Do you think there is an independent world outside our thoughts?
Do we control our world thru our thoughts?

Does the language we use limit our thoughts and opinions?

What do you think?

The importance of action.

Action is the source of all outcomes. You decide for yourself if the results of the actions will be positive or negative.

When I talk to people they are often dissatisfied with what they do for a living and complain about it, but what are they doing to change it? Often nothing at all. Why? Are they afraid of changing their stability? Is change scary? Is it scary to be in a situation where you don’t have control? I believe many think it is.

Action, no matter results being positive, or what you may think is negative, is essential for finding what you find is interesting and fun to do. It is essential for you to know yourself. How do you know what you like doing if you haven’t tested it?

Act on your feelings. Act now. You can analyze situations forever. You will find out what happens. Less analyzing, more action. The amount of information is enormous, you probably could analyze your whole life, but where would that take you?

Being afraid of the unknown is overrated. Through yourself out there. New experiences will make you live a richer life, with more experience, with less fear.

Take care.

1. You involve the customer in your technical product. When your customer has chosen your product they will educate their staff to handle and use your product. Because of this it would be much harder for the buyer to change product because of the cost it will bring for the company. The more employees the company have involved with the product the harder it would be. In consulting the customer has no binding to you what so ever and can chose to do business with a competitor next time, without the same costs related to the customer.

2. Once you have created the product you “just” have to develop it and update it to different customer needs. You don’t have to prove yourself, from the beginning, all the time as you have to do in a consulting business. In technical products the power is not only in the people, as in consulting, but also in the product you have created.

3. Since you don’t have the whole business in the people, as you have in consulting, you don’t have to worry to much about people leaving your business. You still have the unique product. In consulting, the people you have is the uniqueness. More unstable business if you ask me. The risk of employees starting a competitive business in consulting is much higher.

There are probably more benefits with technical products than the ones mentioned above. If you know, let me know. Negative aspects on developing technical products are welcomed as well.

As I mentioned before I am studying economics. How do you develop a technical product from knowledge in economics when you don’t know programming for example? Seems like computer engineers have a great advantage. I have to meet a computer-engineer/technician to help me put my knowledge in a product.

The easy answer is: if you think you surf to much you probably are. Do you think you could be more productive off the web you probably could. If you realize you surf to much there are some easy steps you could apply to be a productive person outside the Internet world and still be able to surf the web. These have done wonders for me:

1. Put up a list of your favorite websites you like to visit often, I have a maximum of 10. (How many sites you should have as max is up to you, but it is a linear function of how productive you are off the web.)

2. These 10 sites are allowed to surf on every day, + 5 other if you find some interesting links on any of the 10. No more!

3. If you come across a new site you like to put up on the list from any of the 10, you could choose to replace one of the 10.

4. Don’t have del.icio.us/popular as your startpage. There’s often more irrelevant new sites, for your interest, then relevant. Go with your special interest instead, for example del.icio.us/productivity.

5. Use RSS on these 10 sites and have it visible on your desktop. Then you can find out directly if there have been any updates on you favorite sites. No need to visit the sites if not.

6. Put off free time every day when you are allowed to surf. Work for 3-4 hours and then spend 15-30 minutes surfing your favorite websites.

Of course, visiting sites with quality content are good for you and makes your mind sharp. But like everything else, to much is not good for anyone. And really, how much of what you read every day on the net do you actually remember and have learned from?

So, what do you think?

Changing habits can be a hard thing to master. Mostly because there are a lot of factors behind what habits you’ve developed; your social network, upbringing, work, economy, time etc.

And many of us have good reasons for changing. It could be tobacco addictions, being lazy, procrastination, eating unhealthy food and so on.

So, how do you change habits?

1. Don’t put yourself in tempting situations. If you have a tobacco addiction, in what situations do you feel like smoking? Don’t put yourself in those situations when you know you will feel like smoking. Stop going to that café if it makes you want to smoke etc.

2. Change your habits over time. Our habits are formed over time, usually on a long period of time. You can’t expect to change them over night. The trick here is to change a little over time. If you are lazy, accomplish one more thing than usual each month. If your smoking, try smoking one less cigarette each day etc. Over time this will lead to amazing progress. And it won’t come as a shock for your mind and body, and this will make it easier for you to keep the new good habit.

3. Focus on the good things that will happen if you change your habits. Focus on the positive side effects of changing; how good you will feel if you start being more effective, the great effects for your body when you stop smoking etc. If you have a positive way of looking at change, you will get positive results.

4. Have people supporting you. Tell your friends you are going to change a habit. That makes you more obligated to change and your friends will support you, and talk to you, during hard times.

These tips have served me well and I am sure they will for you too. Especially number 2 is key to success, changing habits over time. Small steps of change is much easier to accomplish and makes the bad habit smaller and easier to handle and change.

Mnemonics are a group of memory aids that make you remember tons of information; names, figures, faces, facts, lists etc. It is all easier to remember by using the techniques of mnemonics. An yes, it’s much more effective than the ordinary repetition method.

Why is that? What makes mnemonics special?

In mnemonics you use your imagination together with your senses; sight, touch, sound, smell and taste. Relating your senses and your imagination together makes information very easy to remember, using association, observation and visualisation. Actually, after learning this you could have a hard time forgetting stuff.

Buildyourmemory.com has a great website on this topic, where you can learn to remember figures, faces, lists, appointments etc. and link them all together. Really a great resource.

Bert has just started a series called “How to remember amazing amounts of information” on the same topic that looks really interesting. You should check it out.

Memory master, also a great resource, is explaining how to remember speeches, jokes, playing cards etc.

Mindtools also have a lot information on this topic; how to remember information to exams, how to learn a foreign language etc.

Wikipedia on Mnemonics.

These are all great websites on this subject. Learn how to use Mnemonics and you’d be surprised how much information fits in to your head.

*Update* September, 25, 2006
How to win the world memory championship. Article about contestants competing in the world memory championship and how they are able to remember tons of information.

Plato once said: “The contestant in mental games must train for battle with just as much care as the athlete.”

Working out physically makes you more alert, focused and sharp. Working out mentally will make you reflect over things more and faster. It will also make you see relationships between stuff you haven’t before, linking things together.

And as we all know, It’s much more fun learning while playing games.

Now, let’s look at some good games developing your mental abilities:

1. Chess. Strategic and psychological, how you play depends on who you meet.

2. Gomuku, renju. Five in a row-game. Also strategic and psychological.

3. Abacus system is a method of mental calculation based on virtual images formed in the mind and used to perform calculations at highly accelerated speed. It is also helping you to develop your concentration skills. Image abacus calculation relies upon the manipulation of an image rather than the arithmetic processes with which we are familiar. It is able to draw upon right-brain resources and the result is dramatically increased speed. By activating both sides of the brain, you can achieve calculation speed previously only achievable by math geniuses. For example, in Dec. 2000, a first-year student and his 2 sisters had broken 4 Guinness world records with this very same method of calculation.

Related to the abacus system:

A Korean grand master of abacus calculations

Positive feedback from learning the abacus system

Learning abacus

Mindabacus

Abacus brain study

4. Vedic mathematics is a great fast calculation system training your counting abilities.

5. Trachtenberg system is another great fast calculation system.

6. Word games. This requires friends. An example is when you decide at topic and try to name as many objects in that topic as possible, switching after each mention. Let’s say you choose cities in Europe and I say London. Then you have to come up with another city in Europe starting from the last letter n, like Nice, and so on. You can variate this game in many ways. Use your imagination.

7. Scrabble. Great word game developing your vocabulary.

8. Crosswords. Classic.

9. Sudoku. Great Japanese logical game.

The above are my favourites but there are many more. Wikipedia has a great list of mental skill games you should have a look at.

If you look at an alternativ way to develop your thinking and your mind, reading books are a great choice.