An Amazing Mind

You are on a plane right now. You just found out a fire has started, and you will likely die in a few minutes. What are your thoughts?

Yes, it sucks to die a premature death. Yes, you’ll be leaving behind a bunch of great people, and that sucks too. But underneath that, there’s something more fundamental.

There are two kinds of people, when facing death. Most people are afraid of death. On their death bed, they’re anxious and they wish they had done more with their lives.

And then there is a second group of people. Those people, on their death bed, are happy and content with how they’ve lived their life. They say to themselves - “Well, boy, it’s been good. It sucks I have to die now, but I’ve done my best and I’m happy with what I’ve achieved.”

The difference between the two kinds of people is in how they have lived their lives. The first group of people has simply lived nice comfortable lives. They had a good job, kids, and a house. But on their death bed, they wonder -  “what have I really achieved?”

The second group of people lived differently. They had a burning desire to achieve a specific purpose in life. They devoted all their passion and energy to attaining it. Even if they didn’t quite achieve their purpose, they lived a good life.

They had a mission in life.

Why have a mission in life?

Here’s the story of a doctor from Florida, who found his mission in life and started acting on it.

I decided I would work to introduce inhaled general anesthesia into mission hospitals in developing countries (most surgeries are done under spinal or ketamine anesthesia).  I resigned my 6 figure paying job after careful consideration and realization that I was letting my boss’ desires define what my career should be.  I told him I was quiting, he begged me not to quit, said I was making a mistake, and offered me the leave of absence I had been asking for for over a year. I have saved/invested enough over the past 2-3 years to handle my mortgage and medical school loan payments while being unemployed, and will rent out the house to a fellow hospital worker while I’m gone.  I moonlighted during a week of vacation after I found a job that payed nearly twice my usual salary to help pay for the first anesthesia machine that will need to be purchased (that place liked me so much they offered me a job! I turned them down.).  I  then signed a part time locums job in a nearby state… again, for nearly twice what I was making, and for fewer hours worked each day, where I will work until the visas and paper work is all completed to allow me to work and teach in Africa.

When I was on the verge of finally walking away from my job, not knowing if/where I’d get another permanent one, how I’d pay my ongoing financial obligations… it was indeed VERY lonely.  No one but me could tell me I was doing the right thing.  But I just knew, this is what I wanted.  After the decision was final, and I told people what I was doing… EVERYBODY wanted to come with me!  “Who are you going with,” they ask.  I’m going solo.  “Who’s paying you,” nobody, I say.  Yet they all want a part of it!  But you know what?  None of them will.  They don’t want it bad enough.  They have their own jobs, their families… their lives.  And they don’t have the boundry, the will, or the knowledge to do what I’m going to do.  That’s why it’s MY MISSION. 

Now there’s a guy who knows where he’s going!

Your mission gives you a sense of direction in life. It’s what makes you passionate and excited about life.

It makes you feel great about your life. It makes you jump out of bed with a smile on your face, ready to tackle the day ahead! It makes you lie down at night happy with what you’ve achieved, and looking forward to the next morning.

Your mission in life is a big part of who you ARE.

By the way, have you ever wondered why so many men have an existential crisis when they turn forty? The so-called mid-life crisis?

I believe it is because of their mission in life. Or, rather, a lack thereof. They just wake up one day, find out they’re halfway through their lives, and they haven’t done any progress on their mission in life yet. Hell, many haven’t even found out what their mission is!

What IS a mission in life?

In the movie 300, the main character has a solid mission in life. To protect the freedom of Greeks, and unite them against a common enemy. And he was not afraid to DIE to achieve his mission. Because if you betray your mission, you betray your whole life.

Or take Martin Luther King, whose mission was to gain equality for black people in America. Did he completely finish his mission? No… but he achieved incredibly much just by going for it. He raised awareness, organized protests, and gained the blacks a lot more recognition, even if he didn’t achieve complete equality by the time he was assassinated.

Your mission in usually some great goal. Something larger than life. Something you’ll be working on your whole life, and still might not achieve it. But you will make so many great things happen along the way, it will be well worth it.

Your mission in life is unique to you. It’s something special, based on your specific abilities and skills. No one else can have quite the same mission in life as you.

Once you discover your mission in life and start going for it, you might see some resistance from people at first. Like “You’re crazy, you’ll never achieve that. Go get a good job, a nice house, a big car and live a boring pointless life.” Our culture isn’t used to people having a REAL mission in life. But if you stick with it for a while, everybody will see how much better your life has got. How much more happy and passionate about life you feel. And they’ll want to join you.

Of course, you’ll have to be careful about who you allow on your team. On your “mastermind group”. But that’s a topic for another post.

Finding your Mission in life

Finding your mission isn’t something you do overnight. It took me roughly a year to realize what my mission really is. I’ve known it in the back of my mind for most of that time, but I let doubts hold me back.

The trouble with Mission in life is that it seems completely unrealistic to others (and yourself, at first). If you tell people, some might laugh and discourage you from trying. But others will be like “Yeah, the world really needs that! Awesome that you’ll go for it!” Don’t be discouraged by the pessimists. You are more important than someone’s opinion.

Do you think Martin Luther King’s friends believed him when he first said he wanted to stop racism in the US? I don’t think so. But he peresevered, and soon he had thousands, even millions of followers. He didn’t live to see the end of racism in the US, but he brought us much closer to his dream. And that is what a Mission in life is all about.

So what’s your mission in life? Here are a few pointers:

• What do you love doing?
• What makes you come alive?
• If you won a billion dollars, how would you use it to make a difference in the world?
• If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?

For now suspend all judgement. Don’t worry about how realistic your dreams are. The whole point of your Mission in life is that it seems out of all proportion to everyone around you. Only you truly know what you can achieve.

“It’s better to shoot for the stars, and land in the mud, than shoot for the mud and make it.”

And don’t worry if it takes you some time to figure out what your Mission is. As I said - it took me personally about a year.

So what’s the next thing you can do? Just spend some time thinking about your Mission, and figure out what it is.

Until next time. Adios!

Your brain is terribly outdated. No, really. It has evolved tens of thousands of years ago. And let’s face it - cavemen probably didn’t need to understand electric circuits or mathematical functions

But today, you sometimes need to understand abstract stuff your brain isn’t used to dealing with. And you can do that by translating the abstract information for your brain.

Pictures, stories and emotions

If you want to talk to your brain, you’d better use a language it understands!

So if you go like “Hey, brain, can you remember this 20-digit phone number for me?” The brain will go “Uh huh, sure.” and forget it in five seconds. Which is why top memorizers, who can memorize thousands of digits, instead translate every two digits into a picture, and then construct a story out of the pictures. Because the brain LIKES dealing with stories!

And if you try explaining to your brain how electric circuits work? That would be like trying to explain directions to a Japanese tourist who doesn’t speak a word of English. You might get lucky and communicate some stuff to the tourist by using your arms and body… but wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just translate it into a language he understands?

Well, here are a couple of languages your brain understands!

• analogies
• stories
• pictures
• emotions

So if you tell someone “An atom is 10^-11 meters small”, you’ll just get a blank stare. Try an analogy instead! Like “If you took an apple and shrunk it down to the size of an atom, that would be like taking the whole Earth and shrinking it down to the size of an apple.” Granted, you might still get a blank stare, but this will help most people understand it a LOT better than any amount of numbers or statistics.

On a related note, I was walking on the subway the other day, and I saw an ad for a mobile phone. The ad was making a big deal of how thin the phone was, showing a side shot and saying “only 11,7 mm” or something like that.

I was thinking - “Here’s an advertiser who HASN’T GOT A CLUE.” The information on the ad meant nothing to my brain.

Compare that to an iPhone ad (I meant to include a picture, but couldn’t find it). The ad shows a side view of the iPhone, next to an ordinary pencil.

That gets the point across loud and clear! Because everybody has experienced a pencil - your brain UNDERSTANDS how thick a pencil is. That’s the heart of an analogy. Translating a new experience into to something your brain already understands.

Examples of successful analogies

Elecric circuits

Loads of people misunderstand how electric circuits work. For example they think that electrons travel through the battery, where they pick up the charge, then go to the light bulb and deposit it there. That’s great… except electrons move at a rate of centimeters a minute. Oh, and how do you explain alternating current? In there, the electrons just wiggle back and forth.

I never really had an intuitive, “gut-level” understanding of electric circuits. Until I read Bill Beaty’s explanation. In there, among other things, he uses a great bicycle wheel analogy.

Take a bicycle. Then turn it upside down. The front wheel will be your electric circuit. It’s pretty accurate, since a normal electric circuit also consists of electric charges in place, just waiting to be pushed along by a battery.

Now put one hand on top of the wheel. This will be your light bulb. Next put your other hand at the bottom of the wheel, and use it to rotate the wheel. This is your battery. And the friction you feel on your top “light bulb” hand is what makes a bulb light up.

This shows you how the bulb can light up immediately when you put the battery into operation, even though it takes the individual electrons (the bit of your wheel at the bottom) quite a while to reach the bulb.

Learning

Scott H. Young has a great article where he explains how learning happens through connecting information. And he compares your brain’s way of storing information to a road network, with cities representing bits of knowledge, and roads representing connections between bits of knowledge. Again, this makes the concept much easier to understand.

Creating analogies

A couple of years back, I had real trouble understanding mathematical functions. I mean, I could work with them, and do all the school exercises. But I didn’t have a gut-level understanding of what they ARE.

So I thought about it long and hard, until I came up with a whole story that explained them to me. By comparing the mathematical functions to huge swamp creatures that eat and excrete numbers. I won’t type the whole story here, since it’s pretty lengthy, but ever since that day, I really understand what mathematical functions are, and how they work. Oh, and every time I think of explaining them, I crack myself up. That’s a bonus point

So whenever you face some tough-to-digest abstract information, see if you can come up with an analogy. Or create a picture in your mind, or a story, maybe add some soundtrack… whatever helps YOU understand. It makes the information more memorable, and also more fun

Your brain doesn’t enjoy dealing with abstract stuff. It likes stories, pictures and emotions. And if you can connect the new information to something your brain already understands (like the size of a pencil), you will understand it much deeper! Analogies ftw!

It’s productivity time again!

Have you ever tried focusing on something while you needed to pee really bad?

I have.

And I just couldn’t focus.

And yet some people insist on trying to work or study while they’re hungry, or thirsty, or tired. Hey, I used to be that way too!

I used to try to do real work at the computer while I was tired. And then I used to wonder why I always ended up browsing reddit and slashdot and using StumbleUpon, and not getting anything done. (Mmm, now that I think of it, I still spend way too much time on those sites. Maybe I should dabble with my browser’s config and redirect them all to goatse :p)(If you don’t know what “goatse” is, don’t look it up. Seriously. Just don’t :))

Listen to your body

Your body is sending you messages. When you get the feeling that you’re hungry, that’s a message from your body. When you start yawning and feeling all mushy - that’s also a message from your body.

If you ignore the message, your body will wait for a bit, and then try again. But it will use a louder messenger this time. It’s like the first time it sends a polite notice by mail, then a smooth talking englishman stops by your house to politely remind you, and next thing you know a SWAT team is busting down your door, yelling “Dude, this stuff is URGENT.”

Don’t let it get that far. Listen the first time, and do something about it. You should have a VERY good reason for ignoring any of the messages your body sends you.

Procrastination

Did you realize procrastination is also a message that your body is sending you?

It means this: “The stuff you wanna do is boring. Make it fun, please.”

Thankfully, I have written an article dealing with just that! Making Work Fun - Cure Procrastination Now

Common messages your body might be sending you

Here’s a list of some common messages from your body you might be ignoring:

1. Hunger
This one often happens because of the three-meals-a-day mindset. That leads to you first being distracted by hunger, then eating a huge meal, and then being groggy after the big meal because all the blood in your body is used for digestion. You might find a way to pull off three meals a day, but I personally much prefer 5 smaller meals.
2. Tiredness
This often happens when people get trapped in measuring their progress by how much time they spend on a task. For example, deciding to “study” for 2 hours. That won’t lead anywhere, because studying isn’t about how much time you put in - it’s about how well you learn your stuff. That’s why I wrote the series of articles on Learning Mastery.
3. Boredom
Yeah, sometimes you have to do boring stuff. But more often than not, you can turn it into fun. In the article on making work fun, I give you an example of how at first I couldn’t bring myself to sweep the floor… and ended up jumping around one foot talking to myself in weird voices, while sweeping the floor! Almost anything can be made fun!

Summary

So listen to your body. It’s sending you messages for a reason.

And once you take care of all the urgent messages, your mind will be totally free to do the stuff you really want, instead of coming back every couple of seconds saying “I need to pee”. Remember…

When you’re hungry, eat. When you’re tired, sleep.

Ever wondered why some people are loved by others everywhere they go? Ever wondered why some people seem perpetually happy, even in situations where you would be angry or annoyed?

You’ll find out in this article! And you’ll also learn:

• a simple trick that completely transformed a New York stockbroker’s relations with other people
• a precise scientific definition of friendship
• how to become more successful AND happier at the same time
• how “being realistic” is just an excuse used by pessimists to avoid taking action
• and much more!

The power of a smile

Here’s a story from Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends And Influence People”. (It’s a great book btw):

I have asked thousands of business people to smile at
someone every hour of the day for a week and then come
to class and talk about the results. How did it work?
Lets see. . . Here is a letter from William B. Steinhardt,
a New York stockbroker. His case isnt isolated. In fact,
it is typical of hundreds of cases.

1 have been married for over eighteen years, wrote
Mr. Steinhardt, and in all that time I seldom smiled at
my wife or spoke two dozen words to her from the time
I got up until I was ready to leave for business. I was
one of the worst grouches who ever walked down Broadway.

When you asked me to make a talk about my experience
with smiles, I thought I would try it for a week. So
the next morning, while combing my hair, I looked at
my glum mug in the mirror and said to myself, Bill, you
are going to wipe the scowl off that sour puss of yours
today. You are going to smile. And you are going to begin
right now. As I sat down to breakfast, I greeted my wife
with a Good morning, my dear, and smiled as I said
it.

You warned me that she might be surprised. Well,
you underestimated her reaction. She was bewildered.
She was shocked. I told her that in the future she could
expect this as a regular occurrence, and I kept it up every
morning.

This changed attitude of mine brought more happiness
into our home in the two months since I started
than there was during the last year.

As I leave for my office, I greet the elevator operator
in the apartment house with a Good morning and a
smile, I greet the doorman with a smile. I smile at the
cashier in the subway booth when I ask for change. As I
stand on the floor of the Stock Exchange, I smile at people
who until recently never saw me smile.

I soon found that everybody was smiling back at me,
I treat those who come to me with complaints or grievances
in a cheerful manner, I smile as I listen to them
and I find that adjustments are accomplished much easier.
I find that smiles are bringing me dollars, many dollars
every day.

I share my office with another broker. One of his
clerks is a likable young chap, and I was so elated about
the results I was getting that I told him recently about
my new philosophy of human relations. He then confessed
that when I first came to share my office with his
firm he thought me a terrible grouch - and only recently
changed his mind. He said I was really human when I
smiled.

I have also eliminated criticism from my system. I
give appreciation and praise now instead of condemnation.
I have stopped talking about what I want. I am now
trying to see the other persons viewpoint. And these
things have literally revolutionized my life. I am a totally
different man, a happier man, a richer man, richer in
friendships and happiness - the only things that matter
much after all.

A simple smile… and how much it matters! Do you think you smile often enough? Or do you go through your day feeling mostly grumpy and not in the mood to smile.

In the opening of my article on body language, I share what happened when I simply forced a smile on my face and left it there for a couple of minutes. It’s a fun thing to try, and you will realize how powerful even a forced smile is.

When you’re alone (right now?), just put a huge-ass grin on your face, and leave it there for five minutes. At first you’re probably be thinking things like “this is nonsense” and “why am I doing this?”. Towards the end it will be like “lol this is silly ^_^” (am I the only one who sometimes uses “lol” when talking to themselves? :))

But our goal isn’t a fake forced grin. It’s a genuine smile. A heart-warming smile. The kind of smile you see on a baby’s face, and you just can’t help but start smiling yourself.

And that smile comes with a positive attitude. When you believe your life is good, the world is good, and the people around you are good. When you wake up with a smile on your face, looking forward to the day ahead. (Yes, I actually do that. And it rocks :D.)

In other words, being an optimist.

The “realist” myth

Have you ever had the following conversation? (It happens a LOT to us optimists)
You: “Dude, stop being such a pessimist!”
Friend: “Nah man, I’m just being realistic.”

Guess what. Apparently, about 90% of our negative expectations never come true. Now who’s being realistic?

Pessimists (majority of the population) believe that they’re being realistic, unlike those silly optimists. (And optimists believe they’re being realistic, unlike those silly pessimists :p) . Pessimists sacrifice their happiness - but get a trade off of those I’m-better-than-you feelings. Similarly optimists get the same I’m-better-than-you feelings by being optimistic. But they also feel good about life in general (that’s what optimism is about).

(Update: A couple of months ago, when I wrote the first draft of this article, I wrote that pessimists form the majority of the population. Then, when I picked it up now to finish it, I was like “Hey, is that really true? Most people I know are optimists!” It made me realize how much I changed the kind of people I hang out with. Awesome :D)

Choose your reality

There’s not a “more real” reality. It’s as real as you make it.

Think about that for a second. A flat-earther’s reality is just as real as yours. As far as he’s concerned, he’s spent his whole life living on a flat world, with a huge conspiracy around keeping most people from knowing the truth. The reality in your head only starts to matter when you try to interact with the real world. If you believe you can fly, and you jump out of a window to prove it… you get the point.

(By the way, that’s the basis of science. Making claims that can be refuted by experiment.)

But I think that optimists generally pick their own reality, while most pessimists are handed down their reality through media and other people. Hey, if those people actually chose their own reality, they would probably pick something better! So, whose reality do YOU want to live in?

Synthetic Happiness

Imagine I give you a choice. You could either win the lottery, or become a paraplegic (lose control of your lower body).  Which one would leave you more happy a year down the road?

If you said winning the lottery, think again. Studies show that paraplegics are just as happy as lottery winners a year after the incident. This is due to our body’s ability to generate synthetic happiness.

And you can leverage that mechanism RIGHT NOW, to create more happiness in your life without changing the objective circumstances.

Simplicio: But doesn’t creating artificial happiness take your attention away from your real life?
Vlad: Not at all. Synthetic happiness lets you pursue all your dreams BETTER. I’m currently starting an online business, beginning my university studies and posting to my blog - all that while having a lot of outside hobbies. More happiness gives you more energy to pursue your dreams. Optimism also lets you take on challenges you wouldn’t otherwise - and succeed.
Simplicio: But isn’t artificial happiness about escaping from reality?
Vlad: Synthetic happiness is the body’s natural way of creating happiness. I’m definitely against things that take you away from reality, like alcohol and drugs. I’m actually proposing MORE reality, by being present-minded. But more on that in another post.
Simplicio: I’m already quite happy with my life. I don’t see why I should create more happiness…

Creating more happiness

Do this quick exercise right now. On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you with your life?

Answer before reading on.

If you pose this questiona to a hundred people, most will answer between six and nine. (I’ve seen it done). Even though their happiness levels are radically different. Because everyone’s comparing their happiness levels to their own baseline.

But if you ask some of the same people a few years later, they will be like “Wow. I used to think my happiness was 8. Now I see it actually used to be 3, but I didn’t know it at the time. It’s an 8 now, though.”

Most people have been living with a certain level of happiness all their lives. They have their ups and downs, but those all remain pretty close to a certain base line, which was set in their early childhood. Just like a fish can’t even imagine going out of the water - so most people don’t even realize how much happier they could be.

The good news is… you can shift your happiness baseline! So that your ups will be higher, and your lows will also be higher. Now wouldn’t that rock?

So how do you become happier?

Well, one of the BIG ingredients of happiness is… positive attitude!

Friendships

Have you ever wondered what a friendship IS?

Think about that for a moment. How would you define friendship?

Here’s a great definition of friendship I heard somewhere:

Friendship is mutually shared positive emotion.

There. That’s it. Nothing more.

In case you’re thinking “Friendship is about more than that. A real friend will always be there for you. A friend will cheer you up when you’re feeling down. A friend will help you out when you’re in trouble.” … Well, that’s not friendship. That’s confusing friendship with some kind of commitment (if healthy), or dependence (if unhealthy).

Sure, being “best friends” is usually more than just about positive emotion. There’s definitely a bit of commitment in there. And yes, it helps your friendships if you have the similar beliefs and values.

But friendship itself is all about shared positive emotion. No more, no less.

And now you realize what friendship is (you knew it subconsciously anyway, but now you know it consciously), we can answer the question at the beginning of this post!

Why are some people loved by others everywhere they go?

Positive attitude

Positive attitude! Just sharing good emotions with others!

Who would you prefer to be your friend… the person who tears down your dreams and tells you to stay reasonable and keep doing your job? Or the person who supports you in your ambitions, even if they seem a unreasonable to most of the world?

Who would you prefer to be your friend… the person who always comes in with a smile and greets everyone cheerfully? Or the person who is grumpy and complains and doesn’t break a single smile all day?

Be the kind of person you would prefer.

And even more importantly… be the kind of person you prefer… TO YOURSELF. Because like you are your own best friend, you could just as easily be your own worst enemy. If someone else criticizes you, you can bounce back quickly. But if you keep criticizing yourself… then nobody can help you.

So stay optimistic. Stay strong. Be yourself. Live your dreams.

Don’t let your fears be stronger than your desires.

Have a positive attitude.

You rock.

Yaaay! Productivity!

You don’t hear me talk about productivity much, because it’s something I’m still figuring out. But today, I will share the BEST productivity tip I ever got! It definitely more than doubled the amount of stuff I get done on most days.

Ready? Here we go:

Always carry around a pen and paper.

It works! But why?

1. You don’t forget tasks

I’m at the grocery store. I just remember an important e-mail I need to send. I think “As soon as I get home, I’ll send it.” Of course, by the time I get home, I completely forget. Then, when I’m walking the dog, I remember again. “Ah ha! In five minutes, when I get back home, I’ll send the e-mail!” By the time I get home, I forget…

Does the above paragraph seem familiar?

That’s how I used to do stuff. Nowadays, I always carry around this small pocket-sized paper notebook, and a pen. On the front, I keep a to-do list. That is, simple actionable items like “call Tom about the rock-climbing” or “look up bus connections for the trip”. On the back, I note any cool ideas I have, anytime, anywhere.

2. You don’t forget cool ideas

I can’t count how many times I’ve had some cool idea, but forgot about it before implementation. (Obviously. If I COULD count them, that would mean I haven’t forgotten them ) Or, on some days, I would be thinking about possible topics for my next blog post, only to come at one and realize I thought of it a few weeks ago, figured out what I’d write about it… and then forgot.

But ever since I write stuff down, all my cool ideas stay right there, at the back of my notebook! So sometimes I just flip through it, and go “Oooh, I completely forgot about this idea. Awesome, I’ll get started on it right away!”

3. You free your mind for new ideas

Let’s say you’re walking home, and it will be about 15 minutes’ walk before you get there. You’ve got an important phone call to make. And let’s even say you don’t forget. But in order not to forget, you’ll need to think of the phone call every couple of moments as you walk. It will keep interrupting your train of thought.

Now that’s not such a big deal, if It’s just one task. But imagine you had several such tasks on your mind… they would keep interrupting you ALL THE TIME. It would basically waste any quality thinking time you had on your walk home.

Aha! Pen and paper to the rescue!

If you note all the tasks in your little notebook (and remember to look at your to-do list every time you get home). Then you could spend the 15 minutes’ walk inventing a cure for cancer. Or thinking up witty captions to put on pictures of your cats. Whatever you call productive

Bonus

Scene: A remote island full of dinosaurs. A group of 3 people is walking next to a huge gate, when suddenly red lights start flashing.

Doctor: Oh no! The automated gate release mechanism has been activated! We need to memorize this 100-digit number and enter it on a keyboard 5 minutes’ walk away, or the gate will open and the dinosaurs will come out and we’ll all be DOOMED. Oh, and we have 10 minutes to do it.
Vlad: Don’t worry! I have a pen and paper in my pocket!
Doctor: Hooray! We are saved!
(Audience cheers)
(obligatory xkcd reference)

Outro

If you don’t have the habit of always carrying around a pen and paper, hopefully I gave you some reasons today to make you think about it. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: productivity, pen and paper

I recently wrote about my experiences with Esperanto, and why it was the best language (after English) for me to learn.

A couple of readers responded, and seems they also seem to think Esperanto is the best thing since salty pretzels covered in chocolate. Here’s what some of them said:

“When I as a late teenager learnt esperanto just for fun (to have a secret language with my best friend) I could never guess what it would mean to me 40 years later.
The language has brought to me work(a profession in library) friends in 5 continents and travels between south Bulgaria up to north Norway, from east Finland(Imatra) to west England (Morecombe), guests from several countries, numbers of contacts in internet and so on.”

and

“On my foreign travels speaking English, German, French, Spanish, Greek and some Italian and Serbo-Croatian never got me invited into any private homes anywhere - but speaking Esperanto most certainly did! And thus gave me quite a different take on life in Bulgaria, Mexico, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Belgium, Romania than I would have got as a regular tourist. Try it - Esperanto can be as useful as you yourself like to make it!”

So I though “Hey, maybe other people would like to know more about this ‘Esperanto’ thing!”

Here are a few reasons you might want to learn Esperanto:

• you want to learn a new language, but aren’t sure which one
• you tried learning other languages, but got stumped by complicated grammar and counter-intuitive spelling
• you want to meet some totally awesome people

It’s hard to explain what makes the Esperanto community so awesome (though I’ll try ). But I have a good reason to believe you’ll love the kind of people you can meet through Esperanto. And the reason is… you’re reading my blog! There’s just something about that.

First, I’ll give you a crash course in Esperanto grammar, so you can see why the language totally rocks. And then I’ll give you The REAL Reason Esperanto rocks!

Esperanto grammar - why Esperanto rocks as a language

1. All Esperanto verbs are regular

Do you know what all natural languages have in common? The verb “to be” is irregular. I am, you are, he is… there’s no logic behind that! And in most languages, there are dozens, or even hundreds other irregular verbs.

Of course, not so in Esperanto. In Esperanto, EVERY verb is completely regular. So you have:
esti - to be
dormi - to sleep
promeni - to walk

And the present tense is always the same: Mi dormas, vi dormas, li dormas, ni dormas (I/you/he/we sleep(s) ). The past and future tenses are also incredibly simple. Mi dormis, mi dormos (I slept, I will sleep).

2. Pronunciation and spelling are simple and obvious

One thing that confused me to no end when I was learning French was the random spelling and complicated pronunciation. For example… the words es, et, and est are pronounced EXACTLY THE SAME in French, and so are the endings -ot and -aux. Aaaargh!

Esperanto to the rescue! It has a phonetic alphabet. Which means that every symbol you write corresponds to one sound. You can check out the Esperanto alphabet. Oh, and you can check out this cool English poem to see why a non-phonetic alphabet is confusing. Try reading it out loud for extra lolz

3. Every noun ends in -o, every adjective ends in -a, every adverb ends in -e

This makes the Esperanto much easier to learn. It also helps you construct words that you never heard before. For example, if you know that “rapida” means fast, you can form “rapide”, which means quickly.

4. Prefixes and suffixes

This is where the real power of Esperanto grammar comes.

I heard stories of people learning Japanese getting confused, because you have to use a different word for the same thing depending on who’s doing it. If it’s you, it’s small and unworthy, if it’s the other person, it’s grand and exquisite. And if you’re talking to a person of really high social rank, you use yet ANOTHER word for the EXACT SAME action. Crazy Japanese

Esperanto is the exact opposite! After you learn a word, you will be able to form a lot of other word by using some basic prefixes and suffixes.

For example:
granda means big
malgranda means small

bela means pretty
malbela means ugly

So once you learn that rapida means fast, you will be able to form malrapida. (Figure out for yourself what that means ;))

The REAL reason Esperanto rocks

Esperanto’s grammar is great. But you know what’s really REALLY awesome about the language?

The people.

The Esperanto community is more like a big family than just a bunch of people speaking the same language. There’s a program where you can stay in other Esperanto speakers’ homes when you visit other countries. I haven’t tried it yet, but I heard people have great experiences with that. I’ll definitely try it myself next summer.

There’s also this aspect of Esperantists that I love… they’re less likely to follow the mainstream. For example, when I was at the summer camp this August, one morning I was sitting at a breakfast table with 3 other people. The talk turned to computers, and we found out that ALL OF US were using Linux!

In general population, about 1% of people use Linux. At the summer camp, there were at least 8 of us out of about 70 people. Yay for Linux :D. Esperantists are also more likely to do other minority things, like be vegetarians.

That’s something I really enjoy about Esperantists. They’re not afraid to be different from the mainstream. This makes them very liberal-minded and accepting. They’re all also really cool and friendly people (but then again, almost ALL people are cool and friendly ).

So hopefully I gave you some good reasons to think about learning Esperanto. If you want to learn more, visit lernu.net. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: esperanto, languages

I’ve got a confession to make.

I have never lied to you (apart from the obvious sarcasm in some posts). But I have generally tried to make the impression like I am a wise old guy full of life experience.

Ok, here’s my confession. Actually, I’m just 19 years old, and I’ll be starting college at the end of September.

If you feel that my advice is any less valuable because I’m only 19, feel free to stop reading my blog.

And now to the fun bit!

My request for advice

As you might know, I’m the kind of guy who likes to have stuff figured out before taking action (Although I’ve been practicing the 70% solution lately). And college is a big step to take, with a lot of things I could do right. And a lot of cool opportunities I could miss.

I read somewhere that 90% of the time we regret things we DIDN’T do, and only 10% of the time we regret things we DID do.

So my request for advice is this. Imagine you were writing your autobiography, and were making notes for the chapter called “Things I wish I had done at college”. (Or, if you haven’t finished college yet, just let your imagination run wild)

I’m not looking for mainstream obvious stuff (like “I wish I had partied less and studied more”). I’m looking for… well… more like crazy ideas that might actually work. To give you an example, here’s one thing on my list of what I wanna do at college:
- on the first day, knock on everyone’s door and introduce myself

Alright! Payback time! Now YOU can finally give advice to ME!

Why do some people pay thousands of dollars for a used baseball? Why do some people spend $1000 on an iPhone application that does nothing except show others that they have way too much money?

Because people have different ways of measuring value. Everyone uses a different yardstick.

But this article is not about those people. This article is about YOU, and how you can use the right yardstick for each situation.

Why weight and grades don’t really matter

Do you know anyone who measures their fitness by how much they weigh? Or do you even do it yourself?

Unless you’re a professional boxer or a fashion model, your weight doesn’t really matter.

What matters more are your energy levels, your strength, and your endurance. I mostly measure my fitness by how energized I feel.

So instead of picking a diet to lose weight, I eat foods that leave me energized and happy. Because I use a different yardstick.

Or, in high school, I always valued learning over grades. In my last year, I had an average of 8.4 out of 10, where 10 is best and 6 is a pass. I also had a 3 for chemistry… because I disagreed with my teacher’s teaching methodology and found most of the tasks she gave us useless at best, and downright counter-productive at worst.

Sure, you might be in a situation where grades DO matter to you. The point is, always make sure what’s most important to you. Use the right yardstick. If you want to feel energized and look good, forget about measuring your weight (muscles weigh more than fat anyway).

Set goals according to your yardstick

Once you know your values, you can set goals better.

I could measure my blog’s success in at least 3 ways. I could measure the traffic. Or the number of comments. Or the number of RSS subscribers.

I decided to use RSS subscribers as my yardstick, because when someone subscribes to my RSS feed, it means they get consistent value out of my blog, and want to read more. So my strategy is to provide the kind of value that gets readers to subscribe, rather than, say, writing controversial posts that draw lots of comments.

In my social life, I used to feel insecure and worry what others think of me. I worried what kind of impression I’m making, if I’m looking cool, etc. etc.

Then I realized that’s not helping me. So I swapped my yardstick, and started to focus on having fun. Ironically, I find that it makes a lot better impression on people than TRYING to make an impression.

Don’t let others force their yardstick on you

Sometimes you’ll find people who think their yardstick is the ultimate measurement, and they’ll try to force it on you. People like that might claim weight is all that matters about your fitness, or that salary is all that matters about your job.

Listen to those people, but make sure you figure out what’s the best yardstick for YOU.

When I started learning esperanto, I had a couple people tell me “Wtf, Esperanto? Why don’t you learn a language that’s actually USEFUL, like Spanish.”

Well, my yardstick for learning a new language is how much fun it allows me to have. And Esperanto wins that contest hands down over any other language. (Well, maybe except Klingon. I’ll have to look into that one a bit more )

Are there any areas where you use a different yardstick from most people, and it’s worked for you really well? Let me know in the comments. I’m always looking for better ways to view the world

Summary

Here’s a quick summary, to help you remember the main points:

1. Figure out what’s the best yardstick for you in each situation
2. Set your goals by that yardstick
3. Measure your success by YOUR yardstick, and nobody else’s

Until next time. Long days and pleasant nights.

Technorati Tags: productivity, measuring, goals