learntrepreneurs

make the most of your mind

Eva Keiffenheim

Get More Value Out of Online Courses with These Four Strategies

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Knowledge is useless unless applied.

Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

Have you ever paid for an online course and failed to finish it?

In 2020, 183,744 courses launched on Teachable alone. And while the number of new courses keeps rising, their quality doesn’t. Studies show only one in seven people completes them.

In the last months, I spent around $2,000 on online courses. And if I’ve learned one thing then it’s this:

Whether you spend $900 or $50 dollar on an online course, chances are your course creator doesn’t know much about evidence-based learning design.

If you don’t take charge of your learning, nobody else will. Here are the things that will help you make the most of any online course.

1) Start with what you need the most.

E-learning is often ineffective because it’s distant from the actual application.

How often have you watched an aircraft’s safety video? Every time before take-off, you watch how flight attendants put on their life vests. With every flight, you re-watch the video. But it’s ineffective.

This study shows, putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it. You acquire mastery by performing the procedure yourself.

Ultralearner Scott Young labels this the principle of directness. But how you call it doesn’t matter. Simply focus on what you need the most and skip the rest.

How to do it:

Why did you take the course in the first place? Decide on your learning goal and start with the lessons closest to your objective.

When I took my first online courses I felt like disrespecting the course creators by not watching from start to finish. What I didn’t realize is I disrespected my time.

Online lessons aren’t created equal and not every section is worth your time. Many times you find fluffy filler sections. When you see one, skip it.

Treasure your time and jump ahead whenever you feel lessons are a time-waster. Prioritize what you need the most and ignore the rest or save it for later.

2) Find a way to apply what you learn directly.

In my first months of online writing, I took three online courses. And while watching successful writers inspired me, it didn’t help me advance my craft. I ignored that the only way to get better at anything is by practice and application.

“The one who does the work does the learning.”

— Terry Doyle

Online courses can help you create better products, earn more money, and help you live a happier life. But unless you apply the lessons from the instructors, the courses remain mere entertainment. Knowledge is useless unless applied.

How to do it:

Just like the minimum viable product, find a minimum viable action. What is the simplest thing you can do based on what you just learned?

If you take a course on e-mail newsletter, write your first e-mail. If you take a drawing class, do your first drawing. If you take a course on online writing, write your first article. Foster a bias towards action.

You don’t learn by watching things. You learn by doing them. The more you engage with the content, the likelier it will stick with you. Knowledge trapped in online courses is meaningless unless applied to your life.

3) Form an accountability group with fellow learners.

It’s difficult to hold yourself accountable if you’re sitting alone in front of a computer. Last year, I learned it the hard way.

Studying has always been easy for me. I finished my Bachelor and Master studies with great results. So when I started part-time studying philosophy, last year I was nothing but thrilled.

Yet, five months later and I didn’t take a single exam. The reason? I didn’t connect with fellow learners. I lost motivation. I stopped.

I’m only a month into the new semester but my accountability group makes a difference. We e-meet once a week and share tips and resources, ask probing questions, and encourage each other.

Accountability groups add personal layers to online environments. Community-based learning can work on different levels: as a motivational safety net, learning practice, relationship builder, and accountability tool.

How to do it:

If your online course has a Slack channel or private Facebook group look at the most active members. Reach out to them personally, to form an accountability group.

Schedule weekly check-ins. Discuss what you applied. Listen, talk, read, write, and think about the new material. The more work your brain does, the more connections you establish. And the more connections the higher the chances that you remember what you learn.

4) Take effective notes using a Roamkasten.

Our brains don’t work like recording devices. Learning and memory need two components: the learned information itself and a so-called retrieval cue that helps you find the learned material.

In the last years, I experimented with various note-taking systems — outlining, sketchnoting, mind-mapping, Notion workflows, and BulletJournals — before I finally settled on the Roamkasten, an implementation of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten in RoamResearch.

Here’s why this note-taking system beats others:

  • The Roamkasten gets more useful with every additional note you create.
  • The system is built on state-of-the-art learning science.
  • It offers you serendipitous idea discovery.

Through bi-directional linking, the Roamkasten helps you create connections between different domains and challenges your insights while minimizing effort and stress.

Former R&D lead at Khan Academy Andy Matuschak said if you had to set a single metric as a leading indicator for yourself as a knowledge worker, it would be the number of permanent notes they take.

How to do it:

First, decide on a digital tool. You can pick between programs solely built for Zettelkasten, like Zettlr and The Archive, or more functional alternatives like TiddlyWiki, Obsidian, RemNote, Amplenote, and Org-roam. I use Roamresearch ($15 a month) because of its clean design and its Readwise connection.

Second, create a page for your online course where you write down your standard course notes. They include everything the instructor said that you might want to remember. It’s easy to write them because you don’t have to think for yourself. Simply jot them down, one bullet at a time.

Third, create permament Zettelkasten notes. Look at your course notes and ask yourself questions like “Which new insights do you have based on the new material? How does it relate to what you already know? Where in your work or life will you apply it?”

Write exactly one note for each permanent note and write as if you were writing for someone else. Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references, and try to be as precise, clear, and brief as possible.

When you’re done, relate the note to existing notes inside your storage system using bi-directional linking. That way, you implemented two strategies that are known for effective learning — elaboration, and retrieval.

Final Thoughts

Online courses can improve many aspects of your life. But to belong to the few percent who take away a lot from it, consider:

  • Starting with the lessons that help you the most. Skip what you don’t need.
  • Apply what you learn as soon as possible.
  • Form your accountability group to boost motivation and learning.
  • Use a personal note-taking system that helps you remember what you learned.

Don’t feel discouraged by these different ideas. What worked for me might not work for you. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, take what resonates and forget the rest. And most importantly: enjoy your learning journey.

Are you a life-long learner? Get your free learner’s letter now.

3 Principles of Reading Most People Don’t Learn Until Later in Life

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As long as you’re reading, you are already on your way to wisdom.

Photo by Adil from Pexels

Do you ever close a non-fiction book and worry whether reading is a time-waster?

If you ever feel like the knowledge in a book can’t help you live a better life, it’s likely because you don’t know about key reading principles.

Reading non-fiction takes anywhere from six to nine hours — a significant time investment. These hours aren’t wasted if you read for entertainment.

But if you carve out the hours from a busy day to read books like Thinking Fast and Slow, you’re likely looking for something more than joyful reading time.

Whether you want to use books to advance your career or apply what you read to your life, this one is for you. Here are fundamental reading principles many people learn too late in life.

1.) Passive Reading Won’t Make Information Stick

It’s Sunday morning, and you’re on a walk with friends. The topic revolves around some serious non-fiction books you just read. First, you feel proud because you read it. But soon after, you feel dumb.

Because when the conversation goes beyond the main book themes, you feel lost. You discover you only remembered a fraction of the content.

This happened to me quite often. I could talk about the basic claims, but when a friend asked a probing question, I couldn’t answer it. I often thought reading didn’t work for me and considered quitting books altogether.

I didn’t have a basic understanding of how our brains work. Twelve books and hours of lectures later, I understand how we learn and remember.

Human brains don’t work like recording devices. The words on the pages don’t magically stick to our memory.

Learning is at least a three-step process: encoding of information in your short-term memory, consolidating knowledge in the long-term memory, and retrieving information when it’s needed.

To make reading effective, you need to factor in the two components of learning and memory: the learned information itself and the so-called retrieval cue that helps you find the material you learned.

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

— Mortimer Adler

What to do:

These three evidence-based steps will help you remember anything you want from the books you read.

First, elaborate. Explain what you read in your own words and relate it to what you already know. Stop after reading an interesting sentence and scribble your thoughts on the book’s page or your note-taking app.

Answer these meta-learning questions: “How does this relate to my life? In which situation will I make use of this knowledge? How does it connect to other insights I have on the topic?”

You can’t rephrase anything in your words if you don’t get it. By elaborating, you become an active reader and make new information stick.

Second, retrieve. We learn something not only when we connect it to what we already know (elaboration) but when we try to access it. Retrieval is powerful because when you recall a memory, you reinforce both it and its cue.

After finishing a book, summarize the content from your memory: “How can you summarize the book in three sentences? Which ideas do you want to keep in mind and apply? How does the book relate to what you already know?”

This is also the technique Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman used to remember what he learned. He mentally recalled all principles and main points he wanted to keep in mind. You can do the same. Unlock the benefits of retrieval by writing your summary after finishing a book.

Third, space out self-testing. The more time has gone since you read a book, the more difficult it is to recall it. That’s why you can’t remember concepts when you talk to friends. But forgetting isn’t a character flaw. It’s essential for learning.

After a week went by, think about the book you read. Recall your summary without looking at the sheet. After, check for your knowledge gaps. In that way, you strengthen your memory and cues for faster retrieval. Repeat the self-testing once in a while, and you’ll be able to recall a book’s content fast.

The entire process can feel slow and intense. But that’s how effective learning works — you have to do the work.

2.) Reading Isn’t About the Number of Books You Read

When I made reading a life habit, I set the intention to read a specific number of books a year. And while reading 52 books a year for three years certainly helped me get started, this mindset is counter-productive.

Focusing on a number of books accelerates the way you read. But speed-reading isn’t helpful. Different studies confirm when reading speed goes up as a result of speed-reading, comprehension goes down.

And as you know from the previous point, comprehension is only the start of proper knowledge acquisition. If you want to remember what you read, you need to use metacognition (meaning the questions you answer while and after reading).

If you want to expand your knowledge and learn deeply, read slower.

The better the book, the slower you should look at the words. Because all new information and concepts you learn need to be connected to your existing knowledge.

Before building my first business, I had read dozens of books for each stage in the business lifecycle. But when it came to starting, the biggest gamechanger was connecting it to my life by applying what I read.

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

— Mortimer Adler

What to do:

Don’t focus on the number of books you read. Instead, look for ways to include new ideas into your life. Quality matters more than quantity. Pay attention to what’s in front of you. Think about how you can apply it to life, then do it.

As Ratna Kusnur said: “Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for the betterment of life.”

When you read High-Performance Habits and learn about the power of morning affirmations, start to act. Record your own affirmations. After learning about the benefits of journaling through Stillness is Key, place a notebook with a pen on your nightstand and start journaling the same evening.

Whenever you stumble upon practical advice, pause and act upon it. Put an item on your To-Do list or place an action item on a specific spot. Reading a book isn’t a race — the more insightful the book, the more often you should pause to apply it.

3.) Mediocre Books Just Don’t Cut It

This is probably the most common disbelief that prevents people from unlocking a book’s power. Our desire to finish what we start is what makes reading feel meaningless.

Bad books are hard to read; good books almost read themselves. There are too many excellent books on this planet. Don’t waste your time reading the bad ones.

I got this wrong for years. I felt if I put down a book, I disrespect the author. Plus, I paid for the book. So why would I harm both of us?

Now first, the author won’t know if you put it aside. There’s nothing to worry about. You don’t do anyone good if you force yourself through a book you don’t like.

Second, there’s a sunk-cost fallacy that is ruining your decision. This psychological trap means you continue consuming something because you’ve invested time or money in it.

But if you carry on with a lousy book only because you paid for it and spend some hours reading, all you’re doing is digging a deeper hole. Better to waste $11.95 than four additional hours of your lifetime.

What to do:

When you like a book, you feel it. You love the writing style and marvel at the ideas. You can’t wait to read the next page. You look forward to reading it all day long.

Life is too short for bad books. Read the genres you love, the content you deeply enjoy, from authors you admire.

Start books quickly but also quit them fast if you don’t like them. Once you know, you can stop reading bad books without feeling guilty, your reading practice changes. Because once you quit a bad book, you open up the opportunity to read a great one.

Even if your best friend, a smart mentor, or Bill Gates said, you should read a book; you can quit it. Because the best person to judge whether you should finish a book is you.

Quit most books. Read-only a few. Re-read the best ones twice, thrice, or a hundred times. Books change as we do. You’ll be amazed at how many new things you can discover that you may have missed before.

Conclusion

Reading can be the fast-track to a happier, healthier, wiser life. But unless you get the key reading principles right, it remains mere entertainment.

Try all of the strategies but don’t force yourself through anything that doesn’t feel right for you. Do your research, add other techniques, skip what doesn’t serve you, and think for yourself.

Keep the steps that work for you and screw the rest. No matter which strategies you use, applying them will pay off. As long as you’re reading, you are already on your way to wisdom. Charlie Munger, self-made billionaire:

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero.”

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The Two Traits That Made Joe Rogan a Million Dollar Podcaster

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No, it’s not consistency and patience.

Photo by Luis Miguel P. Bonilla from Pexels

Joe Rogan is to podcasting what Stephen King is to writing.

Their careers weren’t set from the start. They took random jobs to pay the bills. Both honed their crafts in early adulthood and pumped out content like crazy. To date, Joe published 1615 episodes, Stephen 62 novels.

Stephen is among the richest authors; Joe is the highest-paid podcaster.

In the past year, I published 149 articles and 61 podcast episodes. I’m still a bloody beginner. But I want to learn from the best.

I spent some hours analyzing Joe’s success and was surprised. Many online creators preach consistency is key. But Joe’s story adds deeper layers to the common advice.

From Kickboxer to Kickass Podcaster

Joe’s journey wasn’t clear from the start. In 1988 he set out to become a stand-up comedian and kickboxer. He said he tried to pay the bills by delivering newspapers, driving limousines, and construction work.

Between 1995 and 2006, he appeared on TV shows, continued with stand-up comedy, and became an interviewer and commentator for the UFC. In 2005, he hired two full-time employees to film him on tour.

In short: Joe had a ton of different jobs before starting his podcast.

The Joe Rogan Experience launched on December 24, 2009. If you look at one of his early videos, you see he even was a bloody beginner. You find snowflakes on-screen and identify the background as one of his house’s spare rooms.

In a podcast with Jon Stewart, he says about his early days: “The early episodes sucked. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t think anyone was listening. It was just for fun.”

And while his Comedy career and TV shows contributed to his conversational qualities, his career path hasn’t always been clear.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

— Steve Job

Joe’s dots connected in the future. These days his podcast gets 200 million downloads a month. If we look at the pricing for podcast advertising, he charges something between $22 and $50 CPM. Joe makes somewhere between $53-$120 million a year solely based on podcast advertising.

His real income is likely higher as he generates revenue from his 8 million subscribers YouTube Channel. Plus, Rogan signed a hundred million dollar deal with Spotify. Joe is indeed the highest-paid podcaster.

What Makes His Show Successful?

To be successful in anything, you need to be persistent. That’s the prerequisite. If he had stopped a few years in, he would have never gotten where he is right now.

But I’m pretty sure there are a few hundred other podcasters who started in 2009 and continued for five or even ten years without ever seeing the success Joe is seeing.

Two traits made his show so successful — courage and curiosity.

Courage

In his 1,600 episodes and counting, his guests range from comedians, over fighters, and thinkers including Elon Musk, Tim Ferriss, Sam Harris, and Rhonda Patrick.

If his guests have one thing in common, it’s that Rogan doesn’t pick them by fame but by sympathy. Every conversation feels like a small journey as he really tries to understand his guests.

Often dialogues drift into surprising directions. For example, the conversation with Metallica singer James Hetfield was less about heavy metal and more about bees and alcoholism.

But Rogan’s also not afraid to ask hard questions and discuss controversial topics. If somebody delivers sound arguments, he likely changes a stance on topics he was very certain about.

A person who lived like Joe Rogan for six weeks summarized the charm of his mission perfectly: “Hear several facets of a narrative, entertain disagreeing viewpoints, and decide positions from a place of the reason all without losing one’s cool or resorting to petty insults.”

Curiosity

To entertain disagreeing viewpoints is a rare gift of our time and super needed. Joe is genuinely interested in the position of someone who thinks differently, as in his interview with Ben Shapiro.

The unscripted, interested, sometimes, hour-long conversations make his guests open up. He creates an atmosphere where you can disagree without discomfort. He detaches arguments from a personal level. Even in disputes, he aims to find common ground.

In a time where the media often takes aside, these open-minded moments are gold. Politically Rogan is probably one of few public figures whose attitudes are difficult to assign.

As this article analyzes, Rogan advocates introducing the unconditional basic income as suggested by Yang, the legalization of cannabis, and marriage for same-sex couples. He identified himself as a supporter of left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders. On the other hand, he complains about high taxes and is hostile to transgender activists.

I disagree with Jordan Peterson on most of his positions, but in his reasoning for Rogan’s success, he couldn’t have been clearer:

“You’re very very curious but also very very tough. It’s interesting watching you because if you don’t understand something you will go after the person […] you’re really good at pursuing things you don’t understand instead of assuming that you know what you’re talking.”

Joe is by all means not perfect, and there are viewpoints I disagree with. But his courage and curiosity help him produce episodes millions of people want to hear.

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7 Questions to Ask Yourself If You Seek More Meaning in Your Life

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Start by defining what a great day means to you.

Photo by Kun Fotografi from Pexels

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

― Howard Thurman

Do you ever lie in bed thinking you ticked off so many to-dos but still didn’t have a great day?

If you don’t really feel alive, it’s likely because you focus on the wrong things. And the most dangerous thing is to measure your day based on the level of your productivity.

Doing a lot of exciting work is good. But being too busy to feel alive isn’t.

Stop numbing your mind with work. Here are seven better metrics to judge your life. Using some of them will transform your days from good to great.

1.) Did you do something meaningful?

For a long time, I believed the only purpose of life was happiness. What other reason is there to go through life’s ups and downs if not to be happy?

But chasing happiness is the fast-track to an unhappy life. Happiness isn’t something you can catch. That’s why neither things nor achievements can make you happy.

The first time I felt long-lasting happiness was after meditating for ten days, eleven hours a day.

Because happiness is the freedom from desire, you can let go of desire when you detach from what you think you need.

Apart from meditation, there’s another way to let go of desire and feel happiness: stop making life only about yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

You don’t need to work at an NGO to do useful, honorable work. You can find it in tiny actions such as:

  • Create a meaningful gift for a person you love.
  • Take your parents on a day trip.
  • When somebody says they’re having trouble with something, find a way to help.
  • Write an article about something you learned and share it with a group.
  • Go food shopping for a neighbor that’s in need.
  • Do something at work that’s outside of your responsibility.

Now you might argue that these things bring you away from what you want to achieve. That you will waste time and not be productive. But this over-optimization is what prevents you from feeling alive.

Life is no chase. There’s nothing to catch. If you want to feel alive and happy, do something meaningful and compassionate.

2.) Did you spend time in nature?

It’s easy to get lost in front of our screens. When we feel busy, we feel like making progress.

Yet, our laptops will never make us happy. You won’t find a single person on a deathbed mumbling, “I wish I spent more time on the internet.”

Don’t focus on the laptop life. Focus on the natural life. Hours spent outside, surrounded by water and forest, is the best thing you can do.

Japanese scientists have proven the health-promoting effects of the forest in several studies. Just looking at the forest lowers your blood pressure, slows your pulse, and decreases the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol.

Nature makes people healthy all by itself. The rustling of the leaves, the scents of the trees, birdsong, and the splashing of the streams heal people and strengthen their health.

“Natural stimuli are fascinating,” says Dr. Anja Göritz, professor of psychology in an interview with the German Times, “They captivate people and attract their attention. The mind is pleasantly occupied.”

To move your day from good to great, spend time outdoors. Go for a walk after lunch. Plan a weekend trip to the next national park. Make camping trips during summer. Start measuring your days by the time spent outside.

3.) Did you learn something you didn’t know before?

Knowledge is power. That’s why learning can improve any life. Yet, only very few people make learning an ongoing habit.

Reading is the easiest way to learn every day. Books expand your mind. They make you discover truths about the world and yourself. Page by page, they help you live a happier life.

Use your curiosity as a guide. How much do your days engage your curiosity? If the answer is “not much,” consider changing something.

This study followed aging individuals while tracking their curiosity levels. They found that people with high levels of curiosity were more likely to live five years longer.

Plus, curiosity drives discoveries. There’s strong evidence curiosity makes you better remember new knowledge. The more curious you are about a topic, the more it’ll stick with you.

So, read outside of your typical field. Say less and ask more and better questions. Spend time with children. Let curiosity guide you to learn something new.

4.) Did you feel your mind-body connection?

My boyfriend has worked out almost every morning for five years. Before COVID, he jumped out of bed at 5:50 AM and biked to the gym. Now he exercises at home. He doesn’t listen to music. He’s fully present in his body.

I always admired his willpower. But he says he doesn’t need willpower anymore. Once you feel your mind-body connection, you want to feel the connection between your brain and your body.

My boyfriend in October 2020. (Picture by Victoria)

And while I’m not yet where he is, doing yoga every morning helps me grasp what he’s talking about. When I connect with my body through movement, the day gets a new quality.

Throughout centuries, philosophers and scientists have hypothesized about the mind-body connection. There’s no consensus yet. We have been left with what many refer to as the mind-body problem: What is the relationship between mind and body?

And while neither philosophy nor modern science has given a clear answer, I just witnessed how it can transform my days from good to great.

5.) Did you sharpen your mind?

The body is one part of the equation. The mind is the other half. Yet, most people don’t prioritize mental health. They chase around, trying hard to take care of the world and, meanwhile, forget to take care of their mind.

“If you take care of your mind, you take care of the world.”

— Arianna Huffington

Meditation is the most effective way to take care of your mind. Mind training tackles different topics such as dealing with a monkey mind, letting go of fear and anxiety, and returning to the present moment after distraction.

Scientists attest to the manifold benefits of meditation. This meta-analysis with more than 1,200 adults found meditation can decrease anxiety. Another study discovered that individuals who completed a meditation exercise had fewer negative thoughts when seeing negative images than the control group.

Meditating is one of the most powerful habits you can build.

Your meditation muscle will grow day by day. By seeing your thoughts as thoughts and letting them go as they arise, you’ll let go of inner chatter. As Mark Twain said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

6.) Did you have time to think for yourself?

Whenever I have a spare moment, I try to fill it. I listen to podcasts, read books, have a conversation with my beautiful boyfriend, answer messages, or hop to the next task in my bullet journal.

And while these activities can be enjoyable and add energy to my life, they have a marginal return on thinking utility. After a certain point, every additional minute of doing decreases the ability to think for yourself.

When we’re so busy doing, we don’t spend single second thinking. Entire days go by without a single deep thought. At the end of your life, you realize you’ve lived the life of others.

An easy fix is to eliminate distractions that take away your time. Get an alarm clock and ban your phone from your bedroom. Leave your phone turned off until lunch. Disable all notifications and use your time to think and connect the dots.

7.) Did you spend undivided attention with fellow humans?

Two friends met at a party. It clicked; over a few months, they enjoyed their time together — until she fell back into her old beliefs. She prioritized her physics research and became a sloppy communicator. At one point, he ended it.

Many people struggle to put their relationships first. Ryan Holiday found great words for this:

“Many relationships and moments of inner peace were sacrificed on the altar of achievement.”

During quarantine, many people have first felt the true benefit of relationships. Human connections give us energy, a sense of belonging, joy, and a feeling of oneness.

Researchers confirm what we instinctively feel. Robert Waldinger, psychiatrist and former professor at Harvard Medical School, shared in a TED Talk how relationships are the most important ingredient for a healthy, happy life.

This is probably the most important point of the entire article. Because if you don’t get your relationships right, having great days is almost unattainable.

Every hour working is an hour without friends and family. Eric Barker cites a study where one of the top five regrets of people on their deathbed is “I wish I didn’t work so hard.”

Care for your friends. Trait working time for people time. A great day for me always includes deep human connection.

All You Need to Know

Now, most people on this planet don’t have the luxury of transforming their days from good to great. But as you’re reading this, you belong to the privileged people who do have a choice.

Start by defining what a great day means to you. Consider using some of the above metrics as inspiration:

  1. Did you do something meaningful?
  2. Did you spend time in nature?
  3. Did you learn something you didn’t know before?
  4. Did you feel your mind-body connection?
  5. Did you sharpen your mind?
  6. Did you spend undivided attention with fellow humans?
  7. Did you have time to think for yourself?

Don’t make these things other achievement items on your to-do list. Pick what you like and screw the rest.

Making time for some of these things is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your future self. Repeat it often enough, and you’ll find yourself lying in bed being grateful for all the great days in your life.

Are you a life-long learner? Join my e-mail newsletter for insights on reading, learning, and growth.

3 Reasons to Write No Matter What Field You’re In

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Plus my tips on how to write consistently.

Vienna University of Business and Economics. (Photo by Ngai Man Yan from Pexels)

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was a genius, but he wasn’t a writer. He dictated his memoirs, and his friend transcribed the audio-tape.

Still, Feynman wrote. A lot. Because he realized something, many people don’t — writing equals working. He explains it in this interview:

Weiner: (Referring to Feynman’s journals) And so this represents the record of the day-to-day work.
Feynman: I actually did the work on the paper.
Weiner: That s right. It wasn’t a record of what you had done but it is the work.
Feynman: It’s the doing it — it’s the scrap paper.
Weiner: Well, the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here.
Feynman: No, it’s not a record, not really, it’s working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper. OK?

Writing is working. But it’s so much more. Here are three reasons why you should write even if you’re not a writer.

1. When You Write, You Have to Understand and Think for Yourself

You can’t summarize an idea that you don’t really understand. So, through writing, you realize whether you truly got the concept or swim in the illusion of knowledge.

The problem is as follows, writes Schopenhauer:

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. … For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.”

Writing changes the game. You put pressure on your thinking. It forces you to push your thoughts into logic. And in this process, you learn and understand.

Scientists call this the Generation effect. In 1978, researchers discovered information is better remembered if it’s generated from one’s own mind rather than simply read.

And while research is still unclear about why it works, it has been shown to accelerate learning and remembering information.

You can’t just read through an idea, hear a conversation, or watch an online course to learn what’s in front of you. Learning requires effortful engagement.

“The one who does the work does the learning,” Doyle said. And when you write about what you read and think about, you do the work.

2. Writing Will Create Meaning in Your Life

There are more than writing’s benefits to learning and working. Writing helps us make sense of our lives. Or, as diarist Anaïs Nin writes:

“Writing to me means thinking, digging, pondering, creating, shattering. It means getting at the meaning of all things; it means reaching climaxes; it means moral and spiritual and physical life all in one. Writing implies manual labor, a strain on one’s conscience and an exercise of the mind. My life flows into ink and I am pleased.”

Think of Dumbledore’s pensive. When you put the wand to your head, the pen in your hand, you extract thoughts from your head. Once they flush into the bowl and on your paper, your thoughts take a different form.

Now you see your mind in front of you. Writing helps you see how seemingly unrelated thoughts connect with each other. That’s why writing is a mind-expanding, often even enlightening experience.

I wrote my first article on March 28, 2020. Since then, I write almost every morning. Writing has paid me +€15K. But I gained something that outpasses any monetary reward: I learned more about myself.

Once you see thousands of words and plenty of articles in front of you, you’ll start to see a pattern — a pattern that can tell you more about yourself than any life coach or any book ever will.

3. The More You Write the Better You’ll Get

In the past months, a lot of people told me they also want to write every day. But they don’t. Because deep inside of them is this belief that they can’t write.

Quantity trumps quality. The reason why most people feel they can’t write is that they’ve never really tried it. They’re stuck in a memory of their high-school writing.

My first few articles were bad. There was much resistance inside my head. I was scared. I obsessed. But what helped me get better was pushing myself to publish and to write more. And more. And more.

Research shows the more you create, the more creative you become. The best ideas and connections will arise once you flow into the writing process.

Don’t tell yourself you can’t write until you’ve really tried. If you don’t want to write it’s fine. Life is still great. But if you want to give it a try, don’t use your inability as an excuse. Publish 100 articles before you decide.

How to Write Consistently

Writing can be fun once you found your process. As with many skills you want to learn, starting is the hardest part. Here are the things that have helped me stick to writing for almost a year.

Set a writing schedule. Whether it’s daily, weekly, or bi-weekly is up to you. Block a time in the calendar and make it consistent.

Give yourself a time limit. According to Parkinson’s law, work expands to fill the time available for its completion. When you write, set yourself a timer. Aim to finish your writing before the timer is up. Even if you don’t, it’ll help you progress.

Write down topic ideas on the go. Keep a journal, or use your favorite note-taking app. When you go through everyday life, write down what you think you could write about.

  • What makes you curious?
  • What surprises you?
  • What can’t you stop thinking about?

Every thought that triggers your emotions is a good starting point. Don’t judge your ideas when you write them down. And don’t ever worry about what you’ll be writing about next month—consistency trumps strategy.

Practice in public. Writing is so much easier when you have a clear goal. You can start small. Set up a newsletter for your friends and tell them they’ll get one article a month. Publishing your work with others will also help you learn faster. Feedback is fuel for better writing. So don’t be shy and share your work.

“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

— Sylvia Plath

Final Thoughts

Feynman was known to never settle for knowing a description of things. He wanted to discover the underlying truth. He really wanted to know, and it was curiosity that led him to his greatest work.

Use curiosity to guide your writing. Soon you’ll discover something about yourself you didn’t know before. All you need is time, motivation, and dedication.

So, when will you dare to write?

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It’s Hard to Hear Yourself Think When You’re Surrounded by Noise

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How to think for yourself

Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels

“Most people are other people,” Oscar Wilde once said. “Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

A lot of people believe things without questioning them. That’s how brands and job titles become valuable. A shared belief system makes them desirable.

Did you pick your job because you truly thought for yourself? Or did you choose it because of society’s perception of that job?

We’ll never know. Yet, I’m sure Kant would kill himself if he woke up to all the fluff that says how to live your life. Around 1780 he preached we should trust no authority except our own reason. Here’s how to do it in 2021.

Consume Less Conventional Media

For many people, the default option is to scroll through their newsfeeds and fill their minds with other people’s chatter.

80 percent of smartphone users check their device every morning within the first 15 minutes after waking up. Before they can even think about their day, their brains are flooded with external stimulants.

When you start your day with your phone, you don’t have the slightest chance to think for yourself. You condition your mind for distraction. Notifications and messages will make your thoughts bounce around like a ping-pong ball.

There’s a simple solution most people will never try.

Don’t turn on your phone before lunch. It’s simple, but most people won’t even try it because it’s incredibly hard to deviate from the norm. But if you do, you’ll be rewarded with clarity and your own thoughts.

When you’re less aware of what everybody else is thinking, you can’t follow their thoughts. Step by step, your thoughts will become more independent.

Make Thinking Time Non-Negotiable

Whenever I have a spare moment, I try to fill it. I listen to podcasts, read books, have a conversation with my partner, answer messages, or hop to the next task in my bullet journal.

And while these activities can be enjoyable and add energy to my life, they have a marginal return on thinking utility. After a certain point, every additional minute of doing decreases your ability to think for yourself.

When you’re so busy doing, you don’t spend a single second thinking. Days, weeks, even years go by without ever having a single deep thought. At the end of your life, you realize you’ve lived the life of others.

When was the last time you used your spare time to just think for yourself?

Thinking, ideas, and insight need input. You don’t need to hide away for 9 years as Montaigne did. A few hours each week can suffice.

If you want to think for yourself, schedule time to think. While it might seem like it’s slowing you down, the opposite is true. Block time in your calendar. Turn off your phone, your computer, and your wifi. Take a pen and a piece of paper to your hand. Then, think and write.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln

Learn How to Think Critically

Education systems teach obedience. The most successful students are those who understand what teachers want and follow the rules. It’s hard to become a critical thinker when grades reward conformists.

Luckily, critical thinking is a behavior you can learn. An HBR article writes critical thinking requires three steps:

  1. Question assumptions. Challenge everything you hear with questions such as: How do you know that? You don’t need to say this loud. But whenever you hear something, ask yourself whether it’s true.
  2. Reason through logic. Seek whether arguments are supported by evidence: Do arguments build on each other to produce a sound conclusion?
  3. Seek out the diversity of thought. Engage with people outside of your bubble (see the next point).

Find Other Independent Thinkers

As most people don’t think for themselves, the chances are low that you have a ton of independent thinkers in your network.

A great antidote is meeting different types of people. Don’t stay in your bubble. Go to university libraries from different faculties and start conversations. Go to another part of the city and speak to people you normally don’t talk to. As Matthew Dicks writes:

“I prefer to write at McDonald’s because I like racial and socioeconomic diversity as opposed to cashmere and American Express.”

Most people learn too late in life that seniority or university degrees are no indicator of self-directed thinking. Don’t let social prestige blend you. Instead, connect with independent minds.

If you’re part of different bubbles, you start to think for yourself by combining ideas from one bubble to another.

Borrow the Brains from Dead People

Go beyond demographics, occupations, and locations. Expand your circle of influencers across time. To do so, read from great thinkers who have lived before you. Follow Schopenhauer’s suggestion:

“Only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.”

And once you read books from other centuries, don’t just look at what happened. Try to really get into their heads and ask questions like:

  • Why do they think that way?
  • How did the world appear to them?
  • What made them change their opinion and why?

Conclusion

To live a life filled with meaning and happiness, it’s not enough to do what everybody else is doing. Dare to think for yourself.

  • Spend less time in front of your newsfeeds.
  • Block thinking time in your calendar.
  • Challenge everything.
  • Connect with independent thinkers.
  • Read the books from past centuries.

Oh, and by all means, please don’t copy everything I said. Question everything. Don’t trust blindly. Make Kant proud. Sapere Aude! — Have the courage to use your own reason.

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The Ultimate Personal Knowledge Management System for 23$ a Month

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The three-step process to make the most of your mind.

Photo by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels

What if you could collect relevant knowledge around you, connect it, and access it whenever you want to?

Choosing the right knowledge management tools is crucial to continually improve and learn.

In personal knowledge management, switching costs are high. But with thousands of apps available, it’s hard to figure out which ones are worth your time.

In the past year, I experimented with different tools for capturing, collecting, distilling, creating, and sharing knowledge. I spent hours exploring and comparing tools like Notion, Obsidian, Miro, MindMeister, Simplenote, Milanote, Feedly, Transno, Hypothesis, Quoteback, Coggle, Typora, Ulysses, PowerNotes, Refind, and the like.

Here’s what ultimately helped me the most to store, manage, and share anything I learn or want to remember. All of these tools are free, except for Readwise (8$/month) and RoamResearch (15$/month).

1. How to Collect and Capture Ideas

Instapaper saves everything you want to consume later.

Instapaper is a simple tool for saving articles and online videos to read and watch later. Whenever you stumble upon a useful resource but you don’t have the time to read it at that moment, just save it with a single click to your Instapaper account.

Use your Kindle as the ultimate learning tool.

Most people are e-reading enemies until they truly read their first e-book. I remained an enemy fifteen books in. You can’t dog-ear your favorite pages, scribble your questions in the margins, or sketch out the concept you just learned.

But since I transformed my Kindle into an e-learning device, I wouldn’t trade for a paper book anymore.

When reading, highlight everything you want to remember. Then use the Kindle Notes web app to trim your highlights and to add notes.

Highlight your favorite Podcast episodes with Airr.

With Airr, you can highlight audio. Whenever you listen to a Podcast episode via the App, you can simply press the ‘quotes’ button. Then, the Airr App will save a transcribed version of what you’re listening to.

It’s a game-changer for Podcast lovers who want to save their favorite sound bites. So far, the app is only available for iOS, but there’s an Android waitlist.

2. Organize What You Want to Remember

Readwise unlocks your knowledge management’s true power.

You can do a ton of things with Readwise, but I mainly use it or two things. First, for importing everything from Airr, Kindle highlights, Instapaper, and physical books. Second, for exporting everything to make your favorite note-taking app. I export my Readwise highlights to Notion and RoamResearch.

Apart from this, you can also use it to combine spaced repetition with whatever you consume. It creates flashcards of your podcast, e-book, and article highlights.

3. Creating and Sharing Knowledge

How RoamResearch lets you build a second brain.

Now there is an ongoing debate whether to use Notion or Roam for building your second brain. But the two applications solve different problems.

While Notion is for project management and team collaboration, Roam is more of a single-player option. Notion is a black hole where you have to go looking for things. Roam is the wise grandma who tells you about them.

That’s why Roam is excellent for creating your personal knowledge base and connecting ideas and thoughts.

Plus, Roam is a powerful tool for a creative workflow. You can use it for research and note-taking until you’ve finished writing your article. This tool is great for converting your final markup text into plain text. That’s how I copy articles I created in Roam into Medium.

Roam is quite pricy at $15/month. You can also pick between free alternatives and programs solely built for Zettelkasten, like Zettlr and The Archive, or more functional alternatives like TiddlyWiki (free and open-source), Obsidian, RemNote, Amplenote, and Org-roam.

I still prefer Roam because of its clean design and its Readwise connection.

Use the Zettelkasten method to create your Roamkasten.

Luhmann, the Zettelkasten inventor, found the answers and lived by them. During his life, he wrote 70 books & 500 scholarly articles. He attributes his success to a note-taking system called the Zettelkasten.

The Zettelkasten is an incredible learning tool as it forces us to use all the strategies known for effective learning — elaboration, spacing, and retrieval.

And applying the Zettelkasten to Roam takes this method to an entirely new level. Roamkasten is the ultimate personal knowledge management system.

Different from so many other knowledge management tools, the ‘Roamkasten’ is designed around cognition and learning science. The key benefits include:

  • Full retention of everything you read, watch or listen to.
  • Deep understanding of ideas and thoughts and creation of your own output.
  • Developing connections between separate domains and challenging your cognitive biases.

And the best about it: it’s an incremental process that requires minimal effort but leads to maximum output.

Building your personal knowledge management takes time, but it’s worth the effort. Once you found the stack you trust, creating content and ideas becomes even more enjoyable.

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Albert Einstein Was a Genius, but a Terrible Husband

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How his life can change the way you look at productivity.

Photo by Taton Moïse on Unsplash

Albert Einstein is one of the most genius contributors to science. At age 26, he discovered light exists as photons and laid the basis of nuclear energy. At 34, he published the general theory of relativity.

He was considered so brilliant that the pathologist who inspected Einstein’s dead body even stole his brain. Nowadays, when you google genius definition, you find Einstein’s name in the explanation.

But what made him a genius in the first place? When asked, Einstein replied,

“Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work.”

And while that’s the story we continue to preach, it’s only one part of the equation. Einstein’s insane productivity came at high emotional costs for the people close to him.

Einstein treated his wife as an employee he can’t fire

When studying in Switzerland, Einstein fell in love with another student named Mileva Marić, the only woman in his physics classes at ETH Zurich.

And while their first years of marriage are told to be romantic, things changed soon. According to biographer Isaacson Einstein said, “I treat my wife as an employee whom I cannot fire.”

Specifically, Einstein handed her a list of martial demands and only remained together if she agreed to the following conditions.

A) You will make sure:

— that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;

— that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;

— that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B) You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

— my sitting at home with you;

— my going out or travelling with you.

C) You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

— you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;

— you will stop talking to me if I request it;

— you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

D) You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

The irony of Einstein’s popular life lessons

For preparing this article, I read through primary sources, like his letters and more recent articles on his life. And while his work is undoubtedly a great scientific contribution, we should be wary when it comes to his life lessons.

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.” — Albert Einstein

Really, brother? Do you say your marriage contract is based on understanding and has not much to do with emotional force? Dude, it’s 1913. For the sake of your two young children and her own social standing, your wife can’t just leave you.

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” — Albert Einstein

Bro, I absolutely agree with your powerful quote. But here’s the catch: Are you aware that because of your marriage demands, your wife couldn’t take her exams and finish her physics studies? You treated her like a personal servant. You limited her intellectual growth.

Now what?

Historians argue Einstein also erased Mileva Marić’s contributions to the Theory of Relativity. Plus, Einstein cheated on Marić with his cousin Elsa Löwenthal whom he would eventually marry (and also cheat on).

When you remember the third point from the martial demands, you can put this into perspective: Einstein would sleep with whomever he wanted, and Marić shouldn’t expect any intimacy from him.

If there’s one life lesson he preached and practiced, it’s the following:

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein

Isaacson wrote about Einstein that “he worked as long as he could, and when the pain got too great, he went to sleep.” He even died while working.

In his biography, it says, “One of his strengths as a thinker, if not as a parent, was that he had the ability, and the inclination, to tune out all distractions, a category that to him sometimes included his children and family.”

Einstein was able to become an insanely productive monomaniac because he sacrificed his relationships.

The point is: For every successful genius, there are broken relationships we rarely hear about. So before reading the next article on Einstein’s, Musk’s, or Darwin’s productivity routines, ask yourself:

Do I see the full picture or only the productivity’s shiny side?

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This is Exactly How Reading 197 Books Improved My Life

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Naval Ravikant: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

Picture by Author.

Do you ever open a book and worry whether reading can really change your life?

If you feel like reading is a time-waster, it’s likely because you haven’t reaped the rewards yet. As Naval Ravikant once said:

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

You don’t see the desired results within weeks. If you stop too early, you’ll never get where you want.

But once you read for years rather than weeks, you see it’s the shortcut to get where you want without trial and error. You simply borrow the brains of the greatest minds and apply their nuggets of wisdom.

Through the 197 books I read, I learned from some of the best thinkers. Here are three specific ways reading has improved my life.

1.) Automating Your Path to Financial Freedom

Financial literacy is inherited. If your parents aren’t smart about money, you don’t learn the essential investing principles unless you read.

Books taught me wealth isn’t about how much you make. It’s about how much you save. Don’t save what is left after spending but spend what is left after saving.

Your paycheck won’t make you rich. Your investments will. Ramit Sethi uses 50–60% for Fixed costs (rent, utilities, debt), 10% for Investments (401(k), Roth IRA, ETF saving plans), 5–10% for saving goals (vacations, gifts, emergency fund) and 20–35% for guilt-free spending money (dining, drinking, movies, clothes).

Reading made me set up my investment plan. Right now, I invest 25% of my income. From my paycheck, 15% go to ETFs, 7% to cryptocurrencies, and 3% in lower-risk assets like bonds. On top of this, I sometimes cherry-pick stocks. But stock-picking is gambling. Here’s why.

Risk and return are interrelated. If you want to invest successfully, you can’t eliminate risk. The money market rewards investors with interest in the risks they take.

Smart investing isn’t about avoiding risks. Instead, it’s about diversifying your risks. But with stock-picking, you’re betting on a single company.

Here’s another insight that altered my path to financial freedom: You’re never going to get rich by renting out your time.

Wealthy people built systems that make money independent from time. They sell products with no marginal cost of replication — things like books, media, movies, and code. You can multiply your returns without working more.

As Nicolas Cole says:

“The way that people build true wealth for themselves is they see money differently than everyone else. They don’t see it as something they ‘have.’ They see it as something they deploy, and use to build and grow from there.”

2.) Cutting Workdays from 11 Hours to Five Hours

I used to work long hours. I worked hard to get what I felt was a success in life, including building my own companies next to a purposeful 9–5 job, my Master’s degree, a handsome fiancé, a specific amount of workouts and books per week, a number on the scale.

I was on an eternal quest for the next achievement. I never paused.

But one book after another, my life changed. Eckhart Tolle made me redefine success. John Strelecky revealed my life priorities. Brené Brown transformed my inner voice. Cal Newport helped me build deep work habits.

My workdays averaged 11 hours. Now, they‘re down to 5. The time spent is less. But my focus is higher. The equation for knowledge work is as follows:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

The more hours your work, the harder it is to focus. Working 11 hours a day with zero focus leads to zero high-quality work. That’s why there’s a diminishing return on input working hours. Putting in more hours can worsen your results. And your life’s quality.

I get up around six. After an hour of meditation, yoga, journaling, and whatever feels good, I write for about three hours. Then I read and add notes to my Roamkasten. At 11, I workout. Then, I take a long lunch break with my partner. Only after lunch, I turn on my phone.

My afternoons vary. I go for a walk with a friend. I take a bath. I have another deep work session for one of my clients, record an interview or volunteer for my NGO. But whatever I do, I make sure my phone and computer are switched off at 8 PM.

I still have workdays where I work too much. But whenever I do, I keep Glennon Doyle words in mind:

“Hard work is important. So are play and non-productivity. My worth is not tied to my productivity but to my existence.”

3.) Learning How to Learn Anything You Want

Learning is the only meta-skill you need to master because all other meta-skills depend on your ability to learn.

If you know how to learn, picking up philosophy or graphic design, or coding is so much easier. If you don’t, learning new skills is a daunting path.

In the first years of my reading journey, I ignored learning. Whenever a conversation revolved around a book I read, I could never remember much. I thought forgetting is my personal flow. But it isn’t.

Forgetting is essential for learning. Spaced repetition, one of the most effective learning strategies, allows some forgetting to occur between sessions. Thereby it strengthens the cues and routes for faster retrieval.

We learn something when we try to access it at different times (spacing) and in distinct contexts (variation). We learn when we connect existing knowledge to what’s in front of us (elaboration) and when we recall what we learned (retrieval).

Here’s how to remember anything you want from books:

  • Elaboration. Think while you read. Pause to make notes on how and when you could use this new insight. How does it relate to anything you already know? Write it down.
  • Retrieval. After you finish a book, think about what you want to remember. Recall from your mind what you want to stick with you. Write it down in your favorite tool — a journal, GoodReads, Notion, or RoamResearch.
  • Variation. Share what you learned with your friends. Talk about your insights in a mastermind group or use the Feynman technique and teach it to somebody else.
  • Spacing. Browse through your old book notes. Look at the title and test yourself on what you remember. This process feels slow and frustrating, but that’s how meaningful learning works.

When I first learned about the process, I fear it’s a time waste. But it isn’t. In Sönke Ahrens words:

“Not learning from what we read because we don’t take the time to elaborate on it is the real waste of time”

Final Remarks

I could go on indefinitely because reading has also improved my life on so many levels (10-day fasts, slow sex, nose-breathing, psychedelic experiences, etc.). But I’ll stop for now and leave you with one powerful thought.

Reading is liberating. Freedom means choosing from a set of options. The more options you have, the freer you are. But most people don’t know about all their options. And that’s where reading kicks in. It helps you explore options you never knew existed.

“One cannot apply what one knows in a practical manner if one does not know anything to apply.”

— Robert Sternberg

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19 Things You Should Say ‘No’ to for a Happier 2021

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How to become the person you want to be in life and business.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Most people think happiness is a skill, something you can build and train with the right habits.

And while this is partly right, there’s a deeper truth about living a life full of meaning that a lot of people miss: Improving your happiness and well-being is often about what you do less of, not more of.

Often I don’t feel happy for the things I do, but for what I don’t do. Last year, I said ‘no’ more often. I focused my time and energy on things and relationships that mattered most. I became self-employed, spent weeks with my parents, and proposed to my boyfriend. 2020 has been one of the happiest years of my life.

What follows are 19 things that I said no to. Not everything will apply to you. But eliminating some of these can improve your happiness and well-being in 2021.

1. Say No to Distractive Environments

1.1 Your phone in your bedroom.

Get an alarm clock and stop waking up to your smartphone’s alarm. When you sleep with your phone in another room, you don’t need to exert your willpower first thing in the morning. You’ll start your days with a clear mind.

“Because it’s my life and it’s ticking away every second. I want to be there for it, not staring at a screen.”

— Ryan Holiday

1.2 Social media on your phone.

Social media’s persuasive design distracts you and takes away your time without active consent. I bet there’s no single person on this planet who will be lying on death bed wishing they spent more time with their phones.

Researchers continue to link social media usage to mental and physical illnesses like back pain, depression, anxiety, and even suicide-related thoughts. If you’re trying to live a happier, healthier life, deleting your social media apps is a great start.

1.3 Phone notifications.

Turn off all alerts. Your lock screen should almost always be blank. If you turn off notifications by default, you won’t see any red circles that nudge you into more screen time. That way, you stop conditioning your mind for distraction.

“What we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore, play in defining the quality of our life.”

— Cal Newport

1.4 Distractions on your computer during deep work sessions.

LinkedIn? Block. Slack? Block. Online Games? Block. Unblock these sites once you finished your deep work block. You’ll be surprised how much more you can achieve in less time. The equation for knowledge work is as follows:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

1.5 Consuming the news.

A 2017 report by the American Psychological Association showed 95% of American adults follow the news regularly, even though more than 50% of them say it causes them stress. Delete your news apps. Stop reading the news. If you still want to know what’s going on in the world, start reading books.

“Are you distracted by breaking news? Then take some leisure time to learn something good, and stop bouncing around.”

— Marcus Aurelius

2. Say No to Destructive Habits

2.1 Finishing mediocre books.

Not all books are created equal, and most books aren’t worth your time. You don’t have to finish every book you start. Instead, read the books that make you want to read more.

“Life is too short to read a bad book.”

— James Joyce

2.2 Consistently working more than 40 hours a week.

It’s nice if you love your work and don’t mind working a lot. But numbing your mind with work is your fast-track to an unhappy life. Life is best enjoyed in balance.

We all have 24 hours a day. People who spend most of their awake time working don’t have much energy left for their health, relationships, and play.

”The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

2.3 Sugar.

Sugar is the biggest culprit for chronic inflammation today. Going sugar-free first feels like recovering from drug addiction (because sugar is a drug). Say no to sugar for a week, and you’ll feel the positive effects on your mood.

2.4 Doing what everybody else is doing.

Don’t read what everybody else is reading. Don’t believe what all of your friends are saying. Foster a healthy criticism and think for yourself. Sapere Aude! — Have the courage to use your own reason.

2.5 Quitting too early.

Everything sucks at first, but only a few things suck forever. The Dip teaches us that there is a time of struggle between start and success when we should either aim for excellence or strategically stop.

Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with it right now. Follow through with your side hustle. Publish 100 articles before you quit and reap your thoughts compound interest.

3. Eliminate Toxic Relationships

3.1 People (mostly men; sorry bro) with big egos.

I was one of the women who learned to sit patiently and smile. But once I learned about patriarchal culture’s influence on women’s behavior, I quit mansplaining situations.

Financial analyst Laura Rittenhouse evaluated leaders and how their companies performed. Eric Barker, citing her findings:

“Want to know which CEOS will run their company into the ground? Count how many times they use the word “I” in their annual letter to shareholders. […] Me, me, me means death, death, death for corporations.”

3.2 Bad listeners.

You are the master of your life. Choose whom to surround yourself with. When someone doesn’t listen to you, you don’t need to continue listening to them. Relationships are mutual.

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.”

— Mark Twain

3.3 Other people’s agenda.

The world isn’t as simple as just givers and takers. But if you give to everyone who asks, you won’t have much left for your own pursuits. Follow Melinda Gate’s mum, who always said to Melinda as she was growing up:

“If you don’t set your own agenda, somebody else will.”

If you don’t fill your calendar with important things, other people will do it. Say no to things that don’t align with your goals.

3.4 Naysayers and maybes.

All decisions in life should be a clear yes or no. Stop saying, maybe. If you feel hesitation towards meeting a group of people, say no.

Follow Mark Manson and Derek Sivers with their crystal clear, yes, and no’s, and watch your satisfaction levels rise.

4 Quit Harmful Mindsets

4.1 Using negative self-talk to motivate yourself.

If I had to pick one single thing you should let go of, it’d be this one. Once I stopped judging myself (thanks, Brené), quitting destructive behavior became easy.

You don’t need to be hard on yourself to achieve what you want in life. Psychologist Nick Wignall writes, “People are successful despite their negative self-talk, not because of it.”

4.2 Complaining when you can change things.

Complainers curse cold weather while they can wear warmer clothes. They complain about bad teachers while they can change their learning path. They grumble about their negative friends while they can change their relationships.

Complaining is choosing victimhood while we still have a choice. Or, as Holocaust survivor and brilliant writer Dr. Edith Eger put it:

“No one can make you a victim, but you.”

4.3 Downplaying your strengths.

Don’t excuse yourself for your personal strengths. You’re capable of almost anything. Carol Dweck says: “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

Don’t apologize for things you can’t do. Replace “Sorry, I can’t” with “How can I?”

“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses”

— George Washington Carver

4.4 Focusing on results.

Lasting progress isn’t about being consistently great; it’s about being great at being consistent.

Focusing on the results will make you impatient. Ultimately, you’ll give up. Don’t focus on the outcome. Focus on the process.

4.5 Wasting your time on perfection.

Perfection is destructive. It has nothing to do with self-improvement. Perfection is, at its core, is about trying to earn approval.

Let it go. Make your deadlines tighter, and don’t work on your stuff after your time runs out. Aim for consistency instead of perfection.

“Perfection is the enemy of progress.” — Winston Churchill

Remember improving your happiness and well-being is often about what you don’t do. Saying no feels hard at first. But it will get easier every time you do it.

Ultimately you realize saying no is a skill you can learn. Once you dare to say ‘no,’ all that follows becomes easier and easier.

So, what are you waiting for? You can do it.

“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage — pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.”

― Stephen Covey

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Avoiding These 6 Things Will Help You Tell Stories People Want to Hear

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How to create a cinema for the mind.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Humans connect with emotions, not facts. So the best way to put your ideas in the world is by telling stories.

Yet, many people don’t know how to captivate an audience. They recite a list of events, get lost in abstractions, or take away the surprise before even starting.

As a result, the audience feels bored and doesn’t listen. Instead of wondering where a story will take them, all they care about is when it will finally end.

My dad is the best storyteller I know, but I didn’t inherit his skills. My stories sucked. And while I was convinced you can learn most things in life, I thought storytelling had more to do with innate talent than learnable traits.

Turns out I was wrong.

Storytelling is a skill you can learn. After completing a TED masterclass, studying Matthew Dicks, and practicing in public, I discovered a pattern most bad storytellers have in common.

1) They recite events in chronological order

When asked about their vacation, we all know people who give a list of locations and activities. “Well, our first stop was in a beautiful hotel in Paris, where we went to Louvre and blah, blah, blah.”

Listeners don’t want to hear meaningless lists. I’m sorry for all of my friends who had to listen to my backpack stops through South America and whether I liked the hostels.

The problem is: People can’t connect with things. Instead, they connect with emotions and moments of insight and transformation.

What to do:

Think about a blockbuster moment: A transformational insight that forever changed the way you think about a specific topic.

One single incident in a seemingly meaningless setting can mean so much more than the best holiday scenery. People connect with stories they can associate with, not with the stuff that has never happened to them.

Don’t talk about a Machupicchu marathon, but share the moment where you found trust in humanity because a stranger returned a lost wallet. Don’t share details about hotel facilities but about the moment you felt homesick because you realized relationships matter most.

To find these meaningful moments, ask yourself: When did you feel angry, loved, surprised, moved, or in awe? Then, recreate the build-up towards the emotion.

Great storytellers guide through the transformation from one feeling to another. The best stories reflect change over time.

2) They tell stories about their heroic self

Would you rather hear about how a failed exam and bad breakup led to chronic depression and my six-month escape to India or about the time I sent only one application and landed my dream job?

Me too. Perfectionism is boring. Nobody wants to hear about the time something ran down smoothly. Especially not if the story has a bragging undertone.

Ego-centeredness leads to bad stories. We don’t want to hear a flawless hero’s journey. We want to see other people struggle as we do. World-class storyteller Matthew Dicks wrote:

“Failure is more engaging than success.”

What to do:

Dare to be vulnerable because this is what moves listeners emotionally. We love to listen to people who truthfully share their struggles. Honesty is freaking attractive.

Share the times you’ve failed and your lessons learned. The times you desperately wanted to achieve something, but you didn’t.

Being honest with each other allows us to strengthen our social bonds and form deep, meaningful connections.

3) Bad storytellers don’t know when to be quiet

Dr. Brené Brown once wrote we should be as passionate about listening as we are about wanting to be heard.

Many of us feel the urge to say something, to at least share their opinion, but hardly anyone is ready to listen.

Bad storytellers don’t pay attention to the space they occupy. They don’t realize when they’ve said too much. They don’t sense when it’s time to be quiet.

Whenever I listen to a person who loves his own voice just a little bit too much, I think of this quote by Mark Twain:

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg crackles as if she has laid an astroid.”

What to do:

Ask questions but don’t listen to reply. Instead, listen to understand. You connect with others when they feel heard and valued.

Don’t bother about what other people think about you. Instead, use your energy to be the best listener in the room.

Whenever you’re in doubt whether you’re saying too much and listening too little, pause and be quiet.

4) They forget to create a cinema for the mind

An audience wants to connect visually, but bad storytellers don’t give any visual information. They get lost in abstractions and don’t act as a person who is physically moving through space.

The bigger the abstraction, the harder it is for an audience to connect. While sentences like ‘certainty is the enemy of growth’ and ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’ work on paper, they don’t work in stories.

People can’t identify with concepts. They’re not relatable, and in stories, they lead to boredom. Just like Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

What to do:

Matthew Dicks sums it up:

“The simplest stories about the smallest moments in our life are often the most compelling.”

Rather than focusing on the big concept and blurring the overall takeaway, aim for details and specificity.

And don’t get lost in the land of nothingness. Great stories are a cinema for the mind. They contain details that make a scene highly sensory—information about the setting, physical location, feelings, events.

A physical location in every scene helps your audience create a vivid picture in their mind.

5) They kill any surprises

Let me tell you about the time I felt outraged and almost left my startup. Wow. I killed any surprise. So do starter phrases like:

  • “You won’t believe it.”
  • “You can’t imagine what happened to me.”
  • “Yesterday, I met the most interesting person ever.”

Stories live by unexpected twists. That’s what makes them interesting in the first place. But if you predict the outcome and raise the expectation bar, your story can only disappoint.

What to do:

Don’t start with a summary. There’s no need to give a disclaimer or summary. Start with the story.

The best place to start your story is by starting at the end’s opposite. Want to tell a story about regaining trust in humanity? Start with a scene when you had the least trust. Thereby, you reinforce the change that happened in you.

And if you need a thesis statement, put it at the end. Because surprise is what creates emotions. Again, Matthew Dicks, who makes his audience laugh hard before he makes them cry:

“You need to build surprise into your stories. There must be moments of unexpectedness so that your audience can experience an emotional response to your story.”

6) They repeat what has been said before

Bad storytellers are often unoriginal. Margarete Stokowski gives a perfect example: It’s like shouting through a megaphone: “We all have to think for ourselves!” And a crowd of a thousand people repeats: “We all have to think for ourselves!”

It’s the tenth article about Elon Musk’s first-order thinking. It’s people who quote Kant’s “Have the courage to use your own reason,” and then happily continue giving more and more quotes.

Bad storytellers repeat what has been said a thousand times. They cling to stories and beliefs that aren’t contradictory or bear any controversy.

What to do:

Take a stance and a statement. Support a thesis. It’s easier to not have an opinion than it is to have one. Don’t be the one who doesn’t have one. Be the one who does.

Use other people’s ideas as a stepping stone. Copy thoughts, but then add a twist and make them about your view of the world. Use your experiences to create a unique story out of them.

If a friend went through a story you would love to share, tell your story’s angle. Don’t ever copy something just because you feel people will like it.

“Be quoatable. Your job is not to recycle but to create something new.”

— Matthew Dicks

All You Need to Know

Great storytellers aren’t born that way. They become great by following these rules:

  1. Don’t give time-stamp listicles of events and facts. Instead, build your story around one emotionally transforming moment.
  2. Don’t make any story about your best self. Show vulnerability and imperfection. Talk about the lessons you learned along the way.
  3. Don’t take too much space. Allow others to take the stage and listen carefully.
  4. Don’t get lost in abstractions. Be as specific as you can, include physical locations, and create a cinematic mind experience.
  5. Don’t take away the surprise. If you need a thesis statement, use it in the end, not in the beginning.
  6. Don’t repeat what has been said before. Dare to be original.

In the end, people don’t make decisions based on numbers or facts — it’s stories that make all the difference. No matter where you are in life, storytelling can help you achieve your goals.

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How MasterClass Makes 9-Figure Revenues Without Really Selling Mastery

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Lessons from EdTech founder David Rogier.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

If you look at MasterClass from a business perspective, it’s a clear success story.

In 2015 David Rogier founded the company. Five years later, he closed a Series E financing round with a post-money valuation of $500M to $1B. In a recent interview, Rogier said MasterClass is on the path to an IPO.

In short: MasterClass is one of the few emerging unicorns in EdTech.

Yet, if you look at the education platform from a learner’s perspective, its success story is less clear. After all, mastery of complex skills and processes is the result of deliberate practice.

Michaelangelo, the painter of 5,000 square feet in the Sistine Chapel, once wrote:

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.”

MasterClass Isn’t About Mastery

In December, a friend asked whether I’d share a 2-for-1 subscription. I read on their website, ‘MasterClass delivers a world-class online learning experience.’

I said yes. $90 a year for learning from world-class performers like James Patterson, Sara Blakely, and Yotam Ottolenghi seemed like an incredible deal.

The two-sided business model

Customers pay for accessing pre-recorded courses, and instructors get paid for recording them. The value proposition: “Getting the best in the world to teach and share and make it a price point that is affordable.”

From the consumer side, it works like Netflix — a streaming platform with a subscription model. For $180 per year, consumers have access to all classes.

Instructors receive a one-time payment and a revenue cut. In 2017, a source reported MasterClass teachers get at least $100,000 per course plus a 30% revenue cut. In 2018, Bloomberg wrote instructors get a guaranteed sum, plus up to a 25% cut. However, in a later interview, Rogier shared contracts vary by individuals.

Hence MasterClass’s key activities are:

  • Recruiting world-class talent and turning them into instructors.
  • Recording Hollywood-like videos.
  • Providing and maintaining the streaming platform and an online community thread.
  • Marketing activities to win paying customers.

What MasterClass got wrong about learning

According to Rogier, instructors design their classes. But education researchers agree: Masters might not be the best teachers. Likely, they’re beginners when it comes to instructional design and the science of learning.

Most MasterClasses build on the thesis that online, low-touch courses are for skill-building. But our brains don’t work like recording devices. We don’t absorb information and knowledge by consuming content. Instead, learning is at least a three-step process — we acquire, encode, and retrieve.

I won’t bore you with the specifics. Barbara Oakley, Roediger, et al., and Lieberman have done a prolific job explaining how we learn and remember. But as a simplified rule of thumb:

“Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow. Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful.”

Learning through passive content consumption isn’t truly effortful.

How humans acquire mastery

Anders Ericsson, author of ‘Peak’ studied high performing-individuals and found that the best among them spent thousands of hours practicing in solitary, deliberate practice. Mastery is a product of practice quantity and quality.

Think about frequent fliers. Before every start, they watch a video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it.

You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself. MasterClass instructors have surely not gotten where they are by sitting on the couch, watching videos about their craft.

The author of ‘Ultralearnering’ calls this principle directness. It is essential for mastering any skill.

Yet, with a few exceptions, classes are as far away from direct practice as they can get. It’s like someone studying the guitar but not holding a guitar — just looking at videos of how to play the guitar.

Don’t get me wrong; I like MasterClass. With its tips and anecdotes, it inspires millions of people to become lifelong learners. But as a learning expert, I cry when I read on the website of an emerging EdTech Unicorn that they offer a ‘world-class online learning experience.’

Because they don’t.

Key Entrepreneurship Lessons

When you spend hours researching MasterClass, you can’t help but admire founder and CEO David Rogier. His humble and authentic stories make him one of the most sympathetic founders I’ve listened to.

Here’s what we can learn from his entrepreneurial journey.

#1 Build something you can be proud of even if it fails

Rogier was raised in part by his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. When he was at her house as an 8-year-old, she told a story that changed him forever.

When his grandma fled to the States, her dream was to become a doctor. She sent applications to 25 medical schools — and got 25 rejections. When calling the deans to ask why they rejected her, all hang-up except for one, who said:

“You have three strikes against you:
You’re a woman. You’re an immigrant. You’re Jewish.”

She reapplied the next year. One school accepted her. Ultimately, she became a doctor. Here’s her lesson she shared with 8-year-old Rogier:

“Education is the only thing someone can’t take from you”

When Rogier graduated from Stanford Business School, he had so many ideas about starting up. He couldn’t decide. The advice that ultimately helped him decide was to pick something that, even if it fails, you’re gonna be proud of.

For Rogier, this meant building a product in education. He shared in an interview about his grandma’s story: “It’s what propelled me to create MasterClass, and to try to democratize mastery.”

So if there’s a lesson here for future entrepreneurs, it’s this: Don’t create a product based on market growth. Instead, build something you can be proud of, even if it fails.

#2 Don’t stop when people say your idea is unachievable

In 2014, Rogier told a former classmate about his MasterClass idea. The friend said it would be too difficult to get the instructors to sign up, especially in the beginning. How can you possibly attract world-class masters without having an existing customer base?

His friend was surprised Rogier presented the signed letters of world-class masters like Serena Williams. Yet, this journey wasn’t predestined.

Signing the best in the world wasn’t easy. He cold-called and e-mailed hundreds of masters in their craft. He says years went by without getting any yes.

Recruiting the first instructors was challenging, but Rogier says he rejects nine out of 10 people who want to become instructors.

Undoubtedly as a Stanford Graduate with an initial seed funding helped gave him credibility. Yet, he has one of the most important traits of founders: resilience.

#3 Reach out to people who can help you

Rogier decided he wanted to do something with education. Yet, he wasn’t sure what exactly this would be.

As a result, he posted ads on Craigslist to pay people $10 an hour to talk about their educational experiences. He asked his interview partners questions like:

  • Who did you learn the most from?
  • Which topics would you have loved to study more?
  • What things do you want to learn now? And how do you want to learn them?

These initial conversations helped him sharpen his vision. Plus, when he recorded the first videos, they looked like crap.

So Rogier reached out to a professor from his grad school who won two Oscars for filming. His professor offered to film the videos, and that’s how the courses started looking like high-class Hollywood movies.

Of course, most people don’t have Oscar winners in their direct network. Yet, asking for help when things don’t go your way certainly increases the chances of reaching the ultimate goal.

In Conclusion

Rogier said learning doesn’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t have to involve a classroom. And it’s true: When done right, education can be entertaining and online.

MasterClass managed to bring the quality of Netflix to the $100 billion e-learning industry. Yet, it failed to bring along state-of-art learning science.

Polished videos don’t lead to mastery. What matters more than lighting and sound are whether consumers really learn new skills. And without using evidence-based techniques for learning, this goal is out of reach.

If you want to feel inspired and listen to master’s success stories, go ahead and subscribe to MasterClass.

If you, however, want to achieve mastery, take courses that really help you learn new skills. Look out for features like:

  • Offering real-time feedback on learning progress. 
    (And no, not like MasterClass with collecting product feedback channel).
  • Giving direct access to instructors. 
    (And again, no, not like MasterClass offering contests to get a 1:1 in exchange for giving the instructors feedback).
  • Having assignments that are directly linked to your desired skill.
  • Including structured access to a fellow community.
  • Deploying spaced repetition features.
  • Using testing as a tool.

Whatever you choose, keep education researcher Terry Doyle’s words in mind who said:

“The one who does the work does the learning.”

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Philosophical Books that Can Still Improve Your Life Today

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Stop buying from bestseller lists.

Photo by BERK OZDEMIR from Pexels

If you look at humanity’s timeline —what are the chances that the truly great books have been written in the past 20 years? Approximately zero, right.

Still, many people buy the latest books instead of the greatest. Here’s what that leads to:

“A public that will leave unread writings of the noblest and rarest of minds (…), merely because these writings have been printed today and are still wet from the press.” — Schopenhauer

Common problems have been the same throughout all centuries: happiness, morality, power, justice, and love. That’s why the wisdom from great philosophers is still so applicable.

Here are eight books from great minds that you don’t find on current best-seller lists.

1. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Even though the title sounds complex, reading the Tao Te Ching is easy. The book helps us understand Taoism, which literally means ‘the way.’

Like Stoicism, Taoism also focuses on simplicity. But it also contains human values like patience and compassion. Stoicism is Jordan Peterson, Taoism is Brené Brown. I much more prefer the latter.

When you read through the 160-page short book written in 4th century BC, you feel trust and self-compassion rushing through you. Here’s one of my favorite quotes:

“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”― Lao Tzu

2. Zhuangzi by Zhuangzi

If Tao Te Ching explains Taoism’s theoretical concepts, this book is its workbook. It shows us how to put Toaism into practice.

Zhuangzi gives us applicable guidance, like “A path is made by walking on it” or, “Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.” In sum, the book is a how-to guide for living a simple and natural but full and flourishing life.

It’s an ancient and even wiser version of Naval Ravikant and a great read for anyone who wants to bring more happiness and wisdom to their life.

3. Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

The main goal of Nicomachean Ethics is learning to achieve eudaimonia, a Greek term with deep meaning. Philosophers say there’s no accurate translation for eudaimonia. But if we had to find a word, it’s happiness.

To achieve this kind of happiness, a person must first reach a state of inner balance. And to achieve personal harmony, there are two things you should do:

  1. Investing in your education, reasoning, and thinking.
  2. Cultivating important character virtues.

In the book, Aristotle explains how to build a virtuous character. First, by learning the difference between virtuous and not virtuous actions. Second, by creating habits that allow you to form a good character.

That’s how Aristotle goes one step further than James Clear. Before he tells you how to form habits, Aristotle gives you a decision guide for future actions.

4. Five Dialogues of Plato

When I started studying philosophy last fall, reading Plato was one of the first reading assignments. Different characters debate topics like justice, death, and virtue. They mostly try to find a conclusion (even though they can’t always find one).

What I love about Plato is his philosophy in dialogue form. The dialogue makes reading interesting.

The asking protagonists are the reader’s voice. They ask questions you will have. And this book contains 5 of the most important Platonic dialogues.

“Are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul?” — Plato

5. What is Enlightenment? by Immanuel Kant

Now, this isn’t really a book but an essay. But Kant is hard to read. And better to read a hard-digestible essay than not to read Kant’s work. It still contains the quintessence of his writings.

Kant popularized the idea that we should trust no authority except our own reason. He would sigh when looking at all the coaches, self-help books, and online courses that suggest how to live your life.

He’d say: Use your own reasoning and, by all means, dare to be wise.

So, this essay is excellent for anyone struggling with trusting their own beliefs. For writers who feel scared to form opinions. And for insecure overachievers.

Kant’s words are a great reminder of whom to trust making any decision in life — you.

6. Penseés by Blaise Pascal

The Penseés is a collection of philosophical fragments, notes, and essays. Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature from a psychological, social, theological, and metaphysical perspective.

While this collection is slightly pessimistic and tries to convince atheists of God’s existence, it’s still worth the read. You will realize the fundamental human problems were the same in 1670 as in 2021.

“Man’s condition: Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety. But take away their distractions and you will see them wither from boredom.” — Blaise Pascal

7. The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne

Just like Bill Gates, Michel was one of the wealthiest men of his time. And just like Bill, Michel appreciated ‘thinking time.’

Yet, Michel’s thinking time far exceeded Bill’s think week. He isolated himself for 9 entire years to find what it means to be human.

Frankly, his essay’s topics seem random. They cover wide arrays and range from friendships to the imagination, to laughing, and more.

Reading his essays is not too difficult. But the sum (1344 pages) is daunting. If you decide to get this book, here is a selection of his most-discussed essays. Yet, when you choose, remember to use your own reason (see 5).

  • On Friendship
  • To philosophize is to learn how to die
  • Apology for Raymond Sebond
  • On Experience
  • On Solitude

8. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Betty Radice

What I dislike about most booklists is they don’t include female authors. Yet, I didn’t know that finding ancient female writing is a true research project.

Héloïse was a philosopher of love and friendship. Plus, she was important for the establishment of women in science. Her controversial thoughts about genre and marriage influenced the development of modern feminism.

Héloïse, a 12th-century woman raised in a convent, expressed her sexuality with such openness our generations can learn from.

“No one’s real worth is measured by his property or power: Fortune belongs to one category of things and virtue to another.” — Héloïse

In Summary

Learning from the greatest thinkers who have ever existed doesn’t need to feel like a burden. On the contrary — it can be fun and worthwhile.

Your life, your reading list. Use your own mind and pick the ones that resonate with you. Then, screw the rest. When in doubt, remember Schopenhauer’s suggestion:

“Only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.”

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The Apeiron Blog — Big Questions, Made Simple.

We know that Philosophy can seem complicated at times. To make things simple, we compile together the best articles, news, reading lists — and other free resources to guide you on your journey. To continue with us, follow us on Medium and sign up to our free mailing list.

How You Can Make Reading an Ongoing Habit

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We make reading more serious than it needs to be.

Image by izoca from Pixabay

When you look at human history, the fundamental human problems are the same in all ages. No matter what problem we face, odds are someone has faced it before and written about it.

Carl Sagan states in ‘The Persistence of Memory’:

“Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Through books, we can learn from citizens of distant epochs. The solution to every problem lies in some a book. That’s why reading is the key to a successful and happy life.

Over the last years, I transformed from reading two books a year to reading at least one book a week. If I can do this, you can too. These tiny shifts can help make reading a habit for life.

1) Buy the books you really want to read.

When I started reading, I followed celebrities reading recommendations and best-seller lists. If Charlie Munger, Melinda Gates, or the New York Times recommend a book, it’s a must-read for me.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

These lists are not where you want to start your reading journey. As Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in his essay on reading and books: “People read always only the newest instead of the best of all times.”

We shouldn’t read the book everyone talks about. Because the best person to judge whether you should read a is neither a billionaire nor a newspaper — it’s you.

“Read what you love until you love to read.”

— Naval Ravikant

How to do it:

Start with what sparks your interest. A few hundred books in, you will anyway gravitate towards the good stuff.

Depending on where you are in life right now and whether you want to read for fun or learning, ask yourself:

  • What are you most curious about right now?
  • Which life area (health, wealth, relationships, work) do you want to advance?
  • What’s a problem in life you really want to see solved?

Find ten-books that potentially satisfy your needs. Search for keywords or experts within the niche. Go to a bookstore and ask for timeless recommendations.

Then, scan through the book’s table of content. Read a few pages and see whether the words resonate with you. Buy three books that attract you the most.

Oh, and if a book doesn’t promise to deliver on your questions, quit it. There are too many great books waiting for you. Choose wisely, then, read thoroughly.

2) Create your ultimate reading environment.

“If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us,“ Dr. Marshall Goldsmith wrote about triggers.

Desired behavior isn’t tied to our willpower. Instead, self-control and self-discipline depend much more on our environment, Nobel-prize winner Thaler discovered.

I bet if we compare a person who takes their phone to the bedroom with a person who doesn’t, the latter will almost always read more.

Resisting social media’s mechanisms is incredibly hard. You don’t want to be nudged to use your phone first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening.

Instead, you want to design your environment to make it work for you. As James Clear put it:

“You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.”

How to do it:

Keeping your phone away from your bed is one of the hardest habits to break. But the work is worth it.

I replaced my phone with an alarm clock and stopped taking my phone to the bed two years ago. Best-decision ever. In bed, I can either sleep or read.

As soon as you charge your phone outside of your bedroom, you have more time during the evenings and the mornings. Instead of newsfeeds, your environment invites you to read.

The less time you spend on your phone, the more you’ll read.

What also helped me is making reading obvious. I put my book on the pillow when I make my bed in the morning. Thereby, reading in bed becomes the default option. Not having to use willpower will set you up for a reading habit for life.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

3) Don’t eat the same dish for breakfast and dinner.

You don’t want to eat the same dish for breakfast and breakfast. Why would you read the same book in the morning and the evening?

Many people try to force themselves through a specific book at a specific time. Reading becomes joyless. Ultimately, they stop reading altogether.

Don’t feel like reading before you go to sleep? Chances are high it’s the wrong book on your bed table.

By reading different books simultaneously, you can take a break from whatever title you don’t want to read at that time. Books are patient. They’ll wait for you until you feel like picking them up again.

“Everyone I know is stuck on some book. I’m sure you’re stuck on some book right now. It’s page 332, you can’t go on any further but you know you should finish the book, so what do you do? You give up reading books for a while.”

— Naval Ravikant

Plus, reading different books at the same time can reveal unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated titles. As James Clear says: “The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas.“

How to do it:

Start a new book before you finished the one you’re reading. Place your books in locations that remind you to read them at the right time.

Right now, I’m reading 12 books. In the morning, before journaling, I often read a page of ‘Meditations.’ The physical book is right next to my journal. I’ll dive into ‘How to Take Smart Notes’ right after writing to level up my reading practice. That’s why my Kindle is on my desk. ‘Leaders Eat Last’ lingers on my shelf since last May, but I’ll give it a second chance before I quit it. Before sleep, I want to dive into a new world, and I do this with a historical novel.

Don’t force yourself through a content-dense book before you start a new one. This slows down your reading practice and takes away any joy. Having different books for different situations will change the way you look at books.

4) Apply new knowledge to improve your life.

Reading lets, you borrow smart people’s brains. Yet, reading per se doesn’t make you a better person. You can read a book a week without changing at all.

If you only read but never act upon your new knowledge, reading can feel like a time-waster. Ratna Kusner said:

“Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for betterment of life.”

It’s about what and how you read that will improve your life’s quality and enhance your mind.

Social climber Dale Carnegie used to say knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied. And to apply what you read, you must take your reading game to the next level.

How to do it:

If you stumble upon useful advice in a book, act immediately. Put an item on your to-do list or place an action item on a specific spot.

By forming action items from your books, you’ll make the most out of any book. You’ll be able to apply knowledge from books to your life.

Don’t intend to read a specific number of books per year. Instead, take your time with the books that can transform your life. Reread them and act upon new knowledge.

When you witness how reading improves the way you go through life, you’ll gladly make reading a habit for life.

Final Thoughts

No matter who you are or what you do, reading can help you achieve your goals. But most of the time, we make reading more serious than it needs to be. Sometimes, tiny shifts can change the way we read.

  • Read the books you can’t stop thinking about.
  • In the bedroom, replace your phone with a book.
  • Be okay with reading different books at the same time.
  • Apply what you read to your life.

While each of these points can change how you read in one way or the other, they only serve as inspiration, and you certainly don’t need to implement every single one.

Choose one or two you like, but screw the rest. Only one person should define your reading journey — you.

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How to Move from Note-Taking to Note-Making Using a Zettelkasten

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You find the most valuable insights at the intersection of ideas.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Do you finish a book or an article and think you’ve found great insights but don’t know what to do with them?

If you ever feel like reading isn’t moving you forward, it’s likely because you don’t collect and connect your knowledge in a good way.

You can read the best writing in the world without changing at all. As Ratna Kusner once said:

“Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for betterment of life.”

But what if there was a simple way to build a database for your personal knowledge? How much easier would your life get if you always find what you need when you need it?

Luhmann, the Zettelkasten inventor, found the answers and lived by them. During his life, he wrote 70 books & 500 scholarly articles. He attributes his success to a note-taking system called the Zettelkasten.

Here’s why this note-taking-system works and how you can make this method work for you.

Why Zettelkasten Outperforms Other Systems

For the past years, I experimented with various note-taking systems —outlining, sketchnoting, mind-mapping, Notion workflows, and BulletJournals — before I finally settled on Zettelkasten. Here’s why this note-taking system beats others:

#1 Your Zettelkasten gets better the more you store

Tools like OneNote, Notion, Evernote, or your physical notebook exist in a top-down hierarchy. They are like a filing cabinet.

In the beginning, each note-taking system looks tidy and clean. But once you store more notes and ideas, they become unorganized.

Zettelkasten, on the contrary works like a bottom-up network. A lack of hierarchy helps you build a giant knowledge web of ideas. Your network works better the more information you store because connections and interlinks grow stronger.

Plus, a Zettelkasten can work as an idea-generation machine. You discover related ideas that you hadn’t thought of in the first place. As Sönke Ahrens writes in his book about the Zettelkasten:

“The more content it contains, the more connections it can provide, and the easier it become to add new entries in a smart way and receive useful suggestions. “

#2 You automatically use state-of-the-art learning science.

I used to rely on ineffective learning techniques like highlighting and rereading. I consumed more and more content instead of reading better.

Now the Zettelkasten will stop you from doing that. It’s an amazing learning tool as it forces us to use all the strategies that are known for effective learning — elaboration, spacing, and retrieval.

#3 You find the right idea at the perfect time.

As you’ll see in a minute, cross-references are at the core of the Zettelkasten. Whenever you add a new note, you think about how it relates to the existing notes.

You use networked thinking to link your notes together. And the more notes you add and connect, the bigger the network. You stumble upon useful intersections and move from note-taking to note-making.

In that way, the Zettelkasten not only captures your notes but helps you generate new ones as well. After all, the best ideas are the ones we haven’t anticipated. Or in James Clear’s words:

“The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas.”

The Zettelkasten works in a network. (Source: JJ Ying on Unsplash)

5 Steps to Start Your Own Zettelkasten

The system is simple. Before I set up my system, I read through +20 resources. Here’s the quintessence on how to get started:

1) Decide on a digital tool

When I started, I tried to implement the system in my existing Notion database. But Notion is built for collaboration, not for building your second brain.

While there are some people saying you can also start an analog Zettelkasten, I wouldn’t advise for it. There are so many great digital options that really ease your workflow.

You can pick between programs solely built for Zettelkasten, like Zettlr and The Archive, or more functional alternatives like TiddlyWiki (free and open-source), Obsidian, RemNote, Craft, Amplenote, and Org-roam.

I use Roamresearch ($15/month) because of its clean design and its Readwise connection.

2) Import your highlights or start from scratch

If you pick Roamresearch, you can rely on a tool like Readwise. Alternatively, you can transcribe your former notes manually or simply start from scratch.

Create a page for each of your highlights, and bold or highlight the most important ones.

3) Create literature notes

From your highlights page, create a new page for literature notes. Your literature notes are a bullet-point summary in your own words where you write down what you don’t want to forget from the initial source.

When taking literature notes ask yourself questions like:

  • What is interesting about this?
  • What’s so relevant that it’s worth noting down?

Lastly, create some tags for your literature notes. Your tags serve as a reference and help you find this literature note when you need it. Your tags can be longer than a single word and are the answers to ‘In which circumstance do you want to stumble upon the note? When will you use the idea’?

4) Create permanent notes

These notes will stick with you forever. You find them by looking at your literature notes, your highlights and asking yourself: ‘Which insight do I have based on the material I read?’

The answer requires serious brain work but it is exactly why a Zettelkasten is such a valuable learning tool.

In contrast to the literature notes, your permanent notes are written prose. A reader of your permanent note should understand it without reading the original source that led to your idea.

In Ahren’s words:

Write exactly one note for each idea and write as if you were writing for someone else. Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references, and try to be as precise, clear and brief as possible.

5) Create cross-references for your permanent Notes.

Now, this is, in truth, the most important step. A note is only as valuable as its context — its network of associations, relationships, and connections to other information.

Use the digital tool’s power of bidirectional linking to connect permanent notes that relate with your idea (of course, in the beginning, you can’t link much). Ask yourself questions like:

  • How does this idea fit with what I already know?
  • How can I use this idea to explain Y?
  • What does X mean for y?

Referring one note to another is the heart of the Zettelkasten method and crucial for idea development.

Final Thoughts

Creating a personal knowledge database can feel hard, especially if it slows down your consumption speed. But becoming a slower reader isn’t a time-waster. The contrary is true:

“Not learning from what we read because we don’t take the time to elaborate on it is the real waste of time.”

— Sönke Ahrens

I set up my Zettelkasten only a few weeks ago. Yet, it’s already transforming the way I store and discover knowledge. It makes reading much more meaningful, and I sincerely hope it does the same for you.

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How Ali Abdaal Makes Over $1m Per Year as an Online Entrepreneur

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And the habits that helped him achieve success.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

From 2017 to 2020, Ali Abdaal built a 7-figure online business while completing his full-time medical studies at Cambridge.

As a YouTuber, instructor, and podcaster, he explores the principles, strategies, and tools that help people live happier, healthier, more productive lives. His YouTube channel has 1.4 million subscribers, and with a book and a second online cohort around the corner, these numbers likely double in 2021.

Recently, he published a 50-minute video on how much he earned in 2020. Ali’s levels of humbleness, humor, and self-reflection make it one of the most inspiring entrepreneurship videos I’ve seen.

This article gives a quick glance at how he made more than a million dollars in 2020, and more importantly, the key takeaways from his entrepreneurial journey.

How Ali Abdaal made +$1,000,000 as a YouTuber

Ali diversified his online income streams over the years. While he built the last two pillars in his early online career, the first three emerged more recently.

1) Skillshare Courses: $475,700

Teachers on Skillshare earn revenue through royalty payments and premium referrals. Instructors make money for every minute watched by Premium students in their classes and for every student they bring through a referral link.

Ali has seven classes on Skillshare, with more than 100,000 students watching his classes at more than 9,000,000 minutes of watch time.

2) Self-Created Online Course: $371,046

In 2020, Ali launched the part-time YouTuber academy. He teaches students how to grow a YouTube channel from 0 to 100,000+ subscribers and transform it into a sustainable, income-generating machine.

The pricing starts at $1495 for the essential package, up to $4995 for the premium package. His 2021 enrollment for February is already sold out.

3) Sponsorships: $184,843

Brands pay YouTubers to feature their products or services in some way. Sponsorships require an existing audience, and Ali got his first sponsorship deal in 2018 when he already had 50k subscribers.

Sponsored videos might run in-video advertisements or use product placements, like Ali does here with Notion, or here with Apple.

4) Affiliates: $180,047

Affiliate marketers earn a commission by promoting other people’s or company’s products and content. The broader creators’ reach, the more people will buy what they talk about.

Ali’s main affiliate income sources include Amazon’s affiliate program, Tiago Forte’s Second Brain Course, a special Keyboard, and a paperlike iPad protector.

5) AdSense: $136,859

Google AdSense is the main income for many YouTubers. The advertisements are the short 5-second clips before videos or the snippets you see while watching a video. To start earning money with AdSense, YouTubers need a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 valid watch-hours on their channel.

For reaching $136,859 in 2020, Ali published 98 videos with 1.3 million subscribers.

5 Lessons from Ali’s Journey

It’s tempting to use Ali’s success as an example for a get-rich-quick scheme. Nothing could be further from the truth. His entrepreneurial journey is another proof that shortcuts don’t exist. Instead, success is a result of smart habits and strategies.

#1 Focus on the single most important metric.

Value creation is the most important metric to measure. Recently, Ali shared a tweet, stating:

“Achieving creator-market fit feels a lot like cheating because you can suddenly grow incredibly fast.”

But if you look at his history, you see that he didn’t cheat. He found his creator-market fit step by step.

In his first months, he targeted the one group he could provide value for: students wanting to get accepted into Cambridge medical school. He recorded videos on test-taking and interview questions.

A few months in, he expanded for the students among him, sharing learning strategies and university productivity desk set up. Only after more than a year of video creation, he tapped into a broader audience and shared videos on note-taking, a general desk setup, reading, and time-management.

He went from a niche audience to a broader audience by focusing on the group of people he can truly help.

How to apply this lesson:
What do you know that can help other people grow? What have you done with ease that other people are struggling to achieve? Focus on this niche as a start. Whatever you do, focus on the single most important metric: creating value for your audience.

#2 Publish consistently for +2 years.

Ali started in 2017 and didn’t earn a cent from his first 50 videos. He needed to build a solid 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch-hours before he’d qualify for the income program.

Around the same time, Ali posted his first video in 2017, Danika Chilibeck and I started Investella, a personal investment platform for women by women. We put in 20, 40, 100 hours and but didn’t see desired results. We grew impatient because we didn’t make any money. A few months in, we stopped.

That’s the difference between Ali and most people on this planet. He continued to trust in his process and producing great content, while most aspiring entrepreneurs stop along the way.

His YouTube success didn’t come overnight. Before earning +$100k a year, he had published more than 300 videos. He stuck to the process and published consistently without expecting returns.

How to apply this lesson:
Making money from online creation is a long-term game. You won’t see the desired results in the beginning. But if you keep working, you might suddenly hit a glass ceiling. Progress is slow but exponential. Whenever you think about quitting, keep in mind, you’re in for the long term.

#3 Accept there’s no secret sauce.

While preparing this article, I expected to find a secret sauce for growing a content channel into a thriving business. But there’s no secret.

On his website, Ali writes that all it takes to become a successful online entrepreneur are three things:

  • Producing content that your audience finds useful (see #1)
  • Posting this on YouTube once a week (see #2)
  • Repeating this for 2+ years (see #2)

Successful content creators know there’s no magic trick. And that’s why they can calmly focus on creation. Ali followed his own advice. He created one to two high-quality YouTube videos for more than three years and ultimately saw the results.

How to apply this lesson:
Don’t waste time searching for a secret source. Use success stories as inspiration but don’t get lost in them. Creation is all that matters. When looking at your metrics, don’t feel discouraged. Use data to analyze what works and do more of it. But apart from that, don’t agonize over low stats. Instead, spend all of your energy consistently creating user-centric content.

#4 Always invest in learning and growth.

In 2017 Ali invested £ 2000 in buying camera equipment while he didn’t make a single cent from his new YouTube channel. Three years later, he wrote in the advertisement for his part-time academy:

“ I’ve spent over $30,000 in courses and coaching programs.”

Learning fuels growth. The best entrepreneurs are lifelong learners and don’t hesitate to spend money on themselves. A quote from Billionaire investor Warren Buffett sums up why this strategy works:

“The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself. The more you learn, the more you’ll earn.”

How to apply this lesson:
Make self-investments and learning a priority. Seek courses, coaching, and training within your niche. Don’t agonize about whether you should spend money on these things. Save on consumer goods, and invest the spare income into learning and growth. Finally, make reading a habit.

#5 Connect with new people.

Ali said he planned to launch his part-time YouTuber academy as another Skillshare course. Then he talked to Tiago Forte and David Perell (both sell online courses at +$1500 and +$4000).

Probably that’s how Ali learned about the features of learner-centric online courses: highly interactive, community-based, feedback opportunities, accountability.

Because he connected with people who’ve successfully done what he intended to do, he deviated from his original plan. He learned that a top tier offer at a higher price is a better way to go.

How to apply this lesson:
Make it a habit to connect with new people. In a Forge article, Michael Thompson shared great strategies for how to do it. He suggests calling one new person every week and reaching out to people you already have weak ties with.

What’s next?

If there’s one thing we learn from Ali Abdaal’s impressive way towards a YouTube millionaire, it’s that the best way to make large amounts of money on the internet is to provide value at scale. Here’s what to remember:

  • Focus on creating value for the audience.
  • Publish high-quality content for +2 years.
  • Stop searching for the secret sauce.
  • Make it a habit to invest in learning and growth.
  • Regularly connect with new people around you.

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Arthur Schopenhauer’s 3 Ideas Will Improve the Way You Read

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Timeless advice on how to make the most of your books.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

Books carry the wisdom of the smartest people who ever existed. Through reading, you find yourself on the surefire way to become happy, healthy, and wise.

Yet, books per se don’t make you a better person.

You can read every day without changing at all. It’s what and how you read that will improve your life’s quality and enhance your mind.

I’ve read a book a week for more than three years and always look for ways to improve my reading practice. Recently, I stumbled upon Arthur Schopenhauer’s essay on reading and books.

Schopenhauer was a philosopher whose writing on morality and psychology has influenced Einstein, Nietzsche, and Freud, among others. Here are his powerful reading insights and how to apply them:

1) Stop Reading Passively

In 1851, Schopenhauer got something right most people still ignore. Books are the arena of someone else’s thoughts, not our own. He writes:

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.”

Human brains don’t work like recording devices. You don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading. Relying on highlighting, rereading, or, worst of all, passive reading is highly ineffective.

For my first 80 books or so, I was a passive reader. Whenever a conversation revolved around something I read, I could never remember much. I thought forgetting is a personal character flaw.

But it isn’t. Instead, it’s the way we read that’s flawed.

To get the most from books, we need to think for ourselves while reading. Active reading is the way we acquire and retain knowledge.

How to apply it:

Before opening your next book, take a pen to your hand. Scribble your thoughts on the margins and connect what you learn with what you already know.

While reading, think about questions like:

  • How can you link the words to your own experiences?
  • How can you use the author’s thesis to explain something else?
  • Do you have any memory that proves or contradicts what you read?

You store new information in terms of its meaning to our existing memory. To remember new information, you not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what you already know.

And by scribbling down your own thoughts, you’re doing what cognitive scientists call elaborative rehearsal. You associate new information with what you already know.

Soon you’ll realize that taking notes not only helps you to concentrate but also to remember what you read. That’s how you transform yourself into an active reader.

2) Not Every Book is Worth Your Time

Books aren’t created equal. When looking at current best-seller lists, what Schopenhauer wrote some hundred years ago feels right on point:

“Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature aims solely at taking a few shillings out of the public’s pocket, and to accomplish this, author, publisher, and reviewer have joined forces.”

A book’s sales numbers don’t say much about its quality. Best-selling authors are primarily great marketers.

When you look at human history, the fundamental human problems are the same in all ages: Justice, happiness, power, love, and change.

And through books, you can connect with people who mastered these areas centuries before. So why bother with the short-cycle of current books?

Again, Schopenhauer:

“A public that will leave unread writings of the noblest and rarest of minds, of all times and all countries, for the sake of reading the writings of commonplace persons which appear daily, and breed every year in countless numbers like flies; merely because these writings have been printed today and are still wet from the press.”

How to apply it:

Knowing what you want to read is essential, but so is its inversion — knowing what you don’t want to read.

Statistically, the chances are small that the best books are written in the current decade. So, look beyond best-seller lists to choose the books you read.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. Instead, follow A.B. Schlegel’s advice, who had also been a guiding star for Schopenhauer:

“Read the old ones, the real old ones. What the new ones say about them doesn’t mean much.”

I love to find ‘the real old ones’ through Mortimer J. Adler’s book recommendations, starting page 175.

3) Develop Your System of Thought

Schopenhauer’s last advice concerns the way we systemize reading:

“Every one has aims, but very few have anything approaching a system of thought. This is why such people do not take an objective interest in anything, and why they learn nothing from what they read: they remember nothing about it.”

Knowledge isn’t power unless it’s applied. And to apply what we read, we must first remember what we learned.

Schopenhauer got right what Harvard scientists confirmed some hundred years later:

“It is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.”

When we don’t pause to think and to contemplate, we keep circling in a limited sphere at a higher velocity. We can read a book a week to 10x our productivity and still lose the most important life lessons.

Like Mortimer J. Adler said: “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

How to apply it:

Don’t focus on the number of books you read, but on your reading depth.

Use your margin notes to create a summary. Keep it brief and use your own words. Depending on your preference, here’s what you can do with it:

  • Keep your summaries analog in your journal.
  • Post them publically on GoodReads, Bookshlf, or your blog.
  • Create your personal knowledge database in Notion or Roam.

Summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing a book might feel like slowing you down. But the opposite is true. Learning works best when it feels slow and difficult.

The One Thing Schopenhauer Was Wrong About

While most of his advice is timeless, he holds one flawed assumption. In his words:

“One can overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment.”

You can never over nourish your brain. The opposite is true. The more you learn, the easier it’ll be to remember. As cognitive scientists write in this paper:

“Our capacity for storing to-be-learned information or procedures is essentially unlimited. In fact, storing information in human memory appears to create capacity — that is, opportunities for additional linkages and storage — rather than use it up.”

Retrieval, the process of accessing your memory, is cue dependent. This means the more mental links you’re generating during stage one, the acquisition phase, the easier you can access and use your knowledge.

The more connected information we already have, the easier we learn.

Conclusion

Acting on Schopenhauer’s insights isn’t complex, long, or exhausting.

On the contrary: These principles make reading fun and worthwhile and help you get the most from books.

  • Become an active reader by taking notes while you read.
  • Know what not to read. Don’t waste your time on mediocre books.
  • Systemize your thinking by creating a personal knowledge base.

Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about what you could do to improve your reading, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the ideas that work for you and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new principles until you find a pattern that helps you on your journey to health, wealth, and wisdom.

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How to Host Learner-Centric Zoom Workshops

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Online workshops rooted in evidence-based learning techniques.

Photo by Artem Podrez from Pexels

A great workshop is less about the tools you use but more about why and how you use them.

I’ve run many interactive workshop sessions using Zoom in the past year: individual coaching calls, digital maths lessons for my students, and larger scale workshops on reflecting and goal setting.

If your target audience differs, don’t worry. When it comes to learning, human brains work in similar ways. Here’s how you create digital workshops on Zoom, rooted in evidence-based learning techniques.

Make Your Workshop as Direct as Possible

Learning in formal settings is often ineffective because it’s distant from the actual application.

Imagine you’re a frequent flier. Before every start, you watch the video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. You watch the video again and again.

But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it. You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself.

Using the power of directness, ultralearner Scott Young mastered four languages within one year. He traveled to the respective country and forced himself to only speak in the foreign language.

Learning works best when you apply it. Hence, aim to include exercises as close to your desired outcome as possible.

What’s your workshop’s learning goal? Once you know what you want your learners to achieve, design exercises directly linked to that goal. Offer a bias towards action.

If you aren’t clear on your learning objective, none of this article will matter. Without learning goals, you’re choosing your gear without knowing whether you’re going on a surf trip or snowboarding.

How to do it:

Write down the learning goal. Then come up with activities that lead to the desired outcome.

If you’re a writing coach and want your participants to reach a broader audience, share headline writing insights. Then, make your learners come up with their own headlines.

If you’re a life coach and want your learners to unleash the power of visualization, make them write and record their own prompts to listen to them after the workshop.

The opportunities are manifold — once you know your what you’ll easily find your how. Focus on your true end-goal and pick a practice that’s as close to it as possible.

Include Testing as A Learning Tool

Many people shrug when they hear about testing as a learning tool. Their memories of tests as a measurement tool have taken their toll. But if done correctly, testing can improve the way we learn.

A study by learning researcher Roediger showed that testing has positive effects on long-term retention. In ‘Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning’ he writes:

“Testing helps calibrate our judgments of what we’ve learned. In virtually all areas of learning, you build better mastery when you use testing as a tool to identify and bring up your areas of weakness.”

Self-testing helps your learners overcome the illusion of knowledge. It shows whether they really understand the subject at hand. Plus, testing helps in identifying knowledge gaps and bringing weak areas to the light.

How to do it:

Instead of repeating your input a third time, use the time for a quick quiz. Kahoot or Zoom Polls will show whether your participants understand the new concepts.

If you’re hosting a series of workshops, you can also open each session with a quiz on the previous lesson. Even if they don’t get the right answer, the process facilitates remembering the correct answer.

During my math lessons, students loved to do low-stakes testing. They revised the material before our session as they wanted to win against their classmates.

I loved it, too. I gained insights into my student’s comprehension. Plus, this type of testing gave entry to meaningful questions.

Unlock the Power of Reflection

Brains don’t work like recording devices. We don’t absorb information and knowledge by consuming content. We store new concepts in terms of their meaning to our existing memory.

If you want your participants to remember what they learn, include them in the learning process. Let them interpret, connect, interrelate, or elaborate on new material.

To remember new concepts, your workshop participants not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what they already know.

Reflection is an effective exercise to help learners connect new information to existing memories. Again, Roediger:

“Reflection can involve several cognitive activities that lead to stronger learning: retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these new experiences and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time.”

How to do it:

Include reflective exercises after every learning unit. Chats are a great way to create a collaborative reflection experience. You can, for example, ask your learners to answer reflection questions like:

  • What surprised you the most, and why?
  • How does your new knowledge change the way you look at life?
  • What’s one thing you will implement today?
  • What might you need to learn for better mastery, or what strategies might you use the next time to get better results?

Be Aware of Zoom Fatigue

Did you ever wonder why you’re so tired after an online workshop?

In the book ‘Engaging Learners through Zoom,’ the author shares a study by Sacasas, director of the Center for the Study of Ethics and Technology:

“One of the reasons Zoom can be so exhausting is the additional focus needed during video communication to remain attentive to facial expressions, body langauge, and the subtleties of verbal language.”

That’s why learners need more focus on a video call than they need in an offline learning setting. It’s hard to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, or the voice pitch, via a screen.

Video chats mean we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, the tone and pitch of the voice, and body language; paying more attention to these consumes a lot of energy.

How to do it:

Ask participants to use speaker view. Explain that they’ll feel less tired once they’ve minimized their own window and the other participant’s faces. That way, your participants only have to see one individual, which simplifies non-verbal cue processing.

In Closing

Attention and time are the most valuable resources of our time. Don’t waste your learner’s time. Don’t ever give an hour-long lecture using PowerPoint slides. Lengthy lectures without learner engagement are extremely boring and don’t lead to meaningful learning outcomes. Instead:

  • Link your exercises as close as possible to your desired learning outcome.
  • Use testing as a learning tool.
  • Include reflection exercises to help learners remember what they learn.
  • Help your learners overcome Zoom fatigue.

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3 Quotes by Yuval Harari That Changed the Way I Think and Live

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On happiness, human extinction, and illusions.

Photo by Aleksander Vlad on Unsplash

To be honest, I fell asleep every time I read a few pages of Sapiens. I was overwhelmed by the width of Harari’s thoughts.

There’s a reason why he’s one of the most influential thinkers of our time. He regularly discusses global issues with heads of state, like Angela Merkel or Mauricio Macri.

In his recent interview on The Tim Ferriss Show, Yuval shared three thoughts I can’t stop thinking about. Chances are, they’ll change the way you think and go through life as well.

“We’re thousands of times more powerful than people in the stone age. But it’s not clear whether we are at all happier than they were.”

I’m an innovation enthusiast, and it took me some years and Tristan Harris to realize innovation doesn’t equal progress.

We don’t know whether we’re happier than our ancestors. We haven’t solved the equation of happiness, and we don’t know how to decrease human suffering.

With all that you’ve achieved in your personal life — are you happier than you were five years ago?

I no longer get drunk twice a week. I enjoy my life and earn money by doing things I love. But am I happier than my five-year younger self? I don’t know.

Whenever we improve something, it comes at the price of something else. After all, we don’t know whether we’re happier than our stone-age ancestors.

What to do:

Yuval practices Vipassana meditation for two hours every day and takes an annual meditation retreat for a month or two every year.

Here’s what he wrote about Vipassana in Tribe of Mentors:

“It is not an escape from reality. It is getting in touch with reality. At least for two hours a day, I actually observe reality as it is, while for the other 22 hours, I get overwhelmed by emails and tweets and funny cat videos. Without the focus and clarity provided by this practice, I could not have written Sapiens and Homo Deus.”

I sat through my first Vipassana course in 2019. After ten days, everything clicked together. I felt true happiness: a complete silence of thoughts. I didn’t sit down for two hours every day afterward, so the effects soon vanished.

But prolonged meditation can help you reach peace of mind, better mental health, and more focus. It’s a proven path to decrease suffering and accessible to everyone. You can search for a donation-based course on Dhamma.

“As a species, we are very good in acquiring more power, but we are not good at all in translating power into happiness.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

“We created stories as a tool for us. We shouldn’t be enslaved by them.”

Yuval explains the only reason why the human species has more power than animals is that we can collaborate.

We created fictional constructs that help us work together. Stories about religion, money, states, and cooperations to create trust on a larger scale.

Often, we forget that humans were the inventors of these stories. When we start fights or even wars about self-made concepts, we should pause to remind us of what really matters.

He doesn’t oppose fictional stories as we need them as they’re the basis for cooperation. But he says we should regularly run the test of suffering.

What to do:

The test of suffering simply shows whether something is real. Humans and animals can suffer. Cooperations, countries, or cars can’t.

All we have to do is ask ourselves: What is real in the world? And what are fictional stories?

When I started working self-employed, I worried a lot about the financials. Will I make enough money to reach financial independence? Or will I miserably fail to pay the bills? Worries about stories aren’t real.

Since I learned about the test of suffering, I’ve found it easier to see worries about fictional stories as they arise. Whenever I do, I let them pass.

“Even in the best scenario, I don’t think Homo sapiens will be around in two or 300 years.”

While his other insights are inspiring, this one is rather frightening. Yuval lists three main global problems that bring him to his conclusion:

  1. As global tensions rise, so does the chance of a nuclear war.
  2. Climate change, destruction of habitats, and ecological collapse.
  3. Technological disruption, mainly from artificial intelligence and bioengineering.

He doesn’t think people will live like us in 200 years because the ongoing changes are too big. The best scenario is that Homo sapiens will disappear, but in a peaceful and gradual way, and be replaced by something better.

What to do:

Memento mori — remember your own mortality. Time and attention are your most valuable resources. Choose how you spend them wisely, and keep in mind that nothing will last forever.

“Change is the only certainty in life.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

Final Thoughts

We’re so often trapped in our heads that we forget the universe’s scale. Harari’s insights are a great reminder of the many axes of life.

These three quotes are so meaningful; your conclusion is likely different from mine. Here’s how Yuval’s insights changed the way I think and live:

  • Make Vipassana meditation a priority. Training your mind will lead to a calmer, happier, and more focused mind.
  • Don’t be enslaved by fictional stories. Break free whenever you’re worried about human-made constructs.
  • Know that one day you’ll die. So, speak your truth and follow your inner guidance.

Do you want to connect? Join my e-mail list here.

These Money Lessons by Morgan Housel Are Helping to Make Me a Better Investor

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Five mindset shifts to help you reach financial freedom

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Did you know that $81.5 billion of Warren Buffet’s $84.5 billion net worth came after his 65th birthday?

I didn’t until I started reading Morgan Housel’s finance blog.

Morgan earned credibility through his former finance column at The Wall Street Journal. But what’s even better is that Morgan practices what he preaches. He’s transparent about every step he takes and passes along precious advice.

In his new book, he shares timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness. Here are the ones that stuck with me. If applied, they can turn you into a better investor.

1.) Your Behavior Matters More than Your Financial Hard Skills

Until halfway through my economics studies, I avoided personal finance. Yes, I aced through my math-heavy exams. But knowing how to invest your own money?

I thought you’d have to be a genius.

Derivates, hedging, and exchange-traded funds sounded like Chinese. A beautiful language I’d never be able to learn.

As a life-long learner, I hear you sigh. Of course, with the right mindset and tools, you can learn anything in life.

When I picked up my first personal finance books, I started learning that making your money work for you is actually pretty simple. Morgan writes:

“Financial success is not a hard science. It’s a soft skill, where how you behave is more important than what you know.”

Once you understand the basics, like knowing your net worth, building an emergency fund, and the power of compound interest, behavior matters more than hard skills.

Psychological biases, like impulsive purchases, often have a far greater effect on financial success than understanding another portfolio theorem.

2.) Only You Can Determine When You Have Enough

I loved the following anecdote from the book as it shows the difference between being greedy and living in abundance.

At a billionaire’s party, Kurt Vonnegut teases his conversational partner Joseph Heller. He says the host earned more money on a single day than the author had made with his popular book Catch-22. Heller replies: “Yes, but I have something he will never have. Enough.”

How much money do you need to feel you’ve got enough? When can you truly feel satisfied and free from greed?

Abundance is a choice. You’re the one who determines whether you have enough. In Morgan’s words:

“The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving.”

If you keep chasing more and more, you’ll waste your life. You’ll always feel you’re missing out on something.

When I became self-employed last summer, I defined my monthly minimum ($2K) and dream ($10K) income for a 35-hour workweek. In my fifth month of self-employment, I hit my income goal.

And yet, I moved my goalpost without realizing it. I kept trying to earn even more, put in more hours, said yes to more projects. With every additional working hour, I dropped another healthy habit.

Work and money have a diminishing marginal utility. From a certain point, more isn’t better but worse.

Once I pass the 35-hour threshold, every additional working hour decreases my joie de vivre. I move less, laugh less, and feel less. In the long-run, no additional income is worth this price.

Enoughness is a choice. Only you can get your goalpost to stop moving.

3.) Freedom is the Ultimate Form of Wealth

Why do you want to make a ton of money?

Do you want a specific car or luxurious clothing? Or are you past material status symbols and chasing new experiences, like traveling the world? Maybe you already found contentment in the presence and want to earn more to pay for your kid’s education or your mum’s retirement.

When you keep exploring your reasoning and peel down the outer layers, many people discover a fundamental core underneath.

The key motivation to become wealthy is the ultimate freedom.

Freedom means doing what you want whenever you want. Freedom means surrounding yourself with the people you want for as long as you want. As Morgan put it:

“Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays. Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is a powerful and universal drag on happiness.”

You no longer have to say “yes” when you feel like saying “no.” You can pick the projects you truly want without thinking about monetary rewards.

That’s also what Naval Ravikant means when he says that you should optimize for independence rather than pay whenever you can in life.

4.) Shut Up and Wait

$81.5 billion of Warren Buffet’s $84.5 billion net worth came after his 65th birthday. One of the richest people alive used the power of compounding interest to grow his money.

This piece of advice is so powerful yet often neglected. To become a better investor, you don’t need to consume financial news a few hours a day. Instead, it’s about remaining passive and wait it out.

If we look at long time horizons, we see nothing but economic growth. And that’s why the benefits of compounding are available for everyone who manages to stick to the same strategy.

Because all you need to do to benefit from compounding interest is keeping your money invested and wait it out. Good returns sustained over an uninterrupted period of time will ultimately win.

Billionaire Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s long-term business partner, sums it up nicely:

“Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.”

5.) Wealth is Income Not Spent

What would you do if you became a millionaire overnight? Most people answer this question by listing all the things they‘d buy. Soon they wouldn’t be millionaires any longer.

The math is simple. If you own a million but spend all of it on consumer goods, nothing will be left to pay the dividends.

Becoming wealthy isn’t solely about how much you make. It’s also about how much you save.

Earning $1200 or $8200 a month won’t increase your net worth if you’re spending all of it on food, clothes, beauty products, cars, furniture, hairdressers, insurances, phones, and travel.

By spending 100%, you will never accumulate wealth unless someone else is saving for you. If you own a million but spend all of it on consumer goods, you’ll soon be broke. Wealthy people remain wealthy because they don’t spend their money, they save it.

Wealth is invisible. It’s income you didn’t spend. As Morgan states:

“Wealth is an option not yet taken to buy something later.”

Bonus Tip: Don’t Trust Mutual Fund Portfolio Managers

Did you know that most wealth managers are salespeople? I didn’t.

That’s why I almost trusted a mutual fund manager when he told me about his investment opportunities. In my uninformed mind, 1% sounded pretty cheap. But it isn’t. Over time a 1% fee can reduce your returns by around 30%.

Morgan Housel likely agrees with Rami Sethi, who writes,

“If you are reading this and you’re paying over 1% in fees, I’m going to kill you. Get smart. You should be paying 0.1 to 0.3%.”

Fund managers and many other financial experts earn money per product they sell. And because they earn commissions, you’ll understand why they likely direct you to expensive mutual funds.

The financial times published an article revealing that half of all U.S. mutual fund portfolio managers do not invest a cent of their own money in their funds. So, better do the maths before investing in an overpriced product.

The Bottom Line

If you just remember one thing from the Psychology of Money, it should be the following: Inspirational lessons on investing and acting according to them aren’t the same thing.

Whenever you read through valuable investing advice, you have two options: Let it pass like a swift moment of inspiration, or ask yourself how to apply that insight in your decision making.

So, if you’re serious about becoming a better investor, pick your favorite lesson and change your behavior. Because ultimately, you are in charge of creating the life you want to live.

Do you want to join our tribe of life-long learners? Sign up here.

The 6 Best Investments I’ve Made In the Past 6 Years

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Spending money (or time) has boosted my health, happiness, and overall well-being.

Eva Keiffenheim on LinkedIn

Most people argue the best investments have the highest return rate.

Looking at my net worth’s development, they’d assume I start this article sharing my crypto portfolio or the compounding benefits of my ETFs.

But the best investment returns aren’t monetary, and I won’t bore you with asset classes. Instead, I’ll show you how the right investments can increase your long-term health, happiness, and well-being.

1) $1500 for Fixing My Eating Habits

It doesn’t matter what you eat but why you eat.

No fitness-tracker, diet, or sports-program will save you if you have underlying beliefs that destroy your plans.

I fought with my body weight since 2011. In 2013, I used will-power to reach my dream weight, and yet, I knew I would eventually fall back to old patterns. I felt my body was working against me, and I wasted hours a day worrying.

What helped me the most were investments in an intuitive eating course, psilocybin therapy, and a psychotherapist.

It took me four years and around $1500. But without these investments, it likely would have taken me a lifetime to uncover my underlying beliefs and change them.

Now, I feel aligned with my body. We’re a team, and it feels easy and natural to make healthy eating choices. Again, I reached my dream weight. But this time, there’s no willpower or fear involved—only trust and gratitude.

2) 10 Days for Joining a Vipassana Course

Here’s the daily schedule of a traditional course, based on Goenka:

The daily schedule at a Vipassana Course: Source: Pali on Dhamma.org

When I first read through this schedule, it seemed crazy. Why would anybody voluntarily meditate for 10 days, 10 hours a day, without speaking, talking, or writing?

By the time I’d been meditating with an app for some hundred sessions. I experienced the benefits that go along with meditation: a clear, focused, calm mind. And so, I leaped and signed up for a Vipassana course in 2019.

Afterward, I absolutely agree with Blaise Pascal, who said:

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

By increasing your awareness, you’ll unleash any stuck emotions. You’ll understand yourself. You might even experience oneness.

The Vipassana technique is a mental tool that helps you deal with life’s hardships. After ten days, you understand the meaning of true happiness.

There’s no fixed fee for the course. Attending the course is donation based. You give what you would like to give. The real investment is ten days of your time. But I promise it’ll be worth it.

3) $250 on Journals for Organizing My Life

In 2017, when I first learned bullet journaling, I almost abandoned the system. I felt Cal Newport was boasting when he wrote, “it will not only help you get more organized but will also help you become a better person.”

I was wrong. And Cal was right.

Around 16 bullet journals in, I know this journaling technique improved my well-being like no other productivity tool did.

The system helped me establish an NGO, host a podcast, become self-employed, read 52 books a year, and so many other things while enjoying my life to the fullest.

Once a year, I sit down and envision the year ahead. Once a month, I translate the yearly goals into the next 30 days. Every week, I’ll break it further down to the next seven days. And every evening, I plan the next day.

$250 for the 16 bulleted journals are among my best investments because every page is a constant reminder of what I care about. Every day is a chance to move further towards my big five for life.

4) $1200 for Writing Courses & Coaching

During the first lockdown last March, I followed my gut feeling and bought access to Sinem Günel’s writing academy.

Before, I hadn’t written anything except for my Bachelor’s and Master’s thesis and around 1350 pages in my bullet journals.

While this investment has also paid monetary rewards, the personal benefits are even bigger.

While writing, my heart opens. While writing, I forget time. While writing, I’m at peace. And without the initial investment in the writing academy, followed by some other online courses, I probably would have quit.

Because the first articles are the hardest. A writing career isn’t linear. You write and write and write, and still don’t see any results.

Learning from people who’ve walked the way helped my trust in my own process. Without a blink, I’d reinvest the $1200 into a writing coach.

5) 7280 Hours for a Fulfilled Relationship

We met in 2014, some months before I’d move to India, then Argentina. And while our long-distance start is rather atypical for romantic relationships, we made it work.

Quantifying my relationship feels odd. In our 7-years together, I never calculated the time we spent with each other. And that’s a good thing.

Here’s a counterexample.

Ali Abdaal, a UK based doctor, YouTuber, instructor, and podcaster, is one of the most productive people on the internet. I admire his reading strategies.

Recently, he shared that in a hypothetic relationship, he’d love to spend 90% by himself and about 10% with his love.

But this thinking is flawed. We can’t, and we shouldn’t quantify our relationships.

Ryan Holiday summarized the phenomenon perfectly, writing in one of his books:

“Many relationships and moments of inner peace were sacrificed on the altar of achievement.”

One of the best investments for personal wellbeing is time spent with my partner. It’s time spent supporting, listening, being supported, loving, laughing, crying, and cuddling.

6) $200 On Turning My Books into Learning Devices

Many people are e-reading enemies until they read their first e-book. I wasn’t a fan until fifteen books in.

You can’t interact with your e-reader as you can with your book. You can’t inhale the smell, dog-ear your favorite pages, or elaborate in the margins.

But you can do something that far exceeds all of the above. You can transform your Kindle into a learning device. Here’s how I made it work for me:

I highlight everything I want to remember. Then, I use the kindle notes page to cut down my highlights to their essentials. Then, I use Readwise to import all highlights to my Notion library.

I spent $150 on a Kindle and $50 a year for Readwise. But the rewards are priceless. The investment in e-reading changed the way I store and access my knowledge.

The Bottom Line

Generalizing investment advice is impossible because every person is different. What might be an incredible investment for me might not resonate with you.

And while these six investments in eating habits, meditation, bullet journalling, writing, relationships, and an e-reader have been great for me, they might be meaningless for you.

Your life, your rules. Whatever you determine as your most valuable investment is up to you.

But in any case, remember: The best investment returns aren’t monetary but the ones that increase your long-term health, happiness, and well-being.

Do you want to connect? Join my E-Mail List.

A Complete Guide to Doing a 10-Day Fasting Retreat

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I’ve fasted twice a year for 3 years and find it essential to my well-being. Here’s how to do it yourself, day by day.

A selection of broths and tea.
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

As a teenager, I thought my parents were crazy. Twice a year, they would avoid solid foods for two weeks. They survived on tea and vegetable broth.

And the weirdest thing — my parents enjoyed it.

As I grew older, judgment evolved into curiosity: why would somebody voluntarily skip food?

Fasting therapy has a long tradition in Europe. In 1917, a German doctor suffered from rheumatism. As a self-experiment, Dr. Buchinger fasted for three weeks. He cured his disease and devoted his career to fasting as a therapy.

But in May 2017, I hadn’t read a single guide on Buchinger fasting yet. I only knew what I saw from my parents. You take laxatives when you start and then consume liquids: vegetable broth, diluted fruit juice, plenty of unsweetened tea, and water.

I did my first 10-day fast, shockingly unprepared. I didn’t use an irrigator. I didn’t move and relax enough.

And yet, fasting had an incredibly positive impact.

Never before had I felt so happy and calm. I felt my body. My thoughts were clear. I felt grateful. And I improved my eating habits long after the fast.

In short: fasting had a lasting impact on my health and wellbeing. I see fasting as the most powerful natural medicine to heal the mind and body.

So, since 2017 I’ve fasted twice a year. My first four fasts were at home, my fifth in an administered fasting retreat, and the sixth during lockdown at home.

I made mistakes along the way and learned a lot during these six fasts. I read books, talked to my parents, exchanged experiences with others, and got a better fast step by step.

[Editor’s note: consult with your doctor before attempting a fast and/or taking a laxative. Especially do not embark on a fast if you are in any of the groups listed below.]

If you belong to one of the following, however, don’t do a long-term fast:

  • Pregnant and breastfeeding women.
  • Children.
  • People with hyperthyroidism.
  • People with circulatory disorders of the brain.
  • People with type 1 diabetes.
  • Cancer patients (due to the risk of malnutrition with permanent calorie restriction).
  • People with a history of eating disorders or being underweight.

Benefits from personal experience

To give you a background of my body: I’m a 27-year-old cisgender woman with a 21 BMI. I’ve never had health complaints or operations. Before my first fast, doctors said I’m healthy.

But I wasn’t healthy. I ate a glass of Nutella a week, hated cooking, and felt addicted to eating. Plus, I didn’t like my body. I worried about gaining weight and eating too much five times every day. I felt trapped in a vicious circle of negative self-chatter.

This is how fasting changed my life:

  • Food Appreciation: I started to enjoy cooking and seeing food as nourishment for my body rather than a threat.
  • Healthy Diet: After fasting, I didn’t like the taste of sugar and processed foods anymore. I changed my diet, but not because I forced myself. It felt only natural to become vegan and choose fresh ingredients.
  • Food Patience: I’m no longer hangry. I know my body can survive days without food, and another hour won’t hurt me.
  • Body Appreciation: I felt gratitude for my healthy body and mind. What I took for granted suddenly felt special. The gratitude always remains for some months after the fasting period.
  • Higher Energy Levels: I had high energy levels before my first fast. But after fasting, I’m able to tackle anything I previously avoided.
  • A Clear Mind: I felt laser-sharp focus. I could look at my life from a bird’s eye perspective. I saw toxic friendships and felt the need to end them. I changed my phone habits. I decided to become self-employed. A lot of major life decisions happened as a result of my fasting experiences.

Other friends had similar experiences. Not all turned vegan and not everybody started to love their bodies. But all of them reported a greater appreciation of mind and body.

This guide is the quintessence of what I learned from my at-home fasts, the administered professional fasting retreat, and knowledge exchange with friends and my parents.

If I could, I would force my younger self to read this tutorial before her first fast.

This article will show you exactly how to create a fasting retreat in the comfort of your home.

First, you learn about the health benefits. Then you get the schedule for your fast and answers to the most common questions, like “Will I feel hungry? Will I lose muscles? Will I lose weight?” Finally, you’ll learn how to overcome the biggest hindrances along the way.

The Benefits You Can Expect From Long-Term Fasting

During fasting, two mechanisms in the body help cleanse and detox it: ketone metabolism and autophagy.

Our body focuses on sustaining our brain, and it uses glucose to do so. Sugar is in our food, and our body can produce glucose itself. That’s why we don’t die when we don’t eat sugars, like in a low-carb diet.

But at around the second day of our fast, our body has used up the glucose reserves in the blood and the liver (and converted extent muscle protein to glucose). Then, the body switches to ketone metabolism.

Ketones are a backup fuel for cells and the brain. They save our body from degrading our muscles while supplying our brains with energy. You can detect ketone increase after a few days of fasting by a slight acetone smell in the breath.

Ketones nourish the brain and can protect the brain from inflammatory cells, which play an important role in degenerative brain diseases.

During fasting, the energy normally needed for digestion, resorption, transport, and storage of nutrients, is saved—the cell switches to a protected mode, where the aging pathways are deactivated.

“Up until the mid-twentieth century, it was more or less a rule of human life that food was not available 24/7. Hard winters and unpredictable circumstances could lead to bad crop harvests. Our body adapted to this regular deficit exceedingly well in its genetic development.“

— Prof. Dr. Andreas Michalsen

Yoshinori Ohsumi won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine because he discovered somatic cells have a recycling program’ that enables them to deconstruct old, damaged, or incorrectly folded proteins into the smallest structures and then rebuild them into new, healthy complexes. This process is called autophagy and is the second mechanism that happens during fasting.

Here’s why autophagy is great for fasting, according to Dr. Michalsen, a Professor of Clinical Complementary Medicine at the Charité University Medical Centre Berlin:

“This process is initiated in instances where the cell is in distress — during fasting, for example. That’s when the cell deconstructs components that have become unnecessary in order to release energy. This energy is then used to form urgently needed molecules. About thirty-five genes control the process of this internal digestion.”

In short, autophagy is a cleanup process in the body. During fasting, the body has more capacity to concentrate on recharging the cells with nutrients that are no longer being supplied.

What science says about fasting effects

“The positive effects of fasting begin after a period of fourteen to sixteen hours. You get those positive effects whether you fast consistently every night, or maybe one entire day a week, or seven to fourteen days,” writes Prof. Dr. Andreas Michalsen.

In his 2017 book, he explains how the body cleanses and detoxes itself during a long-term fast. Let’s look at specific parts of the body. The following list of effects of fasting is the result of ketone metabolism and autophagy.

  • Brain: Increases the growth factor BDNF; changes the messenger balance; enhances mood; stimulates the production of nerve cells; prevents dementia
  • Liver: Stimulates production of ketone bodies and breakdown of glycogen as an alternative source of energy; leads to the reduction of the growth hormone IGF-1
  • Pancreas: Decreases insulin production, recovery
  • Joints: Fasting counteracts rheumatism and arthritis; relieves pain
  • Cardiovascular system: Lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels; lowers the heart rate; improves heart rate variability
  • Gastrointestinal tract: Increases diversity of intestinal bacteria
  • Fat tissue: Leads to fat reduction; changes to messengers (e.g., decreased production of leptin; anti-inflammatory

There are numerous scientific studies from researchers independent from Dr. Michalsen that attest to the benefits of a 10-day fast. My favorite ones include the ones that show fasting strengthens your immune system, improves your cognitive ability, enhances your mood, and alleviates major health complaints. Plus, fasting has empirically documented beneficial effects on rheumatoid arthritis, migraine, fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndromes of the locomotor system, and hypertension.

The Step-by-Step Guide to a 10-Day Fast

Long-term fasts have three phases. The first is the transition phase, where you eat low fat and high fiber. The second phase of food abstinence begins with a day for colon cleansing, followed by fasting days. After you break the fast, you enter the third phase for slow food build-up.

In the following, you’ll find the exact shopping list I always use and a guide on the three phases for your fasting schedule.

Before you start: The Shopping List

It’s nice to start with the right equipment. While doing my first fast, I wasn’t well equipped and had to go to the store every other day. It’s unnecessary self-torture to walk past a well smelling bakery store during your first fast.

With good preparation, you can easily avoid going to any grocery. Here’s what I found helpful to have at home before you start your fast:

Fasting equipment & helpful tools:

  • 20 g–30 g Glauber’s salt, Bitter salt, or laxative tea for a one-time intestinal voiding.
  • A running-in device (irrigator/enema) for colon cleansing during fasting.
  • Massage glove or massage brush for supporting your skin’s blood flow.
  • A hot-water bottle for a liver wrap (more on that later).
  • Basic mineral bath salt for a full bath or foot bath.

Food for the transition phase:

  • 2 l–3 l drinking water (without carbonic acid—that is to say, not sparkling/fizzy water).
  • Various unsweetened herbal teas.
  • Oatmeal, apples, cinnamon, rice or couscous, unsalted nuts, vegetables (e.g., broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, eggplant).

Nutrients for 3–7 fasting days:

  • 10 l –15 l drinking water (without carbonic acid).
  • At least three different kinds of unsweetened herbal teas (my favorite ones include camomile, nettle, and herbal blends).
  • 1 kg–2 kg vegetables for cooking a vegetable broth.
  • 2 lemons.
  • 1 l–2 l juice, not-from-concentrate (e.g., carrots, tomato, beetroot).
Vegetable juices, teas, and supportive tools.
Vegetable juices, teas, and supportive tools. Source: Author

Day 1: Transition

The better the preparation, the easier the fast. In the days before fasting, you want to do anything that helps your body. This initial adjustment period with light food prepares your body and intestines slowly and gently for the transition to fasting.

The first time I fasted, I skipped the transition phase. I was like, “I should eat everything I can because I will feel so hungry during the next days.”

Hence, I ate a lot. Like a lot of lot. At least I didn’t drink alcohol, but I ate a glass of Nutella, crisps, and high-fat processed foods. Binge eating didn’t harm me but made the first days a lot more difficult.

The second time I fasted, I included a proper transition phase. Once I felt how much easier fasting was, I knew I would never skip this phase again.

Including the transition phase makes the first fasting days a lot more enjoyable.

To get the perfect start, stop eating meat, refined sugar, and processed foods. Restrain from alcohol, nicotine, and salt. Instead, drink plenty of water and unsweetened tea.

What helped me the most was a positive mindset. I avoided thinking too much about what I shouldn’t eat but focused on the recipes I would eat during the days before the fasting.

It’s a great idea to plan your meals for the transition phase. The table contains meal suggestions and supportive activities.

Meal suggestions and activities for the transition phase.
Source: Author

Day 2: Colon Cleansing

This day is a bit tricky because there will be a lot going on in your stomach and gut. But in my experience, once your inner organs are clean, you will feel free and light.

On the morning of this day, you start with a big cup of tea and laxatives. I personally prefer “Glauber salt” over other options such as Epsom salt or a high-dose of magnesium because it always worked really well for me.

In the retreat, most people used magnesium as it’s a bit more gentle. It worked for them as well.

Whatever laxative you choose, make sure to drink a lot of water and unsweetened tea. And keep a toilet near you for the entire day. Remember your physical hunger vanishes as soon as your stomach and digestive system are empty.

Suggested food and activities for colon cleansing.
Source: Author

Day 3–Day 7: Fasting days with tea and broths

During the days of fasting, you skip any solid food (no macronutrients). Instead, you drink plenty of water, unsweetened tea, mineral water, and an organic vegetable broth (micronutrients).

For cooking the broth, choose your favorite vegetables, or use an existing recipe like this one or this one.

The second and third day of fast is the toughest day when it comes to energy levels. Your body changes its metabolic processes. You might feel tired, weak, hungry, and moody. But going through this day is worth it.

Many people experience a “fasting high” from day four and onwards. My experience confirms the words from Prof. Dr. Andreas Michalsen:

“From the third to fifth day, most fasting people are in a positive mood and feel satisfied, some even euphoric.”

After the first days, your mind and body feel light and free. The suggested activities aim for the right balance between exercise and relaxation. You don’t want to do sports at 100%, but keep your metabolism going by doing some lighter exercises. If you feel tired, it’s likely due to a lack of movement.

Suggested food and activities for fasting days.
Source: Author

Day 8: Fast-breaking

Fast-breaking is a gradual build-up to your regular calorie intake.

On the first day of fast-breaking, you start the day by eating an apple. Eating an apple may sound unspectacular, but I promise it’ll be the best apple in your entire life.

After days of fasting, your gustatory nerves are super sensitive. You’ll have a taste sensation. So, celebrate your first solid food. Enjoy every bite and marvel at the stimulating eating experience.

It’s best to eat the apple in the morning, so your body has enough time to produce digestive juices and switch the metabolism. Just like your body needed time to ease into the fast, it now needs time to start its digestive mechanism again.

Suggested food and activities for fast-breaking.
Source: Author

Day 9–10: Build up and reintroduction to ingesting solid foods

I know the urge to eat everything you craved for shortly after the fast break.

But resist this urge.

Give your body time to adjust.

The 2013 fasting guidelines state: “For successful fasting, a mindful and stepwise reintroduction of solid food intake is of importance and a cornerstone to successfully adopt a more healthy lifestyle following fasting.”

If you were to eat normal portion size again immediately, you would not only negate the positive effects of fasting but would actually harm yourself.

“Every fool can fast, but only a wise person knows how to break a fast.”

— George Bernard Shaw

During the build-up days, you eat easily digestible food high in fiber. The fresher, the better. The following days you proceed with a healthy whole-food diet. All ingredients should be as fresh and natural as possible.

Start with small food portions; your stomach is smaller and won’t need as much as before. Chew each bite well until there is only liquid in the mouth. Eat as slowly as you can; it might help to put the fork down after every bite. And most importantly, stop eating when you’re full.

Suggested food and activities for build-up.
Source: Author

Answers to the Most Common Questions

Many people have a lot of questions before they first start. Here are the ones I always hear from friends, as well as the answers to those questions.

Will I feel hungry?

Not as much as you think. You might feel physical hunger as long as your gut is not completely empty yet. But from day two onward, you’ll unlikely feel any hunger.

A 2019 study with almost 1,500 participants showed periodic Buchinger fasting wasn’t linked to a relevant perception of hunger. On the contrary, fasting was subjectively experienced as enjoyable, which is an important factor for compliance.

Will I lose muscles?

My boyfriend does weight-lifting six times a week. He didn’t join my first three fasts as he was afraid of losing muscles. In 2019 he did some research (he’s a 5th-year medical student) and joined fasting ever since.

Here’s how he explained to me what happens to our muscles.

From a purely evolutionary point of view, it’s logical our body doesn’t lose all muscles during a fasting period. Some 4,000 years ago, our species survived by hunting and gathering. We had no refrigerators to preserve our food. So we ate most of what we found immediately.

If we’d lose muscle mass anytime we hadn’t food around us, we couldn’t survive. With less and less strength, the chance of hunting and gathering new food would decrease. So, what happens?

A little muscle mass is lost during fasting but the extent of degradation is very small. In the first fasting days, the empty gastrointestinal tract and the lack of carbohydrate causes the insulin and thus the blood sugar level to drop.

This results in higher levels of glucagon (the antagonist of insulin) and adrenaline. As a result, more fatty acids are released from fat tissue and the absorption of these into our cells (as an alternative energy supply) is simplified.

Glycogenolysis also starts — glycogen stored in the liver is released and converted into glucose, which in turn supplies us with energy. Gluconeogenesis also starts — glucose is newly synthesized from lactate, amino acids, and glycerine.

The amino acids that are used here come primarily from skeletal muscles and represent the small part in which muscles are broken down.

It’s so small because after about 14 hours the ketone metabolism, ketogenesis, gets going and is responsible for the entire energy balance after 2–4 days at the latest. Glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis then go back to almost zero.

The substrate, i.e. the starting substance for the ketone bodies, are fatty acids, the amino acids of the muscles are no longer touched and consequently, no further muscles are lost.

Will I lose weight?

In the short-term, yes. But weight reduction is only a side effect. As Dr. Michalsen writes: “Fasting is not about reducing calories — if you simply eat less, the effect is not the same as fasting. Fasting is about using food deprivation to expose the body to small doses of stress, which leads to a stimulus reaction that detoxes the body and regulates it anew.”

Fasting can be a perfect start for changing your eating behavior. But ultimately, the kilos you lose while fasting will only stay if you manage to change into a healthy eating behavior.

Can I do fasting while working?

It depends. During those 10 days, you don’t want to have any social must attends, like weddings or birthdays. The temptation to eat makes the event unenjoyable.

You can fast while working. I fasted while I worked as a full-time teacher. I fasted while I built my startup. Here, the important thing is to do the colon cleansing while staying at home, like on the weekend.

Yet, the easiest way to fast is when you don’t have much work to do. The fewer external distractions and stress, the easier it will be for you to balance exercise and movement. It’s also easier to listen to your body.

If you have the luxury of leftover holidays, it’s a great time to use it because you can give your body all the time it needs. Home office during quarantine is actually a great time to do it, as you might be able to schedule your days more flexibly.

Is long-term fasting good for anyone?

No. Fasting is good for healthy individuals and can help treat skin diseases, rheumatism, and type 2 diabetics. But certain groups shouldn’t fast.

If you belong to one of the following, don’t do a long-term fast:

  • Pregnant and breastfeeding women.
  • Children.
  • People with hyperthyroidism.
  • People with circulatory disorders of the brain.
  • People with type 1 diabetes.
  • Cancer patients (due to the risk of malnutrition with permanent calorie restriction).
  • People with a history of eating disorders or underweight.
An apple sliced into four.
Photo by Nikolai Chernichenko on Unsplash

Biggest Obstacles and Tips to Overcome Them

Let’s be honest: even if you follow all of the tips and the preparation above — have all ingredients in the fridge, follow the activities, take time to be with your body — you might be tempted to break some rules or even entirely quit the fasting halfway through.

Knowing the name of these obstacles will make it easier for you to deal with each of them. The hindrances show up differently for everyone, and some don’t experience any of them.

Yet, a lot of people experience some side effects. Our bodies’ metabolic products and toxins are excreted during fasting through our detoxification organs, the intestines, liver, kidneys, and skin. Side effects like fatigue, headache, and dizziness can be natural side effects of the detoxification process.

1. Food cravings

Even if you don’t feel hungry, you might want to eat. Many people are emotional eaters and take a bite without being hungry. Anytime you smell food from a store nearby or think of food, you might experience cravings.

What to do: Start a “want-to-eat” list. Write down what you’re craving for and promise yourself to cook all these things once you’re done. By putting your desire on a sheet of paper, it’s out of your head.

2. Fatigue

You might feel a lack of energy. This might be a sign that your body wants movement. As this fasting study writes, physical activity causes a general stimulation of the macro-and microcirculation in the body, and also in excretory organs, and can enhance their activity

What to do: Move your body at 60–80% exposure. If you go running regularly, go for a light jog. If you normally jog, go for a brisk walk. Dance in your home, or do a guided yoga session.

3. Lack of concentration

Especially during the first days, focusing or sitting for a long time can be tough. You might think slower, or your comprehension isn’t that good at all. That’s why it’s a great benefit not to have a full-scheduled working week.

What to do: Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself a break and take time to rest or move. Accept that fasting can slow your brain in the short-term but know that it’ll ultimately support your body’s healing.

4. Headache

Your body and mind recover from food. When you fast, you free a lot of energy that was previously needed for digestion. You allow your body to repair and rebuild itself.

Yet, this rebuilding process also requires energy. Depending on the toxicity of your previous lifestyle (stress, processed foods, movement), the repair process will feel harder for some than for others.

What to do: If you have a headache, a large glass of water is a great first choice. Plus, using your irrigator can relieve your headache.

5. Dizziness

Especially after some time in bed, for example, in the morning, you might feel dizzy when you get up. During our last fast, my boyfriend got up so quickly in the morning that he fell back straight into his bed.

Your body’s metabolism needs more time to get going, and dizziness is a natural reaction.

What to do: You can easily prevent morning dizziness by sitting before you get out of bed. What also helps is preparing a bottle of water with some squeezed lemon, which you can drink before you leave your bed.

7. Boredom

You don’t have to go grocery shopping, cook, order food, and eat anymore. You gain one to three hours during your days, and boredom might arise. You can use this time to do something good for yourself.

What to do: If you feel bored, the first choice should be doing anything that feels good for your body. Pick your favorite activity. Go for a walk, do some yoga, journal, meditate, read, talk to friends, or sleep.

And, if you really don’t know what to do anymore, read some scientific papers on the health benefits of fasting. This is always a motivation boost.

8. Bad Taste

From day two onwards, you might experience a bad taste. Your body uses your tongue for detoxification, and bad taste is only natural.

What to do: Drink a glass of water with squeezed lemon. If you feel like it, you can also use a tongue scraper.

Are You Ready for Your Fasting Retreat?

Almost four years have passed since my ill-prepared fast in 2017. Six fasting experiences later, I truly understand why my parents stuck to this curious habit for most of their adult life.

Indeed, a liquid fast is a holistic, mind-altering, and cost-efficient way to improve your health, and thereby, your life.

However, I’d lie if I said fasting is easy and simple and like a great holiday because it isn’t. Fasting is a powerful tool that eases your body — often painful — toxins and feelings which our eating habits otherwise tend to override.

When it’s only your body without food for ten days, you’ll have not much to ease your emotions, which can be tiring, hard, annoying, and, frankly, also boring.

We’re so used to eating that our body and mind rebel like a child when we force ourselves to refrain from food intake.

But if you stick through the initial hurdles, your fasting retreat might become one of the most rewarding and grounding experiences you’ve done in life.

May your personal fasting retreat feel as rewarding and incredibly healing for you as it was — and continues to be — for me.

“Fasting is not just a physical discipline; it can be a spiritual feast.”

— Jentezen Franklin

7 Priceless Gifts That Will Improve Your Money Management

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Time with Naval, automation, books, net worth tracking, and so much more.

Photo by MayoFi from Pexels

Do you ever find yourself dragging your money tasks from month to month without tackling them?

By postponing your investments from month to month, year to year, you’re missing the most important principle for accumulating wealth.

Just like successful investor Naval Ravikant said:

“All the real benefits in life come from compound interest.”

If you don’t know how to tackle your financials, it’s likely because you’ve ignored some of the fundamentals.

Here are seven priceless yet invaluable gifts to give yourself that will improve the way you manage your money.

1) The Best Way to Learn from Successful Investors

You make all financial decisions in life. So, the best way to make better investment decisions is by knowing how the most successful investors play the money game.

That’s what Benjamin Franklin meant when he said: “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

And books are the single best way to learn from the most successful investors. Books are affordable and accessible wherever you are.

Reading gives you access to the smartest money minds. You can pick whatever investor brain you like. By learning the principles that guide top investor’s decisions, you’ll find yourself on the fast track to making better money choices.

So, which books should you read?

I started with the free audio-book of ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ on Spotify. Then, I ordered more fundamentals, like ‘Think and Grow Rich,’ The Intelligent Investor, and ‘The Millionaire Next Door.’

However, if I’d start again, I’d go for entertaining, short, and applicable books first, like ‘I Will Teach You to Be Rich’ by Ramit Sethi.

What you can gift yourself:

Your life, your rules. The books I love might not be the ones you like. Choose the brains you want to borrow and read what fits your lifestyle.

To find a book you want to read, visit your favorite library, bookstore, or browse through popular finance books GoodReads sections.

But whichever book you choose, remember even the best books are worthless unless applied. Summarize your learnings and reflect on them, for example, by sharing your new knowledge with co-workers and friends.

2) Book a Counseling Session with a True Expert

Did you know that most financial consultants are salespeople?

I didn’t. In 2016, I asked my bank advisor for financial advice. He told me to start saving on a building loan contract. And so I made my first uniformed investment decision.

Bank consultants and many other financial experts earn money per product they sell. And because they earn commissions, you’ll understand why they likely direct you to expensive products like loan contracts, bloated funds, life insurance, and so on.

What you can gift yourself:

Don’t ask a bank advisor or an insurance rep for money advice. Instead, get a fee-only adviser who is a fiduciary. He will put your financial interest first.

If you’re living in the states, you can find these advisors on the national association of personal financial advisors; in Germany, it’d be this one. You can find the perfect match if you google for fee-only financial advisors.

In an introduction call, ask questions like: How do you make money? Is it through commission or strictly fee-only? Have you worked with people in similar situations? What’s your working style?

3) Three Hours With Naval Ravikant

Tim Ferriss described Naval best, writing:

Sure, he’s the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. Sure, he previously co-founded Vast.com and Epinions, which went public as part of Shopping.com. Sure, he’s an angel investor and has invested in many mega successes, including Twitter, Uber, Yammer, and OpenDNS, to name but a few.

That’s all great, of course, and it shows Naval is a world-class operator instead of an armchair philosopher.

But I don’t take his perspectives, maxims, and thoughts seriously because of the business stuff. There are lots of miserable “successful” people out there. Be careful about modeling those, as you will get all the bathwater with the baby.

I take Naval seriously because he:

→ Questions nearly everything 
→ Can think from first principles 
→ Tests things well 
→ Is good at not fooling himself 
→ Changes his mind regularly 
→ Laughs a lot 
→ Thinks holistically 
→ Thinks long-term 
→ And…doesn’t take himself too goddamn seriously.

And Naval’s investment principles reflect his personality.

One of my favorite lessons from Naval is to find a way to detach your income from your time investment. He tweeted, “You’re never going to get rich renting out your time.”

The most profitable income is the one that doesn’t pay you for your time but for your scalable creations, like text, code, voice, video, or sound.

Rich people got wealthy by establishing systems that make money independent from time. Just like Warren Buffett said, “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

What you can gift yourself:

Naval is literally the smartest investor I know. Luckily, he launched his own podcast.

In this three hour audio, you find a collection of every episode he recorded on the topic of money, wealth, and investments. I promise three hours with Naval will be one of the worthiest investments you ever give to yourself.

4) Gift Yourself a Way to Track Your Wealth

Your net worth is the best number to measure your wealth. If you want to become a better money manager, tracking it is essential.

Your net worth is what you own minus what you owe. It’s your assets minus your liabilities.

It’s a reflection of your financial habits. Just like James Clear put it: “Your outcomes are lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits.”

Whether you’re earning $1k or $10k a month, you may not like your financial situation. And that’s okay. But while having a net worth of zero is no obstacle in becoming wealthy, not knowing about your net worth is.

What you can gift yourself:

Set up your net worth planner, or use apps like mint. Once you set up you’ve filled your net worth tracker, revisit it once a month.

When you look at your numbers over some months, you’ll see powerful patterns and the effects of cutting expenses, earning more, and investing wisely.

I go through my net worth once a month. In the beginning, I didn’t like it, but once I saw my money growing, it became a habit I enjoy. Every month I set aside 15 minutes and update the sheet.

Gifting yourself a net worth tracker is priceless yet invaluable on your journey to long-term wealth.

5) Make the Right Choices Easy by Using Automation

Increasing your financial wealth isn’t solely about how much you make. It’s also about how much you save.

Earning $1.000 or $10.000 a month won’t increase your net worth if you’re spending all of it on consumer goods like food, clothes, beauty products, cars, furniture, hairdressers, phones, and travel.

Your salary won’t make you rich, but your spending habits will.

People who spend 100% or even more will never accumulate wealth. So, smart investors save before spending.

The more you invest each month, the faster your money will grow. And by automating your investments, you don’t have to remember to save every month.

What you can gift yourself:

Set up a default option that automates your investments. Determine a fixed savings rate and set up a system that transfers your income to the right buckets.

Ramit Sethi, a personal finance advisor and Standford graduate suggests, using 50–60% for Fixed costs (rent, utilities, debt), 10% for Investments (401(k), Roth IRA, ETF saving plans), 5–10% for saving goals (vacations, gifts, house down payment, emergency fund) and 20–35% for guilt-free spending money (dining, drinking, movies, clothes, etc.).

Whatever you do, don’t save what is left after spending but spend what is left after saving. By gifting yourself the automation setup, you’ll consistently get the basics right.

6) Freedom From Stuff You Don’t Need

Did you know that 50% of the more than 1000 millionaires surveyed in ‘The millionaire next door’ never spend more than $400 on a suit, $140 for a pair of shoes, or $235 for a wristwatch?

They could buy expensive things, but they don’t. Because what made them rich in the first place is spending money on things that matter and investing the rest. Conscious spenders care about the value of something rather than the price.

As Ryan Holiday put it: “Mental and spiritual independence matters little if the things we own in the physical world end up owning us.”

New things cost money. And to earn money, you work. And to work, you give away your life. So, in the end, what you exchange for new stuff is your time on this planet.

What you can gift yourself:

Gift yourself mental freedom and stop buying things you don’t need. Instead, spend more time on the things that matter. Give yourself quality time with friends. Initiative get-togethers and weekend reunions. Start to meditate.

And, remind yourself that you have enough, do enough, and are enough. No material possession can help you feel inner wealth.

7) Gift Yourself Free Subscriptions to Superb Blogs

By now, you know about the great ways to take your money management from good to great.

And while most of the gifts require either time (reading books, listening to Naval, automation, net-worth tracker), or money (fee-only consultation), this last option is great for people without much time or money.

Free subscriptions to high-quality money blogs are a great way to receive easy-digestible regular insights.

What you can gift yourself:

Find two to three trustworthy blogs and gift yourself a subscription to their newsletters. Here’s a selection of my favorites:

  • Morgan Housel’s blog on psychology and money
  • Mr. Money Mustace on financial independence and retiring early (FIRE)
  • Dan Solin’s newsletters about flaws in the investing industry (e.g., “Cracks in the Robo-Advisor Facade,” or “Find the Courage to Be Different.”)
  • Ron Lieber’s money column for the New York Times
  • Madame Moneypenny (German only) on ETFs and investment tips

The Bottom Line

When I first tapped into the world of personal finance, I read as many books as I could. I went to seminars, joined masterclasses, and watched online courses. I saved 7,000€ for my emergency fund, tracked my net worth’s development, and set up an automated investment plan.

But managing your money isn’t complex long, or exhaustive. You don’t have to do all these things to improve your money management.

By gifting you one or two things, you can level up your financials. Just like Naval said: “Making money isn’t a thing you do — it’s a skill you learn.”

This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.

How to Learn Like Someone Who Aced the MIT Challenge

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The four principles of ultralearning.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

In 2014, Scott H. Young embarked on a controversial project.

He completed the MIT undergraduate computer science curriculum at 4x speed. Instead of the typical four years, he passed all final exams in less than 12 months.

Some people praise his results as the ultralearning experience.

Others are more skeptical as Scott transformed his MIT challenge into lucrative blogs and books. Here’s a question some people ask:

Is Scott a sneaky marketer or one of the most efficient life-long learners?

And while I’ll share my opinion at the end of this article, the answer doesn’t really matter. What matters is what we can learn from his learning journey.

These are Scott’s tips on how to become an ultralearner and quadruple your learning efficiency.

Use directness to improve learning effectiveness

Learning in formal settings is often ineffective because it’s distant from the actual application. Let’s take an example.

Imagine you’re a frequent flier. Before every start, you watch the video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. You watch the video again and again.

But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it. You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself.

Social climber Dale Carnegie used to say knowledge isn’t power until it’s applied. And it’s true.

Don’t spend your time on tasks far away from your end goal. If you want to write online articles, don’t spend time watching a masterclass on how to write a book. Foster a bias towards direct action.

The directness principle is a powerful way to make learning more efficient.

How to do it:

What’s your end goal behind learning?

Let’s say you want to learn writing. What do you want to use it for? Is it for writing a novel? Then start learning to write by writing a novel. Is it for earning an extra income? Then start studying submission guidelines for paid online platforms and pitch your articles there.

Whatever you learn, focus on your true end-goal and pick a practice that’s as close to it as possible.

Feynman’s technique helps you remember anything

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was an expert for remembering what he learned — by teaching.

Teaching is the most effective way to embed information in your mind. Plus, it’s an easy way to check whether you’ve remembered what you learned.

Because before you teach, you have to take several steps: filter relevant information, organize this information, and use your own vocabulary to paraphrase the concepts.

Feynman mastered this process like no other. The people of his time knew him for explaining the most complex processes in the simplest language. They nicknamed Feynman “The Great Explainer.”

Bill Gates was so inspired by his pedagogy that he even named Feynman “the greatest teacher I never had.”

How to do it:

The Feynman Technique consists of three simple steps:

  1. Summarize whatever you want to learn on a blank page.
  2. Explain what you learned in plain, simple language as if you were talking to a child.
  3. Identify your knowledge gaps and revisit the concepts whenever you’re stuck circle back to your knowledge source.
  4. Reread what you forgot to mention and add it to your explanation.

By following this technique, your learning by ‘first principles’ instead of superficial memorization.

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

Create a meta-learning map

No life skill can earn you greater dividends than learning how to learn. Yet, most people don’t know how to master meta-learning.

Meanwhile, taking responsibility for your learning is one of the most important undertakings you can manage.

Your meta-learning map serves as a knowledge tree for your practice and will help you learn better. Scott Young, the author of ultralearning, says a meta-learning map should contain three key items:

  • Concepts: Anything that needs to be understood.
  • Facts: Anything that needs to be memorized.
  • Procedures: Anything that needs to be practiced.

How to do it:

Make a learning map before you dive into any specific skill.

If you want to write paid articles, don’t start by practicing headlines. Instead, list all the things you need to acquire, like style, editing, storytelling, research, headlines, and a solid idea-to-paper process.

Unsure how to start the map? Find people who mastered the skill you want to learn and ask them about their learning paths.

Do you want to publish a bestselling non-fiction novel? Craft personal, short e-mails and send them to Malcolm Gladwell, Brené Brown, Nicolas Cole, James Clear, and all the other successful authors. Ask them about the core skills they needed to master. Then, start drafting your own map.

Unlock the power of self-testing

Many people feel traumatized when they think of formal test settings. But testing can be a powerful tool to improve the way we learn.

Because self-testing helps us overcome the illusion of knowledge and shows us whether we truly mastered the subject at hand. Plus, self-testing helps to identify knowledge gaps and brings weak areas to the light.

Even if you don’t get the right answer, the process facilitates remembering the correct answer. In almost all cases, it’s better to solve a problem than memorizing a solution.

Use the testing process to learn more as you go along. Always test yourself before you feel confident and push yourself to recall information, not just review it.

How to do it:

My favorite testing techniques include flashcards with a built-in spaced repetition feature (like Anki for anything, readwise for books, podcasts, highlights, or lingvist for languages).

Apart from flashcards, you can also use free recall. After reading something, try to write down everything you can remember, then use the source material to fill the gaps you missed. After your session, sit down with a piece of blank paper. Challenge yourself to list everything you can remember from what you’ve learned in as much detail as possible.

A third alternative includes the question-book method. Here you write down questions that test the content and answer these questions whenever you revisit the source. Ali Abdaal explains the active recall method in one of his learning videos.

Did Scott Young really finish the MIT curriculum?

Yes and no.

Yes, because he achieved his goal of ‘just wanting to learn more about Computer Science.’

No, because he self-graded his exams, skipped advanced course modules, and replaced peer-projects with less intense modules.

There are plenty of discussions that shed more light on Young’s underlying assumptions. And meanwhile, he also shared a critical reflection on his learning path.

But there’s a more important lesson here: With the right tools, learning any new skill is possible.

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How to Remember What You Read From Non-Fiction Books

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A guide for applying evidence-based learning strategies to reading any non-fiction book, and retaining what you read.

A woman sits at a desk while reading a book.
Christina Morillo / Pexels

At age 18, I felt most school lessons were time-wasters. To save future pupil generations from what I had suffered through, I decided to change the education system. And if that wasn’t naïve enough, I assumed studying business education would get me there.

Where, if not in an education program at university, should you learn how to learn?

I was wrong. There were no classes on learning or cognitive science. Being assigned dry, academic, self-promoted professor books, I hadn’t figured how the right books could teach you anything. Instead, I asked the best-performing fellow students about their learning techniques and copied their bulk-learning and memorizing. But after graduation, I felt dumb. I forgot almost everything from my classes.

A Bachelor’s degree taught me how to learn to ace exams. But it didn’t teach me how to learn to remember.

Different studies reveal most students never learn how to learn. Kornell & Bjork and Hartwig & Dunlosky, for example, show that 65% to 80% of students answered “no” to the question “Do you study the way you do because somebody taught you to study that way?”

From the ones who answered “yes,” some likely watched the most-popular Coursera course of all time: Dr. Barabara Oakley’s free course on “Learning how to Learn.” So did I. And while this course taught me about chunking, recalling, and interleaving, I learned something more useful: the existence of non-fiction literature that can teach you anything.

So I read—a lot. Since 2017 I have read about 150 non-fiction books about how our minds work, how children learn, and how education might solve global health problems, to name a few. I was fascinated by education and learning; I skipped the corporate career and became a Teach for All fellow to learn more about learning.

Yet, about 80 books into my reading journey, something felt odd. Whenever a conversation revolved around a serious non-fiction book I read, such as ‘Sapiens’ or ‘Thinking Fast and Slow,’ I could never remember much. Turns out, I hadn’t absorbed as much information as I’d believed. Since I couldn’t remember much, I felt as though reading wasn’t an investment in knowledge but mere entertainment.

I know many others feel the same. When I opened up about my struggles, many others confessed they also can’t remember most of what they read, as if forgetting is a character flaw. But it isn’t.

Forgetting most of what we read isn’t a character flaw. It’s the way we work with books that’s flawed.

Once I understood how we learn — through online courses, books, and Teach for All — I realized there’s a better way to read. Most people rely on techniques like highlighting, rereading, or, worst of all, completely passive reading, which are highly ineffective. It’s only logical most people forget almost anything they read.

Since I started applying evidence-based learning strategies to reading non-fiction books, many things have changed. I can explain complex ideas during dinner conversations. I can recall interesting concepts and link them in my writing or podcasts. As a result, people come to me for all kinds of advice. Plus, I was invited to speak at panel discussions, got paid for content curation, and have received high-level job opportunities. I finally feel like reading is a true investment in knowledge.

And if I, a former naïve clueless mouflon monster can do it, you can do it, too. But before you learn how this system works, let’s explore why it works. To become a truly effective learner, we need to understand the key aspects of human learning and memory.

What’s the Architecture of Human Learning and Memory?

Human brains don’t work like recording devices. We don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading sentences.

Instead, we store new information in terms of its meaning to our existing memory. And we give new information meaning by actively participating in the learning process — we interpret, connect, interrelate, or elaborate. To remember new information, we not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what we already know.

That’s why memory and the process of learning are closely connected. Radvansky, a researcher for human memory and cognition, explains the connection in his book:

“Memory is a site of storage and enables the retrieval and encoding of information, which is essential for the process of learning. Learning is dependent on memory processes because previously-stored knowledge functions as a framework in which newly learned information can be linked.”

Three stages of human memory processing

Human memory works in three stages: acquisition, retention, and retrieval. In the acquisition phase, we link new information to existing knowledge; in the retention phase, we store it, and in the retrieval phase, we get information out of our memory.

The three stages of human memory processing: acquisition, retention, and retrieval.
Adapted by Dunlosky et al. (2007) based on Nelson & Narens’s (1990) framework for metamemory.

We use our memory to encode information, retain it, and then access and use our memory to make decisions, interact with others, or solve problems.

Here, we need to understand that the three phases interrelate. Retrieval, the third stage, is cue dependent. This means the more mental links you’re generating during stage one, the acquisition phase, the easier you can access and use your knowledge.

In the words of a research group around Bjork, a renowned human learning and memory researcher:

“To be a sophisticated learner requires understanding that creating durable and flexible access to to-be-learned information is partly a matter of achieving a meaningful encoding of that information and partly a matter of exercising the retrieval process.”

Now, the question is: how can we achieve meaningful encoding and effectively exercise the retrieval process?

Evidence-Based Learning Strategies, Why They Work, And How You Can Apply Them

We’ve established a basic understanding of how our human memory works (acquisition, retention, retrieval). Next, we’ll look at the learning strategies that work best for our brains (elaboration, retrieval, spaced repetition, interleaving, self-testing) and see how we can apply those insights to reading non-fiction books.

The strategies that follow are rooted in research from professors of Psychological & Brain Science around Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel. Both scientists spent ten years bridging the gap between cognitive psychology and education fields. Harvard University Press published their findings in the book ‘Make It Stick.’

I applied their evidence-based learning techniques for reading. Since I use these techniques, I feel reading indeed is a true investment in knowledge. I can access what I want to remember and use it for writing, podcasting, conversation, or self-improvement.

The strategies presented follow in chronological order and apply to both physical books and e-readers. There are extra supportive capabilities for Kindles that I will explain afterward.

#1 Elaboration

Elaborating means you explain and describe an idea in your own words. Thereby you consciously associate material you want to learn with what you’ve previously learned. In the words of Roediger & McDaniel: “Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know.”

Why elaboration works: Elaborative rehearsal encodes information into your long-term memory more effectively. The more details and the stronger you connect new knowledge to what you already know, the better because you’ll be generating more cues. And the more cues they have, the easier you can retrieve your knowledge.

How I apply elaboration: Whenever I read an interesting section, I pause and ask myself about the real-life connection and potential application. The process is invisible, and my inner monologues sound like: “This idea reminds me of…, This insight conflicts with…, I don’t really understand how…, ” etc.

For example, when I learned about A/B testing in ‘The Lean Startup,’ I thought about applying this method to my startup. I added a note on the site stating we should try it in user testing next Wednesday. Thereby the book had an immediate application benefit to my life, and I will always remember how the methodology works.

How you can apply elaboration: Elaborate while you read by asking yourself meta-learning questions like “How does this relate to my life? In which situation will I make use of this knowledge? How does it relate to other insights I have on the topic?”

While pausing and asking yourself these questions, you’re generating important memory cues. If you take some notes, don’t transcribe the author’s words but try to summarize, synthesize, and analyze.

Elaboration applied by making notes in a book.
Elaboration applied: Remarks in ‘The Lean Startup’ (Source: Author)

#2 Retrieval

With retrieval, you try to recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory. While retrieval practice can take many forms — take a test, write an essay, do a multiple-choice test, practice with flashcards — some forms are better than others, as the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ state: “While any kind of retrieval practice generally benefits learning, the implication seems to be that where more cognitive effort is required for retrieval, greater retention results.”

Why retrieval works: The more time has gone since your information consumption, the more difficult time you’ll have to retrieve it. Naturally, a few days after we learn something, forgetting sets in. And that’s why retrieval is so powerful. Retrieval strengthens your memory and interrupts forgetting and, as other researchers replicate, as a learning event, the act of retrieving information is considerably more potent than is an additional study opportunity, particularly in terms of facilitating long-term recall.

How I apply retrieval: I retrieve a book’s content from my memory by writing a book summary for every book I want to remember. I ask myself questions like: “How would you summarize the book in three sentences? Which concepts do you want to keep in mind or apply? How does the book relate to what you already know?”

I then publish my summaries on Goodreads or write an article about my favorite insights, like here with Ben Horowitz, Elizabeth Gilbert, or Brené Brown.

How you can apply retrieval: You can come up with your own questions or use mine. If you don’t want to publish your summaries in public, you can write a summary into your journal, start a book club, create a private blog, or initiate a WhatsApp group for sharing book summaries.

Whatever you settle for, be careful not to copy/paste the words from the author. If you don’t do the brain work yourself, you’ll skip the learning benefits of retrieval. You want to use your own memory, even if it feels hard. By thinking about the concepts and giving new information your meaning, you’re creating an effective learning experience.

Retrieval applied through a chapter-by-chapter summary.
Retrieval applied: Chapter-by-chapter Goodreads Summary (Source: Screenshot Author)

#3 Spaced Repetition

With spaced repetition, you repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals. The harder it feels to recall the information, the stronger the learning effect. “Spaced practice, which allows some forgetting to occur between sessions, strengthens both the learning and the cues and routes for fast retrieval,” Roediger & McDaniel write.

Why it works: It might sound counterintuitive, but forgetting is essential for learning. Spacing out practice might feel less productive than rereading a text because you’ll realize what you forgot. Your brain has to work harder to retrieve your knowledge, which is a good indicator of effective learning.

So, spaced repetition prevents your brain from forgetting. Research shows repeating the same information ten times over different days is a better way to remember things than repeating the same information twenty times on a single day.

How I apply spaced repetition: After some weeks, I revisit a book and look at the summary questions (see #2). I try to come up with my answer before I look up my actual summary. I can often only remember a fraction of what I wrote and have to look at the rest. I’ll also evaluate whether I’ve applied the knowledge nuggets to my life and, if not, why I didn’t.

The process is quite time-intense, but whenever I feel it’s a timewaster, I remember Ratna Kusnur’s quote on the importance of applying theoretical non-fiction concepts: “Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for the betterment of life.”

How you can apply spaced repetition: You can revisit your book summary medium of choice and test yourself on what you remember. What were your action points from the book? Have you applied them? If not, what hindered you?

By testing yourself in varying intervals on your book summaries, you’ll strengthen both learning and cues for fast retrieval. If you read on your Kindle, there’s software to assist you with spaced repetition—more on that after the next two techniques.

Spaced repetition applied through self-testing on a book summary.
Spaced Repetition applied: Self-Testing one of my book summaries (Source: Author)

#4 Interleaving

In interleaving, you switch practices before completion. So, interleaving means mixing learning with different kinds of approaches, concepts, or viewpoints. By practicing jumping back and forth between different problems, you solidify your understanding of the concepts and promote creativity and flexibility.

Why interleaving works: Alternate working on different problems feels more difficult as it, again, facilitates forgetting. While our intuition tells us completing one topic should be more effective, researchers pointed towards interleaving benefits. Plus, the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ conclude: “If learners spread out their study of a topic, returning to it periodically over time, they remember it better.”

How I apply interleaving: I read different books at the same time. Between my reading start and finish of Harari’s content-dense world history, I read four other books. Mixing my reading with Brown’s vulnerability classic and the memoir of a Holocaust Survivor brought insightful connections between various concepts, similar to what James Clear once meant when he said: “The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas.”

How you can apply interleaving: Your brain can handle reading different books simultaneously, and it’s effective to do so. You can start a new book before you finish the one you’re reading. Starting again into a topic you partly forgot feels difficult first, but as you know by now, that’s the effect you want to achieve.

The books that the author is currently reading while applying interleaving.
Interleaving applied: The various books I’m currently reading (Source: Author)

#5 Self-Testing

While reading often falsely tricks us into perceived mastery, testing shows us whether we truly mastered the subject at hand. Self-testing helps you identify knowledge gaps and brings weak areas to the light. In their book, the scientists conclude: “It’s better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution.”

Why it works: Self-testing helps you overcome the illusion of knowledge. “One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.” Objective instruments, like testing, or self-testing, help you adjust your sense of what you know and don’t know.

How I apply self-testing: I explain the key lessons from non-fiction books I want to remember to others. Thereby, I test whether I really got the concept. Often, I didn’t. After reading a great book on personal finance, I recorded a podcast episode where I explained how Exchange Traded Funds work.

I reworked my preparation four times until I felt it included everything the listener needs. But instead of feeling frustrated, cognitive science made me realize that identifying knowledge gaps are a desirable and necessary effect for long-term remembering. I keep Mortimer Adler’s words in mind, who wrote: “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

How you can apply self-testing: Teaching your lessons learned from a non-fiction book is a great way to test yourself. Before you explain a topic to somebody, you have to combine several mental tasks: filter relevant information, organize this information, and articulate it using your own vocabulary.

When you explain the content from what you’ve read to another person, you’ll identify potential knowledge gaps, can reread the passages you want to double-check, and strengthen your understanding.

Self-testing applied through teaching via a podcast.
Self-Testing applied: Teaching what I learned in a podcast episode (Source: Author)

Additional Tweaks for Kindle Readers

Most people are e-reading enemies until they truly read their first e-book. I remained an enemy fifteen books in. You can’t dog-ear your favorite pages, scribble your questions in the margins, or elaborate on a concept you just learned. You can’t apply much of what I’d described above.

And while these arguments hold, technology-assisted learning makes most of them irrelevant. Now that I discovered how to use my Kindle as a learning device, I wouldn’t trade it for a paper book anymore. Here are the four steps it takes to enrich your e-reading experience.

1) Highlight everything you want to remember

Based on your new insights into human memory, it won’t surprise you that researchers proved highlighting to be ineffective. It’s passive and doesn’t create memory cues.

And while I join the cannon against highlighting as an ineffective learning tool, we need it to create your learning experience. Use your fingers to highlight any piece of content you find worth remembering. You’ll next understand why.

2) Cut down your highlights in your browser

After you finished reading the book, you want to reduce your highlights to the essential part. Visit your Kindle Notes page to find a list of all your highlights. Using your desktop browser is faster and more convenient than editing your highlights on your e-reading device.

Now, browse through your highlights, delete what you no longer need, and add notes to the ones you really like. By adding notes to the highlights, you’ll connect the new information to your existing knowledge. You might recognize this tactic as an effective learning strategy you learned earlier: elaborative rehearsal (see #1 elaboration).

3) Use software to practice spaced repetition

This part is the main reason for e-books beating printed books. While you can do all of the above with a little extra time on your physical books, there’s no way to systemize your repetition praxis. As you know, spaced repetition (see #3) helps you prevent your brain from forgetting and will strengthen your memory.

Readwise is the best software to combine spaced repetition with your e-books. It’s an online service that connects to your Kindle account and imports all your Kindle highlights. Then, it creates flashcards of your highlights and allows you to export your highlights to your favorite note-taking app.

Common Learning Myths Debunked

While reading and studying evidence-based learning techniques I also came across some things I wrongly believed to be true.

#1 Our brain’s capacity is limited

This is simply untrue. As the researchers write in this paper: “We need to understand, too, that our capacity for storing to-be-learned information or procedures is essentially unlimited. In fact, storing information in human memory appears to create capacity — that is, opportunities for additional linkages and storage — rather than use it up.” You increase your brain’s capacity for learning.

#2 Effective learning should feel easy

We think learning works best when it feels productive. That’s why we continue to use ineffective techniques like rereading or highlighting. But learning works best when it feels hard, or as the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ write: “Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”

While techniques like retrieval, spacing, and interleaving can feel hard and appear as if the learning rate would be very slow, the opposite is true. As the researchers write in this paper: “Because they often enhance long-term retention and transfer of to-be-learned information and procedures, they have been labeled desirable difficulties, but they nonetheless can create a sense of difficulty and slow progress for the learner.”

In Conclusion

While these techniques stem from evidence-based learning strategies, their application is my preference. I developed and adjusted these strategies over two years, and they’re still a work in progress.

Try all of them but don’t force yourself through anything that doesn’t feel right for you. I encourage you to do your own research, add further techniques, and skip what doesn’t serve you. Instead of feeling discouraged by all the ideas about how you can improve your learning experience, enjoy experimenting at your own pace. Keep the steps that work for you and screw the rest.

If you’re unsure where to begin, or you’re overwhelmed by all the application strategies, I suggest you start with book summaries first. Writing down what you want to remember makes you think about and rephrase what you just learned.

You can then use it for future spaced repetition (#3) or as a reference guide if you want to teach your insights to somebody (#4). And to write the summary, you will soon realize it’s helpful to elaborate (#1) while reading. Doing it with several books simultaneously (#2) can be a level up once you feel comfortable with the implemented routines.

No matter which strategies you use, applying evidence-based learning strategies will pay off. It’s not a quick win and takes time and patience, but you’ll ultimately reap the benefits.

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

— Mortimer J. Adler

Five Principles By Naval Ravikant That Will Teach You True Wealth

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“Seek wealth, not money or status.”

Source: Needpix

When was the last time you came across a person that excited you so much you had to consume all their content?

Until this Sunday in my bathtub, I hadn’t read anything from Naval Ravikant. But after the first pages of the ‘Almanack of Naval Ravikant,’ I realized I just book-met one of the most interesting people alive.

The e-book kept me awake late that night. Monday, I spent half the day reading a 45-page interview and contemplating on his tweetstorms. Here are his key principles that will help you become wealthy.

“You’re never going to get rich renting out your time.”

What do you have in common with Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, and all the other billionaires on the planet?

Right, you live your life within the same time scale. No matter how wealthy you are, you can’t make a single day have 26 hours.

That’s why the most successful people on this planet say no to almost everything. Plus, truly rich people didn’t build their wealth by renting out their time.

Rich people got wealthy by establishing systems that make money independent from time.

Many people could live better lives if they made their time work for them, but continue to sell their limited hours. What they receive in return are limited rewards.

So, the questions are: How can you decouple money and time to create limitless wealth? How can you earn with your mind, not your time?

Build and sell products with no marginal cost of replication—things like books, media, movies, and code. You can multiply your returns without working more.

Owning your share of a scalable product is the ultimate goal.

Or, as Naval put it:

“You must own equity — a piece of a business — to gain your financial freedom.”

“Making money isn’t a thing you do — it’s a skill you learn.”

Most people aren’t smart about their finances and will never understand the fundamentals of money management.

It’s not because these people are too dumb to become smart investors. They’re just too lazy to learn.

Maybe you’ve built an emergency fund.

Maybe you know and track your net worth.

Maybe you automated your ETF savings plan.

And maybe you’ve done none of the above.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether you decide to learn about your financials. Because money management is a skill, anybody can learn. And once you get the fundamentals right, not much can go wrong.

Yes, financial literacy is inherited. If your parents aren’t smart about money, the chances are high that you don’t know essential investing principles.

My parents don’t know much about investing. But I took masterclasses, asked smart people how they manage their money, and read finance books. I know from experience that money management is a skill anybody can learn.

No matter how far you’ve come on your financial journey, you can take your money management from good to great by reading applicable finance books, like ‘I will teach you to be rich’ by Ramit Sethi, or ‘The total money makeover’ by Dave Ramsey.

Like most things in life — when you commit to learning, you can master almost anything. Like Naval says,

“Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work.”

“Seek wealth, not money or status.”

Money is just a means to transfer wealth, and status just a label in our social hierarchy. You want neither of them.

I used to join the money and status game. Here’s what happened.

I bought the newest iPhone. But an expensive phone comes with the fear of a broken screen. So I also bought a fancy case and overpriced insurance. And yet, I worried about theft while traveling.

By focusing on money and status, we purchase things that add burdens to our lives. Ryan Holiday put it best; writing, “Mental and spiritual independence matters little if the things we own in the physical world end up owning us.”

You don’t want money or status. What you want is wealth because wealth is the ultimate freedom.

Here’s how Naval summarized it in one of his tweets:

“The purpose of wealth is freedom; it’s nothing more than that. It’s not to buy fur coats, or to drive Ferraris, or to sail yachts, or to jet around the world in a Gulf Stream. That stuff gets really boring and stupid, really fast. It’s about being your own sovereign individual.”

“The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn.”

No life skill can pay you greater dividends than learning how to learn. Yet, most people don’t know how to do it.

When researchers asked, “Do you study the way you do because somebody taught you to study that way?” 73% of students answered “No.”

The majority uses ineffective learning strategies and ignores that humans don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading sentences.

But it doesn’t have to stay this way.

Learning how to learn is a skill you can easily learn.

In the last years, I read books on learning and taught as a Teach for All fellow. Here are the best resources for learning how to learn:

  • The book ‘Make it stick.’ (336 pages; 7 hours to read)
  • The free Coursera course ‘Learning How to Learn.’ (15 hours to complete)
  • The learning section on ‘FS blog.’ (10 minutes per article)
  • The book ‘Mindsets.’ (320 pages, 6.5 hours to read)

And whatever you learn, keep Naval’s words in mind:

“Even today, what to study and how to study it are more important than where to study it and for how long. The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet. The means of learning are abundant — it’s the desire to learn that is scarce.”

“Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching.”

In 2017, I read my first life-changing book. Since then, I have read at least one book a week.

Yet, when I stumbled upon this quote by Ratna Kusnur some time ago, I started to question the power of books: “Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for the betterment of life.”

Before building my first business, I had read dozens of books for each stage in the business lifecycle. But when it came to really starting, the biggest impact was just doing it.

Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk found the right words: “But how many books from these ‘experts’ do you need to read before you can actually do something? You can only read so much, and at some point, you just have to do. Stop being a student, and start being an entrepreneur.”

Yes, reading is faster than listening. But doing and trying trumps theoretical lessons.

You’ll get farther bumping along on your own without any books than you ever will, reading a lot but not doing anything.

And yet, the combination of reading and doing trumps mere doing. Again, Naval:

“Read a lot — just read.”

On page 207, you’ll find a list of the books he recommends with short statements, why he recommends them. But before you dive into every single one, remember Naval who said reading is not about following the book advice of famous people:

“It’s really more about identifying the great books for you because different books speak to different people.”

If you blindly copy Naval’s principles, you missed the most important point.

You’re the only person that best knows how to live your life.

Try everything, but test it for yourself. Stay skeptical and discard what doesn’t serve you. Ultimately, only keep the principles that work for you.

Do you want to start 2021 on a high-note? Get Your Free Annual Review Here

How To Do Your Personal Annual Review and Get the Most from 2021

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The step-by-step guide to a year of your dreams.

Photo by Markus Winkler from Pexels

2020 was a great year to learn more about yourself.

You were forced to cancel travel plans and minimize social interactions. You’ve likely spent more time with yourself than ever before. And while time alone might have brought your most unpleasant feelings to the surface, your experiences can reveal a promising way for your future.

Yet, this year per se isn’t enough to make you learn more about yourself. You can spend 52 weeks alone without evolving at all.

It’s about when and how you reflect on your experiences that will improve your life’s quality and prepare you for the next year.

Billionaire entrepreneur Sara Blakely shared in an interview how she regularly reflects on her life’s obstacles and the lessons learned. And psychologist and educational scientist John Dewey summarized the effects best, writing:

“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”

I’ve run a personal annual review for the past four years now and continue to look for ways to improve it. Recently, I went through all my notes and distilled the practices that helped me the most.

4 Things You Need To Run Your Annual Review

You don’t need a fancy retreat to conduct your reflection. All it takes are four simple things.

2×3 hours of uninterrupted time. You don’t want to rush through your review in one sitting. For me, the reviews work best when I block three hours on two subsequent days. You can, however, also block two times 3 hours on a single day. Your life, your choices.

Paper, pen, and the printed questions. Your computer or your phone will easily distract you. Shut your devices off and prepare a technology-free working area. Print this article (you’ll find a printable version a the end) or write down the questions. You can always look up information afterward if you need it.

Journals, diaries, calendars, or other personal data. Your memory is good, but your documentation works better. Collect all personal evidence from the year before your review. It’ll help you answer the questions that follow. If you manage your life digitally, you can use your computer and phone (in flight mode) for part one.

A blank desk, floor, table, or a whiteboard. I’ve done my reviews on a beach chair, in a hostel, and on my desk. What works best is a big empty area, like a clean desk or an empty whiteboard.

Optional: People to work with. Depending on the COVID situation, it can be beneficial to do the review with two to three close friends. You can bounce ideas, verify your thoughts, and help each other focus.

Part 1: How to Kickstart Your Personal Review

The first three hours are all about reflection and examination. It’ll be your evidence-based foundation for the session that will follow in the second session.

Start by getting into the present moment. You can either do it with a 5-minute breathing meditation or by journaling about how you’re feeling right now. Then, ask yourself what you’re most grateful for in life right now.

Once you feel you’re in the right mindset, start going through your notes and impressions from the year. Flip your journals’ pages, look at the key events in your calendar, or think of your highlights and lowlights of the year. You don’t necessarily need to write anything down yet, but you can make some notes if you feel like it.

Now it’s time to answer questions that’ll help you organize your thoughts and feelings. You don’t need to answer them chronologically. You can even skip the ones that don’t feel right. However, I’ve found that the questions I felt resistance toward shined a light on something I tried to ignore.

Questions to Reflect Holistically

  • How have you lived your life in the past twelve months?
  • What residual feelings do you have about the past year?
  • What were your 2020 highlights?
  • When did you feel your heart most open this year?
  • What moment did you feel most alive this year?
  • What are you most proud of? Why?
  • What were your 2020 lowlights?
  • What was most challenging for you, and how did it make you feel?
  • How have you experienced crisis, loss, and pain this year?
  • What made you feel hurt, angry, or sad? Why?
  • What have your highlights and lowlights this year taught you? What are the life lessons you want to remember?

Questions to Reflect on Your Success & Growth

  • How have you grown and developed last year?
  • What were your three biggest work accomplishments? What contributed to them?
  • Are there any other goals apart from the work you achieved that you are proud of?
  • Have you developed any healthy habits you want to keep?
  • Have you developed any new skills? What helped you learning them?
  • What was the best decision you made all year? What did you learn from it?
  • What risks did you take, and what were the rewards?

Questions to Reflect on the People & Relationships in Your Life

  • For which people in your life are you most grateful?
  • Which qualities about relationships do you value most personally and professionally?
  • Which person has inspired you the most? How?
  • Which person had the biggest negative impact on your life? Why?
  • Are there any toxic friends in your life? How have you signaled your boundaries in the past year?
  • What new relationships enhanced your life? Who? How?
  • How has your relationship with yourself changed over the year?
  • Is there anything else you want to reflect on that hasn’t been asked yet?

Going through your memories and answering all of these questions might take more or less than three hours. Time is a mere reference point.

Once you feel your answers are complete, you can stop. If you feel like it, talk through them with a friend and explain what surprised you the most. Then, take a break and let it rest until you feel ready for part two.

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

Part 2: How to Make the Most From Your Insights

Now you’ve mastered the reflection; it’s time to start thinking ahead to 2021. Based on your foundation, you want to develop bigger aspirations and plan the processes neccessary to realize them.

Questions that Reveal Your Deepest Aspirations:

  • What happens when you really show up in the world? What are you really longing for?
  • What would a dream year look like for you in 2021?
  • What does success in 2021 mean for you?
  • What three big goals will you accomplish next year?
  • What three skills will you acquire?
  • We are now in December 2021. You integrated all your experience and learning from 2020, and 2021 was the most incredible year of your life — surpassing even your wildest expectations. With all your energy, write about your year — what happened and how did you feel?

Once you feel happy about your answers, it’s time to dig deeper. Even if it can feel difficult at first, it’s essential to answer your reason behind it. So, with all honesty, ask yourself: Why do you want to achieve it?

Do you want to receive external praise? Do you want to make your parents proud? Do you want to leave the world better than you found it? Do you want to spread love and happiness while fostering a healthy body?

None is better than the other. But knowing your ‘why’ will help you move faster towards your dreams.

Put Your Dreams into Actionable Goals and Processes

You’ve already mastered the deep work of your annual review. What’s left is a plan that helps you move towards your desired 2021 outcome.

When you skip this step, your annual review remains mere entertainment.

You won’t move towards your big goals.

I know because I made this mistake. In 2016 I didn’t translate my annual review into actionable steps. Guess what? My wildest dreams didn’t manifest.

In 2019 I applied the advice that follows. And despite the pandemic, I reached almost all of my goals. My mind and body are strong and healthy. I became self-employed and made a great living from working on my dreams. I run a weekly couple’s podcast with my partner and write six days a week. I live in an honest, exciting, and supportive relationship. I feel a deep appreciation and love for the people in my life.

The only thing that didn’t work out this year — and you’ll know why — is spending the cold European winter in a warm country.

Here’s how you can make it work for you.

Have Clear Goals but Focus On Your Process and Systems

It’s easier to focus on the outcome. But the goal is not in your control. By obsessing about the outcome, you prevent yourself from immersing in the process that leads to your outcome. As James Clear put it:

If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.

If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.

If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.

If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

So, instead of obsessing over the outcome, think about the processes and systems required to get to your goal. Again, James Clear:

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

One of my 2020 goals was to live in a strong and healthy body and mind. But instead of obsessing over the outcome, I came up with habits that would get me there. I focused on building a daily yoga practice and prolonging my daily meditation practice. I developed a feel-good plan to eat 99% plant-based food and do intermittent fasting almost every day.

I reached my goal because I focused on the process instead of the outcome.

Here are the questions that will help you:

  • How do your goals for 2021 translate into actionable habits and processes?
  • What habits, behaviors, or attitudes will you need to develop or adopt next year?
  • What things or habits do you need to stop doing?

Once you’ve broken down your dreams into actionable processes, summarize your reflection on one clean sheet. This summary will be the anchor for 2021. Place it somewhere clearly visible, like next to your mirror or on the wall behind your desk.

Close On A High Note

Congratulations! You’re almost done. To finish your annual review and close the year behind you, write down your answer to:

  • How are you feeling right now? How do you feel about 2021?

If you feel like it, share your summary with your friends or family. In this way, you create accountability partners who might remind you or check in with your progress.

In Summary

It’s easy to skip your annual review and continue as before.

It’s much harder to take six hours, face your feelings, keep your focus, and derive actionable steps.

An annual review isn’t easy. But when you commit to taking an honest look at your year— your highs, your lows, your actions, your mindset — you shift your life’s trajectory.

That’s what will help you live the life of your dreams.

I hope you’ll find the energy to achieve anything you want.

Get Your Free Printable Personal Annual Review Version Here

Four Great Resources That Will Teach You How to Learn

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Crack the core of education and become a lifelong learner.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

No life skill can earn you greater dividends than learning how to learn. Yet, most people don’t know how to master learning.

When asked, “Do you study the way you do because somebody taught you to study that way?” a study by Kornell & Bjork showed about 73% of students answered “no.”

Long after school, we continue to rely on ineffective learning strategies like passive consumption, highlighting, or rereading in the hope new knowledge will magically stick to our brain. Most people ignore that humans don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading sentences.

The mediocre majority will continue struggling through life this way, never experiencing the benefits of effective learning. They don’t care enough about the potential benefits to invest in their growth.

Most people ignore the proven ways to improve their learning process.

As a result, their lives stagnate. “Entertainment and distraction is the enemy of creation and learning. They will keep you in mediocrity,” Benjamin Hardy once wrote.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

A life full of meaningful learning and growth is available if you know where to start. In the last years, I read +15 books on learning, taught as a Teach for All fellow, and continue working in education. Here are the best resources for learning how to learn.

📘Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

A research group around neuroscientist Henry Roediger and psychologist Mark McDaniel spent ten years exploring learning strategies. Their goal was to bridge the gap between cognitive science and educational science. The result of their work is ‘Make it stick.’

The book in one sentence: Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow; learning works better when it feels hard.

Why you should read it: Because of its applicability, this is my favorite book on evidence-based learning. You’ll realize the factors that shape your intellectual ability lie to a surprising extent within your own control. After reading, you’ll understand how to make the best learning techniques work for you.

Time Commitment: 336 pages; 7 hours to read it

Content Sneak Peek: This book explores and summarizes six evidence-based, application-ready strategies that help you learn better and store new knowledge in your long-term memory. The six strategies include retrieval practice (recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory), spaced repetition (repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals), interleaving (alternating before each practice is complete), elaboration (rephrasing new knowledge and connecting it with existing insights), reflection (synthesize, abstract, and articulate key lessons taught by experience), self-testing & calibration (answer a question or solve a problem before looking at the answer and identify knowledge gaps).

💻 Dr. Barabara Oakley — Learning How to Learn

Learning How to Learn is the most popular Coursera course of all time taught by academic experts Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski from the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Oakley’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal, and she won numerous teacher awards for it.

The course in one sentence: Taking responsibility for your learning is one of the most important undertakings you can manage.

Why you should watch it: By exploring effective learning and retention strategies, this course upgrades your learning toolbox. Plus, the course dismantles common learning traps and guides and how to overcome them. After watching it, you’ll feel ready for an effective, personalized learning journey.

Time Commitment: Self-paced 15 hours

Content Sneak Peek: The course explores the modes of thinking (diffuse mode and focused mode), how our memories work (long-term memory and working memory), a handful of learning strategies (recalling, interleaving, and deliberate practice), learning blockers (Einstellung, procrastination, illusions of knowledge, task-switching), brain hacks on a mental level (memory training, environment, Pomodoro technique, habit-forming, focus) and hacks on a physical level (sleeping, naps, workout).

📰 Farnam Street Blog: Accelerated Learning

Shane Parrish, the founder of Farnam Street, was a cybersecurity expert at Canada’s top intelligence agency and an occasional blogger. He promotes proven strategies of rigorous self-betterment as opposed to classic self-help fare. The best articles on the blog explore timeless ideas around learning.

The source in one sentence: You can train your brain to retain knowledge and insight better by understanding how you learn.

Why you should read it: The blog is excellently written and application-oriented. There’s constantly new content, and it serves as a great refresher to the other resources.

Time Commitment: Around 10 minutes per article.

Content Sneak Peek: The blog explores various topics, like deliberate practice, double-loop learning, learning from failure, the half-life of facts, spaced repetition, and the Feynman Technique.

📘Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

There’s been a lot of criticism around this book as the studies by Carol Dweck haven’t been replicated. Yet, I benefited so much from the mindset this book taught me that it belongs in this resource list. While reading it, just consider that it’s not peer-review science but rather mindset advice.

The source in one sentence: By distinguishing between a fixed and a growth mindset, Dweck shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor is influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities.

Why you should read it: This book is a must-read for every person looking for growth. After reading this book, you’ll be able to integrate a growth mindset into your life. For example, you’ll see mistakes as valuable learning opportunities. Studying this book can empower any educator to make positive changes in the classroom environment.

Time Commitment: 320 pages, 6.5 hours to read it

Content Sneak Peek: Mindsets shape whether we believe we can or can’t learn, change, and grow. People with a fixed mindset seek approval, while those with a growth mindset seek development. Role models from our childhood strongly influence our attitudes and ideas, yet we can change our mindset even in adulthood.

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset (Source: Author based on C. Dweck)

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How to Create like Elizabeth Gilbert

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Make your creativity work for you.

Photo by David Becker on Unsplash

Creativity is like Bertie Bott’s every flavor beans, a risk with every mouthful.

“You want to be careful with those. When they say every flavour, they mean every flavour — you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a bogey flavoured one once.”

— Ron Weasley

With every new creation, you dare to eat another Bertie Bott. Even with a solid idea-to-paper process, your creativity will surprise you. You feel moody, surprised, vulnerable, depressed, and enthusiastic while writing the same paragraph. The dynamics make creative work harder than cognitive work, but you can learn to play with it.

Elizabeth Gilbert chewed more Bertie Botts than most of us. She’s been a writer for almost three decades and the personification of a self-made creative-genius. If you read her books about chasing happiness, 19th-century botany, and sexual liberation in the 40s, you’ll see nothing but growth.

From 2007 to 2019, her writing style and content depth drastically evolved. And, lucky for us, her 2015 book takes us through her insights on creativity. Here they are.

“When courage dies, creativity dies with it.”

Fear is part of any creative process. You might fear your lack of talent, inspiration, professionalism, experience. You might fear other people’s opinions, or, even worse, your own judgment. You might fear you’re too old or too young to start. See? Fear is intertwined with creativity.

“Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome,” Gilbert writes. “In fact, it seems to me that my fear and my creativity are basically conjoined twins — as evidenced by the fact that creativity cannot take a single step forward without fear marching right alongside it.”

You don’t need to be fearless to strive for your creative endeavors. But don’t let fear take the lead. Gilbert uses a car metaphor to describe the role of fear: “You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.”

Courage isn’t the opposite of fear. Courage is to feel fear but risk it anyway.

“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

Focusing on things outside of your control will leave you frustrated. You can’t influence how people react to your work. It’s pointless to measure your worth by external reactions, like monetary rewards, audience reach, or editor opinions.

All you can influence is your creative process.

Focus on the dedication to your path. Or, as Gilbert writes, “work with all your heart, because — I promise — if you show up for your work, day after day after day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.”

When we look at the work of successful writers, we only see the tip of the iceberg. We envy other writer’s success but don’t look at the dedicated work they’ve done for years. We admire the great works of George R.R. Martin and Stephen King but forget how even they still struggle through the hard work of the creative process.

You have to stick to your path, even if you’ve achieved your definition of success.

“Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk, and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done,” Gilbert writes. “No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy’s reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself.”

See? There’s no magic. No fast track. You have to drag yourself through ups and downs and eventually, just do the work.

Don’t wait for inspiration to strike you. Measure your progress by your dedication to writing. Inspiration and fear will join you along the way.

“Most things have already been done — but they have not yet been done by you.”

I remember my writing coach’s words, Sinem Günel, who told me a harsh truth in one of our first coaching sessions. Unless I’m a scientific researcher, she said, I shouldn’t expect to create any groundbreaking work.

While I first felt offended — I wanted to innovate education with every written word — this also took away the pressure.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. All you need is to describe your experiences with the wheel and how it can benefit others.

As Gilbert put it: “Once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours. Authenticity beats originality. While the latter often feels like an extraneous attempt to create something new, authenticity brings an inner serenity that creates calm resonance with your readers.”

Every great writer imitates before they find their own voice. Saying what you want to say is the definition of authenticity. Don’t worry about the degree of innovation.

This is what artist Austin Kleon meant when he wrote, “Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.”

“Debt will always be the abattoir of creative dreams.”

Creativity works best when there’s no pressure attached to it. Your inspiration creeps away when it feels the burden to feed a household. Plus, worries don’t go well with your creative flow.

To make creativity work for you, you’re better off keeping a job that can pay your bills.

Elizabeth committed to becoming a writer in her early twenties. Yet, she didn’t go to an expensive school to learn to write. Instead, she made a living on jobs like bartending, tutoring, flea-marketing, or waitressing. And meanwhile, she wrote every day throughout her twenties.

“I held on to my day jobs for so long because I wanted to keep my creativity free and safe,” she writes. “I knew better than to ask this of my writing because, over the years, I have watched so many other people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills. ”

Don’t drive your creativity away by relying on monetary rewards too early in your career. Instead, have a job that pays you bills while you create without monetary pressure.

“Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person.”

Almost any creator can relate to the disappointing feeling after a rejection. But turndowns are part of any creative journey. If one creates with courage, one will face refusal again and again.

Elizabeth writes that she stacked all her rejection letters in one place. Every time she got a rejection from a publisher, she sent a new application at the same time: Whenever I got those rejection letters, then, I would permit my ego to say aloud to whoever had signed it: “You think you can scare me off? I’ve got another eighty years to wear you down!”

If you want to unleash your creative potential, you have to see rejection as part of the process. If you dare to reach high, hearing a lot of no’s is unavoidable. By playing the long-term game, you can stick to the process.

“The world is filled with too many unfinished manuscripts as it is, and I didn’t want to add another one to that bottomless pile. So no matter how much I thought my work stank, I had to persist,” Gilbert writes. “You try and try and try, and nothing works. But you keep trying, and you keep seeking, and then sometimes, in the least expected place and time, it finally happens.”

In Conclusion

Generalizing creative writing advice is hard since every brain works differently. What is good for Elizabeth Gilbert might not have the same benefits for you.

And while these five insights have been useful to my creative journey, they might be useless for someone who’s at a different stage of their creative process.

But if your goal is to create great content, support others, share your knowledge and struggles, and eventually make money online, these five pearls of wisdom can help.

  1. Courage means to feel fear but risk it anyway.
  2. Measure your success by the dedication to your path.
  3. Authenticity beats originality.
  4. Create without monetary pressure.
  5. Endure disappointment and keep on trying.

Creative work is like Bertie Bott’s beans. But if you dare to eat them despite your fear, one day after another, you’re on your journey towards your best creative self. In the words of Gilbert:

“The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust — and those elements are universally accessible.”

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Don’t Just Do — Reflection Can Help You Take Better Action

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Here’s how.

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

The other week I went for a walk with a friend. He was part of a national athlete team and among the top LoL gamers, studied statistics used to make a living from day trading, and now works as a mental coach.

While we wandered along the Danube and talked about my current research interest in learning and reading, he said something interesting:

“There is nothing more powerful, more instructive than learning from your past experience.”

A truth we often forget. We confuse activity with progress and seek new, better, innovative ideas and solutions. Meanwhile, we repeat the same mistakes and thought patterns.

If we’re not visibly active, we believe we’re not learning.

When we don’t pause to think and to contemplate, we keep circling in a limited sphere at a higher velocity. We can read 50 books to 10x our productivity and still lose the most important life lessons. By acting without looking backward, we close our eyes to the bigger picture.

Reading this article, you’ll learn why reflection works and how you can make it work for you. Understanding the power of introspection is one of the rare concepts you can’t unlearn.

Science and Gates on the Benefits of Reflection

Reflection is the active decision to think about your past. Or, as researchers put it:

“Reflection is the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.”

Even if our eyes can’t witness its effects, introspection is powerful. By ruminating, you’re distilling the key insights from your experience. Connect your past with the present moment is an effective learning technique. Neuroscientist Roediger and neurosurgeon McDaniel write:

“Reflection can involve several cognitive activities that lead to stronger learning: retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these new experiences and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time.”

But what’s so good about this strong learning effect? Scientists from Harvard Business School explored this question and state:

“Reflection is a powerful mechanism by which experience is translated into learning. In particular, we find that individuals perform significantly better on subsequent tasks when they think about what they learned from the task they completed.”

Apart from the scientific consensus, well-known people rely on the power of reflection.

Billionaire entrepreneur Sara Blakely shared in an interview how she filled more than 20 notebooks with her life’s obstacles and her lessons learned.

Before learning from Warren Buffett, Bill Gates said he “had every minute packed and thought that was the only way you could do things.” Bill concludes Warren taught him the importance of giving himself time to think and reflect.

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

— Carl Jung

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

How You Can Make Reflection Work for You

Reflection isn’t complex. It can be an easy addition to your toolbox, close at hand whenever you need it. Here are three strategies to start your own reflective practice.

#1 Level Up Your Journaling Practice

You can call it a bullet journal, reflective journal, or learning journal. As long as you spend time pondering on your past, the effect is the same. The key is not to capture events or facts but rather the process and how you felt about it.

Here are prompts to use on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis:

  • What went well? Why?
  • What went wrong? Why?
  • What new did you learn? How can you use this insight?
  • Which activities or tasks did you skip? Why? What can you learn from your behavior for your next steps?
  • On which topic did you change your opinion? How does this shift affect your next decisions?
  • Who are the most important people in your life? Why?

Plus, you can level up your journaling practice with evidence-based tricks. Write sitting in different positions, write for yourself, use the language you feel comfortable with, use diagrams and drawings, or record your own voice.

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

— Steve Jobs

#2 Meet Up With Friends for Joint Reflection

This one isn’t a substitute but a great addition to your journaling practice. Meeting with a group of peers for joint reflection can be powerful.

Heron, a social science pioneer, explains the method in his book:

You have got the choice of which topics you bring up. It can be a job-related reflection circle, discussing relational topics, or generally share personal journal excerpts or your thoughts behind it.

If you want more guidance, you can use these free reflection cards to get additional inspiration. Structure your meeting in facts, feelings, insights, and actions.

#3 Distill Key Lessons in Your Annual Review

The dark months around New Year are a great reminder to pause, reflect, and rethink the past 12 months. A yearly review is powerful. It can uncover valuable self-knowledge.

Here are ten powerful questions for a reflective practice at the end of a year:

  1. Which things have you discovered this year? Which do you want to keep?
  2. What experiences, people, and accomplishments are you most grateful for? Why?
  3. Which residual feelings do remain if you think about the past year? Are you ready to let them go?
  4. What was the biggest struggle in the past months? How did you tackle it, and what did you learn on the way?
  5. How have you grown and developed in the past year? In what area(s) of your life did you make progress?
  6. What have you discovered about yourself?
  7. What moment did you feel the most alive this year?
  8. When did you feel your heart most open this year?
  9. What inspired you the most in the past months? How did this impact your life?
  10. Based on your experience from last year, which advice would you give yourself for the next year?

“Extraordinary individuals stand out in the extent to which they reflect — often explicitly — on the events of their lives, large as well as small…by seizing the opportunity to leverage and frame these experiences, we gain agency over them. And this heightened agency, in turn, places us in a stronger position to deal with future experiences, even as it may alter our own sense of strengths and possibilities.”

— Howard Gardner

Final Words

We don’t have to be visibly active to learn. Progress starts with self-awareness. If we aren’t aware of a problem, we can’t improve.

With practices like reflective journaling, reflection circles, and yearly reviews, we can better understand our thoughts and emotions while exploring how they affect our behavior. We find pieces of our self-puzzle and can hold on to them for good. Step by step, we discover what life paths we want to take, leave, or create.

Let’s stop to rush through life and, instead, take time for reflection. In the words of American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer John Dewey:

“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”