Category: English

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Actionable English Mindset

Intermittent fasting

Picture, if you will, someone living in a great pasture somewhere in Africa. They have a pretty good life, for that standard, they don’t have a 12 hour a day job as their descendants will in some 15000 years or so, they don’t even have been enslaved by wheat, rice or some other crop as their descendants will be in some 5000 years or so, pretty good life. Now, it’s not all that easy and rosy. It will be hunted by predators, some of their same species, and have a better than even chance of dying in extreme pain, pretty fast though, so no that bad again. Well, this ancestor of ours didn’t have regularly scheduled meals as we do know, as a matter of fact, most of their proteins and fats they got intermittently, when they could catch it, the rest of the time they were eating here and there some nuts, insects and the like, but in small quantities. Now, I’m not going to promote a paleo diet here, not at all. What I’m going to argue for is the intermittent part. Intermittent fasting as it is being called nowadays. So, as I am not a nutritionist or a certified professional in this area I must tell you right now that this is not a recommendation but a testimonial of what I have been doing for the past few months, since April 2017. I have been eating breakfast and lunch and skipping dinner every day but once ever since. I haven’t changed anything else, not the quantities of what I eat on the meals that I still do have, and not the composition of those meals, so, I’m not trying to convince myself that I don’t want to eat delicious sugary pastries, drink coffee or eat meat, grains, fruits, vegetables and all the food I’ve learned to like by now. The trick has been only convincing myself every evening that I should not eat, at all, and that’s been that. What is supposed to be happening is that my body starts burning fat to compensate the lack of new nutrients, it’s also supposed to get freaked out that no new food is coming in so it starts hoarding fat. The paradox here is easily solved by noting the amounts that are burned, hoarded and most of all the new food that comes in when I do eat. The body won’t shut down, the fasting is not that severe and I am not starving, not by a long shot, so there’s no real danger on this dimension. The body will get the energy it needs to function where it is stored, in the fat that’s being accumulated during the feeding periods of the day, and it will use it, no deficit here either. The fact is, I’m ingesting far fewer calories than I was before, by my mediocre calculations I’m down to 1300kCal/day from 2000kCal/day. This is a big reduction, and it shows in my weight and figure. When I gain weight I tend to show it on my cheeks, all four of them. So, I’ve lost weight and body fat, I’m down to 65.5kg from 72.0kg and it seems I’m stable there. I am feeling good, not much better and no worse than before, but I am leaner, that’s for sure. I have to repeat myself here, I’m not recommending that you try fasting, I am not a professional of the fields of nutrition or health care, so, if you want to try it check with your physician, more so if your health is frail. If you do try it, share with us your experiences in the comments below, thanks for reading this.

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English Growth Self-confidence

The last day of the year. 

Looking back on the year that has been and not label it an annus horribilis is difficult as it was a very hard time. The thing is that hard times don’t end when the calendar does, so they will probably extend well into 2017. That’s how it is. That being said, there are also many reasons to be thankful and hopeful. For starters I am alive. That may seem trivial but if you want to do things you first need to be alive. Secondly, I am healthy, less trivial than the first statement, now what I need to do next year is keep it that way, and that includes taking better care of my body and mind, so that goes to the “need to better next year” box. Thirdly I have people, I am not all alone. Although I love being alone and am seldom lonely I also love to spend time with some of you, not all of you at the same time, that’s insane, but some of you for a brief period is nice. Fourth and that’s more difficult. I have a way of producing income. I’m not producing as much as I could but I’m working on it so that’s another thing for the “need to better next year” box. Fifth is my take in the future, this one goes with the last one but also on my own mental imaging of the future, to give it more value than I’ve been doing so far. 

There they are, five points to ponder and be thankful and better next year, there are many more of course but those are, for me, the main ones. Some of you will be wondering where’s my spiritual side, or romance or whatever, feel free to update your own lists with what you feel and think is important to you and comment below if you like.

In the meantime, let me wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR. 

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Actionable English Growth Procrastination

Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | TED Talk | TED.com

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English Growth Mindset Self-confidence

I’m a Toastmaster

I’ve recently joined an organization whose purpose is the teaching of public speaking skills and the development in each member of leadership abilities. For those of you who know me you’ll easily see how both skill sets might come handy to me. I am not a confident person as you might very well have figured out by now. I also am someone who’s changing his worldview, mostly on what I want in life, how I can achieve it, and how I can get help getting the results I want. That last part for me is very difficult, not because I am arrogant, that I might be, but because I’m really not that smart and it’s very hard for me to learn and I don’t like to show that side of myself. How I’m dealing with this will be the subject of another post, maybe next week.

Now, all that been said I’d like to talk more about this wonderful organization that is Toastmasters. First things first. Toastmasters was founded in 1905 by Ralph C. Smedley while he worked as education director at the YMCA in Bloomington Illinois, USA. There he saw the need to teach young men speaking abilities, how to conduct meetings, plan programs and leadership. I will not elaborate here on the history, you can check it out by yourselves following this link, suffice it to say that since then Toastmasters International has grown to a worldwide organization with more than 280,000 members in some 14,000 clubs in 116 countries, a big success.

My first experience with Toastmasters was on february of this year when I attended a meeting as a walkin. I arrived a little late so I didn’t get to see the start of the session. I was immediately mesmerized. The diversity of the people was complete, but yet they all seemed no only at ease, but in sync with what was going on. They all presented their speeches, they were evaluated by one of their peers, given advice on what they did right and what they could do better, and there was absolute camaraderie yet there was complete order. I was hooked. I returned the following week as an walkin again to see the complete development of a session, I was so impressed again that by the end of the evening I was subscribing to become a member.

As Toastmasters primary goal is to teach we are not only there to socialize, we are there to learn. More experienced members teach newer ones by serving as mentors and evaluators, and we also get a set of manuals where we can find the different skills that we must learn in every step of our self paced learning. In the month and a half I’ve been a member I’ve given one speech, my icebreaker, which is the first one that a new member gives and where he makes an official presentation of himself to the club and invites. I’ve also had the opportunity to act as Toastmaster for the night, which means I had to host the meeting, which is a challenge on itself of leadership, organization skills and speaking skills, all of my shortcomings were graciously accepted by my colleagues and not one of them rolled her eyes, or stood up and left, so I would like to thank them for that.

As I ready myself to present my second speech tonight, march the 29th. 2016, I am really excited to do this, which would seem odd. As poll after poll show how the fear of public speaking is amongst the most prevalent of all, in some cases topping the fear of death, which inspired Jerry Seinfeld, funny person amongst funny persons, to write the joke that says “the average person, if you have to be in a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy”. So, I’m starting to see myself a little bit differently, because if it only takes one meeting a week for six weeks to make me get rid of this “big fear” either it’s easier than I thought to get rid of my fears or in the end it was not such a big deal to me and it’s something I rather like. I’m thinking the latter.

There you have it for today. If you’d like to face your fear of public speaking, would like to learn the skill and also pick up some leadership resources, check out your local Toastmasters club, if you live in Mexico City you can come to mine, Club BIAM, you’re more than welcome. As always I’d love to see your comments down below.

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Actionable English Mindset Procrastination Self-confidence

“The art of the start”

The title comes from a quote from the title of Guy Kawasaki’s book because it fits so well to the point I want to make, even though his book is about entrepreneurship and this post, well, is not. Now, what this post is about is getting started. Getting started might seem so simple, and in a way it is, but, at least for us procrastinators, it is the hardest part to get to. Starting means being decided, being committed, being there. As we get ready keep fumbling and stumbling, we might think things twice or thrice, yes, that’s a word, and is important to know words, before thinking them once again, and that’s OK, we can think and plan all we want, but when it’s time to start, we start.

When we start we engage, we build, we produce. By starting we set on a journey, we give our lives some sense, even if the task can seem meaningless or is a lifelong journey. Starting is something we do all the time. Every morning we start a new day, we start a new meal or we start a new commute. We are constantly starting. You might think it’s not the same thing because we are repeating and we know what will happen. In a way you do, although you already know that not two days are the same, similar, but not the same, surprises happen. And let’s use that familiarity with our willingness to start. We don’t even think it twice before going out the door in the morning. Familiarity of what’s to come has diluted the fear or anxiety we might have had before. We know where we’re going, what route we will take, how much time it’ll take and we have it pretty much known. And that can be the same thing for something new we are going to embrace for the first time. How? By using some of many visualization techniques that are available to us. I have already talked a little about visualization in my post “Seeing the future” that you might want to check out. You can then visualize your way into familiarity and that will help reduce your fear. We can overcome all when we start, we can overcome none when we don’t. Starting is getting the ball rolling, we roll and roll and roll when we’ve started, but not when we are yet to do so. Even in physics there is more resistance to start than to keep on moving, what’s called static friction and dynamic friction, it takes less work to keep an object in motion than to put it in motion. We are the same, once we are in motion it takes less work, in this case, willpower, to keep going than what it took us to start moving. What can we do to start then if that is the hardest part? We make up excuses, like the following ones.

Start

The “It’s too late excuse”. We’ve all been there, when we face the excuse that “it’s too late now, why even bother” and unless it physically is too late then any moment is a good one to start.

The “I’ll do it later” excuse. It’s good to wait for the right moment to do something, no use in getting to the office at 2:00 AM or starting preparing for the New Year in the first week of March. But when the time is right, we start.

The “I’m not ready” excuse. This one’s a little trickier because we might not be ready. But we can feel it when we are genuinely not ready and when we are just stalling. When we are getting ready we are eager to start, when we are stalling, we are not.

The “I don’t know why I am doing this” excuse. Again, this one is also a little tricky, because we might not know why we are doing something, we have to figure it out first. Most of the time a valid reason not to do something is when we are being forced to do it by someone who is manipulating us. For all other reasons, we take the Nike stance and “Just do it”

Last but not least, the “I don’t want to do it” excuse. Like the last one this can have some validity, but we can feel it in our gut when it doesn’t, then we can also “Just do it” and start.

Now, starting is easier than doing, we are not committing ourselves to go all the way, just starting. We’ll just start. We’ll only lay the first brick. But we know how this works, and we’ve seen above how much easier it is to go on than to start. Once we start we tend to keep on going, inertia takes over and we go on and on and on until we’re done or until a stronger force stops us. I hope this helps you, remember, just getting started helps you getting to the finish line in a way you didn’t imagine it before. I’d love to read your comments about this and other posts either here or on our Facebook page, and thanks for reading.

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Actionable English Growth Procrastination

The “Productivity Equivalence” III

This is the third and last post on the Productivity Equivalence. We have worked on the positive elements of the equivalence and now it’s time to work on the negative ones.

PE = Sleep + Diet + Exercise + Meditation/Prayer/Silence – Stress – Distractions

The negative elements are stress and distractions. As I said before you have maybe other feelings and attitudes that you would like to put on the side. Be my guest, please accommodate this equivalence best fits your needs, this is what it is for, so you can have an idea of what is working for you and what is working against you.

  • Stress. As we know stress can be very harmful. High levels of cortisol for prolonged periods of time have been known to cause harm to the body. This stress causes also behavior changes that take a toll, most of the time a very heavy one, on our relationships. Some might be saying right now “well, be less stressed, easier said than done” Yes, it’s easy to say, but it’s also easy to do. What’s not easy is to take the right step and make the decision to do it, that’s the hard part. We have to understand that the decisions we make affect the present and the future. What we have from our past cannot be changed, it is done, it is what has brought us to where we are right now. At each present moment we can make decisions that transform our lives, make or not make a phone call, visit or not someone, write or not a story, keep or not a relationship. We have to decide what we want for us right now.If we don’t do it ourselves somebody else will or something else will. So it’s really that easy we have to deal with the stress you have to decide if you want to continue living a stressful life or not. if we decide we want to continue to leave stressful life then we must understand the price but we are willing to pay. we don’t want to live a stressful life and the only way to reduce the stress is to scale down then that is something we have to do. In the end it’s our choice, it is what we want and, as with everything else, we are responsible. I am not advocating that we have to eliminate all stress from our lives, some stress is useful, some stress is necessary. Without stress there is no excitement, no fun, no triumph. We need stress, but as we need water, too much water we drown and die, too little water we dry up and die, we need just enough.
  • Distractions. Distractions are those activities that do not help us get closer to our goals. When we procrastinate and don’t do what we have to do we are getting distracted. When we were little and people told us “you can be anything” what they meant was “you can be whatever you set your goals to, and then work your ass off to get them” and distractions are what will keep us from reaching those goals. Some will start saying “you can’t be an NBA player, you’re too short” That’s true, but I can still play basketball, and work for the NBA or an NBA team, or a sportswear company that sells basketball apparel, I can still be all basketball if that’s what I want. But I have to focus on that, all the time. Distractions can take me offcourse in a big way, as would be getting stuck in a job that’s I hate because “I have to pay the bills” and never trying to build an alternate reality and then moving to that, or can take me offcourse in a subtle but constant way, as would be watching two hours of TV every night to “relax”, or wasting ten minutes on Facebook every hour. All those are examples of distractions. One of the most effective tools in our belt against distraction is the ability to focus. Yes, as I said many times before on other posts, being able to focus is one of the abilities we need to develop. The ability to focus and to regain focus quickly if it is lost for a moment is of paramount importance. An example of regaining focus quickly is being able to get back to what’s important seconds after being interrupted by a phone call, and alarm, an impromptu visit from a colleague with an unimportant question. But also being able to focus on long term goals. That focus, that has to be permanent for long periods of time has to deal with other different distractions. You get distracted when you get discouraged, discouraged because you can’t see the result of your labor and after a while you angst and question if the seed you planted will in the end bear the fruits you desire. You get distracted when you see other opportunities pass you by and you wonder if there are making the right choice. You get distracted by your entourage when they question your sanity and the value of what will be gained and instead of pushing you and helping you they want you to stop and hinder you. All of this requires courage yes, but most of all requires focus, and that’s what you have to train for, every single day.

So there you have it, we’ve taken three posts but we have dissected the Productivity Equivalence. As I said before, you might have other parameters you’d like to keep track off for your own version of the equivalence, but if you don’t, feel free to use this one, and for every action that you engage in check where it affects the most, where it puts in and where it puts out and decide on that information if it’s good or bad. As always, I’d love to read your comments on the subject, thank you for reading.

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Actionable English Mindfulness Money Procrastination Self-confidence

The “Productivity Equivalence”

Since the last quarter of 2015 I’ve been changing my habits to positively change my life. I’ve changed the way I see time and also what I do with it. All of this to start applying the “Productivity Equivalence” or SE for short.

PE = Sleep + Diet + Exercise + Meditation/Prayer/Silence – Stress – Distractions

This simple equivalence tells you where to put in and were to take out to attain a higher level of productivity. Higher levels of productivity give you more results, whether your goal is being healthier, spending more time with your family, being wealthier. What this means is simple. You can’t get better results by removing where you should be adding and adding where you should be removing. Also, you can’t eliminate any of the components totally, either the good ones or the bad ones. The good ones have minimums you have to try to achieve and the bad ones, no matter how hard you try to eliminate them they find a way to creep up again if you ever take your eye off of them. You can’t, for instance, stop sleeping altogether and use that time to exercise because that would not work, the result would be a lesser PE value than before. And remember, this is only an equivalence, it’s not a complete equation for Productivity, you can think of things missing here that are important to you. You should put them in and evaluate for yourself what is better. I use it as a reminder and as a guide of what to look for if I suddenly notice a drop in my productivity, so I can make an introspective assessment of what might have changed on this equivalency and work on that.
Let’s take a moment now to view the components.

 

  • Diet. This one is obvious, we need to eat right, I don’t need to tell you that, again. Now, maybe something you didn’t know is this hypothesis that says that our willpower is like a gas tank, we can use it again and again and again until it’s drained and then we succumb to temptation much easier. What does that mean? That we need to be careful on what we use our willpower. If we have to refrain ourselves from taking a donut instead of a piece of fruit from a platter in a conference, then we will have used some willpower to do that, if we have to choose from taking the elevator instead of the stairs then again, willpower. What to do then? We need to save our willpower for really important things. We can remove this decisions in two ways. Always make a decision in advance, we talked about triggers before, well, here’s an example of one of them. “If I have to go up I always take the stairs” “If I want a snack I’ll never eat pastry” We decide beforehand what we want. We can compound that with physically removing temptation and get as far as we can from those delicious chocolate chip cookies.

So, as I’ve accustomed you to this before I won’t change it today. I’m going to stop here for length but I’ll continue tomorrow, how about that, a two day piece. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you, please comment down here, even if it’s only to say hello.

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English

If I wrote a book, would you read it?

Hello reader. I’ve been playing with an idea in my mind. I’d love to help more people overcome procrastination. Some I can reach from here, and that’s awesome, and I’d would love your help there, If you think this site deserves it, please share it with your friends. Now, I’d like to put this help in ebook format, what do you think? If I wrote that book, would you read it? Would you find the information valuable enough  to part with some of your hard earned dollars to get it?  Please let me know in the comments, thank you!

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Actionable English Mindset Procrastination

Resistance

I’m not going to talk about Valentine’s day.

I am doing this even though I don’t really feel like it today. You know the feeling. Sometimes your head wants to be in another place. You can’t seem to find the drive that just yesterday you had to accomplish something. You start having doubts again “Is this worth it?” “Am I good enough?” “Am I the real deal?” It’s a real emotional see saw, am I right? All of this happens to all of us, if it doesn’t happen to you you might be a psychopath, but that’s another story. OK, we all feel this, but what is it then? Glad you asked. This feelings, even though they are not equal, can be bundled in the same space. You can see they’re not equal because the “Am I good enough?” feeling is from someone who is yet to make his mark, but the “Am I the real deal?”, technically called “impostor syndrome”, comes from someone who is already crushing it yet she fears she will be seen for what she is, to her doubting self, a fraud. All this comes from one simple force, Resistance.

“Resistance: the attempt to prevent something by action or argument.” Resistance is a force of nature, of human nature. It’s always there, when we are awake, when we sleep, when we feel cheerful, when we feel gloomy, when we are “in the zone” or when we are “in a rut”, Resistance is always there. We might think we’ve beaten it, but we haven’t. The same way the eagle doesn’t defeat waterfall-984180_960_720gravity when it soars through the sky, because it will have to face it again after sleeping and needing to hunt for another meal. And that is a good thing. It’s a good thing because fighting Resistance is what builds us up. We lift weights in a gym because they cause resistance to our movement and we build muscle from that. We memorize, and have some trouble doing it, because we want to be able to access information later on, and use it, but there is resistance in the memorization process, at least for me.

 

Resistance is. Resistance will always be there. And it’s relentless. And, as Steven Pressfield said “Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill.” Resistance seems to want things to stay the same, but in reality, we know things can’t stay the same, ever. Resistance then wants us to stop moving, to prevent us from provoking that change and produce something. Resistance wants to let things rot. We want to help things live. We want to create. We want to help others create. We want to fight Resistance on every opportunity we get. We fight Resistance every time we decide to write another word, brush another line, talk with one more person, send one more business email, review one more expense report. We fight Resistance all the time we move forward on our creative space. And that’s all there is to it, with Resistance. We only need to know that it’ll never, ever, go away. It will always be there to hold us back. And that is good to know. It’s good to know because we can count on it as we can count on gravity. We can use it to make us go forward. We can use it to make us stronger. We can use it to produce better work everyday. We can use it to force us to stop procrastinating. What? You thought I wouldn’t be able to make a reference to procrastination? It was implied all this time and only in the end did I allow it to show it’s head here.

When you go on this morning, minding your own business, and you feel Resistance, I hope you’re able to recognize it. When you do, first thing before fighting it I want you to recognize it. I want you to see it curiously, and acknowledge it’s existence and power. Then you fight it. You’ll find this way is clearer, you will have more options and you’ll be more successful. Tell us how Resistance has been trying to get you? We’d all love to read it down here in the comments.

Categories
English Growth Money Procrastination

“Second hand procrastination” is it a thing?

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A few weeks back, in my post titled “What kind of procrastinator are you?” we talked about the different kinds of procrastinators. I want to revisit and expand on the ones that have the “student’s syndrome”. We’ve seen how they leave until the last possible moment their tasks, and then rush on to do them, their bodies full of adrenaline, cortisol, from within, and from the outside they might use stimulants such as caffeine, taurine or even others even more intense substances. In the future I will refer to this type of procrastinator as “The Rusher”, because, he rushes to get his job done, sometimes even regardless of the consequences.

The Rusher goes to extremes to get the things done at the last possible moment, just when the pressure, exhilaration and anxiety surpass his content and calm brought by doing something else. Now, this would be the end of the conversation if not for the fact that, more often than not, this rush brings unwanted results. As he sprints to the finish line The Rusher might want to cut some corners, maybe not on the job he’s doing if he’s got high standards, but on the other aspects of his personal and professional lives.

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The Rusher, is by his procrastination a risk taker, as he won’t be taking into account that Murphy may break havoc with his plans of finishing the task. That’s when an unexpected outage in the Internet, an empty printer cartridge, a late delivery all become life or death emergencies that have to be handled at any cost. The procrastinator suddenly starts asking for favors left and right, and his relationships might suffer from this or he might end up indebted much more for this help for much more than the value of the favor entitled in other more normal situations. Also our Rusher might, for example, neglect his commitments to other people or other projects, stressing unwittingly those relationships. All of this without the need of there being an extra setback on the task at hand. The simple fact of having to set everything aside because all available time, every ounce of energy, all of the attention have to be concentrated on the task can cause problems with others. A commitment previously engaged, could be even previous to the assignment or existence of the task, might have to be canceled because it’s priority suddenly drops, as the task’s rises. That commitment is now a casualty of The Rusher’s procrastination. The Rusher is no longer harming himself, he’s harming others who now suffer from this “Second Hand Procrastination”. As second hand smoking is unhealthy second hand procrastination is also harmful to the ones around the procrastinator. It cost them his time, his affections, and it can even have a monetary cost with things as late fees, non refundable tickets going to waste and others. In his professional life The Rusher might even be affecting his coworkers and subordinates, by making them miss important personal activities because of having to rush to finish some task that was waiting on his desk for 2 weeks but now has to be finished by morning. This is one of multitude of reasons why reducing our procrastinating is important. It gives us more clarity, more options, improves the chances of success and might even save a relationship or two.

Has this nudged you to work on your procrastination issues? If so, or even if not, I’d love to read some comments bellow, in the mean time, have an excellent week, and remember that on Sunday it’s Saint Valentine, so better be prepared so you don’t have to cancel it with a work emergency, lack of reservations or whatever other thing you’re putting off.