If you're anything like me, you have a hard time implementing good habits, even though you know you really should do it. Quit smoking, quit instant messaging, quit oversleeping, quit eating sweets, quit watching shitty TV shows. Exercise more, read more, work more, practice your skills more, cook healthy more often. It's not easy being of weak discipline. But, being the clever species we are, we've come up with training wheels:

The 30-Day-Challenge

I first read about this on Steve Pavlina's Website, Self Development for Smart People. The idea is simple. You want to try something which you believe would be a positive change in your life, for example quit watching TV. You then make a bet with yourself that you can do it for 30 days. If you can make it through those 30 days, it's easy to continue. If you don't see any benefits or notice any negative consequences, you can stop after 30 days. But you have to go through these first 30 days in any case! It is very good practice for your discipline also. If you make it through several 30-Day-Challenges, you just KNOW you have the discipline to stick to most things you choose. And if you do one 30-Day-Challenge every month, you'll quickly gain momentum.

April 21st - Vegetarian

April 21st is my birthday. We had a barbeque the night before and stayed up until my birthday to celebrate. I had bought vegan cake, because the vegan bakery was the first one I came across. Shortly after midnight, having eaten about 20 grilled shitty tasting sausages, 3 grilled steaks and now tasting the surprisingly light vegan chocolate cake, I thought: maybe this vegan stuff is not bad after all. I decided trying out that direction. While vegan was too extreme for my taste (I'm basically a milk addict, 2 liters per day is normal consumption), I decided to go vegetarian. I had had enough after the barbeque and I wasn't a huge meat eater anyway. I would eat it, but I wouldn't insist on it. I bet myself that I could not eat any meat for 30 days, or until the 21st of May, to be exact (easier to remember your birthdate). Not eating meat was really easy. It's very simple - you don't eat anything with meat in it. That's it. I had no cravings at all, I wasn't missing anything. Halfway through I was tempted to eat fish, but then I postponed the decision if I would eat fish or not for so long that I didn't want to eat that any more either.

May 21st - Sugar Free

 On May the 20th I went jogging with two friends and twisted my ankle. It sucked massively. I couldn't walk for several days. While putting ice packs on my ankle and cursing myself, I decided to take this as a sign. I was too fat, and I would have no more of it. I had read an article about why sugar is bad for you by Tynan a few days earlier. In it he asks: what's wrong with you? Why don't you just QUIT sugar? I decided this was my test. Becoming a vegetarian was easy. Quitting candy? I had tried that one a lot of times. I've always been fat and a candy addict. But this was the end. This was a battle. Was I not man enough to win against little white crystals? I bet myself that I could stop eating anything with refined sugar for 30 days. Then I could binge on chocolate and cake and coke until I would puke. This proved to be hard in the beginning. I discovered that basically anything wrapped in a package has sugar in it. It also meant no more of the cookies and chocolate bars provided in the office. My coworkers were relieved. Some were also inspired and tried to take the challenge with me. Unfortunately, they failed. Some called me extreme. I liked that. I made it to the 21st of June and bought candy for over 25€. It was a backpack full of sugar, basically. Several bars of chocolate, two packages of snickers and mars, bottles of coke, cake, pudding, sugary gum stuff, everything I could stuff into the bag. At midnight I started and at 00:05 I was sick. I had eaten about half of the sugary crap and was not feeling very well. My roommates called me crazy for eating that much sweets and when I forced myself to eat more and more of it despite being sick and feeling like shit, they completely wrote me off. I couldn't finish it in the next 24 hours. I gave away the last pieces, having eaten about 3/4 of my feast. I was sick all day long. I think it was a weekend, so I didn't have to work, which was a good thing. I felt like puking for a long time, but didn't. After that it was easy to go for another month of no sugar. I actually have cheated on a few occasions. In June a roommate of mine was celebrating her birthday and I tried her self-made cake, which was crammed with sugar. In August I ate ice cream when we celebrated our bets on the European Soccer Championship. But it is really easy to just say no to sweets.

June 21st - Exercise every day

In an effort to lose fat and become more fit, I decided to bet myself that I could exercise every day. I would only count dedicated physical exercise, not running for a bus or walking up stairs. But even if it was just 5 minutes, I would do it. I decided the most practical way would be to exercise right after getting up and before showering or eating breakfast. That way I would only have to shower once and not be puking my breakfast all over the place. Now you could say: 5 minutes? You're not going to do anything! But that's not true. You can fuck yourself up in 5 minutes if you know how to do it. One of my standard exercises is the tabata protocol. The protocol says to do something for 20 seconds as hard as you can, rest for 10 seconds, then go again. A total of 8 times, leaving you with a 4-minute workout, 30% of which is rest. You can do this with squats, push-ups, sprints, jumping jacks, anything. I mostly do it with squats and jumping jacks, because I can't do enough push-ups. The first two rounds feel good. The third round, you muscles feel heavy and your lungs burn. The fourth round feels like it should be the last round. But you're only half way there. Remember, this is an all-out exercise. If you're not braindead after the 4 minutes, you're doing it wrong. You can't not be drained after this. The beauty of this high intensity interval training is that it needs very little time, gets you sweating a lot and you recover easily. You feel like doing another set after 10 minutes. Very efficient and a great start into the day. I cycle this with things like 5x5 push-ups, 5x10 squats or 4x3 minute shadowboxing rounds. This way I also get some muscular endurance and sport specific drills into my routine. Did I do it every day? Almost. I missed it two times, one day I overslept and had to run for work (which I had decided would not count) and one day I was physically ill after riding a bike through a cold rain storm for three hours.

July 21st - Write every day

This one is a bit of a troublemaker. I decided to "write at least 15 minutes a day". This is a crappy definition. The first few times I sat there, thinking, for 15 minutes. I hadn't written a word, but thought a lot about the characters and ideas. Writing is a lot of thinking, not only typing on the keyboard. So I didn't really write anything while "writing", just juggling ideas in my brain. I decided this was not enough, and changed the requirement to "1000 words minimum a day". This was also not good. I realized that to type a 1000 words only took a few minutes, but to write 1000 words of original content took me about an hour. I would take about 10-15 minutes to get into story-mode when writing on my novel. Once I got in it would flow, but it would still take time. I work 8 hours a day, including lunch and commute, that is a lot. I leave for work about 9:00 in the morning and return at about 19:30. I sleep about 8 hours. That means I have 6 hours left each day to get up, exercise, read, chat, watch movies, eat or do anything else. That's not a lot of time. Taking one hour every day from that is a lot. I would regularly postpone my writing to the end of the day, stealing the time from my sleep. This resulted in me being sleepy on the job all the time, which sucked and left me feeling unproductive at work. I also missed a lot. For example I was visiting the European Juggling Convention. We were on site all day and fell into our beds the second we got home. I only wrote twice in that entire 10 day period. There was this feeling that I had to use the time on the juggling, not the writing. I could do the writing anywhere. So this time I failed the challenge.

Conclusion

The 30-Day-Challenge has worked very well for me, but there are a few things to consider. First, the results.

• I lost around 10 kilograms of body weight. That's probably not only from one challenge, but from vegetarian, sugar-free and exercising each day, also I took up kickboxing lessons twice a week. Still, 10 kilograms in 4 months is great. It's not all fat I guess, but I lost a lot of fat. People say how I look thinner and I have to tie my belt tighter. It's awesome.
• I'm not sick after eating. I used to be braindead after every meal. I guess this was from the meat, which takes many hours to digest. Now I have great energy after a meal and don't feel overwhelmed at all. Eating has also become dirt cheap. Meat is so expensive!
• My fitness increased slightly. I guess I'd have to do more for big changes, but I can do more push-ups and squat more easily.
• I get up a lot easier. I used to stay in bed until I absolutely had to leave, but now I jump out and do my little workout, then shower. It's a kind of ritual.
• Despite missing a lot of writing days, I've written more than in the 3 months before that combined. Fuck that, 6 months. Easily.

Hello kids, Welcome back to story time! This is me, your host. So I fell off the wagon. Damn it! I am of course talking about my 1000-words-a-day challenge. I went to the European Juggling Convention for 10 days with a friend. Thousands of jugglers from all over the world meet there and - juggle. It's amazing. It also means you can literally juggle 24 hours a day and find hundreds of people doing just the same. Since you still have to sleep a little and you're very excited, you tell yourself you can't really waste time writing while you're here. Well, that's what I told myself. So I basically wrote nothing for the entire 10 days except a 1300 word post in my german juggling blog, jonglierenistgeil.de.  Yea, yea, I'm weak. But now it's the last day of the convention and I'm getting back on the wagon by writing this.

On Skill

If there is one thing that amazed me on the juggling convention, it was the overall level of skill everyone has. There were little kids juggling 5 balls with tricks like multiplexes (throwing several balls at the same time from one hand), back-crosses (throwing behind your back to the front) and more. I started juggling about one year ago and can't even juggle 4 balls consistently. I can consistently do about 4-5 tricks, all of them rather minor (except Mill's Mess, in which you cross and uncross your arms all the time).  I honestly believe I have never seen so much skill in one room. Juggling is really special in this department because juggling skill is very specific and also very open. You can't fake being able to juggle. If a person sees you juggle for 5 seconds, he knows your skill level. And you can't learn juggling by training synergistic skills, like it is possible for many other physical skills. You can improve your running by riding your bike. It's not a 100% running-improvement per time invested in biking, but it's more than 30% I'd say. That is because both activities require similar muscles and the cardiovascular system. It even works great for mental skills. Reading is synergistic to writing, learning and talking. Juggling has almost no synergies. It's all technique, which is stored in your "muscle-memory" (the part of your brain that controls movement). So is having no synergies a good thing? Actually it is terrible. To learn juggling, you have to juggle. You can't expect any of your other skills to help you with it. And even with the positive synergies juggling is supposed to give to other areas, like developing your brain or something, the amount of time consumed by juggling practice could really be used for something more useful.  But there is something very interesting to this isolated skill. You can measure your investment and skill gains in minute detail. I watched myself go from zero to 80% consistent in the Mill's Mess trick in one week, spending about 1-2 hours each day on it.  Do you know this little bump when learning a new skill, where you're investing massive amounts of time/resources and don't seem to be going anywhere? Then you try it one more time and suddenly - glory! Everything snaps into place the way it should. Represented on a skill/time graph it would look something like this:   [caption id="attachment_31" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Development of skill over time"][/caption] I even FELT the plateau! I had gotten to the point where I could do the throw with crossing and uncrossing from left to right and from right to left, but not change directions. Since Mill's Mess is a continuos pattern swishing from side to side, this sucked. I could only do one swish, then start over. I kept practicing for over an hour without any noticeable improvement. Then I did it one more time, and suddenly it was just a natural movement to reverse directions and continue throwing and crossing/uncrossing. I had finally made it over the bump. Funny: I had one bump for the right-to-left change of directions and one for the left-to-right. Changing from right-to-left was a lot easier, probably because I'm right-handed. Very interesting how your left and right hand are independent in learning movements. If you want to have balanced control over your hands, you have to train your weak hand separately. Or only do tricks with your strong hand. In this way, juggling is great for teaching you about the learning process that goes on inside your brain. 

Automation of Skills

Another very interesting thing happened shortly after. For the first few hours I had to concentrate hard on which throw to make at what time, how to cross and uncross the hands, etc. Then I caught myself thinking about something entirely else (girls, to be specific - nothing beats french girls with mad juggling skills!) and still performing the correct movements.  The Mill's Mess pattern of movement had joined my ranks of unconscious skills. I could now do it without having to think about it - just like walking, talking, typing or many of the other tiny skills you barely realize you have. Automation of skills is a very powerful thing. Since you can only focus your mind on one thing at a time consciously, you need to automate everything else you could want to do at the same time. Some movements (breathing, blinking) are built in into your nervous system - these are called reflexes. You don't have to learn them, you're born with them. But there are thousands of other movement patterns you have internalized. Some over decades (walking), some over days (typing on that new keyboard), some useful (how to walk up stairs without falling), some not so much (washing your hands after brushing your teeth - I always do this, really unconsciously. Maybe I'm a hand-washing-addict). Watch yourself over a few days and try to make a list of movements you have internalized. Here is an example list I made:

• Walking
• Sitting on the toilet
• Buttoning a shirt (I actually don't have this, since I never wear formal shirts - but it can be internalized. I have to do it consciously)
• Checking with your hand if your key is still in your pocket
• Touch-typing
• Associating a tap of the touchpad with a click on the screen
• Turning your hips in and extending your foot while kicking
• Pushing your foot in the ground when punching
• Slipping bills into your wallet in the right compartment
• Pinching your nose and say in your mind "I can pinch my nose, so I'm not dreaming right now" as a reality check (see Lucid Dreaming) (I actually have to consciously stop myself from doing it now, having done it every few seconds for months)

Hello guys and girls, Let me tell you about myself. Yes, you guessed it: this post is all about me. I should make a movie. Starring me! Notice I wrote "my life situation", not "my life". I think this is fundamentally different. You can read Eckhart Tolles "The Power of Now", he explains it pretty well. Basically your life situation can change. It is just one situation. You can choose to walk out of it and make a new situation in your life. Why am I writing this? Am I full of myself? Yes I am. But also to show you how you can easily divide your life situation into several parts and analyse each of them on its own. Then you can decide which parts of your life situation you want to work on.

Dividing your life situation

I like to divide mine into the following parts. Note that these are pretty arbitrary. You can divide yours differently, depending on what you value or how you see synergies between different aspects of yourself. For example, I think fitness is health and directly correlated to happiness. Your opinion may differ. Ok, so here are my sub-sets and how far I have succeeded so far:

• Physical Fitness - 30%
• Creative work - 10%
• Financial independence - 10%
• Social skills - 15%
• Travel - 10%
• Just "fun" things - 30%

Physical Fitness

My current goal in physical fitness is to have a "normal" body weight, meaning below 85kg and below 15% body fat. Also I want to be able to do 30 push-ups without getting too stressed out and have enough stamina to last a few 2-minute-rounds in kickboxing. I want to be flexible enough to do high-kicks to the head.  I'm not sure what my weight and fat percentage are, as I haven't weighed in ages, but I can tell I'm not there. Fifteen consecutive push-ups are pretty heavy on my triceps. My stamina is good for about one minute of mixed fighting intensity or 20-30 seconds of all-out. I can reach shoulder height with my round-kicks. I give myself 30% because I have come some way in fat loss, stamina and flexibility already. I have lost some weight over the last few months, I've been very disciplined with kickboxing training (only missed when I was physically unable to move, like a sprained ankle). Also I changed my diet to vegetarian and no refined sugars. Every morning I do a short workout before I shower, like Tabata Squats or 4 x 3 minute rounds of shadow boxing/kicking.

Creative work

In this department I have quite the goals. I like writing and developing software. So my goal is to publish the book I've written and also publish a small application for Mac OS X. This app may be free or about 25€, depending on how much I think it's worth. The book may not sell for much, but I'd like to make at least a little money of that, knowing that I can do it. So why do I only give myself 10% here? Because I've not done shit to accomplish those goals. I finished the book, that's something. But I haven't done anything else. I bought two books on Mac programming and never finished them. I'm trying to do the better one by the side during weekends, but I haven't gotten past page 110 so far. Also, developing a real app, even a small one, takes hundreds of hours of practice with that developing environment. Since I haven't coded for the Mac before, I'll have to learn everything from the ground up. Concerning the book I could just send it to some publisher, but I keep telling myself I'm not ready for it. Excuses.

Financial independence

This is really bad. Basically I live off my parents' money. They finance my studies at university. I earned some money working in holidays (a few thousand) and at the moment I work at a marketing company, earning 750€ a month. This is an internship for university, so I'm not really counting it for financial independence, but it's a little something. Of course it costs me 8 hours a day, so it's really more of a financial dependence than independence. I really want to improve in this area soon. I feel weird living off my parents' money. Basically I want to earn about 500-1000€ per month without work, meaning it must be mostly passive income. Like royalties, earnings from the published app, and so forth. That's not a lot of money, but I don't need a lot. At the moment I live for about 250€ (rent) + 300€ (food) + 100€ (random stuff) per month, totaling around 650€.

Social skills

My goal here is set pretty high, at least for my standards. I want to be be able to express myself around other people, no matter who they are or what the situation. This includes stunning chicks, authority figures, bosses, family, authorities. Also includes situations where I need something from them. I've always felt that I had a different personality for each social circle I was in. This felt disturbing. Listening to Tyler's work lately has given me a perspective on this: I'm trying to fit in with different social circle's expectations, so they will like me for whatever I am to them. This should stop. I want to be the same person all the time, not matter who the people. I've become better at that. Since moving out from home and then to Hamburg, I've become more centered and friendly. I can talk to people and they will just like me, because I'm nice. I also like most people I meet now and I'm not angry as often as I used to be. So I'm giving myself 15% here.

Travel

My goal here is to travel for at least three months in the near future. Maybe cycling through europe or something. Backpacking could also be nice. I haven't really traveled for a long time. The only move I've made was moving for my six month internship across Germany, which is about 800 kilometers.  So I score only 10%. It's only one move, and it's not even to a different country, but it's six months and I haven't been back once.

Just "fun" things

This includes all the small things I like that are not really important but that I like. My goals here are to become a decent foosball player, juggle 4 balls steadily for about a minute, lose some more of my stuff and replace it with better things, etc. I give myself 30% because I've thrown away a lot of stuff lately. Also I've become a lot better in foosball. My push-kick, push-shot and pin-shot have gotten to around 20-30% to-hit, my racing defense is astonishing my co-workers, and I'm starting to use the 5-man-line more often both for defense and offense. Let's say I'm about to make the jump to amateur ;-) Unfortunately I've really let go of juggling. I haven't juggled in three months now, I think. I'm going to the European Juggling Convention tomorrow, so that might pick up when I go there. Those are not of great importance to me, but I like to have them as skills. They're just fun. Also very motivating for the "big stuff".

"I learned something today"

How's this going to help you? Just write your life situation up like this. State your goal, evaluate your success up to this point, give yourself a score. Put down what you have done to reach them and what you haven't. You then have a roadmap. It's great. I'm thinking how to put this in a neat little system. I really like the flexibility paired with the breaking down of goals into little steps. Gotta think more about this one.. 

Hello children, Today I'll tell you about my personal productivity system. There are many productivity systems, but this one is mine. My productivity system is my best friend in the whole world. I call it "Getting Shit Done", or G*D for short. Ok, so I pitched you alright. It rocks, kay? I tried a few of the "professional" systems. Getting Things Done. Too complicated. I had to install tools to make use of the process and had about 50% overhead work. Then I didn't use them because it was too complicated to enter anything into them. Not good. This was too complex. My problem was not managing thousands of emails. My problem was not delegating tasks around and outsource anything. I just needed to get off my butt! So here goes my system.

JUST - FUCKING - DO - IT - ALREADY

There is one rule and it goes as follows: Rule #1: If you are thinking, at any time, about doing something even remotely useful instead of not doing it, SLAP YOURSELF IN THE FACE AND RUN OFF TO DO IT! And I literally mean run. Get your adrenaline pumped, get things starting, you'll be in full speed before you can even think about the benefits and disadvantages of being productive today. I'll give you some examples.

Just fucking go to training

Today I was pondering if it would be worthwhile to go to my kickboxing training. Normally I always go (twice a week). But it's the middle of summer, everybody is on holiday, our trainer is gone surfing in greece, it's fucking hot and I was sweating just lying around on my butt. Then it hit me: I just had to fucking get going! So I just put on my kickboxing shirt and pants and stuffed my gear in the backpack and off I was. It took me like 1 minute and 30 seconds to get going, and before I could even consider the fact that nobody else might show up I was already gone. And it was awesome! There was actually only one other guy, Carsten. He's a little shorter than me and very agile, and after a little warm-up and training high kicks we sparred for about 45 minutes with a few short rest periods. And it was amazing. I learned so much just from having the time to focus on things instead of the usual rush and diversions. If you're just there with one guy you really spend every single second improving yourself.  Later another guy (Martin) came and we also sparred a little. He's an amazing kicker. He can get to overhead-height and I barely reach my shoulder-height after 4 months of training. I learned so much today and I really got a good workout, improving my fitness, my technique, my fight experience and even my spirit. I'm always really happy and in the moment after fighting. It is quite awesome how something supposedly violent makes you peaceful and content. And all that because I just fucking went instead of pondering the question.

Just write a little, every time you're bored

This is how I finished my first novel. It's about 60,000 words. That's quite short, but I like it. Sweet and short. I am usually more of a "start everything, finish nothing" person. But with this I just told myself: every time you're even remotely THINKING about writing on this book, you're going to do it. It was also very convenient that I had just gotten a Mac and WriteRoom. You just open the laptop, click the "Wr" icon and - boom. You can type. You're in writing-state almost the second you open WriteRoom, because it's full screen and completely distraction free. But back to topic: every time I was bored and thinking about the story I just raced to my computer, opened it and began typing away. I did this for a few weeks and suddenly realized I was two thirds finished. And that after fiddling with chapter 1 and 2 for six months! After that it became easier, because I had a goal very close. But just getting the fuck up and DOING IT helped me build momentum. I just didn't give myself the choice to not write.

Make a blog

Incidentally, this was how I set up this blog. I had a server running for ages. I had the domains for my name. I knew PHP, how to use WordPress, set up the database. I even had a few good ideas what to write. But I kept dragging it around with me.  Then when I started my 30-day-write-1000-words-every-day-challenge, I wasn't in the mood to write on my new book. So I thought - ok, writing 1000 words in a blog would also count. But I don't have a blog yet! So I downloaded WordPress, set everything up, which took me about one hour because I messed the apache config up, and wrote my first post. About 1000 words. It took me less than two hours to install everything and write my first post, but I hadn't "gotten around to it" for months. Then I just fucking got it done.

}finally{

I won't bore you with an extrapolation how everything worthwhile ever has been done this way, or how it is better than any other system. You'll recognize if it can help you. Are you a lazy fuck who sits around, wondering why he's not getting anything done? Then this is for you.  If your goal is actually to delegate tasks and outsource stuff, this might not be your approach. Either way, I think this is a great way to Getting Shit Done

Hello kids, Today we'll talk about two different things I keep hearing. Both seem very reasonable and valid advice to me - at the same time, I sometimes feel they are polar opposites. Am I wrong? Are they wrong? Is one of them wrong? Quick overview:

Pursuing your strengths

Since you are already great at your strengths (by definition) you are much more likely to practise them and gain even more skill. Also, most of the time the rewards of using a skill are not scaling linearly but exponentially. Like so:

• Novice writer: gets a hug from his mum
• So-so writer: gets compliments from his friends ("That's nice")
• Good writer: sells maybe 1000 copies and gets a few hundred bucks
• Very good writer: sells 10000 copies and gets a few thousand bucks
• Great writer: sells millions of copies and gets millions of bucks

Fixing the weak link

A system is only as strong as its weakest link is. If your car has 500bhp but your transmission can only transmit 200, you've wasted 300 and are not one bit faster. A writer with great ideas, colorful language and awesome characters won't be read by anyone if his grammar is all wrong.  You can improve on your other skills all you like, as long as there is something fundamentally wrong in one division, you're not getting anywhere. Sounds reasonable, right?

But don't they contradict each other?

Sure sounds like it. Always fix the weakest characteristic but also always improve the strongest? Which one is right? But, aha! There seems to be an answer to put them both to use. Listen up, kids. The weakest link in the system only drags the system down if the link is used. For example: the biceps muscle is part of a writers "system". But there are very good writers who don't have very well developed biceps. Similarly, improving on your strength is not useful if that strengths cannot be used without the left-behind skills and charcteristics. So how do we know which skills are interconnected and which aren't? I find the easiest way to determine that is to ask "what to do" and "how to do" it.

Pursue the strength in what to do

Writing. Kickboxing. Racing cars. Engineering work. Choose what to do based on your strengths. Forget the fields you're not good at and don't like. I'm not saying focus exclusively on one - that's going to get boring. Choose a few you really like. I like writing, developing software, martial arts and juggling. I try to focus on those. I don't try to improve on my cooking skills, singing skills or such. Not being able to sing doesn't hold me back as a writer, developer, fighter or juggler. As always, it's helpful to make a list of all the fields you can think of and then write the ones you chose down separately.

Fix the weak link in how you do things

So you chose your favourite fields of work/play? Great. In those fields, you should always try to fix the weak links! A kickboxer with great kicks and combinations will not win a single fight if he has a weak defense. A software developer can have great ideas, programming skills and enthusiasm, but won't get anything done if he lacks the understanding of design methodology. Make a list of the different skills that are needed in each of your professions/hobbies. Example: Skills needed in kickboxing:

• Kicking technique
• Punching technique
• Combinations
• Flexibility
• Defense
• Dodging
• Stamina
• Power

Today, let's talk about skill. I love skill. Realizing that I have learned something is one of the best experiences I know. Skill comes in many forms. It can be a physical skill, like a handstand or a well performed round-kick. It can be a mental skill like writing or solving math problems. Or something in between, for example delivering a near-perfect push-shot at the foosball table. One of the reasons why I like skill and learning is that it makes me feel change. I can look at myself and observe: I can do this now. I couldn't do it two weeks ago. I have changed. I have improved. This is a very powerful feeling.

Why learning skills is awesome

Do I really have to sell you on this? Well, so be it. I was a non-believer in skill when I grew up. I was under the impression that people were good at things because they had talent, not because they hat practiced a skill. I'm not sure where that impression came from. I was good at writing and computers, so I had talent in it. I didn't have the math-talent, the sports-talent or the girls-talent. Or so I thought. It didn't occur to me then that I might be good with computers because I was using them all day. This "born with talent" mentality is very damaging. If you know that learning a new skill or improving in one is impossible, why even try? You've only got to lose. I lost this way of thinking when I started going to university. Not that university helped - I learned almost nothing "skillworthy" there, only facts from books ("knowledge", not "skill"). But when I entered university, a friend convinced me to join a martial arts class. I stayed there for a year. It wasn't exactly the best thing I'd ever done, but I realized that I could LEARN this. Nobody is born knowing how to kick people in the face. You have to practise the movement. Soon I started taking up all sorts of body-related hobbies. Boxing, juggling, foosball, then kickboxing. I became a skill-junkie.  There is a problem though. In any new skill, you gain quickly in the beginning. You've never done anything like it, you think it's impossible. But after a week of practice you can do it with relative ease. Then to become proficient, you have to keep practising two months. The skill gain becomes more and more difficult to get in this particular skill. You reach plateaus. Which is why I always quit very fast. Upon hitting a plateau I would stop doing that skill and look for another one, looking for the rush of quick skill gains. I know the basics of a lot of skills, but am not great at any one. Not even good, really. I can juggle the 3-ball-cascade (basic pattern), 2-ball-fountain and the 4-ball-fountain (this one very roughly). I can't do them consistently or do any more spectacular tricks like the Mill's Mess. I can do an ok jab, right cross and round-kick. My hooks and front-kicks are bad, so is my dodging. I beat beginners at foosball with my pretty good push-shot and pin-shot, but I can't do them consistently or pass through a good defense. What am I going at? If you want to became really good at one skill, you have to stick through the not-so-fun-anymore part.

What skills to learn and how far to take them

This is not easy. There is no perfect answer, you have to figure it out on a case-by-case basis. The two extremes are obvious: become a master of one thing and incompetent fool in everything else. This is straightforward: pick one skill and do it for the rest of your life. You will probably become one of the world's best in it after 5-10 years. Probably not that great because your life will seriously lack variety. You might think it's great to be among the world elite in, say, boxing. But in this extreme example, you wouldn't know anything else. Like how to cook dinner. Or how to talk to strangers. The alternative extreme is a jack of all trades, who knows nothing well enough to use it but can impress bystanders with his talk about everything. The disadvantage: you can't really do anything with your skills, because you don't commit enough to any single one. I'm that guy. So it's pretty clear you shouldn't be one of those two guys. And it's also clear that in reality, nobody is really that extreme. Even the worlds most focused kung-fu monk knows something about gardening or sewing. And even the jack of all trades, like me, can do a little with his skill. Be it beating newbies in foosball. I do that. It's fun until a good guy comes along. The good news is: you can become pretty amazing in a lot of skills. You won't be world elite, but you'll be in the top 95%. After three months of intense ANYTHING you'll be pretty good at it, better than 95% of the population. I noticed that that's the case with my so called "talents". I was great a writing in school because I enjoyed it and did it a lot. So I was among the top 3 people. Same thing in english (which is not my native language, which you'll have noticed by now). Same thing with Quake 3 or programming. I'm not nearly elite in those things. But I'm better in each of these than 90% of my friends, colleagues, etc. Just by doing them, not even with a good plan or goals. Now how do you choose which skills to pick and how far to go with each one?  Some skills are no-brainers. If you live in a western society and are a 15-45 year old mal (which I'm guessing since you're on the internet reading blogs), there are some things which you can't waste a minute on because every second spent learning them is worth it. In my opinion, those include:

• Social skills (talking to strangers, picking up girls, having fun around people)
• Some computer skills (needed for basically everything nowadays)
• Anything that improves the quality of your life (cooking, sports, travel)

Skill vs. knowledge

My definition: knowledge is something that can be stored in books. You can store in a book how to cook a steak or build a car. What you can not store is the actual use of information to do something. Knowing that you have to hit the ball really hard does not make you a good tennis player. I think skill is not in the mind but in the body. Knowledge can help you develop skill, but skill itself comes from practice.

Both are amazing books. Read them! Patrick Bateman, the main character of American Psycho and Peter Keating, one of the antagonists of The Fountainhead, are pretty similar. Both don't act upon their own values, they even lost their values while accepting those of others. Peter Keating becomes an architect because his mother tells him so and it is a "reasonable" job. He wanted to be a painter. We don't know if Patrick Bateman ever wanted to be something else, but his job is definitely not fulfilling. The only good thing about it is it gets him money and power. Both Keating and Bateman try to please others with the way they behave, dress, talk and think. They change their opinion based on what is fashionable to believe in. Both seem very successful fromt he outside. Peter Keating achieves the status of the most sought after architect of New York, marries the most beautiful girl and everyone wants to be his friend. Patrick Bateman fucks lots of hot chicks, is very rich and has a very well-trained body. Everything society deems as good, they have it. But inside they are very unhappy. Living up to others peoples standards makes them sick, even when they reach those goals. Especially then. While striving for the goal someone else sets for you, you can focus on them and hope you'll finally be happy when you reach them. When you actually reach those goals, you realize it was all for nothing and you are not one bit happier than before. Probably even unhappier. Remember those people that said "Money doesn't make you happy?" Sure it doesn't. Not when you only work because other people told you so. But doing what other people tell you and NOT getting money is not one bit better. Do what you want. If you get rich while doing so, fine. If not, you'll still survive. Incidentally it's a lot easier to get rich with what you're doing if you love doing it. There are several advantages.

• You keep going even if it gets tough, because you love doing it
• You do it a lot, so you'll get really good at it
• People notice when you love your work, and they are willing to pay extra
• You don't need to relax from doing what you love