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The Perfect Schedule: Life Design Castle

The Perfect Schedule: A Simple Exercise In Life Design

May 12, 2017May 10, 2017 Niklas Goeke Leave a comment

Once every blue moon I come up with a good quote. Most of the time it’s less a result of me being smart than me finding a way to spin someone else’s words just enough so that it sounds like something new. The last time it happened, a quote from The Obstacle is the Way became:

Design a life that lets you come closer to your perfect day, every day.

Since today is a day that’s somewhat antithetical to this idea, it’s a good opportunity to expand on it with a very short exercise in life design: Let’s craft the perfect schedule of your perfect day.

How To Be A Successful Student: The 80/20 Of Student Productivity

May 5, 2017May 8, 2017 Niklas Goeke Leave a comment

It’s the second week of classes of the Spring term here at Technical University of Munich. The weather’s picking up, materials are slow to emerge and exams are a long way away.

However, judging by the first week alone, I can tell there will be a lot of faces filled with regret at the end of this semester. Exams will be postponed, grades will be worse than expected and credits will be missing.

I realize not everyone wants to make an all-encompassing commitment to work like me. But even if you just want to be a normal, full-time student, get decent grades and secure a solid job, there are certain things you can do. So this week, I decided to go super practical and ask myself:

If I could recommend only three good habits to students, what would they be?

Here are the three rules I’ve come up with.

You Still Have Time To Make 2017 The Best Year Of Your Life

April 28, 2017April 28, 2017 Niklas Goeke 4 Comments

13 Ways to Get Your Grip On Life Back

With each passing year, I find more and more truth in this:

“The days are long, but the years are short.” — Gretchen Rubin

It’s that time of the year again. Tax day’s got you throwing your hands up in frustration, your New Year’s resolutions have long vaporized into thin air and you feel like your hold on 2017 is getting weaker and weaker.

I’m here to tell you: You still have time. Read More

Return On Time: Why No Income Is Passive

April 21, 2017May 5, 2017 Niklas Goeke Leave a comment

You know how sometimes, within a few seconds, an idea you had taken as true for decades is shattered to pieces? For example, when I was little, my dad told me the glass windows in churches were thicker at the bottom, because glass was actually a liquid. Just last week I told this to a friend. Well, two minutes ago, this false belief burst.

Some of these urban myths are more pervasive than others. Occasionally, even more people will fall for the lie than stumble into the truth. I think passive income might be one of those extreme cases.

Today, we’ll debunk this concept, and replace it with a better one.

How To Reach Your Goals With 27 Self Awareness Activities

April 14, 2017December 5, 2018 Niklas Goeke 2 Comments

I’m doing it again. I can feel it. Like a toothpick, my thumbnail rests in the gap between two teeth. It’s the position it takes right before I bite it. When I catch myself, like right now, I can prevent it. But it’s always a battle.

Often, I’m okay with losing it, as long as it means I’m winning the war with the article I’m writing. After all, what ends up on your screen isn’t a picture of my fingernails, but a (hopefully) helpful blog post.

It wasn’t always a conscious decision though. For over ten years, I bit my fingernails, unaware of the habit. When I started learning about self-improvement in 2012, it was the first habit I made a conscious effort to break. This both required and helped me with one of the most important human capacities: self-awareness.

Today, I’d like to help you cultivate yours, with 27 self-awareness activities, which you can practice on three distinct levels to improve your thinking, mental health and decisions – and thus, your results in the game of life.

Counterintuitive Confirmation: How To Eliminate Your Doubts

April 7, 2017April 12, 2017 Niklas Goeke Leave a comment

This Wednesday, I realized all my current blog post ideas would take more than a day to complete. Between The 4 Minute Folio launch, AniQuote suddenly materializing from the massive mist of ideas in my head and a new side gig I’ve taken up two weeks ago, it’s a week as busy as ever.

Hence, I decided to give myself the following constraints for this post:

Less than 1,000 words.
No more than 4 Pomodoros total.

Artificially limiting yourself is liberating. Busy weeks come with a lot of learnings, so these rules forced me to go narrow and think really hard:

What’s the biggest lesson from the past 7 days?

7 Years, 7 Rules of Life: Happiness In The Making

March 31, 2017June 13, 2017 Niklas Goeke 2 Comments

In 2010, I wrote down a set of “first principles” for my life. I asked myself:

“Which rules, if I lived by them for the rest of my life, would make me as happy as I can be?”

7 years later, it’s time to reflect and see which ones stood the test of time.

How To Start A Passion Project One Day At A Time

March 24, 2017March 30, 2017 Niklas Goeke Leave a comment

When people sign up for my newsletter, they instantly receive an automated email that asks them: “What’s one thing you struggle with?” Some consider this a marketing trick, but for me, it’s a once in a lifetime chance to talk to readers, say hi and try to help them however I can.

Nevertheless, it does have a research benefit to it: I see which problems keep coming up and what bothers my audience the most. I’ve written so much by now, that most of the time, I can recommend a particular resource for any given issue.

No time to read? Take my free course. Issues with productivity? Gotcha. Can’t google stuff? Wrote a book for you.

Recently, one question kept coming up, which I found myself unable to send people a resource for. It’s a question about projects. A question about starting. Here are three reader responses, all from this week, aimed at it:

“I want to start a business, but hardly have the money or the idea for it!” –Vishal
“I started learning magic tricks long ago, but I never take the time to share my tricks online. There are a few on youtube and I really wanted to share more.” –Flavien
“Being disorganized and lacking focus. I’m a certified NLP trainer and looking to start my own business as a Learning Coach for children. Yet I spend my days on chores, cooking and computer based admin stuff.” –Megan

Can you spot the question? Here’s the one I see: “How do I start a passion project?“

Today, I’ll do my best to answer it. But first…why is it that question?

Investing For Millennials: How To Really Go For Financial Freedom

March 17, 2017April 12, 2017 Niklas Goeke 5 Comments

Last week I accused my fellow millennials of not preparing for their financial future. But pointing fingers is easy. So this week, we’ll do something about it. In fact, I have been doing something about it for quite some time.

I started investing 25%+ of my monthly income in January 2015, and have since been growing my money at just under 7% compound annual growth rate.

But I never could’ve done it without the advice of several personal finance books, which are what I’ll draw on this week to present to you: my guide for investing for millennials. I think this is one of the most practical approaches to reach financial freedom.

Of course this isn’t just for millennials, but it does help if you have time on your side. When I look at how I’ve gotten to the point I’m at right now, it breaks down into seven steps:

Let’s walk through them.

Dear Millennials — A Letter To The Lost Generation

March 10, 2017March 10, 2017 Niklas Goeke 7 Comments

“You are all a ‘génération perdue!’,” the garage owner shouted at the young mechanic, who couldn’t fix Gertrude Stein’s car fast enough.

Dear Millennials Car

“That is what you are. That’s what you all are … all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.”

Stein later told the story to her dear friend, Ernest Hemingway, who’s largely responsible when historians today refer to those born between 1883 an 1900 by said name.

What Hemingway alluded to in The Sun Also Rises isn’t lost in the sense of gone, missing or forsaken, but “disoriented, wandering, directionless — a recognition that there was great confusion and aimlessness among the war’s survivors in the early post-war years,” as Samuel Hynes points out in A War Imagined.

When I look at my generation of fellow millennials, I can’t help but feel as if history is about to repeat itself.

Hence, this open letter.