Find your clean sweep score (Exercise #22)

This is an exercise in finding one thing explicitly and one thing implicitly.  First, measure yourself against a fairly conservative and responsible checklist of things that should increase your personal freedom.  Second, find your hidden personal biases against certain seemingly responsible behaviors.

According to the Better Me website the Clean Sweep Program is:

A checklist of 100 items which, when completed, give one complete personal freedom. These 100 items are grouped in 4 areas of life with 25 in each group: Physical Environment, Well-being, Money and Relationships. These 4 areas are the cornerstone for a strong and healthy life and the program helps a person to clean up, restore and polish virtually every aspect of his/her life. The program takes between 6 – 24 months to complete.

It’s a bold claim.  At first I was curious about which authority they were claiming that these 100 things are actually worth achieving.  The creator of this site, Michael Cooper, is a graduate of Coach University and I think these 100 things are something from their program… and prospective new coaches are encouraged to get their own lives in order before coaching others.

The 100 things are split up into four categories: Physical Environment, Well-being, Money, and Relationships.  Each category has 25 things that, together, imply health and personal freedom.  The idea is that the best way to solve problems and improve yourself is to create the space and mental state that best accommodates problem solving and self-improvement.

I took it and got a 77 out of 100.  I think I cheated on a few though.  I have strong personal preferences against a couple of them (mostly drinking caffeine and alcohol).  However an interesting comment from them is:

Those last 5 or 10 are the ones which are most worth taking care of, given our egos are well entrenched among these incompletions.

That seems true to me.  We all have personal behaviors or habits that we believe our personality is permanently intertwined with.  For that reason alone I suggest that you take this test and pay particular attention to the things on the list that you say to yourself either “Not only do I not want to do that, but I think it’s wrong” or “It’s not that I don’t want to do that, it’s that I can’t”.  Both of these responses indicate a strong emotional conflict between your behaviors and your actual self.  Take a look at WHY you think something is wrong or impossible and you may find some deeply rooted hidden biases in yourself.

• The Clean Sweep checklist
• The “Clean Sweep my life to 100%” goal

Make a promise (Exercise #21)

One of the best ways to change habitual behavior is to commit to it.  This is obvious to us, and is often why we don’t commit to changing behaviors.  If you’re a smoker and you want to quit, make a list of the 10 people in your life that you are most concerned with keeping a high reputation with, and give each one of them a written statement that says, “I promise you that I will never smoke another cigarette.”  Simply thinking about that will let you know just how powerful the force of public commitment is… more powerful than internal commitment, more powerful than the patch, and more powerful than any plan to slowly wean yourself off cigarettes.

If smoking isn’t the main thing you’d like to change, choose something else.  Make a promise about an absolute thing like never doing something again or completing something by an exact date.  Immediate and drastic change that you can’t wimp out on.  Write them down on note cards or blank business cards and hand them out to 10 (or more) people that you desperately want to respect you.  No need to even include an “or else”… that way there’s no way out.

Identify three things that you don’t like about yourself (Exercise #20)

There’s a hidden cost in the things we don’t like about ourselves.  In addition to the fact that the things are usually undesirable traits in the first place, what is usually neglected is the cost of thinking about the undesirable trait over and over again.  In most cases, we are slowly changing creatures and things we don’t like will stick around for years, sometimes decades.  It’s a good idea to check in occassionally with a few of the most costly of these traits and make sure we’re not letting them use up more of our energy, time, and self-esteem than it would take to fix them.

Make a list of the top 3 things you don’t like about yourself.

The important thing here is to find the things that bother us the most.  Sure, you might like to be a foot taller, to have the bone structure of a hummingbird, and have a turtle shell to allow easy sleeping on sidewalks, but does it truly bother you to your core that you don’t have these qualities?  In my experience, the things that bother me most, the things that most encourage the slow and steady buildup of self hate, are the things that I know I could change about myself, but only lack the energy and motivation to do so.  It’s the ability to blame yourself for the undesirable trait that stabs deepest.  So, think hard… what do you really dislike about yourself, name two or three.

How long have you disliked each thing?

Sometimes we rationalize undesirable traits by thinking one of two things: either they are not really THAT nagging, or they are too difficult to change.  Losing 20 pounds, or improving conversational skills, or reinventing your career path are not simple tasks.  However, if you can think back to the first time you considered this trait it becomes more clear how costly keeping them around can be.  Thinking about something once or twice a week, each time with self-criticism and disgust, for years or even decades can really bring you down.  It also brings home the point that it’s possible that this trait is going to stick around for as long as it wants to… sometimes they magically disappear but most of the time they only go away with concerted effort.  When framed like that, imagining yourself having this same conversation with yourself 10 years from now, it becomes easier to motivate yourself to make changes now so that you can save yourself all of those years.

Imagine life without the trait.

Imagine that through some miracle the thing you hated most about yourself was gone.  You would wake up each morning and not have that same thought.  You would be in other situations and not have that insecurity.  How much relief would it bring?  It might help to think about other traits you have had in the past (maybe something like childhood awkwardness or acne or harmful relationships) and how liberating the day was when you found that that particular burden had come to an end.

Write out steps for removing each undesired trait.

What would it take to get fix the thing you hated most about yourself.  Exactly how much effort would it take, how much money, how much of a lifestyle change?  What is the cost of reaching that point?  Compare this cost to the real cost of keeping it around.

Strongly consider changing the top-most undesirable trait.

Really think about it.  Why not do it?  Why not double down on fixing one major source of unhappiness… and give it everything it takes until it’s resolved?  Not only would it remove a self-sabotaging source of self-hate, but it would build up confidence in your ability to make positive changes in your life and give you momentum for more changes.  In my case, the appeal is also to simply have a new project… one that has a real benefit.  You can research the problem, consult friends, and make it a thing.  As a thing, you can rise to the challenge and keep yourself interested in a subject for the duration of its resolution.  Good luck!

Travel with only a carry on, no checked bags (Exercise #19)

I like to travel without luggage.  I just went to San Jose for three days and only brought a bag left over from a trip to Kenneth Cole.  Not having luggage makes you think twice about what you bring and how you bring it.  My flimsy bag might fall apart in the rain, and can't carry anything too heavy.  Also, it might spill out anywhere.  You may not need to be as extreme in your own travels, but here's a good set of tips on traveling light:

Carrying off the art of one carry on [via 43 Folders]

Another interesting link from the comments on 43 Folders was this site: One Bag: The art and science of traveling light.

Throw a big party (Exercise #18)

I'm an introvert, and before last year, shuddered at the thought of throwing a party. I was a party-attender, not a party-thrower, and the thought of inventing a reason, recruiting people, and preparing whatever it was that party-throwers prepared made me freeze up and/or run away. At the same time, I've always envied the life of event and party planners.

Throwing a party, especially if it's not normally your thing, is a great chance to create an entire experience for your friends. From music, to food, to choice of attendees, to entertainment (if any), you can create a vision of a couple hours length and let it explode into a life of its own.

I just threw a party this last weekend for my 30th birthday, and though it was rather stressful and worrisome at times, the stressful and worrisome aspects of it were probably the most enjoyable… as they helped me work towards the vision with more focus. Few things get you to act with the determination and attention that fear of public failure. Haha, I am mostly kidding.

The great thing about parties is that they can be any size in scope… from a small gathering of close friends to a rented venue with bands, djs, or performers, to a multi-day festival out in the desert. Choose a scope that feels uncomfortable to you, tap your social circle for people who can help you think about how to do it right, and pick a date not too far in the future. Start telling people about it right away.

The other great thing about parties is that they are over quickly. An evening is over almost as soon as it is begun, and other than cleaning up and apologizing for drunk dials of the previous night, there's very little follow-up.

Throwing a big party is a great way to inject momentum into your life. Once you throw one, you'll begin to think about the next one, and the next, and the snowball of fun will roll right over you, and carry you along with it.

Watch what you eat (Exercise #17)

The title of this exercise is a bit misleading.  Watching what you eat usually refers to counting calories.  I mean it more in the literal sense… looking and noticing what you are eating.  Acting on that knowledge may or may not happen, but it's not important for the purposes of this exercise.

Watching what you eat will tell you a lot about your current mental and physical state.  Have you noticed that your appetite for food will be different depending on your mood and your state of current health?  When I exercise, I crave different foods than when I've just gotten into a fight with a friend.  Also, my appetite will be different when I haven't eaten in a long time than it is when I have just finished a meal.  There's a reason salads typically come first and ice cream comes last… the body's appetite when full is less for less healthy food than when your body is actually trying to get energy for vital functions.

You can pretty much take the types of foods you're currently craving as a literal expression of your mood and health.  A healthy mental state will crave healthy foods, and vice versa.  Take note of the things you are craving for a day.  In particular, notice:

• How sensitive are you to hunger?  Do you eat at the first sign of hunger, or do you put up with hunger longer?
• Do you eat more healthily when you satisfy hunger immediately, or when you wait it out?
• When do you eat most the most junk food and what is your mental and physical states at those times?

How much can you tell about people around you if all you had to go on was the food that they eat?  How much of this serves as a personality test for others and for yourself?  Most people believe that you can become more healthy by eating more healthily… but is it possible that the reverse is true as well?  Healthy people eat healthily.  Chicken or egg?  Lest we confuse correllation with causation once again, let's start with merely watching the food we eat and watching our moods. 

Retry things you don’t like (Exercise #16)

The purpose of this exercise is to learn more about why you like some things and don't like others. Preference is a very powerful force in our personalities, and by taking it apart a little and looking to see which mechanisms are at work when creating your preferences, you can learn to fiddle with the algorithm a little to make sure you like things that you actually want to like, and that you don't like things that you don't want to like.

Sounds complicated, but a very important aspect of preference (and desire in general) is that there are two levels to it:

1. What you want
2. What you want to want

You might want chocolate, but want to want salad. You might want television, but want to want exercise. When thinking about this exercise, try to figure out if the thing you are retrying is something you want, or something you want to want. The happiest life is one where you both want, and want to want, the same things while also not liking the things you don't want to like.

The sources of like:

What causes us to like something and what causes us not to like something? Are things inherently likable and dislikable, or is there something that happens between the thing and yourself (a relationship, or an aesthetic) that creates a likable or dislikable quality to emerge? I argue the latter. Here are a few things that might influence your judgement of a new thing:

1. Do you already like or dislike this thing? If you know that you dislike brocolli, you will most likely continue to dislike it each time you come across it, even if you do not taste it each time.
2. Do you already have a preference for the general class of thing? If you come across a new green vegetable, and you have an existing dislike of green vegetables, it's likely that you will apply the general rule to the specific new vegetable.
3. Does the environment or group your in have a preference? If you are in a group that strongly prefers sipping expensive wines, and you are relatively new to the field of wine-tasting and have no overwhelming preference for cheap or expensive wines, you may be influenced to adopt the group's preference for expensive wines. Likewise, if you live in a liberal city, you will most likely adopt liberal views. This happens because the environment will influence the evidence and data you receive for making a preference… you will only get good evidence and data about expensive wines when you're around people that love expensive wines, and you will only hear bad data about conservative viewpoints when you're around liberals. It's not that you necessarily adopt the views of those around you, it's just that the environment filters the information you receive about the thing being judged to favor the decisions that the group made.
4. Is there pressure to form a quick opinion? In some social situations, making a decision is difficult because none of the choices stand out as distinctly better than the others. For example, when choosing which new blockbuster movie to watch on a Sunday afternoon. In these situations, people with preferences are rewarded by being decision makers and leaders. It doesn't really matter which option is taken, as long as it provokes action in the group. After a decision is made, it's then much easier to confabulate reasons that it is the best option, strengthening the power of the preference that was originally weak.

In this way, preferences can be created by cascading down a series of decision making systems. The interesting thing is that because preferences are reinforced each time they are invoked, what quickly began as a weak preference will strengthen over time into a much more powerful preference. The possibility then exists that there are very strong preferences in our own personalities that may or may not justify the strength of their preference.

Identify a few strong preferences of your own

I used to strongly dislike zoos. It all went back to one childhood experience where I felt bad about an animal at a zoo. Over the years, disliking zoos became "a thing", if you know what I mean. A thing that felt as much a part of me as my sense of self. I was a zoo-disliker. I was a also a Halloween-disliker. I was an avocado-disliker. However, once I started retrying these things, I often found that the only reason I continued to dislike them was because I had disliked them at some point in the past.

By letting go of that past preference, and the opinion that blossoms from it, I get to let the object cascade once again down the waterfall of experience to see if there was any continuing evidence supporting the preference. In the case of zoos I discovered that my dislike of them was a little lopsided and that while I may object to some of the principles behind the caging of beautiful natural animals, that I could enjoy learning about animals and engaging them in person. My preference, it turned out, had been more positively reinforced by the personal satisfaction I got from stating the opinion and being the kind of person that cared for animals than it had by the actual zoo itself. There's a strange kind of pride in preference. Which isn't necessarily bad in itself, but it might be worth investigating which things you store your pride in… are they all things you want to take pride in? And are you consistently interested in the object of pride? In the case of zoos, why did I take self-righteous pride in not supporting the enslavement of animals when I took opposite pride in eating meat? It's important to notice inconsistency in yourself and acknowledge it, not necessarily to reconcile it right away, but simply so that you can learn to not take yourself and your preferences so seriously.

Related Links:

• Preference [Wikipedia]
• Do Something Scary [Creating Passionate Users]

Listen to the whispers of your possessions (Exercise #15)

Each of our physical possessions has room not only in our homes or offices, but also in our brains.  Each couch, car, and book is something you have to manage, much in the same way that people managers have to care for the needs of their direct reports.  A couch might need a cleaning, or it might need to be moved, or it might need a replacement.  These unfinished tasks are open loops in our brains that will continue to surface in our working memory until they are completed or dropped.  We all know the relief we feel when we sell that car that has been a burden for years.  It is the pleasurable quiet resulting from all the whispering open loops finally shutting up.  The whispering open loops are actually quite a burden on our mental clarity and our daily ability to focus. 

Take a look around your office or home today and ask random objects, “What are you whispering to me?”  You may be surprised at how many things are whispering to you to be read, put away, given away, replaced, or otherwise attended to.The quickest and easiest way to stop the whispering is to get rid of stuff.  Now that summer is coming, why not have a garage sale, or take a few trips to Goodwill to give away a bunch of stuff that you really don’t need.Most people identify themselves as either purgers or collectors.  Get rid of that identity for yourself.  To simplify yourself to that extent is to do yourself a disservice.  Instead of deciding when to keep something and when to get rid of something, simply ask one of the following questions (depending on the amount of whispering you’re willing to take from your possessions):

1. What future project of mine is this attached to?  Am I really dedicated to completing that future project?
2. What if I didn’t get this?  Or didn't have this?
3. Which part of my ideal scene for myself does this possession satisfy?
4. If I had this, and I lost it in a fire, would I get it again?

What are your weak spots with possessions?  Do you abhor people who collect needleess camping equipment but find that you enjoy collecting kitchen appliances?  Do you pride yourself on your book, music, or DVD collections?  Find the possessions you enjoy having the most and listen to the tasks that they’re giving you… throw a party for this movie, read this book, get a bigger bookshelf for us, etc.  What if you didn’t have them, what would change?  What if your house burned down… which of these lovely things would you buy again?  How will these possessions play into your ideal scene of the next couple years?

Instead of having all of these things, think about outsourcing them.  Use the library for books, listen to the radio or convert all of your music to mp3s, and use Netflix and other rental outlets for DVDs. Let them handle the whispering, and with your new clarity of mind, know that if you ever do get around to that project, these things will be available at that time.  But maybe you'll find that the project isn't even that important anymore once the  whispering is gone.

Work a four-day work week (Exercise #14)

Ryan Carson has a great article over at A List Apart about working only four days a week. I've only worked four days a week for the last year and a half and think it is a significant contributor to my enjoyment of life. This is despite the fact that I love my job as well. Things are easier to love when you are at your best while doing them. Many parts of our corporate culture have become focused on productivity, and yet the tools for productivity aren't present. Instead of encouraging people to be productive, many corporate environments are time prisoners. You have to be there 40 hours, if not longer. If you're in one of these environments I encourage you to challenge the system and see if you can convince them that you will can be more productive while spending less time in the office by working a four day work week. Some excellent tips in the article mentioned above, as well as in the comments.

Links:

• The Four-Day Week Challenge [A List Apart]
• Comments on the article at A List Apart
• Comments on the article at Lifehacker

Set up your mind’s workspace (Exercise #13)

Unfortunately, it isn't possible to have guests over in your mind. But wouldn't that be neat? At the very least, if it were possible, perhaps we would tidy our mind’s workspace as frequently as we tidied our home and office workspaces. As it is, the mind’s workspace is more like that basement closet that we stuff thing’s into in order to hide them from guests, investors, friends, family, etc. It is the black box of a productive environment, and as such one of the most neglected aspects of our daily maintenance, weekly reviews, self-evaluations, life hacking, and attempts to get things done. At the same time, the roots of most of our problem can be traced (like a bad smell) back to the mind’s workspace.

Some of the moving parts involved in your mind’s workspace include:

1. Working memory
2. Habits
3. Visualization
4. Bodily and mental stress

David Allen in Getting Things Done does a great job of addressing the mind’s workspace with a couple key phrases. The subtitle of the book is even “the art of stress-free productivity”, which encapsulates both the method and the result of setting up the proper workspace in your mind. Turn your mind into a beautiful room that you are comfortable sitting in. Another great phrase is “mind like water” which is about having an organized mental workspace that is able to react to every event in perfect proportion to the event’s weight. It doesn’t overreact or underreact. Both of these phrases emphasize the aesthetics of a well set-up mind. Perhaps they are a bit too zen wacky for some though, so I’ll try to come at it from a couple different angles.

What is your mind's workspace like?

How does it feel to sit in your mind's workspace? Try it. What do the walls look like? What kind of chair are you sitting in? How does the desk look? Do you have 12 monitors up… each blaring different scenarios, conversations, reminders, news reports, and soap operas? How much information is there lying around, and how organized is it? Is it sunny or dark? Warm or cold? Crazy or calm? All of this is simply an exercise in confabulation of course, as the real structure of working memory is mostly obscured from us. But hopefully what it can help reveal is how your mind feels. Most likely, unless you've already learned the art of mental clarity, this space feels a bit like a dark room full of wild yet familiar things. The cobwebbed attic of the brain metaphor is overused, but strangely appropriate for most of us.

As was mentioned in the post about setting up your physical workspace a couple days ago, there is some projection of your mind's workspace out onto your environments. If you need some help knowing exactly how your mind's workspace is, then, it doesn't hurt to look at your home and office workspaces. What does your desk look like, what does your wallet or purse look like, what does your garage look like?

What do you want your mind's workspace to be like?

What does a perfectly productive mind feel like to you? A good exercise for this is to imagine a virtual reality machine that you can design for yourself. This virtual reality machine will be replaced with your own mind when you are satisfied with it. You'll never need to set another alarm clock because your new mind will have an accurate clock in it that will let you know when to wake up, or when that next meeting is, or when the headlining band is really going on. You'll never need another PDA or pocket book because your new mind will be able to store grocery lists, email addresses, phone numbers, names and faces, and personal affirmations appropriate for every adversity or problem that might come your way. Your mind will have the ability to remember things it wants to remember, and forget things it wants to forget. It will be able to filter out all information that it doesn't need, and focus on tasks that are set when they are set. It will remind you to buy batteries for the dead flashlight when you are at the store passing the battery rack, not when the thunderstorm knocks the power out of your house. It will be an awesome mind, and it will never accidentally fall in the toilet or get left in the cab.

But that mind doesn't exist!

After you've designed the perfect mind, perhaps you're now saying that the exercise was futile because that kind of mind isn't possible. In Getting Things Done, for example, one of the primary goals of the system is to remove all of these distracting and stress-inducing things from your mind because it is not the right tool for the job. I don't actually think this is always the case. Getting your mind in order may allow your to reap wild benefits in productivity and focus in proportion to the level of disorganization it is currently in. The truth is that people are often failing at creating a good GTD system simply because they can't afford to take the productivity hit of writing each thing down when just remembering them seems to work so well. Only, it doesn't always work. And it causes stress. But how much of this is just because we don't know how to use our minds?

Memory is the best list-making tool

What's easier: keeping a grocery list on a piece of paper, or keeping a grocery list in your mind? Well, it depends. Factors include:

• When you realize you need to buy something, is it easier to find the paper and write it down, or easier to remember it?
• When you're at the store, do you have the piece of paper or can you recall the list.

There are two actions involved: saving the list and retrieving the list. Both tools have their pros and cons both for saving information and retrieving information.

To save something to a list, you need to make sure the list is with you. It might take physical energy to find the list if it's nearby, or otherwise you'll have to remember to put something on the list. If you can remember to put something on the list, how much easier is that than simply remembering the thing that you were going to put on the list? To save something to memory, on the other hand, you need to have memory tools at your disposal, which we'll talk about soon. This also takes energy to do, but it's mental energy.

To retrieve something from a list, you again need to make sure the list is with you when it's needed. This, again, will take physical energy, and, it might take additional mental energy to remember where the list is, as well as a mental reminder to get the list before it is needed (it's no good if you remember to get the list when you're already at the store, unless it's already with you). To retrieve something from memory requires mental energy as well as confidence that your list was properly saved into memory.

Another way of thinking about it is this: why does each method fail? Physical memory fails when they are incomplete (you didn't add something to the list when you were supposed to either because you didn't want to expend the physical energy or because you didn't successfully remember to add something to the list) or not present when you need them. Mental memory fails when an item isn't properly saved or is lost before it is retrieved.

How to improve your memory

Most people will say that they don't have a good memory and that's why they have to write things down. But how many of us have really worked on improving our memory? How many of us were taught to memorize things by repeating them over and over? That's actually one of the worst ways to memorize something, especially because our brain learns to ignore things that are repeated repeatedly… in the same way that it'll learn to filter out noise from a loud room. It's possible to remember something the first time you encounter it… if there's a vivid sensation attached to it. Particularly powerful sensations include:

• A striking image
• A powerful emotion
• A new smell

All you have to do to remember something is associate it with a striking image, a powerful emotion, or a new smell. Using these techniques, people have recited the first 83,431 digits of pi, the entire Koran, the entire Guinness Book of World Records, the weather and day of the week for any date in a person's life, and many other ridiculous things. These people are labelled as having photographic, or eidetic, memory.

But, even more amazing and not as much of a scientific anomaly is the fact that each of us can remember an insane amount of information every day without any effort at all. You can remember scenes from movies, quotes from television shows, the lyrics to songs, the clothes people wear, people you've run into at a coffee shop or bar, and any number of details. What separates this information from your grocery list and what you had for lunch last Tuesday? The former are associated with striking images, powerful emotions, and (okay, maybe not that often) new smells. The later, are not.

Here's how you remember something after experiencing it once

Associate it with a striking image. Of the three options given above, this is the one that is most universally applicable. It's not that easy to evoke a powerful emotion or new smell on demand… but it is easy to think of a weird striking image on demand (after a little practice).

There are several well-established ways to do this. Here are a few pointers to great resources:

• Memory Master — I love this site! [via Steve Pavlina]
• The Memory Book [Harry Lorayne]
• The peg system [Wikipedia]
• The major system [Wikipedia]

I'll be exploring some of these techniques more in future entries, as well as ways to continue to explore the possibility of using your brain instead of, and in addition to, technology and things that are expensive and which you are suspicious of.

Set up your workspace (Exercise #12)

I enjoyed following Lifehacker's The Coolest Workspace Contest. The winner, Ryan's Orange Simplicity, reminded me a lot of my own home workspace… instead of orange I've got a bright toy store blue on high walls but other than that very similar.

I happened to be simultaneously reading David Allen's Getting Things Done (since I'm going to be seeing him talk tomorrow, and have been meaning to see what this is all about anyway) and have been pleasantly surprised by the well-roundedness of his philosophy. I've always been a big advocate of the power of environment on the quality of life. One of the first steps of the book is to set up your environment… a space all your own both at work and at home that is set up explicitly to aid in your ability to work. A few factors to consider might include:

1. Time. Spend two whole days setting this space up. By giving it a good chunk of time you will give it the energy it deserves, while also not letting the task of it burden you too much.
2. Space.  Make sure that this space is entirely your own, not shared.
3. An inbox… something that can hold items that need to be processed.
4. A trash can.
5. A calendar for time-centric tasks.
6. An open space, paper, pens, a whiteboard maybe, for note-taking.
7. A filing system and label maker.

These are all very reasonable tools to help set up a workspace in your home and your office. The goal of an efficient workspace is to be able to capture all of the unresolved things that float around in your head. To be able to take ambiguous worries and untie them into individual "desired outcomes" and "next actions".

The power of environment

My outward environment is an incredibly powerful influence on me.  Several of my best tricks to happiness involve manipulating me environment: working in a neighborhood that I like, being able to walk to work, using a Mac, etc.  Our minds not only derive happiness from our environments, but also project their own inner states into our environments.  It's a two-way communication.  What do you think happens first: having a disorganized environment or having a disorganized life?  It's a funny chicken/egg situation.  One will cause the other.  Think of the variety of reactions you've had to people's offices, living rooms, and homes over the years.  You can tell two things from a person's environment:

1. How a person wants to be
2. How a person actually is

Isn't that weird?  Actually, it's not that weird if you think about it.  We are a constantly shifting picture between who we want to be and who we are… and because of the two-way nature of our physical working environments, a close eye can catch pieces of both of our selves as they battle, compromise, convince, and betray each other over time.  An environment that is deliberately and wisely set up will be a greatly helpful to the half of you that is the vision of your best self.

Read up more on setting up your environment:

• Creating a Productive Workspace [Steve Pavlina]
• GTD Primer [Black Belt Productivity] 

Sit still for 15 minutes a day (Exercise #11)

Meditation is intimidating. To me, it has a magical spiritual quality to it as if it were step one of a grand transformation where ultimately I stop drinking and eating meat, and never get angry, and shave my head. Also, there's this inner doubt that if nothing happens and I continue eating meat and going to bars, that somehow it's not working. Definitely my own issues are involved here… but I don't think I'm the only one with these issues. People who practice and teach meditation of course try to remove these expectations from us amateurs, but it's very difficult to erase meaning and association from a word. Meaning clings like glue. It's easier to just get a new word. Instead of learning how to meditate, learn how to sit still.

There are no social or spiritual implications associated with people who sit still compared to those that are associated with people who meditate. Everyone knows how to sit still and everyone knows that it's not a big deal. In fact, it may have a slightly ridiculous association if any, and one might be tempted to conduct this exercise in the corner while sitting on your hands. It brings back images of childhood and our own reckless unruliness.

And yet, it's still strangely difficult. Why is it so difficult to sit still even for a couple minutes?

Meditation is a momentum killer

I think the difficulty of sitting still is a mental one. Over time we've trained ourselves to avoid sitting still for practical reasons involving motivation, momentum, and getting the many things of the day done. When I think about the thoughts that immediately fill my head when I suggest to myself that maybe I should try sitting still for a bit and doing nothing for 15 minutes, my brain protests and says that it will interrupt the flow of the day. A certain level of buzz and motion in my brain can serve as an energy source for the tasks I'm presented with in the course of the day. To let that spin down might cause my mind to stall out and become unable to continue with the rest of the tasks I've got mindlessly lined up like ducks along the fence. When I've got a few errands to run that I don't necessarily want to run, I start figuratively waving my arms about, running in circles, screaming, and generally spinning myself up and distracting myself from too much mental investigation of true value in the things I'm doing so that I can mindlessly direct the building energy at the few errands and bulldoze them over without thinking about it and talking myself out of it. Does this sound familiar at all?

Positive and negative affect

It's a useful motivational trick to use excess physical and mental energy from one source and direct it at another source that wouldn't have otherwise been able to generate the energy on its own. For many of us, this practice becomes habit and we train ourselves to always have some reserved well of momentum available. This well is a positive affect. It is a resource to tap into and use both as a savings account for difficult tasks, and also a cushion when we're hit with a negative event of any kind. If someone insults you, or things don't go as you've planned, the positive affect can absorb the cost of that blow and you can continue on without too much impact. Negative affect, or motivational debt, is often associated with depression. Every new task seems impossible because there's no momentum or energy to tap into. Everything instead has to rely on its own worthiness in order to bootstrap itself into being done… and this only if there aren't existing tasks that are of higher (if less enjoyable) priority lobbying for that energy for itself. Those people with negative affect become overly sensitive, as every insult sends your energy and motivation into deeper debt and has a visible impact on your ability to get along in normal social situations. Because of this positive/negative affect ecosystem, which we've all experienced high highs and low lows of at some point during our lives, we tend to be very protective of our affect well. This is why sitting still (or meditating) can be seen as a treat.

The truth is that sitting still does have the ability to change your affect. It'll challenge the momentum that you've got going and help you examine why you're doing the things you're doing. It won't drain you, or demotivate you, but rather show you what you're doing… at which point you can decide for yourself if the things you are doing are actually worth doing. Because of the positive/negative affect system, we'll sometimes do things simply to keep momentum up… we all know people who are always occupying themselves and who are constantly busy with something… and we all know that sometimes the things we keep ourselves busy with are not really that important. Sitting still is one way to do some spring cleaning in your motivation and momentum systems. Or, it might just give you a sore butt.

Keep track of your personal zeitgeist (Exercise #10)

Your personal zeitgeist is that silly yet haunting list of things that coincidentally seem to pop up repeatedly in your life in different contexts. Do you notice every once in a while how you might not have thought about a certain thing for years and then suddenly it gets brought up in conversations several times in one week by different people? Or, you learn a new word and suddenly you see it everywhere?

Your personal zeitgeist is a funny and personal thing. Ask anyone what kinds of things seem to be popping up repeatedly for them at the moment and almost everyone will have an answer. These small themes are the songs that life is playing on your soundtrack… they are the chapters in your book. They may have meaning, or they may be completely random, but they are usually enjoyable to explore. I've found, however, that if you pay attention to your zeitgeist and play along with a couple simple rules, that you can learn to enjoy the simple flow of them.

Zeitgeist Rules:

1. In order for something to enter the zeitgeist, it must appear in your life three times, in three different contexts, within some limited period of time.
2. Once something enters your zeitgeist, you must run with it. This might mean calling the person that you haven't talked to in years, or learning more about how some people switch hands when they cut something with a fork and knife and some people don't, or buy a painting of a fox that you see in a gallery window when foxes enter, or whatever you think seems naturally to extend from the item's continued presence in your life.
3. See where it leads. Accept all offers related to the item. Trust it. Sometimes nothing interesting will follow out of the item, and sometimes a whole new world of sub-zeitgeist items will explode out of it and your life will be changed forever.

It's a simple and fun game, and allows you to enjoy and participate in the playfulness of life.

Get a flask (Exercise #9)

A flask makes you feel old and young at the same time.  One one hand, children rarely carry flasks.  They're reserved more for serious alcoholics and snobs.  On the other hand, you can now sneak alcohol into any event.  It gives you the exhilaration of possibly doing something secret and wrong that reminds me (at least) of younger days.  Carrying a flask around you for a couple weeks (if you don't already) will give you a new perspective on public and private spaces.  If you don't drink alcohol, fill it with apple juice.  It doesn't matter!

Write out your ideal scene (Exercise #8)

This is step one in Marc Allen's The Millionaire Course, a book which I'm currently reading for the first time due to reading some interesting interviews and book reviews on Steve Pavlina's blog.  Writing out your own personal ideal scene for the future (for the next 5 years or so) seems like great advice, and advice that I for one am surprised is so difficult.

Most people would assume that they've got some kind of concrete vision for their lives.  One might say things like "I want to have that job, be madly in love, move to a tropical island, and have a million bucks."  Or, "I want to have my own restaurant, and drive a fancy car, and have a mansion full of hot love slaves."  I think there are a few things that get confused with an "ideal scene" as described by Marc Allen.

Fantasies

A fantasy is something that you daydream about, but who your inner critic doesn't actually think is for you.  These are the things that come out when you ask people what they would want in life if they could have anything.  Ask yourself.  And then, as soon as you utter your greatest dream for life, wait for that second voice to pop up (it can never stay quiet).  It'll say something like "Yeah, all I need to do is win the lottery." or, "That would've been nice 10 years ago, before X."  A fantasy that you believe is impossible is a dangerous thing to have because it feels like you have an ideal scene for your life when really it's just a fake placeholder that you would never actually try to make manifest.

"Practical" Scenes

These are scenarios that your inner critic comes up with.  Rather than a tropical island and a world famous rock band, you come up with "get promoted to assistant to the assistant manager within the next two years."  Or, "retile the bathroom sometime in the next year or so."  Sure, you've got crazy unrealistic fantasy above, but what's more immediate and makes more sense is a baby step scene that takes the smallest possible step of self-improvement that still qualifies as not standing completely still.

So, if these things aren't ideal scenes, then what is?

The Ideal Ideal Scene

Think on a five year time period.  This is a useful trick that helps you avoid generating false fantasies and scenes that are too limiting or practical.  Five years is a period of time that's long enough to be able to imagine great change in yourself, but also a period of time where you can imagine yourself looking similar, having the same personality, and general keep you from trying to wait for time travel and flying cars in order to acheive your goal.  If you want big change to happen in five years, it might help to start working on it now.

Be as creative as you can be.  The biggest limit to our own lives is our imagination.  For example, take your fantasies and your practical scenes.  How many other people would give the exact same answer to those questions as you do.  Yes, everyone would like to win the lottery even though studies have been made that lottery winners are rarely happier after 5, 10, and 20 years than they were before… in fact, Timothy Wilson in Strangers To Ourselves gives some interesting evidence that lottery winners are less happy after winning than they were before.  Try coming up with an ideal scene that fits your personality more than it fits anyone else's.  Something custom-tailored to your passions, dreams, and view of the world.  Let it get as wild as you wish… the imagination likes to be stretched.

Write it down.  Draw a picture.  Even if you can see everything perfectly in your mind for the ideal scene, write it down and keep it somewhere safe so that you can come back and read it in the future.  This ideal scene should eventually become the dominant vision for your life.  Stronger and more familiar than your doubts about it, more obvious as an eventual reality than as a forgotten daydream.  Do everything you can to make this ideal scene feel real, tangible, and certain.  Add to it over time, draw more pictures, fill in the details, and think about it often.  Marc Allen claims that as soon as this ideal scene is burned into your consciousness, you can begin making concrete steps towards it.  For now, just make the scene and see what comes out.

Some questions from the book to ask yourself that might help flesh out the ideal scene:

1. What kind of work and career do you have?
2. What is a typical day for you?
3. What are you doing to contribute to a better world?
4. Where do you live?
5. What are your most intimate relationships like?
6. What is your family life like?
7. How would someone close to you describe you?