The main thing that has really impacted my productivity and happiness is following a set routine for an hour whenever I get up. So I do the following :<p><pre><code> 1. Brush
2. Meditate - 15 minutes
3. Write - I usually write "3 things that I am grateful for" and "3 things to focus on that particular day"
4. Exercise - 15 minute run
</code></pre>
I do this whenever I get up. So it's not like I get up at 6 in the morning everyday. I just get up 6 hours after sleeping. The advice was given one one of Tim Ferris' podcast and has done wonders for me. I would highly recommend trying it out.<p>Start small. If 15 minutes of anything is too much start with 5 minutes. That's what I did.
This looks like an attempt to monetize an evangelical Christian concept.[1]<p>From the article: <i>The ideal attitude is what she calls Abundant Thinking — a mindset that gives you the creative agency and grit to reach your vision — and, on a daily basis, to design your own life. When Verresen first meets most of her clients, they’re in reactive mode. It’s like they’re in a movie, acting in their job and life without knowing the script or having perspective. Her goal is to put them in the director’s chair, with more choices, perspectives and possibilities to rewrite and upgrade the script as they go.</i><p>From an evangelical site: <i>One way of viewing abundant life is to see when people have been changed by the power of Christ; they live different lives, which affects all aspects of their experience. In missiololgy, we call that "redemption and lift." This isn’t just true individually, but can also be on a cultural level. So, spiritual change, accompanied by better decisions, does often lead to better circumstances financially. (Sometimes it get's you arrested and martyred, so don't miss the point here.)"</i><p>[1] <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/march/what-does-it-mean-to-have-abundant-life.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/march/what-d...</a>
<i>Called Paths to Power, it emphasizes the importance of neutrality: The world is not fair or unfair. It simply is. The more you can suspend judgment, the more you can learn and grow your power.</i><p>Not to be cynical about this approach, but having studied some of these concepts from a Mahayana Buddhist perspective, the idea of utilizing the perspective of Beginner's Mind to "grow your power" is a gross misappropriation and misunderstanding of the entire framework. In fact, within the traditions that originally conceived of these approaches, attachment to power, fame, and/or wealth is seen as the root cause of suffering and mental disenfranchisement and the very conceptualization that is to be let go [0].<p>Perhaps I need to look into this course a bit more to understand their approach but it seems that this is right in line with what many Buddhist scholars have worried - i.e., that these ancient traditions will be misunderstood and reformed in a way that may have wholly unhealthy effects on those who practice it.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths#Second_truth:_arising_or_origin_of_dukkha" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths#Second_truth...</a>
><i>The ideal attitude is what she calls Abundant Thinking</i><p>When I see a marketable name for such things, I immediately know it's some BS mix-match of hogwash to sell to people in need.<p>And sure enough: "sought-after executive coach Katia Verresen, who counsels leaders at Facebook, Stanford, Airbnb, Twitter, and a number of prominent startups".
These concepts also work really well for dating and relationships. If you approach girls with a scarcity mindset, you tend to be a lot more needy, insecure and generally feel like a victim.<p>If you approach girls with an abundance mentality, you're much less needy, more confident and you don't really care about the outcome. You're just there to learn about her, and if she's not interested, well, there's plenty of other girls that will be.
So she sells coaching to already successful and wealthy people that amounts to those banners they used to have around my elementary school that said "Attitude is a little thing that goes a long way"?<p>Hooray for snake oil.
>>"Priming is engaging in any activity that boosts your emotional and mental energy ... [like] photos that make you happy."
That's Asian cats from Instagram for me!<p>I'm usually a bit skeptical of bullet point advice like this as reading it always seem like self-evident truism; I think people have to really experience it in order to understand its proper depth. But I'm glad that self-compassion is mentioned here because it's not preached very often and prob less intuitive. When I realised about it in one eureka moment (I know!) almost immediately I could have more respect for myself and found it much easier to forgive personal flaws and mistakes. So if you ever find yourself kicking and loathing over something, do a mental "There, there" patting on your head! You'll begin to see life in a much more whimsical, Woody Allen way :)
Famous counterexample to this is the stuff about crisis leadership from a few years ago:<p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/08/02/first_rate_madness_interview/" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/2011/08/02/first_rate_madness_interview...</a><p>This guy's thesis is that in tough times, mental illness is associated with leadership effectiveness. His examples are Lincoln and WT sherman. (the stats argument here ends up being pretty weak).<p>Bottom line -- it's really hard to grade heuristics unless you have enough knowledge to restrict the situations which may occur in the future (and if you do, it's no longer a heuristic).
The power of positive thinking has to be one of the most undervalued capital. I would really like to see if there are any counter examples to this thinking that have worked for others.
It sounds like a self improvement system built on top of this:<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky-its-an-easy-skill-to-learn.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky-its-a...</a>
That table layout is really bad on a large screen, at some point there's a nice max for a font and I really don't need giant fonts or text as images. That image is gigantic [1]. And that header hiding animation is so annoying. Why do you do this. :(<p>[1] <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/marquee-test-akiaisur2rgicbmpehea/Wzqzlm1ITymebh6BLin3_Screen%20Shot%202016-04-19%20at%208.04.33%20AM.png" rel="nofollow">https://s3.amazonaws.com/marquee-test-akiaisur2rgicbmpehea/W...</a>
I think the most important thing about this kind of advice is not to generalize it. For some people it works and for some people it doesn't work. There is no self-help advice that works for everybody.<p>Also: The advice given is not complete. The people who have success with this do the things the article describes, but they also do some important things the article doesn't describe.
Hand-wavy garbage. In my mind, there are only three things that matter when it comes to business success: Company reputation, ability to deliver and who you know. Everything else is either not important or fits under one of those tenets.