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Advice, Stories

Don’t believe your own bullshit

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I had a friend in university who was a compulsive liar. By far the worst I’ve ever met. He had the most RIDICULOUS stories ever imaginable. I can’t even begin to describe the ridiculousness if I tried. I will try anyway…

Ok so there was this one about this cop who would get him cocaine. Super cop crosses the borders with a trunk full of the stuff. And the cop would give him as much of it as he wanted free of charge. The cop would also kill people for him. And make hookers have sex with him and his friends. And so on. You get the point. I’m still not even a sliver close to the ridiculousness of this cop story. It’s way better x10000. I cannot even go there, it’s way too elite for me. Sorry, I tried.

He had a million of these stories. They were never ending. Everybody knew he was full of shit. He’d look you right in the eye and just spew verbal diarrhea. He was a likable guy, and people liked him nonetheless. He built a reputation for being the nice guy who bullshitted everything. When he wasn’t around we’d swap stories on what lies he told for the day. It was entertaining and always good for a laugh. I wish tumblr was around back in the day, because the stories would make a great tumblr blog. The crazy thing is, I believe he actually believed his stories.

Most people lie. It’s the degree of lying that’s different. Telling the truth all of the time is actually kind of awkward. See http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707, it’s an article about “Radical Honesty”, which is about telling the truth all of the time.

The worst kind of lie is the kind that hurts others. This could be a lie that gets somebody beat up, arrested, financially destroyed, or some other awful thing. The next worst are the ones you tell yourself.

The ones you tell yourself are often subtle. They start off innocent enough. “I don’t have time to do…”, “I can’t do that because…”, “It’s not my fault because…”. These lies start to accumulate. A white lie here. A tiny lie there. Sooner or later, the lines start to blur. You are not sure what is real anymore. And then you turn into my college buddy with the super cop friend.

In other words, you start to fool yourself and become delusional. The lies you tell yourself start to become the lies you believe. So much so that you start telling them to others, as if they were true. Your friends believe them, until they don’t. Until you’ve tricked them enough times that they simply don’t believe anything you say anymore. They no longer believe your bullshit, even if you still do. See “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”.

People who are full of shit, don’t always know they are full of shit. It starts small. It starts innocent. Now the lies have taken over their life. This isn’t some Breaking Bad TV episode. This is the real deal. Do you consider yourself an honest person? Read Dan Ariely’s “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty”, it’s awesome. You’ll find some really interesting insights about human behaviour and honesty in that one. All I’ll say is that maybe you aren’t as honest as you think you are. Maybe you fudge the truth ever so slightly and convince yourself it’s the right thing to do just so it fits in your current reality. I know for certain I’m probably not as honest as I think I am. I just pray I know the difference between the bullshit I tell myself and the bullshit I tell myself that I actually believe. If not, hopefully the lies are good.

Habits, Mindset, Systems

Getting In the Ring

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It’s 12:30 am on a Saturday night (Sunday morning) and here I am typing on my laptop. I am trying to write. I forget how to. It’s pretty tough.

I spent the day trying to deploy the latest web app I’ve been working on for the past couple of months. It was as I expected – disaster. You know that law, Murphy’s. Damn you. It was the command line tool that I was supposed to install not installing. Then it was the bundle tool not working with the extremely useful error message…. “Error”. Then it was git acting up. Then the virtual instance. Then the internet connection. Shoot me now.

I’ve been trying to chunk my time. Four hours for some deep work. An hour to read. A half hour nap. An hour to write. And so on. It’s hard when shit doesn’t work. When things break and go bad. It’s hard to get into the habits when all I feel like doing is taking a sledge hammer to my computer. So I tinker, wait for the computer terminal to spit back some venomous error, and I tinker again. Rinse. Repeat. Next thing I know 6 hours have passed and I haven’t eaten. I haven’t progressed much, either. More time passes. More tinkering. More suckage. Screw it. White flag. Live to see another day. And now I’m here, trying to salvage my day.

I’ve been doing alright for the most part for the past 6 months. I’d give myself a B. I start the day strong, but post dinner I don’t have much juice left in me to write. I don’t have much juice to do anything. Not tired enough to sleep, too tired to think. Wah, I don’t want to do this. Everything is telling me to stop. Then I just start. And bam, here I am.

Damn, I’m at 300 words already. Then I remember how the pros do it. They just do. Screw motivation, they just do it. Then I remember how I am supposed to do it. Screw motivation, just do it already. It’s that simple. Simple, yes. Easy, hell no. But that’s why the pros are pros and the amateurs are not. Do I want to be an amateur or a pro? I know my answer. What’s yours?

Hey, what do you know. I have words, real words. Not bad. I’ll do this again tomorrow. Because I know habits take time. And consistency. I know processes and systems are better than willpower. But willpower can be strengthened anyway. Pros know this. Then they do it, even when they don’t want to. Need some sleep. Got to recover from the day’s beating. Tomorrow, I put on the gloves and get back in the ring. Rinse. Repeat.

Friends and Family, Goals, Habits, Life, Lifestyle, Me

2013 – Building Up Confidence

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Well, the end of 2013 is upon us, which means a new and exciting year awaits. Last year, in 2012, I took a leap of faith. This year, 2013, it was all about building up confidence. Next year, 2014, it’ll be all about execution.

The first half of 2013 I was still fumbling around like an idiot. My strength gains were stalling, I stumbled my way to launching Rentything, and I was still trying to transition into this new lifestyle and getting into the right habits and routines. But the latter half of the year I started finding my groove. I stopped getting injured so much, started making adjustments to my diet, to my routines, and to my environment. I stayed consistent in my activities with no expectation except to trust in the process. And guess what? The process started to work. Strength started to progress again, injuries were less frequent, productivity skyrocketed. Opportunities for growth in business, awareness of self, and happiness all improved steadily. In other words, I started to find my swagger.

I plan on taking this momentum with me into the new year. No fucking around, just consistent execution every. single. day. I really like where my head is at these days, and am in a very good place spiritually, physically, and emotionally as well. Just like 2013, I expect the first half of 2014 to be very different from the second half. There are some amazing things in technology that I am expecting in early 2014 that I am getting excited for that will have a large impact on my productivity and career for the rest of the year. It’s an amazing time to be alive, no doubt.

As for goals, I don’t really have anything concrete. I like to use goals more as a fun mental exercise rather than hard and fast guidelines to follow. I still want to continue getting stronger, and I think bigger (for a little bit while longer), but need to be careful not to neglect other aspects of physical health, such as sport specific training and aerobic capacity. I also need to do a much better job of blocking time off for important activities. This has been a huge challenge for me over the years, which causes me to spend too much time on certain activities (such as programming and reading) and not enough time on others (such as writing). If I can nail this, my activities will be less lopsided and more balanced.

Patience is something that I have spent the last few months working on improving, and I plan on continuing this practice. Even though I feel I’ve seen some big improvements on patience, I still see tons of room for improvement. Patience with myself, with family and friends, with personal and professional goals. All of it needs improving. Patience, patience, patience.

Happy New Year. Goodbye 2013, hello 2014. Bring it on, bitches!

Goals, Habits

Memrise vs DuoLingo

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So I have been using both Memrise and DuoLingo for over a year now to learn Spanish and thought it would be fun to compare the two. I’ve used DuoLingo longer and have recently finished the entire Spanish track.

What are they? Memrise is an online memorization tool. It uses flashcards, mnemonics, and spaced repetition to help memorize things. I think anybody can create a course and the courses vary from all sorts of topics, not just languages. I use it mainly for Spanish. DuoLingo is a language learning tool presented in a gamified way, complete with leaderboards, trophies, unlocking levels, and points.

Let’s try to compare them over various criteria randomly chosen from my brain.

Design – Winner: DuoLingo
They are both nicely designed actually, but DuoLingo is absolutely beautiful. It plays out so much like a video game, or journey of sorts that you can really tell they put a lot of thought into. Memrise, on the other hand, while still nice looking, isn’t quite as polished as DuoLingo. That isn’t to knock Memrise, though, because I can’t think of many websites or apps quite as polished as DuoLingo. It really is tops for design.

Usability – Winner: DuoLingo
Slight edge here, but the controls on DuoLingo are just slightly more intuitive. You press Enter or number keys or hover over words and DuoLingo just responds exactly the way you’d want it to respond. Colors change and sounds are triggered appropriately if you do something right versus wrong in both programs. If you get something right, things turn green and you hear pleasant sounds. Things go wrong, and things turn red. With Memrise, you don’t quite have the flexibility in controls like you do in DuoLingo, in my opinion. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes you are forced to use the mouse only in certain exercises versus being able to use the keyboard, too. With DuoLingo, it is a more consistent experience.

Effectiveness – Tie
Tough to tell. Memrise is simply memorizing words and phrases, with little helpful mnemonics to help you better understand whatever you are trying to memorize. DuoLingo, on the other hand, has a larger focus on the traditional way of learning languages, with nouns and verbs and sentences and all of that fun stuff. It’s hard to tell if one is better than the other, but I will say that without a doubt they complement each other very, very well. Many times I’ll be doing a lesson in DuoLingo and know words I have already memorized from Memrise, thus helping with my understanding of the lesson.

Fun – Winner: Memrise
Memrise is just more fun, period. Because when you are done “planting”, aka doing a lesson, there isn’t a pass or fail. You get a message, some stats and a percentage of how accurate you were, and you can’t fail and are never forced to do the lesson again. You just simply get more practice on the words and phrases you struggled with during your next “planting” session. And when you are ready to “water the plants”, aka refresh lessons, you conveniently get more practice on the words you struggled with, and less so on the words you breezed through. With DuoLingo, not so much. I can’t even tell you how many times I cursed at the screen because I’d accidently spelled a word incorrectly, thus losing a heart. Three hearts is all you get, and then you fail and have to start over. So many times I was on the very last stage of a lesson with zero hearts left, only to fail because of something silly. You ever play a video game and are right at the end only to get stymied? You know how frustrating that is, right? Well DuoLingo is like that x1000. They have recently improved the three hearts rule by letting you fix your mistakes in a stage, thus only removing half a heart, but it is still nowhere near as fun as Memrise. This one isn’t even close.

Replayability – Winner: Memrise
Now that I am done the Spanish track on DuoLingo, I’m not sure what to do. I still do the daily practice, and I try to do the timed practice and fail miserably, but aside from that and the real life translations, there isn’t much to do except for try and pick up another language (which I don’t want to do as I still haven’t even gotten Spanish yet). Memrise, on the other hand, has so much material on Spanish alone it is staggering. I won’t be done with it anytime soon. I recall reading something recently about DuoLingo opening up their platform to allow others to contribute courses as well, so their limited language courses/materials might change in the future.

Innovation – Winner: DuoLingo
Overall, I think DuoLingo is moving at a quicker pace than Memrise. They both have mobile apps, but DuoLingo keeps rolling out features like crazy. DuoLingo is actually really cool, because it not only helps you learn Spanish but it also helps translate real articles and websites into different languages. That’s the innovation from DuoLingo: take an article from the interweb, let 100 people try to translate it into a different language, if they can come to an agreement with a certain amount of accuracy, chances are the translation is pretty good. Genius! Memrise also has a pretty innovative approach. Take a word as a flashcard and add a mnemonic to it. Let anybody add a mnemonic, thus you have a crowdsourced version of flashcards. I have found that looping through various user submitted mnemonics helps reinforce words quite well. Anyway, I’m rambling. Bottom line, DuoLingo now has courses, practice – both regular and timed, immersion of real world articles, forum discussions, and vocabulary practice, and they keep on coming. Memrise still goes with the flashcard and spacing approach, but they are mixing it up a little bit with different ways to interact and answer questions.

Overall – Winner: Memrise
Fun and replayability go a long way. Despite many of DuoLingo’s advantages, I still much prefer Memrise to DuoLingo. With DuoLingo, some days I actually don’t want to do anything on it, but never with Memrise. I almost always look forward to plant and water in Memrise. However, there are some things I absolutely hate about Memrise. For example, the word for car has many alternatives in Spanish (like 3 or 4 that I have run into so far). Well the answer it is expecting is only 1 (or 2, at best). So even though you are right, it isn’t the answer Memrise is expecting and you get the question wrong, wtf!! Super annoying, but at least you get to keep playing unlike DuoLingo which fails you and forces you to start over if you run out of hearts.

So which should you choose? Well, none, if language learning isn’t your thing. But if you have the time, and like free, and prefer to learn at your own pace, then do both. Like I said earlier, they complement each other quite while. It does take a little bit of dedication and consistent practice, though. Dabblers beware, you’re just wasting your time if you can’t get into a routine with them. Also, I definitely wouldn’t say that either of these programs are the best way to learn a language. There are paid alternatives such as Pilmsleur and Rosetta Stone, as well. Are they more effective? Perhaps, but again they do require some dedication. I still think the best way to learn a language is total immersion – that is, move to the country that speaks the language, and only speak that language and not your native tongue (I have never done this so this is a very light opinion). However, for practicality purposes, I think that DuoLingo and Memrise are very attractive choices.

Goals, Habits, Life, Mindset

1 Year Later

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It’s been over a year now since I started on my entrepreneurial journey, and boy have I learned a lot. I’ve made a ton of mistakes, learned from them, and gotten just a tad wiser. At least, I think. I’ll continue to make mistakes, of course, and that’s par for the course. So many unbelievable opportunities have opened up because I finally had the courage to start believing in myself. But man, was I ever nervous as hell. To an extent, I still am from time to time, and I don’t think that will ever go away. But I sure am glad I took that first step over 1 year ago. I’ll never look back.

 

My life is so much different now. Faster, better, happier, more resilient, more courageous, more patient. I’m a lucky dude. Great friends, great family. That decision to move back to where I grew up was one of the toughest decisions I ever made. I sacrificed a lot, left a lot behind, and made some tough and unpopular decisions. And now I’m better for it. Looking back over a year later, it seems like a no brainer. Why the hell did it take so long?

 

My $80,000 tuition bill is paid. I’m debt free now. Feels good, feels real good. My Spanish has improved tremendously. In fact, I am almost done the entire Spanish course on Duolingo. I sure am glad I started learning Spanish over 1 year ago (probably closer to 1.5 years actually).

 

And my strength? I started barbell training late July of last year. I had no clear goals in mind. I wanted to be stronger, not superhuman level but not pathetic either. Now I’m squating over 300 lbs and deadlifting 2.5 times my bodyweight. And I remember at first I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend all of that money buying a power rack and barbells and weights last summer. Idiot, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

 

Am I where I want to be with my entrepreneurial pursuits? No. Am I where I want to be with my language learning? No. Am I as strong as I want to be? No. But fuck, I am leaps and bounds ahead of where I was 1 year ago.

 

My point is in this moment we all have our doubts, and they never go away. Those doubts are there for your protection, but often times they do more harm then good. If I listened to them, I’d probably be stuck in a dead end job working for the man paying off my debt for eternity and living in slow and silent misery. But every time I felt that doubt I simply decided to act inspite of it and in spite of my reservations. I watch this awesome girl do her thing and I’m convinced that that’s how it goes down

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daC2EPUh22w

 

You see, at first, you look like a moron. You just do. And you probably feel silly, too. But sooner or later, things start to click. Sometimes it takes forever. Spanish, for example, is not something I pick up quickly. It could be my material or my methods, or it could just be I am not really gifted in linguistics (or a combination). But strength has accelerated beyond my wildest expectations. I wasn’t particularly good at rock climbing, but first person shooter games like Quake 3 I excelled at very quickly. Some things you’re just going to be naturally gifted at, and other things not so much. But what matters the most is consistent, deliberate effort.

 

This summer I started running. For years I’ve told my friends how much I hated running. I thought it was deathly boring and repetitive and I never got into the zone while running and I never felt a runners high. Well I’ve been at it for 4 months now and I still find it boring and repetitive and I still haven’t gotten into the zone or felt a runner’s high. But I can feel it starting to make sense. It might not come anytime soon, but if I keep at it, it will. It’s an inevitability.

 

After a long hiatus, I am back training jiu jitsu again. My timing is coming back quickly and the muscle memory is there. And I’m a whole heck of a lot stronger now. I’ll give it a year of consistent and deliberate practice, and have another look back. I bet I’m going to be better.

 

So what’s that thing you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t gotten around to it? Start today, because 1 year from now you’re going to be +9000 at it. Go ahead, give yourself permission.

Mindset

Vulnerability is Strength

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I’m going to let you in on a little secret: machoness is overrated. There are macho dudes that ARE macho because it is who they are, and then there is everybody else trying to be macho. Macho guys are strong, and the fake machos are not. The fake machos lack strength and they try really hard to hide this fact by acting macho. Little do they know that what’s stronger and sexier than acting macho is acknowledging weakness and exposing vulnerability. That’s true power.

Look at this:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HpC6GVjC18

That’s strength right there. To believe in his art so intensely that he would take huge career risks to dress up as a woman, look hideously, and cry about it because of what he believes to be flaws in the human condition. Hoffman, a true artisan. Think he could have gotten there by acting macho? Nope, probably not.

Vulnerability is not weakness as we are so often led to believe, it is true strength. Healthy relationships cannot thrive without vulnerability. Mastery, a road paved with failure, setbacks and roadblocks cannot occur without vulnerability. Realizing that you probably do look silly, you are weak, and people probably are laughing at you, but you are going to try your best anyway (just kidding about people laughing at you, rarely does anybody care). That’s vulnerability, and man is it powerful.

Artists are vulnerable every time they show the world their art. Musicians are vulnerable any time they release new music. Architects, dancers, actors, entrepreneurs, builder of things, the shakers, movers and the doers, they are all vulnerable.

Critics, man. Always the critics. They come at you from all angles, trying to attack you whenever you step out into the world with your art. Don’t act macho and don’t put up your walls. Feel the sting, take the hits, fall on your ass, and get right back up. That’s vulnerability and that is also a great source of strength.

There is no honesty, no self expression, no courage without vulnerability. It is there for a reason. To pass it off as weakness and to shun it away is a great disservice to yourself. But do not confuse vulnerability with cowardice, whininess, or childishness. Vulnerability is opening up the soul for others to see and comes from strength and power while the others come from the same place that acting macho comes from – a lack of maturity, the ego, excuses, and so on all in the name of self preservation and the status quo. They are weak efforts to try to maintain or improve upon your position in the social heirarchy. Vulnerability is giving up your position altogether, to start from the bottom because it feels right, consequences be damned, and saying screw the social heirarchy. And who knows, maybe…. just maybe, one day you’ll end up at the top.

Say it with me: “I am scared and I am vulnerable. And that’s ok.”

Goals, Habits, Life

Practice Your Craft

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. – Aristotle

Bah. I suck. I’ve been hesitant to write lately and seem to have a mental block. Trying to come up with content to write about for Rentything has been a challenge. There’s a reason for this. I haven’t practiced, and I haven’t been consistent.

If you want to get good at something, you must must must practice consistently and deliberately. There are no shortcuts. It is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for success. Anything less simply doesn’t cut it. The path to mastery is littered with failure and setbacks, but this shouldn’t stop you from trying. There are skills that I believe have a huge return on investment and are definitely worth learning. Some of these include:

 

1. General strength training

Not being generally strong is a terrible thing. There are so many reasons to be strong that the list is exhausting. Some of the reasons include being functionally useful in a variety of activites, such as helping friends move, gardening, playing with your kids, and so on. Strength makes almost all activites better and very few worse. And the best part is strength is something that can be earned, significantly, if you are willing to put in your time, probably more so than most other types of physical activites.

 

2. Social skills

This is the one that most people believe is either you have or do not have, which is simply a FALSE belief. Social skills are a game of practice and encompass a huge variety of skills including the ability to listen, to empathise, to connect, to understand, to adapt, and so on. And believe it or not, going out and meeting people and trying different things will improve your skills. On the flipside, not going out consistently and generally hiding from people will make you more socially inept. This is my current situation and is something I am fully aware of. Social skills take consistent practice, just like anything else. And the skills will get rusty.

 

3. Writing

Writing a lot will get you better. I’ve never heard of any writer any time in the history of writing who wrote masterpieces on their first try, it simply doesn’t happen. And when you don’t write frequently, it is a struggle, kind of like what is happening to me write now. Typing these words on this keyboard is very unnatural and coming up with the right words is difficult, and yet I have nobody else to blame except myself.

 

4. Programming

This is something very important to me at the moment, and so is something I spend the majority of my days/time on. I notice if I take days off, it takes a while to get back into the groove of things. Just like many skills, the more consistent the practice the better you get.

There are an infinite number of skills you could spend the rest of your life trying to learn, but you won’t be able to learn them all. I would say getting relatively good at a skill isn’t too difficult if you are willing to put in your time, but obtaining mastery requires extreme dedication and time. Two ways of getting good at a skill are to go full immersion or to spend a little bit of time each day practicing. If we take the full immersion route, there is not much room to learn other skills for the time being. Spending a little bit of time each day allows you to develop other skills without getting overwhelmed on one specific skill.

There are skills you’ll get good at throughout your life. Some, such as driving, will become second nature to you. Others you’ll naturally let die due to lack of interest (like that one time you tried pottery). Others you’ll get rusty on due to lack of practice. This is my current situation with skills such as rock climbing, writing, and jiu jitsu. If you don’t want those ones to go away, start practicing them again. Generally they come back pretty quickly. Having a variety of skills in your repertoire is important, and having a few with full mastery is even better. I think they call it becoming a T shaped person (generalist in many areas, expertise in a few). In my opinion this is a good strategy and one I strive for myself. The skills you get better/worse at will likely be constantly in flux, but don’t worry about it. That’s part of the ebb and flow of life. Just remember to practice consistently.