Visualization

Awareness / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs / Visualization

How a habit forms

There are plenty of books on habits. Too many, if you ask me. You don't need books to start habits. In my experience, self-awareness will get you farther. In particular, starting new behavior creates new emotions and reactions. Paying attention to them will guide you how to follow up to improve them more than reading---if you pay attention to everything you can. That level of self-awareness takes time and effort to develop, so books may seem to help more, but you have to practice self-awareness to develop it, which books hinder, like training wheels when learning to ride a bike. I recommend losing the training wheels as soon as you can. The habit development pattern Not just habits, but sidchas: Start sidcha ⇓ 2. Feel…

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May 17, 2017
My new graphic slogans
My Favorite Posts / Visualization

My new graphic slogans

Some people have told me I make some memorable short statements, which I find flattering. I've also thought about using picture-based social media sites, so I made some simple graphics of some of the statements I like. I don't know much design, so I welcome suggestions to improve. Otherwise, enjoy, and share them if you like them.

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May 6, 2017
Genuineness and authenticity: What it takes
Art / Creativity / Education / Leadership / Visualization

Genuineness and authenticity: What it takes

I finally watched Gone With the Wind. People routinely rate it one of the top movies. Watching it, you automatically rate it by the standards of its time. But watch the acting these iconic scenes. The morning after watching the movie, I woke up realizing how ungenuine and inauthentic the acting was. Sure, by the standards of its time, the acting was probably great. But watch this scene, the opening scene of the movie. Do you not see what are supposed to be grown men behaving like caricatures of children? At 0:56 the man shows his happiness by dancing. What grown man dances and whoops to show happiness for such a trivial reason? Actors call such acting indicating, which means behaving to indicate the emotion…

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February 17, 2017
Fat, Manhattan real estate, profit, and where obesity comes from
Fitness / Visualization

Fat, Manhattan real estate, profit, and where obesity comes from

I noticed when I shop at the grocery store, I use a lot less of it than I used to. I hardly use any of it any more, by floor space. I couldn't find a floor plan of my local market, but this one looks fairly representative: When you avoid food where you have to throw away packaging and food with fiber removed, you only use the two circled parts here: Some of the circled part includes a "coffee smoothie bar," which I wouldn't use. The biggest differences in my life for sticking with fresh produce (and bulk foods for nuts and legumes put in bags I brought with me) are that foods are more Delicious Convenient Cheap Local Healthy That is, by my values,…

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November 10, 2016
Origins: of me and teaching leadership
Art / Awareness / Education / Freedom / Nonjudgment / Relationships / Visualization

Origins: of me and teaching leadership

My reasons for teaching leadership experientially today are mainly To enable people to create meaning, value, importance, purpose, and passion in their lives and in the lives of people around them Because the challenges the next several generations will face require changing behavior on a global scale, which are social and emotional challenges, not technical, and I hope to help create a community of people with the skills to overcome these challenges but why I do it today isn't why I started. Why I Felt Attracted to Leadership I remember the first time I saw Nurse Ratched, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, named as one of the top villains in movies (#5 in the American Film Institute's ranking, two spots below Darth Vader…

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September 11, 2016
Company review: The Sweeten ruined my floor, went over budget and over schedule
Stories / Visualization

Company review: The Sweeten ruined my floor, went over budget and over schedule

I love recommending products and people that work. In the video below, I love the Cuisinart CPC-600 pressure cooker and Vita-mix blender. I don't like reporting on disasters, but some require it. Every summer my floor buckles because I used TheSweeten.com. When someone will work on where you live every day, you want someone trustworthy and with integrity, neither of which I found in working with The Sweeten. I bring up trust and integrity because I didn't just work with The Sweeten, I worked with one of its leaders, I think a founder. I followed his recommendations to post on his site, to choose the contractor he recommended, and on the design. He assured me he would manage the contractor, someone he knew. So even…

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August 10, 2016
20-minute vegetable stew
Fitness / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Visualization

20-minute vegetable stew

I've written about fresh vegetables, fruit, legumes, and how delicious, nutritious, convenient, and cheap they are. I decided to record myself making stew from scratch. I only wish I could write how delicious and nutritious it is. It tastes like it stewed all day. Yesterday and the day before you saw the contents of my fridge. Here's what I do with them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Ss9fXtSAc A few comments You'll notice I comment on the bag, rubber bands, and water. I try to minimize waste. The main waste for this was the packaging for the salt and curry powder, which I would average over hundreds of meals. Everything else I reused without getting new. The choice of vegetables is seasonal by what I pick up from my CSA…

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July 22, 2016
45 6-pack
Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs / Visualization

45 6-pack

Today I turned 45 and my 6-pack is nearly there. My goal isn't to get big nor to exercise a lot but to get rid of fat I don't want and free the rest of me while taking minimal time from the rest of my life. As always, to learn more about myself and to grow. This (My usual diet) Plus this (All my exercise equipment) (rowing machine, four kettlebells, ab wheel, sneakers, and cleats. I forgot a Frisbee)   Plus burpees, cold showers, and a pressure cooker for the most delicious, convenient, and cheapest food I've eaten Equals this If you'll pardon the hand-held selfie: I think the abs look good for a 45-year-old. I've never felt better. My resting heart rate is 53 or…

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July 20, 2016
The most helpful burpee video I’ve seen
Fitness / Habits / Visualization

The most helpful burpee video I’ve seen

This video shows burpee form more simply and clearly than any other I've seen. If you're trying to learn how to do them, I think this video shows it best. I prefer doing them barefoot and bring my knees outside my elbows when I jump forward, but those are matters of taste. Note that he touches his chest and chin at the same time and keeps his back rigid, not curling it. Easy ways to challenge yourself with the same form are to jump higher and bring your hands closer to each other for the pushup, which works the same muscles but harder. Good luck with your burpees!

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July 14, 2016
Farm fresh vegetables
Fitness / Nature / Visualization

Farm fresh vegetables

I meant to post about the vegetables I got each week from my farm share deal (called Community Supported Agriculture or CSA). The farm drops off its vegetables to a place a few blocks away and everyone picks up their share within a three-hour time slot. The summer/fall one I do delivers food twenty-four weeks. The winter/spring one delivers less often. This year's started last week, so the fresh vegetables are on my mind. The CSA changed my diet tremendously last year, along with avoiding food with packaging and the pressure cooker. I buy almost exclusively fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, and build legumes, nuts, and seeds. Before joining, I didn't know how to prepare from fresh vegetables or even what most of them were, which…

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June 17, 2016
The Beijing Sky, Ancient Rome, Mel Brooks, and personal responsibility
Awareness / Models / Nature / Visualization

The Beijing Sky, Ancient Rome, Mel Brooks, and personal responsibility

Have you seen the Beijing Sky lately? It looks more clear sometimes, but often like this: That's not fog, that's smog. We have a whole planet's worth of atmosphere, and we manage to make a city's air look like that. Beijing isn't alone. Plenty of cities around the world look the same, as you know. I couldn't help but think of it when I saw Mel Brooks lately and remembered a gag from his movie, History of the World, Part 1. The scene introduces ancient Rome and shows people in a market promoting the things history books attribute to ancient Rome. One guy is selling plumbing, which, I guess, Rome invented or made big. He shouts out: Yes, citizens, plumbing! It's the latest invention to…

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June 13, 2016
Your choice of sidcha isn’t that important. Just do one.
Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs / Visualization

Your choice of sidcha isn’t that important. Just do one.

Following up yesterday's post about the subtle value of sidchas, I want to lower the bar on choosing what activity to base your sidcha on. Doing one or two sidchas means you can say no to all the others and know you aren't missing out. Still, if you want to do an art-related sidcha, an exercise sidcha, a personal development sidcha, and so on, aren't you missing out on others. Maybe you're missing out by choosing the wrong one. Not a problem. All sidchas give you incredible value Doing a sidcha gives you some value. I'll represent it with this bar: I've done three sidchas for several years now---my burpee-based exercises, posting on my blog, and cold showers, not counting things that I don't consider…

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June 6, 2016
Art / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Inc.com / Visualization

Explore your passions to grow, develop, and to make your work art: My talk at Creative Tech Week

My talk at Creative Tech Week Monday followed up my Inc.com column, Why Entrepreneurs Are Today's Artists (and Why It Matters), which explored how anyone can express themselves and learn and grow through their work if they search for their passions within. Here's the video, just taken by a camera phone from the front row. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGO3k7_Ot_s It also refers to my Don't Be Walter posts from 2013 about the Big Lebowski.

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May 4, 2016
Op/Ed Friday: Science and technology does not equal innovation
Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Visualization

Op/Ed Friday: Science and technology does not equal innovation

I came across the infographic below and disagree with how it categorizes innovation and how it draws its conclusions. It categorizes innovation by "marketable contributions to technology-intensive industries as award-winning innovators and international patent applications." Then it concludes we should support STEM more. I agree we should support STEM more, to have a more educated population. They haven't supported their conclusion at all. I consider myself innovative. With a PhD in physics and having helped build a satellite successfully working in space I consider myself educated in science, technology, engineering, and math. I have met many scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. Very few of them have done what I would consider innovation. I have also met many non-STEM people and found them innovative. Huge innovations come…

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April 22, 2016
Hustling
Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Models / Stories / Visualization

Hustling

What do you do when they cancel your flight? In the late 70s, a man and his fiancée were visiting the Caribbean. They found themselves stranded in an airport when their airline canceled their flight to Puerto Rico. The man was disappointed, but based on his experience running a record business that he had founded, he took initiative to solve the problem. Noticing other people from the same flight were also stranded, he called a chartering company to find the cost to charter a plane. $2,000. He agreed to charter it. He divided that cost by two less than the number of seats in the plane, wrote a sign to show that price for a seat on a chartered plane to Puerto Rico, walked around…

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April 9, 2016
Video: I recorded my burpee sidchas
Exercises / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs / Visualization

Video: I recorded my burpee sidchas

I've meant to post a video of my burpee sidchas. Someone writing a book on high intensity interval training asked me for a video, so I finally recorded my morning and evening burpee sidchas. Maybe my burpee sidcha will show up in a book. I don't claim they're glamorous but I haven't missed a burpee in over four years. I do them every day. I started with ten burpees a day in December 2011, before I created the term sidcha. I add to the routines when what was challenging becomes easy. Ten burpees seems like nothing now. I turn 45 in a few months, if that matters. By the way, if you want to start a burpee sidcha, I recommend finding how many is challenging…

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March 10, 2016
Video: The Worst Problem in the World
Awareness / Leadership / Models / Nonjudgment / Perception / Relationships / Visualization

Video: The Worst Problem in the World

I've shown this representation of what I call The Worst Problem in the World at many seminars. I wrote about it about five years ago. Now you can see the video. Watch all the way through to see some solutions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUycXlo4OX8 Take my course if you want to get beyond it and resolve it in your life, mainly by doing the exercises in it to develop compassion and empathy.

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March 7, 2016
Humor / Inc.com / Visualization

My Inc. post today: Like TED Talks? This 99-Second Video Covers Them All

My post today on Inc.com, "My Inc. post today: Like TED Talks? This 99-Second Video Covers Them All," begins: Like TED Talks? This 99-Second Video Covers Them All Everyone loves inspiration, so we enjoy TED talks. But do they change behavior or just make us feel inspired? Who doesn't love feeling inspired? I do, so for a long time I loved TED talks. No longer. Why not? Because I distinguish between inspiration to act and mere feeling inspired. I've been asking people for years, and in no case of someone telling me a TED talk "inspired" them did they also change their behavior. Not a double-blind controlled experiment, but strong enough evidence for me. So I made this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCXp9GFcDhQ Read the rest at Inc.com: My Inc. post today: Like…

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February 29, 2016
Stop before you ruin things, part 2: a reader’s additions
Awareness / Models / Visualization

Stop before you ruin things, part 2: a reader’s additions

Last week in "Stop before you ruin it: Math that improves your life," I posted about not confusing behavior like this: with this: I gave examples of saturation: money and happiness, material stuff and happiness, nutrients and health, exercise and fitness, and time together and enjoyment. A reader wrote in a few more examples. She specified the x-axis but not the y-axis, though I think you can figure out the dependent variable in each Thinking too much (without doing anything) Solitude Drinking, Desserts, Hygiene Watching TV Organizing things, Cleaning Doing nothing I agree with most, from experience. Can you think of others?

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January 7, 2016
Stop before you ruin it: Math that improves your life
Awareness / Fitness / Models / Nature / Visualization

Stop before you ruin it: Math that improves your life

Do you hate doing things that take effort and get you no results? You're probably doing it a lot without realizing it, especially if you don't understand this simple concept I'll illustrate below. If you'd like to stop wasting your time, energy, and other resources on things that don't help your life, read on. Some things work like this: If the temperature goes up in Fahrenheit, it also goes up in Celsius. If you work more hours and you get paid by the hour, you'll get paid more. It illustrates cases where what you put in, you get out. We call it "linear" because it looks like a line. Not everything works this way. If you don't get enough vitamin C, your health improves when…

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January 1, 2016
Does this bottle disgust you?
Awareness / Nature / Visualization

Does this bottle disgust you?

I saw this bottle at an event. I've seen ones like it before, but this time I couldn't help feeling disgust. Why disgust? Because there is no need to package that amount of water for whatever people are using it for. It won't quench the thirst of anyone thirsty to the point of it affecting their health. For everyone else, it's just a superficial holdover for a few minutes. No one receiving this bottle needs the water in it. Anyone who thinks they do can stand to learn some self-discipline or to recognize that people actually suffer from lack of access to water and this bottle is contributing to people losing access to clean water. This is another perspective on this bottle. Anyone who thinks…

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November 12, 2015
Maturity and pasta
Fitness / Nature / Stories / Visualization

Maturity and pasta

I used to think of pasta and rice as staples---that is, the basic food of a meal to put everything else around. Over the years I've decreased the pasta, rice, and other staples in favor of vegetables. Now that I see restaurants' goals less to healthily nourish you and more to entertain your mouth and eyes, I see so-called staples as ways to increase their profit at the expense of your health. I want more vegetables and they want to give me less. Here is a visual tour of my view of how we mature, in pasta. Like many, I liked Spaghettios as a kid. Sweet and hardly any substance. More marketing gimmick than food, I'd say. They don't look that much more appetizing outside…

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October 2, 2015
Recycling doesn’t pollute much less than throwing stuff away
Models / Nature / Perception / Visualization

Recycling doesn’t pollute much less than throwing stuff away

Throwing things away so they'll end up in landfills pollutes. No two ways about it. Not using something in the first place doesn't pollute. Recycling feels like it's roughly in the middle. If you only have two comparisons and no objective scale, how else can you compare something in the middle but roughly in the middle. Since I wanted to feel better about myself, I probably thought of recycling as closer to not using something in the first place. Reusing polluted even less. Here's how I thought of the pollution scale of throwing things out: This belief fit the phrase "Reduce, reuse, recycle." They all seemed better than throwing something away and mostly related to each other. You can pollute a lot less than recycling…

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September 29, 2015
How to make less more
Awareness / Fitness / Models / Nature / Perception / Tips / Visualization

How to make less more

I eat a lot of mixed nuts and peanut butter. As far as I know, they're all healthy to someone without allergies. I eat a lot of them. I found a site that shows pictures of two hundred calories of various foods. I like and eat a lot of broccoli. Here's two hundred calories of broccoli: Looks like an amount that would go a long way to filling me up. Here's two hundred calories of mixed nuts: Not much! They would taste delicious and I love their crunchy, creamy texture, but if I wanted to fill myself with food, I'd choose the broccoli. Here's two hundred calories of peanut butter: Not much either. So how to make less more? I decided that as much as…

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September 28, 2015

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