When you are in the luxury position of people coming to you with a question (luxury because you are ‘ask-worthy’) how do you answer? Do you give the solution to those people or do you give them the handles to solve their own problem? Do you answer those questions or do you tell a story?

Don’t answer questions, tell a story instead
When you are giving the answer, you won’t help those people. You will help them right now, but you won’t help them in the long term. In about two weeks, they will come to you again, with the same type of question. You can’t keep answer the same question to the same people over and over again, there needs to be a long term solution. So, tell a story instead.

Let’s say, someone comes to you with the question: ‘I am the leader of my study group, but my fellow group members aren’t motivated at all to finish their task, how should I get them motivated?’ You can answer with: ‘Tell them that the goal is important and keep telling them over and over again.’ That answer will work, but that guy will come back, because it isn’t a long term solution, you just give them a solution for right now. You can also answer with a story of how you did that with your own study group. This means a longer conversation; you need to explain what you did, why and when. But when you had that talk, the guy won’t come back. He will understand the way you need to think when you want to motivate people.

Look at big speakers, are they answering questions or telling stories?
I would like to take Tim Ferriss’ his talk at WordCamp ‘how to build a high traffic blog without killing yourself‘ as an example. Tim talks about how he made a successful blog, his talk wasn’t about quick tips to get a successful blog (although those tips were in the talk), but he told the audience how he discovered the quick tips. He measured everything, made an optimalized website with good analysis. What makes this talk so great? Not his quick tips, but his awesome way of optimalizing his blog. You learn from his talk that if you want to run a better blog, you need to look at the statistics better.

What I try on this blog
I hope you noticed this already a little bit, I don’t give study tips only. I try to change the way you think with more personal development like topics. I do give study tips, but not exclusively. But on the long term, I hope you guys learn that changing the way you think, experimenting with studying, experiment with living your life gives you the perfect way to study, the perfect way to live. We aren’t the same, so we can’t have the same ways of living, of studying. We need to try things out ourselves.

Try to think first when somebody is asking you a question. What are you going to do? Answer them? Or tell a story? Are you going to answer them in the short term only? Or do you give them a long term solution with improving their thoughts? Good luck.

When you need to finish a paper, but you don’t do it, you are procrastinating. With this procrastination you build up a guilty feeling. ‘Shit, I didn’t work on my paper, I need to finish it right now, because I wasted a lot of time, I feel so guilty.’ This seems like a good motivator for a lot of people, they claim that they can work good with a guilty feeling.

Why I don’t think guilt is a good motivator
Ask yourself a question, is guilt an intrinsic or an extrinsic motivator? Does it come from the outside in the form of reward/punishment or comes it from the inside; do you really want to finish your paper deep inside? At first, you would say that guilt is an intrinsic motivator. You are feeling guilty, so you want to finish your paper now. I can’t agree with this. I think guilt is an extrinsic factor. Guilt is a punishment for not doing your task. So now you have to fix that guilty feeling by finishing a paper. In that way, you aren’t punished. So guilt is punishment before you did anything.

What will happen on the long term?
On the long term, you can’t keep guilt as a motivator to finish tasks. Because you aren’t changing from an extrinsic to an intrinsic motivator. If you want to succeed on the long term, you need to get away from rewards/punishments, you need to stand completely behind your goal. You need to find an intrinsic motivator to keep pushing yourself more close to your end-goal.

So, when you are feeling guilty about not-doing something, stop feeling guilty. You just didn’t do it, accept it. Finish it now and do your task on time next time. Don’t let yourself feeling guilty, because it doesn’t work. Good luck.

The anouncement

I have written my first ebook about motivation. It will be called ‘9 ways to get motivated for college’, it contains 8 tips to get motivated for college. Not the ordinary way, but ways you may not have thought about before! By the reactions I already had, I can tell that the ebook is going to be pretty awesome.

But I want more awesomeness. I want you to get involved. What is your tip to get motivated? Please share it in the comments or on Twitter or just send me an email. Just write down your way to get motivated in about 25 words (not more than a twitter text) and I will put your tip in my ebook! I’ll mention your tip with a link back to your Twitter/site/orwhatever. Interaction all over the place! Please share your tips!

It’s friday. I don’t want to bother you with complex ideas so near the weekend, so I would like to share with you my favorite three graduation speeches.

Pokémon Graduation Speech

This guy is awesome. You need some balls to get up there and start talking about pokemon!

Graduation Rap Speech

Again, a guy with balls!

A muscial journey through the high school experience

Sit back and relax

What are your favorites?

Having a powernap in a public place? Alright, what do you do with your alarm? Do you just put it out very fast, or do you put your phone on vibrate only? Here is a better idea when you want to powernap in public places like a train or a bus. The key-method.

How to powernap following the key-method

1. Get your keys out of your pocket and hold them. Hold them in your hands above the ground, which will make noise when your keys fall on the ground.
2. Go and nap. Go sit comfortable and start napping. Keep holding your keys above the ground in your hands.
3. Wake up from falling keys. ‘What happened?’ will you think when you wake up. Your keys just fell and you are woke up.

Why this works
When the keys fall out of your hands, you will suddenly wake up, this gives an adrenaline boost so you are awake immediatly. Besides the adrenaline effect, the key-method has another big advantage. When your keys fall out of your hands, you are exactly at the point where you change the phase of your sleep. When you enter this phase, it becomes harder to wake up and it will affect your night sleep. So the time you sleep before your keys fall out of your hands are perfect, it is the perfect amount of sleep to powernap!

Good luck, put this method to the test and keep me informed on how it worked out for you!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Napping Your Way Through the Semester (profhacker.com)
• How Long Should You Nap? (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

Not sure what to do with your life? Still worrying about which major you should do? Finding your passion is something which could keep you busy for years. There are million of books written about ‘finding your passion’. But if you want to learn your passion, you only need to ask yourself one question, hundreds of times and look at the results. The result you feel the most exciting about, the most comfortable with and the one you are the most enthusiastic about is the result of your passion. It only comes down to one question:

If you could do [insert random skill], what would you do?

• If you could breath under water, where would you go?
• If you could fly, where would you fly to?
• If you could dance, what would you dance, with who and where?
• If you could play the guitar, what would you play?
• If you could draw, on which painting will your signature be?
• If you could write, where would you write about?
• If you could help people, who would you help?

All this questions are basically asking you, what do you want to accomplish? You can insert any random thing and the result of it. This asks from you thinking in results, not in developing the skill itself. Some people say the journey is the most important, and it is. But when you know what your destination is, when you know what you are able to do when you accomplish your journey, your journey will be fun!

Back to how to find your passion, let’s take two of the example questions: ‘If you could play the guitar, what would you play?’ and ‘If you could draw, what would you draw?’. The answer will be for me on question number one: ‘Sweet child o’ mine – Guns ‘n Roses’ and on number two: ‘A Caribbean reef’

So now I just have to look at the result. What do I want to accomplish? Do I want to make a beautiful painting or do I want to play Sweet Child o’ Mine? I will choose to play the song on the guitar. That is something I really want to accomplish. So when I have to choose, I will pick up the guitar and learn to play.

If you want to find your passion now, make up a lot of these questions. Look at what you are doing right now in your life, that could be a good example (‘If I could speak French, who would I speak to’ or ‘If I could powernap, what would I do with my increased productivity?’) and make a lot of questions. Now answer them all. Make a big list of questions and results, and look at them. Give them numbers of how important you find the results. What do you want to accomplish? Which skill do you need to learn to get that result? That might be your new passion.

Do it now, don’t waste anymore time. If you don’t do it right now, you might forget this right away (unless you bookmark it). Make yourself a good pot of tea, put on a little bit of nice music, step back from your computer. Grab a piece of paper, write down questions, a lot of them. Answer them all, give them numbers of how important you find each of these results. And find your passion. Good luck.

When we want to change a habit, be more productive or improve ourselves, we usually head over to the experts. What do they advocate and how should I do it? They have difficult programs, expensive courses and nice books. We try what they do, discover it doesn’t work on us and throw it away. On to the next expert. Obvious, this isn’t going to work. We will get stuck in a circle of trying, quitting and trying something new. Instead of only trying proven methods, we should improve methods, tweak what experts do, set their method to our hand.

Change the way you try new methods
When you discover a new method, you should read about it and try it out. But if it doesn’t work, you shouldn’t quit and throw it away, you should try the same method again, but in a slightly different way. Analyze what happened when you were trying a method, where did it go wrong? Change it over there. For example, Leo Babauta tried Getting Things Done, but couldn’t implement it in his system, because he had to change too many habits at once. He didn’t threw GTD away, he looked back, asked himself why it wasn’t working and improved the method. He invented Zen To Done, where you only have to change one habit at the time. He changed the method, tried it again and wrote a complete new book about it.

Out of the box
Experimenting sounds obvious, but there are only so few people who actually experiment with tactics and methods. Those are the ones who actually invent new methods, those are the real experts. Why there are only so few? Because it is hard. We don’t want to think about why things are wrong. We just want to assume: ‘That method doesn’t work for me, let’s try another one’. It is so easy to say. Looking back at where it went wrong forces you to look for mistakes, to rethink processes. We don’t want to be confronted by mistakes.
Besides that, we need to think out of the box. For experimenting with new tactics you need to think differently; you need to think in solutions, not in problems. Thinking out of the box can be hard, because it isn’t comfort. Experimenting with yourself isn’t comfort. We want to do what we like, and don’t try too hard to become any better, because we have to put too much effort in it. We want to become better though, I’ve already pointed that out, people read a lot about methods to improve yourself and tactics. But we never put it in action that much, which means we can actually change ourselves, we don’t try a system for more than a week, because it requires effort and lost of comfort.

Get out of your comfort zone.
Do something crazy. Is there snow outside? Make a snow-angel. Tim Ferriss says you need to lay down on the ground at a busy street to get out of your comfort zone. Just lay down at the street, when someone asks you what you are doing say: ‘I just felt like lying down for a while.’ Act crazy, find ways to get out of your comfort zone. It will make the experimenting process easier.

How experimenting eventually give you comfort.
When you experiment with methods, with yourself, you will find comfort eventually. Because you will find a method which works. You want to learn speedreading, but it never worked out? When you eventually start to experiment, tweak methods and you will find something that works, you will be happy. You will enjoy the satisfaction of completing something.

Put this in action. Write down something you want to learn, right now. Something which you’ve tried to learn before, but it didn’t work out because you didn’t experiment. Write the methods down you’ve tried. Look back at it, find what went wrong. Experiment by tweaking methods, combining methods or by inventing a complete new method. When you do, write it down. Write down your findings, with the result. Is the result positive? You might have invented a new method! Be proud, feel happy. Experimenting will make us better persons.

If you have a big goal, you must also have a plan. When you are looking at your time plan, whether you say you need to work on your goal every day before class or one afternoon a week, you need to show up every time. Never, and never skip a time you need to work on your goal.

Charlie wants to write an e-book, his goal is writing an e-book. So he says to himself: ‘I’m going to write on the e-book every time I’m on the train back to my parents’.’ That is good, but now he needs to stick to it. When he meets friends in the train and they are talking to him, he needs to stop them at some point, to work on his e-book. It doesn’t matter how long he works on the e-book, as long as he works on it just for a couple of minutes, he just needs to show up, working on his e-book, as he planned to do.

Why is showing up every time so important? Those couple of minutes he works on the e-book, will those be productive? Will he get anything done?

The answer is yes. He probably don’t get much done, but everything he gets done is one step closer to his goal of writing an e-book. If he only writes half a page, he is half a page closer to accomplishing the e-book. That half a page may contain one of his best writings he has ever done, because he wanted to be that fast, because he got inspired by talking to his friends.

But there is something else, if you show up, you think about your goal again. If Charlie works on his e-book, his mind gets reminded of the e-book, he starts to think about it again. He might get some new ideas when he walks out of the train later that day, when he gets to sleep that night, because he has been thinking about his goal again.

Show up every day, and you are one step closer to your goal, one step closer to awesomeness. Just be there, just show up, every day, is all you need to do.

It has been more than 6 months now since I’ve had the HP bundle to review. I’ve done some reviews in the beginning of the giveaway and I am going to do the last one now.

The HP Pavilion dv6
What a machine. It works perfect for me. It’s big, it has muscles and it keeps going all the time. I almost never shut down my laptop, I always put it to sleep only, and it still works great. I haven’t been testing out any great games, basicly because I just don’t have the time and money for those games, but it has the potential to carry some great titles. I love the HDMi port, when I’ve plugged my laptop on the HD tv of my parents it was fantastic.

Furthermore, the dv6 came with 500gb hard drive, which is awesome of course, 4gb RAM, which makes it super fast and with Windows Vista. I think I’m going to upgrade to Windows 7, since all the great stories I’ve heard about it, but this works out fine too!

The HP Mini 110
In the beginning I said it was a sweet little thingy. And it still is. It has everything you expect from a netbook, and it misses everything all the other netbooks miss. It doesn’t have a cd-player and it doesn’t have a big intern memory. Although, it does have a big uptime (around 5-6 hours) and it is sooo lightweighted. I love it.

TimBuk2 backpack
Before I got the TimBuk2 backpack, I’ve never heard about them. Shame on me, obvious. TimBuk2 is great. The backpack I have is great, it is big, it has a seperate place for my laptop and it works out great. I’m travelling 2 times a week by train for around 3 hours, I always take the TimBuk2 bag, it can carry everything, including both the laptops and it takes me everywhere!

For students
Alright, this is great, but you want to know what it means for you of course. Well, I love the complete pack. I think it is a great bundle together. I use the netbook to make notes in class. You can just carry it in your bag (I think the TimBuk2 bag is too big to bring to class) and you can get it out really quick. It has an uptime for around 6 hours, so you won’t have any problems with failing batteries. The dv6 is the wonderful machine which stays home, ready to rock when you are back at your dorm room. It has all the power you need there, while you have the mobility with the mini 110. The backpack is wonderful for travelling to your parents’ and back.

To conclude, a great bundle. A great set of machines to use when you are a student. Thanks again to HP for supplying this great stuff!

If you have something which may be interesting to review, please contact me, maybe we can arrange something, I would love to help you out!

One of the essentials to get a good grade on your test is having good notes to review. But that sounds easier than it is. You can write down a lot, and still not getting the essence of what has been told to you. And when you are reviewing your notes, you have a lot to review. There is just so much, can you get all of this in your head? Probably not. There is a way to get good notes to review, including the essentials of what has been told to you, this is the Cornell Method of note taking. This will force you to understand the essence and to take complete notes.

What is the Cornell Method?
The Cornell method means that you divide your piece of paper in 3 boxes. The above-right box contains the name of the class, the date and the name of the teacher. This gives you a good overview and you know where to go to when you have any questions.

The big box on the right is where you take your notes. You take notes as usual, you write down what you have to write down and you make a pretty big, complete story. Everything you need to know is on there and more. In this box you also make drawnings and write down examples and cases. This box contains a lot of text and when you write it down you know you won’t remember all of it.

The small box on the left contains the key points of what you have written down. And nothing more. Only the essentials, you can review the notes on the right when you don’t understand something good enough.

How to make notes with the Cornell Method

1. When you enter class, get your notebook and draw lines to divide the boxes. Write down the name of the class, date and name of the teacher (and maybe his email address?) in the box top right.
2. Start taking notes. Write down almost everything the teachers says in the big box at the right and do it fast. Use abbreviations and doodles to write faster. When you are in doubt whether or not you need to know this, just write it down.
3. Go to the library after class and review your notes. Get the key points, the essentials, out of what you’ve done. Write them in the left box, where you keep the key points. Don’t write too much, you don’t need to explain points again, just cite to the right box. Make use of arrows.
4. When you are on the point with your studying for a test that you need to review your notes, review the key-points only. Don’t bother the big story at the right anymore, only review the key points. When you don’t understand something, or it is not completely clear, take a look at the box on the right. See the examples there and understand what you meant when you wrote the key points down.

The Cornell Method will make you understand your own notes better and saves you time. Besides that, you will also remember the lectures better, because you have reviewed them right away. The key-points will be floating around after the lecture, so you will remember those better.

Start now, start dividing your notebook in 4 boxes, or just buy a Cornell-method notebook (pre-divided, awesomeness). Put it into practise and be a winner.

As my post about the awesome Barney Stinson is still in the popular post section, I decide to do something similair to it, write a post about the legendary Joey Triibiani (the one from Friends).

1. How you doin’? Always ask how someone is doing. When there are problems, give them a listening ear. When there aren’t problems, they will like it that you’ve asked. Showing interest every once in a while makes us a better person, not only in the eyes of others, but also towards yourself! And, of course, it is a great pick-up line.
2. Pizza is a snack. Pizza isn’t a good meal, it’s just a snack. Eat pizza when you feel like a snack. Have pizza for lunch, pizza is more than a quick dinner. Enjoy pizza, everytime you want!
3. Never give up. Joey is an actor with not that much success. He had played once in a commercial, he played Kevin who couldn’t open a milk package. But he keeps doing what he wants to do and eventually becomes ‘Dr. Drake Romoray, neurosurgeon.’ Friends stopped after 10 seasons and what did Joey do? He started the show ‘Joey.’ Don’t give up.
4. Don’t act smarter than you are. Joey is honest, when Ross starts to talk about paleontology, Joey says he doesn’t understand it. He knows he is pretty stupid and he is not afraid to admit it. Don’t act smarter than you are, eventually, people will look through your act!
5. Invent cool games. FIREBALL! Come on guys, invent some cool games, submit them here in the comments and let’s go play them!
6. You can’t do it alone. Barney Stinson shows how awesome he is, he is the only one that awesome in the show How I Met Your Mother. Than Joey, he is fun without the others, but not that much fun. Joey needs other people, his spinoff was bit of a flop. Don’t forget that you are not alone, find likeminded people and enjoy.

Those are 5 things we can learn from the legendary Joey Tribbiani. These 5 things could make us a lot cooler. It won’t make us a Joey, but it will definitly develop our personalities. Good luck.