How An iPhone, An iPad And A Mac Are Shaping My Digital Life

As a digital nomad, I do spend a lot of time processing and evaluating information. But the “nomad” part of being a digital nomad means I do it mostly when I’m on the road. I do not have a fixed office space. I work in a variety of places, from shared offices to coffee shops (most of the time), my own home or even parks (when weather allows me, that is). I did have an office for more than 10 years, but got rid of it after selling my company, two years ago.

To make a long story short, due to the fact that I work pretty much everywhere, I realized that my digital life has certain particularities. I’m using only 3 devices: an iPhone, an iPad and a MacBookPro. Each of them has its own usage pattern and I find it increasingly interesting to try to understand them. Since I’m a digital value creator myself, I am also interested in other people digital habits, especially what type of activity is spread over what type of device. But more on that in the end. For now, let’s start with the iPhone.

iPhone Usage Patterns

I own an iPhone for about 3 years, since the initial version. Didn’t buy an iPhone 4 yet, mostly because I don’t have any FaceTime counter parts (at least that I am aware of) to make it worth. For development I can get along pretty ok with a 3GS. I can safely ignore the retina display and the speed, I’m ok with the 3GS and I will not get rid of it until the next iteration (iPhone 5, most likely).

Emergency Info Check

I keep a number of notifications alive, like new friendship requests from Facebook, replies form Twitter and PayPal (yeah, I do love those daily tiny alerts telling me that people are still buying my books or that I just received some affiliate payment). I try to keep the number of these notifications relatively low in order to preserve battery life.

Email

I seldom answer emails on my iPhone. If I do, it means I place a really high priority on the person that sent that message (so if you get a “sent from my iPhone” signature in my email messages, be happy, I really value our relationship. Or the message was really burning, make your pick ). I have only 3 main email accounts and I’m using the iPhone unified Inbox to scan them a few times a day. Especially at red lights (if I’m driving), or while exercising. I eliminate the vast majority of garbage and leave the rest for further processing.

Facebook

I do answer Facebook friendship requests using my iPhone. The Facebook app in the iPhone is (now) pretty stable and relatively easy to use. I still hate the fact that I can’t unfriend somebody using it, but that’s it. I also answer emergency messages, sent using Facebook messaging system, if any.

Twitter

I’m only responding to push notifications like direct messages an replies. From time to time I do some impulse tweeting. Lately, I drastically downshifted my Twitter presence.

iAdd

I manage my tasks and projects with my own iOS app, called iAdd. It’s a universal app, which means I can use it both on my iPhone and my iPad. On the iPhone I stay mostly in Do. Meaning I just see what’s the next task or event and process it (either reDecide it or mark it as Done). Every once in a while, especially since I’m hit with some sudden inspiration (which tends to happen at least once a day) I use it to quickly brainstorm some ideas in Assess. It’s not uncommon also to send the freshly brainstormed idea to my own email from within iAdd.

If you’re not familiar with the terms Assess, Decide or Do, I recommend you to have a look at the ebook which outlines the productivity framework on which iAdd is based.

StumbleUpon

I’m still an active user in StumbleUpon (you can friend / follow me here) which means I get a considerably high number of shares each day. Until SU launched they iPhone app it was a real chore to empty my StumbleUpon toolbar. Today I’m using their iPhone app. It’s fast and (again, now) pretty stable.

iPad Usage Patterns

I own an iPad for about six months and no, I do not have any regrets that I didn’t wait to get an iPad 2 directly. I’m very satisfied with my current 32G 3G. Ironically, the 3G part of it it’s something I didn’t use yet, to be honest, since I already have a data plan on my iPhone. I don’t see any reason to pay twice for the same service. Oh, and I’m also going to tell you upfront that the term “couch computing” is very appropriate for the iPad. Meaning I’m using it mostly on my couch. I’m pretty sure that the location is also shaping a lot of its usage patterns.

Facebook

Since Facebook doesn’t have yet an iPad app (and third party apps are still pretty rough on the edges) I use it in Safari. I do all my Facebook activity (as sparse as it is nowadays) from within my iPad, in Safari. I interact, answer to event or app invitations (if anyone is looking interesting enough for me) and follow my friends activity.

Twitter

I use my iPad for consuming timelines. I do like the official app for Twitter, especially the user interface paradigm. I do think they created something really valuable with those panes and I find it difficult to imagine other ways of consuming Twitter. I also engage in conversations or follow links, the webView implementation in Twitter client is relatively comfortable.

Email

I do answer my emergency messages (which are not answered already on my iPhone, that is) using the iPad email app. I also use it to clean up if there are any leftovers from my previous iPhone sessions, or if I didn’t have the time to use my iPhone for email at all. So, if you get a signature like “sent using my iDevice” in my emails, do know that it was sent from my couch. If that matters for you, of course.

iAdd

Almost my entire assessing and deciding are taking place in the iPad. Meaning I do organize my entire activity using the iPad. This may be due to the fact that the Mac version of iAdd is still in its very early stage, but also to the fact that the iPad is simply a very suitable device for that kind of activity. Once the planning is done I just do a sync with Dropbox. Next morning I sync my iPhone with Dropbox too and voila, my day is literally at my fingertips.

MacBook Pro Usage Patterns

I’m using a Mac for more than 4 years now. One of the oldest posts on this blog is witnessing the very moment of my conversion from a 10 years long Linux citizen to what others may call “an Apple fanboy”. I don’t consider myself an Apple fanboy, I just use the most appropriate tools for my tasks. It just happen to be a 17 inch MacBook Pro.

Email

I do all the heavy processing on my Mac. Meaning I follow conversations and I also try to keep a relatively organized Inbox. Gave up to Inbox zero, because it conflicts with my ADD framework.So I do keep messages in my Inbox, which is assimilated to my Assess realm. Every time a message will trigger an action, I will process it with iAdd and then delete the message. Basically, it means that if I don’t have any more messages in my inbox, I either finished every imaginable thing I may do with my life, or I’m dead. Again, if you want to know more about my happy separation from the “Inbox zero” concept, with all its pressures, go ahead and read my ebook.

Writing

All the articles for this blog (and every other activity related to writing, like presentations for conferences or courses) are written on the Mac. I created more than 2 years ago a blogging setup that makes me keep my blogging under a relaxed control, using MacJournal smart journals feature. Also, all the image processing is taking place on the Mac.

Coding

It goes without even saying that I code my projects on the Mac, although I admit I played a little bit with the idea of having a (very) striped down version of XCode (or anything like that) on my iPad. But I do realize this is pretty much impossible.

Twitter and Facebook

Every once in a while I fire up Firefox and leave two tabs open: one in Twitter and the other one in Facebook. But this is relatively uncommon since I do avoid any type of interaction when I’m working (writing or coding).

Conclusions

iPhone – emergency and impulse reactions

iPad – consuming information and planning (tasks, time, projects)

MacBook Pro – producing, evaluating and distributing digital value

***

What are your digital habits? Do you have / use more than one device to manage them? Please share your experience in the comments, I’m really looking forward to it.

33 Ways To End Your Day

We’re creatures of memory. If we couldn’t remember our own identity each morning we wouldn’t really exist. We wouldn’t know who we are, why we’re here, who are our friends or our enemies. The subtle miracle of waking up each morning starts in fact each evening, when we go to sleep. And since we already have a lot of ways to start the day I thought it would be nice to find some ways to properly end it.

1. Project The Next Day

Plan it ahead, if you use a planner. Or just imagine how you want it to be. Picture it in your head. This doesn’t guarantee that it will go exactly like this, of course. But it will give you quite an accurate idea about what you want and will help you sleep better. You already know what is waiting for you, right?

2. Recap The Highlights

Rewind the current day until morning and start looking at the most important parts. I usually pick only three main points and start thinking at them, but your mileage may vary. You may go for only one highlight or for ten. The idea is to anchor your day exactly the way you want it.

3. Meditate

You don’t need to do it more than 10-15 minutes, but you do want to do it often. It helps your mind to slow down and to prepare for the night. After a 10 minutes meditation, your mind will be quiet and light. Your body will slip into sleep without any effort and you’ll wake up as good as new.

4. Choose What To Dream

It doesn’t always work but its a very good exercise. It will put your brain on a creative path. And when it works, it’s really awesome. Of course, you never dream exactly what you planed, but if you manage to mix in just a few things you really want to dream about, then your sleep will turn into the show of your life.

5. Read A Story To Your Kids

Or to yourself. Or even to your partner. Stories are a wonderful way to switch your focus from the stress of the day and relocate your mind in a more relaxing realm. Our entire life is in fact just a story. In time, you may even try to create your own bedtime stories instead of reading some ready made stuff.

6. Write In Your Journal

If you don’t keep a journal, maybe it’s time to start having one. Writing in a clear and detached way about what you did in the last diurnal interval has an incredibly powerful effect on your being. It puts things in perspective, it cleans up your lenses and it creates your own personal history.

7. Take A Walk Alone

Let the events fly away, the emotions fade and the thoughts melt into silence. Just walk. No need to do it in a park or on a lonely street. As a matter of fact, walking on a busy street is even better. You may hit a glass wall if you’re not paying attention, but it will surely help you sleep better.

8. Give Or Receive A Massage

Of course, that means you’re not alone. And it also means you’re not making love, which is something completely different. Giving a massage requires a certain devotion, attention and skill. Being focused in this activity (either as a doer or as a receiver) will help you blend in the night in a magical way.

9. Laugh

Watch a comedy. Or read a comic book. Or just listen to some jokes. Laughing is the cheapest, most enjoyable and clean medicine in the world. No matter how tired, sad, or frustrated you get after a bad day, giving yourself the chance to have a big laugh will cast away all the bad vibes.

10. Make Love

I don’t think you need reasons for this one. Or if you need, there’s something wrong somewhere.

11. Listen To Some Music

In the dark, just before you’re ready to fall asleep. When you close some of your senses, the remaining ones are taking much more from your attention span. Without vision, your hearing will fill all your focus and that music will sound very different. You can even dance a little, if you feel like.

12. Do A (Very) Small Chore

Wash a glass or clean the kitchen table. While it won’t make the house shine, will still give you a sense of grounding. Your environment affects you in ways you can’t always perceive. Doing something nice for your surroundings just before you go to sleep will make things brighter in the morning.

13. Watch Some Personal Photos

You may not like your own image but your personal history is part of your life. Get soaked into it just before you go to sleep. It will help you build a sense of identity and structure. Bring in those pictures people you love or care about. Their images will sometimes go with you during the night, in your dreams.

14. Go To A Party

Preferably to one you know you’ll enjoy it. The people, the music, the joy, the atmosphere, well, all of these will make you literally step out of the clothes and structures of the day. It may even create some magical encounters which will make your life better, who knows. So don’t you ever refuse going to a nice party.

15. Write A Message To Someone You Care About

A short email, an SMS or even a plain old style paper letter. Just end your day with a little bit of care for somebody else. Thinking of your close circle of your friends is one thing, but acting on it with a message is something different. A very nice thing to do just before your day goes over.

16. Write A Short Story About Your Future Self

A complete imaginary story, of course, about yourself, in the near future. And because it’s just a story, you can put whatever you want in it. And because it’s about yourself, it will gradually blend into your ideas, reactions or goals. Next day you may recognize some of the situations you created in that subtle threshold between reality and the night dreams.

17. Get Rid Of An Useless Object

There must be something that is not necessary anymore in your house. Throw it away just before you end your day. Throw away objects, leftovers, garbage. This practice will make you better at throwing away useless people or habits in your life. And you’ll sleep better.

18. Prepare Your Next Day Clothes

It may sound shallow but it’s a really interesting way of ending the day. Try to imagine the next morning like an act from a theatrical play and choose your costume and your preferred role. Not only it will add a touch of playfulness to your next morning, but it will also force you to recompose your image.

19. Be Thankful

For at least one thing that happened during the day. If you can’t find that thing, then you’re in a real trouble. Start with something that “just went ok” and then move on to something you’re really grateful for. We do not pay enough attention to positive stuff in our lives, mostly because we’re too busy surviving.

20. Try To Remember The Same Evening From One, Two Or Ten Years Ago

That’s a little bit difficult, I admit, but it’s incredibly enlightening. I don’t always succeed remembering stuff so clearly, but when I do, it’s so much fun. Try to do it a week in a row, from Monday to Friday. Your life will seem so much different now. And way better than you think it actually is.

21. Try To Project This Evening To A Future One

In one, two or maybe ten years from now. That’s the mirror exercise for the one above. Try to imagine your evening in one year from now, same month, same day. Will you be still in the same place? With the same partner? Going to the same job? Let loose. Imagine a different existence. Eventually, it will come true.

22. Do A Mild Yoga Session

Which may translate into a short sequence of stretching or just some really easy asanas. During the day you are unconsciously using entire groups of muscles, thus creating physical tension and sometime even psychological obstructions. A short yoga session will help you relieve those tensions.

23. Delete Some Email

I’m not using Inbox zero anymore, but I kept the pleasure of trashing the garbage whenever I get a chance to. And what better chance is to clean up your inbox then right before your day will end. It’s like doing that little chore around the house, only it will be pertaining to your digital house.

24. Visualize Your Waking Up Hour

I used to do this when I was a kid and I had to wake up early for some trips to other towns, like 4 or 5 AM. I used to visualize the number 4 or 5 and then trying to fall asleep immediately. Almost always I was getting up at that hour without a clock alarm or other help. try it. It may work for you too.

25. Do A White Night

Ok, this is not technically a way to end the day but rather to blend the day into the next one. A little bit extreme and definitely not something to do very often, but usually fun. That mysterious second when the night becomes the next day has something magical.

26. Watch The Sunset

I usually like to do this alone, but your mileage may vary. Either way, witnessing sunset is one of the most beautiful ways to end your day. Especially in a more natural surrounding than a city. But even in a city, the dusty line of the horizon, violently colored in red by the sunset, is a very nice view.

27. Clean Yourself Up

I’m not talking about your personal hygiene here, but more like trying to let go of the clutter you accumulated. It may be physical, or it may be psychological. Over the time I found out that a personal cleaning session (both physical and mental) just before going to bed can make miracles next day.

28. Have A Small Chat With A Friend

Just connect, this time not by sending a message, but by actually having a small talk. It will create a disruption in the flow of events and it will help you move your thoughts away from your daily chores. Just don’t forget to listen too while you’re having this conversation.

29. Check Your Pipes (And Unclog, If Necessary)

By “pipes” I’m referring to our internal sewage system. Psychologically speaking, we’re not functioning without residual matter. That matter is accumulating in our “pipes” and, if not handled with care, it will explode sooner or later. Just do a checkup and see if you can unload some unprocessed stress.

30. Have A Cup Of Tea

There is something both playful and formal about having a cup of tea. At some point it may become a ceremony and at the other just the liquid pretext of letting your thoughts floating around. I usually choose the second option, but trying a little tea ceremony could be interesting too.

31. Have A Glass Of Wine

Of course, you can have a glass of wine while watching sunset or chatting with your friends. I’m talking about something else here: about really savoring a glass of wine, without doing anything else. In moderation, wine is a great anti-inhibitor and quite a healthy beverage. It also helps you go to sleep faster. Or so I heard.

32. Improvise

Don’t get too caught in this routine of “having to end your day in a certain way”. Just do something that you’ve never done before. Close your day in style. Learn a Japanese Kanji character each evening or learn to cook kosher. Go to a sumo competition or count to 1000 in Arabic. Do your own thing.

33. Schedule A Way To Start Your Day

That has little to do, if anything, with number one from this list, “how to project your day”. It’s not about projecting. It’s about choosing that tiny first thing you want to do when you wake up. That first thing will shape your entire day. If you don’t know how to do it, just start here, there’s 33 ways to start your day. Pick the one you want.

My Top 7 Demotivating Habits

In the subtle fabric of our day to day routine, every now and again we allow some red stripes to mingle in. Sooner or later, those stripes will unweave the whole mechanism. I’m sure you’ve experienced it too: the day goes on fabulously, everything falls into its place, and then, apparently out of nowhere, something small happens which breaks the entire process. Suddenly, you feel down, you don’t have any desire to go on and all you want to do is to whine on somebody else’s shoulder about how pitiful your life is.

Those red stripes are demotivating habits. We all have them and, on a very unconscious level, we’re all allowing them to manifest every once in a while. The problem with those demotivating habits is that we’re not always seeing them as demotivating habits. Many of them are just downgraded versions of normal reactions or, to be more precise, just facts. But we tend to interpret those facts in a diminishing way.

On a regular day, I get around 3 or 4 of these. I somehow learned to identify them, but I’m not always 100% correct. Their ability to disguise into legitimate actions still amazes me. So, for the sake of putting a name on their face and covering them with shame, I decided to write a post on this topic. Namely, about my top 7 demotivating habits.

1. The “Look, Something Shiny” Syndrome

Every time you allow your focus to get trapped into an allegedly pleasurable activity, by interrupting what you were doing, you are experiencing this demotivating habit. If you’re into social media, you know what I mean. Twitter or Facebook are the most popular shiny things which are invading our territory.

But there are many other versions of it. Starting a conversation with your office colleague, for instance. Looking outside of your office window. Turning on the TV, if you’re working from home. Calling a friend in the middle of something you’re just doing, only to find out “how is he”. All of these are forms of the “look, something shiny syndrome”.

2. Overheating

Or doing too much too fast. I’m a very good candidate for this habit because I crave to see things happening. If things aren’t happening with the speed of light, I usually consider this to be a big problem. I want it now and I want it all. So, when I’m starting something, I’m totally immersing myself into it. Up to the point that I sometimes forget why I started it in the first place.

Overheating is a sign that you’re creating a lot of friction around you. Friction generates heat. And heat is a sure way to lose energy. There’s a certain time needed for each thing to come to fruition and if you’re trying to make it faster than it needs, then you’re setting yourself for failure. Demotivation, in this case, is just the first sign that you’re doing something wrong.

3. Fear Of Not Doing It Good Enough

I’m not doing this now because I’m not in the best shape for it. Or, I’m not having this meeting right now, because I’m not yet prepared. I’m not writing code, because I don’t master some inner workings of the app. Of course you should! You should have the meeting, you should write that code and you should adjust while you’re doing it.

Sometimes, things just have to be done. Not in a perfect way. Not even in a good way. Just done. But our need for recognition (which, at its core, is natural and legitimate) is tricking us into not doing them, because they will not be “good enough”. Of all these top 7 demotivating habits, this one is the most annoying (and the most common) to me.

4. Bad Physical Health

Luckily, I don’t have this problem anymore, because, in the last few years I paid close attention to my physical health. But there was a time when this was a major problem. For instance, smoking. It’s an addiction which creates a short wave of endorphins, followed by a much longer period of dumbness and lack of focus.

Overeating, drinking too much, or even exercising too much are also symptoms that you’re lowering your chances to get things done by simply ruining your physical health. And, believe it or not, having a good physical health is a matter of habits. Habits which will enforce a healthy lifestyle, that is.

5. Breaking It Into Meaningless Details

It’s the “analysis paralysis” syndrome. Or, in terms of Assess – Decide – Do, it’s about being stuck in the Assess realm for ever. The need to analyze your problem and making it actionable is fundamental. You can’t do something in a reliable way if you’re not having a clear image about how you’re going to do it.

But spending all your time dissecting your tasks, projects, goals or attitudes in smaller and smaller chunks of data will eventually paralyze you. One of my business partners had this habit and I had an incredibly hard time working with him because of that.

6. “It Doesn’t Really Matter”

If you set yourself for doing something, do it. During the day you may encounter contexts which can take you out of your normal state. You may be caught in something that seems to have a higher priority. Well, instead of avoiding doing what you planned, you should reschedule. Put a different priority on those tasks, but still commit to do them.

If you’re falling for this habit, you’re becoming a drifting, course-less ship on a lonely ocean. It’s true that priorities are changing during the day. Which means you should change your priorities too, but not get rid of the stuff you wanted to do just because now it “seems” unimportant.

7. Others Are Doing It Better Than Me

That’s the most common demotivating habit I’m seeing around myself in the last few years. People are not doing things because they like doing things, or because doing things will make them feel better. They’re doing things because of the competition. And when the other guys are doing those things better, there’s no reason to continue, right?

It’s a fundamental mistake. And it acts at a very deep level. Doesn’t matter if somebody is a better “put your desired quality here” than you. Because it’s not about them. It’s about you. Your experiences. Your days and nights. Your life.

Don’t hand it to somebody else.

Life Device Drivers: What Are They and When You Need To Upgrade

Life device drivers are fundamental for a smooth social interaction. They’re the invisible layer which allows us to have a proper interaction with various social interfaces, like a job or a family. Oh, you don’t know what a life device drivers is? No problem, this is exactly what you’re going to find out in this article. But before we dive in, let me tell you that this is the second follow-up to my first article using a computer metaphor to describe self-improvement. You may want to have a look at it first: Are You The Best Version Of Yourself?. And you could also check out the first follow up in this series: How To Defrag Your Mind In 5 Eay Steps.

What Is A Life Device Driver?

Well, it’s just like a software driver, only it’s for your day to day life. I bet you wouldn’t think at that, right? Now, seriously, continuing our computer-human parallel, a life device driver would be described as a set of procedures one uses to manage a certain context at a very low level. The driver should also be used to enforce a certain result upon using that context. Sounds much more complicated than it is.

For example, if we’re talking about computers, a printer driver would let your computer communicate with your printer in order to print documents. The expected result would be the transfer of an image from your computer screen to a piece of paper. Subsequently, a marriage life driver would let you function in an almost automated way as husband and wife. The expected result would be an ongoing partnership which will allegedly make your life easier.

Of course, neither printing or marriage are always creating the expected result. Hence, the constant need to improve their drivers.

Habits, Skills and Life Device Drivers

Drivers are using very low-level programming interfaces. They’re built to access directly the most intimate parts of your computer: interruptions, memory buses and so on. In some respects, they’re like habits: once implemented, you’re using them transparently. Subsequently, once you installed a life device driver you’re just using it and don’t bother about how to talk with the part  you want to manage. But in fact life device drivers are much more complex than a simple habit.

The difference between a mere habit and a life device driver is quite simple: besides the fact that the life device driver should be very low-level, close to the core of your behavior, it should always end with a predictable result. For instance, if you have the habit of taking a nap every afternoon, that wouldn’t be a life device driver, because the expected result will vary drastically. Some afternoons you’ll be fine while others will make you feel like crap. If any of you ever wanted to implement the habit of taking a nap during afternoons, then you know what I mean.

Skills, on the other hand, are essential to life drivers. If you learn a new language, for instance, every time you communicate in that language you will generate an expected result: the other guy will understand what you’re saying. Provided that there aren’t significant bugs in your foreign language driver.  Other examples are: managing your job with a solid set of skills (both technical and social), managing a personal relationship or creating and maintaining a hobby (like travel, for instance).

Life device drivers are just very specific skills, implemented as habits.

Managing Your Real Life Peripherals

If life drivers are skills implemented a habits, what are they actually driving? What is the equivalent of peripherals in our human-computer parallel? We know what a peripheral is for a computer: a printer, a monitor or a keyboard. But in real life?

A life peripheral is an external context in which you want to express yourself. Being married, that’s something that could be called a life peripheral: you do want to express yourself within this context, but it’s not part of your core. You are a complete individual without being forced to be part of a marriage and many of us are functioning like this. Not every computer does have a printer and not every human being wants to be married.

Another peripheral would be a job. For many of us, a job is just an external interface. A context in which we are performing a certain number of tasks and at the end of the week we enjoy the expected result: money. A personal hobby, like traveling, would be another example. You acquire a set of skills (like foreign languages, for instance) and then implement them as habits (doing that constantly).

So, managing your life drivers means acquiring new skills and then maintaining them in the form of habits. Every once in a while, you will need to upgrade your life device drivers, of course.

Still with me? Good.

Why Do You Need To Upgrade Your Life Drivers

Every time you reach a new level in your life you need to upgrade your drivers. You need to be sure you have the right skills and put them to work on auto-pilot in order to perform well on the new interface. Otherwise there will be hick-ups. The expected results will be delayed or even null. You will spend a lot of time debugging your specific life drivers instead of just doing what you have to do.

Every time you enter a new relationship or get a new job, you need to upgrade your drivers. You need to reassess your role in the new relation or acquire new skills for the new job. Failing to do this will put you in the very frustrating state of having a beautiful printer, or camera, or other gizmo and not being able to use it, by lack of the appropriate drivers. And we all know how frustrating that can be.

Entering a new stage in your life without a proper life driver could even result in a frozen computer, or a need for a reboot. Your new job may look and feel great and even give you an underlying feeling of personal progress, but the lack of a proper driver for your new context could lead to a serious life crisis. And if in the geek’s world we know it’s always segmentation’s fault, in this case there’s nobody else to blame for forcing a cold reset, than yourself.

How To Upgrade Your Life Drivers

If you ever had to attach a new peripheral to your computer (a printer, or a camera, or something like this), you’ll find the next steps surprisingly familiar. If not, well, you’ll be in a better position to do this when you’ll have to. Here are 5 steps in which you can upgrade your life drivers whenever your life peripherals are changing.

1. Identify The New Peripheral

Most of the time, this step is obvious: you’ll know when you’ll get married (or at least I hope so, for your own good) or when you get a new job. But there will be times when you won’t exactly know what are the peripherals you want to manage.

For instance, you may want to enrich your social life. But, as real as the inner need may be, this s a very vague definition for a peripheral. Hard to identify it in the form of a manageable device. You can have a better and more fulfilling social life in a million ways. This is why is important to know very well what exactly are you looking for. In some situations the new peripheral could be identified as: a new group of friends. Or: a new group of like-minded people for exchanging ideas. Or: a support group for my public speaking skills.

Once identified, go to the next step.

2. Identify The Expected Result

Now, if you know what you are attaching to your life, it’s time to decide how exactly you want it to work for you. For computers peripherals, this is generally easier, because they come with some specs. A camera should capture frames at a certain frame per second rate, a printer should print at a certain resolution and so on. For life peripherals, things are a little bit fuzzier.

If you’re attaching a new job into your life, you do have a little bit more freedom to decide how exactly it could work. You may negotiate the number of hours you spend, the number and quality of skills involved and then make a specific request. The other part should offer you money, a decent work place, and so on. Now you made your own specs. The same goes for a marriage (more or less, to be honest) and for a personal habit.

It’s important to remember that on this step, a little bit in contrast with a computer setup, you have enough freedom to create your life device specs on demand. You decide what the expected result of using the new interface will be. But it’s also important to understand that you can also change the specs on the go. For a computer, usually this is happening only with a hardware upgrade.

3. Identify The Low-level Access Routines

Now you know exactly what you’re attaching to your life, you know the expected result, all you have to do is to start putting together the pieces. You will start to actually create your new driver. The equivalent for the geeks world will be the analysis stage. You start looking around for technology and choose a programming language. You make all sort of diagrams and workflows, which in a non-geeky, normal language should translate as: you’re imagining your new life in that new context.

In this stage of upgrading your life device drivers you’re creating and incorporating new skills. If the new job requires some training, you’re attending classes. If the new relationship requires some new adjustments (ok, you’re moving together, who’s going to do the dishes?) you’ll start identifying them. This stage is, like I said, analysis-driven, rather than actionable. You’re contemplating your next life device driver.

4. Program And Implement The New Driver

This is the step where you start “writing code”. You have the main architecture of your life device driver, hopefully you already acquired (or upgraded) the necessary skills, all you have to do is to freeze them in new habits. This is also the most difficult to implement, because creating new habits is usually a tedious task.

For instance, if you lived alone for 20 years, and your new relationship is upgrading to a “”living together stage“ you will find it very difficult to change some of your habits. Maybe you have a morning routine in which you’ll have to incorporate a new person (ok, who’s going to use the bathroom first? And for how long?) or maybe you’re having a poker night with the guys every Thursday (and you’re really going to miss that, believe me ).

Most of the life device drivers bugs are created in this stage. We all seem to know what we have to do to improve our lives, but it seems we have a very hard time actually doing it right.

5. Test And Debug

This is the stage when you’re actually using the life driver. You’re already at the new job, or you’re already moving in together, upgrading to your next level of your relationship. Most of the time, you get a trial period at any new job, usually a month. This is the period in which you have to put your new life driver to test. If you already have a life driver, of course.

This is also the last stage in which you can modify your driver. You can make adjustments, replace routines, integrate new skills and create new habits. After this stage is over, you will remain stuck with your life driver in its current state. Not much to be done to it after you finish this testing stage.

In every relationship, the first few months are usually shaping the next years and modifying what you’re creating now is really, really difficult later. Your marriage life drivers will be already in place.

Personal Example

Now, let’s talk about a real life example. Two years ago I decided to sell my online publishing company. After that, one of the bigger social interfaces changed dramatically: I didn’t have an online publisihing company anymore. But I did want to do something with my life. Hence, the need for a new peripheral in my life. Hence, this blog.

That was step number one, if you didn’t realize it by now: I identified exactly the new peripheral in the class of “work”. What exactly I want to do as “work”? Create a personal development blog, of course.

The second step was also pretty clear: I want this blog to become profitable in 2 years. I want to work anywhere between 2 and 8 hours per day and have a very flexible routine. Oh, and I also wanted to generate even a bigger revenue than in my previous business.

The third step was relatively difficult. I had to choose between the Romanian market, where I was obviously comfortable with the language, but the overall market audience was completely out of my target. It was both really small compared with the English speaking blogosphere and not at all interested in anything more than tabloid blogs. I also had to assess my biggest liability, writing and reading in English, and take some steps towards drastically improving these skills. Fortunately, the rest of the diagram was filled in with the necessary requirements: had a lot of business experience, management skills and so on.

The fourth step took me like 2 months. I sold my company in July 2008 and started the blog in October 2008. Not too much to be told about this stage, I just started to write and follow my 2 years long strategy.

The interesting stuff happened (and still continue to happen as we speak) in the fifth step: since October 2008, my life blog driver suffered a few major upgrades. Some of them were related to the time spent writing, some of them were related to the time spent promoting and some of them were about simple things like changing the blog domain from a .ro domain name to a .com domain name. At the moment, I’m pretty satisfied with this life device driver as it is, but I’m sure there are a lot of other small features which can be added.

Well, feel free to suggest some, if you see a flaw in my workflow. And, by all means, do share your impressions. Do you think this is a sustainable approach? Do you see parts where it can be improved? Would you use such an approach to adjust to some big changes (both wanted and unwanted) in your life?. Let the comments begin.

How To Defrag Your Mind In 5 Easy Steps

This is a follow up to my post: “Are You The Best Version Of Yourself?”. Specifically, that article used a geeky metaphor, comparing our own being with a computer. In order to be sure you run the best version of yourself, a certain number of maintenance tasks have to be performed, such as “updating your drivers” or “stay virus free”. In this post I’m going to detail on “Defrag your mind”.

Defrag Your Mind? What Exactly Is That?

For the non-geeky versions of my readers, I will briefly outline what a defragmentation is. Although it sounds pretty harsh, it’s nothing but an optimization process. The data on your computer hard-disk is not written and read in sequential order. It’s broken down into smaller pieces and written at arbitrary locations. Now, after a certain period, the effort for retrieving that information, scattered around your entire hard-disk, could become really time consuming.

This is where defragmentation comes in: it re-arranges the data on your hard-disk so it would be much more easier to access. The expected result of such a process is an increase in speed and a higher reliability of your equipment. In other words: you’re going to work not only faster, but also much safer.

Now, how can you do this to your mind? Here is my take on it, in 5 easy steps:

1. Chose Your Dominant Setup

Maybe you’ll be in travel mood for the next couple of weeks. Or maybe you’ll have to deliver something big at your job. Or maybe you’ll want to learn something new. Whatever the case, you’ll have to identify your major focus in the next few days or weeks. This is what I call your “dominant” setup. It will be your main concern, your essential duty.

Similarly, there are computer setups for video processing or for games.  There are setups for text or image processing. Depending on these setups, your hard-disk algorithms may change. This is why it’s important to do an assessment first and understand what are you going to perform in the next few weeks. You’re going to setup your mind exactly for that.

Based on this initial assessment, when you’ll chose a dominant configuration for the next period. try to identify it with a single word or a small sentence: “finish project”, “workout” or “visit Rocky Mountains”. Your whole defragmentation process will target this dominant setup.

2. Identify Necessary Information

Once you correctly identified the main concern for the next period, start to identify related areas. What information do you need to succeed? Are there any important actions you need to perform on a regular basis? Are there any specific attitudes you need to adopt? Any habits you need to implement? All these items are part of your main setup.

Identifying your necessary information should be done rather slowly but thoroughly, than quickly and fuzzy. If you’re going to establish a new algorithm for your main central unit, you’d better make sure you  won’t let out something important. That will only make the whole process slow if you’d have to go back and re-start it again.

One tip in this step would be to make a log of it. If it’s something about holiday, just write down the “cloud” of necessary information, actions and habits in a list format. Next time you go on a holiday, you’ll have the info available and spend less time on assessing it. Another tip that could significantly shorten this step is to use mind-mapping. A non-linear document would be more appropriate for this process than a sequential one.

3. Establish Priorities

You know the setup, you have the tools, now all you have to do is to establish priorities. If you ever witnessed a defragmentation, you saw that the most frequently accessed information is usually moved in the first sectors of your hard-disk. That would make it easier and faster to be accessed. And you’re going to do exactly that: make things easier to manage.

Identifying priorities is obviously closely related to the dominant setup. If you’re going to work more than usual, then one of your priorities would probably be to have your laptop charged as often as possible. If your main setup would be traveling related, maybe the tool which should be constantly charged is your mobile phone.

The easiest way to assess the priority is to use a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being the higher point of the scale. Take the previously gathered information and run it through this filter. Ok, this is a laptop, on a scale from 1 to 5 how important is that for my dominant setup? Ok, will give it a 2. Just start practicing and in time you’ll get better at it.

4. Ignore The Unimportant

One of the biggest clutter sources in our lives is the excess luggage we’re carrying around because we think it’s necessary. Or because somebody else has already decided for us it’s necessary. Or simply because we didn’t do any assessment whatsoever and we’re still carrying around those lose ends. Our focus is too loaded with too many lenses.

The 4th stage of your mind defragmentation should address exactly this question. If you moved all the important stuff closer to your core in the previous step, now you’re going to take the unnecessary bits and pieces and move them far away from your reach. Don’t get rid of them, of course, just offer them a well deserved break.

For instance, if you’re going to travel, you may totally ignore your office suits. Push them away, ignore. If you’re going to learn something new, decide you’re going to cut on your distractions: ignore watching TV or social activities. The most important function of this step is to actually write down what are you going to ignore. Don’t expect it to happen naturally.

5. Run A Dry Test

Once your dominant new setup is in place, try to run a dry test. It won’t have the benefits of actually implementing the whole things, but it will still be useful. Take 15 minutes to imagine a whole day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you get to bed. Every information you need is in place? Are your priorities well balanced? Is the clutter properly stowed away?

If you’re satisfied, congrats, you just had your first mind defragmentation.

A Real Life Example

1. The Dominant Setup

I do a little bit of defragmentation every time I enter a new milestone for my blog. One of the dominant setups this year would be “monetize my blog”. These are at least 3 main functions I should perform under this new setup:

• create new products
• identify markets for the products
• promote my new products
• increase blog traffic

2. Necessary Information, Actions and Habits

• focus on creating extra products (text, audio and video)
• focus on promoting my blog via social media
• allocate at least 2 extra hours each day for new products
• evaluate the promotion and generated income

3. Establish Priorities

• the most important thing: create products (priority 1)
• the second most important thing: promote the products (priority 1)
• the third most important thing: increase blog traffic (priority 2)

4. What To Ignore

• spend less time reading other blogs
• spend less time on other projects (workshops, for instance)
• ignore alternative monetization like display advertising

5. Run A Dry Test

As you may already know I already have 5 books published on Amazon and things are going pretty well on this direction. The dry-test started on early January and just finished a few days ago when my 5th book was approved. I know how my dominant setup will look like for the next few months.

Well this is how a basic mind defragmentation process looks like. This is really sketchy but I hope you got the idea.

How Often To Defrag?

Similar concepts in productivity metodologies (like GTD), suggests that a thorough review should be done weekly. In my experience, there’s no need for a weekly review in order to keep your mind defragged. It’s more about how often you will change your dominant setup, or your goals. This is also closely related to your own lifestyle.

For instance, I do think you should do a defrag every time you leave on holiday, but only if a holiday will mean a major shift in your regular lifestyle. If your current lifestyle is a nomadic one, living location independent, maybe you should do a defrag every time you check in to a new country.

***

What are your thoughts on this one? Do you see any more steps involved in the process? Do you see the process with even fewer steps? Would you try this? Did you already tried it but under a different name? Would love to hear from you in the comments.

Translations of this post: Spanish (Como desfragmentar tu cerebro).

Raw Food Update – Almost 6 Months Later

After a series of 6 articles about The Making Of An Online Business, I thought it would be wise to write about stuff that has been ignored for long time here on my blog, and also about something a little more personal than business advices. Although they seem to have quite an audience, these advices are not my primary goal for this blog. As I always said, this blog is a continuous search for a personal path.

And that personal path lead me almost 6 months ago on the raw food track. My loyal readers know already what does that mean, but for the new ones I will outline some of the raw food specifics. I don’t eat meat, not any animal food like milk, eggs or cheese. I don’t eat processed food, anything cooked is outside my view. I only eat fruits, vegetables and seeds. The only exception is honey, which is the product of… I don’t know if I can associate it with milk, but whatever, I eat honey.

Although this seems like a very limiting choice of foods, it is in fact a very pleasant one. I eat apples, pears, bananas, avocados and all kind of fruits I can find. I eat a lot of roots like celery, carrots and parsley. I incorporate garlic and onions any time I can and of course I eat a lot of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and capsicum. I discovered several months ago that pine buds are a fantastic food, along with almonds, nuts or pumpkin seeds. During winter I eat a lot of dried fruits like dates, prunes or raisins and of course oranges and mandarines. In fact, I do have a greater variety than before.

Raw Food And Health

I plan to have a complete medical test later this month and I will write in detail the differences from my last medical test. Please note that before going raw vegan I was a lacto-ovo-vegetarian for more than 3 years. I did have some cholesterol anomalies and I did had a colon sensitivity which was in fact pretty disturbing in the last 4-5 years. Before being a vegetarian I was a complete mess in terms of eating, I was also a regular drinker in my early twenties and I guess this can leave pretty powerful marks.

There are visible effects of my health even without the medical tests, which I guess they come clean this time. First of all, the weight loss is constantly at same level. I am 1,82 tall and my weight is between 79-81 kilos regardless of what, when and how I eat. During the first three months of being raw vegan I lost 14 kilos. This is a fantastic benefit and it will well worth a raw food diet even if it would be the only one.

My sleeping patterns are completely upgraded. I can go to sleep anytime now, have around 7 hours a sleep and then wake up relaxed and ready to go. Doesn’t matter if I go to bed at 23:45 or at 21:00, I do sleep 7 hours and feel ok. I had a lot of issues with my sleep before, I either overslept constantly, either made white nights every other week, in order to “win” some time. Not anymore. I literally sleep like a baby.

Oh, and one other thing to mention about my health, which I think it’s pretty important. During last month we were traveling for the holidays. While in Switzerland, Bianca caught a serious cold. She was feverish (around 39-40 degrees Celsius) for 2 nights in a row and had to have antibiotics. Usually, when somebody in the family has a bacterial infection like that one, all the family is picking it up. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t pick it up this time.

The other day, after 2 weeks of kindergarten, Bianca caught another infection (we were warned about that, every time a kid starts socializing like this, there will be an adaptation and immunization period). Didn’t caught this either. While Bianca’s immune system is starting to build up seems like my immune system is already better than before. It’s important to know that last year during May – just two months before starting to eat raw – I had a horrible illness in which I had almost a week of high fever, and it was a bacterial infection. So, it’s definitely a big improvement here.

I’m sure that my body is now in better shape and all its functions are better than 6 months ago thanks to this raw food habit. I also think that there are some better protection processes taking places in my body, but it’s too early now to write about this. I will monitor these patterns closer and see how it’s going. It’s basically about how my body reacts to a serious increase on stress (being it a fitness session, or a bacterial infection). I’m sure there is something much better going on, but without more details I can’t be sure and I really don’t want to go delusional here, keeping it only to the facts for now. (more…)

Therapeutical Talking And Writing

Every time I talk about something that was on my mind for a lot of time, I have the tendency to forget about it shortly after. Just talking about things that really were on my head seems to make them disappear afterwards. I had this impression a lot of times. Lately, I experienced this almost on any topic I am thinking about. Expressing my thoughts in words, written or talked, made the topic vanish. It’s like giving the thought some shape pushes it out of my brain, into another realm.

I had this going on for many years. I ruminated about something for months, making it bigger and bigger in my head, and then, all of a sudden, expressed it violently. Either in form of a journal entry, a blog entry, or sometimes in a fight or controversy with somebody else. After the eruption, the inside volcano magically disappeared. I even forgot that there was a volcano in that place. Shifted my attention to something else, and of course, started another ruminating session on a different topic, soon to be ended with another eruption, in several days, weeks, or months.

This chain of reactions lead me to the concept of therapeutically talking or writing. In today’s blog post I’ll try to understand what are the reasons for this therapeutical dimension of talking. Why is this happening, what are the triggers and what are the limits of this behavior. Is this a good thing, a bad thing or just a thing that I have? We’ll see about that together.

Healing Talking

During the last 5-6 years I started to pay more attention to this phenomenon. I monitored those “eruptions” and the subtle mechanism behind them. Gradually isolated similar events and tried to build on a pattern. It seemed that every confusion, fear, worry or lack of trust was in fact a root for a ruminating session. Not being able to express in the very moment my feelings about that confusion or fear pushed it back into my mental backyard, converting them in seeds of some huge wild-growing plants. 

Without paying attention to those plants, they grew until they started to shade my normal thinking patterns. They grew so big that they took some of the whole garden light. So big that I was forced to confront them. And the only immediate action I could take was to cut them out. Talking them out loud, writing about them, bringing them into conversations or fights. I just cannot leave in the dark, so I had to eliminate the obstruction, most of the time by violently expressing it.

After I eliminated those huge ugly wild-growing plants, the backyard was clean again. No need for another confrontation, my mental clarity was not obstructed anymore. Those wild-growing plants were out for good, so the very topic that generated them was forgotten.

This pattern was so powerful that it become my way of life. Almost everything that wasn’t managed was staying somewhere back, waiting to reach an “explosion” point. After expressing my feelings out loud, the problem disappeared. I went on this rollercoaster for years, until I started to feel annoyed about something.

I didn’t realize in the beginning what was my annoyance. But things around me started to lose consistency. I was forgetting stuff, more and more stuff and more and more often. If there was something that I was already “erupted” on, I even avoided direct confrontation. I knew from the beginning that this will lead to a huge wild-growing plant that will need to be cut in a painful storm of words, so I was keeping the distance. I didn’t engage in a lot of activities, started to work less, to keep honest relationships away, to avoid social interaction. All of that was before a source of pain expressed by words, so it had to be avoided.

But that was even worse. My way of dealing with negative emotions or situations was keeping me from experiencing a true and sincere life. Everything was thrown back and vomited weeks after in order to keep me clean. And between those periods I was almost invisible. I wasn’t doing much on my own. It was this chain of non-confrontation and therapeutical talking that took command of me. It was an auto pilot. (more…)

Raw Food Update – 4th Month

It’s been more than 4 months now since I’m eating only raw food. That means eating only fruits, vegetable and seeds, unprocessed. It’s been quite a while since I’m doing this and I’m glad I did it. In today’s post I’ll try to outline some of the consequences of this lifestyle.

Raw Food Is A Lifestyle

Yes, that’s the most important thing about eating raw. It’s more than a diet. It’s more than an eating habit. It’s a lifestyle in itself. Eating raw food had a lot of impact in all areas of my life. The most noticeable effects were those related to my physical body. I will not insist on that, I’ve already published some graphs of my weight loss in the 3rd update about raw food. I will just mention that my weight remained steady, between 79 and 81 kg, no matter what I ate.

But as I said, it was not only the weight loss. My sleeping patterns improved dramatically. I can wake up every morning at 6 AM and have a full day without noticing fatigue. I can do all type of work, not only intellectual, and feel balanced and lucid. No matter if I do some DIY work in the garage, involving use of heavy machines, so to speak, or if I work on my social network or do some blogging, the overall energy level is still high.

Sometimes I wake up at 8 AM, but that’s because I fall asleep after midnight. I still feel ok. Sometimes I wake up at weird hours, like 4:43 or 5:32, several days in a raw. I have to find a way to cope with that. Sometimes I stay in bed, and sometimes I wake up and try to do some work, or to read or to surf the web. There are days in which I try to take the afternoon nap with Bianca. I don’t feel that strange feeling of oversleeping, even if I do take a one hour nap in the afternoon. I wake up alert and energetic.

In fact, this energy level is so much higher that I sometimes forget other people do experience spikes in their energy level. I noticed that before but it become much clearer in the last month. Right now I can feel if somebody has a energy spike or an energy whole. Most of the time those spikes are related to cooked meals – man, I feel so satisfied with this, I need to be lazy for a half an hour -  or to coffee. I don’t have this type of up and down energy line anymore.

My body appearance has also dramatically changed. Not only I dropped that ugly belly for good, but I can see that the muscles on my body are now in the correct place. I need to reboot my gym practice though, and I could hardly wait for it. I didn’t started right now because I know there will be an adaptation period of at least one week. And in one week we’ll going in Switzerland for the Holidays. We’re expected to stay there more than 2 weeks, have the New Year Eve there, and that would just made the first gym week useless. I’ll start it next year. (more…)

Finding Your Personal Mission

A personal mission sounds pretty serious, doesn’t it? Living your life by a personal mission must be something really hard and difficult. It means waking up every day and creating your flow of actions according to that personal mission statement, right? That means your freedom is gone. Being spontaneous is doomed and your life enjoyment dead and buried.

The vast majority of people are thinking like this. To be honest, I used to think the same, for a very long part of my life. Having a personal mission always sounded extremely limiting to me. I love to be free, I love to change my mind whenever I feel like, I love to be flexible about stuff and a personal mission sounded like the most effective way to kill all of this. I always rejected the idea of having a personal mission. Life is something you discover every second, right? So why putting labels on it and build limiting fences?

It took me a lot of hard work and a lot of unhappy experiences to understand the benefits of having a personal mission. It took years of delusion and lying to myself, hundreds of artificial values to invest in and tons of social conditioning to bear. It took almost a lifetime.

Why Having A Personal Mission?

First of all, let’s be clear on one thing: right now I live with a personal mission, but I used to live very comfortable for years without one. It’s not mandatory. It’s just far more better for me. This is not, by any means, an evangelist post which aims to make you create your personal mission just because it worked for me. It might not work for you. In fact, it might not work for a lot of people. But it worked for me.

So, why having a personal mission?

• Because it subtly gives a new substance to my everyday activities.
• Because it brings a lot of coherence and meaning to my everyday activities.
• Because it puts me in perspective: how I’m doing today versus how I’ll be doing 5 years from now.
• Because it makes me do the things I do best and avoid the things I’m not good at.
• Because it creates a personal path that I will follow with joy.
• Because it makes me happy about things I can do and prevent me from being unhappy by doing things I don’t want to do.
• Because it’s keeping my energies focused.
• Because it helps me understand why I’m here and how I can live better.

How To Choose Your Personal Mission?

Well, I don’t know how to choose your personal mission, because that’s your job. I do know how I chose my personal mission. (more…)