General Improvements:

• No more smoking (though it did take two months to get my concentration back)
• 8 hours of sleep per night (up from 6)
• Minimal alcohol consumption (I never drank that much, but I now drink alcohol once a month or less.  I think I’m more sensitive to sugars than anything else)
• Six hours or more of intense aerobic exercise a week cycling, and 11 of mild exercise (walking the new dog).    I think I’m close to the optimal level of physical activity for maximum brain function.

Workplace Improvements

• I have  strong “Owl” Chronotype and I now work with that.  I wake up later and work later than previously.
• I discovered my peak creative production hours (defined loosely as the hours where my brain maximizes my working memory) and schedule my hardest work in those hours.  The hours are between 2:00 and 5:00 PM, just fyi.  I do the less creative work in the non-peak hours (such as accounting, tech support, email, etc)
• I use the Pomodoro Technique for everything these days.  I use this online timer.\
• The phone, email, Twitter, etc are turned off while I’m working, the door is closed and the dogs are outside.
• I describe everything I’m trying to do (via the Pomodoro Technique) in writing before I actually do the work.

So far the results impress me.  I work slightly less, but I produce more per hour and I feel less stress or anxiety than I did before I started.

What should I try next?  I still consume legendary amounts of caffeine, and my desk and office are far too messy, but what else besides that?

photo credit: jurvetson

The 12 things (with my notes in bold and italic)

1. EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power. – The most important chapter.  Short version – if you exercise your brain will be smarter and it won’t get dementia.  I’ve put this to the test, and I am more focused with exercise than without.
2. SURVIVAL | Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too. – Not that memorable, good background information.
3. WIRING | Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.- Not that memorable, good background information.
4. ATTENTION | Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.- Intuitive,  and general background information
5. SHORT-TERM MEMORY | Rule #5: Repeat to remember. – Important, counter intuitive info on memory.
6. LONG-TERM MEMORY | Rule #6: Remember to repeat.- Important, counter intuitive info on memory.
7. SLEEP | Rule #7: Sleep well, think well. – The second most informative chapter.  I had always thought of sleep as a time of rest, it turns out to be a very active process for the brain.   Sleep is when the brain cleans and restocks itself.
8. STRESS | Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. – I had no idea that stress was the physical reaction that it is.  This is the third most important chapter.
9. SENSORY INTEGRATION | Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses. – Good advice for graphic designers.
10. VISION | Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses. –  mostly background information.
11. GENDER | Rule #11: Male and female brains are different . – we knew this already, but Medina tells us how male and female brains differ.
12. EXPLORATION | Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers. –  mostly background information.

From this book I have made the following changes in life

• I am distance cycling again
• I sleep eight hours or more per night
• I structure presentations differently (in accordance with the memory chapters).
• When I do graphic and information design I use more graphics and less text

After reading this book I life a more positive, more effective, and less stressful life.  Thank you Dr Medina.

photo credit: laszlo-photo

When I hear an interview with someone who attended a “top-tier”, “elite”, or “Ivy League” university all the graduate ever seems to mention are the connections they obtained while attending the university.  Ivy League graduates also point out that there is no other place they could have made such connections.  The quality of the education goes unmentioned.  As I am creating a web startup based on connections, connection making institutions fascinate me, but I wonder about the educational value of these institutions.  The institutions select their graduates by exclusive criteria by an measure, but for fields that are not connection based (I am defining connection based fields as government, politics, American big business and the like) I can’t recall that many Ivy League graduates.

I’ve been trying to think of musicians, authors, comedians, software developers and bootstrapped entrepreneurs who attended elite American universities and I’m coming up with very few names.  Are these schools just self-selected connection factories?  Stressing connections over education may well be a more productive strategy for our networked society.  Do Ivy League universities spend much time on teaching the fundamentals of their degrees?  My brushes with Ivy League graduates in the business world (this is quite a small sample mind you) have generated the following observations:

• The Ivy Leaguer will always tell you where he or she attended college with no prompting.
• The Ivy Leaguer will always be young for the position he or she is in
• The Ivy Leaguer will not seem particularly competent at the position
• The Ivy Leaguer will name drop like crazy
• The Ivy Leaguer will mangle the concepts of “Tactics” and “Strategy” to avoid specifics of their ideas

Perhaps creative people don’t need college at all (my thought), or if they do, they don’t mention it anywhere near as much.  The status given to Ivy League institutions could just be a magnifier of that fact.

Just random thoughts on a Thursday morning.

photo credit: rawheadrex

• Owning Money – how much money do you have in the bank account, or can be converted to cash quickly.  Most people regard money wealth as the only wealth
• Owning Time – How much time do you have in the average week/month/year that is under your control?  Do you spend 90 hours a week working in a job you hate?   Do you spend 30 hours a week doing housework, maintaining electronic gear, smiling at people you don’t care about, or commuting?   If so, you possess little time, no matter how much money you can spend.  Tim Ferriss is the best explainer of this notion.  Read his blog (and book).  (I include  his book, The Four Hour Workweek on my all time top ten list of books.  I intend to write a time-wealth calculator at some point.)

Up until reading the Farmville article I limited my definitions of wealth to the above two categories.  Reading the article crystallized my notion of clan wealth.

Please note, I’m using the Southern American definition of Clan, which I define as a group of people related by blood, marriage, friendship, or history of friendship which has an intricate network of mutual obligations and debts and acts as one unit on divisive issues.  (Please also note, nothing in this post relates to the KKK).  In American pop history the Hatfield and the McCoy groups serve as the best example of clans.

I define Clan wealth as membership and position in the clan.    Clan Wealth is a product of relative position within the group times the overall strength of the clan as a whole.  Someone rich in clan wealth would be someone able to make decisions for a powerful group of people, much like Joseph Kennedy.  IIRC Tim Ferris writes about this in his book, but he defines clan membership as a means to the other forms of wealth, i.e. a tool, not wealth in and of itself.  The Farmville essay delves deeper into the inner workings of mutual obligations.  I do not intend to invest many resources into this version of wealth, but quiet millions of people are investing their time and money (the other two forms) into developing clan wealth right now.

More thoughts on this to come I’m sure.

Update: 4-27-2010 corrected link

photo credit: Jeff Belmonte

Kennedy survived the crash “because he possessed a passion for facts, a complete lack of sentiment and a marvelous sense of timing.”

The above tendencies are usually descibed as “shrewd”, but it is informative to see the tendencies listed out like that.

The article mentions information monopolies and private intelligence services as well.    Federal regulators call what Kennedy (and others) did insider trading these days but economists call it “asymmetrical information”, i.e. information you have that other people don’t.  In the stock market such information is a regulated good, but everywhere else people call  asymmetrical information an essential part of  sales and marketing.  You (by definition) have more information about your product and customers than your competition and those facts define opportunity.

I see Stronico as a “wetware” application, i.e. a brain helper you can use to organize information in meaningful ways.  By being able to visualize your social network you should be able to see opportunities that you would otherwise not be able to see.  Granted, in Joseph Kennedy’s case it was information on publicly held companies and their stock prices, in the Stronico user’s case it would be the purchasing manager at XYZ Co needs a new water system, but Stronico serves as an informal intelligence system, populated by your day to day experiences.  Time to tweak some marketing…

[Setup - In the early days of CNN and Turner Broadcasting Ted Turner would prowl his office building and drop in unannounced into random meetings.   One day he walked into a meeting where people were planning a cross-channel week-long special on dinosaurs]

Speaker – “Okay – now all we need to do now is come up with the name.”

[Assembled marketing people] – “Prehistoric Times”, “Before the Comet”, “Things That Walked Tall”, etc, etc

Slowly Ted Turner raises his hand.

Speaker (nervously) – “Yes Mr Turner”

Ted Turner: “Why don’t you call it “Dinosaur”

Speaker (nervously) – “Well, Mr Turner, we were looking to convey a bigger brand and feel than simply calling it dinosaur.  Does anyone else have any other ideas?”

[Assembled marketing people] – “A Different Kind of Tail”, “Some Were Vegetarians”, “Jurassic Park – For Real!”, etc, etc

Ted Turner: “Why don’t you call it “Dinosaurs”

Speaker (even more nervously) – “Mr Turner, that’s still not what we’re looking for.”

Ted Turner: “About twenty years ago I started a cable news network.  You know what I called it?  Cable News Network!”

The marketing people named their special “Dinosaurs“

In Sum: The Turner Rule: If  you cannot decide quickly on a marketing matter, just be obvious.

photo credit: mil8

• Nootropics: their effects, their risks, and where to get them – I think I’ll be picking up some Thiamine and sticking with that, as the others seem a bit scary.  It is a fascinating bit of research though.  Nootropics are “Smart Drugs”
• How to get Smarter – these are all fairly basic, but I intend to find some way to test them as part of my measuring everything possible campaign of 2010.

The first link is far better than the first, but you should read them both.  Upgrade your wetware!

photo credit: Andrew Mason

For whatever reason I find this sort of open, public, rule based scheduling more appealing than the current approach most companies (including mine) follow.  As one must commit to software these days the process of development is important to my decision to buy in the first place.  I’m not sure I have any real reason to believe in this, but it would seem that this approach would be more likely to fix problems that actually exist, as well as resulting in greater usability.

In sum, the idea is that software scheduling should have the following characteristics

• Performance over new features
• Separation of performance development and new feature development
• Published scheduling
• Transparency for timelines

Thoughts?  This is actually close to Milton Friedman’s idea of a monetary rules to replace a gold standard, instead of monetary policy being arbitrarily set by the Federal Reserve.

photo credit: Peter Kaminski

Then I had the thoughts:

1. Why not have a website (of course) where I could give away handmade prizes in exchange for information
2. The items made on the lathe’s would be one-offs, the best tip, tidbit, etc per month would win the price, which would probably be a gavel of some sort.
3. There would be a new topic every month, as well as a new prize
4. Later be the prize could be for the best entry on the free educational versions of Stronico as well (more on that to come).
5. The information would have to be in the form of short, freeform entries, or tips, on a particular topic, either mneumonics, cooking, woodworking, typing, or whatever.  Ideally there would be some voting involved, but initially I would choose the monthly winner and send out the prize.

The next challenge I suppose would be how to structure it to support Stronico, either as a promotional site, or as a freeware standalone part of the social networking/mnemonics/brainware part of the internet.

That’s my idea for the day anyway – I thought I would share my thought process with everyone.  I find it helpful to flesh out the idea in words instead of leaving it unformed in my head.

photo credit: Robert S. Donovan