Category: Learning

5 Lessons I Learned From Meditating for 800 Days in a Row Cover

5 Lessons I Learned From Meditating for 800 Days in a Row

Nik

Two years ago, I finally began to meditate. Inspired by Naval Ravikant, I managed to turn a decade-long aspiration into an actual habit.

For the first week, I did an hour a day, and, ironically, the sheer size of that commitment helped. I learned several things from my experience, the most notable being that I should continue to meditate, no matter how much.

As expected, life happened, and for a while, I only managed to meditate five minutes a day. Nowadays, I’m back up to 15.

When I say “meditate,” I mean “sit comfy yet straight, close your eyes, and wait.” That’s all meditation is. Beyond a timer, there are no apps, no music, no neural-activity-tracking headbands or wonky gadgets of any kind. Those things cause stimulation, which is the opposite of meditation.

Looking at my habit tracker, I see today marks my 825th consecutive day of meditation. What an appropriate day to share a few more lessons, don’t you think?

Read More
What Makes You Attracted to Someone?

What Makes You Attracted to Someone?

Nik

Why do you keep dating douchebags? How come you can’t you get over your ex? Why do some relationship feel effortless, while others force us to try very hard? The answer to all of these questions lies in understanding attraction.

I’m not talking about sexual attraction, although what I’ll share will, to some extent, explain that too. I mean attraction as in: “Oh, I like that guy!” The kind of attraction that’s natural, effortless, and that you might feel towards a great deal of people, even if you don’t have any agenda involving them whatsoever.

It’s a good thing, this attraction. It allows humans to get along, which, in a world this crowded, becomes more important by the day. When you easily hit it off with others, you can seamlessly navigate thousands of relationships, no matter how microscopic their role in your life may be. Which do you prefer? A queue at the bakery in which everyone gives each other the death stare, or one with light banter and the occasional, “No way, I always go for the chocolate-frosted ones too!”?

As we shall discover, this last bit of “me too” is a key element of attraction: Likeness breeds liking. I mean, it’s in the word, isn’t it? “Josh likes Trina” indicates that, in one way or another, Josh and Trina are alike. This phenomenon is so universal, it lets Seth Godin explain marketing in a single sentence: “People like us do things like this.” For now, let’s remember that since likeness is easy to find, so is attraction — and that turns our superficial chemistry into a double-edged sword.

If you quickly relate to others, beyond forging genuine friendships, you’ll also connect with many people that, ultimately, don’t belong into your life. Sometimes, that connection extends far beyond a brief encounter at the bakery, and that’s when things get complicated: A shared love for jello shots becomes a six-month stint of endless arguments. A brutal assignment survived together makes you cannon-fodder for your coworker’s quest to get promoted. That’s attraction leading us astray, and the consequences hurt.

While it won’t prevent you from ever falling for the wrong person again, understanding why attraction forms is the first step towards getting better at knowing when to trust your attraction and when to double-check your gut.

“Knowing” is the key word here. That’s where the answer to the seemingly simple yet surprisingly complex question of “Why are we attracted to people like us?” begins. Given humans have been trying to understand each other since the dawn of time, it might come as a little less of a surprise that that answer can be found in a 2,000-year-old book.

Read More
Do Self-Help Books Work? Cover

How Modern Non-Fiction Books Waste Your Time (and Why You Should Read Them Anyway)

Nik

When I first discovered non-fiction books, I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. Whatever problem you could possibly have, there’s a book out there to help you solve it. I had a lot of challenges at the time, and so I started devouring lots of books.

I read books about money, productivity, and choosing a career. Then, I read books about marketing, creativity, and entrepreneurship. I read and read and read, and, eventually, I realized I had forgotten to implement any of the advice! The only habit I had built was reading, and as wonderful as it was, it left me only with information overwhelm.

After that phase, I flipped to the other, equally extreme end of the spectrum: I read almost no books, got all my insights from summaries, and only tried to learn what I needed to improve a given situation at any time.

So, do self-help books work? As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Read More
The Wheaton Scale of Productivity Cover

The Wheaton Scale of Productivity

Nik

When you no longer have to work, how do you decide what to work on — and how much you work at all? Most people will never face this question, and so they zone out when others ask it.

Let’s consider a man named Jack. Jack thinks the above question is stupid. He assumes that if he didn’t have to, he’d never choose to work. In fact, why would anyone? Ironically, with that kind of mindset, if Jack came by some money, he’d just spend it all and, ultimately, be forced to go back to work.

Meanwhile, Blair has ventured deep into the world of work. She has studied productivity, time management, and flow. She knows about philosophical concepts like zen and self-actualization. She is thinking about leverage, delegating, and the impact her work makes on the world as a whole. Blair has had jobs where she was happy and jobs where she was miserable, and so, when she hears the above question, she is intrigued.

The reason Jack and Blair can barely have a conversation about work is that they’re too far apart on the Wheaton scale of productivity.

Read More
30 Lessons Learned in 30 Years of Life Cover

30 Lessons Learned in 30 Years of Life

Nik

Yesterday, I turned 30. When I was 18, I thought by 30, I’d have it made.

My 20s were a long, slow grind of realizing “made” does not exist. “Made” is past tense — but you’re never done! The only finish line is death, and, thankfully, most of us don’t see it until we’re almost there.

Instead of the binary made/not made distinction, I now see life as round-based. You win some, you lose some, and different rounds have different themes. There’s a carefree-childhood season, a teenager-trying-to-understand-society season, an exuberant-20-something season, and so on.

At 30 years old, I’ve only played a few seasons, but each round feels more interesting than the last. If that trend persists, I can’t imagine what one’s 60s or 90s must be like. By that time, you’ve seen so much — and yet, there’ll always be new things to see.

Most seasons last longer than a year, and there’s plenty to talk about with respect to the important, defining decade from 20 to 30 alone, but today, I’d like to do something different: I want to share one thing I’ve learned from each year I’ve been alive.

Read More
The Japanese Art of Kintsugi: How to Practice Self-Improvement Without Judging Yourself Cover

The Japanese Art of Kintsugi: How to Practice Self-Improvement Without Judging Yourself

Nik

I still remember the commercials: “Clearasil Ultra Face Wash — and in three days, they’re gone!” “They” are the pimples, of course.

Each ad played out the same way: A teenage boy hides from his crush because he has acne. His friend reminds him of the party in three days. “You can’t go with that face!” The boy uses Clearasil, shows up, and gets to kiss the girl.

As someone who suffered three long years of intense acne in high school, those ads hit me right in the feels — first with hope, then with misery. After I tried the product and it didn’t work, Clearasil continued to erode my self-worth in 30-second increments by reaffirming a false belief I held about myself: As long as I have acne, girls won’t be interested in me, so there’s no point in even trying.

Every year, millions of teenagers share this experience, and it reveals a pattern deeply ingrained in Western culture: Find a flaw, worry about it, try a quick fix, and if it doesn’t work, go back to worrying. Repeat this cycle until some magic pill works or you find an even bigger inadequacy. While this may lead to some improvement, in the long run, it inevitably leads to self-loathing.

You wouldn’t think a pimple commercial reveals so much about a nation’s culture, but if you watch a few Japanese skincare ads for reference, you’ll see — because unlike Clearasil, they do clear things up.

The Japanese Perceive Problems Differently

The first thing you’ll notice about Japanese beauty commercials is that they’re not directed at teenagers. There’s no Justin Bieber claiming zits are intolerable, no before-and-after pictures, and no shrill voice prompting you to “get acne out of your life.”

All you’ll see is adults going about their day, feeling good because — and this is the part the commercials focus on — every day, they practice their skincare routine. Pimples aren’t presented as a flaw to be overcome, just a part of everyday life. “If you consistently take care of your skin, acne might still happen, but it won’t have enough power over you to ruin your day.” That seems to be the message.

This is radically different from how we approach obstacles in the West, and it’s no coincidence. The Japanese perceive problems differently. They don’t view them as stumbling blocks to be eliminated. Instead, they see them as stepping stones on a never-ending journey. They empathize with problems.

The Japanese cultivate this worldview at an early age, thanks not just to their commercials but also their teachers.

“He did it!”

Jim Stigler is a psychology professor at UCLA. He once observed a fourth-grade math class in Japan. Surprisingly, the teacher called the worst student, not the best, to the board. The task was to draw a three-dimensional cube.

Every few minutes, the teacher would ask the rest of the class whether the kid had gotten it right, and the class would look up from their work and shake their heads no. At the end of the class, he did make his cube look right! And the teacher said, ‘How does that look, class?’ And they all said, ‘He did it!’ And they broke into applause. The kid smiled a huge smile and sat down, clearly proud of himself.

Imagine this scene in a Western classroom. Based on 13 years of going to school in Germany, I can tell you: It would not have gone this way.

Usually, if a student is called out and doesn’t immediately get it right, they are branded as stupid — if not by the teacher, then at least by the other students. They’ll return to their desk with their head lowered in shame and, instead of discovering the solution, go back to worrying about their pimples.

In Japan, mistakes are seen as valuable. There’s not just something to learn, there’s something to learn for everyone. Instead of being left behind, people who struggle are pulled into the light. Solving the problem becomes a joint effort, and if the student succeeds, everyone wins.

You might say, to the Japanese, mistakes are worth their weight in gold — sometimes literally.

Kintsugi: Don’t Fix — Integrate

Kintsugi is an old Japanese art. It is the craft of repairing broken pottery using seams of gold. Instead of trying to hide the object’s cracks, it accentuates them. The message is simple but meaningful: Our trials and flaws are not scars on our character — they are the very fabric that makes us human. Each obstacle, each mistake becomes a building block of a better tomorrow, thus making us a little more unique and beautiful.

In the West, we tend to throw things away when they break. Each year, millions of perfectly usable products end up in landfills. To some extent, we do the same with people. This is sad but unsurprising, given the perpetual message in our education and media: If you struggle in even the slightest, you’re not good enough. You can buy some Spanx, muscle supplements, or an online course to fix it, but until you have, don’t bother, and definitely don’t bother others with your problem.

But what if our mistakes are just for learning? What if our flaws aren’t flaws at all — just puzzle pieces that make us different and, thus, lovable?

There’s a difference between fixing and integrating: One is done to compensate, the other to move forward. When we obsess over correcting our flaws, we may succeed, but we’ll never feel content. It takes a general appreciation of life’s transience to focus on learning, accept what we can’t change, and even see beauty in our little imperfections.

The Japanese call this appreciation “mono no aware” — an empathy toward things, a sense of impermanence. Mono no aware is at the heart of kintsugi, and it can make the difference between a laid-back, joyful pursuit of growth and a never-ending spiral of self-flagellation — just like a golden thread can make a repaired plate look more beautiful than it was before it broke.

Summary

From your skin to your mind to your bank account: A desire to improve your life is a wonderful thing. It’s less wonderful if that desire leaves a constant taste of “I’m not good enough” in your mouth.

Not always but often, Western self-help wants you to feel self-conscious. The industry points out your problems, twists the knife, and then happily sells you a plethora of quick fixes to combat them. Whether they work or not, in the long run, this will damage your self-image.

While it’s good to confront our problems head-on, the Japanese aim to do so without negative connotation. They stress consistency and effort in their marketing, parenting, and education. Mistakes are a valuable source of learning for everyone, and our flaws are not just not so bad, they make us unique and beautiful.

The next time you spot a pimple or give the wrong answer, remember the art of kintsugi: Don’t fix. Integrate. As long as you make them steps to something bigger, not a single one of your obstacles will go to waste.

Funny Shower Thoughts Cover

44 Funny Shower Thoughts That Will Snap Your Mind in Half

Nik

On any given day, your brain is either growing or deteriorating. There is no such thing as “maintaining” your mind.

When you don’t challenge your brain, that day, your mind will shrink a little. When you solve a problem or entertain a new idea, your mental ability will grow.

If you do the crossword every day, at first, it’ll make your brain sweat. Eventually, you’ll have memorized all the coded prompts, and it’ll only be a rote memory exercise. So how can you keep stretching your mind?

The answer is not to read a book a day or work crazy hours. Your brain would soon overload and demand a long break. Neither complete stagnation nor excessive learning is the answer.

What you can and should find time for, however, is five minutes a day to engage with new ideas. That’s enough to get new combinations of neurons to fire together, and that’s what mental growth is all about.

Ryan Lombard can help you do just that. Ryan has a series he calls “Thoughts That Will Snap Your Mind in Half.” So far, he’s made 20 parts. Here are the first eight, totaling 44 funny shower thoughts, ideas, and mind-bending questions.

Some made me think deeply, some just made me laugh, and some I didn’t understand at all (yet). I’m sure a few of them will send your mind in new directions.

Here are Ryan Lombard’s 44 “Thoughts That Will Snap Your Mind in Half.”

  1. If you weigh 99 lbs and eat a pound of nachos, are you 1% nacho?
  2. If you drop soap on the floor, is the floor clean, or is the soap dirty?
  3. Which orange came first — the color, or the fruit?
  4. If two vegans are arguing, is it still considered beef?
  5. When you’re born deaf, what language do you think in?
  6. If you get out of the shower clean, how does your towel get dirty?
  7. If Apple made a car, would it still have windows?
  8. When we yawn, do deaf people think we’re screaming?
  9. If you’re waiting for the waiter, aren’t you the waiter?
  10. How do you throw away a garbage can?
  11. If you buy a bigger bed, you’re left with more bed room but less bedroom.
  12. Why aren’t iPhone chargers just called “Apple Juice”?
  13. If you work as security at a Samsung store, does that make you a Guardian of the Galaxy?
  14. When you feel bugs on you even though there are no bugs on you, are they just the ghosts of the bugs you’ve killed?
  15. When you clean a vacuum cleaner, aren’t you the vacuum cleaner?
  16. Nothing is ever really on fire, but rather fire is on things.
  17. If life is unfair to everyone, does that mean life is actually fair?
  18. What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
  19. Why is it called taking a dump when you’re leaving it?
  20. Being down for something and being up for something mean the same thing.
  21. If you’re in the living room, and you pass away, did you die, or are you just knocked out?
  22. Why is the pizza box a square if the pizza is a circle and the slice is a triangle?
  23. Why is it called a building when it’s already built?
  24. How does a sponge hold water when it’s full of holes?
  25. The blinks of your eyes get removed from your memory.
  26. What would happen if Pinocchio said, “My nose will grow now?”
  27. Actors pretend to work.
  28. People who need glasses just got bad graphics.
  29. Why is bacon called bacon and cookies called cookies, when you cook bacon and bake cookies?
  30. Do clothes in China just say, “Made down the road?”
  31. If your shirt isn’t tucked into your pants, are your pants tucked into your shirt?
  32. If you’re invisible, and you close your eyes, can you see through your eyelids?
  33. A fire truck is actually a water truck.
  34. Why are deliveries on a ship called cargo, but in a car, it’s called a shipment?
  35. If one teacher can’t teach all subjects, why is one child expected to study all subjects?
  36. Are oranges named oranges because oranges are orange, or is orange named orange because oranges are orange?
  37. What happens to the car if you press the brake and the accelerator at the same time? Does it take a screenshot?
  38. The youngest picture of you is also the oldest picture of you.
  39. If we have watermelon, shouldn’t we also have firemelon, earthmelon, and airmelon? The elemelons!
  40. Why do we drive in parkways but park in driveways?
  41. Your burps are just your puke’s farts.
  42. If it rains on a Sunday, does that mean it’s now Rainday?
  43. Clapping is just hitting yourself repeatedly because you like something.
  44. Your alarm sound is technically your theme song, since it plays at the start of every episode.

Some of these questions don’t make sense, others have fairly obvious answers. Some are just jokes, while others seem like they can’t be answered at all.

The more of these “shower thoughts” you consider, the more patterns of creative thinking you’ll spot.

There’s the “flipped logic,” as in the cookie vs. bacon example, the “circular reasoning” of being a vacuum cleaner, and the paradox of life being fair by being unfair. There’s the “incomplete set” of the elemelons, the “chicken vs. egg” problem of the orange, and the “all roads lead to Rome” behind your youngest picture also being your oldest.

Once you recognize such patterns, you can think about where else they apply and come up with your own examples. The latter is the ultimate creative exercise, and it proves: It only takes five minutes a day to grow your mind instead of shrinking it.

Don’t waste this opportunity. Just like we must share joy in order to grow it, we must snap our minds in half to double them in size.

How to Get What You Want by Being Street-Smart Instead of Book-Smart Cover

How to Get What You Want by Being Street-Smart Instead of Book-Smart

Nik

There are two ways to be smart: One is to have a high IQ, the other is to be good at getting what you want.

The former contains an element you don’t control — genetics — and while you can read many books to make up for it, maximizing intelligence alone has little use in the real world. Being street smart, however…

In 1862, Mark Twain was stuck in a silver-mining town in Nevada. A notorious slacker, he was quickly fired from the only job available: shoveling sand. His buff roommate, however, hadn’t found work, and so Twain sent him to the mine, telling him to ask for work without pay. After a few days, word got out about the productive “intern,” and soon, he earned enough for both of them — and Twain went back to reading, writing, and eating stewed apples.

Now I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of smart I want to be. Since it doesn’t rely on intellect alone, being street smart is mostly a decision — a philosophy, if you will. I thought long and hard about what I could teach you that would actually make you smarter, and, rather than facts and figures, all I could see were three ideas underpinning this philosophy.

Here they are. May they help you get what you want and make the world a better place along the way.

1. Principles Beat Knowledge

Neil deGrasse Tyson once told a story about interviewing two job candidates. Both were asked: “How tall is the spire on the building we’re in?”

The first person said: “Oh! I know this! I studied architecture and memorized all the heights. The spire on this building is exactly 155 feet high.” As it turns out, that’s the right answer.

The second person said: “I don’t know, but I’ll be right back.” She goes outside, measures the length of her shadow on the ground against the shadow of the building, and, after comparing the two, says: “It’s about 150 feet.”

“Who are you gonna hire?” Tyson said. “I’m hiring the person who figured it out. Even though it took that person longer. Even though the person’s answer is not as precise. ‘Cause that person knows how to use the mind in a way not previously engaged.”

To Tyson, this is the difference between fuzzy thinking and thinking straight: “When you know how to think, it empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.”

Principles beat knowledge. Knowledge can be memorized, accessed quickly, and it is useful to have a lot of it available at any given time. Everything you know, however, is nothing but an insight derived from a principle, and if you understand a lot of principles, you can generate any fact you need in real-time — no need to cram your brain with knowledge.

When you hold an apple in your hand, you know it will fall to the ground if you let go because you understand the principle of gravity. A principle doesn’t break. It’s universal. Knowledge, however, finds its limits all the time, because unlike principles, facts change.

If you jump off the spire in Tyson’s example, you will die. You know this. It’s a fact, and it seems so universal, it feels like a principle — but it’s not. It only happens in movies, but if you stood atop the spire as the building was collapsing, jumping off — towards a helicopter, with a parachute, into some safety construction — would be your only way to survive. The circumstances changed, and the principle overrode the knowledge.

Therefore, it is much better to have a few guidelines for how you think rather than many options of what to think.

Knowledge is good, but too much of it can limit our thinking instead of expanding it. The more drawers our file cabinet has, the more desperately we believe that one of them must hold the answer, and so we waste our time pulling out drawers when we could derive the solution — maybe a brand new solution — by combining our principles.

If you want to achieve your goals and make a difference in the world, you must never be intimidated by knowledge, and you must never rely on knowledge alone. Collect it when you can for it might one day be useful, but never let your knowledge trump your ability to think on your feet.

2. Psychology Runs Everything

One of the first and most important principles is that psychology governs everything — absolutely everything. The invisible forces of human behavior shape every decision we make, every action we take, and all of our interactions with others.

Right now, there are over 200 biases twisting your thoughts and perception. Every waking second, we are affected by our instincts, our environment, and the actions of those around us.

I think it cannot be overstated and might be the most important principle in accomplishing anything in this life: Psychology rules everything. You must never neglect psychology, never underestimate it, for its power is near-limitless.

Judges have sent innocent men to prison over bias. Billionaires have been tricked out of their fortunes. Retail empires have been built and collapsed on small differences in perception and a lack thereof.

Money, fame, charity, legacy — whatever you want in life, it translates to change, to transformation, and the most powerful, most sustainable way to enact change is to deeply understand and embrace psychology.

Read some books. Understand the basics of perception, bias, and persuasion. Learn how our emotions affect us and how our minds work. Master, not guess, which of the brain’s many kinks work for and against us.

Whatever you look at in life, consider the angle of psychology: Which behavioral forces are at play here? Why do we do what we do?

Whether you wish to be self-disciplined and run a marathon, create your own board game and sell a million copies, or found a company that will convert 25% of the world’s CO2 into something useful, heed the science of the mind, and you shall one day be successful.

3. To Get What You Want, You Must Make People Feel

Maya Angelou once said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

In a world run by psychology, an ounce of common sense is worth a pound of theory — and no matter what the theory suggests, humans are, by and large, run by their feelings.

“What do you feel like eating?” “I don’t feel this idea.” “I feel like I can afford it.” Nutrition, business, money — three of the most important topics in our lives, all governed by principles, and what do we do? We listen to our feelings. For better or for worse, this is how it’s gonna be.

It is great to practice rational thought, to aspire to reason and intelligence, but neither will be the biggest hindrance in getting you what you want — especially if it involves convincing other people, and it always involves convincing other people.

Appeal to our natural desires. Make us feel loved. Make us feel strong. Whatever you want, you’ll have to make us feel something to get it.

A confidence coach may have to make people angry, help them use regret as fuel for change. A great writer can make us feel sad, but in that sadness, we may find closure. Others provide simpler pleasures, like laughter, excitement, or schadenfreude.

The first incarnation of Facebook, FaceMash, put two photos of people side by side and let others vote on who’s more attractive. It’s a product built on curiosity and our desire to judge.

Tesla succeeds because its cars look good and feel futuristic. It’s not about numbers or sustainability, it’s about being part of something bigger while still having fun. The benefits are side effects.

Apple is not about glass and microchips, it’s about “having good taste.” You can viscerally enjoy the design of their products — and to top it off, they also perform well. The design “just flows” and the tool “just works.” A trillion-dollar company, built on gut feelings.

If you want to change the world for the better, let self-absorbed humans do the right thing by accident. Make us act in our own interest, and align the incentives so everyone benefits. The same applies to getting what you want, and it all runs on the unstoppable force of feelings.

If Mark Twain’s mining story sounded familiar to you, it’s because it closely resembles Tom Sawyer’s genius stunt of getting the other kids to pay him to paint his aunt’s white-picket fence — a feat depicted in Twain’s most famous work, a hallmark of American literature. That’s what he used his spare time for, and today, we’re all better off for it. We can still learn from his stories.

Academics frequently dismiss street smarts as unethical or lazy. Sometimes, they do so out of a false sense of honor or because they’re jealous of others getting what they want while they don’t, seemingly without hassle. Most of the time, however, they simply fear their intelligence won’t amount to anything in the real world, thus running from the very thing they so desperately hope to achieve.

Smart people realize that being smart alone does not mean much at all. If you want to accomplish things in this world, you need other people to buy into your ideas, and if you can’t do that, it doesn’t matter how brilliant those ideas are. Those people, like you, run on imperfect brains providing imperfect conclusions, many based not on facts but feelings.

Being street smart is the ultimate commitment to being pragmatic, to getting things done, and to understanding the world as it is so we can make it into the world we wish it to be.

Don’t just be smart. Be street smart. Look at life through the lens of principles, psychology, and feelings, and, like the great but laid-back humorist we call the father of American literature, you’ll move with its current rather than against it.

If You’ve Never Written Before, Don’t Charge for It Cover

If You’ve Never Written Before, Don’t Charge for It

Nik

Three weeks into studying abroad in the U.S., I started missing German bread. I love American food, but when it comes to “Brotzeit,” those pale, floppy slices of toast just don’t cut it.

I wanted a loaf. I wanted rye. I wanted the sour, moist-yet-crunchy freshness only German bread can provide. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find.

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and so eventually, I became desperate enough to decide to bake my own. Since my baking skills are on par with a nine-year-old, this was a much larger-scale effort than it might seem.

Read More