Insight Synthesis

What Does Having More Money Feel Like?

2012-07-19T13:09:59Z

Having more money usually results in no more than a higher Quality of Life (QoL.) It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll suddenly begin forming new habits because of this big change in your life.

Our hobbies and things we buy are directly correlated to our budget. We implicitly raise our standers of quality and how we perceive purchases. If hiring somebody to fix your shower head will cost $50, and you make $50 an hour, that means you’re spending only $50 vs the 3-4 hour DIY job you’re thinking about to save money. 3-4 hours to do something means the cost (in work hours) comes out to $150-200 and probably low quality work.

People who overspend when they are rich are people who likely overspent and gotten into debt before coming across their fortune. Here’s an example: Spending $300/night on a hotel isn’t that big of a deal to somebody who makes $1000 a day. If that person is making $30,000 a month, $300 to them is only 1% of their monthly income. 1% of $4100/month – a common middle class monthly income (~$50k/year) – is $41. That doesn’t sound absurd. In fact, we will probably opt to spend much more if we feel this is a one time thing, or “we’re on vacation so we might as well stay somewhere nice.”

Productivity Tips That Actually Work

2012-07-19T13:03:36Z

If it takes less than 10 minutes to do, do it now. Some 10 minute or less tasks are taking a shower, doing the dishes and going around the corner to buy something you need.
Don’t have idle moments. If you feel you’re being idle or conversing with your inner critic too much, shake it off and remind yourself what the next important action is. It will make you feel like crap but if it’s something you can finish in 10 minutes or less, the pros beat the cons.
Have yourself complete at least one small part of what you’re doing before going on breaks. If you feel the need to take a break because you’ve “earned” it by doing a task, then do another task but for no more than 10 minutes, then continue with your break. Over time you will naturally build a habit of reminding yourself what matters right now. Doing the dishes so you don’t have to do 2 loads before bed, vs doing the dishes now and possibly having to do another load before bed knowing both tasks will take 20 minutes in total.

The idea here is to use the time you have between important tasks to complete mundane little tasks that quickly pile up

Sometimes you’ll need help. Sometimes you’ll fail (certainly more than you’ll win, at anything) and sometimes you’ll have regrets. These are part of the human experience and brooding over them costs a lot of time. Most people don’t realize how much time they have in a day (even minus sleep.) It’s not easy to condition yourself to change right away

New experiences are important to help your brain cells build stronger and more efficient connections together. This plasticity is responsible for molding your behaviors and humans are able to constantly make use of it in positive ways to induce a conditioned response. You can’t choose exactly how you feel. Your brain
Don’t say no unless you have a great reason. If the person inviting you is constantly rebutting every excuse you have, they know you don’t want to go because you’re disturbed or anxious. There’s no point hiding it and there’s also no real point in saying no unless you really have an excuse. Alone time results in strengthening the networks between neurons such that they are configured in formations that determine how you feel about something and how you approach it. It’s obvious when somebody is depressed or anxious, and trying to talk them out of it isn’t going to work.

Always take into account the fact that others don’t perceive things you do. You might have a grand idea or you’r enthusiastic about a subject. You’ve found something that’s meaning to you. This means whatever it is you can’t stop raving about is a way to help you cope with your own issues. For others to join in to help you achieve it, or when it comes to explaining your idea to somebody else, keep in mind that the other person probably doesn’t have the same definition of the adjectives you’re using. Some people might understand you at an intellectual level, but unless you have authority (experience) and a proven track record, telling people your ideas generally results in questions and topics that lead you to never start. Show off or ask for help only when you’ve done a majority of the work and have shown that this is something you’d actually pursue this time. You waste everyone’s time by constantly switching between ideas.

How to Get Small Tasks Done

2011-02-25T23:48:35Z

Small tasks pile up quickly. One tip I use is to simply remind myself that if the task takes less than 10 minutes, Its best to get it out of the way right now.

Doing the dishes right after eating or cooking takes about 1-5 minutes tops for 1-2 people’s dishes. It takes about 3x as long to finish the same load if you let food dry onto the dishes overnight.

Doing your dishes encourages others to do theirs as well. You should continue to do at least your own dishes regardless of whether your roommate/partner/family take notice or not.

Taking out the trash takes no more than 2-3 minutes. Before adopting this habit (took awhile) I used to let garbage pile up in my garage and take it out in big batches monthly.

It’s unlikely you would have productively used the 5-10 minutes each task takes. When depressed, anxious or just unproductive, time seems to fly by very quickly. In fact, 10 minutes is a very long time. Adopting a habit of learning something, recreational reading or exercise for 10 minutes a day is a great start.

The Reason Self-Help Doesn’t Work

2010-10-04T20:01:40Z

There are some excellent self-help material out there. Some of it can change lives, or at least instill excellent habits and help one see things in a new light. Think and Grow Rich is a classic. Steve Pavlina’s articles are informational and motivational. Joe Novarro’s books on body language are a must read for everyone. There’s something I noticed about people who don’t get many benefits from self-help.

Self-help books assume that you’re healthy to begin with. How can you Get Things Done when you can’t even change the cat litter less than once a month, or do the laundry or dishes?

These things aren’t easy, but for some people they just aren’t possible. It’s not that one may be physically incapable of doing something, but for people who suffer from depression (clinically, not just occasional sadness,) it’s easy to justify against doing anything. No matter how good this advice is, telling a depression person to exercise daily will never produce results. Telling a depressed person to quit smoking will never produce results. That person may be able to exercise and quit smoking after the depression is taken care of. In this sense, these things would serve as symptoms of depression rather than a cause.

If you’re stuck and you can’t seem to move forward, especially if it has been this way for a prolonged period, I recommend seeking professional help. It takes a lot of courage to get past the stigma of mental illness (it takes about 8 years to diagnose depression, on average) but it doesn’t make sense to loiter through life until it gets bad enough that you will end up seeking professional help anyway.

After the mental illness is being taken care of, the self-help material begins making sense in a new light. It’s no longer just mental masturbation, but begins being actual habits that you can work into your life slowly. Treating the depression will not change the bad habits a person depressed for years may have integrated into his life, but once you treat the illness (either via medication or psychoanalysis, or both) getting things done, exercising on a regular basis, getting over shyness, socializing, etc become feasible, especially after you begin seeing changes occur at such a rapid rate.

So What If the Chemical Imbalance Theory is Wrong?

2010-10-04T19:46:40Z

When discussing depression and medication, people use the argument that medication is ineffective because they don’t agree with the chemical imbalance theory (that low serotonin causes depression.) Not only is this an obvious logical fallacy, but the chemical imbalance theory is no longer in vogue in the science circle. It hasn’t been in decades. It mainly gained traction because it was used in a few anti-depressant commercials and is now perpetuated by people who are anti-psychiatry and anti-pharmaceauticals.

Many people don’t realize this but we don’t know how many drugs work. It’s pretty irrelevant to the patient. If a drug is safe and effective according to studies, then the drug may be administered to help a patient, regardless of whether we know exactly how it works or not. If we knew enough about depression, then anti-depressant’s wouldn’t cause so many side effects and psychiatry for depression wouldn’t be hit or miss. But these facts don’t disprove that the medications as effective. If you’re depressed, what choice do you really have? You can suffer from depression for another 10 years waiting for new studies and medications, or you can take whatever treatment(s) work today and live a ridiculously higher quality of life.

There are many plausible theories on what causes depression that don’t involve low serotonin. In fact, a drug called Tianeptine is an SSRE—Selective Serotonin Reuptake Enhancer—meaning it works the opposite of SSRIs and it’s as effective for depression. (“SSREs have been demonstrated to be as effective as SSRIs against depression, have a much faster onset of action (immediate), and have a much better tolerability profile”)

Remember that in psychiatry, meds are prescribed based on the patient’s own experiences. Medication is changed, augmented and doses adjusted purely based on how the patient feels. The patient is not tested for having low serotonin or low dopamine. HOW the medication works is irrelevant to most patients and even to most doctors. Doctors may keep up with the latest studies, but to them, their primary goal is making you healthy again.

Let’s look at a scenario:

Jane is depressed. It gets worse over the years, to the point where she lost her job and cannot emotionally work anymore. She’s overwhelmed and chronically fatigued, and cannot bring herself to do much anymore. Just taking out the trash feel’s like a hard day’s work, and most of her time is spent surfing the net or asleep. She can see her life turning to shit day by day, but cannot muster up enough motivation and enthusiasm to do anything about it. She may not be suicidal, but death by atrophy or homelessness is preferred to the efforts of living.

She has friends that insist that prayer, exercise, “going out” and so forth will cure her depression. Jane likes her friends but takes her advice with a grain of salt. They’ve obviously not been depressed, otherwise how do they expect a depressed person to go out and exercise? When you’re overwhelmed, there’s a feeling that there are far bigger things to worry about and philosophize over than going out to exercise.

Things get so bad that Jane considers seeing a doctor. She feels somewhat embarrassed but knows that it’s for her own good.

Jane begins taking Prozac (or Zoloft or Celexa or any other SSRI) and feels even worse for the first 2-3 weeks. She expects this and remains persistent in taking her meds. She wakes up one morning and things begin looking up. Things are different, though she can’t quite put her finger on why. Things aren’t as bad as she had been seeing them the past few months. Living may not feel easy, but it certainly feels feasible. She gets out of bed and her house and room look different. When did it become such a mess? When did she stop caring about the stench coming from the piles of laundry all over her room? Did breakfast always taste this good? She steps outside and notices how beautiful the world is. Trees, people running about, a breeze of fresh air, was the world always like this? Just last week this same scene was monochrome. Today it’s vivid.

Now would it really matter to Jane if the chemical imbalance theory is wrong? If she were to pick up a newspaper that says in bold “Scientists Prove Low Serotonin is NOT the Cause of Depression” would that suddenly make Jane’s world monochrome again?

Jane may feel great and then one day decide to stop taking the meds. Her life goes to shit within 3-6 months. When she starts the medication again, her life is fixed, again. That’s all that really matters to Jane.

Whether the Prozac helps her depression by inducing neurogenesis (growing new neurons,) increasing serotonin, reducing the damage caused by cytokines (stress), whether it’s a placebo, or whether it signals for Zeus to zap Jane’s brain with a lightening bolt, none of that matters. Jane probably doesn’t care how Aspirin, Penicillin, her Ipod or her microwave works. These serve functions to Jane, much like the function to live offered by her anti-depressants.

A $10 Self Control Experiment

2009-12-12T06:20:32Z

Spend at least $10+ buying something you really want to eat. The healthier, more expensive, more ethnic – and anything else that may make it easier to justify eating the meal, the better.

Buy this meal, prepare it, unpack it, etc, and then have it sitting in front of you. Oh, and don’t eat it. Just sit.

DO NOT taste any part of the meal. Don’t even taste the ketchup packets.

DO NOT eat anything for the next 8 hours.

DO notice the smell and freshness of it.

DO make note of every justification you’re coming up with. (See list below)

Remember that this is a test of self-control, not healthiness, finances, or anything else. The cost of the meal is the cost of the experiment, not “a waste of money.” Yes there are starving kids in Africa, but when did you give a shit?

This will likely take a few tries, but try to 1up the last meal you failed to resist.

Justifications that may be going through your mind:

I’m wasting money
I’m wasting food
My mom/Gods told me never to throw food out.
I never tried food from this place
I never tried this dish/item
I’m gonna be awake for a long time so I should eat
I’m hungry. It’s not healthy not to eat
I need protein (or carbs, or fats, or calories, …)
I have dry mouth (water is OK but don’t fill yourself up)
I’m afraid of getting an ulcer (or some other medical condition)
I just drank coffee, alcohol or , it’s better if I eat something with these drugs
I don’t have self-control, who cares?
I’ll try this again some other time
Just a bite (1 bite is justified same way as entire meal)

Notice that in the back of your mind, the goal that you will eat the food will remain. What’s stopping you from eating the food is your search for a reasonable justification. The point of the task is to stop this searching and just accept the unwanted end result – no soup for you.

Chillax

2009-12-12T06:07:45Z

There are no benefits to freaking out. None. Deep breath and a slow exhale.

Procrastinating things never makes them enjoyable

2009-12-12T05:54:11Z

When you don’t feel like doing something, you may decide to take a nap, or postpone the task to a later day (most likely tomorrow). This seems like sound logic, but it usually disregards the fact that when the time comes to actually do the task, you will not feel anymore desire to do it than, than you did the time you postponed the task. And you will likely postpone it again.

There are situations in which putting things off is OK, or even the best solution at the time (i.e., too drunk, etc), but most of the time, you might be postponing something simply because you haven’t given it much thought yet and have no idea where to begin. The task seems overwhelming, or because the task just provides no immediate pleasure.

“I’m too tired” and “I’ll take a nap” are excellent excuses because we imagine waking up refreshed, energetic and ready to take on anything. This is almost never the case. In fact, when I have a lot of things piled up from the prior week, I definitely don’t want to get out of bed. This becomes worse when more todo-list items, especially ones of high priority, are all reaching their deadlines or are already past due.

Always give tasks a thought on what the exact steps required are to complete the task, and about how long it will take, before postponing it. If it takes less than 10 minutes, why not do it right than and there? It will end up taking much longer than 10 minutes if you’re going to postpone it multiple times and potentially suffer a consequence.

An analogy would be being too lazy to login to pay your credit card bill, but all the while worrying about it, and finally getting a late fee and lower credit score.

Getting Things Done? Try getting ANYTHING done

2009-12-12T05:48:39Z

Cleaning is the Manly Thing to Do

2009-09-21T17:07:49Z

(Cleaning and cleaning up in this paper are used interchangeably to refer to restoring a unit or environment to how it was prior to starting a task, including but not limited to water+soap cleaning, such as doing the dishes.)

Cleaning up sucks. It can stop you from starting an otherwise fun project because you don’t want to bother with the clean up. Unfortunately, it’s a necessity — one that many people would never learn to just accept and do without whining. It’s one of those are things that just have to be (done).

Cleaning up is actually a manly thing to do. A major aspect of being a man entails putting emotions aside and doing whatever task needs to be done. Being able to stop yourself from thinking how awful and ‘worthless’ cleaning up might be – whether done in a whiny fashion in which you bitch about how annoying cleaning up is, or done in a state in which you envision devising some clever way to avoid cleaning up: A business plan, an innovation, or any philosophical or logically correct idea – will almost always result in you just getting up and doing the work anyway.

The thought that you have to clean up is easier to accept effortlessly if you tie it into each task you’re doing. It might take 2 minutes to cook Ramen noodles, but it would be erroneous to tell yourself that eating will only take 2 minutes. Though the noodles need to remain in the water for 2 minutes before they are ready, the entire process from opening the cupboard to finishing the dishes takes much longer.

Keeping the entire process from start to finish in mind before you begin will make it easier to quickly accept and finish up anything that needs to be done afterwards. But besides that, cleaning up is actually pretty cool sometimes. Quality cleanliness is an art. Anyone can wiggle a plate left and right under running water and say they did the dishes, but being able to use an efficient amount of water (and no more), the right amount of soap/solution, and devise methods for making finishing the task easier or more efficient, takes practice. And it shows, as you will learn if you live with somebody who’s impatient or simply doesn’t put much effort into cleaning up

The Only Motivation/Productivity Tip You’ll Ever Need

2009-08-03T14:22:46Z

It’s something we know deep down but continue to ignore and try to find alternatives for, sort of like physical exercise. We look for tips, shortcuts, medicine to take, people to copy and people to push us. Ultimately, all the experience, wisdom, knowledge we gain, and all the self-help books, will lead us to this same conclusion: Just Do It – it’s the only mantra you need.

Knowing this, begin looking for an answer not on how to be more productive (I just told you how), but on why you avoid things that aren’t enjoyable right now. It’s because you’re not future oriented, and it’s the same reason you don’t exercise on a regular basis. The kids who sat in the back of the class in junior high school and didn’t do any work probably had the same problem. Imagine you’re teaching them why they should suck it up and go to class, and then use the same thing you tell them to motivate yourself to suck it up and just do what needs to be done, right now.

What if You Record Yourself for a Day?

2009-08-02T12:04:36Z

Imagine taking a camcorder and recording yourself for 24 hours on an ordinary day. You could actually get hold of a camera and do this, but this may be difficult as batteries don’t last longer than a few hours, and your camera might not be portable enough to be practical in some situations (mounting it while driving, walking around with it, etc). Just visualizing this scenario works just as well if you put thought and effort into it.

Imagine this in third person; You seeing yourself from the outside, and with no audio (and if you actually do record, play it back on mute).

Your camera is positioned toward your bed and begins recording as soon as you’re up in the morning – up as in conscious, not necessarily fully out of bed. What would you see next? Some people get up right away, but most probably remain in bed fully awake for awhile, pondering the universe and their existence.

Now you go through your morning routine (SSS: shit / shower / shave), and eat, or not. Assuming you sit on the computer to work, what would you see yourself doing? Maybe pausing in between work, browsing random sites, just staring at the screen not doing much.

Imagine the rest of your ordinary day. If you’re a thinker, most of your life only happens in your head. On a muted video, you’re sitting around not doing much, but at that moment in your head, countless thoughts, ideas, worries, and emotions and imagery are happening, and you might not realize that to the rest of the world, you’re just standing still. No action is being taken, and you can finally see why hours go by without much work getting done.

Too Much Reading & Thinking, Not Enough Doing? You’re Normal!

2009-07-05T00:53:03Z

Thinking about doing something, but never actually going ahead and pursuing it is actually more common than you think. I’ve met very very few people (none I can think of off the top of my head) who will take an idea, no matter how simple or grand, or what the potential is, and then implement it. Some start, but most will lose hype in the idea within days if not a few weeks.

When we feel hyped about an idea we have (a new project, a business plan, etc), we feel the idea is brilliant, perfect, etc, and we feel determined to begin working. This hype never lasts however, no matter how brilliant the idea is in an objective sense. We eventually sober down and will easily begin pushing the idea further back on our todo list, if not completely disregarding it as being unfeasible or stupid. Every idea is stupid unless it works.

Being a Doer instead of a Thinker requires an excruciating amount of discipline. 99.9% of people can’t do it. Stop thinking you have a mental illness or any sort of problem, disadvantage or misfortune. You don’t even have a lack of discipline, if you’re comparing yours to the average person. Sure, Amphetamine might help, but it doesn’t mean you have ADD. Depression and anxiety can hinder progress and stop you from doing pretty much anything, but it doesn’t mean not being depressed or anxious will necessarily mean you will begin knocking big projects off your list.

Understanding this may give you a more accurate picture of yourself and put you in a more positive mindset. You don’t want to be normal, you want to be exceptional. Suddenly, there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with you — instead, you have a drive to work beyond your limits and excel at what most people cannot – Doing things when you absolutely don’t feel like it. Skipping naps and other enjoyable things to get shit done.

People are More Understanding than We Assume

2009-07-02T16:35:15Z

You’d be surprised to find out that most people are understanding if you just speak to them. It’s almost never all-or-nothing, and many people will gladly settle for much less than what you think they expect of you. Here are some examples…

You can usually ask for an extension on school work. Contrary to what I’ve always assumed, professors aren’t going to think you’re an idiot or sigh, just because you tell them that you’ve been having a problem with the work or need some extra time to finish.

Even after you’ve agreed to finish something for a client, there’s nothing wrong with going back to them and telling them that you can’t get this or that done exactly as planned, or that things are taking longer than expected. If you can’t finish something on time, it’s better to tell them ASAP and work something out, rather than giving up quality by rushing things.

If you can’t make it to an appointment on time, just call in that you’ll be a little late. Very few things are worse than having people wait on you, especially if it’s a first meeting.

Most of the time we won’t speak up out of fear or humiliation, but there’s no shame in going back and explaining something honestly to a person, no matter how high we think they expect something from us. Ironic.

If you closely watch how people interact with you or with each other, they’re usually pretty honest about what they can and cannot do. The idea that only people who are incompetent or slow go back and ask for more instructions, or admit that they don’t understand something, is completely irrational. In fact, there’s something non-human about just taking in commands and shitting out work – Input/Output.

Stop Doing Half-Assed Work!

2009-06-20T09:56:11Z

Sometimes we avoid doing trivial tasks because while the task itself takes 5 minutes, there’s a burdensome process that must happen before and after the task. One example is upgrading your computer. Putting new computer memory (RAM) in is easy. It’s simple and takes literally a minute. The entire process of upgrading your RAM can take much longer, or at least seem to be a huge burden psychologically. We need to shutdown, move the pc, open it, put the RAM in, close the pc, move the pc back, run some RAM tests, etc.

In reality even the entire process done fully as hypothesized above doesn’t take too long, but we will subconsciously avoid or procrastinate on tasks that we think might be a chore. One way to counter this is to always think about maintenance while you work. Don’t do a half-assed job because you’re in a rush. Take extra time to make sure your work is quality. Leave your work in a state in which neither you, nor anybody else would mind going back to and maintaining. Depending on what you’re working on, document your work (for yourself as much as for others), clean up properly and make sure things are as close to how you left them as possible. Try to be consistent.

I have a major problem taking the garbage out, not because I mind spending 60 seconds picking up bags from every room and tossing them in a bin, but because I can’t find the garbage bags. Irritated, I fumble through my garage for a garbage bag, get the chore done, but then have the same problem a few days later. If I take an extra 5 minutes to organize all the things I need (bags, twist ties, etc), probably close to the bin going out, then the chore will remain trivial.

Another major cause of stress is not being able to find something, because I didn’t put it back in its usual place the last time I used it. This is especially aggravating when somebody else does it to me. Living with others who have bad habits is probably the best catalyst in getting you to make positive changes in your own habits.

Spending a little extra time in every single task you do takes considerable effort to make a habit, but is well worth it. I suggest starting small. I began by always putting things back where they belonged, and then moved on to doing the dishes as soon as I’ve used them, instead of having them pile up. It’s especially important to keep the flow going when you absolutely don’t feel like doing so. The best time to keep pushing and go with it is when you can logically justify putting the chore off. Being able to realize that washing a just-used plate will only take a minute and is worth it, when you can easily justify not washing the plate because you’re studying or otherwise very busy, is one of the last steps you’d need to get through before this habit becomes regular.