Accelerator × Engine Power.

Note: Intelligence could enter into this equation, but since it is something over which we have no control, it is not worth taking the time to think about it. In addition, there are lots of books dedicated to the subject of “natural talent” vs. “talent acquired”, and the answer is always that the 1st is only of importance in very high level competitions like in the Olympic Games or in very specific cases, as savants in which which gives them skill out of the normal range [1,2]. Not considering such specific cases and for our day-to-day and even high-level needs, the talent acquired is by far more important.

Featured image cortesy of alicia bramlett @ flickr.

The Light

The lights we’re subject to influence us and can be responsible for a better or worse learning. Before the invention of tungsten lamps, white strong light meant day, weak white light (moon), yellow/orange light (fire) or no light meant night. The changes between these lights were gradual. Then came lamps lit by the power of electricity and despite the awesome benefits it brings, it brought confusion to our bodies.

This machine with a cumbersome programming that started thousands years ago, hasn’t had time to adjust and keeps assuming the same correlation between light color and strength and time of day. And if we don’t purposefully respect those correlations, we may risk confusing our internal clock (the so-called circadian rhythm)

Fine. What’s the problem in my … rhythm becoming confused? One of the problems concerns health. People that expose themselves to lights according to their … rhythm tend to have less health issues.[5]

Ok then. Then what do I need to know about light?

The 3 Things About Light to Pay Attention to

Color

We receive yellowish/reddish light from the sun. The change in color from one to the other is related to the blue and green light not reaching us as the sunset approaches, or the sun rises.

Such is the importance of the color of the light that we’re exposed to that NASA is thinking about installing light changing colors [7], precisely because of the reasons talked here.

Blue light (white light includes blue light, so this applies to white light as well) seems to be beneficial during the day for increasing concentration, reducing reaction time and improving our emotional state [9]. On the other hand, its presence at night deregulates the biological rhythm in a stronger way that yellow/red light does [5].

Intensity

The more intense the light is (this is measured in lm, short for “lumens”) the stronger the effects the color has on us.

Duration of Exposure

The same way, the longer we’re exposed to a certain light, the greater the effects. Being exposed to a holophote for 1/2 second is different than being exposed to a candle for a whole day.

Mimic Outside Light

This being said, what should we do? We should have every light that shines on us to mimic as close as possible an 8-12 hour period of daylight. From the dim morning light,  that gets stronger and whiter until the noon. Then gradually get yellower dimmer and redder until it becomes non existent or very dim. Natural light is usually good. I say usually because there are some exceptions. Rainy or Nordic countries are not blessed with many sunlight. This is why in these countries it is fairly common for people to use strong white lights to combat depression.

In lamps packets it’s possible to read the color of the light they emit in Kelvin (K) (Fig. 1). Yellower lights (1800-3000 K) are better for a cozy environment and for rooms where we spend more night time. Whiter (5000-6000 K) allow us to see better color contrast. For this reason they are better for work where it’s important to distinguish and combine colors.

Then there’s also the light emitted by electronic devices. For Windows computers there is a free application called f.lux for windows that adjusts the color of the computer screen to match more natural light (white light from dawn to early afternoon, then more and more orange ) With several options for each one for your liking.

If you use tablet or mobile phone there are similar app for Android / iOS.

Conclusion:

• Prefer environments which are illuminated as closely as possible according to the sequence: white light gradually stronger from dawn to noon, then gradually fainter and more orange to the minimum limit to use before bedtime;
• Use indirect light sources, especially during dawn, dusk and night.

The Sound

The sound, or the lack of it, can be both a distracting factor and a concentration aid. Depends on the person. In addition, the same person may have preferences that vary over time – sometimes they may desire more silence, sometimes more noise / music.

Sound pollution is a source of stress with several health effects [1, 2]. In this aspect studying in quieter environments may even be better for health. For this we either eliminate or change the sources of the noises, we change places, or we change our ability to hear the sound. As for the first two, there are no great suggestions to make that apply to all situations. In relation to the latter an easy and inexpensive way is to use headphones with sound reduction, such as in-ear phones (Fig. 3).

As this is not for everyone, because having a thing inside the ear may not be very enjoyable, there are also headphones that cover the entire ear that also block a large part of external sound (sound isolating headphones) and still others with the ability to create sounds that cancel external noise (noise canceling headphones).

But silence is not for everyone, and even for those that prefer it, that may not always be the case! There are even people who believe that they cannot study in silence. Is it learned or innate behavior [3]? Still, you may simply not want such a quiet environment and some background noise can even help to focus or motivate (some musics can improve our moods). However many people also cannot study in silence. Let’s look at some hypotheses to introduce some sound in the environment, taking the most obvious and common that is by playing music:

• On youtube, search for “10 hours” plus anything, for example “10 hour sounds”. For example “10 hour relaxing” “10 hour rain” “10 hour thunderstorm”, nature, coffee, fire,
• Public place like coffee or beach;
• Turn on TV with the sound low;
• Put movie / radio / series / playlist to give on computer with low volume;
• Simulators of sounds online (click to open):

Final suggestion:

1. Grab your favorite hot drink;
2. Open the following links:
   • Rain
   • Music
   • Fireplace

Conclusion

• Change the sounds you hear in order to reduce distractions, improve concentration and improve your mood.

The Distractions

What distracts a person may not distract another. If one prefers absolute silence because the noises distract, another may not be able to study without ambient music.

The best way to combat most of the outside distractions (on the other hand, the internal ones are when you think about how good lunch was or what you’re going to do in the afternoon) is to do so in a way to avoid expending mental energy (will power for the effort to needed to refocus yourself) to deal with them. What does that mean?

An example: if you’re with the television on, it’s normal that you hear from time to time something that catches your attention. The more you concentrate on that thing, the more effort you will have to make to get back to what you were doing. Even if you do not look, you may be constantly exerting the willpower not to look, (e.g. a movie that you like is on).

Either way, you’re expending energy that could be used to learn better. The best way to combat it is to eliminate these expenses. So, from the worst to the best would be: turn off the television (with the command within reach); Turn off the television; Disconnect the TV from the wall outlet; Go to a room without television; Go to a place where there is not even a television nearby.

More examples and possible solutions to minimize the will power expenditure:

• Facebook – block hosts file, go to location without internet;
• Computer game – uninstall, use a weaker computer that can not run it;
• Unpleasant food smell – leave the place;
• Phone – put it in airplane mode, turn it off, put it far where it is out of sight and hands so that it takes more work to go there to pick it up than to continue to study;
• Objects that evoke strong memories – remove them from view.

If you do not leave them, it means that you will have to use mental effort to stay focused, and that is not what we want. Any energy that is not used in the learning is wasteful.

• The best way to deal with distractions is to eliminate them at the root. Do it and you’ll have more mental stamina for learning.

The Decoration

We all have a mission. With so many things to do during the day, though, it is not always present in our minds. Having a way to put that mission and goals more visible helps keep our mind focused and motivated by reminding us that “This is why I have to continue!”.

The Place

Studying in an amusement park or nightclub (taking the obvious disadvantage of noise, lack of lighting and place to put material) is not conducive to studying, if not for other reasons, because no one else around you is doing it. On the contrary, everyone is doing something that you would like to do.

So it’s usually a good idea to go to a place where everyone is working, or at least not doing something that you would like to be doing yourself. Then you need to have eye contact with people and them with you. Being in a cubicle in a library does not evoke the same feeling as being at a library table with a view of everyone, and where you see everyone around you working.

Examples of Places to Consider

• Libraries (faculty, school, public);
• Home – in principle is the one from which you have more control over the environment (light, sounds and company);
• Coffee shops;
• Nature – pencil, paper and your head. Sometimes it ‘s all that’ s needed;

• The social weight of seeing others doing a certain activity that you would like to be doing is felt in the study. So, try going to a place where you feel more willing to study, just because everyone around you is doing it.

The Organization

There are those who say that people who place extreme importance on cleaning are harsher at making judgments and determining punishments. On the other hand the hygienic hypothesis (Okada, 2010 # 2) suggests that from a certain level, the higher the standards of cleanliness of a country, the greater the number of autoimmune allergies and diseases (simplifying are those in which the cells of defense of our body rebel against us) are present there.

According to some doctors hygiene should be more about reducing the number of bacteria and not eliminating them altogether (except cases of patients with immune deficiencies) since not only 95% of them are harmless, but in small numbers they are serve as dummies for immune system to practice. For example a few thousand salmonella are child’s play to our immune system. The problem is when there are millions.

Regarding organization and minimalism (the latter is basically a way of living that certain people adopt where they try to minimize everything that is not absolutely necessary) depends.

In terms of creativity, for example, adopting minimalism can be counterproductive, because it minimizes the number of different things we can be inspired by or think of. IDEO, a company that excels in originality and innovation, as their offices filled with several crazy props. How much longer would it have taken Newton to think of the theory of gravity if he were not at the foot of a fruit tree from which fruits would fall and instead into a white room?

However, litter is unlikely to make the room any more useful – objects must be minimally related to the theme, which, in that case, is unlikely. On the other hand having multiple objects increases the chances of looking at someone and distracting you. If the objects are related to the job, this can even be positive.

Whether we adopt minimalism or not, the more organized a learning environment, the easier it is to find things, because even if we forget where something is, we know how to go there by reasoning. For example if we put all the papers of a given topic in a given place, then any paper of that topic can only be there. So logically organize things, so that their place makes sense.

If, in addition to being organized, we get used to putting things in the same places, it has the advantage that it becomes a habit. That is, you put the brain in auto-pilot, which is way to save mental energy, necessary for high performance.

Initially it takes a greater effort, because instead of just throwing things you will have to expend some effort to put them in the right places. The difference is that after some time you no longer need think about doing so. This also has the advantage that reduces the likelihood of losing something.

• Keep the study environment clean but without going to excess for example using alcohol to disinfect every corner of the house;
• Organize the work environment in a way that is logical;
• Get used to putting things in the same places.

The company

You have two possibilities: either you study alone or with others. Preferring one or the other depends on your personality but also on the type of company you have available. Each member of a group composed of highly motivated and equally competent people goes further than if they were to work independently. First, in a group of competent people each should have slightly different knowledge of each other. Some are better at some parts others are better at others.

It is much quicker and more efficient for us to ask someone a question, see it answered right away enabling us to get back to learning, than looking for the answer in the middle of things we already know. The person that explained the answer to you is also benefiting because the act of explaining, itself:

1. Is a form of active learning;
2. Triggers the memory, which makes it stronger;
3. Can help them find holes in their knowledge (see rubber duck technique).

We have moments of willpower weakness at different times, in which we feel like stopping and doing something else. In a group of equally motivated people it is unlikely that these moments happen at the same time. They pull you back in. Later you pull them back to work.

In contrast, if you are with unmotivated people you will be able to notice that it is you who have to do the heavy lifting. They will want more frequent breaks, they will be distracted more easily with things not related to the work. But if you don’t go with them and have a cup of coffee or talk about whatever they’re talking they can see you as antisocial or not part of the group. But in this case your performance is reduced compared to working alone. Therefore, a group with the same working motivation is preferable. Or, for lack of one, work alone.

• Be in highly motivated and competent groups, and with whom you get along (needle in the haystack? I wouldn’t argue that… );
• If the above is not possible, and if the goal is performance, prefer to learn alone (read – without people you know).

The Conclusion

So light, sound, distractions, decoration, what others do at the venue, organization, and company. It is these 7 of the most important factors that, if taken into account, have managed to build an excellent study environment.

• You’d like to know interesting insights about how the brain works, and practical applications;
• You’re interested in improving your learning and memory abilities.

Why listen to the author

• Medina is a developmental molecular biologist with special research interests in the isolation and characterization of genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders;
• Has spent most of his career life working with industries dealing with mental health.

Reviews

Reading time: ~8min.

Move, Exercise

Medina starts by talking about how we’re wired to be moving. How our brain was made to be on a moving body. He then gives the example of a famous bodybuilder in his 70s that was very strong. He was not only physically but also mentally strong, alert, quick-minded and intelligent [anecdotal evidence, but ok…].

Is there one factor that predicts how well one ages? He compares between two men of the same age (in their 80s). One is your typical waiting-to-die in a home for the elderly with vacant eyes just staring around. The other is a famous architect, lucid and quick minded. He asks “How can two people of the same age, age so differently?” The one factor is sedentary life. If you don’t live a sedentary life you’re more likely to age well and retain your mental strength.

He then showed that people that perform physical exercise throughout life perform better in tests made to assess long term memory, reasoning, attention and problem solving. He also showed how sedentary people’s scores would improve for a while after doing exercise but returned to their normal lower levels when they stopped and went back to being sedentary again. Being physically active also cuts by more than half the risk of getting mental disorders.

Medina then mentions that exercise stimulates our body to produce substances that promote the development of new capillaries which improve blood circulation. Fresh oxygenated blood is needed to infuse oxygen not only for the cells to breathe but also for them to let go of harmful free electrons which will attach themselves to the oxygen. As the human body is used to walking 15 km per day, so including exercise in our lives will not make us smarter but normal. Exercising will bring us to our natural state.

He says exercising is as close to a magic bullet of medicine and of staying healthy as we can get. Many companies are in fact incorporating exercise in their offices which ends up raising the performance of all their employees.

Learning Changes the Physical Structure of Your Brain

The subject switches to biology. Medina argues that whenever we learn something, physical changes occur in our brains. New connections between neurons are formed, neurons increase in diameter. A scientist once compared the brains of birds that had been taught to do tricks to ones that hadn’t. The ones that had learned the tricks had larger brains and with different folds in certain areas than the others. Violinists also have over-developed, enlarged and swollen brain zones that concern their left hand while the part that controls the right hand looks anorexic. The brain seems to act exactly like a muscle. The more activity it does the (physically) larger and more complex it becomes.

Medina then mentions that there have been studies showing that there are neurons that only fire for one specific thing. You have a neuron that only fires for a specific person you know. For example you have Jennifer Aniston neuron.

He then talks about a very good surgeon that needed to remove some bad cerebral cells from a patient. He would touch the exposed brain and the patient would tell him what he felt. The surgeon then put a piece of paper in the places where he touched so that he knew about what was each area of the brain of that particular patient. For example, for bilingual patients he had to put two papers about languages, one for each. So before watching a funny cat video, do you really want your brain to physically change itself in order to accommodate the memory of it?

He then talks about a gifted education researcher, John Bransford. Bransford says that if you want to learn something don’t start with the details but with the key ideas and in hierarchical fashion for the concepts around these larger notions to form.

There’s No Such Thing as Multitasking

It is physically impossible for you brain to multi-task. Every time we think about something else other than what we were just doing our brain has to switch the active connections. People that appear to be good at multitasking actually have good working memory and are better at doing many things sequentially. The thing is, studies show that people that are interrupted take, on average, 50% longer to accomplish tasks and make 50% more errors. It’s the “where was I?” factor. Switching tasks takes some tenths of a second. Think about how much that is. Specially while driving, studies have shown that fiddling with your phone is like being drunk.

How to Win Teacher of the Year Prize

What does John Medina do in his classes that is so special to have won this award? Well, he applies what he’s wrote in this book. Here’s the recipe:

• Divide the class in 10 min. segments where 1 of them is explaining a general concept . The other 9 are devoted to explain details.
• Always do it hierarchically. General idea first that’s how the brain likes it. It is important to remind often where we are. If the instructor doesn’t sprinkle where they are in terms of framework the audience has to multi-task and guess or figure out where the concepts fit in the general scope of things.
• Explain the links between the stuff you’re teaching clearly and repetitively.
• Then reserve every 3rd or 4th day for reviewing the facts delivered in the previous 3-4 days. Present previous information in compressed fashion. The students should inspect notes, comparing with what the teacher is saying in the review.

This one he didn’t do, because the school wouldn’t allow, but in fact Medina’s ideal school would be one where after 1h30 – 2h of teaching new stuff, teachers would review everything that was learned during that time.

How to Memorize Better

Create a Strong Memory from the Start

The book then switches focus to memorization. The stronger we encode information at the moment of learning the stronger the memory. Medina shows a test that we can do with a group of friends and whose results have been replicated throughout laboratories in the world. Give a list of ~10 words and ask one group to count the number of letters that have diagonals in them and the other to think about how they like each word. The 2nd group will remember 2 to 3 times more words than the 1st.

When trying to recall something your odds of success increase if you replicate the conditions you were in when you first learned/memorized the thing.

To add to that, the more pathways you have leading to an information the easier it is for it to be recalled. For example when learning a new word, read several examples of it, and think of its meaning for you personally.

The first few impressions of new information are crucial in determining whether it will be remembered because the neural pathways that are created to process new information end up becoming the permanent pathways the brain reuses to store the information. (Like the college professor that made no sidewalks in the new campus. He waited to see where students would walk anyway, then later paved the paths.)

Use Spaced Repetition

Scientist Robert Wagner tested mass repetition vs spaced repetition and saw that the people he experimented on recalled more if the same information had been remembered at spaced intervals instead of cramming. He also mentions the work by Ebbinghaus which endorses this idea. So, in order to better memorize things we should deliberately re-expose ourselves and in an elaborate and personal way relating it to other things.

Spaced Doing makes sense. It is a way of the brain knowing what to forget and what not to forget. Why should our brains remember something that didn’t elicit a strong emotional response (which means it isn’t dangerous, it isn’t fun, it isn’t sexy, … so basically it’s – boring) and that we didn’t use never again? It makes sense to forget that. Forget useless boring memories. But not even if something is emotionally boring, but you do it all the time, your lizard brain may not understand why it’s important, but the fact that do use it all the time means, at least, that it’s something that needs to be easily accessible.

This forgetting is stronger at the start, when the memory is still fresh. This appears to be because the electric isolating material that forms with time around the neuron and neural pathways (myelin) is still very thin as is the neural pathway itself, so it doesn’t take much for the signal and the neural pathway to disappear.

There are several studies that mention how napping improves the rest of your day’s cognitive abilities, in fact, our bodies seem to have been made for a night’s sleep and a nap during the mid-afternoon.

Rest On It

Apparently, we learn while sleeping. During night, the brain makes new connections. An experiment was conducted where students were given some math problems and a method to solve them. There was a shortcut to solving those problems, which they weren’t told. If they allowed the students to sleep during the time allowed to solve the problems, they would have triple the chance of finding the shortcut (from 20% to 60%) no matter how many times they ran the experiment.

Napping appears to have a complimentary function to night sleep, and in fact, our bodies seem to be pre-programmed for that, hence the typicall after-lunch drowsiness. In one study, a 26-minute nap improved NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent.

Use Pictures

The next topic is about the Pictorial Superiority Effect (PSE). Memorizing information through a picture is several times more efficient than memorizing it through text. We’re talking triple or quadruple the efficiency — that is you remember more and for longer if information is presented through a picture instead of text. This effect is truly Olympian. Scientists did some tests and found that people could remember more than 2500 pictures days later after memorizing with 90% accuracy. Several tests corroborate this.

As for text and oral information, people only remember 10% of information for ~72h. One reason that may explain why text memorization is so low is that text is nothing more than a lot of pictures with minute details. For our eyes there aren’t words. Everything is a picture. Letters are just a specific type of picture that we recognize and that together with other of the same pictures, create meaning. The PSE is an established fact for many types of topics but it is unclear if some like arts, philosophy are better conveyed through narrative for example.

Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.

Use Your Senses

He proceeds taking about how we have evolved to use multiple senses in combination to better make sense of the world. He gives the example of a scientist who made a study where there were 3 groups of people. One was given info delivered via one sense (e.g. visually) the other by another sense (e.g. hearing) and the other with a combination of those. The 3rd group would always have better recall, memory consolidation, and problem solving capabilities. There’s a neurological phenomenon called synaesthesia in which stimulation of one sensory leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory. People who report a lifelong history of such experiences are known as synesthetes. These generally display advanced memory.

If you’re not a synesthetes though, there’s hope. Smell seems to be great for normal people to remember emotions. It increases recall up to 50% as shown in some studies. For example, in one study they put two groups in the movie eating popcorn. Then they were asked a series of questions. However in one group they put the smell of popcorn in the room. That group was able to recall double the one without the popcorn smell. If you want to forever imprint a summer’s love into your memory use one kind of perfume every day during that period. Later on when you smell that perfume memories will come flooding. One reason for this is that smell directly stimulates the amygdala, which directly controls emotions. Smells control emotions.

Relax

The last subject of the books is stress. How chronic stress makes the immune system weaker. In a study, one group of people with happy memories and another with sad, had their blood monitored. The sad group had a weaker immune system. Stressed people are many times more likely to get a cold and other diseases.

Stressed brains learn worse than relaxed brains. He gives the example of children who have to endure their parents’ fights and arguments. Those kids, studies have shown, have higher blood pressure, more stress hormones in the urine. He says how they feel and are in fact powerless to stop the conflict and that this loss of control is emotionally crippling. The feeling of powerlessness is very stressful. Teachers find many children emotionally distracted, so upset and preoccupied by the explosive drama of their family lives that they are unable to concentrate on such mundane matters as multiplication tables.

The emotional stability of the home is the single greatest predictor of academic success.

All the best stress management books touch the same point: the biggest part of successful stress management involves getting control back into your life. See when and in what situations you feel the most helpless and tackle that.

 Key takeaways

• Move, exercise, be physically active – it’s the best health magic pill there currently is, and it also improves your ability to learn and to keep your brain in good health to function properly in general and to resist aging better. Mix aerobic with non-aerobic, both help the body in different ways;
• The brain is like a muscle. New information takes a physical form in your brain. The more developed you are in an area, the bigger that part of your brain becomes;
• There’s no such thing as multitasking, only sequential activities. Each time you switch activities, your brain takes a few tenths of a second to reengage, and this re engagement increases likelihood of mistakes happening (texting and driving is very bad for this reason);
• When learning, start from the general ideas and only then the details. As you progress in your learning, keep reviewing where you are, and how what you’re studying fits in the grand scheme of things;
• To remember better:
  • Use spaced repetition (do things you’re trying to learn not jammed into sessions but spaced in time, trying to improve in each one);
  • Sleep on it (sleep while thinking about a problem you want to solve);
  • Prefer pictures rather than text or voice. Ideally all of them (use graphs, drawings and pics to explain stuff);
  • Use smells to elicit strong emotions (e.g. the smell of someone or a pet you loved that is no longer with you is the strongest emotional reaction you can get);
• The feeling of powerlessness is one of the most stressful feelings one can have. Be sure not to cause others to feel that way. You’ll also be making their immune system stronger.

An interesting source made by John Medina himself with further visual and cool explanations and exercises related to this topic and the link to another summary of this book also made by him and another by Derek Sivers.