Category: Initiative

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Why “For Example” Is A Bad Way Of Explaining Things

Niklas Goeke

When our math teacher in high school introduced a new topic, what happened next would always follow the same pattern:

  1. She explains the Pythagorean theorem.
  2. Nobody gets it.
  3. She makes an example.
  4. Some people get it.
  5. The rest of the class goes “Can you make another example? Pleeeeeeeaaaaase?”

Steps 3-5 of the pattern would then repeat until the majority of the class understood the new concept and the “More examples!” screams slowly died down. Then we moved on.

Since I was often part of the group who got the gist the first go around, I’d be bored for the remainder of the lesson, waiting for everyone else to get the joke so we could continue. In the meantime, instead of listening, I tried to come up with more of my own examples.

I didn’t know it back then, but as it turns out, I was doing something right.

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The Bottom Locker – Why You Should Always Do It The Hard Way

Niklas Goeke

3104.

That’s the number on my locker. Wanna see it? Sure, here it is:

do it the hard way locker

6 out of 7 days of the week I go to the library. None of the lockers belong to anyone by the way.

Anyone can choose whichever locker they want on any given day of the week. You come, you pick one, you go, you leave it open.

Then how come on all 6 days I get to use that same locker, again and again and again?

Why can I walk around and tell everyone with 100% confidence that that’s my locker, number 3104, Nik’s locker?

Here’s why (and why you should care): because it’s on the bottom.

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Habit Review for 2015

Niklas Goeke

Tomorrow 2015 will be over.

I remember January 1st as if it was yesterday.

Interesting theory:

The reason each year seems to fly by faster than the last is that as you age, each year represents a smaller portion of your life.

Here’s a visual example:

habit-review-share-of-life

If you’re 1 year old, one year is your entire life. If you’re 14 years old, one year is only 7% of your life.

And so on.

That means at 42 years old, a year is only 2% of the time you’re alive, and it gets less with every year!

Seems to be true for me, and while I always ponder about the happenings of the last 12 months during those last few days of the year, I thought I’d take those ponderings public this time.

Since this is a blog about habits, why not make it a habit review?

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The Spartan Solution – A 4-step system to increase willpower every day

Niklas Goeke

Are you as disciplined as you’d like to be?

No?

Do you want to toughen up?

Have that twinkle in your eye that says: “Life, if you punch me in the face, you know I’ll just grit my teeth and fight back even harder.”

Oh you do? Sure, who wouldn’t.

That’s why I spent all of last week pondering how to help you do just that, and create a framework for it.

Here’s what I came up with.

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