Finding the Minimum Effective Dose

(MED) of Life
by Stephen

If you want to maximize your potential you have to be as

self reliant as possible. And the Archimedes lever for doing
that is increasing your learning speed and the scope of your
learning and it does not have to be complicated
- Timothy Ferriss Nov, 23 2012 CBS This Morning

TodayI posted this on Facebook:

The 4 Hour Chef is a wonderful book! I am picking it apart and soaking up the details.
I love the opening on meta learning, and I love how Tim uses cooking as a template for
better learning. Each topic is only the beginning of what is going to be a long road to
understanding the process of D.S.S.S. and C.F.E. I see a lot of cheat sheets in the near
future. I feel like the triad of 4HWW, 4HB and 4HC is creating a template for better living!
The 4 Hour Chef is absolutely more than a cookbook! Especially for those who choose to
look beyond the confines of a spectacular cover and typical Tim Ferriss hyper-marketing. It
is essentially the workings of a mind in the process of 80/20 deconstructing the entire
world!

Just in the first 56 pages

I have finally grasped a true comprehension of the brilliance behind Michel Thomas
language learning CDs which Tim first introduced me to in the 4HWW. In 3 pages and a
few minutes of deconstructing complex principles I can finally see the utility of auxiliary
verbs and how we overcomplicate language acquisition Usually to the point of feeling
like a failure.
The idea of reversing everything demonstrated through the creation of an upside down
fire is brilliant. Google backward, upside down and reverse and then your topic of
desire. Try Googling reverse workweek Yes you guessed it, it is only 4 Hours!
Tim simplifies the overwhelming task of finding and interviewing key influencers in your
field then in a few pages provides an assignment on learning to taste broken down to 5
simple principles.
Wow, that is a lot of diversity in a cookbook!

10,000 hours or 10,000 minutes (166 hours)?

Tim has convinced me that we dont need 10,000 hours to be world class at most things.
But I am trying to figure out what this means.
He claims that with the right approach we can all make it to the top 5% of anything within
6 months to a year.
This of course, like all blanket statements isnt true, but I do believe that he is onto
something. Specifically that the process of learning tends to be inefficient; Extremely
inefficient!

The MED of Life

Tim is building upon a concept that he has been working on from the very beginning: The
lowest volume, the lowest frequency, the fewest changes that get us our desired result is the
MED. It is the holy grail of acquiring more skills in less time, which in essence allows us
to live a better more fulfilling life!
Tim gives us these examples on page 56 of The 4 Hour Chef when he talks about
selection and the 80/20 principle:

1. Fat Los Minimum Effective Dose:

MED = Consume 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up. (p.s Tims dad
increased his monthly fat loss to 18.75 doing this with a simple Myoplex Shake every
morning) Or from the 4 Hour Body: Spinach, black beans, and egg whites (one-third of a
carton of Eggology liquid egg whites) with cayenne pepper flakes.

2. Overcoming Female Weight-Loss Plateaus

MED = five minutes of kettlebell swings three times per week.
Most men should start with a 20-kg (44 lb) or 24-kg (53 lb) kettlebell and most women
should start with a 16-kg (35 lb) or 20-kg (44 lb) kettlebell .

3. To Gain 10-30 Pounds of Lean Tissue in One Month

MED = 90-120 seconds of tension for most muscles. Slow cadence lifting (five seconds
up, five seconds down). i.e. Occams Protocol. Also I am a big fan of the Book: Body By
Science which this protocol is based on.

4. Master Conversational Fluency in any Language

MED = Learn 1,200 words, focusing on highest frequency. Again I am a big fan of the
Michel Thomas Language Learning Program which Tim mentions in the 4HWW.

5. Marketing
MED Read Kevin Kellys article 1,000 true fans
*Also one of Tims older and better recommendations: The 22 Immutable Laws of
Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!

Meta Learning (More Links and Resources Coming

Soon!)
META is where youll learn to mimic the worlds fastest learners. It is possible to become
world-class in just about anything in six months or less. Armed with the right framework,
you can seemingly perform miracles, whether with Spanish, swimming, or anything in
between.

D.S.S.S (DISS) The recipe for learning any skill

Deconstruction: What are the minimal learnable units, the LEGO blocks, I should
be starting with?
Selection: Which 20% of the blocks should I focus on for 80% or more of the
outcome I want?
Sequencing: In what order should I learn the blocks?
Stakes: How do I set up stakes to create real consequences and guarantee I follow
the program?

C.F.E (Caf) Secondary principles that are helpful but

not required.

Compression: Can I encapsulate the most important 20% into an easily graspable
one pager?
Frequency: How frequently should I practice? Can I cram, and what should my
schedule look like? What growing pains can I predict? What is the minimum
effective dose (MED) for volume?
Encoding: How do I anchor the new material to what I already know for rapid
recall? Acronyms DiSSS and CaFE are examples of encoding.

What follows is the one pager 0f the Meta-Learning chapter of Tim Ferriss Four Hour Chef
(the first part of CaFE is one-paging whatever youre learning).
Its forming the foundation of my Mindset & Skill Acquisition Method, and Ill be putting
it to the test in the next few months with an experiment to learn surfing (which I'll be
updating about on eddyazar.com).
You can get the full chapter and method notes here.

It is possible to become worldclass in just about anything in six months or less. Armed
with the right framework, you can seemingly perform miracles Tim Ferriss

The Two Guiding Principles

1. Failure Points. Avoid things likely to trip you up.
2. The Margin Of Safety. Pick a plan that ensures great results

DiSSS Planning Your Attack

Deconstruction The Minimum Learnable Units
Students are subordinate to materialsMaterial beats method. Tim Ferriss
When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food
will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is. Alice Waters, founder of Chef
Panissee
Break the skill down into bite-sized pieces & identify all failure points and all fundamental
principles.
Find and interview the pros (especially the unconventional pros) in the field, and find out
what they do in common, what trips beginners up, how they would teach you, their fav
learning resources, other unconventional pros, etc.

Selection Choose The Best 20% To Focus On

Do as little as possible, not as much as possible Henk Kraaijenhof
Simple works. Complex fails. Tim Ferriss
Find the MED (Minimum Effective Dose) you need to learn this skill. What teaches overall
principles well? What micro-skills are used throughout the skill?

MED = The lowest volume, the lowest frequency, the fewest changes that get us to our
desired result is what I label the minimal effective dose (MED)

Sequencing The Order In Which Youll Learn

How do you cut time without cutting corners? Tim Ferriss
What is the best order in which to learn? How can you avoid all the tripping points and
learn all the fundamental principles and micro-skills? How can you make sure youll stick
with it?

Stakes Real Life Consequences

What rewards or punishments can you put in place that will ensure you will follow
through? People counting on you? Money on the line?

CaFE Making Things Easier

Compression One Page It
The word decision, closely related to incision, derives from the meaning a cutting off.
Making effective decisions and learning effectively requires massive elimination and
the removal of options. Tim Ferriss
Fit the entire skill on one page.

Frequency When & How Often?

When & how often should you practice? What is the ideal schedule that youll stick to?

Encoding Easy Memorization

Use Mnemonics and memory techniques to remember things.

How to Apply the Minimum Effective Dose to Your

Finances

Efficiency. This could be my favorite word (Or, it could be los pantalones. Its a toss
up).
I love efficient web designs, work spaces, and finances. Anything that delays progress or
prevents you from completing a task, achieving a goal, or simply getting started should be
eliminated at any cost. You may not realize it, but your financial life can be made more
efficient. There are roadblocks and bottlenecks everywhere in your financial life, and
removing them will allow you to achieve the lifestyle you desire.
Becoming more efficient with your money will allow you to be in a position to take more
risks. You could finally start that business youve dreamed of, or confidently take 6 months
to a year off of work to travel.
The problem with money is, people like to complicate it to no end.
Head over to your local Barnes & Noble or Borders, and youll find more books about
investing than you could read in a lifetime. How is anyone supposed to fully grasp a
financial concept that takes 400 pages to explain, let alone implement it? So many people
forget that the point of investing is to have more money after a defined period of time than
you did when you started. Investing is not a hobby. Ill say it again, investing is not a
hobby. It is a task to be completed in the most efficient manner possible.
So if the point of investing is not to entertain ourselves, then one could assume that we
want to simplify the steps and take only the necessary actions to complete the task. Thats
where the Minimum Effective Dose come in to play.

The following is an excerpt from Tim Ferriss' latest book The 4-Hour Body:
The minimum effective dose (MED) is dened simply: the smallest dose that will produce a
desired outcome. (Arthur) Jones referred to this critical point as the minimum effective
load, as he was concerned exclusively with weight-bearing exercise, but we will look at
precise dosing of both exercise and anything you ingest.* Anything beyond the MED is
wasteful. To boil water, the MED is 212F (100C) at standard air pressure. Boiled is
boiled. Higher temperatures will not make it more boiled. Higher temperatures just
consume more resources that could be used for something else more productive.
If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED
for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced
break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, lets assume one week,
someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to t in four more
tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale prebeach self. Sad little manatee. In biological systems, exceeding your MED can freeze
progress for weeks, even months.
Ferriss shows us how this concept can be used to achieve a desired body composition, but
what about achieving a desired financial situation?
As weve previously discussed, there is not a one size fits all solution to getting out of
debt, saving more, or finding a career that satisfies. The reason? Everyones goal is
different. In terms of physical appearance, everyone has a different idea of what the perfect
body looks like. Some say its bulky and muscular, while others prefer the long, lean look
of a swimmer. When it comes to money, some are willing to sacrifice greatly in order to
live a lavish lifestyle, while others prefer giving up the cars and jewelry for a highly
fulfilling career or a life of simplicity. These are merely different ends of the spectrum, and
you may lie somewhere in between.
To apply the MED, you must have a concrete goal in mind.
In fitness, its been shown that having a goal of being healthy is entirely too broad. You
need to have a specific goal, such as, I want to lose 20 lbs. of fat, while increasing my
overall strength by an average of 25% for all major muscle groups. Now thats a goal that
you can effectively work toward!
The problem with the MED is that our minds tend to reject its simplicity. We try and fail
using several other methods, knowing full well that had we implemented the MED at the
beginnning, we would be much further along. The MED is boring, and our minds dislike
the monotony.
There is no better example of this than saving for retirement.
Conventional wisdom shows that the most effective way to build a nest egg is to make
automated contributions to an account that gradually steps down from aggressive to

conservative as we get older. Although Target Date funds arent perfect, they tend to be the
most effective way to achieve this. If Google Maps gave you directions to retirement, this
would be the suggested route.
So, youve got your Target Date fund set up, and your making regular contributions. Then
what happens? You get a little bored with it. Its not fun. You start to ask yourself if
youre diversified enough. Even though a mutual fund is made up of several securities
usually from different market sectors, the fact that your account appears to only have one
holding plays tricks on you.
Or, better yet, your buddy tells you about this hedge fund hes in that returned 50% last
year. He fails to mention that it lost 45% the year before. Without doing any due diligence,
you blindly sell out of your boring Target Date fund and jump into the hedge fund. Next
thing you know, its down 20% and your money is locked up for 12 months. By the time
youre able to withdraw your money from the hedge fund, youve lost money. All the
while, youre boring little Target Date fund had a modest 5% return that year. Not only
would you have made more money had you left it alone, but you also would have saved
yourself from the work and stress of making the change.
Although the Minimum Effective Dose for finances tends to be the boring way of doing
things, resist the urge to spice things up with strategies that are too good to be true.

Meet Tim Ferriss

Joshua Boorman

Contents [hide]

1 Who is Tim Ferriss?

2 What is Tim Ferriss famous for?
3 Deconstructing Learning
4 Why Tim Ferriss is kickass?
5 Tim Ferriss works & where you can find him?

Who is Tim Ferriss?

Tim Ferris was born in 1977 and grew up in East Hampton New York, in his later years he
attended Princeton University where he studied East Asian studies and then switched over
to Neuroscience.
In the early 2000s Tim Ferriss founded a nutritional supplement company called Brain
Quicken. Through a lot of hard work and savvy business skills he grew this company into a
very successful business however, as he mentions in his #1 bestseller The 4 Hour
Workweek, the success of this business was consuming far too much of his time and he was
becoming far too immersed into this company. He lost much of his freedom despite making
huge amounts of money and needed he quickly needed to change the course of his business
in order to free up his time.
Tim did this by simplifying his business and putting appropriate systems and measures in
place to run his business without the need for him having to work the business 14 hours a
day. You can look up his process of minimization and simplification of his business by
reading the 4 Hour Workweek where he details the processes he undertook to achieve this.
In particular have a look at this blog post by Tim which explores the history and art form
behind his processes that emanated from the Roman Emperors most trusted adviser Lucius
Seneca.

What is Tim Ferriss famous for?

Tim Ferriss really obtained cult icon status through his original book the 4 Hour Work
Week. This #1 bestseller had been around for a couple of years before I got my hands on it
in early 2010. I guess the book really resonates with me because I had just gotten back from
a 12 week backpacking adventure throughout South East Asia where I came to realize that
the corporate rat race was not the ladder that I wanted to be climbing. Instead I wanted to
ignite the inner entrepreneur within and dance to my own beatso to speak.
I think thats what is so important about this book is that it looks at the importance of your
time as opposed to your bank account balance. The 4 Hour Workweek focused on the
emerging renaissance of the New Rich which showed us that we should learn to walk to
the beat of our own drum in life. It discusses how anyone can escape the 9 to 5 grind,
become their own boss, set up an online business with systems in place that allow for
minimal time consumption but which generates enough money to take mini-retirements

allowing the New Rich to travel more, spend more time with their families, do whatever it
is that they have always dreamed of doing, basically simplifying their lives and removing
the unnecessary clutter.
Tim really does look at a minimalist approach to business and living life in order to cut out
the clutter and meaningless crap in our lives which tend to complicate things. For example
why do we need a big mortgage for a big house and flash new car when we never get to
truly enjoy it since we are working ridiculous hours in a corporate office just to be able to
make monthly payments to maintain illustrious possessions we dont even really get to
enjoy. Instead why not put systems in place where you can generate a passive income and
go off and travel to foreign countries living on $50-$100 per day and really experiencing
life and other cultures.
This is obviously just one example or scenario everyones lives are different and will
have different aspects and subjective factors that will result in you taking a different
approach. But the general idea is to free up your time so that you are able to get out and
enjoy life and the things you have always wanted to do or open your mind up to new
possibilities within our world.
In particular this book sparked an avalanche of other books, blogs, programs and speakers
who talk about the New Rich culture and in particular making money online generally in
a passive or minimalist type of nature.
Online marketers, online business people and general internet entrepreneurs will often refer
to the 4 Hour Workweek as the written piece which completely change their outlook on life
and business.
The book along with Tim himself has gained such a cult status and following that it is really
hard to NOT see him as a modern day trailblazer of kind.
His follow up bestseller books were entitled the 4 Hour Body and the 4 Hour Chef. Each
book looks at basically deconstructing the most effective principles at achieving the
required goals sought. The 4 Hour Body obviously focuses heavily on achieving health and
fitness goals. Whereas the 4 Hour Chef looks at preparing fantastic food and meals in the
easiest of fashions. But the 4 Hour Chef also goes into a great amount of detail in teaching
its reader how to master any skill or activity through deconstructing the learning
techniques or taking the Minimum Effective Dose (MED) and apply it to the mastering of
the particular skill or activity.

Deconstructing Learning
As mentioned above and the main focus of the 4 Hour Chef saw Tim explaining his
deconstructing learning process for any task or activity. Basically he looks at the minimum
effective dose of any activity or skill otherwise known as the 80/20 principle or the Pareto
Principle.

Basically, in a nutshell this is where 80% of the effects actually come from 20% of the
causes or in other words 80% of your outcomes will come from 20% of your inputs. So
what this means for Tim Ferriss and other proponents of these principles is that in whatever
activity or skill we wish to learn of partake in then we should focus on the important 20%
of what gets 80% of the results. Discard all of the other wasted time and effort put in which
reap an insignificant amount of result.
More specifically Tim created his own process of putting these principles into play when
attempting to master a skill or activity his DiSSS CaFE looks like this:
D = for deconstruction. What is the minimum useful unit of knowledge?
S = for Selection. What 20% of those minimum units will lead to 80% of your desired
outcome?
S = for Sequencing. Whats the most effective order for learning these units?
S= for Stakes. What psychological and social mechanisms can you setup for discipline and
motivation?
C = for Compression. Can I compress the most important 20% into a one-pager?
F = for Frequency. What is the best duration and frequency, knowing my personal limits
and goals?
E = for Encoding. How do I create mental anchors to make sure I remember stuff?

Why Tim Ferriss is kickass?

We for me personally I am a massive fan of this guy, so much so my wife is bloody sick of
me talking about him haha.
But seriously the guy is awesome, he is constantly testing and pushing the boundaries on
various things in life (often referred to as Life Hacking) to present to the masses the best
and most effective way of achieving success in our lives.
For this reason I believe that Tim Ferriss is a modern day trailblazer whether it be losing
weight, building muscle, sleeping better, learning a language or skill in record time, getting
your female partner to orgasm more intensely, living healthier, living longer or just
LIVING then Tim Ferriss is at the forefront of finding out how we can better our lives
through testing new directions in life.
Thats right ladies and gentlemen, Mr Tim Ferriss, the self-proclaimed human guinea pig is
out their putting his body, life and self-respect on the line by experimenting with all sorts of
interesting activities and skills in order to find the best way in which you too can improve
your life.
But dont be mistaken that Tim Ferriss is just out there making a quick gimmicky and oversensationalized name for himself, he is actually a highly intelligent entrepreneur and public
figure in his own right. He advises many of the worlds largest tech companies such

as as StumbleUpon, Lyft, Posterous, Evernote, DailyBurn, Shopify, Reputation

Defender, Trippy, Foodzie, Badongo, TaskRabbit, RescueTime, and SimpleGeo in addition
to having a small equity stakes in Facebook and Twitter.
No biggie!!
Anyway if you are looking for a highly intellectual, highly entertaining person who just
really seems like a really love-able guy and good bloke then check out any of his works and
most importantly keep an eye out for his new works constantly in the making.

MED todays most important

effectiveness principle

I went to the doctor the other month with a headache and he hit over the head with a plank
of wood. Wrong solution. Made things worse.
I went to another and he gave me 500mg of Ibuprofen. Right solution, but not enough to
calm the symptoms.
I went to third doctor and he prescribed 1kilogram of Ibuprofen. I spent 1 month in hospital
getting over it.
A final doctor told me that what I needed was the minimum effective dose: The right
amount of the right stuff to get the desired results. Not less, not more and not something
else.

In all things effectiveness, leadership and communication, its the same story. Ill take a
presentation as an example:

Dont use a table when a graph would be better. Dont give technical facts when a
story would be easier to understand.
Make sure you give enough content to make your point
..but not so much as to send them to sleep (or the hospital if its really bad!)

Minimum Effective Dose, introduced to me by Tim Ferriss in his great book The Four
Hour Body, is THE guiding principle for personal effectiveness, leadership and
communication.
Ask yourself (always):

What MUST I have/say/do/be to get what I want?

What is just a bit more with no real impact, or worse still: negative impact?
What is the RIGHT WAY to get what I want?
What approach would not be appropriate?

Are you doing the MED right now?

How can you apply the MED principle to your own work?

Tim Ferriss DiSSS Method for Weight

Loss
by Darren Beattie 0 comments

Timothy Ferriss has a history of doing the least amount

possible for the biggest possible outcomes.
Hes the best-selling author of three books that attack an underlying principle hes termed
Minimum Effective Dose (MED A term hes slightly altered and borrowed from
the pharmaceutical industry), or the minimum you can do in order to get the result youre
looking for.
The ultimate learning hacker, his first book was a productivity hack book (The 4-Hour
Workweek), followed by an even more popular fitness and health body hack book (The 4Hour Body).
*That last book borrows heavily from a lot of the fitness and health professionals I mention
on my resource page.
Most recently, hes revealed his accelerated learning secrets in a book about cooking hacks
(The 4-Hour Chef) and hes calling it DiSSS or DS3 if you like.
Before I had ever even heard of Tim, I had been filtering my work systemically.
One of my favourite quotes comes from Bruce Lee:
Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.

This describes Tims approach to a tee, but DiSSS is just a good way to remember his
system there are other sub-components to it that I may discuss in a future post and its
four components:

Deconstruct (you can basically ignore the small i it just makes for a better
acronym)
Selection
Sequencing
Stakes

Deconstruct
By far one of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to lose some weight is taking
on too much, too soon and all at once. Take a moment to think about how one typically
goes about solving a puzzle:
1. Organize all the edge pieces
2. Organize these edge pieces according to colours that mostly match
3. Start connecting the edge pieces together forming the frame around the rest of the
puzzle
4. Organize the rest of the pieces according to colours that mostly match
5. Start in a corner where the edge pieces match the colour scheme of the other pieces
you just grouped together
6. Work inward continuing to utilize your colour schemes and adjusting often as
needed
And so on and so forth, some of you may attack them differently, the point is that most of
us will all develop a system that groups a larger puzzle into smaller more manageable tasks.
This is a principle often called chunking by psychologists, and it can be masterfully used
to help you lose weight. What are the absolute minimum learnable chunks for weight loss?
Mindset:

The Growth Mindset

Start with Why
Understand Your Values
Know Thy Motivation
Understand One-Thing-At-A-Time
Kaizen
The 90/10 Principle
Identify Your Blocks and Work Through Them
Deliberate Practice
Using Stillpower
The Process of Change

Nutrition:

Diet is an Iterative Process

Understand the Basics of Portion Control
The Weekly Ritual
Manipulate Your Environment in Your Favour
Cook Most of Your Own Food
Eat Whole Foods
Eat Lean Protein with Every Meal (1-2 palm sized portions)
Eat 1-2 Fistfuls of Veggies with Every Meal
Eat Starchy Carbohydrates moderately (mostly on days you train)
Eat healthy fats daily (Fish (Oil), Ghee, Coconuts (Oil), Olives
(Oil), Macadamia (Oil), Nuts, Seeds, etc)
Eat on a Spectrum

Exercise:

Learn to Breathe
Learn to Squat
Learn to Deadlift
Learn to Lunge/Step
Learn to Push
Learn to Pull
Learn to Stabilize (Control/Decelerate Range of Motion)
Learn to Rotate (Properly Be Very Careful Here to Start)
Learn to Carry (Locomotion)
Learn how to structure proper workouts
Learn when you should train
Learn how often you should train
Why Mobility Matters
The Basic Principles of Injury Prevention
Energy System Development
Neuromuscular System Development
Learning How to Use Interval Training

Im sure I will continue to develop these principles, these are not set-in-stone rules about
what you HAVE to do in order to lose weight, they are just a set of principles that you can
pick and choose as they apply to you, in order to hit your objectives.

Selection
If we follow the 80/20 principle; what are the 20% things that youve deconstructed that
account for 80% of success?

Likewise, what principles would you want to focus on for 80% of your time to maximize
these results?
Well above, I deconstructed a bunch of things for you, now you have to select what applies
to you.
You can use this cheat sheet to figure out which one will yield the biggest bang for your
buck, or use this cheat sheet to develop some of the habits I noted above in another
document I put together for all of you.
Remember, absorb what is useful to you, and ignore what you think may not be as useful,
then adopt anything that can be uniquely your own in other words there Im sure Ive
missed something, or have yet to discover it, and if you find something, please share it in
the comments below.
Assignment: Choose one of the things I listed above to focus on learning.
Of course you dont have to just take my word for this stuff, here are some additional ideas
for selecting strategies that work:

Research studies
Research reviews or articles written by quality researchers and/or practitioners
Reading books/blogs on the subject(s) (be mindful of the source, especially their
background)
Attending seminars/workshops (look for layman ones, rather than ones geared to
trainers like me)
Video/DVDs (again be mindful of the source)
Online Courses (you guessed it, be mindful of the source!)
Conversations with qualified persons
Etc

That may be a lot of data to deconstruct and select based on importance, that I may have
excluded, forgotten about, or simply havent found it to be significantly important yet.

Sequencing
A very important and often overlooked component of learning how to lose weight and
maintain that weight once your objective has been completed is the order of delivery.
Now that youve deconstructed the pieces of the puzzle and selected the pieces that are
most important how do you deliver them?
As the saying goes, you have to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run.
For example, maybe going to 30 grams of protein each meal feels like too much initially.

Am I positive that that amount for most Men will be most optimal (depending on eating
frequency)?
Yes I am, but
You can stuff my opinion on this matter completely, if eating that much protein initially
causes gastrointestinal stress (and it might initially), doesnt feel good, or if you have an
underlying medical condition that prevents you from doing so.
Absolutely!
Is six servings of veggies a day too hard? What about two or three to start?
You have to meet yourself where youre at and build sequentially from there, some of the
ideas above will need to be regressed first in order for you to eventually meet them.
Some of them might already be way too easy for you to start now, so you need a
progression.
Ideally the starting point seems almost too easy to implement, thats fine, you need to build
some momentum. Then progress to slightly and slightly more challenging skills.
So if you start with two servings of veggies, and thats more than the zero or one you were
eating before, thats a good starting point.
Once thats ingrained, take it up a notch, try three or four servings.
Once thats ingrained, again take it up a notch until you hit that sweet spot of at least five or
six servings a day of vegetables, habitually every day.
Then move onto some other nutrition skills that need some buffering or improving.
Assignment: Select what you want to focus on, focus on it, dont focus on whats next.
However, before you pick that something, take a small moment to think about (in the back
of your mind) what youll want to tackle next or somewhere down the road.
Where would you like to be? What things provide a good foundation? You want to
snowball.
This enables you to pick something that can build towards what youd like to complete and
gives you some sequencing.
You could road map it out if there are several things you need to link to obtain your end
outcome.

Stakes
Im going to preface this by saying that Im not a big fan of stakes as an effective method
for change, but my distaste for it is high relative to the way most people set up stakes.
i.e. I must achieve X by Y or else I will do Z.
Bad idea, as it is typically only useful in the short-term and in reality should be applied
ONLY to controllable factors.
Many people choose stakes based on outcomes that are out of their control.
Now luckily, I tend to choose controllable factors rather than outcome come based goals
like lose ten pounds in 3 months.
i.e. eat six servings of veggies every day.
I like to think that results are the ultimate stakes, but sadly this is not always the case for
the people I work with, and Im battling the status quo on this one society still mostly
believes that incentives are what should drive behavior: I disagree.
If however, you are the kind of person, that thinks an incentive is what youll need to
achieve your desired outcome, then maybe youll find some value in this approach.
Heres how you can create better stakes if thats the route you choose to go:

Bet on Daily or Weekly Objectives not outcomes

Stickk (think if I dont workout Monday/Wednesday/Friday then I will donate, as
opposed to the more common, if I dont lose 10 lbs 3 months from now, make the
immediacy felt today)
Prizes/Awards (I spoke about why rewards arent really a great idea here but if you
must, you must)
Sign Up For a Contest (Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Yearly/Etc the more immediate the
greater the chance youll start, which is most important)
Anti-Charity Contributions (if you dont hit your objectives, money will be donated
to an organization you despise, see Stickk above, loss aversion is stronger than
pleasure gains)
Apps like Lift or other tracking software (which I feel do not benefit from coaching
but can be useful)
Humiliation/Punishment (Not recommended at all by me, though still used by
some)

Generally I favour positive stakes over negative ones, but human beings are hardwired to
worry more about losing something than gaining something (thats a fact), so negative
outcomes can sometime be more powerful to certain individuals.

Research suggests that we need three times the positive influence the counterbalance the
negative ones.
If stakes dont work for you though after a while, I believe you should look for actionable
factors you can change and look for a deeper form of intrinsic motivation give the
objective a strong meaning you can reflect daily.
All in all, there you have four wonderfully simple methods for enhancing the speed of your
long-term weight loss strategy.
Do you have any additional ideas on this approach, a habit or method that was the key to
your success? Leave a comment below.
Ill then be following up with a few more of my own additions to this method soon

The 80/20 Rule

by Darren Beattie 3 comments
This was going to be called, the 2 things you can do to get the most out of training, in
essence a lesson on effectiveness.
What can philosopher, Vilfredo Pareto, teach you about productivity and effectiveness?
Quite simply put that a relatively small amount of effort, organized in an appropriate
fashion can lead to a staggering amount of success, or that a relatively small amount of
things are yielding the majority of your stress and difficulty in life.
Either way he formed the basis of what is now often called the Minimal Viable Dose, or
the minimal amount of anything that will yield the greatest (most?) desired results.
If you are stuck on getting something done, sometimes the best thing to do is take a step
back, give your mind a break and follow up with some self-analysis. To improve your
productivity, and consequently your effectiveness, one such analysis is the 80/20 Analysis.
An analysis common in business. It is widely assumed that 20% of your customers are
largely 80% of your business.
In fact, it seems that you can apply this principle to change anything, from your level of
fitness, to your job, your family life, your social sphere and many other walks of life too.
Lets look at a general level for now. Write down what you do in a typical day (Need a
hand with this? Try something like Rescue Time), and categorize quickly what you would
view as productive and what you would view as unproductive.
I recommend having at least a 3 day cross-section, with 2 weekdays and 1 weekend from
which to really draw a good but simplistic life analysis.
Try a tool like iDoneThis if you need additional help its free and will prompt you to
record what you did that day, qualitatively, each day at a predetermined time and then
look at a nice cross-section of data to see how productive your days ACTUALLY are.
From there:
1) Identify the 20 percent of activities that produce 80 percent of the results you are looking
for (based upon your objectives in that particular realm of your life).

2) Identify the 20 percent of activities that consume 80 percent of your time.

Ill give you a hint; nutrition, sleep and exercise are all productive.
This exercise is really about identifying priorities in your life and finding a positive
balance.
You need to be able to identify good uses of time and activities that are not particularly
useful.
This is a really difficult task when done correctly as most things serve some kind of a
purpose, but what most people discover is that they spend a lot of time doing insignificant
or inconsequential activities, rather than focusing on things that truly matter to them.
To cut more stuff out, refer to the Stop-Doing List, advocated by author, Jim Collins.
However, if over-consumption is holding you back, you need to find a way to break that
cycle. For example, I think its fair to say that most people over-consume television and
they know it.
What strategies then could you explore that would reduce the amount of time you spend
watching TV?
Look to start by cutting one thing, instead of all 20% of your bad habits that lead to
productivity leaks at once.
Get some social support, tap all your resources to change one thing for a month or more
until it sticks, then move on to another activity consuming too much time.
This is an on-going process its part of my year-end review but you can make big
strides in a short amount of time and save yourself a lot of headaches.

What is MED? Plus MED references for exercise, food

and more
By Luke Starbuck
Its a concept that the book talks about, but doesnt go into a lot of detail with. If youre
worried you might be doing more than enough exercise, but still seeing no results, or if you
feel like youre not doing enough, MED has the answer. Likewise, if youre wondering
about sleep, meals, protein, beans, and weights training theyre all covered here.
(A note on the photo I couldnt resist.. whats the MED of I love yous'?)
The fact that the M.E.D. concept underpins the ideas the Four Hour Body, isnt necessarily
obvious, if just one or two chapters are read. Especially if the MED chapter is skipped, the
other chapters could be read quite differently. Thats why its important to understand the
MED concept, and how it applies to fat loss, muscle gain, exercise, food and more.

So what is MED?
M.E.D. standards for Minimum Effective Dose. Its a term that medical science is familiar
with, but its not something we use in day to day talking, so it sounds a little bit odd.
Lets look at it a little differently.
If you were baking a cake, and you werent using a recipe, but knew the ingredients to
include, how would you know how much sugar to add? The simple answer is that if youre
new to baking, you probably wouldnt know, and you could do one of two things:
1. You could add so much theres going to be no doubt about the final results
sweetness
2. You might add a smaller amount, aiming to hit a balance between flavor and
sweetness.
If you took the second option, you might end up with a cake that wasnt sweet enough, so
you would try again, this time adding half as much again, and so on, until you found the
right amount.
That right amount would be the MED of sugar required to make that cake that is, the
minimum amount of sugar needed to make the cake sweet. Adding more after that may

make it sweeter, but its not going to be the difference between someone tasting the
difference between bitter and sweet.
So, back to slow carb and away from those delicious cheat day cakes for a minute: you can
imagine that MED plays a very important part of many aspects of a Four Hour Body
lifestyle.
To explain this a little further, its important to know that the Minimum Effective Dose isnt
just the most efficient, and therefore attractive option, but, in fact, sometimes going a long
way beyond the MED can actually result in no effect being seen, or in a negative effect
being seen. This would be true for our chocolate cake, if instead of 1/2 cup of sugar we
added 4 cups of sugar the result wouldnt be 8 times better, in fact it would most likely be
unappealing.
The MED concept is important, in many aspects of the Four Hour Body, including;

exercise
slow carb
protein
beans
sleep
water
weights training
cardio training
and many others

Lets take a quick look at the MED for each:

Exercise
If you have read our article The Golden Rule of Slow Carb Fat Loss: The Right Amount of
Exercise, youll already be aware that there is definitely a sweet spot of exercise to
undertake, if fat loss is your goal. But here, MED extends beyond fat loss, through to
muscle gain, and general wellbeing in the long-term. It is just as unhealthy to do too much
exercise as it is to do too little. Too much can result in overtraining which is a state
where your body is more prone to infection, disease and injury, and many systems are not
working at their best.

Slow Carb
A minor detail in the book mentions that you should eat enough food so you dont feel
hungry. Though it also cites not putting limits on how much you eat, and not worrying
about counting calories, this comes with the underlying idea that you will be looking to eat
enough that is, an amount just a little more than feeling a little bit hungry. Fine tuning
this is easier if you start with undereating a little, and adding until you no longer feel
hunger between meals. Imagine if you started eating much more than you needed to feel

satisfied between meals, and you would have trouble knowing if you were eating too
much or just enough.
In the bigger picture, you want to find just enough slow carb lifestyle to achieve fat loss
youre happy with. So for some people, this means ice baths, supplements and squats in
bathrooms, for others it just means 4 meals a day of beans, protein and vegetables.

Protein
Each meal is designed to provide adequate protein, with a minimum amount cited in the
book of 25 grams per meal. Assuming 4 meals per day, this means 100 grams of protein per
day. Though protein is a healthy substance, nothing should be overdone, and protein, in the
case of the slow carb diet, can not replace the complex carbohydrates that beans deliver, nor
can it replace the nutrition and fibre gained from the vegetables, not even if you double
your protein intake to 200 grams per day. For those who are training to gain muscle, the
MED of protein comes in around 180-220 grams per day, depending on goal weight and
current weight. The same applies though, to adding more protein than this it will most
likely just contribute to an aching stomach and no more benefits than that.

Beans
Many people ask about beans, and how much they should be eating. This is a personal
thing, as we are all different shapes and sizes. However, the MED reference point for beans
is to be eating them with each meal, and in a good proportion to other food types. This
generally means between 1/2 and 1 cup of beans per meal. Some big guys go higher than
this, some smaller girls will include just 1/2 cup with each meal. How much is right
depends on you. The minimum effective dose in this case is how much gives you the
energy you need, to do what youre doing, from one meal to the next. Pretty simple!

Sleep
This is a common one that can be easily missed. The human body requires a certain amount
of sleep to fully function. It also requires a certain amount to repair, rebuild, recover from
injury and illness, and keep everything running well. The more stress on the body, the more
it has to recover from. This includes exercise, work, emotional stress, and lack of sleep!
For sleep, the minimum effective dose is the amount that provides you with adequate
energy for the whole day (no naps needed), as well as feeling like your body is able to
recover from any weights training, gym classes, or cardio exercise you are doing. Most
likely, the MED of sleep for each person is actually different from night to night. For
example, after a weights workout, I can use up to an extra hour to wake up feeling just as
refreshed as I do on other days. Factor this in when youre planning your activities as well
as your work. If you stay back and work late, youll actually need more sleep, though this
isnt always the case.

Missing your mimimum effective dose of sleep can lead to a range of consequences
catching the flu more easily, not being able to focus, or not rebuilding muscle broken down
in a workout. If this continues, you could in fact be going backwards in an effort to increase
sleep, or productivity, as your body is broken down and doesnt have time to recover.
Consider taking a full week to discover what your sleep MED is Ill bet it will surprise
you. Doing this recently, I gained 2 lbs of muscle after not moving the scales for 3 weeks.

Water
Commonly, we talk about 8-10 glasses of water per day. But what is that really for? There
is so much the body uses water for that its difficult to really say for certain what the MED
of water is, however its obvious that if we workout, if we get hot, or if were drinking
coffee, the minimum effective dose of water will increase for that day. Keep in mind the
kinds of things that affect water needs, and aim to always satisfy the minimum effective
dose. Going too far over can lead to other problems though, so its important to look to find
that balance point.

Weights Training
As evidenced by the Occams Protocol workout schedule, doing weights everyday is
certainly not the answer to gaining muscle. Doing weights once a month, however, will not
get you as much gained as you could have had. So, theres a point in between somewhere,
which Tim describes as having more rest as your muscles grow. In other words, the more
recovery you need, the more time between workouts. This makes so much sense, but there
are so many training programs that recommend even rest between workouts, for 12 weeks,
or longer.
The MED concept, in regards to weight training, goes beyond recovery time however.
MED is the number one factor in the Occams Protocol workouts consisting of very few
different lifts, and very few sets. In doing just a few compound exercises, and at one set per
lift, the book explains that any more than this level of work is just burning energy. MED
looks to find the minimum amount of activity that will prompt your body to grow more
muscle. Doing a lot more could mean youre breaking down muscles that could be
repairing, as well as using up energy that could be going into recovery. So there are some
very good reasons to look for the MED in any weights training you are doing.
Its important to remember that just because the book suggests workouts of one set, that not
all the other workouts out there are wrong. In fact, looking at the lifting cadence, or speed,
shows that each repetition (rep) is a full 10 seconds long. This means if you do 8 reps, you
have worked that muscle group for 80 seconds. If you compare this to some other
programs, where you might do 5 sets of 5 reps, if you complete these with a faster speed,
you might only be working the muscle for a total of 50 seconds (5 reps at 1/1 cadence = 10
seconds per set x 5 = 50 seconds total). So the MED for lifting weights has a lot to do with
time under tension that is, how long the muscle is under tension for. And the minimum
effective dose, to grow muscle, is between 80 and 120 seconds.

Cardio Training
Cardio training is that kind of exercise that gets your heart going. This is particularly close
to my heart, because I used to do a lot of running, and a lot of bike riding, looking to
exhaust myself, and then some, to achieve what I perceived was a pinnacle of fitness.
Sadly, I never actually felt that great, and never really saw the training pay off as extra
energy, because I was always tired. I know much better now that in fact I was overtraining
myself and my body had no time to recover.
The Minimum Effective Dose of Cardio exercise comes in two flavors duration of the
activity, and how often these activities are.
With regards to duration, unless youre training for a specific endurance event (and even
then you can do so with short training sessions), cardio training between 20 and 40 minutes
is generally ideal. Check out our article Learning Fast Effective Cardio from a Body
Master for a workout that can satisfy the fitness requirements of most people in 20
minutes. If you train longer, after a certain point you are no longer training those muscles,
or training the cardiovascular system, but in fact challenging your bodys stress endurance
systems, and the effect can last for days and days afterwards. It also doesnt necessarily
prompt the body to develop more cardiovascular endurance, stamina or strength, which is
what training is all about: giving the body a reason to develop beyond its current state.
The MED of cardio exercise, and how often it comes, is similar to weights training the
body needs time to recover. Muscles need time to recover, but so does the body in general.
If you are completing intense workouts every day, even if theyre only 20 minutes long,
there isnt much time to recover. Youd need to be getting a lot of sleep to give yourself the
best chance (not likely for most of us), and even then, after a time youd be risking
overtraining injuries and other problems. The MED suggested online is 2-3 times per week,
with at least 1 day of rest after any session. So this could be Sunday, Tuesday and Friday, or
Monday, Thursday and Saturday, or another combination.
Finding your MED for exercise is critically important if you want to see results many,
many inquiries we get from people include reports of daily cardio sessions, plus weights
sessions, or regular endurance sessions, plus shorter intense sessions, perhaps 6 days a
week. Not seeing results, in this scenario, is the expected result. Finding the MED means
less training and better results and a faster path to your goals.

And what about all those other things?

MED as a concept can be applied to many other areas of life. Whats the MED of calling
your mom? Of walking the dog, or feeding your cat? Of catching up with friends? The
MED for cooking your steak? (Thats an important one.) All of these scenarios show that
doing too much of one thing doesnt make it better. The Minimum Effective Dose is about
finding the point at which you dont need any more to achieve the result you desire, but no
more. This leaves you free for other things, other foods, other sports, other uses of your
time.

Find your MEDs in a just a few areas of life and you will feel amazing benefits. I
guarantee it.
Have an idea of your MEDs? Leave a comment below, especially if youve been surprised
about one of them!

The Core Idea: 5 Books That Changed My

Life
Written by Ben, November 6th, 2014
books
Great books change your life. Even the not-so-great can contain a nugget of truth that
resonates, and set you on a different path. Here are 5 books, and their take-away concept,
that have done that for me.

Minimum Effective Dose: Tim Ferriss (The 4 Hour Body)

Tim Ferriss is an interesting guy. At times he seems like an arrogant prick, at times a
humble guy on the path to self-betterment. The 4 Hour Body is a good book, if you're
interested in health and experimentation, but it's not "great". It has, however, changed my
life.
One of Ferriss' core concepts in the book is finding the minimum effective dose: that is,
what's the least amount you need to do to get the outcome you want. For the most part
(given the subject matter of the book) he applies this to health-related ideas: exercise,
supplimentation etc. But I've found it applies everywhere.
I've been following this principle since I was 13, without having a name for it. After being a
very conscientious student in primary school, I wised up in high school. I worked out how
hard I needed to study to get the grades I wanted, and stopped there. I needed a university
entrance rank of 65 to get into the course I wanted, so I aimed for 75 (and got 74.7). This
frustrated my teachers who were certain I could get into the 90s, but that seemed like a
whole lot of extra work for no real gain.
Thanks to Ferriss I've realised that this is a broadly applicable idea, not just a result of my
laziness. So long as I'm clear about my goals, I find this a great way to not over-commit,
and to leave myself the time and energy to do more things.

Dichotomy of Control: Epictetus (The Enchiridion)

It should be no surprise that Epictetus makes my list. The dichotomy of control (coined by
William Irvine to describe the central Stoic concept) has fundamentally changed the way I
approach the world.
Put simply: everything in life fits into one of two categories: it is completely within my
control; or it is not. To be happy, and to improve as a person, I should focus solely on those
things that I control and ignore those that I don't.
What this boils down to, in practice, is focusing entirely on my actions and reactions. I can't
control how the kids behave, but I can control how I react to them. I can't control if my
work is appreciated, but I can control how much effort I put in.

Time as a Filter: Nassim Taleb (Antifragile)

Antifragile is a rare book, in that it (along with its companion, The Black Swan) have many
life altering ideas. The one that has probably made the most day-to-day difference for me is
the idea that time acts as a filter.
To back up a little, the core idea of Antifragile is that things can have a spectrum of
reactions to change: fragile things dislike change, robust things don't care, and antifragile
things like, or improve with change. Time by its nature exposes things to more change
events, which leads to the conclusion that those things that have lasted a long time are at
worst robust and at best antifragile: time weeds out the fragile.
This has most affected the types information that I consume. I was already rapidly tiring of
(and in many instances removing) news from my reading list. I've been a heavy user of
Pocket for years, which I found gave me more opportunity to avoid sensationalist articles:
often by the time I got to them an hour or so later, I'd lost interest.
Armed with Taleb's idea, I took things to the next level: I reversed my Pocket list so that I
read the oldest artilces first. This has been wonderful. I immediately cull a good 30% of
articles before I open them, because I'm just not interested any more: either it's no longer
the issue du jour, or my interests have changed. Best of all though, there are some absolute
gems, and I find myself happy with year-ago-me for finding such good stuff.
Time as a filter has also influenced the books I read. I'm more likely to pick up something
that's been around for a while, particularly in non-fiction. I have a backlog of pop-science,
pop-sociology and pop-tech type books that I may never read now, and I'm fairly sure I'm
the better for it.

How the Amish Adopt Technology: Kevin Kelly (What

Technology Wants)
Kelly points out that, rather than being the luddites most people suspect, the Amish are not
so much anti-technology as they are against the thoughtless adoption of technology. They

go through long evaluation processes to determine if a certain techology will improve their
community: will it enhance their family lives, support their values, or undermine them?
Regardless of whether you agree with the Amish values, the idea of cognisantly assessing
the things that we bring into our lives is brilliant. And it applies more broadly than
technology. I ask of a lot of things: does this make me a better person? If the answer is no, I
have to seriously think about what I'm doing.

Loved and Lovely: Adam Smith via Russ Roberts

(Theory of Moral Sentiments)
Unlike the Stoics that inspired him, Smith is concerned less with controlling our human
impulses, and more with understanding how to use them to our, and society's, advantage.
One of his brilliant concepts is that people want to be "loved and lovely": that is, we want
appreciation and respect, but also to deserve it. It's this concept of being deserving of love
that instructs our actions and prevents us from gaming the system.
This has added an extra dimension to my own stoic-inspired thinking. In practice, the dayto-day actions of a Smithian and a Stoic are very similar, but with Smith the persuit of
personal perfection seems much less lonely.

Change starts with me: Utah Phillips (The Past Didn't

Go Anywhere)
This one's a bonus: not a book, but a spoken word album, and one of the most soulenriching things in my life.
Utah closes out a story, as told to his son, about his time in the Korean war with:
"Right then I knew that it was all wrong, and it all had to change. And that that change had
to start with me"
It's a simple idea, and not that original. But the delivery, in the context of his experience,
gives me chills every single time I hear it.
The album as a whole grounds me, feeds my empathy and makes me want to be a better
person.

How Tim Ferriss Taught Me To Do Double

Unders, & The 10,000 Double Under
Challenge

For those of you that are unfamiliar with what a double under is, well, I cant really say I
blame you.
A double under is the passing of a high speed jump rope not once, but twice under your feet
in a single jump.
This is a common movement in the sport of CrossFit, which has recently taken the fitness
world by storm, and a sport I participate in frequently.
But this story isnt just about double unders. While it does involve the execution of 10,000
double unders in 30 days, its about much more than that.

This is a story about:

Skill acquisition hacking

Self-image hacking
Psychology of change
Inspiration
Discipline
Progression
Adaptation
And the creation of time for a goal

Before going into the full story, I want to share with you a few reasons why I set out on this
challenge for myself, as well the rules I followed, the inspiration I kept with me, and the

skill hacking method I learned from Tim Ferrisss The Four Hour Chef that really
helped catapult me from beginner to borderline expert in just a couple of weeks.
Im going to explain that method in this post.

Why Did I Do It?

It wasnt to lose weight. It wasnt to increase my vertical. It wasnt to increase my cardio.
And it definitely wasnt for the fun of it.
All of those things (except the last one) were just cool side effects.
For me, this was more about the challenge of doing something a little crazy. It was not
only to see if I could crack 10k in 30 days as a personal challenge, but also to see if I could
hack the skill enough to operate at an expert level in that same time frame.
Plus, if I could do this in 30 days, what other cool stuff could I accomplish in just a few
weeks?
But it wasnt just that either. It was also about forging self-discipline and continuous life
progression. This challenge was not something I looked forward to doing every day, but I
knew if I stayed with it, I would get better, and that was a really satisfying reward.
Ive always been someone who wants to continue to improve, and thats what Academy
Success is all about. Always Be Improving.

The Rules:

For a double under to count towards the total, it had to be during an unbroken set
of at least two consecutive double unders. Single double unders did not count.
Unsuccessful DU attempts did not count.
After week two, any set of less than 5 unbroken double unders did not count.
After week three, any set of less than 10 unbroken double unders did not count.
All 10,000 double unders had to be completed within 30 consecutive days starting
from day 1
Double unders performed during CrossFit WODs did count towards the full total
(including all coaching sessions and classes)
If illness or injury occurred during the challenge (which it did), double unders must
be made up upon recovery within the initial 30 day time frame. No exceptions.

All of these rules kept me progressing, kept me honest, and made sure I had no excuses or
ways to procrastinate during my challenge.
And theres a lesson in that. If you want to achieve something, create a system to hold
yourself accountable to. Youll have a much higher chance of success.

The Equipment and Supplements

There has been a lot of interest about the equipment and supplements I used for the
challenge, so as to not distract from the main point of this post, learning double unders, I
added a section at the bottom that details the full equipment list.
Check out the equipment used for the 10,000 double under challenge here.
You can also download this list along with a comprehenisve one-page summary of this post
here, for future reference.
The Double Under One Pager and Equipment List

The Inspiration
It always helps to have constant inspiration during a life challenge. #motivation #success
Click To Tweet
The reason Im such a big proponent of inspiration is because inspiration hits you on an
emotional level, where motivation is often on a logical level.
Motivation is most often derived from inspiration.
During the challenge, I found myself returning to this video of CrossFit Champion Chris
Spealler several times to keep me going, as well as to study his technique.
Just try not to be emotionally affected by this.
Pretty awesome isnt it? I didnt get quite that far, but as youll see in a moment, Ferrisss
method paid off, and I got pretty darn good.
Next, Im going to explain how this method of skill hacking works, and how it helped me
through my challenge.
I may have been able to complete it without this framework, but I can guarantee you it
would have been a hell of a lot more difficult.
Get ready for meta learning!

Hacking the Double Under Skill Tim Ferriss Meta

Learning in Action

If you havent read Tim Ferrisss The Four Hour Chef, I highly
recommend it.
While 2/3 of it is a cook book (moreso how to cook efficiently, not necessarily a traditional
cookbook), the rest, in typical Ferriss fashion, is a life hacking manual to teach you how
to learn basically any skill you want to learn at record pace, not just cooking.
I used the Meta Learning method in The Four Hour Chef throughout the challenge to make
incredible leaps in progress throughout. Without it, it would have taken me A LOT more
time to finish, and time is something I value very highly.
The method Ferriss teaches involves a chronological sequence of key steps that can be
applied to any skill, in order to learn it to an expert level in the least amount of time. It
takes into account many productivity principles, including elimination, streamlining, and
accountability, to name a few.
The basic steps in order are:

Deconstruction Learning what the key parts of the skill are

Selection The MED (minimum effective dose) in order to get to an expert level
Sequencing The most effective order to learn the key pieces
Stakes Setting up accountability to enhance follow through

Deconstructing the Double Under

The first step in Meta Learning is Deconstruction. In this phase, you isolate the separate
pieces, or learnable units, of the skill to stand on their own.
This is the phase in which you understand what it is your dealing with, and begin to
understand how they all fit together to ultimately create the skill.
For double unders, a relatively simple movement composed of a jump and a violent wrist
flick, there were very few minimal units.
The mastery would come later in the details of each. Once I officially started my
deconstruction phase, (in week 2) I began asking many questions to my coaches and
counterparts.

Ferriss recommends getting world class coaches to speed up your progress, of which my
box, Four Barrel CrossFit has multiple (including CrossFit Games athlete Lindy Barber).
I also observed many of the more adept double under performers I knew, including Chris
Spealler from the video above. This would help later in the Sequencing video. Eventually, I
was able to isolate the double under to these key skills.
More to come regarding these in the selection and sequencing sections.

Body and Hand Positioning

The Jump Takeoff
The Jump Landing
The Jump Cadence
The Rope Setup
The Rope Grip
The Rope Flick
The Rope Cadence

Selection for the Double Under

In selection, Ferriss teaches to isolate the MED (minimum effective dose) of the parts
discovered in the Deconstruction phase. What can be eliminated, or streamlined to make
the learning process quicker?
I decided all of the parts I identified were important, so none could really be eliminated
altogether, but what I could do was master some of the easier and more important pieces up
front for some quick wins to keep me motivated, and to simplify the rest along the way,
significantly streamlining the learning process.
I decided that body positioning, and rope setup were going to be first. Those were areas I
could master without the need for movement. Spealler does a great job of explaining those
two keys in this video, and the rest is basically him kicking ass.
He doesnt say it outright, but I did find this video helpful to understand the jump technique
as well. Note the minimal movement of his body, and how his foot strike is more on the
ball of his foot than the toe. Then he always transitions to his heel to absorb the impact.
It might not seem that important, but this is an absolute key to sustained high reps,
especially thousands over the course of a week, which I learned the hard way.
At first, I was rebounding from my toes without much of a heel tap, and it was wrecking
my feet and calves.
If you dont release the tension by tapping your heel, you will destroy your foot arches and
your calves in the process. Remember that.

Sequencing for the Double Under and Eliminating Failure Points

Sequencing is the basic idea learning things in the proper order to progress as quickly as
possible. You have to crawl before you can walk, so to speak.
But there is a sequencing problem with the way most people learn double unders. I
believe this is where most people get in trouble.
The double under jump can be done at an intermediate level (20-25 reps or so) without
proper technique, but eventually the body will become fatigued and fail to perform.
Unfortunately, Ive noticed that the way most people learn double unders inherently results
in failure.
Heres the problem with the typical way double unders are learned.
The vast majority of jumpers will go straight into attempting to turning the rope while
jumping simultaneously. Its even often taught this way. Ive observed that this is the big
failing point with double unders.
If youre a beginner, its extraordinarily difficult to turn the rope correctly, AND jump
correctly at the same time, because in order to master your jumping technique, you have to
turn the rope correctly. In order to master turning the rope correctly, you have to jump over
it
So you see the dilemma.
If you dont know how to do either one, youre fighting an extreme uphill battle and youre
learning bad habits in the process, which I unfortunately already had.
You either rush your rope turn and end up flailing your arms wildly in the process, or you
mis-time your jump and try to compensate by lifting your knees or legs awkwardly.
Its nearly impossible to learn this way, and its a HUGE failure point for most people,
especially if you havent done a lot of jump rope in your life.
I knew I had to eliminate this failure point (as Ferriss suggests) in order to progress to an
expert level, and so will you. So I found a way to sequence these correctly.

Learning the Jump in Isolation Before Anything Else

First I learned the jump by eliminating the rope from the equation. Any steady cadence will
do here. The technique is what matters. I jumped in place focusing on my landing, a steady
rhythm, and staying on one general spot.

Large emphasis was put on landing on the balls of my feet and ensuring I tapped my heel
before jumping again. I found that it really helped to close my eyes so I could feel
everything I was doing.
Here is a side by side of how my jump progressed throughout the challenge.

You can see at first I was splitting my feet pretty badly. Why, I have no idea. It was likely a
bad habit from learning incorrectly.
But in order to get back in alignment, this was causing me to absorb the impact of the
landing with mostly my toes. I was tripping up after 5-10 reps due to eventual fatigue as
well as misalignment of my feet.
Through isolating the jump technique, I eventually was able to correct this, allowing me to
get to much higher rep counts far easier.
Do this for at least 5 minutes a day during the initial couple of weeks of your challenge if
youre inexperienced.

Learning Hand Positioning and The Rope Flick

Next, I learned hand positioning, and the rope flick, two more very related keys to the
double under.
If youre going to be proficient at double unders, you need to minimize the movement in
your arms and shoulders, using mostly your wrists to flick the rope around the axis of
your body from slightly out in front.

The large muscles of your arms and shoulders will tire much quicker than your wrists. This
is another key to longevity and higher rep counts.
But how can you learn to flick the rope correctly without having the jump mastered yet?

The Ultimate Double Under Hack Speed Balls

Enter my homemade speed balls, made from an old rope I had lying around, two small
wiffle balls, and a couple of zip ties. These proved to be extraordinarily helpful in helping
me learn how to perform the rope flick better without having to worry about jumping at all,
thus eliminating that failure point completely, as our good friend Tim Ferriss recommends.
Working with these about 5-10 minutes per day is immensely helpful. I highly recommend
either making a set for yourself, or picking up a set from Again Faster Equipment in their
double under training pack (itll be much cheaper to make your own, but the quality may
not be as good.)

If you want to make your own, just pick up a basic speed rope and cut the cable to about 18
inches from each handle, then wrap the cable through the wiffle balls and tie them off with
a zip tie. Pretty simple, and an extremely effective training tool.
With these, I had the rope turn down in a few days and my rate of fatigue during workouts
went WAY down.
So with those two somewhat different training techniques, I was able to learn these two key
parts of the double under separately, to pretty high efficiency, making it far easier to
perform them together.

Stakes for the Double Under

The last piece of the Meta learning technique is setting up stakes for yourself so youll
stick to what you want to learn. Without stakes, itll be much easier to give up during
difficult times.
For me, The 10,000 Double Under Challenge that I created was obviously at stake, but
there was something else at stake as well. If I failed, I wouldnt, in good conscience, be
able to release this story to the world, and have it help CrossFit communities all over with
their double unders.
To me, success was a must if I was going to inspire others to take this challenge as well.
That motivated me more than anything else.
Stakes within stakes Along the way I also found myself having to set up stakes within
stakes, so to speak. Thirty consecutive days of one thing can get a little boring at times,
and I also needed something to motivate me to keep pushing for higher rep counts to
continue to improve.

So I started doing a WOD (workout of the day) called Flight Simulator mid way through
Week 3.
This WOD is 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, 5 double
unders, all unbroken sets, with a requirement to stop and reset after each set.
Its a brutal WOD which is very frustrating at times, but also very rewarding when you
finally finish it. It also keeps you moving and working towards a time-boxed goal, which
helps speed up your workouts.
It definitely helped me to keep pushing. My best time on that was 24:48 during the
challenge, which I have since beaten by a few minutes, but for never even coming close to
finishing that before, I couldnt complain too much.

The Comprehensive One Pager

Ferriss also recommends that in order to have a simple reference, to summarize the key
learning points from your sequence into a one pager that you can easily consult. Ive taken
the time to do that for to use for your own double unders. It also includes the full equipment
list along with it if youre interested.
Feel free to grab that here. Let me know if it helps. Youll also get free weekly content from
Academy Success by opting-in here.
The Double Under One Pager and Equipment List
A Word of Caution: So before you move onto the story of how I progressed, if youre
going to embark on this challenge or just want to get better at double unders, make sure to
use the DiSS framework that I laid out above. Itll thoroughly accelerate your learning
process. If you dont, youre going to have a pretty frustrating month.
And make sure you tweet Tim Ferriss (@tferriss) that you found this post. He will
appreciate a solid success story like this using his work.
@tferriss Check out how this guy used DiSS to learn double unders #fourhourchef #crossfit
Click To Tweet
I kept a log of each day during the challenge. Heres how things progressed, and the lessons
I learned along the way (these will make your challenge a lot easier).

Week One of the 10,000 Double Under Challenge

Now that youve got the meta learning tactics under your belt, heres the story of my 10,000
Double Under Challenge and the lessons I learned throughout.

When I started, I had already been doing double unders on and off during CrossFit classes,
but had never really taken the time outside of class to learn how to properly do them
(most people dont because they are ridiculously frustrating).
Like most people, I struggled during WODs that called for them, and it was starting to
annoy the shit out of me.
Needless to say, my form was a bit rough. My arms were way too involved, causing my
shoulders and forearms to get tired after about 20 reps, and my jump was improper as well.
I was landing on my toes only, and splitting my feet as you saw above (I have no idea why).
As I mentioned above, all of these hinder higher rep counts.
Basically the more movement you have in anything other than your legs and wrists,
the worse you are going to be at double unders. Through a bit of coaching at Four Barrel
CrossFit in New Albany, IN, I got to this point in a few days. I was capping out around 20
reps or so.
Still a lot of work to do
Total Double Unders in Week 1 = 1,390

Lessons Learned in Week 1

Week one was a proof of concept test (always test your ideas before fully committing to
them).
Could I really do this, or should I cut the cord and call it a wash? I found out that I most
likely could, but I needed to make some significant adjustments if I was going to be
successful, and if I didnt want to two hours each day on this challenge. As you guys know,
I tend to value my time
Here are some lessons I learned during the first 4-5 days of my challenge.
Not stretching / warming up is stupid After the first couple of days, my legs were really
sore, and began to cramp around 75 double unders into a set. This made jumping really
difficult because my legs would not fire as quickly.
I wasnt drinking enough water throughout the day, or stretching well enough before and
after. I was also not using the foam roller I picked up yet (see equipment below), which
helped immensely after I got it. I ordered that on day three and started using it before and
after each set.
I may not have made it otherwise.

Mental toughness was going to be just as important as physical toughness Double

unders can be frustrating. Even experts trip up now and then, and I was just a tick above a
beginner when I started this challenge. During the beginning, it was common that I tripped
up two or three times before getting a good set going, and even then they often ended at 510.
On a set of 300+, thats annoying to say the least.
It wasnt until halfway into week two that I consistently started turning sets of 20-25. If I
was going to make it to 10,000, I had to stay focused and positive, and keep visualizing
myself getting better. There are a lot of failures on the path to success in that large of a
goal.
Supplements help My muscles got sore, and stayed sore. I needed to eat better, and get a
little supplement help. On day three, I started taking a simple supplement regimen
composed of Fish Oil, L-Glutamine, Amplified Creatine, and BCAAs to help my muscles
hydrate and recover quicker.
This helped immensely and also improved my regular workout performance at the same
time. This was a slight adaption and simplification from the method listed in the Adding
Muscle chapter of Tims, The Four Hour Body. I also drank a crap load of water.
I took two capsules of Fish Oil in the morning, two L-Glutamine, three BCAAs, and one
Creatine. Then I repeated this at lunch and before bed, without the Creatine and Fish Oil. I
also downed a 16 oz. protein shake following each double under session.
I wont say that the supplements are necessary, but they did seem to help quite a bit.
Strong Double knots Self-explanatory.
Technique is vital My double under technique was lacking quite a bit during week one. I
knew if I was going to be successful, I had to improve immensely. As my test was now over
and I was fully committed to The 10,000 Double Under Challenge, I enlisted the help of
expert coaches, and began using the meta learning technique laid out above to speed up the
learning process from here.

Week Two
The beginning of week two was the vital turning point in my challenge. This is when I
started to use the methods in Tim Ferrisss DiSS method to evolve my beginner jumping
style into a more expert cadence and my arm-heavy rope turn into a much more aggressive
and powerful wrist flick.
Through coaching, videos, and my own personal observation, I deconstructed the main
movements of the double under that I listed above, and began examining them for the

minimum effective dose. I also fabricated my speed balls during this week that your read
about above, shown again here.

This helped me practice the wrist turning motion required to maintain double under pace
for sometimes 50+ repetitions. The skills were beginning to develop nicely, and my style
was starting to look pretty decent. If it wasnt for being sidelined for a few days with a
stomach bug, week 2 would have been a much larger progression.
Total Double Unders in Week 2 = 2,102
Running Total So Far = 3,492

Lessons Learned in Week 2

The big two lessons I learned in week 2 both involved the main movements of the double
under. The first was that my grip was too much into all of my fingers when it should have
just been in-between my index finger and thumb, with the rest of the fingers as support
mechanisms.
This helped me immensely with developing a more aggressive flick motion to more easily
get the rope around two rotations in each rep. It helped not only with the rotations, but also
with fatigue because it was much easier to perform the motion.
Here is a picture of how my grip was, and how I ended up adjusting it to get a better flick
motion. You can really notice this position in the final video (hold your horses).

The second was a reminder from my coaches to make sure to kiss the heel of my foot on
each rep. Absorbing all of the impact of a double under with my toes only was really
fatiguing my calves quickly.
I kept working on this without the rope and eventually got better, but still needed work for
it to stick. These two lessons helped immensely, especially on the Saturday of this week
when I was able to get in two sets and hit 1100+ reps in a single day.

Week Three
This is where meta learning went into full effect. The sequencing of learning a proper jump
cadence and wrist flick, coupled with eliminating the failure point of jumping while turning
through those skill progressions helped me get to a point where I could hit 50 double unders
fairly consistently.
However this had some side effects. I was still having a bit of trouble with my recovery
time and my legs were cramping during workouts, so I had to take a few recovery days to
make sure I wasnt overdoing things. This was a low rep week because of that, but I had a
three day stretch where I hit 500+ reps on each day, which was a nice mental barrier to get
over.
The Foam Roller I got from Amazon came in very handy this week in helping me get back
into action.
Double Unders in Week 3 = 1,857
Total Double Unders So Far = 5,349

Lessons Learned in Week 3

All in all, this was a fairly uneventful week in terms of additional lessons beyond what I
had already learned. This week was more about honing the main movements and
maintaining my body than it was about learning additional skills.

Week 4
I flat out crushed it this week. The jump cadence had set in. The wrist flick had set in, and I
was performing double unders at a near expert level.
DiSS had paid off. I finished the Flight Simulator WOD referenced above for the first time,
and set in at a total of 3204 in only five days of workouts. My legs were also recovering
a lot quicker as well. I was no longer getting sore after workouts.
The only thing holding me back at this point was my stamina. I struggle with
cardiovascular endurance, so after 500-600 reps I was getting pretty winded. Otherwise I
may have gotten 5000 in this week alone.
Double Unders in Week 4 = 3,204
Total Double Unders So Far = 8,553

Lessons Learned in Week 4

I did learn one very key lesson in this week that a lot of people struggle with, which was
how to get the double under cadence started effectively. For some reason I was having
trouble getting my rope turn started at the end of week three and into week four.
What I discovered through some video footage was that I was really rushing and tensing
up on my first one or two reps.
I was losing my form, pulling my hands back, and tripping up. What helped me through
this was an effort to set my hands on the first turn, then get straight into my wrist flick,
staying relaxed. This kept the rope in the correct position and allowed me to begin the
flicking motion with a lot more stability.

Week 5 The Final 1,500

Week 5 was the home stretch to 10k. I needed about 1,500 reps in four days to finish out
the challenge, which I wasnt too worried about given I was capable of sets of 700 without
too much trouble at this point.
I took Saturday and Sunday off to spend some time with my family, which was nice to help
me recover from the previous week. This set me up for a three day stretch of 1,500 reps to
finish out.

Monday 715
Tuesday 515
Wednesday required less than 300 reps to hit 10k.

This was my final set, where I hit 72 unbroken reps to break the 10,000 mark.
Needless to say I was a little bit winded after that, so I apologize for the lack of excitement
and commentary. My wife was also quite proud.
Double Unders in Week 5 = 1,512
Total Double Unders for the 10,000 Double Under Challenge = 10,065
So there you have it. How Tim Ferriss taught me to do double unders, and how I did 10,000
double unders in 30 days.

Some Cool Stats From the Challenge

Jump ropes used 2

Cables used 3
Pairs of shoes worn 3
Week 1 total 1,390
Week 2 total 2,102
Week 3 total 1,857
Week 4 total 3,204
Week 5 total 1,512
Total double unders counted 10,065
Unbroken PR 72
Best Flight Simulator time 24:48
Total number of workout days 21
Total number of rest / travel /sick days 9
Average double unders per day 479.3
Ants squished Countless

Also, in case you think I made all of this up, here is the Google Doc spreadsheet that I used
to track my progress. There are some notes in there as well that may help you as well.
Feel free to make a copy to use for yourself as well.

Now the 10,000 Double Under Challenge is Yours

I knew this challenge would test me mentally and physically, and even though I questioned
it many times during, it was a great experience.
So now I challenge you.
If your DUs need improvement, this challenge will help you in an extraordinary way. And
the method Ive laid out above will help you get through it in a scientific manner that uses
psychology to motivate you. You wouldnt question Tim Ferriss would you?
If youre in, tell the world with this tweet, prepare yourself using the information in this
post, and get started.
Im doing the 10,000 Double Under Challenge. Are you up to it? #crossfit
Click To Tweet
If youre not up to it, thats cool. Its not for everyone, but Id still like to thank you for
reading this far and I would like to invite you to become part of the Academy Success
community. You can do that by using any of the email signup forms on the site, and youll
also get some cool free stuff.
Would you also do me one more favor and share this post with your friends who you
know do CrossFit?
One of the main reasons I did this is because I had a lot of trouble learning double unders
from the beginning, and I know a lot of other folks do as well. So I wanted to create a
framework for learning. Now that the framework is complete, I hope it can help to inspire
a way for many others to learn double unders the way I did within the CrossFit
community.
So spread this around a bit, and then go, learn your double unders!

Be sure to let me know how its going and feel free to ask any questions in the
comments.
Good luck!
Cody
PS: Here is the link again to the one-pager and the equipment list if you would like a copy.
Youll also get free weekly content from Academy Success.
The Double Under One Pager and Equipment List

Full Equipment List

When I started out, I only had a couple of these things. Throughout the challenge, I
developed the need for more of them.
If youre going to give it a go, I recommend picking up most of these items before you start
if you dont have them already.
Shoes I alternated between the Inov-8 F Lite 195 Lightweight CrossFit Shoe the Vibram
Komodos, and my regular Asics tennis shoes, depending on how my feet were feeling. The
Asics had the most padding for shock, but the least amount of feel.
You get a lot more feeling from the Vibrams, but sometimes the rope got stuck in my toes
on misses, hurting my time a bit. You dont need special shoes unless you want them.
Tennis shoes will do just fine here. Just make sure you can feel your feet. Padding also
helps in the 1000s of reps. I swapped to tennis shoes a few nights when my feet were
hurting.
Jump Rope(s) For the challenge, I actually used a Rogue Ultra Speed Cable Rope for
most of them, but at my CrossFit gym I cranked out a few hundred with the Rogue SR-1
Bearing Speed Rope, which I found to be quite a bit easier to use.
It has more aggressive bearings and a larger handle, which was nice for more control of the
rope. Ill likely switch to this one for the future. It was actually around 25% more efficient
for me, which is pretty significant. I also picked up some replacement cables in case I
needed them, but the Rogue cable actually held up really well.
Rubber Mat I knew if I was going to do 10,000 double unders, I needed to protect my
feet and legs. I also needed a smooth surface on which to turn the rope. Otherwise it was
going to hang up and wear pretty easily as well.
In true life hacking fashion, I picked up an 6 x 4 horse stall mat for $25 and slapped that
puppy in a flat spot in my driveway. Bam, instant padded gym floor!

This one from Supermats is about the closest thing youll find online, but I recommend
checking our your local Tractor Supply if you have one. These things are heavy to ship.
Foam Roller Absolute Lifesaver Using this Foam Roller before and after each session,
and once during the day, really helped iron out the tight spots in my calves from each day
of bounding. It helped to speed up the recovery process and made pre-workout prep and
post-workout recovery a lot easier.
I highly recommend grabbing one of these if you do any sort of physical activity and find
yourself getting tight.
Supplements Optimum Nutrition Fish Oil, L-Glutamine, and BCAAs to help my muscles
hydrate and recover quicker.
I also used Amplified Creatine by GNC for quicker recovery during workouts, and better
muscle hydration after. I also downed a 12-16 oz. protein shake immediately following
each double under session.
Like I said, you dont have to use any of these, but they do help with recovery over
sustained periods of time. Make sure you also drink plenty of water.

The Minimum Effective Dose (MED)

Posted in Productivity, Skill Building, Smart Thinking By Michael Parker On August 14,
2013
inShare

The Minimum Effective Dose (MED) is the smallest effective does or amount of effort that
will lead to the desired result. Here is the explanation given by Tim Ferriss in his book on
meta-learning, The 4-Hour Chef :
Anything beyond the MED is wasteful. To boil water, the MED is 212F (100C) at
standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures will not make it more boiled.
Higher temperatures just consume more resources that could be used for something else
more productive.
The MED is similar to the 80/20 rule in that it highlight the efforts/methods that will
produce the highest results in the shortest amount of time. Ferriss gives another example:
If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED
for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced
break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, lets assume one week,
someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to t in four more
tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-

beach self. Sad little manatee. In biological systems, exceeding your MED can freeze
progress for weeks, even months.
MED can be applied to almost any area, having been used in bodybuilding, fitness and
importantly; learning and skill development. Justin Mitchell has used the principle of the
MED to teach non-technical people how to program for the web (Coding for Entrepreneurs)
without overloading them with unnecessary information.
I highly recommend Tims book The 4-Hour Chef which goes into a fair amount of detail
on MEDs especially applied to learning.
I could go on for longer regarding MEDs but if Im honest, anything else I say would just
be fluff.

The Guide to Learning Any Skill in Eight Weeks (plus, an awesome deal
from Tim Kenny)
So what exactly is metalearning?
The term gets thrown around a lot often in close proximity with the name Tim Ferriss but the resources to become a better metalearner are almost always vague. Thats hardly
surprising: Its a tough thing to teach. Its much easier to teach someone a specific
language than it is to teach them the principles of how to learn any language. But the
latter is infinitely more valuable. As they say: Give a man a fish and youll feed him for a
day. Teach a man to fish and youll feed him for life.
This piece serves two purposes. First, its going to go through the basics of metalearning, as
taught in Ferriss The Four Hour Chef. Second, its going to offer an insane deal on a new
course by another brilliant Tim: Timothy Kenny. This is a course focused specifically on
metalearning thats useful for entrepreneurs. Its an 8-week intensive training program
packed full of practical, useful information that usually sells for over $1000. Over at
GiveGetWin, we approached Tim hoping that hed open up a few spaces in his course at a
discount to help us raise money for charity. Tims generosity exceeded our wildest
expectations hes allowed us to offer 20 spaces in the course for only $79 each!
If youre only here for the deal, skip to the bottom of the article and follow the link. If
youre interested in learning the basics of metalearning, lets get started

Change Your Mindset

Its possible to become world-class in just about anything in six months or less. Armed
with the right framework, you can seemingly perform miracles, whether with Spanish,
swimming or anything in between."
Forget the average. Forget how other people learn. Its possible to excel at a skill (which
Ferriss defines as reaching the global top 5%) in just six months. Malcolm Gladwells
10,000 hours is based on research about reaching the very top of an ultracompetitive field
like basketball or chess. As an entrepreneur, you dont necessarily want to become the
worlds best speed reader, or coder, or even manager. You just want to get good efficiently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnYAs Josh Kaufman explains in his new

book, The First 20 Hours, approaching abilities with the right framework can make you
good in 20 hours. For beginners, this is awesome. If you create a process and stick with
framework, theres no limit to the number of skills you can pick up.

Emulate the Right People

These top 0.01% whove spent a lifetime honing their craft are invaluable in later stages,
but theyre not ideal if you want to rocket of the ground floor the rare anomalies whove
gone from zero to the global top 5% in record time, despite mediocre raw materials are
worth their weight in gold.
To learn at this rate, we need to study the extreme performers the people who managed
incredible results in a short time without natural abilities. Its important to realize that these
are the people to emulate, not the top performers. The top 1% often succeed despite how
the train, not because of it. Superior genetics and a luxurious full-time schedule make up
for a lot.

The DiSSS Method

The recipe for learning any skill follows the acronym DiSSS: deconstruction, selection,
sequencing, stakes.
Deconstruction
The goal of this section is to break the skill apart into as many smaller subskills as possible
and build up a framework for the learning youre going to undertake. This is important for
two reasons. First, it makes it psychologically easier to tackle a large problem when you are
constantly accomplishing small wins than going face-to-face with an enormous, formless
monster. Second, it allows us to get a grasp on exactly what it is we will need to learn.
Formalizing the scope of our learning helps us understand things better by putting each
piece in context of the entire puzzle.
This is a crucial and often overlooked. Were anxious to get into the learning part of
learning, but preparation makes sure were doing things the right way. Dont skip it!
Heres some common techniques for deconstruction.

Reducing: Find a way to break down each task into its formative pieces. Often
youll make connections, see overlapping parts, and make the larger task seem
much more manageable.

Interviewing: Get to know people who went through the process youre going to.
Remember, if you want to get good at basketball fast, interviewing someone who
has spent half their life on the court isnt ideal (although it may be useful). Instead,
find someone who got good at basketball fast. Ask them what their training was
like, the biggest mistake they see other people make, what they did that was
considered unorthodox, and any other advice they might have. Eventually, youll
start to see patterns emerge. Trust these patterns more than conventional wisdom.

Reversal: Taking that thought a step further, what would happen if you did the
complete opposite of conventional wisdom? An expert in a field is restricted in their
thinking, but you have the free mind of a beginner. Use it to think of the most
outlandish solutions to a problem possible. Often, theyll be obvious and
overlooked.

Translating: Try to transfer the framework you use for one type of learning into
another. For example: what if the approach you take to building businesses has the
same framework as creating relationships? If youre interested in learning more
about this, you should check out the Coursera course called Model Thinking. Its
one of the most interesting things Ive ever taken part in and its free!

Selection
After breaking down the skill, youll have a better idea of which subskills are most
important. Youre only going to focus on the ones that bring you the most results for the
least effort.
In Ferris terms, youre going to find the minimum effective dose a subset of skills to
focus on that should provide about 80% of the results for 20% of the effort (in some
extreme cases, the numbers can go up to 90:10 or even 95:5).
To give an example, lets look at language learning. Theres 171,476 words in the Oxford
English Dictionary. Going through alphabetically would be stupid. You wouldnt know how
to ask who, what, when, where, or why for years. Instead, youd go after the most
commonly used words. The top 100 words make up 50% of all written material. That seems
like a more reasonable place to start.
Snatch up that low-hanging fruit!
Sequencing
The order that we learn things plays a massive role in accelerated learning. We naturally
assume we should learn things in order of complexity, but that isnt always the case. Think
about which subskills are necessary in order to learn more complicated subskills. Build a
sequence of learning logically.
To give an example, Shinji Takeuch realized that the most important prerequisite subskill
for learning to swim was to overcome the fear of drowning. By building a method that
allows its practitioners to train all of the movements in shallow water, Takeuch overcame
this barrier.
Stakes
Will power is a fickle beast. Unfortunately, its often at its worst when we need it to be at
its best. Theres many techniques for building will power, but the easiest way to handle it is

to create small rewards/punishments for succeeding/failing. Because of the principle of loss

aversion that were more motivated by the thought of losing something than by gaining
something of equal value Ferriss recommends that we set up stakes.
There are online tools for this. The most common is called stickK. Its founder is an
economics professor from Yale who realized that incentives and accountability are the two
most important keys to achieving any goal. Its easy to dismiss actually betting as
unnecessary, but its hugely valuable to keeping you motivated.

Case Study: Learning Tango in Argentina

In six months, Ferriss went from having zero tango experience to being a semi-finalist in
the tango world championships with a Guinness World Record. How?
Deconstruction: Tim processed thousands of videotapes of competitions, looking for
patterns and categorizing them. Then, he made an effort to meet grand masters in tango and
interviewed them.
Selection: Applying the 80/20 principle to this information, Tim decided on exactly which
types of movements he would be able to learn in six months that would yield the best
results. He also focused on leveraging his past experience, uncovering which skills he had
that could be applied to making certain subskills easier to learn. In his case, that included
creative pivots (because of his experience in breakdancing) and large, elegant steps
(because of his height).
Sequencing: There is an implied order to learning tango, but Ferriss ignored it. Later in the
career of many males, they began to learn the female role to learn to lead better. This was
often cited in his research as the time at which skills catapulted to the next level. Instead of
waiting, Tim started with the female role, and was able to learn to lead much fast.
Stakes: As far as I know, Tim Ferriss is a superhero and doesnt require stakes to keep him
motivated. Im kidding. By basing all of his tango learning around a final competition in
which he would compete, Ferriss set himself up to be embarrassed if he didnt learn at the
rate that he expected. If hed just studied independently without an upcoming public
performance, he could have snuck away when things got tough without the humiliation.

5 Ways to Simplify Email and Life

Matt Cooke
September 8, 2013

How is yoga related to email? Bramacharya and awareness.

Prehistoric caveman had to preen. For survival of the fittest to work in his favor, the
caveman had to check how he appeared to others. He had to provide, and make others
aware he was doing so, in order for the tribe to let him continue to be part of the group.
1. Online Awareness
Email and social media today are the same as preening was to the caveman. Today, we
won't die or be left by the tribe though. Social media gives us the ability to check how
others are perceiving us. Awareness in how we use these tools is important. Whenever we
use them unconsciously, i.e. when bored, or stuck in a current project, we are sucking away
our energy, and power to choose our experience. Over time, email and social media suck

away our time to enjoy family, travel, experiences, start that idea you've never had time
for, and time for yogic practices.
2. Batching Tasks
Focus on batching together tasks like email, phone, laundry, bills, and other time-suckers
that are excuses to doing your dharma. Designate specific times to perform these tasks to
once a week or month. This frees up mental energy to give to your loved ones, community
and world.
3. Effective > Efficient
Tim Ferriss says, being effective is using the minimal effective dose, or the least amount
of work to get the job done. This ultimately leads to you being able to focus this added time
in your day to other tasks where you can be effective, or be with loved ones, be of service,
or do your self-awareness practices. Just because I get a lot of unimportant things done
efficiently doesn't make them important. The new breed of yoga practitioner, and creative
thinker instead wants to be effective.
4. Simplify. Use the 80/20 principle
In 1906, Vilfredo Pareto, saw that 80% of the Italian land was owned by 20% of the
population. He further developed his principle, noticing in his garden, that 20% of the pea
pods held 80% of the peas. His principle can be applied to everything! It states that 80%
of any output comes from 20% of the input. e.g. 80% of happiness comes from 20% of
activities. Apply the 80/20 principle to your life. Where is your 20%? How can you use that
20% more in your life, to maximize your happiness?
5. Two other important questions to ask yourself everyday:
What two things must I get done today to be satisfied? Do these tasks first thing in the
day to have success everyday! Hint, hint: meditation and yoga.
Am I inventing things to avoid important things? Set an alarm to remind yourself
throughout the day, to check if you are avoiding important tasks by checking email, and
generally not be effective. Maybe you are being efficient at getting unimportant tasks done
to fill your eight-hour day, but are you getting your dharma work done?
Don't let your yoga get lost in the minutiae of social media updates and email. Let your
work shine in the world, and keep your practices strong through awareness of your email,
and energy.

How to Learn Anything in the Shortest

Possible Time
By Marc Winn January 23, 2013 Leave a Comment
Doing the unthinkable is easier than you think.
Tim Ferriss
What different decisions would you make in life if you could become really good at
anything you wanted fast? If you were armed with a radically improved ability to learn,
how far could you go? What would you do if all the learning barriers were removed? How
many things would you learn? How would your life change?
Author Malcolm Gladwell reckons that becoming the best of best in any field requires
10,000 hours of effective practice. Thats a lifes work! What if I told you that you dont
need to do that? Even if you are only better than 4 out of every 5 people, you still have
enough ability to earn a good living from your expertise in a certain field. Be better than 19
out of 20 people, and you can do very well indeed. Take it up a notch be at that level in
numerous skills, and the world is your oyster! The greater the variety of skills you master,
the more opportunities are open for you. Rather than having expertise in only one skill, a
combination of high level skills in several areas differentiates you from the crowd. You
could be one in a million!
So much of our learning these days is ineffectual, based on educational techniques designed
in the Victorian era. Our assumption is that certain people have a talent for something,
rather than understanding that anyone can develop a talent.
To become whatever you want to be and have the skills and knowledge you need, all you
require is time and a really effective accelerated learning process. Nowadays, we
understand much more about how the human brain assimilates information, and how to
model other peoples success by deconstructing their strategies, techniques, actions and
thinking processes.
In his book, The Four Hour Chef, Tim Ferriss (Amazon UK, US) explains how any
complete boiled-egg-burner can become a world-class chef within weeks. More
significantly, the techniques are transferable to any arena, helping you optimise your time
and efforts and develop great expertise. His methodology constitutes a real breakthrough
model for learning anything faster, better and more effectively in a fast-paced world. This
capacity for mastering new skills in the minimum amount of time is cutting edge
accelerated learning, requiring just four elements to turbocharge your success:
Step 1: Deconstruct the Problem

Ask yourself, What are the first steps, the building blocks, I should be starting with? Take
the skill and break it down into the minimum learnable elements, the basic building blocks
with which you will build your success.
To deconstruct any skill, start with the outcome in mind. Know specifically what you want
to achieve, and know how youre going to measure it. Then, work backwards to identify the
specific steps and resources you need to succeed. In other words deconstruct your journey
to success.
Try throwing a lot at the wall and see what sticks. Whats essential and vital to know and
utilise, and whats merely decoration? Test common assumptions, and ask better
questions. Think outside the box, and contrary to common belief: What happens if I do the
opposite of best practice? Discard negative beliefs that provide excuses and block
possibility, like children learn languages faster than adults (actually, they dont). Dont
spend a year learning Italian in a weekly class before going to Italy; book a flight a week
earlier and immerse yourself in the culture spend time cramming the language in context.
Seek out and meet maverick experts and innovators, either in person, or through their books
and materials. Identify the common features of their practice, to adopt them yourself.
Identify your role model or an expert in the skill you are looking to acquire. Look at who is
the best, or who breaks the rules to great effect and success, and examine how they do it.
Especially look for those who do amazingly well despite not having the ideal background,
qualifications, shape or size for that skill. Their talent isnt genetic: theyre doing it with
technique, and technique can be learned. Even if they dont follow the rules, they achieve
extreme success unconventionally and you can do the same, or better! Break down the
skill, by what you learn from these experts and what makes them different.
For example, take Terry Laughlin, the expert who invented Total Immersion swimming
(www.totalimmersion.net) enabling people to become very effective swimmers in
anything from one hour to two weeks (for a complete non-swimmer). His TI approach
deconstructs swimming to optimise your balance, streamlining and breathing to produce
phenomenal results and efficiencies. For championship swimmers and beginners alike, the
results from using these techniques are astonishing. That has to be better than swimming
lessons at your local pool!
Break new skills down and identify alternative approaches to really increase your learning
success.
Step 2: Reflect on What Really Counts
Ask: Which 20% of the tasks should I focus on, that will get me 80% of the outcome I
want? Use Paretos Principle (read my 80/20 post) to accelerate learning any new skills or
techniques: select the 20% effort that generates 80% of the results and apply it to anything
you want to learn or improve. Concentrate on whatever it is that actually makes the
difference that vital 20%. Some of what youll identify is common sense: in books, good
writing is always good writing. Hard work is hard work. But it also means thinking laterally

and asking apparently ridiculous questions. What is the difference that makes the
difference?
Theres a minimum effective dose for any skill or goal. For instance spending five minutes
swinging a kettle-bell on a regular basis rapidly tones your body; consuming 30 grams of
protein within 30 minutes of waking up optimises the effectiveness of your ability to
maintain a healthy weight; 20,000 fans of your book within its first 2 weeks will guarantee
that it is a best seller.
Similar effects are produced from easy techniques for learning languages super fast. The
Michel Thomas Method (www.michelthomas.com) of learning languages works by
breaking a language down into its component parts, enabling you to reconstruct any
language for yourself making your own sentences, and saying what you want to say. You
learn the language in small steps, which the brain loves; then you can progress to produce
more complex sentences. Its actually possible to learn the structure of a new language in an
hour, using as few as only 6 sentences translated into your chosen language. Through these
you can deconstruct the grammar and understand the principles behind a whole language.
This is the minimum effective dose for learning any language. From there on, you only
have to learn 2.5% of the vocabulary of the given language (1200 -1500 words) to appear
fluent.
Why sweat by working hard when you can work smart? All you have to do is Identify the
minimum effective dose for the skill or goal you want to achieve, then take the small steps
that make the most difference.
Step 3: Get the Sequence Right
Success is not just what you do, but how you do it, and how you sequence the steps in the
process. Once youve decided which 20% of actions to focus on for maximum results, the
next thing is to decide on the best order in which to do them. What should you do first, and
next, for producing the best outcome?
Much of our learning today makes things difficult early on and allows a high chance of
failure.
Much teaching is about doing the boring stuff first: learning verbs in languages or notes in
music. Instead, do the interesting parts first which are often hands-on. Having a
conversation or playing a tune is more engaging than learning what traditionalists call the
basics first. Basics kill the desire to learn and make it difficult for the learner to see the
connection with the end result. The secret to motivation is to experience success early. So
build in some quick wins, fast. This way, youre more likely to stick with learning the skill.
Identify the failure points all the ways in which things can go wrong so you can avoid
them from the outset. Build in a margin of safety from the start, so that if you make any
error, theres still room to manoeuvre, enabling you to succeed.

In learning most new skills there are thousands of methods but very few fundamental
principles. Master those, and you become a master of anything you choose. Knowing the
most powerful techniques to learn these raw principles is key. If youre a male wanting to
dance tango, learn the female role and steps before the male one. Learn to follow, before
you lead. Learn to play chess by starting with the end game, rather than the opening moves.
Learn the adaptable base principles rather than memorising the openers. That will take you
much further in far less time.
The really important thing to remember is that the order in which you do things can
radically improve your chances of success. Do the things that will make the greatest impact,
in the right order, and you will successfully learn a new skill to a high level.
Step 4: Raise the Stakes:
If you do a bad job, you get fired. If you dont follow your diet, nothing changes. Believe it
or not, the most important factor of success in learning is staying the course and going
through all the necessary steps to reach your goal.
So if keeping at it is the most important factor in learning a skill, how do you set stakes
high enough to create real consequences if you dont which guarantee that you keep with
the program?
To ensure a failure-proof system that works for everyone it is important to have the stick as
well as the carrot. Try publicly declaring your goals and the stakes Ill do this or Ill
shave my head or give you all next Monday off. Even better, you can use websites like
StickK (www.stickk.com) on which you make your commitments public online and pay
money as a consequence if you fail to meet them. This allows you to put a large sum into
escrow and nominate a referee to ensure that youre accountable if you dont achieve your
goal or intention. If you fail, your money goes to your chosen anti-charity: a non-profit
that you really hate eg something like the George W Bush Presidential Library. It has to
be something that gets your blood boiling for the consequence to have maximum punitive
effect!
If the reward of achieving your outcome isnt motivation enough, raising the stakes will
ensure that youre persistent and resilient enough to stay focused, keep at it, and do all you
can to achieve your aims.
In summary, theres nothing much to stop you learning whatever will help you to succeed in
your goals! Through deconstruction, reflection and selection of whats most important,
sequencing well and raising the stakes, you can easily supercharge your ability to learn new
skills fast.
If you can learn anything and be good at it within a very short space of time what would
you choose?

 What will you do accelerate and maximise your success?

What would you do, with a radically higher expectation of what you are capable of?
How could you change your life?
How can you change your business?
How will you change the world?

Do The Minimum And You'll Get More

Faster
by Jeff Vacek
Hey Jeff here
For the last few weeks Ive been reading select chapters of Tim Ferriss new book, The 4Hour Body.
Why would I only read select chapters you ask?
Well, its because of a Mantra that Tim Ferriss lives by that Ive also adopted. Its called ME-D or Minimum Effective Dose.
You see what Tim did he tested a gazillion different diets, exercise routines, etc. on
numerous different people and body types AND talked to tons of doctors, athletes and
health professionals with one goal in mind.
To figure the MINIMUM 99.9 percent of the population has to do to lose weight and gain
lean muscle. And he shows you in his book how to ONLY read the chapters you need to
reach your health and fitness goals.
Hence, Minimum Effective Dose or M-E-D for short.
When I read about M-E-D in the first chapter of Tims book my life changed forever.
Heres why I realized that Minimum Effective Dose could apply to just about anything
especially my business.
Thats exactly why Im telling you about it and why I named this post so purposely.
Ask yourself where in your business are you doing too much to reach a specific goal.
Sounds weird doesnt it?
Too much? Huh?
Yep, there is such a thing as doing too much. And its a very common reason why people
dont get anywhere in business.
You over analyze, you dont take the shortest route possible, you waste time, you dont
have the CLEAREST, MOST EFFECTIVE, SHORTEST path to your goal. In other words,

your internal GPS (Global Positioning System you know the electronic gadget that can
tell you EXACTLY how to get somewhere) is taking you the long way around.
Sound familiar? Did I just describe your business OR heck your life in general?
For those of you that are my Info Renegade students, you have M-E-D right in front of you.
Its in the form of our 60 Days to 10K training module.
That module tells you the EXACT path you need to follow inside our training program to
reach 10K in 60 days.
Its not easy For some of you it may take a complete mindset shift. But its definitely
possible.
You might also be saying, Well Jeff, M-E-D wont work for me because of this or that.
Bull crap Go read some of the case studies in The 4-Hour Body. Youd be surprised
what you can accomplish by just living by the Mantra of Minimum Effective Dose.
So heres what I want you to do
Below this post I want you to leave me a comment. Tell me one area of your business (or
your life if you dont have a business) that you can apply M-E-D to. You dont have to
change your whole business or life overnight. Take baby steps.
Again, tell me one area of your business (or your life if you dont have a business) that you
can apply M-E-D to. And tell me what youre going to do to implement M-E-D. What are
you going to take out, change, shift, transform, etc? Who are you going to delegate to, get
to help you, etc?
Tell me, tell me, tell me. I want to know. I want to know how many of you are going to take
on M-E-D like I did.
It sure has changed my life for the better DRAMATICALLY and I would love for it to do
the same for you.
I look forward to reading your comments below.
Cheers,
- Jeff Vacek
Certified M-E-D Specialist

5.5 Reasons Why You Need To Understand

Minimum Effective Dose
by kentlapp
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Minimum Effective Dose. An important concept you might be missing to take your life or
business to the next level.
This is largely the premise of Tim Ferriss latest book The 4 Hour Body. Whether or not
he gets the credit for coining the phrase Im unsure but the concept is rock solid
nonetheless.
The principle in its simplest form is best understood when considering boiling water.
Assuming normal atmospheric pressure water will boil at 212 degrees Fahrenheit every

time. Heating that water to 424 degrees is cool too but you still just have boiling water. In
other words if the result youre looking for is simply boiling water, any resource expended
above 212 degrees is pretty much a waste.
Lets assume you hire someone to clean your house for the first time. It normally takes you
2 hours if the kids are sleeping. They arrive first thing in the morning and when you return
after being gone all day you find the house only half done with the cleaners still hard at
work, whistling happily. Theyve been super-thoroughly-deep cleaning, toothbrush to the
tile, light-bulb removing style. They have exceeded Minimum Effective Dose grossly.
Were not talking about perfectionism here, this is much larger than that. If you put
xxxxxxxxxx into your product when the client was expecting xx you have wowed them,
which you should. But they will likely be one of the last clients to have the privilege of
buying xx at that price level because you let your costs get out of control. What if the client
would have been satisfied with xx and absolutely thrilled with xxx? Consider this, would
you pay twice as much for boiled water heated to 424 degrees as you would for boiled
water at 212 degrees? Unlikely, you just want some boiled water.
Now that we understand the concept lets uncover some of the benefits of considering MED
in your projects and processes.
1. You will serve more people.
This is a politically correct way to say you will make more money or get better results with
the same amount of input. Naturally, if you make the best use of your resources, getting the
most bang for your buck, your output will be maximized. And dont kid yourself, were all
paid for our output.
2. You will maximize your Energy.
Energy and Priorities are your limiting factor, not time. We all get 24 hours in a day. Some
get more done because they prioritize and expend their energy properly. Others get even
more done because they consider MED when expending energy.
3. You will be a better You.
Putting too much into too few areas means you wont have enough left over for the other
responsibilities in life. And while this may be ok for a season eventually youll be forced to
drop some things or figure out how to manage your energy better. When you figure out the
MED your responsibilities require there will be more of you left over at the end of the day.
4. You will increase your Return On Investment.
Considering MED from strictly a financial standpoint would make the concept worthwhile.
Although subconsciously this is the million dollar question when considering your purchase
offer price, considering whether or not improving the investment will improve returns, or
even considering which investments to get into in the first place.
5. Greater Confidence and Morale.
Both personally and corporately. Dont ever ship junk but when you start experiencing

accomplishments from managing your Doses properly youll gain momentum, and
momentum is an extremely powerful and sometimes evasive multiplier of your efforts.
5.5 It just makes sense.
Unless you have an unlimited amount of energy, in which case I havent met you yet.
Please comment below: What areas in life do you think we consistently exceed Minimum
Effective Dose?

Move Before You're Ready: Get Started

Without Being An 'Expert'
Herbert Lui 6 November 2014 7:00 AM
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All our lives, people have told us to learn everything about something before trying it in the
real world. Yet this fast-paced world demands that we move before we know everything
about a subject. Instead of waiting to change your career, for the perfect internship, or
enrolling in more education, you should tweak your approach so that you learn and apply
skills quickly.
Photo by Martin Cathrae<

Many people spend their whole lives waiting to be ready. Ready often becomes more of
an excuse than a prerequisite.
For example, you dont need a certificate to tell you that youre a design pro. Karen X.
Cheng learned design in six months while working full-time. She made it work by moving
before she thought she was ready, and so can you.

Focus On Just-In-Time Learning, Not Just-In-Case

Learning

There are two types of learning: you perform just-in-time learning when you acquire
information just before it is needed (for example, on-the-job training). In contrast, you
perform just-in-case learning when you acquire information far in advance of when you
need it (traditional education at school or university). We only use a small portion of the
just-in-case knowledge we acquire in school for our day-to-day work. This type of just-incase learning is not very effective.
Youll quickly see the importance of just-in-time learning and be forced to apply it to the
real world. Or, youll fail, and learn the hard way. Entrepreneur and angel investor Dan
Martell writes on his blog:
Focus on learning and getting the right advice in near-real time. Trying to anticipate the
skills and information you will need to acquire months before you actually need it can
result in a lot of wasted time.
Youll still need a bit of just-in-case learning, though. Specifically, youll need to
understand the tools or techniques necessary to achieve certain results. As maths professor
John Cook explains in an earlier article on Lifehacker:
On the other hand, you need to know whats available, even if youre only going to learn
the details just in time. You cant say I need to learn about version control system now if
you dont even know what version control is. You need to have a survey knowledge of
technology just in case. You can learn APIs just in time. But theres a big grey area in
between where its hard to know what is worthwhile to learn and when.
The key to balancing just-in-case and just-in-time learning is ruthless prioritization and
quick deadlines.

Figure Out Your Minimum Effective Dose

A Chinese scholar understands over 20,000 Chinese characters, but you only need to
understand 1000 to be literate. The most frequently used 200 characters will allow you to
understand 40% of basic literature (enough to read signs, restaurant menus and basic
newspapers).
This is what author Tim Ferriss calls the Minimum Effective Dose, or MED. Its the
smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome. For example, approximately 1000 words
will make you conversational in a language. This concept applies to all sorts of desired
outcomes.
Another example: if youve decided to be a blogger, you just need to know how to set up a
blog on a platform like WordPress, create a post, and publish it. You can learn how to
change the theme, how to attract attention, SEO and all those other skills later.

Prioritise Depth Over Breadth

You will be tempted to dabble in everything. Dont. Stay focused on the minimum effective
dose for a specific outcome before you explore other options. Get really good at one thing
before moving on to other skills. As author Josh Waitzkin explains in The Art of Learning:
It would be absurd to try to teach a new figure skater the principle of relaxation on the ice
by launching straight into triple axels. She should begin with the fundamentals of gliding
along the ice, turning, and skating backwards with deepening relaxation. Then, step by step,
more and more complicated manoeuvres can be absorbed, while she maintains the sense of
ease that was initially experienced within the simplest skill set.
But dont get ahead of yourself. Stay focused on the immediate desired outcome and the
skills required to achieve it.

Connect With Others To Accelerate Learning

People who have achieved your goals can be catalysts to your learning. You can save time
and learn from their mistakes. You can take a deeper dive into what they do, and understand
the habits and skills that were key to their success. Author Robert Green writes in Mastery:
The people in your field, in your immediate circle, are like worlds unto themselves their
stories and viewpoints will naturally expand your horizons and build up your social skills.
Mingle with as many different types of people as possible. Those circles will slowly widen.
Logistically speaking, its possible to connect with anyone these days. (If you want to find
an email address quickly, try previously mentioned Norbert.) Naturally, the other person
has to want to help. If they do, creating a relationship with them can be valuable to your
growth.
If you choose someone who isnt busy (such as retirees), theyre more likely to reply. On
the other hand, if youre trying to connect with someone whos busy in the field right now,
you could learn about their skills and techniques through one of their close associates. In
both cases, you should bring some value to the table. Tim Ferriss elaborates in The 4 Hour
Body:
Do me a favour is not a compelling pitch. The proposed interview should somehow
benefit your contact.
The path of least resistance is to freelance write for a blog, newsletter, or local newspaper
and do a piece on this person and his/her methods, or to quote him/her on a related topic as
an expert (Expert Predictions for Winter Olympics, for instance). Once youre in the
door, ask your expert all the questions youd like. Are you terrible at writing? No problem.
Make it a Q&A format and simply print the relevant questions and answers.
Once youve connected with them and set up a conversation or interview, your challenge
will be to make a good first impression. If its just over email, you should ask pointed
questions that are easy to answer. Do research before you get in touch with them (by

reading interviews or listening to podcasts they have participated in) so you dont ask them
about something you should have known. Nothing rubs people the wrong way like lazy
questions.
At a previous job, my editor gave me a crucial piece of advice: he recommended that I ask
How?, or Can you give an example of that? much more frequently during interviews.
He said that he did this at least a dozen times in an interview. These real-world, or even
hypothetical, examples help us learn much more quickly and remember things more
effectively. (Thanks Sean!)
If you develop your relationships carefully enough, youll find that some of these people
can become your mentors.

Explore A Real-Life Example

A little less than a year ago, I saw something that I really wanted to emulate: the Pharrell
article in Complex Magazine. The interactive elements completely caught my eye and
regularly renewed my attention. What if readers could interact with my articles like that? I
could tell stories in a much more immersive way.
At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about coding, and had little experience with web
design. I was looking into the mother of all interactive articles, Snow Fall, and discovered
the term Parallax (basically, when one layer scrolls at a different rate than another one).
I knew I didnt have to become great at front-end web design or graphic design (depth over
breadth), I just needed to make those pages with parallax and scrolling effects really well. I
already knew how to write case studies and stories, so I prioritised my search for
discovering the minimum effective dosage of coding. I had no idea what that specifically
looked like.
I talked to my friend, a software developer, and he told me about a library called Skrollr.
Up until this point, I hadnt even thought of building on top of a library or framework. That
saved me no less than a dozen hours in research. I cant emphasise the power of connecting
with others to accelerate learning enough. (Thanks Jon!)
Building on that just-in-case information, I could search around for Skrollr parallax
tutorials. There was one with a template, so I downloaded it and started tinkering with it
(just-in-time learning). Another friend showed me Anvil, and I started messing around with
the elements of that template locally. (Thanks Dami!) Eventually, I built a webpage for one
of my favourite musicians. I uploaded it to my own website and shared the URL with him
via email. He liked the design and we tweaked it to match his branding. He then published
it on his website. (Sadly, we had to remove the Parallax element from it because Skrollr
didnt play friendly with mobile at the time.) But I got a chance to work with a really
interesting person and learn about web design, the entertainment industry, and public
relations.

Skip The Artificial Prerequisite

Remember, dramatic change isnt a prerequisite for picking up a new skill youre curious
about. It can be much more gradual.
As you master these skills one by one, youll find that more doors open. Instead of waiting
for opportunities, you can create more and more of them.
There are situations that warrant formal education. For example, if you find that you really
enjoy graphic design but are looking to take things to the next level, or if youre in a field
that demands credibility, then training may be a good option.
But in other situations, done is better than perfect. Before dropping tens of thousands of
dollars for tuition, Id suggest making these small changes first and picking up these skills
for free. Not only will it save you money and frustration, it will also be a low-commitment
way to verify whether you really like what you think you do.

Art of Mastery: My Top Five Strategies to

Improve a Skill Rapidly
Jan 17, 2014
by Ben in Articles // Health // Life Lessons // Money // Relationships with No Comments

Whether its learning to type faster, building a stronger friendship, or excelling in catching
a baseball, we all have skills that we want to master. For myself, one of the goals I want to
achieve in the near future is to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Another one is to learn a
few other languages. Mastery is a life long journey.
In this article, I will share with you my success strategies for maintaining steady and
continuous growth in a certain skill or an area in your life.

1. Make a Public Statement & Commit to a Public Challenge

Making a public statement means to tell the world what you are going to do. If you want to
be a triathlete, post it on your Facebook, tell your friends, write out a public statement!
When you do this, it makes you accountable to these witnesses. Second, make a public
challenge. This sets a public deadline that I cant miss. I did this by entering in the
Vancouver Marathon in May, and then proceeded to tell the world about it. This forces me
to achieve my goal because now Ive committed my reputation as an honest and
trustworthy person. The feeling of having people ask me how was the run would be
unbearable if decided not to show up for the marathon.
In your life, I suggest you to tell your friends your goals. Pay and put yourself in a race you
cant get out of. Give permission to people to laugh and make fun of you if you dont
complete your challenge. Thats the only way to move forward.

2. Keep Track of Statistics/Use Data

I just read an article about how many young people are leaving the province of British
Columbia in Canada because they cannot pay off their personal debts. People are blaming
their marriage breakdowns, wage cuts, and job losses. Though I agree with these problems,
I knew there were more deep seeded issues. Looking at the graph that they posted, it shows
that 37% of young people overextend their credit and suffer from poor money
management.

I have to ask: how many of us keep track of our finances? Do we bother to look at our bank
statements? Do we keep track of our monthly spending or income?
I got good at managing my money through TRACKING EVERYTHING. This means being
aware of where money goes and comes from, and how Im spending it. This awareness puts
us in the right direction. Using data allows us to measure how well we are doing. By
knowing how much Im spending on food, necessity, entertainment, etc. I was able to cut
budget on specific items or categories. Seeing a green positive on my money flow also
inspired me to keep going on this right track.
Money management is one skill. You can use data to measure your effectiveness in almost
all other skills, such as weight training, calorie cutting, etc.

3. 80/20 Pareto Principle/Minimum Effective Dose

Im going to take a page out of Timothy Ferriss, the famous author of the 4 Hour Work
Week and 4 Hour Body. He took the Pareto Principle to a whole new level with his skill
acceleration techniques. The Pareto Principle simply states that 80% of the effects come
from 20% of the causes. In real life, that means 80% of the problems come from 20% of the
people, or 80% of your income comes from 20% of the customers.
The minimum effective dose is essential for skill building. Spending too much time on
perfecting a skill can lead to boredom, and often is extremely time consuming. The learning
curve flattens out and you get less return, even if you spend the same time practicing. Take
for example (This is from the Four Hour Body):
To be perceived as fluent in conversational Spanish, for example, you need an active
vocabulary of approximately 2,500 high-frequency words. This will allow you to
comprehend more than 95% of all conversation. To get to 98% comprehensive would
require at least five years of practice, instead of five months. Doing the math, 2,500 words
is a mere 2.5% of the estimated 100,000 words in the Spanish language.

4. Always Look for New Strategies

Learning, in itself, is a skill. If you always approach a girl the same way and get rejected,
you dont get better at meeting women by doing it over and over again. Thats called
insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
However, if you evaluate what you did, change your strategy, and try again, that is how
improvement happens.
To give a personal example: Lately, Ive been training for a marathon. I tried the traditional
training method, which is to run 10-20KM a day, but it was painful on my knees and wasnt
as effective as I thought. I reviewed my results, took up additional research, and found that
marathon runners are now switching over to sprinting as a way of training. I then took
action and will soon be looking back on the results.

5. Find Mentors who have Done it Before & Ask for Advice/Copy Them
If you dont follow any of my tips today, follow this one. A mentor who has done it before
will show you the way. They have encountered and overcame almost 90% of the problems
you will face on your journey. They will also have figured out a system that cuts down on
time wasted on trial and error. Sometimes you will have to look far and wide for them, but
in the end, theyre worth everything.
If your mentor allows you, just copy exactly what they did, step by step. Following a
proven innovative system will improve your chances of success significantly.

Metalearning, The Four Hour Chef, and

Instructional Design
by Connie Malamed
9

Sharebar

My ears perked up when I heard the word metalearning

in an interview with the author of The Four Hour Chef, a new book by Tim Ferriss. I was
curious how metalearningroughly defined as learning how to learnrelated to a cook
book.
I wondered if the author had devised a new speed learning model based on experience that
could be applied to instructional design.
As it turns out, the author learns to cook as a way to demonstrate his methods for
accelerated learning. He claims his approach can overcome the dreariness of slow learning
we often experience when acquiring new knowledge and skills.
This is not an academic tome, but rather an informal, conversational and circular read. If
you prefer a linear narrative, you wont find it here. The author jumps from one experience
or anecdote to another, which certainly keeps things lively. Still, I did wonder whether an
editor was involved in Amazons first foray into book publishing (rather than facilitating
self-publishing).

The DiSSS Method for Accelerating

Learning
Over the years, Ferriss has constructed a quick-learning methodology, known as DiSSS,
that hes used to learn languages, tango dancing and other pursuits. The acronym comes
from his technique: Deconstruction, Selection, Sequencing and Stakes. (The i just helps
with acronym pronunciation and mnemonics.) Below youll see what each learning phase
entails.

1. Deconstruction is similar to chunking but it goes further. During deconstruction,

you identify the minimal units that are required to become competent at a set of
knowledge or skills. The author calls these Lego blocks.
Some deconstruction approaches that Ferriss finds helpful include: viewing the
subject from a variety of perspectives, looking at what successful outliers are doing,
probing the minds of experts through interviews, and finding simple commonalities
in a domain that can serve as a key to accelerate learning. One important point: when
interviewing experts, take in the explicit knowledge, but watch keenly for their
implicit expertise (what they can not verbalize).
2. Selection is based on the Pareto Principle, which states that for many events, 80%
of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In terms of metalearning, identify
which 20% of learning units will give you 80% of your desired outcomes. Its a
matter of distilling and simplifying to the fewest moving pieces. Selection
demonstrates a concept trumpeted throughout the bookthe Minimal Effective
Dose (MED). This is encapsulated as, The lowest volume, the lowest frequency,
the fewest changes that get us our desired result.
3. Sequencing is the familiar act of organizing content or in this case, the learnable
units, into a logical flow.
4. Stakes requires you to construct consequences that will enforce sticking with the
program. Its a way to remain committed when the original fire of motivation begins
to dwindle.

Second Set of Principles: CaFE

You didnt think it was that simple, did you? There is a secondary set of principles that are
part of this method. Here goes:

Compression: Find a way to squeeze the minimal learnable units into a one-page
study aid or cheat sheet. The author recommends two types: the Prescriptive OnePager lists rules or principles that help you generate real-world examples. The
Practice One-Pager lists real-world examples to practice, which helps you learn the
principles indirectly.
Frequency: Plan a study/practice schedule that provides the frequency needed to
gain competency.
Encoding: Find ways to associate the knowledge and skills with what you already
know.

10 Applications to Instructional
Design
Youve probably found that many of the methods in the DiSSS approach are familiar to
instructional design. One great difference is that DiSSS is completely learner-centered. The
learner has the control, creates his or her personal program, and devises consequences for
failure to follow through. For anyone with high motivation, this is an intriguing approach to
try.
But what about workplace employees? The ones who take compliance training and other
courses that are required for their jobs? If we could accelerate learning for the masses,
imagine how appreciative they would be. Here is what I think instructional designers can
borrow from this method with good results:
1. Find ways to give learners more power
2. Include audience members in analysis and design
3. Reduce content to its minimal moving parts
4. Stop and look at the goals and objectives from a variety of perspectives
5. Turn content on its head; start at the end and work your way backwards
6. Speak to experts who gained mastery in nontraditional ways
7. Observe experts for their implicit knowledge
8. Consider which 20% of skills will provide 80% of the desired outcomes
9. Distill, distill, distill
10. Provide study and performance support in simple one-pagers
The Four Hour Chef reminds readers that there are always setbacks and plateaus during
learning, particularly accelerated learning. When people are aware that this is part of the
process, it can help them maintain motivation. Do we ever talk to learners about how they
learn? We should.

Minimum Effective Dose

April 17, 2014
Ideas borrowed from The Four Hour Workweek & The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss

The minimum effective dose (MED) is defined simply: the smallest dose that will produce
a desired outcome.
Anything beyond the MED is wasteful.

To boil water, the MED is 212F (100C) at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher
temperatures will not make it more boiled.If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a
melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant
and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach.

Tim Ferriss is one of my favorite authors & bloggers. You can find his blog @
http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ Most of his writing is related to life hacking. Life
hacking refers to any productivity trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method to increase
productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life; in other words, anything that solves an
everyday problem of a person in a clever or non-obvious way. You can also think of life
hacking as practicing the 80/20 principle or The Pareto Principle in all areas of life. The
Pareto principle (also known as the 8020 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of
factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of
the causes.

What are some ways you can apply Minimum Effective Dose (MED) to your life?

Here are some practical ideas on applying MED to real life:

Conduct an 80/20 analysis on your life on a monthly basis

What are the 20% of your activities that are driving 80% of your results in these areas;
fitness, work, productivity, happiness?

What are the 80% of your activities yielding only 20% of results that you need to cut out?

What are your life goals or bucket list items? Begin with the end in mind. Design the life
you want and make it happen.

Decode or deconstruct patterns of success. Model the patterns that generate the outcomes
you desire.

Look at everything as a test or experiment: your own creative lab

Whatever you track & measure will improve; weight loss, spending, fitness, reading, food
log

Make a lot of small bets; experiment relentlessly

Fire bullets to calibrate, then fire calibrated cannonballs

Pay attention to the power of daily actions compounded over time

Always observe; who are the key influencers in this environment?

Take action, learn, iterate

Think big, start small, scale fast

14 Tips For Learning Any Skill Incredibly

Fast
Tim Ferriss' new book, "The 4-Hour Chef" is definitely about learning to cook rapidly. But
it's also about learning just about any skill.
He writes:

"Whether you want to learn how to speak a new language in three months, how to shoot a
three-pointer in one weekend, or how to memorize a deck of cards in less than a minute, the
true recipe of this book is exactly that: a process for acquiring any skill. The vehicle I chose
is cooking."
Along with the recipes, there are great insights into learning, and some great tricks you can
use every day. We've broken out a few of the best tips.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

There's a basic, four-part framework you can apply to any skill.

statigr.am/willcock78
Deconstruct
"What are the minimum learnable units, the LEGO blocks, I should be starting with?"
Selection

"Which 20% of the blocks should I focus on for 80% or more of the outcome I want?"
Sequencing
"In what order should I learn the blocks?"
Stakes
"How do I set up stakes to create real consequences and guarantee I follow the program?"
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

First, deconstruct the task. People often give up on tasks because the amount
of information is overwhelming.

Daniel Goodman / Business Insider

The key is to find something defined to focus on, and to break it into smaller, more
manageable parts.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Start with tools you can use quickly.

statigr.am/lucarutigliano
Learning to conjugate verbs is awful. It's boring, and there's no immediate impact. But by
learning a few helping verbs (to be, to have, to want, etc.) not only do you learn
conjugation, you unlock a large, functional chunk of the language. Small, useful victories
keep you on track and accelerate learning.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

By finding the simplest building blocks, you'll progress faster.

statigr.am/_stephysmalls10

Ferriss gives the example of learning Japanese. There are 1,945 characters in the language,
some with as many 15 strokes. But there are only 214 radicals which make up all of those
characters, and those have clues to meaning and pronunciation as well. It's much more
manageable, and provides a clear path forward.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Find someone who's been doing or teaching the skill for years.

Find an expert, not necessarily the best in the world, but someone near the top. Give them a
reason for talking to you, because asking for a favor isn't a compelling pitch. Ask questions,
such as how they would train someone who's poorly suited for something, who the best
little-known teachers are, and what an eight-week training course for someone with a
million dollars on the line would look like.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Make progress through the 'minimal effective dose.' A small step is easier to
turn into a habit, and you're less likely to skip it.

Danah Khalishah via Statigram

People frequently fail when they try to do everything at once. They approach a massive
project and quickly get discouraged. Taking small, but high-value steps takes less time, and
you learn more in the long run.
If you're learning a language, pick the highest value, most frequently used words in a
language and learn a few each day. If you're learning to cook, pick the most common
cooking techniques to learn first.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Don't overtax your working memory by trying to do too many things at

once.

msbluerose10/statigr.am

One of the principal barriers to learning something is the limitation of working memory.
That's the memory focus you use for the task at hand, which fills up quickly when
something's new and unfamiliar. When it's overtaxed, you make more errors. The key is to
work on only one step at a time until it becomes second nature before moving on.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Try doing the opposite of what everyone else teaches.

gmmail/Flickr
Every Boy Scout knows the "teepee" method of creating a fire, with the smallest kindling
and newspaper in the center and big logs on the outside. The exact opposite of ita layer
of smaller logs, on top of a base of much larger ones, topped by newspaperworks better,
with less management. Flipping a problem on its end can yield an easier solution.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Eliminate as many options as possible.

flickr/jeferonix
Information and advice get overwhelming, and we use the search for more information as a
distraction and excuse. Make a one-page cheat sheet for all of your most important options
and information. You'll make faster decisions and spend less time searching, which saves a
huge amount of time.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Acknowledge that you're probably terrible at self discipline, and create real
stakes for failure.

Daniel Goodman / Business Insider

No matter how much you want to accomplish something, or how well you plan, people tend
to drift because they aren't good at self discipline. You have to create external stakes. One
way is to use the science of human behavior, specifically our aversion to losing. One
example is setting up an anti-charityan automatic payment to an organization you dislike
if you don't hit your goal.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Watch out for the low points in advance so they don't derail you entirely.

statigr.am/mesch04
Just by the way your brain works, there are limits to learning. At first you're really excited,
you learn a lot, and exhaust yourself. Then you have a drop off as things get more difficult.
Then, later once you've mastered the basics, you start to plateau. That's another failure
point. Watch for them and plan in advance.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Hack the way that your brain remembers things.

statigr.am/mesch04
Your brain remembers the things you study in the beginning and end of study sessions.
Split sessions in two to minimize the time in the middle. The Von Restorff effect

means recall peaks with unique items too, so insert different or compelling interludes into
lists or tasks that are monotonous.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef.

Give yourself a margin of safety.

Getty Images/Gabe Palacio

Ferriss uses Warren Buffett as his example here. Buffett famously buys stocks at a discount,
so he'll likely do well even if things go badly.
The same lesson applies to learning a skill. Making sure you'll have a good, measurable
outcome even if you mess up keeps you on track. You avoid the worst failures, and get
something useful out of your effort no matter what.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

Learn from outliers, but only the right kind.

Al Bello/Getty Images
Michael Phelps is not a particularly good person to learn from. You can't replicate his
ridiculous physical gifts or the portion of his life he devotes to swimming. The best people
to learn from are those who started out as average, then became outliers. They actually have
techniques you can replicate.
Source: The 4-Hour Chef

8 ways to apply the 80/20 rule to language

learning

In this post Ill briefly describe the 80/20 rule, give some real-world examples of how it can
be applied to language learning, and then give you eight simple steps to figuring out how to
apply it to your own learning.

The 80/20 rule

Image credit: flickr.com/stargardener

Input vs Output
You work hard.
Question: does each individual hour you put in result in equal output in your work?
You study hard.
Question: do you feel that every hour of study improves your language ability by a
proportional amount?
You know a lot of people.
Question: does each relationship enrich your life as much as every other?
Theres a strong chance that you answered No to the above questions. In looking for why
that might be the case, the Pareto Principle offers an explanation. Otherwise known as the
80/20 Rule, it states that input and output is rarely balanced. 80% of your results are
produced by only 20% of your efforts.

In fact, the 80/20 relationship is far more pervasive than just this. When you start looking, it
manifests itself throughout life. 80% of the worlds wealth, for example, is thought to be
controlled by 20% of the people. Its often the case that in the world of sales, 80% of
revenue is generated by a dynamic 20% of salespeople.
The lesson?
While this is all very interesting, there is a serious point. Namely, if you know that 80% of
what you do will have little impact on your results, then it makes sense to identify the other
20% that really matters, and then focus all your energy on that.

The 80/20 rule applied to language learning

My video on the same topic:
Armed with this insight, we then have to examine the way we learn languages and ask
ourselves: what is that 20% for me? Identifying that 20% can be tricky. More on that later.
First, some examples.

Case 1
Think of the last language course you took (self-study or face-to-face). Think of how it
contributed to your language level. Now, what proportion of that course was truly valuable
to you, or made a big impact on your level? Chances are you ploughed through a lot of stuff
and only remembered those things which you found really useful. While its true that all the
other stuff might have had some long-term benefits, in reality, as with any long-term
project, you need more tangible short-term aims in order to maintain momentum and stay
motivated.

Case 2
When I was in Japan, I spent a long time studying and learning but didnt seem to make
progress in speaking. I determined that it was because I hadnt been putting my language
into practice and as a result nothing became automated. My 80/20 in that situation was
clear: any real improvement was going to come from practising speaking with native
speakers putting into practice everything Id been learning at home. I focused all my
efforts on setting up speaking opportunities with teachers and language partners. I also
came up with some brutal exercises to put my speaking through its paces in everyday
situations. My level went through the roof over the next few months.

Case 3
Have a look at what I wrote about in this post, describing my early stages in learning
Cantonese:

To get really good at a language you need to read and listen a lot to authentic language. But
you cant do that before you know enough words to understand it all. Therefore, as a
beginner, an 80/20 analysis tells you that you need to prioritise one thing: vocabulary.

How to find your 20%

Its all very well for me to say identify those 20% of things that will make 80% of the
difference, but youd be justified in throwing it back at me: Fine! you say, but how do I
identify that 20%?

Doing your 80/20 analysis.

Image credit: flickr.com/desideratum

Eight ways to do your 80/20 analysis

1. Word frequency list. If youre a beginner, you could start with a word frequency
list in the language youre learning. The 100/200 most common words in the
language would be a great place to start. Having said that, you could argue that
youd learn those words pretty quickly however you went about studying, so take it
or leave it! However, it is the obvious point to make in relation to an 80/20 strategy.
2. Set short-term goals. Most of the sales departments revenue was generated by
20% of the salesmen. How is that measured? By income. Would they have an
income target for the month? You bet. Whats your language learning target for the
next month? Dont have one? Big problem. You cant measure what will bring
you results if you dont have clearly defined goals. Get your short-term goals
down on paper, and only then you can determine what steps will bring you 80%
closer to reaching those goals. See this post if you need help with this.

3. Educate yourself. In order to make smart, strategic decisions you need to know
what youre talking about. So read up on language learning. Blogs such as this one,
this one and this one are a great place to start as passionate language learners talk
about their experiences.
4. Past experience. Think back to previous language-related experiences, whether in
another country or at school. Can you put your finger on anything in particular that
really helped you? Can you replicate that now?
5. Study habits. Look at your study habits. What balance of time do you spend on
speaking, writing, reading and listening? If youre really down on one skill, it may
be that focusing on that skill for a while really gives you a kick where you need it.
6. Feared things. Is there something that really puts you off, or that youre afraid of?
(e.g. learning Chinese characters, reading your grammar book.) Its often the case in
life that tackling your feared things bring your the greatest results.
7. Be honest with yourself. Ive caught myself, at times, telling people that I study
everyday, but then realising its been a few days since I hit the books. Be honest
with yourself if youre not attending to the basics (like doing some study
everyday) then thats exactly what will bring you your 80%.
8. Common sense. Not a popular one, but its sometimes what we need. Be practical
examine the obvious. Whats frustrating you right now? What would you really like
to be able to do? Now, drill down and do some straightforward thinking about what
you could do that would help you get there. Often the answer is staring you in the
face. See Case 2 above, for example. Dont over-complicate things. Think along the
lines of the following:
A. I cant speak!
B. Why not?
A. I dont know enough words.
A. Then learn more words!

A Beginners Guide To The 80/20 Principle

80/20 In A Nutshell
You dont need to do everything. You only need to do the things that get results.
You can either think thats unfair or you can use it to your advantage. If youre reading
this, youre one of the smart people who will choose to harness the energy of this principle
rather than fight against it.
Heres how you can do just that to optimize everything you do from the get-go.

How 80/20 Works

For most events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This number
can change sometimes its 70/30 and sometimes its 90/10. But whatever the ratio, the
point is that a small number of causes have a disproportionately large effect on the
outcome.
From income to clients to blog posts to travel to fitness to relationships, youll find that the
80/20 rule works everywhere.
But lets back up a bit. What is the 80/20 principle and what does it even mean?
The Essential Rule:
20% of the inputs drive 80% of the outputs.
This rule originated in Richard Kochs book, The 80/20 Principle. This book is a solid read
and is definitely worth going through.
Interestingly enough, if you pick up Kochs book, youll notice that, 25 pages in, he
mentions that you can get the most important knowledge in every book by following a
three-step process. Like a good student, I followed his instructions I read the start and the
end of the book, skimmed the rest, and then read the start and the end again. If the author is
going to tell you how to read books, you should listen!

80/20: A Visual Example

Some Practical Examples Of 80/20

Language
Most languages have close to a million words (if not more).

Most people only use a few hundred of those words in a day.

If you want to learn a language, you dont need to memorize the dictionary. You just need
to learn the words that are used most often. Thats less than a few thousand words.
You could spend day and night learning the Spanish words for the minutia of biology and
the entirety of the language, but unless you urgently need to speak about mitochondria, the
words youve learned probably wont be of much use to you.
If youre not interested in explaining mitochondria, you can master the basics much, much
faster. Thats how someone like Benny manages to learn a language in three months. He
doesnt focus on being perfect. He just focuses on speaking and doesnt worry about
looking stupid.
Diet
If you change 20% of the foods you eat, youll see absolutely massive results, particularly
when youre just starting to improve your diet for the first time.
If youre eating paleo and you cut out sugar and grains, youre not going to have to worry
about whether or not a legume is strictly paleo. It may be important but its not the most
important thing, so you dont have to worry about it. Simply choosing to stop eating junk
and to start eating real food is going to give you bigger results right off the bat than if you
debated whether or not to eat beans.
Ive talked about this in multiple places, but cutting out grains and dairy will get you 80%
of the way there. Everything after that is simply tweaking.
If youre frustrated at not seeing results when it comes to losing weight, stop thinking you
need to overhaul everything. Just change the few things that are going to make a huge
difference, and use that change to get the momentum to make more changes further down
the road.
Fitness
If you want to start changing your fitness habits, you dont need a complicated program.
You can make a ton of progress through body-weight movements and sprints.
This is what the entire No Excuse Workout is based on. You dont need a mega-gym and a
personal trainer to get into shape. You just need to get started, to focus on a few movements,
and to make those movements into a habit.

Business
Back when I worked in an agency, there was this mindset that you could never ever lose a
client. Ever.
There was no real reason for this belief. It was just seen as bad to lose a client. Even if
that client sucked. And some clients did suck. Badly.
To give an example, we had one client who paid us almost nothing and who would call to
complain almost daily. Despite the fact that we doubled their conversions (and revenue),
and cut their costs in half, they still werent happy. They didnt care about results because
they wanted control.
With some clients theres no reasoning.
Hint: Its always the clients who pay you the least who want the most from you.
Unfortunately, wanting to keep every client is a terrible mindset to have when running an
agency. But, because this mindset existed throughout the agency, we were losing
~$20,000/month. But money wasnt too much of a concern (due to the organizations
structure and the investors behind it), so no one worried about it too much.
However, Im allergic to poor functioning businesses, so I took to Excel, and, in twenty
minutes, laid out how we could cut half of our problem clients who were bringing in less
than $1,000/month. I also outlined how we could double down on our existing (headachefree) clients who loved us, and make more money with fewer headaches (without getting
rid of any employees), and actually turn a profit.

I got a Hmm Thats interesting before I decided to leave. I still dont know what they
decided to do with that spreadsheet.

This also works for a ton of other business scenarios. Here are a few examples:

If you run a blog, youll find that 20% of your posts generate 80% of the traffic.
If you sell products, youll find that 20% of your products produce 80% of your
revenue.
If you look at your expenses, youll find 20% of your bills represent 80% of your
expenses.

80/20, 80/20, 80/20.

Income Earning & Wealth
Warning: Controversy ahead!
Below youll see a chart of current income inequality charted against estimated and
ideal levels for different demographics. At first glance, these charts look terrible. But if
you really look at what they show, its simply the 80/20 rule at work, to the nth degree.
Check it out.

The actual distribution clocks in with the top 20% owning about 84% of the total
wealth. To people who dont understand the 80/20 rule, this looks grossly unfair
everything should be distributed much more fairly! (Not coincidentally, almost every other
estimate and ideal skews that way). However, if youre familiar with 80/20 in everyday
life, it wont surprise you very much at all that the actual wealth distribution follows the
80/20 rule almost exactly.
Please note: Im not arguing that this is a good or a bad thing. Im simply saying
it is. 80/20 is a reality that you can choose to either ignore or understand and use to your
advantage. If youre smart, youll pay attention to it.
80/20 is everywhere. Use it if you dare

Why Youre Scared To Actually Use 80/20

I was raised to have the hardworking Midwestern mindset. Work hard and dont leave until
the job is done. Do it right every single time.
Thats great advice. It creates integrity and a sense of pride in your work. Its solid advice
that most people could apply to their life and work.
It can also be a foolish waste of time if you mindlessly apply it across the board to
anything and everything you have to do.
Heres the truth: You dont have to be perfect. Your work doesnt have to be perfect. In fact,
its often not going to be perfect. So instead of chasing the impossible standard of
perfection, focus on getting to good enough to go to the next step.
If youre not quite sure how to feel about this, your inner perfectionist is probably crying
foul.
Ive got some news for you: You need to make him disappear.
He needs to go away, for good. You need to kill him off. Use your bare hands if you have
to. It wont be pretty but its necessary. He seems harmless, well-meaning even, but hes
holding you back from being as effective as you could be.

Putting 80/20 Into Action

If youre tired of theory, here are some practical things you can do to implement 80/20
today.
Budget
Look at your budget. Use Mint to start analyzing your purchases. Which categories cause
the biggest expenses? Figure out which big expense you can cut. Pick something like cable.
Cutting out cable would save you $100/month probably the same amount as cutting
something small that you have all the time, like your daily cup of coffee and would
give you more time to create something worthwhile at the same time. Double win.
Revenue
Analyze your various revenue streams and the effort involved in each. The chances are that
youve got one cash cow or bigger revenue stream which takes the least work/is the most
fun/is the easiest to run. Get rid of the other obligations that arent generating ROI on the
same scale, and focus more on those streams providing disproportional results. (This is
what I did when I cut off a lot of low budget client work.)
Diet

Dont overhaul your whole diet. Dont go on a cleanse or spend hundreds of dollars on
juicing. Just cut out grains and dairy for four weeks. See what happens.
Fitness
Dont get a gym membership. Dont spend three hours a day on the treadmill. Spend twenty
minutes a day doing a four-week program or an eight-week program of body-weight
movements and sprints. Combine this with your new diet, and watch what happens.
Language
Stop trying to memorize the dictionary, and learn 200 words in another language. Buy a
ticket to another country for a week and just start speaking to people. Watch yourself
become more fluent in that language in seven days than your friends who spent months
with their heads in a textbook.
Websites & Marketing
Instead of focusing on every marketing channel imaginable, look at your stats for the last
90 days and find out where the majority of your traffic is coming from. Double down on
those traffic sources and forget everything else. Do this for 90 more days and then watch
what happens.

Exceptions To The Rule: When The 20% Is Needed

Of course, the 80/20 rule isnt guaranteed to work 100% of the time (its called the 80/20
rule after all). If you find yourself in any of the following situations, please ignore all the
above advice:

Youre building a rocket.

Youre a surgeon operating on somebodys brain, heart, or other vital organs.
Youre translating sign language at an international leaders funeral. In this case,
you should know more than 20% of sign language, unlike this guy:

If one of those situations applies to you, good for you. Otherwise, get over yourself,
focus on the 20% that matters, and get stuff done
Note: This is not a political discussion. If you leave disrespectful, incendiary or stupid
comments, it will be deleted.

How to Acquire Any New Skill in 20 Hours

or Less
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211 180 0
When I moved to New York, a friend of mine took me out for lunch to welcome me to the
city. While we were eating, he made an offhand comment that stuck with me: Besides
work, most people hardly ever leave the 3-block area they live in.
Years later, after living here, I realize how right he is. We get comfortable. We know whats
around us. And most of all, we dont want to take a risk (and possibly look stupid) by trying
something new.
His point wasnt just about where we live. The more and more I get better at my own craft,
the more resistance Ive noticed in myself to try something new. When was the last time
you learned a new language, took up a new sport, or traveled to a totally different country?

Its uncomfortable to imagine being a beginner at something again. What if I fall off the
skateboard? What if people laugh at me? Ah, screw this, Im gonna go watch TV.
Thats why I love people who constantly try to reinvent themselves especially masters of
their craft because it would be easy to coast.
A while ago, I invited one of my friends, Josh Kaufman, to talk about mental frameworks
(like the ones I used to answer hundreds of emails/day). As a reminder, Josh founded
PersonalMBA.com and is one of the deepest thinkers on systems that I know.
Today, Ive invited him back to talk about the process of how to learn a new skill. If I want
to learn windsurfing, do I really need to spend 10,000 hours? How do I get good enough
to enjoy something faster than that?
I like having Josh share his techniques because hes a total weirdo. Instead of using off-theshelf software, like 99% of people in his business do, he built it himself. When I looked at
him disgustedly, saying Why, dude? he smiled and said, It was fun.
No! Its not fun to build a shopping cart. But he loves the process of pushing through the
initial pain to build something new.
His new book, The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything Fast, will teach you exactly
this.

What I like about Josh is he breaks down learning all kinds of new skills like playing a
new instrument, learning a new language, picking up a new sport, or even learning to cook.
These are the things we always talk about wanting to do, but never actually get around to
doing. And in todays guest post, hell show you how to acquire any new skill in 20 hours
or less. (By the way, I especially love the part where he preemptively yells at you below.)

Take it away, Josh

*

In less than 12 months, Ive learned the following:

1. How to code. My entire business now runs on software I wrote myself, and if I ever
decided to stop running my own business, I could land a six-figure position pretty easily.
2. How to do yoga. Now I can practice by myself at home in a safe, effective way, and Im
getting stronger and more flexible every day.
3. Learned how to windsurf. Its a challenging, physically demanding sport, but its super
fun.
4. How to play the ukulele. I know how to play many popular songs, and I can pick up a
songbook or tab and figure out how to play pretty much anything.
5. How to play Go. Its the oldest strategic board game in the world, and WAY more
complicated than chess.
6. How to touch type (again). I now type using a keyboard layout called Colemak, which
is much more efficient than the QWERTY keyboard layout most people use.
7. How to shoot and edit a movie. I bought a camera and shot my first short film: a trailer
to launch my second book, an international bestseller that hit #2 on Audible.com overall.
Outsourcing production of the trailer to a professional wouldve cost at least $20,000, so
even after purchasing my camera and gear, I had an immediate 300%+ ROI on the project.
I learned all of these brand new skills on the side, without quitting my day job or ignoring
my family. In the midst of these projects, I overhauled a 140,000+ word manuscript (the
second edition of my bestselling business book, The Personal MBA), taught three business
training courses, took care of my two-year-old daughter, helped my wife build her business,
and wrote the manuscript for my second book.
How? I learned how to acquire new skills very, very quickly.
Its not rocket science. If youre smart about how you practice, you can go from knowing
absolutely nothing about it to being quite skilled in only a few hours. Put in as little as 20
hours of focused, deliberate practice, and youll easily outperform 99% of the human
population.
If you learn to practice in an intelligent, strategic way, theres no limit to what you can
learn.
Even rocket science.
*

Skill Acquisition: What Would You Like to Learn?

Take a moment to think of all of the things you want to know how to do. Would you like to:

* Learn how to speak or write a new language?

* Figure out how to draw?
* Play a musical instrument, or learn to sing?
* Start your own business?
* Get better at negotiation or public speaking?
* Program, design, or learn some useful new technology?
* Fly an airplane?
Learn how to acquire new skills quickly, and you can pick up ALL of these skills, and many
more. You can learn things thatll help you make more money. You can learn things thatll
raise your profile, earn the respect of people you value, and create new opportunities. You
can learn things thatll permanently enrich your life, and open up entirely new areas of the
world for exploration and enjoyment.
*

The 3 Major Barriers to Learning Something New

So why dont most of us spend more time systematically picking up new skills? Three
reasons:
1. Most people dont commit to learning anything specific. They just say things like I
think itd be totally cool to learn how to speak Japanese someday, and never actually make
a plan to sit down and practice. Even worse, they never take a moment to figure out WHY
theyre interested in that particular skill, so its close to impossible to make it a priority vs.
other, more urgent matters, like going out drinking with friends or watching old episodes of
Breaking Bad.
2. Learning new skills is often intimidating. When youre learning something new, there
are enormous gaps in your understanding of the topic. Youre very aware of what you dont
know, and you dont know where to begin. That ambiguity generates fear and uncertainty,
both of which make the ancient survival-oriented parts of your brain freak out. Whats the
easiest way to stop feeling afraid? Give up.
3. Learning new skills is usually frustrating. Lets say you push through the uncertainty
long enough to actually sit down and practice. Heres whats going to happen: YOU WILL
SUCK. Completely, totally suck. Whats the easiest way to stop feeling stupid? Stop
practicing, and say to yourself, it really wasnt that interesting to begin with.
Heres the thing: indecision, intimidation, and frustration are universal barriers to skill
acquisition. Theyre entirely predictable, so you can prepare accordingly.
The key to rapid skill acquisition isnt involve complicated memorization techniques or
mental hacks. Its just a simple, systematic way to spend your time and energy doing things
that help you build real skill, and avoid things that dont.
*

Dont Worry About Being an Instant Elite Ninja Master

of the Universe
Lets get one huge misconception out of the way right now: when learning a new skill, you
dont have to worry about mastering the skill or becoming an expert.
Say you dont know how to paint, but want to learn. Heres the absolute worst way to go
about it: compare your current level of ability (nouveau third grader) with Picasso,
Michelangelo, or any random artist that posts on deviantART. Anything that you produce
will look like garbage in comparison, so why bother?
Even worse, you may have heard that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. Thats at
least 4 hours of practice every single day for almost 7 years. Who has time for that?!
Heres the thing: you probably dont need to be an expert.
Skill acquisition is tied up in many ways with social status: being good at something is a
status signal, so our brains track our perceived competence vs. others constantly. When you
dont think youre as good as other people at something, its common to feel self-conscious,
and your mind starts looking for ways to protect your fragile ego from feelings of
inferiority.
Thats why you get so uptight when you try to learn something new: your brain kicks into
social comparison mode, even though its unnecessary at best, and counterproductive at
worst.
Most of the time, you dont need to be an expert you just need to practice enough to get
the results you want, whatever they might be. Comparing yourself against other people
during the beginning stages of skill acquisition is wasted energy, and its a very real barrier
to improving your skills.
In the vast majority of cases, people decide to pick up a new skill to either (1) get a
particular valuable result or (2) have fun. Thats it. Social comparison is meaningless who
cares what other people can do if youre able to get the results you want?
Heres a simple example: I recently learned how to cook on the grill. I wanted to grill
burgers, chicken, steak, vegetables, etc. for my family, so I could help out around the house.
It only took a few hours of practice, as well as a few simple tools, to get really great results.
(Pro tip: using an interval timer and a fast digital thermometer makes grilling anything way
easier.)
Am I the most mindblowing expert ninja grillmaster who has ever lifted a spatula? No.
Am I now an internationally recognized celebrity chef? No.
Do I need to be in order to cook a delicious dinner for my family? Absolutely not.

When you decide to learn something new, youre not competing against other people:
youre competing against your own previous lack of ability, and any improvement is a win.
Once you grok that early phase skill acquisition isnt a competition, leveling up your skills
and abilities becomes much, much easier.
*

Heres the core method to acquire any new skill, personal or professional, as quickly as
possible:

1. Set a concrete, specific Target Performance Level

Setting what I call a target performance level makes it much easier to identify exactly what
youll need to actually practice. It sounds simple, but this is an extremely common point of
failure: most people never decide what they want, so its impossible to figure out how to get
it.
Define what you want to be able to do in a clear, concrete manner the more detailed, the
better. Instead of relying on a mindless, broad goal like learn how to code, setting a target
performance level like deploy a functioning Ruby on Rails application to Heroku is much
easier to practice.
Likewise, deciding on ONE skill to work on at a time is crucial. It comes down to
arithmetic: you need a critical mass of experience doing something in order to build
noticeable skill. If you spread your efforts over too many skills, you wont improve any of
them.
Choosing only one skill to work on is often difficult, so heres a simple method I use to
make it easier to decide. Make a list of all of the skills youd like to learn. When youre
ready to commit to a new skill, take out your list, and ask yourself this question:
If I could only learn half of the skills on this list, which ones would I keep?
Cut your list in half. When youre done, cut it in half again, and again, and again, until one
skill is left standing, Highlander-style. (In the end, there can be only one.)
Remember: youre not deciding that youre never going to pick up any of the other skills on
your list. Youre just deciding youre not going to focus on them right now. Pick one skill:
everything else can wait.

2. Deconstruct the skill to avoid overwhelm and make

practice more efficient

Most of the things we think of as skills (like public speaking or playing the guitar) are
actually bundles of smaller sub-skills that are used in combination. By breaking the skill
into more manageable parts, practice becomes way less intimidating, and you can work on
improving one sub-skill at a time.
Like so many things in life, skills follow the law of critical few (often referred to as
Paretos Law or the 80/20 principle). Breaking down the skill into smaller parts is the
first step in figuring out which sub-skills are critical.
Take golf. When you play golf, youre not just doing one thing. Driving off the tee,
hitting with an iron, chipping out of a bunker, and putting on the green are completely
different skills, so its best to practice each in isolation. Driving, using an iron, and putting
happen most often, its probably best to practice those first. (I dont even play golf: this
basic level of deconstruction is possible after watching someone play golf for a few
minutes. Its really not that difficult.)
Most skills follow a similar pattern: a few subskills are critical, while the remainder are
rarely used or contribute less to the end result. Practice the most important sub-skills first,
and you accelerate your overall rate of skill acquisition.

3. Use 80/20 research tactics to find the most important

subskills quickly
Next, find a few books, courses, DVDs, or other resources about the skill. Dont try to
finish them all in detail: skim them all, one after another. The most important techniques
and ideas will appear often, in multiple sources, allowing you to establish which sub-skills
are critical with more confidence.
An hour or two of research is all you need: too much research is a subtle form of
procrastination. You want to do just enough research to identify the critical sub-skills,
avoiding the inefficiency of just getting started without a strategy.
When I was learning to code, I bought over 20 books on the subject. I thought the best way
to learn was to read the books, and THEN try to write my own program. The reality was the
opposite: I only started to develop real skills when I used three introductory books to
identify a few critical ideas, then spent my time actually writing programs.
Do your homework, then shift to real practice as quickly as possible. Practicing the skill in
context is the only thing that generates lasting results.

4. Anything that gets in the way of focused, deliberate

practice is an enemy that needs to be destroyed

The more effort it takes to sit down and begin, the less likely you are to practice. Were all
cognitive misers: if something takes a great deal of thought or effort in the moment, were
less likely to do it.
Want to learn how to play the guitar? Guess what: keeping your guitar in a case, in the back
of a closet, on the other side of your house pretty much guarantees youll never practice.
Heres what I did when I wanted to learn how to play the ukulele: I kept it close to where I
worked every day. All I had to do to start practicing was reach over and pick it up, so I
practiced.
One of my friends (and former clients), Tim Grahl, has a great rule of thumb:
I assume that future Tim is going to be stupid, lazy, and make bad decisions, so I set up my
environment to prevent that from happening.
Instead of relying on willpower to force yourself to practice, its always more effective to
change your environment to make practicing as easy as possible. Little changes, like
placing your guitar in an easy-to-reach location, make an enormous difference.
Likewise, anything that distracts you or pulls focus while youre practicing holds you back.
Close the door. Unplug your TV. Disconnect your internet. Mute your cell phone. Do
whatever it takes to keep your attention on the task at hand.
Anything that gets in the way of focused, deliberate practice is an enemy that needs to be
destroyed. No mercy.

5. Use precommitment psychology to break through early

resistance
Now, the moment of truth: are you willing to rearrange your schedule to complete at least
20 hours of deliberate practice? (Thats roughly 45 minutes of practice a day for the next 30
days.)
Sit down, take out your calendar, and do the math. When exactly are you going to practice?
What are you going to give up, reschedule, or stop doing to make the time?
If you dont have time, or arent willing to accept the necessary tradeoffs to MAKE the
time, thats a sign the skill isnt a real priority at the moment.
Theres no shame in that. If youre not willing to commit to at least 20 hours of practice to
acquiring a new skill, then youre probably better off dropping the project and doing
something else. Its better to clarify your true priorities and make a conscious decision to
stop than dabble just long enough to feel guilty about giving up.

If youre willing to invest at least 20 hours of focused effort in learning a new skill,
precommitting to putting in the time makes it much more likely youll practice enough to
acquire the skill. This technique is called a pre-commitment, and its extremely effective
at changing behavior.
Heres how the 20 hour pre-commitment works: once you start practicing, you must keep
going until you either (1) develop the level of skill you want, or (2) complete at least 20
hours of practice.
In my experience, pre-commitments are critical. Making a credible promise to yourself (or
to other people) before you start practicing is key if you want to get results as quickly as
possible.
Heres why: if youre just dabbling, its easy to quit as soon as you face the slightest
difficulty. Remember: the early hours of practice are going to SUCK. Youre going to be
horrible, and youll know it. Its very, very easy to get frustrated and give up.
Making a pre-commitment completely changes your inner dialog. You find yourself
thinking and saying things like Im going to keep going until I get what I want or I reach
the 20 hour mark. If I suck, Im going to suck for 20 hours. Thats okay. I expected this. Im
going to keep going, because getting better at this is important to me.
Theres a wide (and growing) body of evidence that perseverance in working toward longterm goals in the face of setbacks, frustrations, and adversity usually referred to as gritis an essential element of success in every field. If youre able to persist when the going
gets tough, youll reap outsized rewards. Making a pre-commitment makes it much, much,
much easier to keep pushing through early frustrations and setbacks. Its simple, but it
works.
Theres nothing magical about the 20 hour mark, by the way: I chose that particular
threshold purely for psychological reasons. 20 hours isnt long enough to feel intimidating,
so it feels easy enough to pre-commit, but its long enough to see dramatic results.
In my experience, the first few hours of learning anything are frustrating and confusing. A
2-4 hours in, you begin to get the hang of it. By hours 4-6, you start to see really exciting
results. By hours 15-20, youre better than most people will ever be.
After 20 hours, youll be in a much better position to judge the skill: do you find is
valuable? Are you getting the benefits you were looking for when you began? Could you
benefit from further practice?
You can learn many skills, like basic cooking techniques, in a few hours. Heres an
example: I learned how to grill hamburgers, steaks, ribs, and chicken this summer. I can
cook dinner for my family, and the food tastes great, which was my target performance
level. If you get the benefits youre looking for, theres no need to keep pushing forward
unless you really want to. You dont have to be a world-class black belt 6-sigma ninja

master of absolutely everything you ever decide to learn. Define what you want, persist
until you get it, then move on.
Other skills, like programming, benefit from continued, more challenging practice. Im
about 150 hours into web application programming at this point, and Im still learning a
ton. The core process is the same: if youre willing to invest the time and energy, you can
use this method over and over again to level up a skill all the way to mastery.
*

Success is in the SYSTEM. Knowing this stuff is

meaningless unless you DO it.
Thats the core of rapid skill acquisition: five simple steps that will help you acquire any
new skill as quickly as humanly possible. In practice, I use two more detailed checklists to
systematically acquire new skills, which I discuss at length in The First 20 Hours.
Now, you might be thinking something along the lines of yeah, yeah, yeah, this is all
common sense. Tell me something I havent heard before. Where are the brain hacks? What
about study skills, memory palaces, and nootropics? Can I learn faster by rigging up a 9volt battery to zap my brain with electricity?
First, to echo what Ramit has been saying for over eight years now: YOU ACTUALLY
HAVE TO DO THESE THINGS. Reading about this stuff isnt enough. Skills require
practice, and practice requires effort. No practice, no skill acquisition.
Second: SIMPLE THINGS WORK. This strategy is simple, and it works. If you use it, you
will learn fun and useful things in very short periods of time. Unnecessary complexity is
stupid.
If you actually sit down to practice, and use this method to practice in an effective/efficient
way, youll be amazed at how good you become. Youll be able to do things youve never
been able to do before, and youll see real-world improvements in your abilities extremely
quickly.
If youre willing to work, simple methods can produce extraordinary results.
*

Whining is NOT An Effective Skill Acquisition Strategy

One last thing: I recommend removing the phrase I dont have time from your
vocabulary. You have all the time youre ever going to have, and youre in full control of
how you choose to use that time.

If a skill is a big enough priority to learn, you have to MAKE TIME to practice it. If its not
important enough to rearrange your schedule, be honest with yourself, drop it, and move
on.
Whatever you decide, stop whining. Whining is not an effective strategy for skill
acquisition.
Allow me to channel Ramit for a moment:
LOSERS SAY: I dont know how to do that so I cant do it. OMG, learning is so hard: I
heard it takes at least 10,000 hours to be any good. I dont have that much time anyway, so
Ill wait until someone finally invents The Matrix so I can upload new skills directly into
my brain while I sit on the couch watching Real Housewives of New Jersey.
TOP PERFORMERS SAY: I dont know how to do that but its important, so Im
going to figure out how. Im going to practice in a way that helps me improve as quickly as
possible, and stop doing things that get in the way. I dont have an unlimited amount of
time and energy to do this, so Im going to MAKE time for practice, and use it as
efficiently as possible.
The result? Top performers get better and better at skills that help them make more money,
get more done, and have more fun while losers sit on the couch complaining about how
the world is so unfair.
Rapid skill acquisition isnt easy. It requires a huge burst of very intense effort. Skills
require practice, full stop. Its supposed to be hard but the results are well worth the
investment.
So what are you finally going to learn how to do? Decide what you want, break it down,
focus on the most important subskills first, make it easy to practice, and pre-commit to at
least 20 hours of practice before you begin.
Then get started, and practice well.
*

Heres what to do now

Make a public pre-commitment in the comments section about a new, high-value skill
youre going to practice over the next 30 days. Make your target performance level
concrete and specific, and include details about WHAT youll be able to do and HOW
youre going to practice.

The 80/20 Approach to Learning

Technology
The challenge these days with learning new technology isnt a result of a lack of resources.
If you have access to the internet and/or a library, with patience and persistence you could
probably learn any tech skill on your own using books, YouTube, and other online courses.
This abundance of information is actually making it more challenging to learn. Where do
you begin and whose information should you trust?

How Paretos Principle Will Help You Master Technology

Faster
Youre interested in learning a new technology (be it software, an app, or hardware) and
youd like a systematic process to learning how to master itwithout having to commit a
lot of time to this endeavor. This is where the 80/20 approach comes in handy.
This learning approach is based on Paretos Principle, also known as the 80/20 Rule which
can be summarized as: 20% of something is responsible for 80% of the results (20% of
your customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue, for example).
When learning a new technology, a smarter and more effective approaching to learning it
would you should focus your learning on the vital skills youll use most of the time. And if
youre willing to forego your desire to know everything, your practical mastery of that
technology will be fast.
So whats involved in approaching learning with an 80/20 mindset? Check out the articles
below to get started.

The 80/20 Approach to Learning: 3 Steps to Determine the 20% to Focus On

How to Let Go of Your Need to Learn Everything
How to Practice & Get Really Good Quickly With the 20%

I find that a huge barrier to embracing new technology is an overall fear of technology. If
youre ready to ditch your fear of technology, check out my resources here.

The 80/20 Approach to Learning: 3 Steps

to Determine the 20% to Focus On
Yolanda Enoch @YolandaEnoch 0 comments
If you want to truly embrace the 80/20 approach to learning new tech tools, having a cutthroat attitude when it comes to narrowing the list of skills you should focus on is
key. Remember, youre figuring out whats important FIRST and then youre
focusing your time and energy on learning those skills only.
So how do you take all the information thats out there and come up with the skills to focus
on?
Read on.

The Secret to Getting to the 20%: Focus on the Practical

Skills
In my past life in Human Resources, Microsoft Excel was a tool I used daily. I wanted to be
an advance user of Excel so that meant that I needed to learn about macros and pivot tables.
The problem with learning those two skills was that I never used them nor did I have a
practical reason to use them.
I did, however, need to learn how to use VLOOKUP. I did a lot of reporting and would
have to grab data from one report and insert it into a separate spreadsheet (accurate
reporting was a given). VLOOKUP was a godsend for this reason. Since I was using
VLOOKUP almost daily, I very quickly mastered it.
You are what you practice most.
~ Richard Carlson
It can be very sexy to want to learn everything. But if you never practice those skills, you
most certainly wont retain them (its not like riding a bike).
Figure out the 20%, then focus on learning those skills.

3 Steps to Deconstructing a Tech Skill

When youre deconstructing a tech skill, youre looking for the key concepts, important
sub-skills, and the necessary components and tools required to learn how to master the skill.
Here are three steps to deconstruction:

Define your target performance level.

This is where the exercise to discover your why comes in. Once you sure why youre
learning this skill, youll be able to describe what youre trying to achieve and what youll
be able to do when youre done.

Deconstruct the skill into sub-skills.

Josh Kaufman, an expert on rapid skill acquisition, recommends that you find resources
that you can quickly skim to establish an initial list of sub-skills. Amazon is a great
resource, as you can typically browse through the table of contents of most books, and the
chapter titles could easily be your list of sub-skills. Check out a few of the bestselling/popular books for ideas.

Research each sub-skill then eliminate the non-vital skills.

Armed with a list of sub-skills and a defined target performance level, you can now
research each sub-skill to determine whether its necessary to meet your target performance
level. It is doesnt contribute to your target performance level then it should be
removed from the list of skills. Question the applicability of each sub-skill before finalizing
your list.

How to Practice & Get Really Good

Quickly With the 20%
Yolanda Enoch @YolandaEnoch 0 comments
Just like theres a right and a wrong way to love somebody (shout out to Keith Sweat),
theres a right and a wrong way to practice the sub-skills needed to reach the target
performance level of an unfamiliar tech skill.
Unlike typical practice (be it sports or the arts), you dont with drills on the fundamentals
then gradually build on those skills. The approach is radically different when you want to
learn a new skill fast.
Its also completely attainable and you level of retention will be impressive because the
amount of stuff you have to learn is very small (only the 20%).

The Secret to Effective Practice: Immersion

Years ago, I took cooking classes to improve my paltry abilities in the kitchen (my
vegetable lasagna was amazing but couldnt be the only entree in my wheelhouse). I found

a store that had a really cool cooking assistant program, which allowed me to assist the
instructor in cooking classes in exchange for credit I could use to take future classes.
My 10th time assisting was one I will never forget.
Normally, as an assistant, I would get assigned very simple tasks: dice some onions, mince
some garlic, help cleanup at the end of class. But not this class.
When I arrived, I heard from the other assistants that this particular instructor was great but
pretty tough. I knew what they meant the moment I met her.
Instead of being asked to chop and dice (I was feeling confident in my abilities with those
things at this point), I was told I was going to be making the main entree, chicken
enchiladas. Id never made enchiladas or cooked for a large group before. Plus, I was
making the enchiladas by myself so there was no one to blame if they were a disaster.
At one point the instructor told me I was going too slow and then another time she stopped
by to check on my progress only to be disgusted by my results. Apparently, I want putting
enough chicken filling into each enchilada shell. She took one of my already-stuffed
enchiladas, reopened it, added about 100% more filling, closed it, and then walked away
without saying a word (I also want to recall some loud sighing and eye rolling too but Im
probably being dramatic here).
This experience turned out to be one of the scariest but proudest moments of my life! At the
end of the class, the instructor thanked me in front of the entire class (she announced that
my first time assisting at her location was a success). ANDthe enchiladas were delicious!
In this situation, I was thrown into the deep end of the pool and I could have sank but I
chose to swim. I fully immersed myself in this amazing learning experience and since this
was a completely new experience with me (just like practicing an unfamiliar tech skill is for
you), I just jumped in and started playing. Truthfully, I was afraid to ask questions (there
was no one to answer them anyway) so I just had to read the recipes and hope that what I
was doing was correct.
And frankly, I was trying to avoid a Gordon Ramsay moment with the instructor (warning:
strong language).

How to Practice Immersion the Right Way

The right way to practice immersion, according to Josh Kaufman in his book The First 20
Hours, is to practice in short bursts by the clock. The emphasis should be on quantity and
speed and not on perfection.

Before you begin practicing.

Make sure you have all the tools and equipment you need in order to practice (a checklist is
helpful so you dont forget anything).

While you are practicing.

When youre learning something new, dont torture yourself by trying to practice for a long
period of time. Practice for 90 minutes. When you are immersed in practicing something,
you arent looking up or researching for more information, you are literally inside the
program or tool and playing around with learning the skills you identified as important.
For instance, if you wanted to learn how to create presentations and one of your sub-skills
was to learn how to add images to slides, you would spend your time inserting images and
manipulating how they looked (borders, blurring, color changes, etc), where they were
positioned (center of the slide, bottom right, etc.) and sizing (cropped, made larger or
smaller, etc.). After playing around with images for a 90 minutes, youll definitely be wellversed in how to use images in presentations.

Look for associations to help you remember.

Find a memory to associate with the skill youre learning (it helps with retention). For
instance, one of the shortcuts in my 80/20 Guide to Mastering Shortcuts on Your Computer
& Smartphone, is how to paste text in your clipboard quickly. The shortcut is Command +
V on a Mac (Ctrl + V on a Windows computer). If you look at the letter v on your
keyboard, it looks like a pizza slice to me. And whats one of the main ingredients in pizza:
tomato paste (technically its tomato sauce but you get the point).
Ive also found that making flash cards helps me remember things (and I actually make the
flash cards using index cards and a pen as studies show that the physical act of writing
things down helps us learn more).

Accelerated Learning: Fast Track to Becoming an Oud

Player

Do you know Tim Ferriss? He is the author

of The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Chef, all of which are
bestsellers.
Well, the first one sounds interesting, but Im not interested in the second or third titles, you
say. He is one of my heros. Actually, OUR heros. Both Navid and I fell in love with this
guys awesomeness and idea of doing less work and getting more results out of it.
In fact, as I am writing this article, he has published a new blog article. I highly suggest you
check it out. He is giving out a whole bundle of the audiobook of The 4-Hour Chef along
with chapters on accelerated learning for free! I am downloading it right now, and cannot
wait to listen to it.
Its this concept of accelerated learning I want to share with you about today. There is a
video you can watch where he gives a whole presentation about it (or if you dont have
time for the video, skip to my summary after the video).
Tim talks about mastering any skills by following his method: DiSSS. Each letter except for
the i stands for an important concept. I will break it down here and explain how we can
apply the concepts to our Oud learning process.

D of DiSSS
First, the D. D in DiSSS stands for Deconstruction. This has 2 meanings. The first one is to
break something large into smaller pieces. When you look at Oud masters playing their
instruments on YouTube, you may wonder how you may ever get to that level. So break the
whole process into smaller pieces. In fact, when we designed the Oud for Guitarist lessons,
that was our main focus. We did not want to throw all kinds of maqam (scales) at you only
to cause you to get overwhelmed. So each lesson is about 15 minutes long or less, and the

video lessons show you a technique from different angles, so if you need to, you can work
on one finger movement at a time.
The second meaning of Deconstruction is to identify failure points: reasons why you might
fail or quit achieving your goal. Tim says that if you avoid these failure points for at least
the first 5 sessions of your practice, your practice becomes your habit. So lets think about
what makes learning the Oud a challenge. Probably the biggest challenge is that it takes too
much time to practice. I know, you practice for 2 hours one day, 1 hour next day, 2 more
hours on the third day, and you dont see any improvement. Some may think they cannot
spare that much time every day for practicing, so give up there. Then how about for the
next 5 days, you just practice for 15 minutes right after dinner, for example? I tell you only
to spend 15 minutes daily. Then watch what happens. (Im sure many of you will end up
spending more than 15 minutes in the end.) This will become a habit, and you may be able
to increase the amount of your practice time.

1st S of DiSSS
Next, the first S stands for Selection. This is what I meant by doing less work and getting
more results out of it. This is also called minimalism, the 80/20 Principle or Paretos Law.
The Law states that 80% of the results come from 20% of tools, practice, effort or whatever
the cause may be. In his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim talks about applying this Law
into all aspects of your life and focusing on the 20% of the efforts that create 80% of your
happiness.
Lets try to apply it to Oud learning. First, we need to select what 20% of techniques and
knowledge is creating 80% of beautiful tunes that the Oud masters are playing. This is why
we did not include all maqam out there or all types of techniques out there into the video
lessons. You really dont need to know 20 maqam to play the Oud (the same thing is
demonstrated for learning the Guitar in this video by the Axis of Awesome, which Tim
mentions in the video). You really dont need to know all types of flashy techniques to play
the Oud. BUT you do need to learn to play a few major maqam, play with good, sturdy
strokes and some cool finger movements. After learning a number of string instruments,
both Western and Middle Eastern, Navid was able to select these key elements of playing
the Oud, so you can focus your effort on the 20% of knowledge and techniques that will
produce 80% of the results. And this is how the Oud for Guitarists program was designed.

2nd S of DiSSS
The 2nd S stands for Sequencing. Tim achieves his accelerated learning at anything like
cooking, dancing, body building by challenging the norm or best practices. He learned to
dance tango and performed in championships in less than 6 months by studying the female
role of following instead of the male role of leading.
And again, this is what we applied in the Oud for Guitarists lessons. We did not follow the
usual musical theory or teaching methods used by Middle Eastern music teachers. We
wanted to help people who grew up with Western musical background learn how to play

this instrument, so we structured our lessons like Western music lessons are taught. Each
lesson has clear learning objectives, instead of just follow what Im doing type of
teaching approach that some Middle Eastern instructors may take. Instead of spending time
listening to a lecture on how the Middle Eastern musical scales work, you can play a tune in
a new scale, so you can learn by hearing the sounds. Also, you can change the order of the
lessons based on your preference. Each lesson can stand alone, although you may want to
follow the first few lessons, so you have the very basics.

The Last S of DiSSS

And the last S. Stake. Motivation. Incentive. Whatever that makes you stick to your goals.
Tim mentions a website called stickK.com, and this is a site where you publicly state your
goal, set the stakes you can set it so that your money goes to a charity you would hate to
support if you fail to meet your goal and get support to achieve your goal.

Pequenos hbitos, grandes resultados

Assistindo uma palestra do Tim Ferris, lembro de abrir meu bloco de notas rapidamente
para anotar uma citao. A frase foi simples e, aparentemente, no continha nada de novo,
mas ressoou pra mim como a mais pura verdade, um fato que muitas vezes deixamos passar
em branco.
Mantenha as coisas simples, o complexo falha.
Em geral, quando precisamos mudar algo em nossas vidas, miramos alto demais.
Adicionamos camadas de complexidade, na esperana de que toda essa confusa estrutura
nos fornea um caminho mais detalhado at nosso objetivo, mas tudo isso s complica.
Quando observamos uma coleo de instrues muito extensa ou detalhada, desanimamos.
So muitas peas para juntar, acabamos no fazendo nada.
como ir academia. Voc chega l no primeiro dia e s quer fazer seu exerccio. Sua
motivao foi suficiente para lev-lo at l. Na cabea, tudo est bem claro. chegar,
treinar e ir embora. Ao fazer a matricula voc questionado por taxas extras e avaliaes
fsicas, a resistncia comea a surgir. Um professor recebe a tarefa de mostrar os aparelhos
e construir uma ficha de exerccios, apenas depois que fizer seus exames.
Quando v, voc j est encarando uma longa lista de exerccios, cada um com sua forma
particular de execuo. As mquinas possuem nomes, preciso decorar o nome dos
msculos, pessoas falam dos suplementos que precisam tomar. Quando v, a simples
vontade de perder a barriguinha se transforma num monstro difcil de interpretar.

Enquanto seu reservatrio de motivao est cheio, voc segue firme nos primeiros treinos,
mas o dia em que acordar meio desmotivado, vai repassar tudo o que tem que fazer, cada
exerccio, aquecimento, alongamento, pr-treino, ps-treino, gente querendo aparecer, toda
a atmosfera que envolve a academia, e quando v, no sai nem da cama.
Muitas vezes nem renova o prximo ms.
Para alcanarmos mudanas substanciais em nossa vida, precisamos apostar na
simplicidade e transformar essa pequena mudana num hbito, onde no precisamos gastar
fora de vontade para executar. A partir disso sim, podemos comear a entrar em camadas
mais complexas.

Reuni um conjunto de atividades simples e de fcil execuo, que por isso possuem grande
potencial de sucesso.

1. Tome um banho frio

Existe uma extensa literatura sobre os benefcios do banho frio. Alguns artigos tratando do
assunto apontam desde o crescimento de massa muscular, perda de gordura at reduo em
nveis de depresso. Mas o benefcio aqui outro.
Ao abrir o chuveiro frio, uma tempestade de pensamentos preenche nossa mente, tentando
nos convencer de que aquilo no uma boa ideia. Voc sabe que o conforto est a uma
chave de distncia, que no precisa fazer aquilo. Como em todas as situaes da vida,
comeamos a racionalizar os motivos para evitar o desconforto.

Faz muito tempo que no tomo um banho quente, mas todas as vezes que abro o chuveiro
sou recebido com a mesma carga de justificativas, tentando me convencer de mudar a chave
para o banho quente. Com o tempo fcil observar que os mesmos mecanismos de
racionalizao que sua mente cria para no tomar um banho frio, so os mesmos que usa
para no sair de casa e ir correr no domingo a tarde. So as mesmas desculpas que o
seguram quando resolve comear aquele projeto novo.

Nosso crebro repete seus argumentos e quando entendemos que estamos sendo enganados
por ns mesmos, reconhecendo estes padres, mais fcil de cortar as desculpas e seguir
em frente. Enfrentar a barreira da zona de conforto e observar como voc se comporta
simples e resulta em grandes mudanas.

2. Para entrar em forma, use as escadas

Se voc est precisando entrar em forma e ainda no bateu aquele nimo de procurar uma
academia ou uma atividade que agrade, d preferncia s escadas.
O ato de subir escadas exercita os msculos da coxa e dos glteos, descendo, voc ainda
recruta a panturrilha. Pela frequncia repetitiva de movimentos, subir escadas estimula o
corao, trabalhando a capacidade cardiovascular. Uma nica subida de escada pode no
fazer tanta diferena, mas se considerar quantas vezes utiliza o elevador por dia, a simples
troca pode representar o mesmo que uma caminhada de 30 minutos no fim do dia.
No comeo eu tentava justificar com tempo. Estou com pressa, no consigo trocar o
elevador pelas escadas. Honestamente, isso sempre uma grande desculpa.
Parece boa, afinal, sempre precisamos chegar no trabalho o mais rpido possvel.
Observando friamente, utilizo a escada por todos esses anos e posso dizer que, em mdia, a
diferena de tempo costuma ser de, no mximo, dois minutos. Em horrio de pico quase
zero, j que o elevador para em muitos andares at chegar ao destino.
Acredite, dois ou cinco minutos no vo fazer diferena alguma no final das contas.

3. Trabalhe com pausas

muito comum nos pegar voando por a. Cheio de trabalhos para entregar, emails para
responder, e quando vemos, estamos sentados descendo a barra de rolagem do Facebook.
muito difcil quebrar o padro de desvio quando estamos com a ateno to longe, e mesmo
quando nos foramos a fazer o trabalho, quando menos esperamos nos pegamos com a
cabea presa em outro lugar novamente.
Criar pequenos intervalos entre as tarefas sacia nossa vontade de relaxar, e ainda assim
fazer o que precisamos. A verso detalhada desta tcnica se chama Pomodoro Technique,
mas aqui vai a verso mais simples possvel disso. Lembre-se: o complexo falha.

O tomate smbolo do mtodo

Ajuste um despertador para 15 ou 25 minutos, este o tempo mdio que um adulto

consegue manter a concentrao em uma atividade, sem desviar seriamente sua ateno. A
cada perodo de 15 minutos, d 5 minutos de pausa.
Essa pausa livre, sem culpa. Use facebook, leia um texto, tome um cafezinho, faa o que
quiser para relaxar. Quando o intervalo de 5 minutos acabar, assuma o prximo ciclo de
atividades. A cada 4 ciclos d um intervalo maior, de 15 minutos, para fazer alguma
atividade que exija mais tempo, como pagar contas ou assistir um vdeo mais longo no
Youtube.
No adianta se enganar, ningum fica trabalhando sem parar por 1 hora consecutiva, neste
perodo sua ateno viaja para bem longe, s vezes por bem mais que 5 minutos. A luta
entre a atividade que deve ser executada e os prazeres da procrastinao comeam a se
chocar.
Com um intervalo especfico agendado, essa briga est resolvida. Quando pensar em abrir o
Facebook enquanto preenche aquela planilha, basta lembrar que em alguns minutos voc
poder fazer isso sem culpa alguma.

4. Decises difceis? Faa uma caminhada

Exerccios fsicos no estimulam apenas o corpo. Nosso crebro extremamente

beneficiado pelo aumento da circulao sangnea. Uma ressonncia magntica realizada
em alunos sentados em silncio, e logo aps uma caminhada de 30 minutos, demonstra o
impressionante efeito de um simples passeio.

Caminhadas so excelentes para o momento antes de uma prova, tomar decises

importantes, resolver problemas difceis. Frequentemente, achamos que ficar parado em
cima do problema nos ajudar a encontrar uma soluo mas, s vezes, para achar a resposta
o que voc precisa fazer s sair para dar uma volta.

5. Ansioso? Estressado? Medite

impossvel escrever sobre maneiras simples de melhorar a vida sem falar sobre
meditao. Essa prtica amplia sua capacidade de concentrao, memria, sentimentos
como empatia e compaixo. Meditar tambm reduz ansiedade, estresse e depresso.
A lista de benefcios vai muito alm e parece no acabar, mas j deu para pegar a ideia.
Muita gente acaba no usufruindo destes benefcios por alguns mitos pouco esclarecidos.
Vale enfatizar que: No necessrio horas meditando todo dia para sentir os benefcios.
Algo em torno de 10 a 40 minutos j so o suficiente para apresentar resultados
incrivelmente satisfatrios.
Apesar de muitas tradies antigas utilizarem tcnicas de meditao (existem inmeras),
no necessariamente precisa existir um vinculo religioso na prtica, a no ser que voc
prefira seguir por esse caminho. Apesar dos primeiros passos serem simples, existe toda

uma gama de conhecimento em torno de tcnicas que no futuro podem ser bastante
interessantes.
O Gustavo Gitti postou um excelente guia para todos que desejam comear.
Link Youtube

6. Leia um livro por semana

Com todos esses elementos da tecnologia moderna nos distraindo constantemente, muito
difcil manter nossos hbitos de leitura. Substitumos os livros por sries de televiso,
tempo no Facebook, jogos de celular, e quando vemos, a nossa pilha no lida est cada vez
maior.
No existem dvidas que ler mais influencia positivamente muitos os aspectos de nossa
vida. O que basta saber organizar isso e encaixar este hbito na agenda. Sempre que
batemos o olho em um, nos deparamos com o sentimento de execuo a longo prazo.
Pensamos em todas as pginas que vamos ler, uma por uma, deixando pra l o real
sentimento de aproveit-lo e absorver o conhecimento que ele pode trazer. O segredo para
bloquear isso criar metas fceis de alcanar e repeti-las diariamente.
Aumentei meu ritmo de leitura durante o programa de empreendedorismo que participei
ano passado. O material de apoio utilizava 19 livros e eu queria ler todos durante os 3
meses do programa.
Organizei minha rotina de leitura em dois perodos: um pela manh e um antes de dormir.
Em cada um eu leria 10% do livro, levasse o tempo que fosse necessrio. Como eu sou um
forte adepto dos transportes pblicos, acabava lendo ao longo do dia, enquanto esperava o
metro ou durante a viagem. Isso acabava dando 30% por dia, totalizando 3 a 4 dias para ler
cada.
Julien Smith fez um post em sua pgina no Medium com uma dica simples, mas super
eficiente para atingir a meta de completar um livro por semana. Um livro mdio possui
entre 250~300 pginas. Alguns um pouco mais, outros menos. Numa mdia razovel ao
longo do ano, 40 pginas por dia podem garantir 52 volumes lidos.
Para quem no tem tempo de sentar e ler 40 pginas (cerca de 1 hora de leitura para uma
pessoa normal), uma excelente alternativa utilizar o leitor voz para texto no Kindle, ou
optar por audiobooks, ouvindo enquanto dirige, treina ou trabalha.
Sei que nem todo mundo pretende ler tantos livros assim, mas para quem estuda ou possui
uma longa lista, um hbito que vale ouro.

7. Ao mnima vivel

Sempre que quero realizar algo, independente de quo complicado seja, fao uma simples
pergunta:
Qual a menor ao que posso fazer para iniciar este hbito?
Tem o sonho de correr uma maratona e nunca correu na vida? Que tal s colocar o tnis e
sair para caminhar? Qual seria um prato interessante, mas no muito trabalhoso (comecei
com esse aqui)? Mudar de carreira mas ainda no tem confiana? Comece um blog sobre o
assunto.
Todo grande objetivo pode ser quebrado numa pea muito pequena, que sirva de impulso
para alcanar algo maior. Entenda que existe o cenrio grande, mas sempre procure a menor
coisa que pode fazer para tornar essa transio a mais simples possvel.
Com todos os meus clientes de coaching sempre precisamos fazer o mesmo exerccio,
transformar o big picture em algo pequeno, que no amedronte. Assim como o exemplo da
academia, no inicio do texto, as coisas tendem a se complicar demais se deixarmos.
***
Estas so algumas das simples atitudes que utilizo para facilitar a vida e conseguir realizar
as atividades de forma cada vez mais eficiente. E voc, quais dicas fazem parte do seu
canivete suo de hbitos? Como faz para deixar a vida mais simples?

Can You Really Learn a Skill in A Week?

The Secrets Inside Tim Ferriss' Insanely
Fast Learning Strategy
Productivity guru Tim Ferriss eschews the idea the it takes months or years to learn a new
skill. In his new TV show he proves it only takes a week (and the right mindset). Here, he
explains how.
By Tim Ferriss As Told To Drake Bear
Tim Ferriss is best known for rethinking traditional working lifelike by reducing the 40
hour workweek to 4. Now, in his new T.V. show, the Tim Ferriss Experiment (which airs
Sunday nights at 8 p.m. on HLN) he disassembles the rule that it takes 10,000 hours to
master a skill. We talked to him about the method and the madness needed to learn to drum
like rock star, race rally cars, and learn a language in only one week. According to Ferriss,
this kind of rapid skill acquisition requires managing your neurotransmitters, figuring out
why your bones might break, and other elements of the hacker mentality. Find a selection
of the interview below.

If youre trying to cram three months of training into one week, the most important thing is
separating techniques from attributes: If you're trying to learn parkour (an extreme type of
obstacle course training), you need to figure out where you can cheat by refining technique
and jumping to intermediate or advanced stuff. You also have to recognize that there are
challenges and obstacles like tendons snapping because you don't have the time to develop
the increased power output or strength. The attributes take time to develop and they're
genetically limited, whereas the technique is something you can deconstruct and really
learn quickly if you approach it with the proper framework and hacker mentality.
Separating those two things out is very important.

Mental work is physical work

I view the mind and body as very interdependent. This might sound weird, but I think that
the separation of mind and body is completely false. If you look at the brain, it's an organ
like anything else. If I'm trying to learn a language in a weekwhich is certainly thought of
as a mental skillthere are physical components, too. In one of the episodes, I have to
learn Tagalog well enough in about 3.5 days to be interviewed on live TV for about six
minutes. That's really stressful, really difficult. But why did I choose Tagalog as opposed to
say Vietnamese? Because I had to avoid tonal languages, languages that click, where you
have to actually physically change the vocal chords. So it's thought of as a mental skill, but
there's a physical component, too.

Similarly, if you don't have the technique, you are continually misspending your
neurotransmitters. You're going to hit a wall cognitively, but it has a physical, biochemical
basis. One of the advantages I have is that I think of the mental and physical as biologically
mediated. And you can cheat that too, with performance-enhancing supplements included,
or with just training, with something like meditating.
When people think of mental activity, they tend to think of it as an ethereal zapping of
electricity that has no cost to the body. That's not true, the brain is a massive blood and
oxygen sink. You need stimulus and recovery in mental work in the same way that you need
stimulus and recovery for sports. Just as you have physical over-training in the weight
room, there is mental over-training with too much time in front of a screen or thousands of
small minute to minute decisions over time with no rest. This contributes to biological
duress. When this happens you're not adapting, you're actually degrading performance.

Why taking breaks is important

You need stimulus and recovery in mental work in the same way that you need stimulus
and recovery for sports. Your body needs time to regenerate neurotransmitters, so it's in
your best interest to take breaks. There is a reason why power lifters take five to six
minutes to rest between sets, the energetic system takes that long to replenish properly. You
have to have an awareness of the fact that just because you're not moving your body doesn't
mean that you aren't working.
You need stimulus and recovery in mental work in the same way that you need stimulus
and recovery for sports.

While you can learn tons of skills, you need to have a focused framework
You need a framework for dissecting a skill, and to work through it very logically. I used
two frameworks that I call DiSSS and CaFE.
DiSSS stands for deconstruction, selection, sequencing and stakes. Deconstruction is taking
something like startup investing and breaking into down into smaller components so that I
can study it more effectively: you have, say, company selection, company evaluation,
perhaps it's team evaluation, deal flow, exit strategy, secondary market. These are all
elements of successful angel investing. Then you have selection, what are the most
important of these components to focus on. Doing 80-20 analysis: identifying the 20
percent of inputs that contribute to 80 percent of the outcomes that you want. So that might
be something as simple as founder selection. Or it could be valuationyou're buying
something at a discount, something that's distressed, shares that are sold because an
employee wants to buy a house, or something like that. Sequencing: In what order do you
learn these things, in what order do you practice these things.

Tim Ferriss
Then there's stakes: building incentive so that you actually follow the program. Why do
people quit diets or play the guitar for two sessions, put it down, and never pick it back up?
Because there's no penalty, there's no cost. You don't get fired from your job if you quit the
guitar. But if you use something like stickK or DietBet.com, you can actually put your
money on the line, where if you don't follow your program, and you have a referee to keep
you honest, you have money that will go to an anti-charity, your least favorite charity on the
planet. A good friend of mine has $1000 on the line for the American Nazi Party to lose X
number of pounds by Y point in time.
Why do people quit diets or play the guitar for two sessions, put it down, and never pick it
back up? Because there's no penalty, there's no cost. You don't get fired from your job if
you quit the guitar.
CaFE is a secondary framework: compression, frequency, and encoding. Compression is
how to prevent overwhelm by taking the fundamentals of a given skill and compressing
them into one or two pages, so whenever you feel completely underwater, you can return to
it. Frequency is the optimal training regimen: when are the breaks, how long are the breaks,
when do you study. Then encoding is what most people think of as memory tricks, how do
you make slippery material steady, how do you use imagery and mnemonics to memorize a
shuffled deck of cards so you remember the order or how do you remember 300 to 400
vocabulary words in a day.
Those are the two frameworks by which I do everything. Having that structure is really
helpful: It gives you a roadmap and makes learning a more concrete process.

SXSW 2013: Tim Ferriss 4-Hour Ethos on

Accelerated Learning for
Accelerated Times

Ive long been a fan of Tim Ferriss, best-selling author of the 4-Hour Work Week and
arguably one of the worlds most effective men and if youre introduced by Hugh Forrest
the Director of SXSWi, Im thinking youre kind of a big deal.
Ferriss tenacity is infectious and I find that hes one of these speakers that sends you off to
think hard about how much time you waste and what you could achieve if you found better,
faster ways to do things.
Here are some takeouts from his Acquiring the Skill of Meta-Learning SXSW presentation:

His 4-Hour ethos is about accelerated learning for accelerated times. He applies a
theory of DiSSS (Deconstruction, Selection, Sequence + Stakes outlined further in
What You Can Learn From Author Tim Ferriss, the Four-Hour Marketer by Ad
Ages Steve Rubel) to all of the goals he wants to achieve.
Central to his philosophy is questioning: What if I did the opposite of best
practices? What if I did this task in reverse?
The worst time to learn a skill is when you really have to use it. Pressure is not your
friend when picking up something new.
He cites the biggest impediment to learning a new skill is saying yes to too many
things. Steve Jobs echoes this by way of his quote Innovation is saying No to 1,000
things.
Cute factoid: Before his first appearance at SXSW many years ago, Ferriss focused
on maxing his on-stage energy to keep audiences engaged by practicing in his
friends garage in front of his three Chihuahuas. If his energy dropped, the
Chihuahuas walked away (or worse, went to sleep). No-one can say this man isnt
dedicated to a high standard of quality.

I have found PR to be one of those professions where being effective gives you the thinking
time to bring strategic value to your clients and most importantly to achieve a work/life
balance that bears the gift of clarity (and sanity!). A 4-hour work week maybe not, but even
adding a zero would land us PR folk in a pretty great place.

What You Can Learn From Author Tim

Ferriss, the Four-Hour Marketer
Four-Step Learning Model Can Be Applied by Marketers
Pressed to Master New Skills
Tim Ferriss is something of an anomaly. Most authors dream of making the best-seller list
once. Ferriss has done it multiple times. All three books in his "Four Hour" series -including his latest, "The Four Hour Chef" -- are perennial chart-toppers.
Lucky, you say? Perhaps. Formulaic? Somewhat.
What I discovered, however, is that Tim Ferriss is just as much an expert in marketing as he
is in the skills he's mastered for his books: lifestyle design, fitness and, now, cooking. He's
homed in on the 20% of the effort required to deliver 80% of the results. And this all starts
with innovation.
"It's easier to gain market share by being different vs. marginally better," Ferriss told me.
"You can train yourself to be different by asking seemingly ridiculous questions."
One of those questions, about how to generate book sales, spawned a unique partnership
with Bit Torrent. The file-sharing network distributes Chef for free. To date, it's been
downloaded more than a million times without any negative impact on sales.
I asked Ferriss how his four-step learning model can be applied by more classically trained
marketers who are always pressed to master new skills. Here's what I learned.
Deconstruction
The first step is simple, but also the most time-consuming. It involves deconstructing how
the best do what they do. For marketers, this would involve having teams pick apart
competitors as well as companies and/or products in other verticals.
For example, Ferriss knows more about the grassroots success of "50 Shades of Grey" than
most book wonks. This is because he is a relentless clipper.
Ferriss files away marketing creative that captures his attention in a swipe file he keeps in
Evernote, a company he advises. He then scours these for best practices but also keeps an
eye out for a herd mentality.
One of his favorite maxims, he told me, comes from Mark Twain: "Whenever you find
yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Selection
Next, he identifies the 20% of the audience and the 20% of the tactics that will deliver 80%
of the desired results.
His segmentation approach is somewhat unorthodox. Instead of shooting for an "average"
consumer that doesn't actually exist, he recommends looking for the exceptional customers
at the fringes and then addressing their needs. These tend to be more defined and therefore
measurable.
Solve for the extremes -- in his case, die-hard life hackers -- and you solve the mean.
This also extends into tactics. The author recommends identifying 10 bloggers to engage
who will create an impact rather than spamming thousands. He also advises leveraging the
platforms your teams like to use rather than exploring new ones.
Sequence
With his priorities set, Ferriss then engages in a series of two-week tests that help him
determine a logical order. But he does so in a completely data-driven way. For example, he
tested Pinterest by mapping it closely to Nielsen BookScan sales. Two weeks creates two
comparable data sets. Ferriss recommends choosing data points that aren't subjectivein
other words, indisputable numbers.
Stakes
Finally, there's the stakes. For marketers, these are built in. If you don't succeed, you won't
climb the ladder or, worse, you can lose your job. This is especially true of CMOs.
However, in a more personal realm, Ferriss recommends StikK.com, which donates your
money to a charity you abhor if you fail to meet a stated goal.
Can Tim Ferriss' D.S.S.S. learning model, which he calls "diss" for short, work in a
marketing team? I believe it can, but not without risks.
Still, there's no doubt that the ideas he shares -- zeroing in on best practices, Paretto's 80/20
principle and more -- are in fact timeless even as his methods are unorthodox.
And I believe a little bit of controlled chaos can go a long way in a chaotic world.

Meta-Learning: Accelerated Learning For Accelerated

Times

Today at the South By Southwest Interactive Conference, I had the privilege of catching
Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek) present a session about Meta-Learning.
What is that? Essentially, it is the idea of accelerated learning for accelerated times.
We all know that the world is moving fast these days, blazingly fast in fact. This
environment requires many more skills to thrive.
Based on his latest publication, The 4-Hour Chef, Tim built a synopsis of his model for
rapidly learning new skills and behaviors. This approach played a huge role in his ability to
learn how to be a chef. His model was rather simple, so I decided to share here on the blog
for those of you who missed the session.

The Meta-Learning Model: DiSSS

DiSSS is an acronym for his model about swallowing an elephant in reasonable bite sized
chunks. Here is what each letter in the word in his Meta-Learning model means.

D = Deconstruction
This step is about breaking up the overall skill you want to learn into reasonable parts. He
shared a swimming example (apparently, he just learned to swim a few years ago), where
he could not master the skill of breathing while kicking. So he broke it down into the parts,
as in learning to breathe properly, then adding the arm motions, but without kicking until he
got those parts figured out.
A key point was to identify the potential failure points first. Those might be reasons youve
failed to learn this skill in the past, or perhaps reasons most people fail. Avoid those for the
first five training sessions so you can set up a good habit (he says 5 sessions are enough to
build a habit), then add them back once youve convinced yourself you will get over it.
This stuff works. I used a similar approach to learn electric bass guitar many years ago and
had no idea it was so smart!
[The i doesnt mean anything, just there to make it a word you can actually
pronounce]

S = Selection
For this part, decide what is the minimal effective dose of something you need to take on,
in order to start learning the basics. For example, if you want to learn multiple languages,
find a set of the same text / sentences to translate to each of those languages. Always start
in the same place and grow from there.
He gave another great example about learning guitar. Using this approach, you can learn a
ton of songs fast. Do a Google search for the Axis of Awesome (whom, by the way, it was
very cool to hear him mention). Look for their video about the 4 chord song, and youll see
that almost any pop song you want to learn can be played with the same four chords. Yep,
its really that simple.
When learning cooking, a craft, a trade, etc., use as few tools as possible until you
command them, then expand. Anything like this that requires specialized skills.

S = Study
I actually missed the word he used for this S, but Study well encapsulates the spirit of
what he outlined. Heres the premise: How will you practice or perfect the pieces of the
skill that you are deconstructing it down to? How can you do it in a less risky way?
He used a very good example of how he learned to saute like a real chef. Rather than
flipping hot food in a pan and risking a messy situation, he was taught to perfect it using
beans, while sitting on a carpet, until he got the motion down. Then he took it to the kitchen
with less mess to show for it.

S = Stakes
What are the stakes you are willing to accept, i.e. the consequences, of not following
through? Is it self-set? Something else like a deadline or work commitment? What will hold
you true to your desire to learn this new skill?
He also shared a site called Stickk, which looks like a decent option for holding you to your
own stakes. The service allows you to put aside money in escrow. If you dont follow
through, the money all goes to a charity you would NEVER support. Double motivation.
Get it done, get the money back. Do what you said youd do.

Simplify: An Overall Mantra For Successful Learning

Heres a great point that Ive always bought into. Most of the complexity we deal with in
life is avoidable, or possible even self-inflicted. Try to view everything more like tasks or
goals that you can slowly chip away at, not as huge tasks to swallow all at once. This
applies to both work and home tasks youre learning. Simplify and enjoy the positive it
brings.

Let me close with a quote from one of Tims Colleagues in Santa Cruz: Things are best not
when there is no more to add, but when there is nothing left to remove.

Meta-learning
Tim Ferriss talked about the 4-hour ethos: accelerated learning for an accelerated time, and
his book The 4-hour Cook (a huge tome). Not being familiar with his past works (4-hour
work week, etc.), this was all new to me, but in essence he threw out this: DiSSS. Break
down your skill and focus and you can become an expert in 6 months.

DECONSTRUCTION: Break the skills into small, doable pieces. Swimming is

complex, but break it down to kicking, arms, breathing.
SELECTION: Find the most valuable stuff to learn. 4 cords in almost all pop songs.
13 sentences can help you learn any language.
SEQUENCING: Change the sequence. To learn dancing, learn your partner's role
first. Learn closing moves of chess, not the opening.
STAKES: You need incentives to do well. Make them mean something.

Other tidbits:

Focus on subtraction and not addition. "Perfection is achieved not when there is no
more to add, but when there is not more to remove."
The perfect cup of coffee: Use 12 grams of fresh hand-ground coffee (from burr
conical grinder) with 120grams of hot water not to exceed 180 degrees in an
Aeropress.
Ferriss practiced his 2007 SXSW presentation in front of his friend's
three Chihuahuas until he could sustain energy long enough for them not to walk
away.

Acquiring
the
Skill
of
Meta
Learning
My Notes from Tim Ferriss talk at SXSW 2013
The four hour ethos on accelerating learning in accelerated times Things take a lifetime to
master is a myth Ask yourself odd questions and question the obvious (duolingo,
automattic)

Model Methods not Attributes (optimism)

Determine your baseline
look for the outliers or anomalies and have they been replicate them
can I replicate
o can a reverse this
o can I reconstruct this
when you think creatively about thing you begin to think creatively about
everything else
cooking is the perfect dojo because it uses all your senses

DiSSS
Framework

Deconstruction
o break it down
o ask why have I failed in the past, why might I fail
o Log first five or six session without using the failure points
Selection
o 20% of your efforts produce 80% of output (minimum effective dose)
o (axis of awesome 4 chord song)

Use few tool and get good at them

Prefect coffee aroepress 200g water to 12g coffee 180 degree water
Sequencing
o most neglected step
o What if I did the opposite of best practice
o What if I did the reverse
o Worst time to learn a skill is when you have to use it
o Act of Substitution
Stakes
o stickK
o set stakes for your goal
Simplify
o focus on subtraction rather than addition
o Chip Away
o Perfection is achieved not when there is not more to add, but no more to
remove
o
o

Q&A
one of the biggest impediment to learning things is trying to do too many things
get over failure, its not bad thing
(the war room - film)
(on simplification) If you cut out 80% of the bullshit youre where you need to be
A coachs goal should be obsolescence Look for a coach to accelerate what youre doing on
your now to replace it

Como Aprender Qualquer Lngua em 3

Meses
Aprender uma lngua no precisa ser complicado.

Princpios de neurocincia cognitiva e

gerenciamento do tempo podem ser aplicados para alcanar fluncia oral (definida aqui
como +95% de compreenso e 100% de capacidades expressivas) em 1-3 meses. Um
panorama da minha obsesso por lnguas, de um post anterior sobre aprender fora da sala
de aula:
Dos ambientes acadmicos da Princeton University (chins, japons, coreano, italiano) e
Middlebury Language Schools (japons), para os resultados decepcionantes observados
como um "curriculum designer" na Berlitz International (japons, ingls), eu busquei por
mais de 10 anos responder uma simples pergunta: porque a maioria das aulas de idiomas
simplesmente no funciona?
O sistema ideal - e a progresso - baseado em trs elementos nesta ordem...
1. Eficcia (Prioridade)
2. Aderncia (Interesse)
3. Eficincia (Processo)
Eficcia, aderncia e eficincia referem-se ao "o qu", "por que" e "como" aprender uma
lngua alvo, respectivamente. Em termos simples, primeiro voc decide o que aprender,
baseado na frequncia de uso (prioridade); voc ento filtra materiais baseados em sua
probabilidade de estudo e reviso contnuos, ou aderncia (interesse); por fim, voc
determina como aprender o material de forma mais eficiente (processo).
Eficcia: Se voc selecionar o material errado, no importa como ou se voc estuda fluncia prtica impossvel sem as ferramentas adequadas. Professores esto subordinados
a materiais, tal como cozinheiros esto subordinados a receitas.
Aderncia: Reviso e exposies mltiplas ao mesmo material apresentaro sempre um
elemento de monotonia, que deve ser combatido com um interesse no material. Mesmo que
voc selecione o material e mtodo mais eficazes, se voc no adere a eles com estudo
repetido, eficcia e eficincia no significam nada. Em outras palavras: voc pode persistir
com o material e o mtodo que escolheu? Se no, materiais e mtodos menos eficazes ainda

sero melhores. A melhor abordagem no significa nada se voc no a usa. Por analogia, se
correr colina acima com uma bola de boliche em cada mo for o jeito mais eficaz de perder
gordura corporal, quanto tempo uma pessoa comum poderia aderir a tal programa?
Se voc no tem interesse em poltica, voc vai aderir a um curso de idiomas que foca neste
material? Pergunte a si mesmo: Posso estudar esse material todo dia e aderir a ele at eu
alcanar meus objetivos de fluncia? Se voc tiver qualquer dvida, troque sua seleo.
Muitas vezes, melhor selecionar contedo que combina com seus interesses na sua lngua
nativa. No leia nada sobre uma coisa que voc no leria em ingls, se o ingls for sua
lngua nativa. (e.g. no leia Asahi Shinbun se voc no l jornais em ingls). Use a lngua
alvo como um veculo para aprender mais sobre um assunto, habilidade ou rea cultural de
interesse.
No use um material incoerente com seus interesses como um veculo para aprender uma
lngua - no vai funcionar.
Eficincia: Pouco importa se voc tem o melhor material e tempo de aderncia a ele se o
tempo de fluncia de 20 anos. O retorno sobre o investimento no vai te obrigar a isso.
Pergunte a si mesmo: Esse mtodo vai me permitir atingir reconhecimento e recordao
com o menor nmero de exposies, dentro do menor perodo de tempo? Se a resposta
no, seu mtodo deve ser refinado e substitudo.

Um Exemplo de Eficcia (80/20) em Prtica.

As palavras mais comuns em O Senhor dos Anis

O Princpio de Pareto do 80/20 dita que 80% dos resultados de qualquer esforo vm de
20% do investimento, material ou empenho.
Ns podemos adaptar este princpio e priorizar o material baseado em sua probabilidade
registrada e frequncia de uso. Entender 95% de uma lngua e se tornar fluente oralmente
requerem 3 meses de aprendizado aplicado; alcanar o limiar dos 98% poderia exigir 10
anos. H um ponto de rendimento decrescente onde, para a maioria das pessoas, faz mais

sentido adquirir mais lnguas (ou outras habilidades) do que adicionar 1% de melhora a
cada 5 anos.
Agora, ao arroz e feijo da comunicao: as palavras.
Se voc for um estudante de ingls (embora a lista possa ser adaptada para a maioria das
lnguas), as seguintes palavras proporcionam o maior retorno por hora investida para as 1-3
semanas iniciais de estudos:

As 100 Palavras Escritas Mais Comuns em Ingls

1. the
2. of
3. and
4. a
5. to
6. in
7. is
8. you
9. that
10. it
11. he
12. was
13. for
14. on
15. are
16. as
17. with
18. his
19. they
20. I
21. at
22. be
23. this
24. have
25. from
26. or
27. one
28. had
29. by
30. word
31. but
32. not
33. what
34. all
35. were
36. we
37. when

38. your
39. can
40. said
41. there
42. use
43. an
44. each
45. which
46. she
47. do
48. how
49. their
50. if
51. will
52. up
53. other
54. about
55. out
56. many
57. then
58. them
59. these
60. so
61. some
62. her
63. would
64. make
65. like
66. him
67. into
68. time
69. has
70. look
71. two
72. more
73. write
74. go
75. see
76. number
77. no
78. way
79. could
80. people
81. my
82. than
83. first
84. water

85. been
86. call
87. who
88. oil
89. its
90. now
91. find
92. long
93. down
94. day
95. did
96. get
97. come
98. made
99. may
100. part
As primeiras 25 palavras compem cerca de 1/3 de todo o material impresso em ingls. As
primeiras 100 abrangem 1/2 de todo o material escrito, e as primeiras 300 compem cerca
de 65% de todo o material escrito em ingls. Artigos e tempos verbais e conjugaes que
podem ser muitas vezes omitidos em algumas lnguas ou aprendidos por reconhecimento
(compreenso) mas no lembrados (produo).
A maioria das listas de frequncia so erroneamente apresentadas como as "palavras mais
comuns" em ingls, sem distino feita entre vocabulrio escrito ou falado. As 100 palavras
mais comuns utilizadas na fala so consideravelmente diferentes, e esta distino se aplica a
qualquer lngua alvo.

As 100 Palavras Faladas Mais Comuns em Ingls

1. a, an
2. after
3. again
4. all
5. almost
6. also
7. always
8. and
9. because
10. before
11. big
12. but
13. (I) can
14. (I) come
15. either/or
16. (I) find
17. first

18. for
19. friend
20. from
21. (I) go
22. good
23. goodbye
24. happy
25. (I) have
26. he
27. hello
28. here
29. how
30. I
31. (I) am
32. if
33. in
34. (I) know
35. last
36. (I) like
37. little
38. (I) love
39. (I) make
40. many
41. one
42. more
43. most
44. much
45. my
46. new
47. no
48. not
49. now
50. of
51. often
52. on
53. one
54. only
55. or
56. other
57. our
58. out
59. over
60. people
61. place
62. please
63. same
64. (I) see

65. she
66. so
67. some
68. sometimes
69. still
70. such
71. (I) tell
72. thank you
73. that
74. the
75. their
76. them
77. then
78. there is
79. they
80. thing
81. (I) think
82. this
83. time
84. to
85. under
86. up
87. us
88. (I) use
89. very
90. we
91. what
92. when
93. where
94. which
95. who
96. why
97. with
98. yes
99. you
100. your
A frequncia individual das palavras pode variar entre as lnguas (sobretudo pronomes,
artigos e possessivos), mas as diferenas so geralmente relacionadas ao grau de frequncia
mais do que a omisso completa ou a substituio por um termo diferente. As listas acima
so surpreendentemente aplicveis maioria das lnguas populares.
O contedo e a seleo do vocabulrio alm das 300-500 palavras mais comuns devem ser
ditados pelo assunto de interesse. A questo mais relevante ser "Voc vai passar seu tempo
fazendo o qu com esta lngua?"
Se necessrio, a reformulao mais prxima seria "Atualmente eu passo meu tempo
fazendo o qu?". Vale a pena repetir: no leia sobre algo que voc no leria em sua lngua

nativa. Use a lngua alvo como um veculo para aprender mais sobre um assunto, habilidade
ou rea de interesse cultural. Material pobre nunca produz uma boa lngua.
Alimente sua lngua com habilidades que voc gosta, ou voc sair da sua "dieta" e vai
parar o estudo muito antes de atingir qualquer nvel mensurvel de proficincia.

Como um exemplo pessoal, usei manuais de artes marciais para competir com eficcia no
jud enquanto era um estudante no Japo. Meu objetivo principal era aprender arremessos e
aplic-los em torneios. Para evitar dor e constrangimento, tive a tremenda motivao de
aprender as legendas dos diagramas passo-a-passo em cada manual de instrues. O
desenvolvimento da lngua foi de longe uma prioridade secundria.
Algum pode assumir que o cruzamento do material a outros assuntos seria mnima, mas a
gramtica , de fato, idntica. O vocabulrio pode ser muito especfico, mas eu eclipsei a
habilidade gramatical de estudantes de 4 e 5 anos de japons em 2 meses de estudo e
aplicando manuais especficos de esportes.
A especializao do meu vocabulrio no apresentou um nico problema, importante
notar, como eu passei 80% do meu tempo livre treinando com pessoas que tambm usavam
o jargo do jud e outro vocabulrio nico aos treinos de esporte e desenvolvimento
atltico.
Uma vez a estrutura da gramtica transferida a memria de longo prazo, adquirir
vocabulrio um processo simples de repetio espaada, que ser assunto de um post
futuro.
Enquanto isso, no deixe as lnguas assustarem voc. checklist e o processo de encontrar
material que voc goste com uma boa frequncia de retorno de investimento.
Ganbare!
Este artigo foi escrito por Tim Ferris, e o original est neste endereo:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/20/learning-language/
A traduo, e leve adaptao foi feita por mim.

Como Aprender (Mas No Dominar)

Qualquer Idioma em 1 Hora
Este post atendendo a pedidos. Quanto tempo leva para aprender chins ou japons x
espanhol ou galico? Eu argumentaria que menos de uma hora.
Aqui vai a razo...

Antes de investir (ou gastar) centenas e milhares de horas

em um idioma, desconstrua-o. Durante a pesquisa para minha tese em Princeton, que era
focada em neurocincia e aquisio no-ortodoxa do japons por falantes nativos do ingls,
bem como quando remodelando currculos para a Berlitz, esse passo da desconstruo veio
a tona como um dos hbitos caractersticos dos aprendizes mais ligeiros de idiomas...
At agora, eu desconstru o japons, mandarim, espanhol, italiano, portugus-brasileiro,
alemo, noruegus, galico, coreano e talvez uma dzia de outros idiomas. Estou longe da
perfeio nessas lnguas, e sou terrvel em algumas, mas eu posso conversar em algumas
delas sem quaisquer problemas - s perguntar aos estudantes do MIT (Instituto de
Tecnologia de Massachusetts) que vieram at mim noite passada e falavam vrias lnguas.
Como possvel se tornar um falante fluente em uma dessas lnguas em 2-12 meses?
Comece com a desconstruo deles, escolhendo sabiamente, e abandonando apenas alguns
deles.
Considere uma nova lngua como um novo esporte.
H certos pr-requisitos fsicos (altura uma vantagem em basquete), regras (um corredor
deve tocar a base em beisebol), e assim por diante que determinam se voc pode mesmo se
tornar proficiente, e - em caso positivo - quanto tempo vai levar.
Idiomas no so diferentes. Quais so as ferramentas, e como elas se encaixam com as
regras do seu alvo?

Se voc um falante nativo de japons, respectivamente em desvantagem com pouco mais

do que 20 fonemas em sua lngua, alguns idiomas parecero quase impossveis. Escolher
um idioma compatvel com sons e construo de palavras similares (como espanhol) ao
invs de um com um monte de sons novos que voc no consegue distinguir (como chins)
pode fazer a diferena entre ter dilogos significativos em 3 meses ao invs de 3 anos.
Vamos olhar um pouco os mtodos que eu usei recentemente para desconstruir o russo e o
rabe para determinar se eu poderia alcanar a fluncia em um tempo alvo de at 3 meses.
Ambos feitos em uma hora ou menos de conversa com falantes nativos sentados perto de
mim em avies.

Seis Linhas de Ouro

Aqui esto algumas perguntas que eu

aplico desde o incio. As verses simples vm a seguir:
1. H novas estruturas gramaticais que adiam a fluncia? (veja em SOV x SVO, bem
como casos gramaticais)
2. H novos sons que podero dobrar ou quadruplicar o tempo de fluncia?
(especialmente vogais)
3. Quo parecido aos idiomas que j entendo? O que vai ajudar e o que vai
interferir? (A aquisio vai apagar uma lngua anterior? Posso emprestar
estruturas sem uma interferncia fatal como o portugus depois do espanhol?)
4. Todas elas respondem: Quo difcil vai ser, e quanto tempo vai levar se tornar
fluente de modo funcional?
No leva muito tempo responder a essas perguntas. Todo que voc precisa so algumas
frases traduzidas em sua lngua alvo.
Algumas das minhas favoritas, com razes, so as seguintes:
A ma vermelha.
(Ela) a ma de John.
Eu dou a ma para o John.
Ns damos-lhe a ma.
Ele d-a (a ma) a John.

Ela d-a (a ma) a John.

Estas seis frases sozinhas revelam muito da lngua.
Em primeiro lugar, elas me ajudam a ver se e como os verbos so conjugados, baseados no
falante (ambos de acordo com o gnero e o nmero). Tambm sou capaz de identificar de
imediato uma super-aflio em algumas lnguas: a disposio dos objetos indiretos (John),
objetos diretos (a ma), e seus respectivos pronomes (lhe, a). Eu acompanharia essas
frases com algumas negaes ("Eu no dou...") e diferentes tempos para ver se so
expressos como palavras separadas ("bu" em chins como negao, por exemplo) ou se o
verbo muda ("-nai" ou "-masen" em japons), o ltimo fazendo a lngua muito mais difcil
de quebrar.
Em segundo, dou uma olhada para a estrutura bsica da frase: sujeito-verbo-objeto (SVO)
como o ingls e o chins ("eu como a ma"), sujeito-objeto-verbo (SOV) como o japons
(eu a ma como), ou outra coisa? Se voc for um falante nativo de portugus, SOV ser
mais difcil do que o familiar SVO, mas uma vez voc aprende um (a gramtica do coreano
quase idntica a do japons, e o alemo tem vrias construes com verbos no final), seu
crebro estar formatado para novas lnguas SOV.
Em terceiro, as primeiras trs frases revelam se o idioma tem os muito temidos casos
gramaticais. Quais so os casos gramaticais? Em alemo, por exemplo, "o, a" no to
simples. Pode ser "der, das, die, dem, den" e mais dependendo se "a ma" um objeto,
objeto indireto, possudo por algum, etc. Muita dor de cabea. O russo ainda pior. Esta
uma das razes que eu continuo adiando-o.
Tudo isso de apenas 6-10 frases! Aqui vo mais duas:
Eu devo d-la a ele.
Eu quero d-la a ela.
Essas duas so para ver se existem verbos auxiliares, ou se o final de cada verbo muda. Um
bom atalho para o aluno independente, quando no mais precisa de um professor para se
aprimorar, aprender as conjugaes para verbos "de ajuda" como "querer", "precisar", "ter
(que)", "dever" etc. Em espanhol e muitos outros, isso permite que voc se expresse com
"Eu preciso/quero/devo" + o infinitivo de qualquer verbo. Aprender as variaes de meia
dzia de verbos d a voc acesso a todos os verbos. Isso no ajuda quando outra pessoa est
falando, mas ajuda a sair das rodinhas da auto-expresso o mais rpido possvel.
Se esses auxiliares so expressos como mudanas no verbo (geralmente o caso do japons)
ao invs de palavras separadas (chins, por exemplo), voc ter maus bocados no incio.

Os Sons e a Escrita

Eu peo ao meu professor improvisado para escrever as tradues duas vezes: uma vez no
sistema de escrita da lngua nativa (tambm chamada "escrita" ou "ortografia"), e de novo
na fontica do ingls, ou eu escrevo uma aproximao ou uso IPA (Alfabeto Fontico
Internacional).
Se possvel, eles tero que passar comigo seu alfabeto, me dando uma palavra de exemplo
para cada consoante e vogal. Pondere seriamente as vogais difceis, que vo levar, na minha
experincia, ao menos 10 vezes mais tempo de se dominar do que uma consoante pouco
familiar ou combinao disso ("tsu" em japons representa alguns problemas, por
exemplo). Acha o portugus s mais devagar do que o espanhol com algumas palavras
diferentes? Pense de novo. Passe uma hora praticando as vogais abertas do portugus
brasileiro. Eu recomento que voc tome um pouco de gelo para sua boca e garganta antes.
Passar pelos caracteres do sistema de escrita de um idioma s pratico realmente para
lnguas que tem ao menos um sistema de escrita fontica com 50 sons ou menos - espanhol,
russo e japons seriam bons. O chins falha j que os tons multiplicam as variaes de sons
que caso contrrio seriam simples, e tambm falha miseravelmente em sistemas fonticos.
Se voc corre atrs do mandarim, escolha o um tanto incomum GR (Gwoyeu Romatzyh)
romanizao pinyin se possvel. mais difcil de aprender de primeira, mas nunca conheci
um estudante do pinyin com metade da preciso dos tons de um usurio decente do GR.
Resumindo, porque os tons so indicados pela ortografia em GR, no por sinais
diacrticos sobre as slabas.
Em suma, trate a lngua como um esporte.
Aprenda as regras primeiro, determine se vale a pena o investimento do tempo (voc ser,
no mnimo, medocre?), ento se foque no treinamento. Escolher seu alvo frequentemente
mais importante do que seu mtodo.

Produtividade: tome as rdeas do seu

tempo
Eu gosto de fazer coisas, muitas delas. Aprendi a tomar um cuidado extremo ao aceitar
novas atividades, pois tenho o instinto de querer fazer tudo ao mesmo tempo e, quando me
deparo com algo que realmente quero - ou devo - fazer, reflito bastante sobre o impacto que
isso causar na minha organizao.
Como abordei recentemente, muito do que fazemos pode ser filtrado se aprendermos a
escolher melhor nossas atividades, aliviando bastante a carga de obrigaes do nosso
cotidiano. S que existe aquele ponto onde s nos resta arregaar as mangas e fazer o que
precisa ser feito. E, mesmo com todo critrio de escolha, as vezes nos atrapalhamos em
organizar estas tarefas dentro do tempo disponvel.
Gerenciar o tempo e a forma que aloco minhas atividades extremamente importante para
minha rotina. Eu escrevo muito. Alm do PdH, tenho um site sobre Parkour, um blog
pessoal e tenho feito trabalhos com escrita para outras duas outras empresas. Tambm
mantenho uma empreendimento que me ocupa bastante com tarefas administrativas. Como
trabalho em casa, ainda acabo refm das tarefas rotineiras de cozinhar, limpar e organizar, o
que consome mais tempo do que parece. Sem falar no corpo e na mente, que precisam estar
bem afinados para no deixar a peteca cair o que adiciona tempo para academia, artes
marciais, parkour, leitura e outras coisas que fao diariamente como manuteno pessoal.
Para ser capaz de fazer tudo isso e no falhar com ningum, utilizo alguns truques para
poupar tempo e permitir que cada tarefa seja feita da melhor forma possvel.

Escreva tudo, sempre

Uma das caractersticas mais marcantes de pessoas muito ocupadas esquecer das coisas.
No s atividades em geral, mas ideias, pensamentos ou insights que tiveram em algum
momento acabam passando batido na turbulncia do dia.
O que fao ter um pequeno caderninho de bolso para anotar tudo. Nele, escrevo algumas
ideias, crio listas e lembretes de coisas que surgiram inesperadamente, mas que se no
forem anotadas se perdem no tempo. No precisa ser algo rebuscado. Coloque a data no
topo da pgina e escreva pequenas coisas que voc quer lembrar depois. Enviar email para
o Jader ou Ideias para presente do aniversrio da Patrcia so exemplos das coisas que
acabo escrevendo no meu caderninho e que otimizam muito meu tempo.

Comece pelas tarefas mais simples

Para alcanar o mximo de tarefas no dia, costumo organizar o que preciso fazer a partir do
tempo estimado de cada tarefa.
Coloco ligaes e emails no topo dos meus afazeres. Estas so atividades que normalmente
demoram menos de 5 minutos e posso realiz-las com bastante facilidade, e servem como
um aquecimento para me colocar no ritmo do dia. Depois encaixo outras tarefas como
visitas, reunies e at meus textos que pedem para ser executadas com mais calma e
menos ansiedade, partindo para elas aps concluir as coisas mais distrativas.
Neste modelo priorizo a quantidade de atividades que posso fazer ao longo do dia e a
motivao que nasce ao ver uma quantidade grande de itens sendo cortadas da lista. O
impacto visual de chegar ao fim do dia tendo cortado apenas o primeiro item de uma lista
de 15 atividades algo que pode causar desnimo.

Mas tarefas muito complicadas podem vir primeiro

Mesmo utilizando o modelo anterior como padro, costumo posicionar tarefas que exigem
um grande desgaste emocional, algo com que tenho dificuldade ou at mesmo aquelas que
no quero fazer no topo da lista. Esta mudana importante principalmente quando percebo
que estou evitando uma atividade por ser muito difcil ou trabalhosa.
Muitas vezes, quando este tipo de tarefa surge, ela vem acompanhada de uma forte carga
emocional. Nos perdemos na ansiedade do que estamos prestes a fazer, e isso acaba no

permitindo que faamos mais nada. Por exemplo: preocupado com um documento decisivo
que no sei preparar e preciso entregar com urgncia, acabo no fazendo as ligaes,
enviando emails e cuidando das tarefas rotineiras. Inundo meus pensamentos com o
estresse da atividade at o momento em que vou executa-l. O famoso sofrer de vspera.
Justamente por esse motivo, quando atividades assim aparecem, melhor tirar a pedra do
meio do caminho o mais rpido possvel e fluir livremente com o resto do dia.

Seja honesto com o seu tempo

Uma das coisas que fiz bastante at notar que havia algo errado era marcar tarefas com o
tempo de durao da atividade em si, sem considerar as tarefas marginais necessrias. Uma
palestra marcada para durar uma hora, por exemplo, no consome apenas esse perodo de
tempo. Existe o deslocamento, o credenciamento, a busca por um local para estacionar e
por a vai. Agendar uma palestra das 14h s 15h e uma reunio de 15h s 16h inocncia, e
te torna sensvel a imprevistos.
Aprendi. Hoje marco tudo para 25 minutos mais cedo no meu calendrio e deixo vago um
espao de pelo menos 30 minutos entre cada tarefa. Pessoas que moram em cidades mais
movimentadas podem precisar de mais tempo entre uma atividade e outra.
Para evitar surpresas e atrasos desagradveis, o importante ser honesto e evitar mascarar o
tempo extra que algumas tarefas necessitam. Caso contrrio, voc vai olhar a agenda sem
entender porque sempre se atrasa para os compromissos.

No somos multitarefas
Um dos maiores mitos da modernidade o de que conseguimos fazer vrias coisas ao
mesmo tempo sem comprometer a qualidade ou o andamento da atividade. Quando
prestamos ateno em duas atividades simultneas no s deixamos passar pequenos erros
que poderiam ser facilmente corrigidos como nosso nvel de reteno de informao cai
drasticamente.
Ouvimos e lemos, mas no guardamos.
Alternar entre tarefas tem um custo alto para nosso crebro, que ao se deparar com a
mudana de padres demora mais para entrar no ritmo e desenvolver a atividade. A cada
troca de foco, necessrio se acostumar com a tarefa novamente. Alguns estudos apontam
que a produtividade cai bastante quando trabalhamos com atividades simultneas, e o
ndice chega a cair at 40% em atividades mais complexas.
Assim, ao criar uma lista de tarefas, devemos focar em nos dedicar integralmente a uma
atividade por vez, evitando ao mximo que tarefas concorrentes possam tirar nosso foco.

Corte distraes sempre que puder

O item anterior fala sobre trabalhar com duas ou mais tarefas simultneas, mas os
problemas apontados so os mesmos que acontecem quando interrompemos o que estamos
fazendo para responder ao chat do Facebook, ouvir o reprter na televiso ou prestamos
ateno no Luciano Pires enquanto escutamos um podcast. Para tarefas pouco complexas
este tipo de interrupo conta menos, mas pode ser um divisor de guas para um longo
grupo de atividades ou algo que exige mais profundidade.
Durante meus ltimos anos de trabalho corporativo comprei um grande fone de ouvido que
usava sempre que estava em minha mesa. No havia nada tocando ali dentro, mas as
pessoas no sabiam disso. E o acessrio funcionava. Meus colegas me interrompiam
menos, e s me chamavam para coisas que realmente precisavam da minha ateno. Outra
coisa que fao muito, agora que trabalho em casa e sofro com todas as distraes que o
nosso lugar pode oferecer, desligar a WiFi do notebook enquanto escrevo. Isso evita que
eu entre no Facebook, acesse sites de noticias ou faa qualquer outra coisa enquanto
desenvolvo uma linha de raciocnio. Sempre que tento acessar e vejo a mensagem de
Pgina no encontrada rapidamente me recobro de que devo terminar o que estou
fazendo.
Para os que moram com familiares ou trabalham em lugares com gente que pergunta coisas
o tempo todo, se isolar numa lanchonete ou caf traz um resultado que vale o custo de
tomar um cafezinho s para ocupar a mesa. Mas lembre-se de no pedir a senha da internet.

Atividades pessoais tambm consomem tempo

Existem tambm as coisas pessoais que precisamos fazer, mas raramente lembramos de
acrescent-las na agenda. Tratamos o item transferir dinheiro do bolo como algo simples
e rpido, que pode ser feito quando chegamos do almoo ou antes de ir embora ao fim do
dia. S que, pela pressa, acabamos deixando passar.
Tarefas como essas nunca esto sozinhas, e temos dezenas de pequenas coisas para serem
feitas diariamente. Para resolver isso, guardo um espao exclusivo para fazer coisas
pessoais, evitando que elas se misturem com meus outros afazeres.

Ao invs de esperar uma janela de tempo aparecer, crio um item em meu calendrio uma
hora dedicada apenas para minhas atividades. Um fator importante lembrar de respeitar
este espao, sem subestimar nossas coisas e junt-las em uma grande bola de neve. Gaste
esse tempo para pagar academia, contas, agendar consultas e, se sobrar uns minutinhos, dar
uma ligada para aquele amigo para quem voc sempre esquece de ligar.
***
O objetivo no virar um manaco produtivo que ignora as pessoas ou s pensa em
trabalho.
Gerenciar nosso cotidiano e otimizar a capacidade de executar tarefas faz com que sobre
mais tempo para usar com amigos e atividades relaxantes. Como muitas das dicas
apresentadas mostram, fazer menos coisas s vezes a chave para alcanar resultados cada
vez melhores. O maior segredo do gerenciamento de tempo aceitar que cada atividade
precisa de seu espao, com dedicao e foco exclusivos.
Se voc tem alguma dica que ajude nossos leitores a desenvolver melhor o cotidiano,
colabore conosco na caixa de comentrios.

Leaders of the Pack: Tim Ferriss on Skill Mastery

Posted by Kimberly B. on Friday, August 22nd, 2014

Perfection is achieved not when theres nothing more to add but when theres nothing left to
take away.
The Little Prince
Tim Ferriss is an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, angel investor, writer, chef the list
goes on. An expert on skill mastery, Ferriss teaches people around the world how to learn
more efficiently, and how this translates into greater success in all aspects of life. As the
author of incredibly popular books such as 4-Hour Work Week, and 4-Hour Chef, Ferriss
delivers revolutionary lifestyle philosophies disguised as simple how-to guides. Here are
some his best tips for bettering ourselves, and our businesses, by learning new skills and
mastering self-improvement.

As leaders, understanding how to learn more efficiently is one of the greatest skills we
can acquire. Tim Ferriss has valuable tips to accomplish this.
Image source: Flickr user Benjy Feen
1. Deconstruct
When beginning a new skill from cooking to marketing try deconstructing it first:
before you start, identify why you might fail. Ferriss suggests acquiring this information
based on other peoples experiences, as well as your personal history. The goal then
becomes to simply avoid these identified failures for the first five sessions of whatever skill
youre practicing. This might translate to workout sessions at the gym, cooking dinner at
home, or staff meetings at the office.
2. 80/20 principle
Follow the Pareto principle of 80/20, which states that roughly 80% of the effects come
from 20% of the causes. Widely used in business practice, the Pareto comes in myriad
forms. For example, the idea that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients. Ask
yourself, what are the tools and skills that I use 20% of the time that end up producing 80%
of the results? Focus on those. This goes hand-in-hand with practicing minimalism.

3. Sequencing
Take a page from lean manufacturing and streamline your method. When we have a strong
framework for learning skills, we can apply it to virtually any skill or task. For example,
Ferriss has found that doing things in reverse is a very effective way to learn. Doing
something backwards usually means that you truly understand it, rather than simply
succeeding at temporarily memorizing something.
4. Consequences
Ferriss is a firm believer in incentives. By focusing on the results. Building incentive into a
behavioral change you want to acquire, or want your team to acquire, can often make the
difference between success and failure. While money is typically a great incentive, try
using it in a non-traditional way. Instead of offering individual financial incentives, what
about promising to donate to a charity of your teams choice if the goal is met? Applying
real-world, positive stakes to a goal is an extremely effective tool for creating successful
results.

Keep it simple; pay it forward

A proponent of minimalism, Ferriss encourages us to focus on removal. Subtract elements
in your approach that arent 100% necessary. In addition, be mindful of the obvious: the
worst time to learn a new skill is under pressure. Knowing this, look for opportunities for
no-stakes learning at work. This means that we need to be practicing our management and
leadership skills when everythings running smoothly dont start learning a new
technique during a time of crisis.
Lastly, Ferriss reminds us that creativity is a type of thinking, as is success. By mastering
our approach to learning, we can apply it to all aspects of our lives. Not only do we benefit
both personally and professionally, but so do those around us. Because when were able to
teach ourselves, were also able to teach others and what are great leaders if not great
teachers?
Teach because you have lessons to share. Tim Ferriss

Merrell's 'Minimal Effective Dose' outdoor

exercise with Tim Ferriss

You know him as the best-selling author of books like The 4-Hour Body and The 4Hour Workweek. Tim Ferriss, age 35, is a fitness freak, an outdoor junkie, and now the
face of a new exercise video and project with Merrell, 4 Fundamentals of Outside
Fitness. GearJunkie caught up with Ferriss last week from his home in the Bay Area for a
few questions on fitness, gear, the outdoors, and something called the quantified self.
Stephen Regenold

Tim Ferriss mid-workout, here doing a military-influenced blurpee pushup

GearJunkie: So many fours! Why the 4 in your books, and now this workout regimen
with Merrell?
Tim Ferriss: It was not intended to be a brand. It really came from the first book, The 4Hour Workweek. It was the amount of time per week I spent managing my company, so
the number was based on personal experience. But it became a useful tool for
communicating other things and as a metaphor for hyper-effectiveness.

You have a pulse on a lot of forward thinking. How will people be exercising in 10
years from now?
In ten years time, the tools people associate with the quantified self movement will
become so prevalent that youll not need to opt in, youll have to opt out. The act of
tracking things like heart rate and blood sugar will become standard. Youll wear something
like a nicotine patch and see stats on your iPhone. Youll be able to see it or give it to a
company like Wellness FX to manage and analyze for you. What gets measured gets
managed. Think Strava, altimeters, lactic acid measurements, and all the things we use now,
but much more integrated.
What are the biggest fitness mistakes people make?
People believe the first purpose of sports or training is to improve performance or lose body
fat. Thats dangerous. Injury prevention should be the first priority. Bulletproof your body
first, then focus on performance. Beyond that, it depends on each persons motivations. You
need to distinguish between recreation and exercise. A 10-mile run to remain sane is fine.
But do the minimal effective dose [only whats needed to gain positive effects]. Also,
people tend to only do what they are good at. If youre a runner, you run. Mix it up or you
will develop stress and overuse problems.

Best-selling books by Tim Ferriss

Fitness does not need to be complicated. Explain this line from your Merrell video.
For exercise, take simple steps. Stick with it. Do [equipment-free] body weight exercises.
Use a kettlebell. You can workout effectively just 5 minutes a day if thats what you have.
Sneak it in! Super effective exercise can often be the least time consuming. Ive worked
with gold medalists and pro athletes for years. They all keep it simple. Also, get outside!
Youll be happier and healthier.
Who is the audience for the 4 Fundamentals of Outside Fitness video?
Anyone who spends too much time in front of a screen, or anyone who needs to get in
better shape but is putting it off because of gym memberships or the commute needed to get
to a gym. [See the video here.]

Where did the exercises come from?

Ive used some of these exercises for 10+ years. The cat crawl exercise came from the
world of parkour. The person who taught this to me is Brian Orosco. The trap walk came
from Eric Cressey, a physical therapist who trains baseball players among others. The
pistol exercise Ive known of for ages, but the technique and subtleties come from Pavel
Tsatsouline. And the blurpee is a military-influenced move I learned at the Health Gracie
Academy.
How did you start working with Merrell?
Ive been wearing Merrells for years, including for training to learn Japanese horseback
archery. They are comfortable and use minimalist soles. Merrell came to me with this
project. Its the first time Ive done a partnership like this.
What Merrell shoes are you wearing now?
The Vapor Glove is an extreme minimalist shoe. I like it for a workout and for running.
They are so light you can practically roll them up. The Reach Glove looks almost like a
dress shoe. It has laces but you can slip it on. I wear them to business dinners and
everywhere.

Scene from 4 Fundamentals of Outside Fitness video

I saw Black Diamond carabiners and SealLine waterproof bags, among other gear, on
your blog. What are some of your other favorite pieces of outdoor gear?

I love a lot of gear but I dont often use the gear for its intended purposes. For example,
those SealLine waterproof kayak bags, I use them as travel-friendly weights. I fill them
with water for weight and snap them shut then use them like a kettlebell for a workout in a
hotel. I have a climbing harness and shoes, a BlueSeventy wetsuit. I use a lacrosse ball to
roll out my feet in morning, and I also roll out my chest. Thats a good tip for people with
back pain from sitting at a computer. The pec muscles shorten, so you can use the ball and
stand against a wall and roll out the pecs.
What are some of your current obsessions?
I skied with Jonny Moseley last week. We did dawn patrol at Lake Tahoe, at Squaw Valley.
It was set up by Zozi.com. Another thing is archery tag. You use arrows with foam tips and
paintball masks. I took kiteboarding lessons at Ocean Beach in San Francisco here last
month. I can tell I might be getting into that.
What projects do you have coming up? Are you working on a new book?
Taking a breather! Nothing huge planned right now, but I am sure that will change within
the coming months. Downtime, I have learned, is just as important as working hard.

Tim Ferriss Interview

Tim Ferriss On Building A 4-Hour Body

Quick Bio
Tim Ferriss first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, was one of the most influential books of
internet culture. It established Ferriss reputation for hacking -- figuring out the minimum
that needs to be done while still getting maximum effects.
Ferriss new book, The 4-Hour Body, gives the authors signature take on all things
physical. It hit the No.1 spot on The New York Times Bestseller List the first week after its
release.
With the subhead, An uncommon guide to rapid fat-loss, incredible sex, and becoming
superhuman, The 4-Hour Body breaks down experiments for gaining muscle, losing fat
and increasing performance, and nearly any other conceivable physical task, from holding
your breath for record-breaking periods of time to 15-minute female orgasms -- and
learning how to do this in less time than youd think.
Theres just one problem: Not everyone believes Ferriss. In fact, the best-selling author
inspires everything from adulation to horror and has been called everything from a genius
and digital Kerouac to a huckster and the white horse of the apocalypse.
We sat down with Tim to discover which is the case.

Tim, we're here to discuss your new book, The 4-Hour Body. It's
primarily a fitness book and not really related to business or angel
investing. So how does all of what you do and have done -- while
very impressive -- qualify you to write a fitness book?
Tim Ferriss: It doesn't qualify me at all from the standpoint of me being "the expert."
However, there are a few things that I think qualify me to write a book about physical
performance and appearance.
The success of the first book brought me access. I have access now to the best athletes,
scientists and doctors in the world -- everyone from black-market chemists to those
involved in Olympic training centers. Second, I have the ability and the resources -- time
and hundreds of thousands of dollars -- to do the testing. I also have access to one million
people a month through my blog that I've used to, in effect, create open-source clinical
trials to test the diets and the workouts.

And while I'm not an elite-level powerlifter or anything like that, I do have a good baseline
of competitive athletics. I was an All-American in wrestling in high school, was National
Champion in Chinese kickboxing in 1999 and have spent a lot of time around professional
athletes, which includes my eight-plus years as CEO of a sports nutrition company. Finally,
I'm just a relentless record keeper of all things physical.
All of these factors have led me to some really interesting conclusions -- conclusions that
are going to save people a lot of time and wasted effort.
The new book is a minimalist guide to the smallest changes in about 50 areas that produce
the biggest results, ranging from fat loss to muscular gain to ultra-endurance to sex and
sleep.

You've mentioned being a huge self-experimenter, and the trailer for the
book definitely pitches you that way. What is the benefit of selfexperimentation, and also, how can it be done? That is, can you
give some insight into how readers can run some safe experiments
on themselves that would be beneficial?
TF: Self-experimentation is of interest to me because it's very easy to spot patterns or small
things that allow you to accelerate progress, often well beyond what one might think
possible.
To give you one example, I did one uncommon blood test and found something completely
random that turned out to be huge. It wasn't something you'd find in a complete metabolic
panel through an annual checkup.
The blood tests that I did through SpectraCell Laboratories, Inc. (the lab allegedly used by
Lance Armstrong) identified a selenium deficiency. Once I knew that, I was able to address
that deficiency easily and consistently by eating Brazil nuts. This one discovery, among a
few other dietary changes, helped me to triple my total testosterone and roughly double
bioavailable testosterone.
Now, that test cost me $200 or $300. There are people spending $200 a month on
supplements without having this type of testing done first. They could be flushing that
money down the toilet because those aren't supplements they need. Instead, they should get
the tests and really identify the few critical things to change that would force-multiply their
results in the gym, whether it's for powerlifting or endurance.

You've said that you didn't approach this project as a "fitness expert" but
rather as an expert at simplifying things and disseminating
information. Give us a quick rundown of the studies and doctors
you used.
TF: I'd say that most of the insight in the book has come from having a foot in worlds that
seldom touch each other. From the very outset, I approached the book as an investigator

and an experimenter.
Now, the content and the protocols -- all of that came from people who are the best at what
they do or from findings that came out of those self-experiments and testing with others,
from Joe DeFranco, Charles Poliquin and Pavel Tsatsouline to Dr. Tim Noakes and NASAbased researchers.
It's been very eye-opening to see the common threads. The most important commonality is
that the people who really are the best at what they do are very experimental and
meticulous about tracking their variables. It doesn't matter if theyre working with athletes
or space shuttles. The principles are the same.

You've made some bold claims that seem nearly impossible for a person
with any training experience to accept without skepticism -skepticism that you encourage.
TF: Being called a huckster and a charlatan started several years ago, so that's something
I'm accustomed to. In most cases, it doesn't bother me.
If you take a strong stance and have a clear opinion or statement on any subject online,
you're going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there's no discussion. Discussion
is what I want, which means that I'm fine with the consequences.
For example, let's say I present a case study that demonstrates gaining 34 pounds of muscle
in 28 days. I'm not saying that anyone can do that. I'm saying that it's within the realm of
physical possibility.
I think that you can learn a lot from the extremes, and this is why I also talk to people like
Dave Palumbo, who went from 140 to 310 pounds. It's not that anyone is going to do that,
but you can learn a lot from looking closely at those extremes as opposed to focusing only
on the middle. The extremes inform the mean, but not vice versa.
That said, there are two types of skepticism. I encourage active skepticism -- when people
are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're
trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.
I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and
criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.
If I make a claim, people should say, Wheres your evidence? Wheres your data? And I
should be able to respond to that. I should be able to support whatever recommendation Im
making. Whereas if a skeptic says, That doesnt work. This doesnt work. That doesnt
work. Tim Ferriss is full of shit, people should turn to them and say, OK, whats your
replacement? How do you know it doesnt work and wheres your data? If someone's
criticism is completely unfounded on data, then I dont want to hear it. It doesnt hold up to
scrutiny.

You mentioned that you gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days without

steroids. You were replicating the now-famous Colorado
experiment during which Casey Viator bested even you. He gained
63 pounds during that same time frame. How did you train and
how did you eat?
Tim Ferriss: In my case, it was probably about 10 to 15 pounds of regain. But that's not
regaining from my baseline. That's regaining from a previous highest weight. And those are
two very important distinctions.
I wrestled at 152 for my entire high school career. And my body weight, my baseline, puts
me at between 150 and 160. I was able to get up to about 185. So the first 10 to 15 pounds
were most likely regain. (And, by the way, the entire experiment was supervised by a Ph.D.
at San Jose State University with hydrostatic weighing. It's not like this is just me holding
up a newspaper and claiming that I did it.)
For my geek-to-freak experiment, it was similar to the Casey Viator protocol, but it was
less than half the number of exercises. I was generally doing between 5 to 10 exercises
total. It was a one-set-to-failure protocol and at a very slow cadence.
This would be similar to Ken Hutchins and others who use 5 seconds up, 5 seconds down.
Ken sometimes uses 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down, depending on friction and equipment
used.
So you had the training protocol (primarily compound movements), and then you had the
eating portion. In terms of number of calories, I'm estimating between 4,000 and 6,000
calories.
The way that I determined whether I increased my intake or decreased my intake was very
simple. It was the rate of muscle gain on the scale and through body composition testing. If
the number didn't move up at an acceptable rate, I just added more food to what I knew I
was already consuming.
The challenge with this type of overfeeding program is minimizing fat gain. To do that, you
need to also increase insulin sensitivity and partition calories preferentially to muscle
tissue.
That's roughly the protocol. In terms of training, I was doing two approximately 30-minute
workouts per week. It was four hours of total gym time for the entire 28-day experiment. In
this case, it was literally The 4-Hour Body.
Finally, I want to say that I did a lot of genetic testing through 23andMe, Navigenics and so
on. I also had muscle biopsies done. I possess what's called a nonsense allele for the variant
of the gene ACTN3 that encodes a protein called Alpha-actinin-3.

This is reflective of my capacity to produce fast-twitch muscle fiber. Based on the genetics
testing and muscle biopsies, at least in the vastus lateralis, I'm not predisposed to gaining
muscle mass quickly. So I don't want people to think that I'm just another Casey Viator,
because I don't think that's the case.

There are a lot of claims listed on the back of your book. One is "How to
increase fat loss by 300% with a few bags of ice." Can you explain
the science behind that?
TF: Absolutely. Cold exposure can be used for a number of very interesting effects.
I was looking at cold exposure primarily for its effect on glucose transporters, GLUT 4 and
also on two other factors, one being brown adipose tissue, BAT, which is sometimes
referred to as "fat-burning fat" because it's similar to muscle fiber in its composition of
mitochondria. Also, a hormone called adiponectin, which I think people are going to hear a
lot more about soon.
I spoke with researchers who focus on adiponectin and also a former NASA researcher who
focused exclusively on cold exposure, primarily for fat loss. What he realized was that
someone like Michael Phelps doesn't burn through 10,000 calories a day because of his
activity level alone; it's because of the thermal conductivity of water.
If you do something as simple as 15-minute ice baths three days a week, and you time those
baths properly, you can significantly multiply your fat loss. And you can certainly multiply
the effects even further by using something like an a2 adrenal receptor antagonist, like
yohimbine. But the ice itself does have a multiplying effect, and it's very measurable.

How's that done?

TF: OK, buy three 10-pound bags of ice and put them into a bath of cold water, filled up to
roughly your midabdomen. Set a kitchen timer for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, start a timer for five minutes. Then cross your legs (so you'll fit better in
the tub) and slide down so that your entire body is underwater except for most of your head
and your hands. This will prevent, in the beginning, any type of strong convulsions, like
excess shivering.
The last minute or two, you put your hands underwater. The hands radiate heat very
effectively, and you'll start shaking.
Over time, you increase the duration of full-body immersion and immersion of the hands.
So I'd start with 10 minutes up to midabdomen, five minutes fully submerged and, last
minute only, hands in the water.

Is there a less painful protocol?

TF: Yes. Cold showers! They'll have less of an effect, but they'll still have an effect. Or you
can use ice bags or ice packs on the neck, upper traps and, ideally, the upper chest area.

For a host of reasons, brown adipose tissue (although less than in infants) is present in
many adults and can be triggered effectively by applying cold in a local fashion using ice
packs. So it will give you less of an effect than the more extreme versions, but it will still
produce an effect.

Any more fat loss tips?

Tim Ferriss: Cinnamon. I've found cinnamon to be very effective for lowering the glycemic
response to meals. People have heard that before, but I didn't realize how profound it could
be until I did the actual testing with continuous glucose monitors. And I tested all different
varieties and species of cinnamon from Ceylon to Saigon.
One more tip: I tracked 194 people for a portion of one of the diets. If they replaced the
milk in their coffee with fresh cinnamon, specifically Saigon cinnamon, they could lose an
additional two to five pounds of fat per week. Keep in mind that these are people who have
at least 20 to 30 pounds to lose, but still, cinnamon (or, in this case, the removal of lactose)
was more effective than anyone anticipated.
Curiously, I did not find vinegar -- apple cider or otherwise -- to be effective at all, and I
tried pretty much all of them. The literature said otherwise.
Another thing that's very helpful for fat loss is pre-bed supplementation: magnesium and
zinc. It's so simple and so baseline that people often neglect it.
Also policosanol, which is very controversial because most of the supporting research has
come out of Cuba. There's a lot of conflicting research, but policosanol combined with
alpha lipoic acid, among other things, was very effective for accelerating fat loss when
taken pre-bed.

Let's move on to athletics. You spent some time with Joe DeFranco,
attacking some of the performance tests, the illustrious NFL
Combine. What were you able to achieve in that time period?
TF: Joe is a very astute scientist. He's a real student of the game. I spent two days with Joe,
and we focused primarily on the vertical jump and the 40-yard dash. I'm horrible in both.
I was able to add three inches to my vertical jump within 30 minutes of training. Joe used a
combination of many different things, from technical refinement to specific hip flexor
stretches to aid hip extension.
With the 40-yard dash, I cut three-tenths of a second off of my time, which was the highest
rate of improvement in the 40-yard dash for the gym. DeFranco says that his success rate
with the vertical will be nine out of 10 people, and in the 40-yard dash it's 1,000 out of
1,000. He's really very, very good at the 40-yard dash, as he is with all the tests used for
NFL players.

You write a lot about steroids in the book. I want to dig into that. First,
can you describe the circumstances under which you used them?
TF: I have to start, for legal and liability reasons, with saying that I don't recommend
anyone use anabolics illegally or without medical supervision.
So, that said, I had a number of severe shoulder injuries that led to reconstructive surgery. I
was training in Brazilian jujitsu at the time, at the Ralph Gracie Academy in Mountain
View, California.
I could very easily separate the people in MMA who had shoulder surgery into two groups:
people who had not used some type of anabolic treatment to accelerate recovery, and those
who had. The people who had used, without exception, had full recovery with full range of
motion. For those who hadn't used, it was hit or miss, and most had a permanently limited
range of motion.
That was when I began doing very extensive research and talking to those who'd used -whether it was high-level powerlifters or other high-level athletes. How had they
implemented postsurgical anabolic use, post-cycle therapy and so on?
I ended up using a number of low-dose therapies, including testosterone cypionate, with
medical supervision in the U.S. I've also used testosterone enanthate, Sustanon 250, with
low-dose, high-frequency growth hormone (HGH). The last was done six days per week,
two injections per day, one IU per day. The most extensive stack also included once weekly
Deca, very low-dose Cytomel and a handful of other things.
In that stack, I think the components that could do the most damage are thyroid hormones.
People shouldn't use those without blood tracking and constant medical supervision.

Let's talk about steroids in sports or drugs in sports in general. What

percentage of people do you think are using and what are your
thoughts on "protecting" the integrity of the sport versus anything
else?
Tim Ferriss: I think that at the highest levels, if were talking about any sport that is
dependent on power, speed or endurance, all of the athletes are using some form of drug.
That may simply mean $1,000 a month of supplementation and prohormones. Or it could
mean interleukin therapy and 20 IUs of growth hormone a week. Or it could mean
erythropoietin, EPO and darbepoetin, which not many people have heard of. Darbepoetin is
pretty interesting.
I agree with Charlie Francis, who said that in the Olympics, at least in sprinting, there are
the people who are using and dont get caught, there are the people who are using and get
caught, and then there are the people who come in last place.

Its an unfortunate reality, but you do run up against physical limitations when the public
demands new world records every year. Were not evolving to become better at the 50meter sprint. Its just not very high on the list of evolutionary changes. So people are
naturally going to augment with pharmaceuticals and everything else at their disposal.
What would you do if you'd made $50,000 a year at most and now you suddenly had the
chance for a $1,000,000 bonus from a huge shoe manufacturer if you broke a world record
wearing their logos?
Turning to doping, I think a smarter approach to the problem would be first identifying the
athletes in each sport or in categories of sports who have the highest naturally recorded
levels of, lets say, testosterone and thyroid hormones. The next step would be allowing
everyone to dope up to that measurable limit with medical supervision.
That would certainly go farther toward establishing a level playing field than simply testing
everyone using mass spec for a few dozen anabolics. Because everyones going to cheat, if
it is truly a matter of protecting the athletes and establishing a level playing field, the
regulators would be much more effective if they approached it from the perspective I
recommended. In reality, I think the anti-doping measures are mostly about politics and
very seldom about protecting athletes.

You've said that doctors can learn about steroids from bodybuilders. Can
you elaborate?
TF: Bodybuilders usually view doctors as too conservative to do anything interesting, and
the doctors view bodybuilders as cavalier amateurs. This is an unfortunate separation of
expertise that results in no cross-pollination between the two groups.
One example of how educated bodybuilders can make a difference comes in the anecdote
of a friend of mine who was hit at an intersection by a car while on his bicycle. He was
training for an Ironman and was sideswiped by a car that put him into the intensive care
unit. He suffered brain damage that affected his testosterone production.
He tried every possible testosterone therapy in common use within the medical
communities: testosterone cypionate, propionate, AndroGel, etc. It wasn't until an advanced
bodybuilder at his gym recommended testosterone enanthate that he fixed his testosterone
and libido issues.
Now, from the standpoint of a medical professional, testosterone enanthate really shouldn't
have made that much of a difference, even though the pharmacokinetics are slightly
different. Yet it did.
The empirical data from bodybuilding circles can be extremely valuable. It's unfortunate
that it's so dismissed. Just because someone didn't go to an Ivy League school doesn't mean
they don't have better data than you do.

One subject that's getting the book a lot of attention is obviously the sex.
More specifically, you have two chapters on the 15-minute female
orgasm, which of course piques a lot of curiosity. Who did you
speak to about this subject matter? Can you give a very brief
overview of who they are, what their expertise is and what you
learned from them?
TF: Some chapters, of course, were more fun to research than others. The two chapters on
female orgasm (The 15-Minute Female Orgasm) were certainly in that group.
I started with the experts. First off, I wanted to find people who'd already tried hundreds of
things. One was Nina Hartley, who has starred in more than 400 adult films and helped me
tweak many common positions to make them more effective for female orgasm, which is
actually pretty simple to do.
Then, you have Nicole Daedone, who is part of a group called One Taste. The group
specializes in, among other things, a detailed understanding of sensitivity of the clitoris and
how you can cultivate or facilitate extended female orgasms.
I, of course, in the name of science, had to ensure that this worked in the field. Testing
ensued. And, as it turns out, there were plenty of things that didnt work -- and thats the
point of research in the real world. Labs are controllable; a Friday night is much less so.
What ended up included in the book worked on more than 95% of the women tested. So it
is field-proven, and I think, for many people, will be immediately the most interesting part
of the book to read.

The Choice-Minimal Lifestyle: 6 Formulas

for More Output and Less Overwhelm

I was stressed out over dog cartoons.

It was 9:47pm at Barnes and Noble on a recent Saturday night, and I had 13 minutes to find
a suitable exchange for The New Yorker Dog Cartoons, $22 of expensive paper.
Bestsellers? Staff recommends? New arrivals or classics? Id already been there 30
minutes.
Beginning to feel overwhelmed with a ridiculous errand Id expected to take five minutes, I
stumbled across the psychology section. One tome jumped out at me as all too appropriate
The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. It wasnt the first time Id seen or read Barry
Schwarzs 2004 classic, but it seemed like a good time to revisit the principles, among them
that:
-The more options you consider, the more buyers regret youll have.
-The more options you encounter, the less fulfilling your ultimate outcome will be.
This raises an difficult question: Is it better to have the best outcome but be less satisfied, or
have an acceptable outcome and be satisfied?
For example, would you rather deliberate for months and get the 1 of 20 houses thats the
best investment but second-guess yourself until you sell it 5 years later; or would you rather
get a house that is 80% of the investment potential of the former (still to be sold at a profit)
but never second-guess it?
Tough call.
One call wasnt tough: he recommends making non-returnable purchases. I decided to keep
the stupid pooch cartoons. Why? Because its not just about being satisfied, its about being
practical.
Income is renewable, but some other resourceslike attentionare not. Ive talked before
about attention as a currency and how it determines the value of time.

The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen explores this using case studies, but heres one
example to illustrate: is your weekend really free if you find a crisis in the inbox Saturday
morning that you cant address until Monday morning?
Even if the inbox scan lasts 30 seconds, the preoccupation and forward projection for the
subsequent 48 hours effectively deletes that experience from your life. You had time but
you didnt have attention, so the time had no practical value.
The choice-minimal lifestyle becomes an attractive tool when we consider two truths:
1) Considering options costs attention that then cant be spent on action or present-state
awareness.
2) Attention is necessary for not only productivity but appreciation.
Therefore:
Too many choices = less or no productivity
Too many choices = less or no appreciation
Too many choices = sense of overwhelm
Some people find that religion enables a practical choice-minimal lifestyle, as tenets often
limit the number of possible actions. During his year of attempting to follow the rules of the
Bible literally, the then-agnostic AJ Jacobs of Esquire cited the rules and restrictions of the
Bible as amazing in this respect. Not having to consider a wide spectrum of options or
actionsas he was following immutable if-then rulesallowed him to focus undiluted
attention on the areas that werent constrained. The result? Increased output.
Even though I attended an Episcopal high school, Im not religious in the common sense
(and I dont use the term spiritual), so this approach isnt mine.
What to do? There are 6 basic rules or formulas that can be used, regardless of
denomination.
1. Set rules for yourself so you can automate as much decision-making as possible (see
the rules I use to outsource my e-mail to Canada as an example of this)
2. Dont provoke deliberation before you can take action.
One simple example: dont scan the inbox on Friday evening or over the weekend if you
might encounter work problems that cant be addressed until Monday.
3. Dont postpone decisions or open loops, to use GTD parlance, just to avoid
uncomfortable conversations.

If an acquaintance asks you if you want to come to their house for dinner next week, and
you know you wont, dont say Im not sure. Ill let you know next week. Instead, use
something soft but conclusive like Next week? Im pretty sure I have another commitment
on Thursday, but thank you for the invite. Just so I dont leave you hanging, lets assume I
cant make it, but can I let you know if that changes? Decision made. Move on.
4. Learn to make non-fatal or reversible decisions as quickly as possible.
Set time limits (I wont consider options for more than 20 minutes), option limits (Ill
consider no more than 3 options), or finance thresholds (Example: If it costs less than $100
[or the potential damage is less than $100], Ill let a virtual assistant make the judgment call
or consider no more than 3 options).
I wrote most of this post after landing at the monster that is ATL airport in Atlanta. I could
have considered half a dozen types of ground transportation in 15 minutes and saved 3040%, but I grabbed a taxi instead. To use illustrative numbers: I didnt want to sacrifice 10
attention units of my remaining 50 of 100 total potential units, since those 10 units couldnt
then be spent on this article. I had about 8 hours before bedtime due to time zone
differencesplenty of timebut scarce usable attention after an all-nighter of fun and the
cross-country flight. Fast decisions preserve usable attention for what matters.
5. Dont strive for variationand thus increase option considerationwhen its not
needed. Routine enables innovation where its most valuable.
In working with athletes, for example, its clear that those who maintain the lowest bodyfat
percentage eat the same foods over and over with little variation. Ive eaten the same slow
carb breakfast and lunch for nearly two years, putting variation only into meals that I focus
on for enjoyment: dinner and all meals on Saturdays. This same routine-variation
distinction can be found in exercise vs. recreation. For fat-loss and muscle gain (even as
much as 34 lbs. in four weeks), Ive followed the same time-minimal exercise protocol with
occasional experiments since 1996. For recreation, however, where the focus is enjoyment
and not efficacy, I tend to try something new each weekend, whether climbing at Mission
Cliffs in SF or mountain biking from tasting to tasting in Napa.
Dont confuse what should be results-driven with routine (e.g. exercise) with something
enjoyment-driven that benefits from variation (e.g. recreation).
6. Regret is past-tense decision making. Eliminate complaining to minimize regret.
Condition yourself to notice complaints and stop making them with a simple program like
the 21-day no-complaint experiment. Just a bracelet and awareness can prevent wasted
past-tense deliberation that improves nothing and depletes your attention and emotional
reserves.
###

Decision-making isnt to be avoidedthats not the problem. Look at a good CEO or top
corporate performer and youll see a high volume of decisions.
Its deliberationthe time we vacillate over and consider each decisionthats the
attention consumer. Total deliberation time, not the number of decisions, it was determines
your attention bank account balance (or debt).
Lets assume you pay 10% over time by following the above rules but cut your average
decision cycle time by an average of 40% (10 minutes reduced to 6 minutes, for
example). No only will you have much more time and attention to spend on revenuegenerating activities, but youll get greater enjoyment from what you have and experience.
Consider that 10% of additional cost as an investment and part of your ideal lifestyle tax,
but not as a loss.
Embrace the choice-minimal lifestyle. Its a subtle and underexploited philosophical tool
that produces dramatic increases in both output and satisfaction, all with less overwhelm.
Make testing a few of the principles the first of many fast and reversible decisions.

Tim Ferriss 80-20 Optimization

n The 4-Hour Workweek book, Tim Ferriss talks about the Pareto law of 80-20 and how
it can save you time and help you make tons of money. The Pareto law state that 20% of
your time each day is producing 80% of your revenues and the remaining time is just lost
doing pointless daily grind things or doing tasks that you are not uberly efficient at. This
applies to time, work, cooking, etc. For example, 5% of the tasks I did in the last 10 years
while building websites really produced 99% of my revenues. The rest of it was
an inefficient mashup of new tasks & having to learn every time I did a new project instead
of hiring a qualified professional for particular item. For all those years, I should have
focused only on what I already knew and had many customers that needed help on and
delegated everything else. I would have made a lot more money and worked a whole lot
less.
Although the concept is very simple, I had a very hard time turning around my work for
work normal behaviour and switching over to that philosophy despite many attempts and
posters on my refrigerator reminding me to trim the fat and focus on the essential when it
came to tasks and work.
One of the reason I think I always went back into my work for work mindset is simply the
overwhelming daily grind of life and the natural tendency of the human to settle into
comfort and avoid the unknown at all cost. It is so easy to fall into the trap of giving the
client all he ask for and the working on projects and tasks that you are not the best at and
love. One of the other reason seems to be that somehow, somewhere during my
development and early life, I tricked my brain into thinking time was ever expansible and
you could fit multiple complexe tasks
So after 4 years of trying to convince my brain of working less, making more money and
focusing ONLY on the essential, I FINALLY found a way to visualize it so that it made
SENSE in my brain and convinced it to adopt it every day. Here is how I see this:

So heres the deal, the top graph is how most people and businesses time is spent vs the
money it generated.

The small vertical green band represents miscellaneous tasks (small and large) that
you do or that are requested by your clients. The size of the band also represents
how little money you make when you do that.
The large blue vertical band represent the time spent on a set task(s). As you can
see, all those small/large tasks that I do that are very complicated and dont bring
meaningful revenues also happen to be the ones that eat up most of my time. And
yes, this is a faire representation of my time before I started optimizing my work.
Below, you see what happens when you delegate those tasks and get rid of all the
noise. The goal is to focus on only what you are really good at and the items,
services and tasks that produce the highest return on investment for both you and
your client.

At first, when I read that in Tim Ferriss book, I though to myself that this was a very
selfish and unethical proposition for my clients since I it implied selling expensive services
that were easy for me to do. It made me feel bad because I was so used to just giving away
my life working hard.
But after thinking a bit more about this, I had a Eureka moment. First, I had to understand
that if the clients see value in what I did at the price I was selling it, then it meant that the
client was also happy about it and getting a great return on investment. Then I realized that
in order for me to be really good and really quick at giving a service, I needed to learn a lot,
experiment, practice, analyze and so on and put a lot of time in my learning process and
experimentation. Otherwise, I was doing something that the client never would have the
time or the specific knowledge of the specific skills to do in the first place. In other words,
you were specializing in a specific skill that was in high demand and delegating everything
else.
So there you go, this is my own representation of the fact that time is linear and that you
must optimize it all the time with the 80-20 law. Questions? Comments? Epiphanies? Have
a better idea to make my graphic easier to understand? Drop a line and thank you for
reading!

The Parkinson Law

Tagged 4hww, 80-20 analysis, epiphany, fundamentals, time management

On this Wednesday morning, I want to remind you about one of the things that I MOST
struggled at all my life. The one thing that Ive now been practicing* since January 2013:
make your projects shorter without reducing quality. Most project can be done in 1/10th
of the time if you delegate properly, spend time only on what essential, focus on the 80-20
rule, etc. Yes, 1/10th.
I realized after reading the 4-Hour Workweek how much time I wasted at every projects
that I did in the past: making things more beautiful, giving my clients things they never

asked for in the first place (therefore doing more work-for-work), adding tasks and sub
tasks that were absolutely non essential to the desired outcome of that project, etc. In other
words, I was spending my time on things that didnt matter.
Ill write a more complete post on this later on, but for now I wanted to share with you this
little poster that I did for myself as part of my Uber Blog Growth Challenge (I need to do
80 such posters in February).
Have a fantastic week, and dont forget to comment, give tricks, etc if you have any!

* NOTE: Ill write an article on the future on this, but for now Ill just say that if you want
to be good at anything, of fix something thats keeping you from moving forward, or
improve a strength, then youll need to practice it!
I hear so often people say that they cant improve at something but when I ask them:
What have you tried? or How often do you practice?, then they look at me confused I
tried one time, a few months ago.
Heres the dirty secret: youll NEVER improve if you dont PLAN to, if you dont SET
TIME ASIDE to PRACTICE the notion EACH WEEK a few times. It doesnt need to
be hours, you can just take two or three 30 minutes sessions per week.
For example, you could give yourself 1 short project (ONE MAX) that you think can be
done in 3 hours and then give yourself 30 min to complete. Youll ALWAYS complain its
impossible at first, dont worry. I do that all the time too. But once your brain accepts it,
it WILL start finding solutions.
Here is an example of such a practice: I gave myself only 60 min (see my timer on the
picture) to build a trebuchet using ONLY paper, string and scotch tape (+ counter weights)
and it had to be able to launch a projectile 2 meters away. I made it, barely! The point is
FORCE yourself to think outside the box by always practicing on very VARIED
projects so that your brain become more malleable. Once you do it one time, practice
the SAME PROJECT 2 more times while removing steps, parts finding shortcuts, etc. Youll
soon become a master project manager that will create more and more great work in
MUCH LESS TIME. Also, if youre like me and like building stuff, then this is a ton of
fun! And it applies to projects of any size, not just hobbies and crafts of course.

My August 2013 paper trebuchet challenge: I had to build a paper trebuchet in only 60
minutes using ONLY newspapers, scotch-tape and some string.

How to speed learn like Tim Ferriss

Tagged 80-20 analysis, epiphany, fundamentals, mindset, Tim Ferriss
I just came across a tweet from Tim Ferriss (April 9, 2014) today and it really hit me how
that would be a great, even fantastic way to learn faster: DRAWING ideas, concepts & .
The idea is simple: if you spend some time internalizing whatever youre trying to learn
and youll learn it faster. The first time I heard about that was went I was trying to
remember people names. I used to be absolutely awful: someone would come to me and
say: Hey, Im Stephanie and 3 seconds later I would have NO CLUE AT ALL what her
name was. My brain was wired to just ignore peoples name and that didnt make too much
of a good impression. But I could remember random license plate numbers of random cars,
because you know, THATS important.
So I started reading about tips and tricks on how to remember names better and soon I came
across this: you dont remember names simply because you give it NO EFFORT. One
of the best trick is simply to repeat the persons name right after they say it, while still
shaking their hand: My name is Shelly Nice to meet you, Shelly. What it does is it
bring your focus onto the person name for a few seconds and just like re-reading a book,
the information get memorized easier after you repeat / re-read it.
So when I saw Tims drawing, thats what immediately came to my mind: when you SLOW
DOWN and TAKE THE TIME to write, draw, build, understand something, it is WAY
EASIER to remember than just skimming over it trying to read as much stuff as possible.
And that is a KEY CONCEPT. I added a few notes to myself on the picture below,
including details like the shadows he added to the stem: the more you become AWARE of
the details, the better your memory will be and problem solving capability will be in
the future.
In the spirit of not only learning, but also taking action, here are the changes I made to my
weekly schedule because of Tim Ferriss post:

I now allocate time every to DRAW 1 thing per DAY in order to REMEMBER
faster and more easily.
This include Idea maps, drawing, caricatures, etc. Take notes and arrows to key
parts, understand the global mechanism to better understand bigger picture as
well as key concepts & links between ideas & structures

The image + my notes were meant only for my own use and I often put Snagit analysis like
this in folders in my computer per theme so that I remember things better or can come back
to it later. But since I thought it was interesting to other people, I decided to create this post
and share this. Enjoy, and tell me what you think, if you have any tips or tricks, etc:

How Minimalism Improves Training

Effectiveness

A steely Edwardian writer once gave this advice to his self-indulgent peers:
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it
wholeheartedly and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your
darlings.
Decades later, William Faulkner abbreviated it to kill your darlings; healthy advice for
any writer and for instructional designers or training content developers. It wisely tells us to

put aside what we want to say and focus instead on whats useful to the audience.

More to Do, Less to Read

Minimalism brings great value to the training experience. Developing learning content
following the less-is-more approach allows trainers to start immediately on meaningfully
realistic tasks and reduces the amount of reading and other passive activity. In short, people
are trained more efficiently and contributing productively in less time.

Easier Said Than Done?

Its tempting for a writer to include certain elements in training content due to many
factors: deep involvement in the subject; a kitchen-sink approach is faster than paring down
to the essentials; or plain old client and supervisor pressure.
But a minimalist approach has serious rewards for trainers:

Learning-friendly seat times

Satisfied trainees who learn just what they need to
No unnecessary writing, development, or review time
Better training outcomes
Higher odds of reaching business goals

Heres what an effective minimalist approach looks like for training:

Step 1: Form learning objectives around end goals.
Step 2: Identify and remove anything that doesnt directly serve those objectives.
This method keeps the training focused on the learner and, more importantly, helps settle
disagreements about what is actually necessary to achieve results.

Keep the Muscle, Lose the Fat

Here are some tips for keeping training fat-free:

Prioritize. Identify the most important aspects of the training and showcase those.
Minimize or eliminate the rest, so critical information doesnt get buried.
Create well-thought-out learning objectives. Obtain the project teams buy-in.
Sticking to objectives provides the discipline needed to prevent over-teaching and
gold plating. For example, if designing a software training do learners need to
know the whole system to do their job effectively, or can the objectives focus on a
handful of key features?
Know your learners. Investigate the learning audience. Visit them on the job, talk
to them on the phone, and conduct user tests nothing reveals the unnecessary parts
like user feedback and observation.
Respect your learners. Avoid the impulse to spoon-feed let learners think for
themselves. For example, try Cathy Moores method of scenario-based assessments
when writing test questions. Using this provides real-world outcomes instead of
simple right/wrong feedback, and allows learners to see the results of their decisions
and draw their own conclusions.
Build on a learners experience. First, remove anything they already know.
Second, help learners use their existing knowledge to solve problems related to the
new skills theyll learn.

One last thing: Dont kill all your darlings. People often confuse minimalist with short, but
brevity alone doesnt guarantee effective training, and you may end up omitting important
stuff. Think lean, and keep whats most important to maximize knowledge retention and
results.

Use These 2 Minimalist Concepts to Hack

Your Design Learning

Im the best at psyching myself out when starting new projects.

Before I even sketch out a simple plan of the project, my mind enters ultra-irrational mode:
Well first, dont I need to finish that Photoshop tutorial to learn how to make a better
UI? Shouldnt I also get a better grasp on typography, color and layout before I start
designing this app?
Ive literally put roadblocks in front of myself.
If you find yourself doing this too, I think youll find this post very helpful, and a bit
different from other design articles floating around on the interwebs.
___
The last several months Ive been getting more in tune with The Minimalist philosophy. It
all started when my friend invited me to The Last Bookstore, where Joshua Millburn &
Ryan Nicodemus were promoting their new book on minimalism. In their Q&A with the
audience, two concepts stuck out to me:

Just In Case:
Just in Case are the 3 most dangerous words to living a minimalist life. Just in case
means acquiring things just in case you need them. A pantry full of restaurant
condiments. Pairs and pairs of old socks and t-shirts youll never wear. So how does this
relate to design?

You see, I still experience just in case syndrome when it comes to new projects. I start
downloading tons of design templates, save links to tutorials, and generally waste time
surfing the web.
In my head, I came up with all these nonsensical excuses to feel ready for a project,
thinking I need to do XYZ before getting started.
So I hoard information and resources, and overload myself with unnecessary things
that dont help me with my project. This is the equivalent of packing 2 full suitcases for a
weekend trip.
In essence, I was doing work around the project, instead of working on the project
itself.
(Sidenote: hoarding information is one of the worst forms of procrastination)

Just in Time:
Just in time is the antithesis of just in case. Instead of packing a bunch of useless
items on your travels, bring the most important essentials and just buy whatever you need.
Instead of thinking you have to learn XYZ skill before starting a personal project, just learn
whatever skills are necessary along the way.
Example: lets say you want to work on a dating app as a personal project. Heres some
steps that fall in line with the just in time philosophy:
1. Brainstorm and dump all your ideas into a Word document
2. Research and/or survey a few people regarding your project. Can you tell me about
which dating apps you use and why?
3. Sketch out some initial ideas and key screens.
4. Prototype a few screens in wireframing/UI tool. Google things you dont know
along the way, e.g. How to draw wireframes in Illustrator.
5. Repeat
When I was gunning for a position at one of the Big 4 Accounting firms, recruiters stressed
that school or book knowledge is important, but most people learn 80% of what they
need on the job. Accounting or not (yeah, I dodged that bullet), picking up new knowledge
while doing the job is the best way to learn. More on that in a few paragraphs.

Striking a Balance
Theres definitely a balance to all this. Im not advocating that you not learn. Its not
a crime to learn Photoshop before you start your project.

For those completely new to standard tools like Axure or Photoshop, it may be worth
investing in a beginners course just to get familiar with a program and do basic things.
However, there is a point of diminishing returns when you fall down the rabbit hole of
trying to learn every new program / skill on the block (a futile feat). Thats why learning
becomes much more manageable when I started to think of projects as learning
frameworks.
Projects make good anchors for learning skills (like Photoshop) much faster and better.
They provide direction to learn something, rather than wandering aimlessly through an
endless tutorial hell.
Over time, heres what I hope my time and effort expenditures look like:

Why is this important?

Personally, my biggest mental block is the idea that I need to feel 100% prepared and ready
before starting something. Talking to other budding designers, I spot the same theme that
holds them back from making faster progress.
The truth is, well never be fully ready and preparing forever is a big lie. So learn it as you
go, and enjoy the ride.

The minimalist guide to learning new skills

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks and all the sweet serenity of books
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As the proactive, self-employed go-getter that you are, the chances are you like me have
a love of learning too.
But the problem is of course that in business, theres a plethora of new skills and concepts
that you need to get to grips with.
The big picture: How to start-it, how to run it, how to market it, how to grow it. Hone in on
a day-to-day basis and that boils down to: how to find funding, do your own bookkeeping,
manage your I.T., use social media, network effectively, bag PR, blog for England, grow
your list AND get to grips with any Apps or software youll need to manage it all.
Not to mention the fact that as a parent, you probably have less hours in the working day to
get on with actually running your business anyway. So what time do you have left to learn
all this stuff?
You end up collecting bits of information here and there.
Getting by the best way you can.

Shiny Object Syndrome

Do you find yourself browsing the Internet and before you know it, youve bought a stack
of books that teach you How To. in 30 Days, but 90 days later, you still havent got
round to starting it?
Or perhaps youve heard that YouTube is The Thing for video marketing. So you watch the
latest webinars, download the eBooks, set up your account and now all you need to do is,
ahem, buy a camcorder and find something to video!

Its so easy to become distracted by the never-ending stream of new ideas out there.
Theres even a name for it, Shiny Object Syndrome, the habit of collecting and stashing
away shiny, new ideas.
Im being flippant of course. Im not suggesting that you stop learning. The reality is that
we all love the buzz and excitement of learning something new.
But if youre becoming so distracted by all these new ideas, that you end up
collecting/joining/signing up to things that have no relevance to your business goals, then
you have a problem.
Quite likely, youre not getting to where you really want to be with your business. Getting
nowhere fast, as they say!
Its the equivalent to booking your holiday in Spain, but taking the plane to Japan. A bit
daft! When you have a destination in mind, you obviously map out a sensible route to get
you there.
Similarly, when it comes to your business goals, set out a sensible route to help you reach
those goals. By creating a learning plan.
Your learning goals for your business should be clear and measurable so that you can
plan steps to get you there. [Tweet this!]

Heres how I create my own learning plan, so that I can keep a check on goals for my
business:

First, make a list of what you need to learn versus what youd like to learn: If
youre just starting out and not sure what those needs are, start with the skills that
you need to run your business. Where are your weaknesses, which ones do you
need to address? Ask experts within your field if you need help with this. You
might like to learn how to draw whiteboard animations, but if its not going to get
you more customers today, thats a want and can be left on the side, or preferably
ignored. If youd like to create tutorials to help your customers get to grips with
your products and services, thats a need.

Next, create your own resource inventory: Create an inventory of all the
resources, tools and skills that you already have. This will help you figure out
which ones you need. You can then plan your route by figuring where to go for
your training, or where to buy/download and how much it will cost.

Prioritise your learning needs: Now take your list of need to learn and imagine
you can do only 1 item. What would it be? Address that one first.

Set objectives before you start learning: You might have a lot of different reasons
for learning a particular skill or taking a particular course. Its often the case that
courses offer benefits in many different areas of your life (or in this instance, in
your business). However, we learn best when we narrow down our objectives. So
take all of your reasons for studying the course and narrow them down to just the
one thats most important. Ask yourself: If I take just one thing away from this,
what will it be?

Find an accountability partner': When someone else knows that you will follow
through on your promise, it will make you less likely to quit in the middle.

Immediately apply what you learn in real life: The best way to stay motivated is
to immediately apply what youre learning in real life. If youve been taking a
course on starting your online business and its just starting to get off the ground,
however small the change, its still a change for the better, taking you closer to your
goal.

Let these 6 principles guide you whenever you feel the urge to collect another shiny new
idea.
Speaking from personal experience, its all too easy to become inspired or even intimidated
by what your peers or competitors are doing, to the point where you feel you ought to be
doing the same in order to keep up or stay ahead.
Sure, you need to be aware of whats happening around you, but I would suggest that you
keep it to a healthy minimum.
When it comes to your business and your goals, you need a one track mind.
Focus!

The Pareto (80-20) principle in language

learning

Being a perfectionist when it comes to language learning is one of the main reasons so
many people never end up using a language theyve studied. They are paralysed by the
thought of making a mistake. They dont know all the words & all the grammar, therefore
they cant speak yet.
Its sad how much this bogus mentality slows people down and even prevents them from
ever trying.
Today I want to share a fundamental concept behind how I can speak languages shortly
after arriving in a country, and progress so quickly, as many others in efficient immersion
environments do. It is based on my interpretation of the 80/20 rule, also known as the
Pareto principle.

The Pareto principle

This rule is applied in so many fields and in its simplest form, basically states that you get
80% of the results from 20% of the work. (Other interpretations are possible, like 80% of
the wealth of a country typically belonging to 20% of its population).
While there is some merit to using the number 80, the actual quantity doesnt interest me as
much as the fact that you get most of the end-results from a fraction of what you put into
something.

And the other way around is that a certain percentage of a language is simply irrelevant to
me in my day to day dealings. Why do I need to bother with it right now?

The irrelevant top percentage

A non-Pareto approach to language learning would imply that you need to know everything
before you can speak. If you dont know how to say aardvark or armadillo in French or
Chinese, then your level simply isnt good enough.
I say differently; many words like these are so uncommon and unlikely to show up, that not
knowing them will make no difference at all in your life. If you compare two natives of a
language, where one knows the word armadillo and the other doesnt, then will their lives
really be that different given the same circumstances?
I extend this to slightly more common words: at the moment I dont believe I know how to
say shoelace in any of my target languages (even if I was awarded a C2 diploma in that
language), although Id recognise that word based on seeing and hearing it previously a few
times and especially based on extrapolating thanks to the context and perhaps word
etymology.
So when given the option, which do you think I choose between studying the word
shoelace, or to just walking up to a native and conversing and socialising, and ignoring the
fact that such a silly word isnt in my head yet and isnt going to ultimately lead to the end
of the world.

When starting off

Taking this even further youd be surprised to see what you can do with very little
vocabulary and a good sense of understanding the context of what is going on around you
and non-verbal communication.
With this in mind, I speak a language pretty much immediately after I start learning it.
Maybe I wont know how to conjugate verbs in the past tense? Well then Ill just say
yesterday I eat while waving behind me (a gesture which Ive found to be pretty
international; if I ever get met with confused looks Ill figure out how its different there).
Maybe I dont know how to say small yet; then Ill just say not big.
Learning new languages in spoken contexts for as long as I have means that Ive come up
with many ways to get around not knowing a word, usually good enough to even make the
other person unaware that Im using a workaround.
You cant know everything, so I try not to think about my limitations and try my best to
figure out how to get my point across.

When I hear a reply Ill try to understand individual words (since getting the whole phrase
will be out of reach), and extrapolate thanks to the usually extremely generous context the
word is sandwiched into, and get a pretty good idea what theyre talking about.
Is this a good place to be in forever and if you want to have deep meaningful conversations
in a language? No. But saying that you cant get value out of this stage and it should be
avoided entirely is an extreme, unnecessary approach for people too scared to try and see
what they can get out of it.
When you do it well enough, natives will not lose their patience with you. Here in the
Netherlands, I was warned that nobody would ever speak Dutch to me in the early stages. It
turns out it was nothing more than lazy excuses from expats that werent trying hard
enough, or doing it in an awkward way that makes the other person feel uncomfortable,
regardless of their actual language use. I have ways to make it more fun for the other person
to listen to me.
As well as this, I suspect people arent speaking English with me because I am rolling my R
so its harder to even guess that I may be an English speaker. (You can hear what I sound
like after a week and a half of Dutch here). This is of course yet another aspect of
languages independent of grammar and vocabulary.

Youre ready either NOW or you never will be

I hate it when I hear people saying theyll wait until they are ready before they speak.
This is a procrastination technique motivated by nothing more than fear of failure. Fail fast
& fail often and youll succeed way more regularly. Slipping up and making some mistakes
while learning a language is totally natural; avoiding doing it is avoiding using the language
as it was meant to be used; for communication!
There will never be a day after years of pure study when you wake up, look at yourself in
the mirror and realise that the promised day has finally arrived and you suddenly start
effortlessly speaking like a native. Its ridiculous to consider such a thing if you havent
already been practising.
Saying you have no words is ludicrous. If its a European (or otherwise related) language
you have tons before you even start, and even if it isnt, then sit down for a few hours and
learn some crucial basic vocabulary and phrases. Then you no longer have no words,
simple as that.
Learn 20 words now and then use the hell out of them. Be imaginative. Then learn more
words and youll see that its ever so slightly easier. By the time you can hold an OK
conversation, a few short weeks or months into intensive use with natives, youll be able
to survive 80% of normal situations in that language, despite putting in way less than 20%
of the work most people do to get to a similar stage after years. Its not the years you put in
after all that make you successful.

Efficiency at its best

As Ive said before, my background is in engineering, so I like to look at the most efficient
way to reach my end-goals and will experiment until I see something that produces real
results. Ill produce something within a deadline, no matter what. That means speaking
now.
If this doesnt float perfectionists boat, then frankly I dont care. I dont use my languages
in exam situations where each mistake is a big red X. My priority is communication, and
using the little I have imaginatively is how I do it. Necessity forces you to progress, so you
will reach a higher level much quicker.
Mastering a language does take time. I have reached fluency in a language in a matter of
months several times, but continue to try to improve on what I have. You will never reach a
day when you say you are ready and your work is done. Fluency is not necessarily an
end-goal, its just a useful milestone to aim for after a few months.
But the fact that I need to tidy up a few edges of something that is definitely fluent, does
not take away what I can do now with the language, and all the incredible things you can
indeed do in the mean time before reaching fluency.
Successful language learners find ways to use the little they know in the maximum possible
ways; this adaptation of Paretos principle is an absolute must for people focused on
speaking well as quickly as possible. Hell, its important for achieving anything. If you
wait until its perfect (the 100% stage), then youll be waiting forever.
Squeeze the little information currently available to you to get the best out of it!

For success, only do the minimum!

soccerunlimited | December 19, 2013 - 11:06 am

Minimum TimeMax Results

After my last post When is failing a positive? (http://www.theperformanceu.com/?
p=250), I think I am going to lose all creditability from the coaches that read this blog.
Only do the minimum? This goes against everything that coaches/parents/teachers/and
respected entrepreneurs have been preaching since the dawn of time, but I am going to talk
about how the mentality of the minimum, not maximum, is needed for athletes to be their
best.

The idea for this post came to me through countless parents and players telling me, as if to
brag, how much training they have fit in their off-season. Private training with our Staff,
team off-season training with the club, basketball at school, indoor soccer on the weekends,
ODP, 3vs3, futsal, and the list goes on. I even have had players that had attended another
performance training company to workout, after school, before seeing us in the afternoons.
The question isis this doing more harm than good? Are these players getting better
because of their consistent pursuit to improve or are they setting themselves up for failure?
Some is good, more is better? Right? WRONG!

I think we get caught up in the notion of being the best and that it is derived from doing the
most without understanding what the demands for our goals are. You wouldnt boil water
until it reaches 150 degrees, if you know that water boils at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Everything past 100 degrees is just wasted energy and time.
Malcolm Gladwell tells the next story of how talent has patterns that reinforces my point, in
his book, Outliers.
For the past century, studies have been done on the IQ (number equivalent of intelligence)
scores of people and how it may relate to success and other life factors. Just to give you an
idea of what an IQ is, a number of 70 is mentally disabled, 100 is average, and somewhere
around 115-120 is college or grad school intelligence. Less than 1% has an IQ over 130,
Einstein had an IQ of 160 and Leonardo Da Vinci was estimated above 200.
The interesting revelations of these studies is that measures of success, ie: wealth, life span,
education, job title, etc all increased with increasing IQ scores from 70 to 100 and from
100 to 120. However, once the scores got around the 120 level, it seemed to plateau. In
other words, you were more likely to be wealthy and successful if you scored 110 vs a
score of 80, but no more likely to achieve success if you scored 150 vs. 130 or even 190 vs
130.
There is a minimal amount of skill necessary for success, and it is probably less than you
think. More does not necessarily = more likely.
Arthur Jones, one of the most famous exercise scientists in history and creator of Nautilus
fitness equipment, came up with the term minimum effective load for the training time or
amount that is needed for a desired result. He once trained a body builder and put 34
pounds of muscle on him in 28 days, without steroids and with training sessions that rarely
exceeded 30 minutes. This is because he knew exactly the minimum amount of work
necessary for the muscle to grow and never exceeded this in training. Jones was often
outspoken and frustrated with how mainstream media presented the notion that a person
needed hours upon hours of training to achieve the body that they desired. He proved
otherwise and I frequently have the same frustrations.
Here is the sport equivalent of the IQ example: Basketball is a tall mans game and there
are very few players that are less than 60 that reach the NBA. I am not saying that Mugsy
Bogues (53) was a myth or that nobody can achieve this level under 60we are just
going with the norm. If you are to take statistics over the last 30 years, you would see that
being 60 greatly improves your
chances to make the NBA comparatively to a player that is 59. In the same argument,
increasing height has the same increased probability of success to a certain point. Being
75 does not make you more likely to make it than 611after all, Michael Jordan (the
greatest NBA player of all time) was 66.

Most physically able does not necessarily = most likely to succeed.

This all relates to how a player develops throughout his/her youth by noting that a player
just needs to be good enough in all areas necessary for the sport in order to have a better
chance at success. Instead of spending so much time and energy into having your player to
be the best finisher, just work towards consistent competence and build the other skills
around finishinglike turning, receiving the ball, distributing, and making effective runs.
For a 12 year old soccer player to be effective in scoring, she needs to learn how to dribble
under control in the direction desired with a certain speed and timing to beat a defender and
create an opportunity to shoot where the goalkeeper is not. She does not need to learn how
to do 15 different moves, run a 4.4 second 40 yard dash, or hit the upper 90 with her shot.
That is excessive and would take much an entire career to master these skill sets.
What is the minimum needed to produce the desired result?
Even more importantly, we need to direct more time and effort in developing the mental
skills for a player to take minimal skill and produce maximal results,
such skills include: creativity, critical thinking, and a clearly defined decisions. I have
always said that technical skills are dead without the ability to use them at the proper time,
in the proper way. Its never too early to make a player that is a clear thinker.
What if our kids/players spent less time conditioning (doing cardiovascular work) and spent
more time on how to play the game with a proper rhythm (no wasted steps or touches) and
more effort on understanding the game? We would surely spend less time training, probably

be less likely to pick up an injury, and therefore be more effective on the field in
competition. Just a theorythat I doubt any coaches will experiment with.
Instead of working to be on the best team, work to be the best you can be. Not all
environments are created equal and not all players learn in the same environment. Not all
players are created equal and all teams need a variety of skills in their 11 on the field.
Good luck
John

Doing Just Enough To Get By And Still

Accomplishing Maximum Results
Posted on April 30, 2013 by Larry Jones
6

Photo by Andres Rueda

Minimum Effective Dose
Minimum Effective Dose or MED is one of those semi-new concepts being discussed quite
a bit right now. The concept was originally developed and utilized by inventor and exercise
guru Arthur Jones. Today, the MED banner is being proudly waved by none other than
author Tim Ferriss.
The minimum effective dose (MED) is dened as the smallest dose that will produce a
desired outcome.
Lets look at some examples of MED.
Examples
First, heres a practical, real life example that is often cited: boiling water. Water boils at
212 F. Raising the temperature beyond that will not make something more boiled.
Boiled is boiled. If we do raise the temperature beyond the minimum, then we are just
wasting energy and heat resources.
Second, example: bombs (I know, weird example. Follow me, though). Back in World War
II days, we needed hundreds of planes with hundreds of bombs in order to carpet bomb
cities to force an eventual surrender. But, today, with our sophisticated laser guided
hardware and global satellite positioning systems, we can send up just a few planes with a
few smart bombs and target just a few, select locations to accomplish (mostly) the same
result.

Third example: music instrument practice. Now, in this example, this will vary from one
musician to the other. There will be variables based on age, maturity level, concentration
ability, and difficulty of music. So, each instrumentalist needs to measure their own optimal
practice time frame. Again, based upon the variables, this could range from 30 minutes to 3
hours. But, there will come a point for an instrumentalist when further practice in a 24-hour
period becomes a waste of time. They will hit the wall of the law of diminishing returns if
they keep on practicing.
Fourth example: physical exercise. Im all about MED on this one. I have no desire (and
zero extra time) to spend hours in the gym or training for a marathon. Im all about doing
the minimal amount to achieve my desired results! Again, this varies according to each
person, their metabolism, the intensity of the workout, and so on. For me, Ive found that 4
days a week, with alternating days of cardio and strength training of about 25 minutes per
day, seems to be my MED. Ive been able to accomplish the level of physical fitness I need
for maximum performance.
Fifth example: writing. There is an MED to the skill of writing. Writers like Seth Godin
have become masters of it. They utilize writing techniques that use fewer filler fluff words
and maximize a few select concentrated words in order to get the desired point across to the
reader.
Application
I know what youre thinking at this point. Larry, who cares? Does the minimum effective
dose really matter to me and my life? Sure does. If you can truly grab a hold of this
concept, you can use it as a filter to pass through all of your activities, actions, schedule,
and even financial purchases.
We live in an excessive, over the top world. Were all trying to out man and outgun each
other. Go the opposite direction. Try the MED approach, instead.
Apply it to a house you may be looking to purchase. How much square footage do you
really need? How many bedrooms and bathrooms do you really need? Use the MED
approach to calculate what will get the job done effectively.
Apply it to your career. Do you really want to work 80 hours a week for $120,000 and
never see your family? Or, could you see yourself in a simpler, less stressful position at 40
hours a week at $75,000, spending more time and energy on the ones you love most?
Something to consider.
Apply it to your eating habits. Do you tend to consume mindless calories? Or, using an
MED approach, do you consume smaller amounts of higher quality foods such as on a
slow-carb diet of higher amounts of protein and vegetables? Try it. It works.

Apply it to your sleep patterns. Do you really need 8 hours to function properly, or could
you actually get by on 5.5 hours if you are in great physical shape and take a 20-minute
power nap every afternoon? I know thats actually possible for a lot of people.
In my personal opinion, the MED possibilities are endless and can help you achieve
amazing, maximum results if applied well.
Questions: Are you familiar with the minimum effective dose approach? Do you employ
MED in your own life? In what areas do you utilize it? What kind of results do you receive
with this approach?

Single Set HIT Training - Minimum effective dose

Unfortunately I did not inherit or learn the art of efficiency very well. In fact my
temperament is much more "work horse" than albatross. However, when you get older and
you are working close to your physical and mental limitations - adapt or die so to speak!
Note to self: Learn efficiency and effectiveness.

Variation is key
The theme throughout these last 6 months of bodybuilding training has been VARIATION,
so I was researching what I was going to do for my next training block. Variation doesn't
have to mean dramatic changes to exercises but rather subtle manipulations to hand/foot
positions in exercises and various training parameters such as; tempo, load, sets, reps, rest
etc.
Interestingly, William Kraemer (a well known sports scientist - professor of Kinesiology)
calculated how many possible ways there were to do a training program, when you consider
order of muscles worked, particular exercises for each muscle group and the use of free
weights or machines. The number of possible programs was 10 to the power 67. Each,
although similar is in fact different. This
explains how magazines can constantly churn out new programs.
I have played around with rep ranges between 3-15+ but will usually vary sets to
compensate, so total training volume is roughly similar. I have personally found, I get the
greatest and longest lasting muscle mass gains from doing low rep (4-6), heavy load
training. There are also discussions about high rep training for hypertrophy as some people
have made good gains with this. (Some evidence suggest it may occur through metabolic
pathways which lead to up-regulation and production of natural anabolic hormones and
growth factors). My personal experience with this kind of high rep training was a really

sad, non-satisfying muscular pump, kind of like when you blow up a punctured bike tire
that you haven't actually fixed. Whether there is a gender difference or it's genetic, who
knows.
Again, I must emphasise individualisation is key with programming because everybody is
different. Genetics plays such a huge role in bodybuilding and that should not be
underestimated. So at best, a good program provides instructions to take you to your
genetic potential. The rest is mind set and nutrition! The use of drugs and dosages again is a
factor to consider and a particular training program may well work very differently for an
individual who is using a cycle of drugs compared to if he/she is not using.

History repeats itself

I was thinking back through my training history and when I was in good shape. It was
probably when I was competing in Thai Boxing and was actually doing about 20 mins total
of very high intensity pad work and sparring. This was only because I was banned by my
very smart coach! from doing more. I used to do a 60 min run in the morning and then
afternoon gym work was limited to about 6 * 3 min rounds of very hard pad work. No
weight training. This was a tried and tested method that was found to work really well after
discovering high volume training just made me overtrained, stale and ill. This is not a state
you want to find yourself in; neither when you are faced with an opponent who wants to
smash your face in or when you are lying underneath a heavy barbell.

Arthur Jones and HIT - High Intensity Training

"If you like an exercise, chances are you're doing it wrong"
As an extension of this idea of low volume, high intensity training, I researched HIT- high
intensity training, popularised by Arthur Jones in the 1970s but now largely forgotten.
Casey Viator, Sergio Oliva, Mike Mentzer, Boyer Coe and Tom Platz, amongst others were
all advocates. Essentially it is a single set of a few exercises performed slowly (often using
negatives), to momentary failure.
Arthur Jones was a real generalist with very varied interests from wildlife film making to
flying planes; he invented the Nautilus and MedX equipment. I'm slowly getting though a
periodical he wrote called the Nautilus Bulletin. Very interesting and well worth a read. I
always like to read fitness in history; when you bear in mind it is a reflection of the era and
the time it was written, it is very illuminative. Nautilus Bulletin

The Colorado Experiment and Casey Viator

Casey Viator ( I am a huge fan) won the Mr America aged 19 in 1971. He trained for 10
months before that competition under the guidance of Arthur Jones.
The Colorado experiment was an interesting case of nature vs nurture coming together. The
experiment was conducted in May 1973 at Colorado State University in Fort Collins,
Colorado. It was designed by Arthur Jones and supervised by Dr. Elliott Plese. The training
was condensed to about 3 sessions a week lasting 33.6 minutes.
Results
Increase in bodyweight: 20.5kg
Loss of Body Fat: 8.1kg
Muscular Gain 28.7kg

The Colorado experiment protocol

28.6kg in 28 days (Casey Viator)

There was a lot of criticism about this experiment and of course it is a n(1) on somebody
who had tremendous genetics to support muscular growth. There is also the issue of
"regression to the mean", where Viator went into the experiment with a deficit of muscle
from atrophy after a car crash.
But still....numbers don't lie and this protocol has been replicated with successes and also
failures I must also add (drop outs)! He contested that he was not using anabolic steroids.

The example of Arthur Jones and Casey Viator is a nice one. An example of good synergy.
Jones brought the knowledge, and Viator brought the intensity. The two of them together
created this tour de force. Casey could really train in a way most people would balk at; he
also had great genetics! Arnold Schwarzenegger was an example of someone who couldn't
tolerate the method. It didn't work for him. He didn't want to go to that "mental place" of
intensity, so instead opted for the high volume route, which did work.
This era of bodybuilding really fascinates me. Of course, like all sport, knowledge evolves
but so does drug use. Bodybuilding today is more chemical than it was 50 years ago, it
doesn't make it better or worse but it is different and I think training today reflects that.
Effective training is finding that balance between stimulus and recovery. If recovery is
better (drugs!), you can use more stimulus and hence high volume training can work very
well. I think it is also worth to note that the different categories in bodybuilding are very
different. Training for Fitness category (both male and female) is very different to
bodybuilding category. In the latter, the degree of muscularity and leanness in competitive
physiques is extreme and is virtually unobtainable without steroids. Bodybuilding is an
aesthetic sport, so what is deemed desirable is a reflection of the time too. What judges
want to see today was different to 10, 20, 50 years ago. The sport, the categories and
perceptions of what constitutes a good physique, evolve and change.

HIT Basics
HIT relies on a single set of a few exercises but performed to absolute failure - so a real
balls out, gut wrenching effort -that is the key to it's success and use. It relies on that
intensity, and not everyone can go there. Arthur Jones believed that most bodybuilders at
the time, were over trained from high volume programs, and what they lacked was rest and
intensity. What comes with high intensity, is the requirement for adequate rest, so training
was spaced out at least 72 hours apart. Interestingly, the same rationale and inclusion of a
good proportion of intensity is used to explain the reason for the success of Kenyan
marathon training programs. The intensity is what lacks in British marathon training, but
the double edged sword of intensity is the need for recovery. Not easy when you also have
to factor in high mileage for building an aerobic capacity.
The training concept is interesting. There are various variants of training and specialising
for different body parts but essentially the basics are: Intensity, Progression, Form,
Duration, Frequency and Order.

Do each repetition slowly - as an approximation, 4secs concentric 4 sec eccentric,

with no rest between. Tempo can vary from slow to super slow (30s for each
portion)

Perform 8-12 repetitions per set. Time under tension is therefore about 6090seconds per exercise

You need to reach momentary muscular failure for maximum intensity

Limit a routine to 12 exercises or fewer

Train for 3 nonconsecutive days or less per week

Order of training - largest muscles first and smallest last

Utilise both single joint and multiple joint movements

Initiate specialized routines for only 2 consecutive weeks. Wait for 3 months before
specialising on the same body part

Optimize recoverability; train less as you get stronger

Take a 9 day layoff after each 6 months of steady training.

Curiosity killed the Cat

So in the name of curiosity and experimentation, I decided to trial this.
And yes....no surprises it's really tough. It most definitely requires someone to spot you, as
you're going to failure (with good form).
My workout:
1 set of 4 exercises with 3 mins rest between each exercise. Tempo - 4secs for each portion
of the lift.
Squat, bench press, dumbbell pullover, bicep curl.
The challenge to the neuromuscular system is immense as you are getting more muscle
recruitment. (All or nothing principle of muscle recruitment). Time under tension is high
but weight would be dropped roughly by about 20% compared to a set at a faster tempo.
Above is the description and now let me try and explain the emotion, which I shall sum up
with the below diagram

Of course, the translation would be simply "unprintable" but you get the idea. There were
"F" and "C" bombs thrown left, right and centre. I was amazed at the muscular shaking that
happens from the central nervous system input. This also caused me to then drop a 10kg
weight plate on my foot from shoulder height. Excellent.
The next day, unbelievable DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) which I'm still
suffering 60 hours later. So, I can conclude considering I did a total of 360 seconds of
exercise - I'm fairly impressed by the level of discomfort induced. There is nothing
dignified about the experience but we''ll see what the effects are after 2 weeks. I plan on
doing 3 sessions of HIT (5-8 exercises) a week, combined with 6 cardio sessions early
morning (45-60mins). 1 day of complete rest.
I like this concept of the minimum effective dose. At the moment, I'm on a calorie
restrictive diet, working and studying an MSc, so I don't have huge reserves of energy or
time for the gym. I have to be very efficient and make sure the little that I do, does count i.e
efficiency and effectiveness! My goal is preservation (not building) of muscle and losing
body fat, so in theory this method may just work!
I think again, this just confirms that there is no good or bad program (within reasonable
logical limits!) but efficacy depends upon many factors including, genetics, recoverability,
drug use and mentality. Bring on gene therapy - then I can just stay in bed for a year and eat
Rolo's.