Photo by Zach Bulick

Just as I think it’s valuable to look back on the last 12 months of progress, I also think that planning is at the core of actually getting what you want in life. This post is the counter-part to my 12 month review post.

What’s the big picture?

My purpose is to grow, with courage & openness, sharing love & honesty, and inspiring others to do the same.

I wrote that early 2011 and I’m pleased that 12 months on it still resonates strongly.

As I mentioned in my 2011 review, I’m at a unique point in my life – I feel like I’ve just hit the reset switch in many ways. I’ve cleared out all the clutter, have ended almost all the projects I was working on and now have a clean slate with a lot of available capacity. The challenge is to make the most of this opportunity and not just get lazy and pile a bunch of crap back in. Already this week I’ve spent more time than I care to admit playing iPhone games.

If I look out to the horizon, and try and picture where I want to be 3 years from now, there’s a number of themes that I identify with. Above all else I want to continually experience situations that challenge me and force me to think about myself, the things I do, the people I spend time with and the world around me as a whole. Already I’m beginning to identify things I’m doing here in Beijing that aren’t optimal and I will need to change at some point.

My vision for the future is surprisingly clear, and I can see for the first time how some of the different aspects of my life are likely to come together. I reads like this:

I have developed my mandarin language ability to a point where I can think & speak without having to translate to english. I can read newspapers, understand marketing messages and work in mandarin, needing to look up or clarify unknown words only a few times a day. Every day I work with people I respect and admire, in a way that plays to my strengths and utilises my language ability. It is with an Australian, American or Chinese based company or companies, that has a profit motive, which does business between East / West, heavily utilising new technologies. My role is meaningful, inspires me to do my best work & I am compensated at the top of the industry. I live between China and a 2nd country, and spend most of my time in China.

My life is simple, unhurried & focused. I earn enough that outright cost is never a factor in my decisions. I have amazing friends and a peer group that shares my values & supports me in the things I choose to do. I have a relationship with a woman who is intelligent, caring, shares my values, offers a different perspective and is accomplished in her own right. My environment is free of clutter, warm, nurturing and gives me what I need.

I am fit and healthy and know how to get the best from my body. I am at all times confident, secure, relaxed and unthreatend by interactions with other people and all social situations. I am regularly approached for advice.

A lot of that sounds a bit wanky, but I’m going to run with it anyway.

Some principles

Just as last year, there are a number of principles I’d like to follow, they’re mostly the same but with a few tweaks:

Help others, when it doesn’t burden me to do so
Essentially this is a combination of charity, generosity & contribution.

Be honourable, honest & authentic with myself and others
One of things I’ve been noticing in myself and others lately is how we talk about other people in their absence. When someone I’m with bad mouths another person I’m always disappointed. But it’s something that I do too and I’d like stop. Quite often I am hyper-critical of others, but I feel this needs to be at all times delivered in a way that caring and respectful – would I say the same if they were standing next to me? This doesn’t mean i have to pretend to like everyone, or stop being critical – it just means that whatever I say must come from a place of caring rather than spite or jealousy or envy.

Give everyone a chance
I’m insanely judgemental.

Your shoes don’t match your belt? Clearly you’re an idiot.

While it would be nice to pretend that I could switch this off, at the moment I don’t think it’s something I can change. Rather, I’m going to accept that I judge, acknowledge this, and then work to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise.

Do what’s important first
Too often I get caught up in being busy, rather than doing the things that matter.

Banish mediocrity from my life

Make time daily to check in with my vision, identify what the important tasks are that support this vision, then execute them

Be elegant & take my time to do things right

With the vision above and the principles I’ve outlined, must of course come practical, actionable steps.  For many of these I’m will develop a separate plan of attack but for the time being I’m just going to list them.  Some will no-doubt get their own post in the future.

Practical stuff

• Develop a daily rhythm, that helps me perform at my best & stick to it 6 days a week,
• Do a 3 month HSM (starting 25 Jan 2012),
• Exercise regularly, current options are yoga, dance, hiking,
• Develop my mandarin so I can have a casual conversation effortlessly & read a newspaper,
• Develop my online income streams to a point where I am earning $500 pm,
• Produce a meaningful body of work that is a calling card for amazing job offers,
• Build my china network,
• Bring an existing niche website to a point where it aligns with my principles & write a case study,
• Write regularly; and
• Develop and test a video marketing business idea.

                                      

Photo by Nick McIntosh

For the last couple of years now, I’ve been doing an annual review and making a plan for the upcoming year.

This post is my 2011 review, and it will be followed by my 2012 plan in the coming week or so. To review my year, I go back through all my photos, videos, blog posts, emails, calendar entries and journal to jog my memory about what projects I worked on, the people I spent time with and the places I visited. This year I also made a number of video journals as well as keeping some written notes as to my thoughts and emotions during the last 12 months – these in particular have been really interesting to look over as I can clearly see the emotional peaks and troughs I experienced.

If you’re interested you can also read my 2010 review and my 2009 review.

At the start of 2011, I set a number of goals, a summary of which were to…

• provide a meaningful contribution to others,
• show generosity with my time and money,
• improve my honesty with myself and everyone around me,
• be open to new ideas, people and situations,
• manage my time effectively, every day,
• produce my best work. EVER; and
• be elegant.

With some more specific plans to…

• learn 100 mandarin characters (simplified),
• complete 2 short-term consulting jobs to complement my existing client work,
• book flights for my next overseas trip,
• monitor and improve my health; and
• create 1 new source of cash flow.

So how did I do?

Incredibly, I hit everything except the mandarin, but I’m happy to say that I’m well on the way and I also feel like a did a good job of sticking to the principles that I outlined.

Some of the things I did were…

• measured my generosity & did some volunteering,
• exercised regularly and even went so far as to do a couple of experiments with gaining muscle mass,
• built an income producing niche website that is generating a small amount of money (enough to pay my mobile phone bill) each month,
• took a 1 month trip to China and tested if my business was location independent,
• worked with some great people, on projects I found interesting, doing things that played to my strengths,
• worked hard in my business and made enough money to cover my costs,
• continued participating in a Men’s Circle; and
• worked hard with my friend Gideon on a new business idea.

There were also a number of things that came to an end in 2011…

• after 3 years of running The Hive in Brisbane with Mike & Walter, we decided not to continue running the event in 2012; and
• after 2.5 years of meeting monthly with several friends and discussing our goals, we decided mid year that GAS had run it’s course.

But by far and away the 2 biggest things that impacted me were…

• my 3 year relationship with my girlfriends came to an end at the start of 2011; and
• selling everything I own, and leaving Australia to live indefinitely in China in December 2011.

The relationship that ended at the start of 2011 is the longest relationship I’ve had and I had no appreciation for the emotional turmoil that I would experience as a result. After looking over my journal notes, it clearly dominated my emotional state for the first half of the year and I owe my friends a lot for listening to me and giving me support during that period.

External influences

Last year there were also several events that happened around me that impacted my thinking and my actions, until now I haven’t really acknowledged or noticed things external to my little bubble but during 2011 I watched my friends face challenges and succeed, time and time again:

• Clint walked the length of the South Island of NZ,
• Mike launched Cupstart,
• Simon completed his PhD,
• Ehon launched Soften The F*&% Up,
• Jen handled a massive life change with amazing character and courage (and still took the time to listen to me),
• Chris went from strength to strength with HSM; and
• Yaro dealt with an incredibly tough year with a degree of emotional maturity that I didn’t think was humanly possible.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to be surrounded by these people and to be able to cheer them on, but it’s also a huge call to ‘step up’ because if they can do it, there’s no reason why I can’t.

However, with this inspiration came a reality check. This year for the first time in my life, I can say that I noticed death:

• a guy I went to uni with died of cancer, he was 25,
• a good friend had her close family friend pass away in her early 30s; and
• my friend’s mother had a stroke in June and she remains in hospital, 7 months on.

I’ve never been to a funeral. I still have 3 of my 4 grandparents above ground and the closest death has come is when my dog died a couple of years ago. For better or worse it’s fair to say I’ve been sheltered.

While none of these events touched me directly, 2 degrees of separation was enough to demonstrate to me that life is unpredictable and we don’t know what’s around the corner. The biggest impact of these events was that I decided to book a 1 way ticket to China, leaving Australia at the start of December, and prioritise learning a 2nd language which is something I’ve been wanting to do for several years, but haven’t pulled the trigger. I’d been waiting for a time when ‘all my ducks were in a row’ and I decided that was a poor line of thought.

The bigger picture

So…. after spending 1/2 a day reflecting on all the above, what speaks loudest about the last 12 months is not so much “look at what I achieved” but instead, “look at how unfocussed I was”. I’ve identified before that I have a habit of trying to do too much, the result of which is that I’m always busy, but it’s not necessarily work that is moving me closer to my goals. 2011 had a lot of that.

Interestingly, I’ve ended the year in a position where I’m very comfortable. Everything in my life is good. A coupe of years ago my focus was on moving away from pain (crappy job, a lack of like-minded friends and my own limiting beliefs) but I feel like I’ve levelled up in the hierarchy of needs to a point where my focus is now on moving closer to the things in life that I want. The only problem with this is that it’s MUCH harder to define these things than it is to define points of pain.

This is perhaps one of the reasons why I’ve been rather scattered – I haven’t had a good answer to “what do I really want” and the default is to do anything and see what works. It’s also really hard if your doing many things that are good or very good, to justify dumping them while you search for the thing that is ‘great’. I’ve encountered this problem before.

Further, after doing these annual reviews for several years, I’m now able to look and see the broader trends within the context of a longer period.

2009 was a year of exploration and discovery, it was the first time I actually took a hiatus from work and thought about whether or not I was on the right track. 2010 was focussed on being honest about the things in my life that weren’t working for me, and then actively removing them
& 2011 looks to have been a year of beginning to move towards the things that are important to me.

I’m incredibly grateful for the last 12 months, as there’s no doubt in my mind that above everything else it’s been a big growth year and it’s given me a lot of clarity on where my time and energy is best spent.

Stay tuned for my 2012 plan.

                                      

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFJEeSP-XEs

If you’re having trouble viewing the video, click here to watch Language Learning: First Impressions on YouTube.

It’s a now just on a month since I moved to Beijing, and for the past few weeks I’ve been immersed in my first ever intensive language course.

I’ve been attending classes from 8am -- 12pm, 5 days a week at Beijing Language & Culture University and will continue until mid-January, just before the Chinese New Year holiday festival.

4 hours of classes a day has been a massive shock to the system.  I originally planned that I would be able to use the rest of my day to focus on other activities, but instead I’ve found that after each class I come away absolutely exhausted and I feel like I’m having my brain slowly pushed through a sieve!  After class I find that I need to de-compress and the last thing that I want to do is sit in front of a computer.

So What Have I Learnt?

My goal for this course was to simply attend and try my best to keep up with the content and not beat myself up if I didn’t master everything instantly. I’m extremely impatient when it comes to learning new things and I need to keep reminding myself that I’m here for the long haul.  The course has been a great start but it is only that -- it’s bleedingly obvious that the way the teaching environment is structured isn’t optimal for me and I’m looking forward to arranging a tutor or perhaps attending a different school where I can have more input into what materials are analysed.

A good example of this is that we have been taught the words for dormitory, dining hall and mineral water, but not the word for toilet. Go figure.

Despite this, we have learned a significant amount of vocab and it’s amazing to be able to actually see and hear how the foreign signs and sounds are unraveling in front of me.  For instance, I took a bunch of shirts to the dry-cleaner a couple of days ago and when I was leaving he said “ming tian, wan shang” which translates to “tomorrow evening” which is when the shirts would be ready.  I had only learned the words “ming tian” and “wan shang” a couple of days earlier and it was incredible to actually understand what he’d just said to me.

Most of the time I feel like everything I hear, whether it is said directly to me or not, is like static on a radio. Very occasionally though, someone will use one of the few words that I know and can recognise and then for that brief instant I will get perfect reception, before dropping back into ‘static’.

Hopefully with time and practise, the amount of static will decrease and my ‘reception’ will get better.

                                      

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YXwl00ZizQ

If you’re having trouble viewing the video, click here to watch The China Plan on YouTube.

So one week ago, I left Australia and flew 9000 km to Beijing, China which is where I will be living for the foreseeable future. I sold up everything I owned and have little more than a suitcase with some clothes, a backpack and a laptop. The feeling is both incredibly liberating and utterly terrifying.
This post, and the video above is about answering the #1 question that I’ve asked since I announced that I was moving to China, which is…

What on earth am I doing?

For quite a few years now, one of the things that I’ve wanted to experience in my life is to learn a second language, and learn it to a point where it is an asset, not just a novelty.  It’s quite uncommon for people in Australia to be fluent in a language other than English, and I only know a couple of people that are genuinely bi or multi-lingual.

So I decided to pack my bags and immerse myself in China, because I think it will be a valuable life experience.

Why China? Why not Spain or Germany or Indonesia?

I think for better or worse, China is going to be THE country that shapes the next 50 years of human history.  Rather than stick my head in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening, or worse still try and resist it, I’m here to learn everything I can about this country, its language and the culture as I’m sure that there will be great opportunities that will appear in the coming years and I want to be prepared.

One of these opportunities that I’m already investigating is the process of arranging manufacturing in China and how to setup a supply chain that enables single point global fulfilment.

                                      

The article has just been published on Anthill Online, an Australian business website dedicated to start-ups, entrepreneurship, small business and marketing.

You can read the full text here:

What I learn’t trying to launch an affiliate program with three days’ notice by Nick McIntosh

(as published on Anthill Online on 15 November 2011)

                                      

Photo by yum9me

There’s nothing I like more than a challenge when the goal is just “to see what’s possible”. I’ve built heaps of websites, started businesses, volunteered for projects for no other reason to explore an opportunity or learn more about a topic.

But one of the areas that I’ve done very little in is exercise and fitness.

I’m naturally blessed with high metabolism and have never had to watch what I eat. I grew up playing sports and I genuinely enjoy spending time outside doing activities that make me sweat.

Because of this, I’ve never really been interested in going to the gym just for the sake of exercising – it seems a bit silly to be honest. I’ve never had to examine my diet too closely or had any sort of health issue that requires “management”.

But, earlier in the year that suddenly changed…

Back in March I spent 6 weeks following a gym routine called Occam’s Protcol with the aim to put on a few kilos of lean muscle mass, in all the right places.

The program, which combines gym work, diet and a variety of suppliments was outline in Tim Ferris’ book the 4 hour body and the general permise of the routine (like everything in the book) is big results, with as little effort as possible. All backed up with ninja like planning and measurement. This is my kind of experiment.

In the case of putting on muscle mass, Tim was able to pack on 28 pounds (15 kilos) of lean muscle mass in 4 weeks with only 4 hours of total gym time(!).

When I tried this earlier in the year, the results I got were very underwhelming – almost nothing happened.

In 6 weeks I put on 1.6kg of muscle and 700g of fat.

But at the time I only followed the gym plan and did not add in the diet recommendations or suppliments.

Here’s my full post of my first attempt at Occam’s Protocol

So I’ve been wanting to try the experiment again, but this time addressing the diet and suppliments as well as correcting for the issues I discovered the first time I tried.

I was also encouraged by finding a couple of other success stories, from people who had been able to replicate the results in the book:

• Josh Crocker +16 lbs
• +18.5 lbs in 7 weeks
• +10 lbs in 2 weeks
• Another two week case study

Round 2

From mid July to mid August I went back onto Occam’s Protocol and this time changed my diet and added in suppliments to match the instructions in the book. Oh and I tracked the whole thing with spreadsheets like the data geek that I am.

First, the results:

Starting Weight (measured on gym scales)
14/7/11 70.9 kg (156 lbs)

Ending Weight (measured on gym scales)
21/8/11 73.6 kg (161.9 lbs)

Gain 2.7 kg (5.9 lbs)

I put on 4.5kg, of which 2.5kg was fat.

Boo

Hardly the kind of gains that are going to leave me looking like the incredible hulk – and the fat gain proportion is certainly way higher than I execpted.

What happened?

So why didn’t I gain 15kg like Tim or at least 7 or 8kg which seemed to be do-able?

Honestly, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you exactly what I did and while I have some theories for what I need to do differently, I’d really appreciate some outside opinions.

The Gym

Just as in my first experiment with Occam’s Protocol, I alternated the A / B routines as outlined in the book with a 3-4 days between each session.

The only difference is that this time I also did the two handed kettle bell swing which I wasn’t able to include before due to a lack of equipment.

I still had to take the video camera a couple of times to ensure that I was performing the exercises correctly and I also had a friend who is very familiar with all the machines to show me the correct positions on each.

Assume the position

Positioning myself on the machines is something that I really struggled with the first time especially on the shoulder and bench press exercises. Should the bar be inline with my nipples or chin, should I push my elbows out or keep them close to my body. These little things can have a big impact on which muscles are being targeted.

Gym results
exercise: starting weight x reps to finishing weight x reps

Pull downs: 50kg x 9 to 65kg x 7 (+30%)
Shoulder press: 30kg x 9 to 45kg x 6 (+50%)
Leg press: 85kg x 18 to 110kg x 11 (+29%)
Bench press: 28.5kg x 8 to 40kg x 9 (+40%)
Kettle bell: 16kg x 25 (2 sets) to 16kg x 33 (2 sets)

So clearly I achieved some decent strength gains, but this wasn’t the goal so I’m trying hard not to get excited by the numbers getting bigger.

Still the biggest challenge in the gym was doing the exercises consistently and gettting the 5/5 cadence right (5 seconds from the top of the movement to the bottom of the movement and back). I really strugged with this with the bench press and the leg press as I seem to hit a weak spot half way through the movement so I naturally wanted to do it more quickly to get some momentum to overcome this.

I tried to correct this by going to the gym with a friend and having them count out the timing, but unfortunately my friend wasn’t able to make every session.

The Diet

I really enjoy food, eating is one of my favourite things but I tend to naturally regulate my diet: If I have a day of gluttony, then the following day or 2 I will skip a meal here or there or just have something light, because I just don’t feel that hungry.

Occam’s feeding is a BIG departure from what I normally eat in almost every way.

To get the kind of weight gain detailed in the book, it recommends you eat a minimum 175 grams of protein every day (for my body weight). However I mentioned this to a trainer in the gym and she said I should probably up that to 250g!

Here’s what that looks like as food:

Breakfast Shake
500ml whole milk (16.5g protein)
1 egg (6.3g protein)
whey powder (30g protein)
almond butter (12g protein)

Breakfast (mid-morning)
Instant noodles (8g protein)
Tuna (33g protein)
1 egg (6.3g protein)

Snack
Protein bar (10g protein)

Lunch
chicken + vegetables + brown rice (33g protein)

Snack
Protein bar (10g)

Dinner
steak + vegetables (35g protein)

Nightcap
500ml whole milk (16.5g protein)
1 egg (6.3g protein)
whey powder (30g protein)

For a total of 252.9g protein

Eating this much EVERY DAY was not fun.

At the start, I thought that I could just battle through an “adoption phase” and then sooner or later this amount of food would become normal. Neil, one of the case studies in the book said that he turned into a ravenous food destroying machine. This didn’t happen to me. By the end of the month I’d scaled back to 100g – 150g protein per day just to keep my sanity.

To make this kind of diet work, I think I’d need to hire a chef or get organised enough to prepare food in bulk – massive bulk. Neither of these are likely to happen.

The Suppliments

Adding in pills and powders was something entirely new to me. But I figured why the hell not. So for the duration of the month I took:

L-Glutamine
Cissus quadrangularis
Alpha Lipoic Acid
Creatine Monohydrate

There’s 2 points I want to note here…

1. The cost

This stuff isn’t cheap! A month’s supply of the above, in the dosages recommended, was $157 USD. Infact, after you add in gym membership and additional food – this whole experiment would have been around $300-$350 AUD. Which could be read as:

I paid $300AUD to get 4.5kg heavier (but 2.5kg was just fat). Hrm. Not sure about that return on investment.

2. The dosage

I was supposed to take 10 grams of L-Glutamine, every 2 hours (80 grams per day) for the first 5 days. But I made the critical mistake of trusting the “2 gram” scoop that was included to be accurate. It wasn’t. Not even close.

I was actually taking 1.5x the dose which I didn’t discover until I almost ran out of L-Glutamine!

Other thoughts

2 days in I got sick & came down with the flu. Rather than doing the sensible thing of suspending this experiment until I had recovered, I decided to plough on and continue with the diet, gym & drugs even though I was running a fever, taking cold & flu medication and feeling horrible.

That was pretty dumb.

I took me about 10 days to fully recover and I think that could have slowed my progress significantly.

The Gym is not fun

A bunch of my friends genuinely enjoy going to the gym and moving heavy things up and down. I thought that there was a chance I’d come to like going to the gym but after doing Occam’s Protocol twice I can safely say that the gym is not for me. At no point was this fun – infact if it wasn’t for doing this as an “experiment” I wouldn’t have made it.

I really enjoy exercise when it comes as the by-product of doing something fun, like rollerblading or rock climbing. But the artificial environment of the gym is just not a place that I want to be.

Tips to make this work

If I was to try this again, I think these are the most crital points for success.  Nail these and you’ve got a shot:

TIP: Buddy up – expecially useful when it comes to timing in the gym, and making sure you’re doing the exercise correctly. As soon as you add another person, I found that my natural competitiveness kicked in so if my friend does 8 reps, I’m sure as hell going to push for 9.

TIP: get someone who know’s what they’re doing to show you which machines to use and how to position yourself.

TIP: get some accurate scales that can measure small quantities – when you’re measuring out a 2 gram dosage, regular scales probably aren’t going to cut it

TIP: plan your meals and prepare prepare prepare – this will take quite a bit of time.

TIP: If you get sick, stop & recover before continuing

TIP: Measure everything and remember to do the measurements more than once.

So… where to next?

Does Occam’s Protocol work? For me? No. Personally I just don’t care enough about building muscle mass to justify trying this a third time.

For me, the process of doing the experiment is what makes this fun, not so much the outcome.

And because that motivation isn’t there, it would take a huge amount of effort for me to manage the diet, drugs and gym to the level of detail needed to get the most out of this program.

The cost also makes it hard to justify doing this again. $350 isn’t a huge amount of money but it is a new pair of rollerblades or 4 months of rock climbing, both of which I love doing.

Tim Ferriss, if you’re reading this (and I hope you have Google alerts set up) I’d love to get your input. I have blood tests, DEXA scans, spreadsheets – the works!

                                      

Photo from The Cool Hunter

The other day something amazing happened.

A complete stranger sent me an email and said I was an inspiration to her.

My immediate thought was, “Me?! Holy crap that’s cool! Best email ever!”

This person had read a short bio of me on the Interactive Minds website, in which I mentioned that I’m interested in lifestyle design and then clicked through to this blog.

I’ve never thought of myself as an inspiration to anyone before, and I haven’t ever considered that what I’m doing in my life is particulary note worthy but when I thought about it, I’m sure that the people I look up to don’t wake up each day thinking, “who can I inspire today?”, so why would I?

How did this happen?

What is it I’m doing that’s worthy of getting an email like this?

I think the formula is actually pretty simple:

Do what you care about

With passion and honesty

Disregarding what others may think of you

And don’t ever stop.

The funny thing is, no where in that formula is the focus on anyone but you. I think it’s the classic case of leading by example rather than trying to rally people to believe something when you’re not actually living it yourself. It doesn’t work if you set out with the goal of wanting to inspire people, it’s just something that happens along the way when you do a good job at whatever it is your care about.

This is how I try and live my life. I don’t always succeed, but I think trying every day is what’s important.

Now all this ego stroking is great, but I’m a practical person and this post is titled “How to Inspire”, not “Hey look someone said I’m an inspiration” so how do you actually go about living this way if you’re sitting behind an office desk staring at a budget report and waiting for the clock to say 5pm?

Well, there’s 2 videos below that I think are the best resources I’ve ever seen.

Focus on being a better you

These videos don’t talk about inspiration. They talk about how to bring about change in your life, which is what you should really be focusing on if you want people to look up to you. Like I said, by focusing on the things you care about, without concern for what others may think, you become an inspiration. You can’t put the cart before the horse.

These two people, Nick Crocker and Charlie Hoehn inspire me. Nick gives an amazing overview of how to bring about change in your life and Charlie gives a fantastic & practical example of how to implement the concepts with respect to finding the job of your dreams.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgI0Xyepzik

If you’re having trouble viewing the video, click here to watch Floss the teeth you want to keep on YouTube.

In case you don’t have time for the video (please make time later, future you will say thanks) here is a summary:

• Change is hard because we have a tendency to overvalue short term goals and undervalue long term goals
• Change is like a muscle, you need to develop your strength over time
• The ability to defer self-gratification is a good indicator for long term success (better than IQ)
• It’s easier to add a new behaviour then change an old one
• Make 1 small change and do it for a fixed amount of time, rather than making a number of changes with the intention of them being permanent
• Break down goals into small baby-steps
• Measure you progress
• Find a buddy to change with
• Incentivise by avoiding a negative
• Adjust your environment to support your goal
• Be patient

The practical: How to get your dream job

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5qUR3tpEdA

If you’re having trouble viewing the video, click here to watch The New Way to Work on YouTube.

• Living up to societies expectations will not get you what you want
• Know the worst case scenario
• Learn how to step outside the system, so you do not become dependant on it
• To rapidly advance your career, you need to do something different
• Do free work (different from a intern-ship) to build your skills and network (defer short term gratification)

Next action: Leave a comment below with what small thing can you change today that will bring you closer to your goals, whatever they may be…

AND

If there’s someone out there that you look up to, tell them! It feels great. Infact, I’m going to email Nick and Charlie right now…

                                      

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejC336nW5Bg

If you’re having trouble viewing the video, click here to watch Moving Goal Posts on YouTube.

One of the keys in Lifestyle Design and Personal Development is to set goals for the things you want to achieve. However, I’ve noticed recently that by the time I have achieved a goal, I am already thinking beyond it and have “moved” the goal further back.

As a quick example, one of my goals for the last few years has been to transition from being an employee to running my own business and doing so in a way that is location independant -- meaning that I can do my work from anywhere in the world.

I’ve recently taken a trip to China, and I took my laptop & work with me and I was able to successfully test my location independence. I can now say that I can effectively run my freelancing business from anywhere in the world. Goal achieved right?

But before I was even back in Australia, I realized that merely being location independent was not good enough. I realised that I needed to evolve my business beyond this and develop it so that it creates income passively and gives me even more freedom. This is something that will take 2-3 years of hard work. The goal posts have moved.

This idea of moving goal posts can be extremely frustrating because it invokes a sense that I’ll never be “finished” in this quest to build a great life and grow as a person, there will always be another step to take. But at the same time, I have a sense of wonderment because I know that the options are unlimited and that the more I evolve, the more I will see what’s truly possible.

I just need to wrap my head around the idea that as I evolve, my goals will evolve with me -- they will always be “moving”.

In essence, this means that we need to find a way to be happy and satisfied wherever we are in life, right now. Because if we tie our happiness to some future condition, (I’ll be happy when I…) by the time we get there the goal will have moved.

                                      

Photo by Mr Munnings on Tour

For the first 3 months of this year I did a little experiment.   I measured karma.

To be more specific, I tracked the acts of generosity that I experienced both from a giving and receiving perspective.

Why? Because at the time, I didn’t feel like a generous person and my generosity is something that I’d like to improve.  Generosity is something I struggle with and for the last couple of years it’s been on my goals to improve my generosity.

I operate from a scarcity mindset, particularly when it comes to money. It’s the accountant in me.  If I give someone $20. I’ve just lost $20.  Losing money, particularly when it’s avoidable is bad / stupid. This is obvious right?

So for as long as I can remember I’ve been an extremely reluctant giver.

Whip around at the office? Count me out.
Buy a legacy pin? No thanks
Daffodil? Pass
Save the wilderness? Not me.

It’s not that I don’t think these are worthwhile causes – I do. It’s just that if I give money to starving kids in Africa, well that means I have less money for me? And it’s not like I’m rolling in cash.  This also extends to my friends – if I buy someone a coffee, I would start keeping a mental tally of who owes me what. It’s not uncommon for my thinking to go something like…

“I just bought Mike a coffee, that coffee cost $3.50. Mike owes me $3.50″

If the next time I see Mike, we go out for lunch and he pays, it becomes…

“Mike just bought me lunch, my meal cost $11.00. So I now owe Mike $7.50.”

Pretty rediculous right?

So that’s where I was – Scrooge Mc-Duck.

What’s wrong with this behaviour?

Well, what you put out is what you receive.  I was putting out scarcity and stingy-ness.  I was doing my best to hide it and disguise it but that was where my thinking was at.

One of the ideas that keeps popping up in personal development is karma or what you out put out is what you receive. It’s a concept that also covered in The Secret – your world will conform to the intentions you hold.

If you are unkind to people, people will be unkind to you.
If you are abundant with the world, the world will provide you with abundance.

Which is just the same as treat others as you’d like to be treated. Hardly a new concept.

So in essense, how can I expect to receive generousity if I am broadcasting the mindset of stingyness?  The whole idea is that your external world will be congruent with your inner thinking. That is is, if I don’t have a mindset of generiosity, the world will not be generous with me.

But for me it goes beyond this, it’s also important that I feel generous and that I move away from thinking only about money from a position of scarcity.

But how do you get this feeling?

Well, for me, feeling generous comes from knowing that I am generous.

But what is generous? To me it’s simply giving without the expectation of receiving.

So I did a little experiment…

The problem with all this karmic stuff is that it’s a bit fuzzy and normally ends up in the meta-physical section at the book store.

Me, a geek who loves a good spreadsheet thought – what if i just measure the generousity / karma that is in my life? From there, once I know where I am, I can start making decisions about whether or not I should change my behaviour in this area.

But how do you measure karma?

So I came up with a plan – 3 Months Of Forced Giving.

Every time I was presented with an opportunity to be generous, I had to step up and do what I can.

To get some objectiveness around this, I logged every time I made a generous action – usually just giving a couple of $ to someone on the street.

BUT

I decided to take this a step further and address one of the niggling problems that I’m sure many people use as an excuse – “I can’t afford to be generous”.  To do this I logged everything I received for 3 months. Every time someone bought me coffee, lunch, helped me with a problem.

So what happened?

I started giving money away. It was weird. Very weird. To make sure that I couldn’t cop out and hide in my house and just say that no opportunities presented themselves, I pledged that for the first 6 months of this year I’d give at least $50 a month to charity.

One of the first instances was walking through the city and being accosted by a backpacker representing amnesty international. Now normally my tactics when I see these people are to:

1. Not make eye contact
2. Move past them as quickly as possible.

If I do accidentally make eye contact, it’s a smile with a shake of my head and mouthing the words “no thanks”.

If they speak to me, I keep walking *NEVER STOP* and say sorry not today…

But on this occasion I couldn’t do any of that.

Instead, I made eye contact and smiled. And when asked if I could spare a minute I said yes. And I stopped and genuinely listened.

The guy spent 10 minutes telling me about kids in Uganda. At the end of his pitched he asked me if I’d like to make a regular donation, but I balked at handing over my credit card details on the street. So instead I promised him I’d go home and learn more about Amnesty and decide whether or not it was a cause I’d feel comfortable supporting.

I went home, read up on it for about an hour and then gave them $20. A by product was that I actually became engaged with their organisation!

I felt good! It tweeted it and facebooked it to let all my friends know that I was better than them!

Over the next few months I gave money to flood victims, earthquake victims, supported a hospital, and a charity that is trying to change Australia’s drinking culture.

I never once missed the money.

But the bigger differnce was with my friends. Rather than trying to keep tallies in my head, I just let it ride.

When I was out and it made sense to do so, I offered to pay. I stopped counting cents and if I got a ‘raw deal’ when it came time to split the bill – that was ok.

In the first month I bought people lunch, drinks, dinner and gave freely of my time when someone asked for it. It cost me a grand total of $58. And about 23 hrs of my time – most of which was for helping with the QLD floods

That’s it.

And when I tallied up what I received I got a rude shock:

• A beer ($4)
• Lunch x2 ($19)
• A coke ($2)
• A tea ($3)
• Dinner x2 ($35)
• Snacks ($2.5)

Total: $65.00

And beyond this…

• my girlfriend bought me some clothes.
• a near stranger lent me a book
• a friend let me use his computer for 2 1/2 days

Holy shit my friends are generous.

The idea that I couldn’t afford to be generous got crushed after the 1st month.

I was shocked.

And then I realised what was going on in my head all these years.

I would remember the (small) acts of generousity I would do, like buying someone a cup of coffee. These would be etched into my brain. But if someone bought me something, there woould be an excellent chance that I’d forget about it soon after…

Oh shit. I was remembering what I gave (money out) but quickly forgetting about what I received (money in). A guarenteed way to make me feel hard done by.

So in months 2 and 3 I stepped things up.

My of my friends had a little cash flow problem and asked if anyone could help him out for a couple of weeks. I jumped at the chance and lent him a not insignificant amount of money. Before, I probably would have asked for security. Even though he’s one of my best friends and I trust him to the ends of the earth. That’s how warped my views were.

I also loosened up with the small stuff and actually began to enjoy being generous. I was at a bar and the guy in front of me ordered some drinks, the bill was $21 and he only had a $20. As he was about to do the awkward “I’ll just have to go get another dollar from my friends” move, I was behind him and gave him the dollar, without a second thought. The surprise on his face was awesoome. And so was the feeling I got.

I invited a bunch of people out to dinner and when it came time to sort out the bill I paid last and discovered we were short $12. My first reaction was which one of my friends just skimped. Bastards. But then I remembered that I’d just had 3 hours of excellent conversation and good food and turning around and grilling everyone on who’d paid for what would really sour the mood and leave at least 1 person embrassed for what I’m sure was a simple oversight. So I paid.

And when I checked the numbers again, I’d once again got more back than what I’d given. Even though I was now giving at more opportunties.

A change in mindset

One of the most interesting things to come out of this is to directly see how karma can sometimes play out. Where a chain of events can lead.

Karma isn’t instant and there’s not doubt in my mind that tracking this stuff month to month, while better than nothing, is much too short term.

When I donated my time in January to a volunteering organisation to help with the QLD floods, I inadvertantly made an impression on someone because 4 months later I got a phone call from a woman I’d met there who wanted advice on an internet business idea.

Not rmembering this person at all, I still agree to catch up for a coffee and have a chat about the idea.

After chatting for 90mins she actually offered to pay for my time (I refused, but she did buy my coffee).

A week later there was an opportunity to invite her to a conference that was relevant to her business idea. As an organiser, I gave her a ticket FOC.

And a month later she called out of the blue and said she was recommending me for some very well paid consulting work.

None of this would have happened if I’d been working under the mindset of “I can’t afford to be generous”.

So where to from here? We’ll I’m not longer tracking this, I stopped after the 3 months when it became so blatently obvious that the world was looking after me. Instead, what I’ve tried to do since this began is to adopt a more generous, positive attitude.

This doesn’t mean that I’m a walking ATM handing out $50′s to anyone that asks, or agreeing to help move a truck load of furniture to a different state, but I am much more aware of my small contributions and change in attitude can make a difference to other people and that it won’t leave me worse off to do so.

So here’s my question for you: What area in your life is affected by scarcity thinking?

                                      

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWJlRzUn6ek

If you’re having trouble viewing the video, click here to watch Coming Home: The end of my mini-retirement to Beijing China on YouTube.

So after 5 weeks away, I’m now back home in Brisbane.

This will be my last mini-retirement post but before I tell you what I’ve learned, maybe take a minute to look back over the other articles and videos from the last 5 weeks, if you haven’t already seen them.

Mini-retirement to Beijing China

Proof of life: My first 24hrs in Beijing

Rolling with the punches: Mini-retirement mistakes

Mini-retirement tips: How to make new friends fast

Mini-retirement tips: How to keep your business running!

When I shot this final video I’d been back a week and there’s 3 main things that struck me upon arriving back in Brisbane and finishing my mini-retirement to Beijing, China. Here we go…

It’s important to appreciate the good, and not get hung up on the bad, wherever you are

The first thing I noticed after stepping off the plane in Brisbane was the vibrant blue sky and the white, wispy clouds.

I smiled -- Beijing doesn’t look like this. Beijing by comparison looks like a dump. It’s skies are polluted, it’s dusty, people spit and there’s no green grass or flowers (at least when I was there).

Now, I could have spent the last 5 weeks getting hung up on this fact and spent my time whinging about the place and how Brisbane is better. But I’d be choosing to define the city by what it doesn’t have, rather than celebrating what it does well.

Beijing beats the pants off Brisbane in many ways -- it has better food, value for money and transportation. So while I’m not denying that Beijing is more polluted than Brisbane, I’m going to choose to appreciate the good aspects of this amazing place.

Obviously this doesn’t just apply to city vs city. You can choose what to take away from any trip or experience or meeting or event -- you decide whether you celebrate the good or dwell on the bad. It’s a glass half empty / half full situation.

This trick is called reframing and you can read more about here if it interests you.  Reframing on wikipedia.org

Friends here and friends there

One of my earlier posts talked about how to make new friends when you travel and over the course of 5 weeks I did just that.

At the start of the trip it never occured to me that in just a few short weeks I’d be saying goodbye to these people. Every where I went, both in China and Singapore I was welcomed as if I had just moved in next door and I was staying for good.

I’m truely grateful that so many people opened their lives to me and choose not to see me as short term tourist -- someone who’d only be around for a little while and is therefore not worth getting to know as they’ll soon be gone.

There is no way that my mini-retirment would have been half as fun without these amazing people but getting up and leaving after only 5 weeks has left me feeling quite sad.

It’s like being given a great big delicious chocolate cake, having just 2 bites and then someone takes the cake away from you. You get caught up on the loss rather than how good the cake was.

I miss these new friends and hope that I’ll see them again. It’s fair to say that I was extremely under-prepared for this psychologically.

And then there’s the flip-side, upon arriving back in Brisbane, I was blown away by how happy everyone was to see me! I’ve got so many “Welcome back Nick!” messages and everyone wants to know about my little adventure.

It’s great to know that my friends are interested and care about what I’ve been up to.

I really hope that I can maintain some of the friendships I’ve made and being away has made me more aware of how strong the friendships are that I have here in Brisbane. It’s good to feel loved.

A kick up the arse

When I first read Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week and the concept of taking mini-retirements it sounded like a good idea and something worth trying. Now that I’ve actually done it -- tasted it -- oh boy do I want more!

If I had the means, and it was responsible to do so, I’d already have the next flight booked.

After 5 weeks exploring another city in another country, I now see a new world of possibilities and experience just waiting to be had and I’m sure I’ve only just scratched the surface.

It’s like I’ve just had my eyes opened and now I want to see how deep the rabbit-hole goes!

BUT to do this responsibily I need money. More specifically I need a source of cashflow that isn’t tied directly to my time. I want the flexibility to be able to focus on the things that interest me, like learning a new language, but still have an income.

At the moment as a freelancer / consultant my income is tied to my time. The more I work the more I get paid. If I stop working, I stop getting paid.

This is fine, and I’m extremely grateful for being able to earn money as a freelancer as it offers significantly more freedom that being an employee. But after this trip it’s clear that to experience world travel sustainably, in the way I want to experience it, I will need to again make a shift from freelancer into business owner.

This mini-retirement has given me a big slap in the face to stop being lazy and instead refocus my energy on building something great. So in the coming weeks I’m going to be assessing the options and ideas that I have and making a start on a new project.

After all, if I’m not moving forward towards my goals every day… then what am I doing? What am I spending my time on? ‘Monitoring’ facebook and twitter for several hours a day is not productive.

I’m also now hyper-aware of the projects that I make committments to and will be assessing much more rigourously whether or not they support my goals or distract me from them. I’ve already begun cutting out some dead wood in this area in the days that I’ve been back home but there’s a lot more to be done here.

So there we have it. My mini-retirement to Beijing, China is done. It was better than I ever could have expected and I’d highly recommend it to anyone.

I’ll leave you with a question (you can answer in the comments below) -- where would you take a mini-retirement and why?

- Nick