Block Post

Let's keep the "Ch" (phlegm sound) in Chanukkah "Happy Hanukkah"#KeepChSoundInHanukkah

— Alec Berg 🇺🇸 (@alecberg) December 24, 2016

How to Improve Your Diet

Goal: Longevity
Sub-goal: Health, Diet improvement
Topics: Habits, Decisions, Methods for Change

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Okay, My diet isn't great.

These small decisions in theory can give or take away health from you.

Most of the reasons for a bad diet are really just bad habits and lack of knowledge. If eating a specific food could be quantified, like each cookie reduces your life span by 7 days, people might make a better effort to avoid the bad food.

Its starts when we buy food.

So the real goal to eat a better diet is to:

1. Assess your current diet and problems with it
2. Make a plan to solve the problem
3. Follow the plan
4. Continually adjust what you do

Another method (Small Change) is to:

1. Make one small change, that is a positive change
1. Eat X
2. Make one small negative change
1. Don't eat Y
3. Repeat step 1 & 2

At work I've been eating the following:

• Coffee - Black
• Questbars - 2 for bf
• Food from Cafeteria
• Nuts for snack
• Not enough veggies or variety
• Too much protein and fiber
• Have 5 bars sometimes
• Bulletproof coffee
• I've stopped making this since I got my new job
• Grape drink

Random Food Method:

Make a list of healthy foods

1. Create random meals
2. Buy the foods/items I need
3. Prepare the meals ahead of time on the weekend

Research Healthy Foods

This is difficult because there is a debate going on about what's healthy and what isn't. A number of popular writers are criticizing the low fat high carb diets. Gary Taubes, Tim Ferriss, Dave Aspery, Atkins, Paleo, 

Create habits to avoid foods

Some foods are probably bad for you and some are probably good. I say probably because we don't really know for sure. What are some of the foods/behaviors I avoid:

• Candy and cakes
• Chips
• Milk in coffee or tea
• Bread

What's bad to eat? Fruits? Milk? 

Let me know the one small change you will to make below in the comments

Better Plan to Test my Blood Sugar

Goal: Longevity
Sub-goal: Health, Lower Blood Sugar
Topics: Planning

---

Does planning work?

Not for me.

I don't recall a time where I made a specific plan and followed it and achieved the success I wanted.

My goal is to lower my blood sugar (bs). My bs as measured by A1c is 6.1. That's too high as normal is 5.7 or less.

My Current Method

I am currently testing my blood sugar when I feel like it or remember to. So the knowledge I gain may not be accurate or useful. Since there is some pain involved it would be smarter to know what I can specifically do to lower my bs.

Why Lower Blood Sugar

How to Lower Blood Sugar

Recently I've noticed my blood sugar a bit lower than I've expected. The two things I've been doing that may have helped is taking Metformin and Reversetrol.

From my own experience walking up stairs seems to lower my bs.

How to Test Your Blood Sugar

Using Persuasion Tactics on Twitter

Thanks to Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert. I've become a student of persuasion.

I'm going to give you a number of ways to be more persuasive on twitter. You can be more persuasive in your tweets, your replies, retweets, pictures, profile, etc.

First, if you haven't read Scott Adams book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, get and read it.  Also buy and read Robert Cialdini's book Influence and Pre-suasion.

From these books I've come up with the acronym ASSCURL, which are Ciadini's 7 categories of persuasion. Note that his original book had 6 and his Pre-suasion book added Unity.

1. Authority
2. Scarcity
3. Social Proof
4. Consistency and Commitment
5. Unity
6. Reciprocation
7. Liking

So for each of these how do you use them in twitter?

Authority 

We look to authority for shortcuts, so you need to become an authority on something and tweet about it. Write a book. Give a talk. Teach.  

Another way to get authority is to get twitter followers. I have almost 68,000 followers on twitter and when you see something from me I have more authority than someone with 52 followers.

If you can get the twitter @verified check mark that also gives you authority. Your links and contents can give you authority. The quality of your videos and website sends a message.

Also the language you use in your tweets can also be authoritative.  

• Scientists say ...
• Many famous people..
• Many doctors...
• Sam Harris says..
• According to economists..
• Many people know
• Most teachers think...
• Your neighbors..
• Sam Harris says ...
• Nobel prize winner ...

Scarcity

People value things that are scarce.  You can use terms that say something is scarce:

• Final days..
• only 3 left
• Limited time only
• secrets

Social Proof

We tend to have more trust in things that are popular or endorsed by people we trust

• Everyone...
• No one ...
• Powerful users following you
• Having many followers

Consistency and Commitment

We tend to stick with whatever we've already chosen. Consistency is a shortcut.

People who follow you, like a tweet, add you to a list are more likely to do you a favor if asked, due to consistency.

• Ask questions that get a Yes
• Who thinks that weight loss can improve your health and make you happier
• Would you pay $5000 if it could save your life?
• $5000 program to lose 100's of pounds, if you lose the weight you'll get $4500 back

Unity

Unity is Cialdini's 7th rule of persuasion relates to family. Using family related language can help to persuade:

• Welcome to my twitter family
• I give you the same advice I'd give to my family ...
• Here is what I'd advise my children to do
• To my brothers and sisters out there
• As parent let me suggest
• We are together like a family in ...
• I need some advice from you
• find something that can unite you and your follower
• ethnicity
• location
• political beliefs

Reciprocation

In many social situations, we pay back what we received from others:

• Follow back
• Retweet for people who retweet you
• Like for Like
• Give free sample
• Help others and they are likely to help you

Liking

We are more likely to comply with requests made by people we like

• Follow people who like you
• Say positive things about people's tweets
• Like people's tweets
• People like people who are like them
• Give honest complements

For example recently I was going to tweet something negative, that I thought was funny, about Scott Adams saying something like "Your daughter is beautiful."  referring to his girlfriend. Instead I tweeted 

.@kristina_basham @ScottAdamsSays
Best couple ever!

— Alec Berg (@alecberg) October 9, 2016

.@kristina_basham .@ScottAdamsSays Would make a great #president and first lady in 2020

— Alec Berg (@alecberg) October 10, 2016

and it worked. I got likes and replies from these tweets.

So remember the acronym ASSCURL to help persuade you way to twitter success.

If you liked this blog please retweet it or comment below, because it helps motive me to share more of my knowledge.

Thanks for reading!!

Getting Unstuck

I'm stuck!

That's the first step to getting unstuck is admitting you're stuck.

I know this from problem solving and I'm a professional problem solver. I've spent over 40 years of my life solving problems so I've become pretty, pretty, pretty good at it.

One key rule of problem solving is to accept the problem.

If there's one thing you learn today it's

When you have a problem, accept it.

Okay, I've highlighted this rule for you and me.

So what am I stuck on?  I'm glad you asked.

I haven't been able to reach my next weight loss goal for the last 34 days.

Matter a fact I'm 5.2 lbs. away. My goal is to weight 165.8 and this morning I weighed 171.

I'm glad I weighed myself today. Am I depressed? No, my weight is a fact not a judgement. I tell people that the most important rule to losing weight and keeping it off (LWAKIO) is to weigh yourself everyday.

The negative response to this idea is "I'll get too depressed."  If you don't have a speedometer you'll speed and if you don't have a gas gauge, you'll run out of gas.

So the is weight gain the real problem? No. It's a result of something else, most likely too many calories, not enough exercise or too slow metabolism.

Now each of these issues has sub-problems that need to be solved.

What happened yesterday that I gained 2 pounds. Well it was Thanksgiving and my willpower disappeared pretty quickly. I had a lot of chocolate covered raisins, hot dog in a blanket and nachos with guacamole. The red wine didn't help either.

On the other hand, I filled up a bag with stuff to bring home and I left it at the party.

So what is the problem that I'm not accepting?

Maybe my current weight loss method doesn't work.  The problem appears to be willpower and not being able to control my temptations. I'm sure that there are a number of events and people which increases my poor willpower.

Some of the things that are problematic for me are:

• Pizza
• Ice Cream
• Alcohol
• Breads (Pretzels)

Alcohol is a pretty big culprit as it drops my willpower. People also are a problem as my wife has low willpower and when my kids are home it's easy to overdo it.

On the other side of the coin my exercising hasn't been as good since I've started my new job.  My walking has dropped from 1 - 2 hours to 20 minutes. 

I'm good in some ways as I don't eat candy from vending machines. 

Okay so now the plan to get unstuck. I've used a couple of strategies in the past that worked and I'll try them again.  

1. Walk at lunch for 1 hour if I'm not at my goal weight
2. Work out at least 3 days a week
3. Buy the food but save it for when I'm at my goal weight as a reward and for motivation
4. Avoid these items completely if I can get to my goal in 15 more days
5. Find substitutes for the good feeling I get from food and use them

I had the idea of having a periscope of my weight loss and take my weight each day if I don't achieve my weight goal in 15 days.

So what are you stuck at?  Maybe I can help. Leave a comment below and let's get unstuck together.

Why you Should Always Back into a Parking Spot

Arguments for backing in to a parking spot

1. At a baseball game or sporting event
1. It's pretty clear that getting out of a parking spot is difficult in a crowded parking lot and most people intuitively know to back in. Trying to back out of a spot can be very difficult when cars are blocking your path. Visibility is so limited in cars that they've included backup cameras in them
2. It's easier to get into tight spots
1. Once you learn to back in it's easier as your car can make sharper turns going backwards
2. Your side mirrors only work when backing in
3. It's safer
1. There is more danger when leaving a spot than when entering
2. Other cars backing up might not see you and vice versa
3. Coming out of your driveway there's more likely to be an obstacle while leaving than while entering
4. If you're rushing somewhere like making a train you're much better off fronting out than backing out.
5. My car was hit 2x by cars backing up and I hit a car backing up
4. It's easier to get out of the spot
1. If you have to get out in an emergency you'll be happy you backed in
5. When backing out if car's parked too close to you, you might not be able to get out as your car's front may not have enough room to swing out
6. The situation where you parked might have changed preventing backing out of spot
7. Two cars backing out at the same time can't easily see each other

Arguments against backing in

1. Carbon Monoxide (CO)
1. If you park in a garage in your house then you should front in as less CO will enter the house
2. Other drivers might get annoyed that you're backing in
3. Most drivers front in so they might not know what you're doing
4. It's harder to learn
5. You can rush backing in because you can see who you're delaying and get into an accident
6. Where you are parking might not be obvious to others and they might take your spot

Tell me your thoughts below, because I'd love to hear from you.

How to Overcome Your Fear of Dogs

You've seen the headlines.

Pit bull kills Kid

Man Attacked by Dog

Man Bites Dog

Okay that last one wasn't real.

But you're probably here because you're afraid of dogs.

I was once afraid of them but I will discuss in this post how to overcome this fear.

There are 4 steps to overcome it.

1. Get/Learn how to record TV shows
2. Buy/Record the Dog Whisperer TV series and Cesar 911
3. Get a puppy from an animal shelter and raise it
4. Read as much as you can about this topic

My journey to overcoming my fear of dogs started on a cold December day in Long Island NY.

I was out for a jog and running in the street was a white dog. I said "Where's your owner" to the dog thinking he understood English. With that the dog jumped into my arms and was shaking.

So carrying the dog I start to ring the bells of the houses to see if anyone knew who's dog it was.  No one answered their door. I guess I wouldn't answer if I saw me carrying a dog. Finally a woman who appeared to be a nanny answered the door.  

I explained the situation to her and asked if she could watch the dog while I ran about a mile back to my car and she agreed. 

So I arrived back and put the dog in my car. But know what do I do. I felt like I was on a mission to help reunite this dog with it's owner. So I called my wife and she said to bring it to a nearby vet.

So I drove to the vet and told them the story. The didn't recognize the dog but would keep it there overnight and send it to the dog shelter if no one claimed it.

I took a picture of the dog and rushed home to put up signs.

After putting up the signs I got a call from someone who thanked me for finding their dog. I don't remember exactly how, but the dog was returned to it's owner.

It was getting near my son's birthday and I thought that my experience was a sign from God that I should get him a dog for his birthday.  

to be continued.....

Below are some Periscopes of me and my dog Lola.

.@alecberg Watch on #Periscope walking my #dog https://t.co/y5Wb5s4Enr

— Alec Berg 🇺🇸 (@alecberg) November 19, 2016

.@alecberg Watch on #Periscope more dog walking https://t.co/y9AhIhXGN8

— Alec Berg 🇺🇸 (@alecberg) November 19, 2016

Job Security and IP (Intelectual Property)

Job Security is important when you have bills or 2 kids in college like I do.

There are two components to job security:

1. Keeping your current job
2. If you lose your job, being able to quickly get a new job

Job Security is a subset of what I call $ecurity which is stands for Money Security.

The goal isn't necessarily keeping your job but keeping a flow of money coming in that exceeds your expenses.

What is IP?

This is the knowledge you bring to the job. Companies that are successful are ruthless in protecting their IP.  What about people?

You have IP. All the knowledge you have is your IP. Should you share this? 

I'm not sure. If you're a manager you want to make it an incentive for people to share their knowledge. What if the employee wins the lottery, what would you do?

I as a rule share my knowledge. I document my knowledge and help people when they ask.  But should I always do this?

Some of the issues I help people with took me hours of hard work to figure out. Now someone comes along and takes 20 seconds to solve the same problem because I documented it for them. Now another thing to consider is that I get reviewed against my co-workers. If I help them I reduce my chance of getting the highest review. Matter a fact if I sabotage or don't help them I increase my odds of getting a high review.

What are your thoughts on this issue?

Anger over my Boss not Saying Good Morning

I'm not sure why, but I get angry from my boss not saying "Hello" to me in the morning.

I walk by his desk and try to make eye contact with him, but he doesn't look up and say "Hello."

It feels like I'm not important to him.

So the rule for you manager's out there is acknowledge your employees.

Could I have done something? Was he ignoring me? Probably not. I guess not feeling important to him made this one behavior of his worse than it really was.

He didn't get the best out of me and I came up with a few Key Principles from him that are mostly opposite rules.

Random is Beautiful

From the shuffle feature on the iPod or music players to software I built over 30 years ago.

Random is Beautiful.

#RandomIsBeautiful

Today my wife randomly selected a book 4 me 2 read Value at Riskhttps://t.co/W4xqukA7QN#Random #Finance #Derivatives

— Alec Berg 🇺🇸 (@alecberg) October 30, 2016

Random created you through random changes to DNA.

Random helps me select what I will do.

Random makes life less boring and helps you get out of your habits.

Random helps to not get into decision paralysis

Random can help improve your exercise and diet routines.

Back to VaR aka Value At Risk.

I bought this book years ago, maybe 20 years. It's so long I'm not sure. It sat on my book shelf and then on my desk.

But today I asked my wife to pick a number between 1 and 33 and she said 26. So I reached for the 26th book on my desk and Value at Risk was the book.

So I start looking through the book and it's something useful to me from 2 ways. The first is I just got a new job as a Risk Manager and the book will help with my understanding of managing risk. The second is that I've been listening to a book called 5 Elements of Effective Thinking. This book talks about Digging Deeper as the first of the 5 rules.  So this book also meets that criteria.

I'm very excited about learning and what better thing to learn than something that will help me on the job to reach a life goal of $ecurity.

Is "Nasty Woman" a complement to Women?

The media has portrayed Donald Trump's comment that calling Hillary Clinton a "nasty woman" was calling all women nasty.

She's a beautiful woman, doesn't mean all women are beautiful.

She's a smart woman, doesn't mean that all women are smart.

She's a smelly woman, doesn't mean all women smell.

She's a nasty woman, clearly doesn't mean that all women are nasty. Just if you lie about someone to their face I'd call that nasty.

If anything it's a compliment to women as most women aren't nasty so he had to add the adjective.

Prioritization Practice

In my continuing series on Key Principles I discuss Prioritizing.

Prioritizing maybe one of the most important of my Key Principles and also be where I fail the most at.

Tim Ferriss in his great book The Four-Hour Workweek discusses two main principles:

1. 80/20 Principle aka Pareto's Law
2. Parkinson's Law

So I've come up with the idea of Prioritization Practice.

You need to practice prioritizing thing to be good at it.

Prioritizing is basically taking a list of items and sorting it by what you should do first or what you should do now.

One of the first rules is "What is the nearest deadline?"

A second rule is "What's a small task to get out of the way?"

What's not important?

Look at two items and if you could only do one of the tasks which one would you do?

So the process I've come up with will help you do an almost 80/20 sort.

Take your list and split it into two equal size lists. Say you have 100 items. Split the list into top 50 and bottom 50.

Then take the top 50 and split it again into top 25 and bottom 25.  You now have 75/25 which is pretty close to 80/20.

So that's the 80/20 rule. But now for Parkinson's Law - Work fills the time allocated.

The best way to see Parkinson's Law in practice is when you're late or wait until the last minute. Somehow all your energy is focused on getting the job done as best you can in the limited time you have.

The best tool to help with this is to set and Egg Timer and do as much as you can in this time frame. A good article on this in another KP I call FTAD (Finish Then Add Details).

So now every day you need to practice prioritizing. But you also need to do what you've prioritized to take action and make prioritization a habit. There are many ways to create and remove habits. I'll add my method in a future post.

Give it try now. But remember there are 2 steps

1. Prioritize
2. Take action

Why haven't I reached my goals, what my system to reach them?

I believe that there are only 3 goals that every goal is a sub-goal of:

1. Longevity
2. $ecurity
3. Fun

Though I'm still trying to decide where "Cleaning up" belongs.

Lately I haven't felt like I have a real goal.  

I've been spending a lot of my time:

• Listening to Scott Adam's Blog
• Tweeting on twitter
• Learning about persuasion

So for each of the categories above my top goal is:

• Longevity - Reduce my blood sugar, W < 170 
• $ecurity - Do well at my new job which I start on Monday
• Fun - Find ways to have more fun, by creating a list and doing something from it each day

Danger of Stop Signs

Yesterday, while driving home from the train station I stopped at a stop sign. I started to go but saw a car coming too fast to stop and it didn't. It went right through the sign. I slammed on the brakes and honked. The driver went through the sign honked me back. He probably didn't see the sign or was texting.

When approaching an intersection after stopping at a sign or a green light don't assume the person will stop. Proceed with caution as you never know.

Also if you're walking especially at night turn on a flashlight or show your phone so drivers can see you.

Drive safely and send this link to a loved one as you might save their life.

-AB

10 Commandments of Success

1. Fud Wud Ug Wug
2. Learn from your mistakes
3. Step outside of your comfort zone
4. Learn meditation/mindfulness
5. Set goals and sub-goals
6. Balance your time
7. Read non-fiction books
8. FTAD (Finish Then Add Details)
9. Create and break Habits
10. Be Curious

Habit = Result

Everything you do is a result of your habits.

If you don't like your result then you must change your habits.

Good Habit = Good Result
Bad Habit = Bad Result

What are your results are they Good or Bad. You probably have some good and some bad results.

What is a Habit?

Habit = Repeated Action

So to create a new habit you have to repeat an action. To stop a bad habit you have to stop repeating an action.

This is really important. Stop what you're doing and

1. Identify your good and bad results
2. Identify the habits that gave you these results
3. Identify the action you repeated or need to repeat 
4. Set an alarm or use a sticky note to tackle one action at time.
1. Action to do
2. Action to stop doing

For example, I use to rush and be late.

Bad Result = rushing to make train in morning and driving recklessly which could injure someone

Bad Habit = Leaving to late to make train without rushing. Caused by setting alarm, and snoozing it 3 times.

Action =

• Snooze alarm 2 times
• set alarm 10 minutes earlier 
• set time 10 minutes earlier than for real
• Go to sleep early enough to get up with 2 snoozes
• Don't drink caffeine to near sleep time

Post below in the comments any of your bad or good habits.

#FudWudUgWug

-AB

How to achieve enormous success, really great success, phenomenal success with just 5 easy steps that work

Okay, I was impersonating Trump because I thought it was funny the way he talks.

But seriously, use these 5 tools to achieve enormous success.

1. Index cards (okay pencil is also needed)
2. Fud Wud Ug Wug aka Change
3. Random
4. Idea Muscle
5. Egg Timer

Step 1 Index Cards

Go to a supermarket, Staples, anywhere you can get the standard 3x5 index card. I prefer the ones without the lines.

Step 2 Fud Wud Ug Wug

This isn't an Indian chant but an acronym for

If you do what you've done, you get what you've got.

So  you want to look at your life so far. Has it turned out the way you want or are there things you don't like about it. Look at everything you have and if you keep doing the same things you'll get the same result. I think it was Einstein who said "Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result."

So if not not achieving success at anything the first key is to change, try something else, almost anything else is better than doing the same thing.

Change is hard because habits are so easy.

So if you want a different result you will need to change.

Step 3 Idea Muscle

I first heard of the idea of an Idea Muscle a few years ago from +james altucher.  He basically says just like if you don't exercise your muscles waste away, if you don't come up with new ideas your idea muscle wastes away.

One great benefit from improving your idea muscle is that everything you do starts with a change. Don't know how to change, then come up with a list of 10 ways to change.  Don't know how to implement the change? Come up with 10 ways to implement change X. Anything you want to do, just use your idea muscle to start a solution to your problem. Use your idea muscle to come up with 10 goals to reach and 10 ways to reach a specific goal.

Step 4 Random

If you used an iPod set to Random or shuffle you know the benefit of this. Rather than listening to the same songs because of habit, random will break down habits. You can also use random to come with ideas when working on your idea muscle.  Get a book and open to a random page. Select a random word on the page and try to come up with 10 ideas on that word.  You could select 2 random words or 3 and continue coming up with new ideas.

Now back you your index cards.  You can use these index cards for randomization.  Write your 10 goals on 10 index cards and randomly select one. Then write on 10 more cards 10 tasks to bring you closer to your goal. Now work on this task for a set amount of time using step 5.

Step 5 Get an Egg Timer

You can buy the old egg timer or use your smart phone. There is a nice on at http://e.ggtimer.com 

Summary

Take these simple 5 steps and continually improve your life. The first step to change is to take the first step.  Give me some advice on how I could improve this and post your updates in the comments below or tweet me at @Alecberg on twitter

ASSCURL May Be the Most Important Acronym to Know

I love acronyms and I hate them. LOL.

At work, thousands of acronyms are mentioned, like they had an important meaning. And most of the time the meaning of the acronym is meaningless.

I've come up with a few acronyms, some good and some bad.  Many acronyms may have lost their meaning like IBM where the acronym is more meaningful than the original term, (International Business Machines).

Sometimes acronyms obscure meaning KFC - Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Some of the acronyms I've come up with help me but probably confuse my readers.

One thing I hate is when someone at work gives a PPT (PowerPoint) presentation and doesn't define the acronym they've used.

Acronyms can be used as a mnemonic device like the word HOMES representing the Great Lakes in the United States.

Back to ASSCURL which is a funny word maybe it means twerking, but this is a memory device to help remember the 7 categories of persuasion which was created by Robert Cialdini.

The categories are:

Authority
Social Proof
Scarcity
Commitment or consistency
Unity
Reciprocity
Liking

So when you need to persuade like when:

• getting a job
• writing a resume
• getting others at work to do things for you
• getting your friend and family to do stuff
• finding a date
• writing an ad
• selling a product or service
• writing a book
• getting a promotion
• changing a person's mind

To learn more about ASSCURL see

Some of my favorite acronyms that I created:

• FUD WUD UG WUG - iF yoU Do What yoU've Done, yoU Get What yoU've Got
• ALED - A Little Each Day
• PURGE - Prioritize yoUR Goals Everyday
• FTAD - Finish Then Add Details
• MTB - Market Then Build

For more see my Listi on Acronyms to reach your goals

Master Persuaders don't Follow There Own Advice

I've been following Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) on twitter and read his book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big and it's helped me tremendously.

From getting a promotion to getting famous people to do stuff.

He has been very accurate so far in predicting many things. He's predicted that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination. He's predicted that Hillary Clinton has been using the #Godzilla of persuasion who he names as Robert Cialdini.

Robert Cialdini is the author of many books on persuasion. But his two most famous are:

• Influence
• Pre-suasion

Gozilla's first book has listed 6 main techniques to persuade but he and Scott Adams doesn't use them properly.

The 6 Persuasion techniques are:

1. Authority
2. Scarcity
3. Social Proof
4. Reciprocation
5. Liking
6. Commitment and consistency

He's recently added a 7th which he calls Unity.

You can remember these from the acronym ASS CURL which is what Twerking is.

But as smart as both of these guys are they're missing Authority from their twitter pages.

This "Verified" icon tells me that it's the real twitter account and not a fake.

So how come guys which are Master Persuaders don't follow the basics?

Sam Harris' View of Donald Trump

I follow 2 very smart people on the internet. Scott Adams creator of Dilbert and Sam Harris the "New Atheist."

I've gotten Scott Adams to challenge Sam Harris to a debate on Trump.  Scott is pro-Trump and Sam is anti-Trump.

As one of the many undecided voters, I find they both make good arguments on the internet. Scott through his Periscope channel and blog and Sam Harris from YouTube and his blog. Both of these guys are as Scott Adams calls it "Master Persuaders."

Sam Harris' Dissection of Trump via Joe Rogan experience (57 minutes). This is a YouTube video that can be accessed from http://bit.ly/SamHarrisVsScottAdams

Here are Sam's arguments below that I transcribed from the video.

Lying

• If someone gets caught in lies again and again
• Trump is lying or some cases changing his mind in an incoherent way
• Functional equivalent of lying
• Functionally unpredictable
• Stance A on Monday and B on Wednesday
• When discrepancy is pointing out he tells you to go "fuck yourself"
• 2:23 Why people love Trump
• New kind of authenticity
• This is the new way of being honest
• A new form of integrity
• Sam Harris sees

• Dishonest and theatrical hucksterism
• Pretending to be things he isn't
• Doesn't care what's true
• Going to tell you to "fuck yourself" every which way
• Knows he predicted incorrectly (in reference to primaries)
• Couldn't imagine people would find this compelling enough for Trump to be on cusp of getting elected
• It's terrifying
• Doesn't care about truth
• Witnessing something new with Trump that good people aren't willing to put up with the process
• Anti-establishment mood. Jam a stick in the wheel in the system
• No version of the truth that makes Trump look acceptable
• Bill Clinton wasn't a rapist in 90s but now he's a rapist for purely opportunistic reasons
• He's probably lying about the amount of money he has
• 38:40 He's almost certainly lying about giving money to the vets
• 39:49 He can't acknowledge that he did anything wrong
• He pays no price for [lying] among people who like him

His Intelligence

• Advertising his lack qualifications for the office
• I'm not bothered by his racism, misogyny, demagoguery, bullying because guess it's an act and in truth he doesn't have a racist bone in his body.
• Hunch he's far more liberal than he seems
• The thing that can't be true, is he's brilliant and well informed on the issues
• He's not pretending to be incoherent and irresponsible about the issues
• The vacuousness of his speech
• He'll say the same thing 3 times in a row and it was meaningless the first time
• He says "It's gonna be amazing, so very, very amazing, trust me it's gonna be amazing
• He's never strung together a string of sentences that was interesting
• There's never a moment where I think he's smarter and better informed than I realize
• Image of an urn and you pull things out and all you pull out of it is junk, chicken bones, broken marble, gum
• It's possible the Hope Diamond is in there
• But minds aren't like that when I see what this guy says he doesn't say anything that a well informed intelligent person would say and ideas are connected
• You can't fake this stuff, being uninformed or  well informed
• Building a wall is a stupid idea among many stupid ideas
• Smart people see he looks like a buffoon 
• 21:22 There's no reason to believe that if he was president he would be a totally sober and presidential person
• Climate change is a hoax
• People assume that he's a successful business man he must understand the economy
• I guarantee you [Trump] doesn't know anything about the difference between Sunni and Shia

Illegal Alien Policy

• Rounding up 11 million illegal aliens and send back to Mexico
• This one policy claim is so impractical and unethical
• Your gardener, housekeeper, car wash person, person who picks the vegetables gets a knock on the door by the Gestapo 
• Vast number of people are law-abiding
• Many have kids that are American citizens
• Are you going to send that person back to Mexico and do it by the hundreds of thousands and millions
• This one point alone should be enough to disqualify a person's candidacy 
• So crazy
• More energizing to the people who already like him
• Round them up
• Send them back to their country
• Waste of law enforcement resources to focus on this and not on real terrorism is pure insanity totally unethical
• People are rallying around this

Climate Change

• His policy is insane and dangerous
• He thinks it's a hoax
• We should pull out of the Paris accords
• Bring back the coal jobs
• It's important to understand what the truth is on climate change
• With Trump saying this is all bullshit in defiance of all of the science ... is on every other point
• It really matters who's right about climate change

Pandering

• Smart people who are voting for him thinks that's he's pandering
• Not disavowing the white supremacy vote
• If it's true how weird and unethical that is
• No compunction about lying

Crazy Things he's said/did

• Climate change is a hoax concocted by the Chinese to destroy our manufacturing base
• He likes Putin and has said favorable things about him
• Round up the illegals
• Build a wall
• He's a birther
• Bill Clinton wasn't a rapist back then but now he is one
• Dismantle NATO
• He's created a wormhole in our political process of craziness
• He could get on twitter and say I'd like to fuck Nicki Minaj and create a twitter storm
• Parody of disabled reporter

Islam

• I guarantee you [Trump] doesn't know anything about the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
• Which countries are predominantly Sunni and which are Shia?

Head in the Game

• 28:00 His head has never been in this game
• It's obvious from everything he says

Character Flaws

• He has them

Future back to decision

• Crystal ball doesn't tell you who won but tells you it's a disaster
• Worst president we ever had

 Sam Harris Policies

• We should be able to defend our borders
• No good argument for a porous border that we can't defend and figure out who's coming in
• Building a wall is almost certainly a  stupid idea among his many stupid ideas
• Great to know who's coming in and have a purely legal process
• Against open borders or porous borders

Smash the window

• People are voting for change and not for Trump
• Light a fire
• Almost any process that you would change the system is more intelligent than that

Likely to Screw things up Argument

• If things are screwed up who more likely would cause it?
• Clinton is perfectly predictable

General Statements Election

• Joe Rogan (JR):
•  Anybody that you want to be president wants to be president
• Play Super Bowl with 3 worse teams
• Drunk inmates, high school kids
• SH
• People want to change the system but they're not thinking about the implications of radically changing the system
• It's astonishing that out of 300 million people these are the choices
• Each candidate should be more impressive than the next like watching a slam dunk contest
• Smart on all the topics but also ethically wise
• Wasn't obviously an asshole
• Mature relationship to changing his mind
• Taboo to change your mind, system is broken in that respect
• Watching the debates will be like watching the Super Bowl, 100 million people watching debates
• Even if we do everything perfectly there will still be a tsunami of risk and hassle, waste and rest of world's chaos
• Even if our house was in order we still have
• Terrorism
• Global Climate Change
• China and India complying with climate goals
• Virtual certainty that there's gonna be a pandemic
• The shear fact that in 1918 there was a killer flu and there's gonna be another killer flu
• We need smart people to optimize the system to deal with these kinds of things
• If we're promoting religious maniacs, crazy narcissists, liars, ignoramuses and only those people how could this end well?

Positive Statements on Trump

• He's dissected out the religious factions of the Republican party
• Trump pretends to be religious

General Statements on Trump

• Vast difference between Clinton and Trump
• Trump isn't an adult (by implication)
• 7:50 Trump will run civilization off a cliff (by implication)
• Hillary is lesser of 2 evils
• JR: 
• Trump is a powerful character in more ways like a show man character
• He's putting on a great show and he's gonna win because of great show
• He's not in touch with reality (We need someone who is in touch with reality)
• Not only is he ignorant but he doesn't care, keeps doubling down
• Putting Trump at the helm is basically putting chaos at the helm 
• He believes what he believes regardless of the information coming in and regardless of the consequences
• It's worse than having no one in charge, because you put the power in this person's hand
• Every decision has to go through Trump that is like an information scrambling device
• Best case is he'll get into the oval office and he'll be scared that he's running the better part of human civilization and will hire the best people 
• All Trump thinks is that bluster, banality and bullying will win in every situation 
• He's an incoherent demagogue
• He's a liberal and tolerant on one hand and getting ready to be Hitler and you guys are still prepared to vote for me
• We need a qualified person to deal with all the hassles and dangers

Trump is Winging it

• He's winging it. 
• It could not be more obvious that he's winging it on every level.
• There's no way to signal that he's winging it more clearly with everything he's doing, yet there's no penalty.

Wake up Call for Republicans

• He's not aligned with the Republican platform in most ways

Trump's Policies and Changing Position

• The truth is no one knows what his policies are because he keeps changing his position on things like taxation
• He's talked on both sides of core republican issues
• In many ways he's left of Hillary
• Isolationist
• War both extremes
• We're gonna get out of the world's business, isolationists which is deeply anti-republican
• I'm gonna be the maniac who you never gonna know who I'm going to bomb next
• We're gonna wipe out ISIS, not a man left standing
• I'm not gonna take shit from anyone including China, North Korea 

Trump vs. Media

• He shouts down press pool
• Sam Harris says that the press is
• Highly imperfect
• partisan
• false stories
• exaggerations
• screw people over
• there are reason to not trust the press

Sam Harris on Hillary

• "She's terrible in many ways" 
• JR: She was anti-gay marriage until 2013
• 5:15 to use the sexist term, she has a shrill voice, yelling when she doesn't need to yell
• 5:41 she's a bad candidate
• 5:45 she's very smart, well informed, qualified
• Who I will vote for given the choices
• 5:57 I understand people's reservations with her
• 5:58 She's a liar, opportunist
• She's predder[sic] naturally inauthentic
• She focus groups every third sentence
• People who've met her behind closed doors say "she incredibly impressive"
• I'm for Clinton despite all my reservations about her
• On Facebook
•  I get thousand points of pure pain [about Hillary]
• No one loves Hillary
• Liar and opportunist
• Get your reservations about her
• At least she's a grown-up (implying that Trump's a child)
• She's not going to change the system
• She's not going to run civilization off a cliff (implying opposite)
• People energized about Sanders and Trump but none for Clinton
• 8:22 Maybe somewhere someone loves Clinton
• Does not have her defenders the way Trump and Bernie do
• The main gripe against Hillary is she's politics as usual. She's not going to change the system
• Clinton will be predictable, a politician, centrist on foreign and domestic policy, liberal on social issues
• Will not dismantle NATO, go to war with North Korea, get into a alliance with Putin
• She's not going to do something insane (implication Trump might do something insane)
• 28:07 For all of her flaws or how much you hate her as a person, she understands what's going on in the world
• 31:22 When you have a choice for someone that's been in the game for long enough to be really well informed and capable of compromise and not breaking the entire machine vs someone who just stepped off the step of his reality TV show
• 48:28 She's very knowledgeable. If she feels like she doesn't have the knowledge she's going to go to source of the knowledge, grab the best experts she can find
• She will be aware as [Joe Rogan] or I as to the consequences of not knowing what's going on

Who would make a good President

Sam uses this question to show a difference between Hillary and Trump

• Someone who is deeply ethical and wise
• Well informed about the way the world works
• When not informed he recognized his ignorance so quickly and remedies it as fast as possible
• He seeks out the best experts, defers to them and 
• He's mindful about the limits of his knowledge and his expertise is vast

concludes that "You could not begin to say that about Trump.  Honestly, you could probably say that about Clinton."

Subtle Put Down of Trump

• It's like saying his hair is so natural

On the Scott Adams side:

• Hypnotist
• Studied persuasion
• Flame-thrower to a stick fight

Please note I'm still working on this document but thought Scott Adams could address the issues raised.

The issues

• Gun control
• Confiscation guns in Australia
• War
• Terrorism
• Crazy Trump
• Special interests
• Taxes
• Immigration
• Black Lives Matter
• Political Correctness
• Global Warming
• The Media
• Trump's intelligence
• Trump's persuasion skills

Scott Adams is very persuasive. If not for him I wouldn't have considered voting for Trump.

Hillary issues

• Experience
• 2 Criminal Investigations
• server in basement
• Anti gay marriage
• Wouldn't admit she's wrong
• Clinton foundation
• Health
• Politician
• Her inappropriate laughing
• The way she talks
• Attacks on trump instead of policies
• Media bias
• Super predators

Trump issues

• Trump University
• 4 Bankruptcy's 
• SA: that's okay because he's had 500 successful businesses
• Not releasing tax return
• SA: if the IRS is okay with it I'm okay
• He bragged about not paying taxes
• Racist
• SA: He's pro-america if you're on our team
• Misogynist
• Extreme position
• SA: His first offer in a negotiation
• Ghost writer for Art of Deal
• Miss Piggy incident
• Trump foundation
• Interruptions during the debate
• Thin skinned
• Dismantle special interest groups, corporations, lobbyists
• Narcissist

My own thoughts

• Violence 
• Media bias
• Cognitive dissonance - examples on video (Bill Maher)
• China
• Deficit
• Terrorism

My $50,000 Dog

I got a dog from the pound about 4 years ago as a puppy. Her name is Lola.

Recently I hired someone to play with Lola for a 1/2 an hour per day for $10.

Now $10, doesn't sound like much until you run the numbers.

$10 * 5 days per week = $50 per week

50 weeks per year * $50 = $2,500

I need to earn $5,000 per year minus 50% taxes to have the $2,500 to spend.

10 year of this = 10 * $5,000 = $50,000.

She's worth every penny.

How to Solve the Problem of too Many Books to Read

I have a problem.

I have too many books to read.

Right now I've got 12 books out of the library and at least 500 books on my shelves and another 500 pdf books on my computer.

The answer is pretty simple. I can only read one book at a time, so I should read the book that's most useful to help me reach my goals.  So the question is:

What are my goals?

Once I know what my goals are I need to know what's my most important goal.

Another problem is that after I read a book what do I do with the information. I need to add tasks to my to-do list and other items that help me reach my goals.

The current book I'm reading is Cialdini's Pre-suasion.

I've also just finished listening to Leil Lowndes' book How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (H2T2A).

Another thing is that the books I have are an insight into what my goals are. Each book's title persuaded me to put down my hard earned money for the promise that the title and sub-title.

I've identified 3 goals that I have and believe everyone else has:

1. $ecurity
2. Longevity
3. Fun

So the Pre-suasion book relates to $ecurity and Fun and the H2T2A has $,F. 

The hardest thing about picking which book to read is assess how well it will bring me closer to my goals. 

Now, library books have an increased value as they have a deadline to read. So it pays to prioritize these. But at the same time I can take library books out that aren't aligned with my goals.

Books to Goals

1. Pre-suasion - Cialdini
2. The Small Big: Small Changes that Spark Big Influence - Cialdini
3. TED talks:the official TED guide to public speaking 
4. Invisible Influence - Jonah Burger
5. Smarter, Faster Better: Secrets of productivity in life and in business
6. Stand Out: How to find your breakthrough idea and build a following around it
7. The Idea Hunter
8. Dilbert and the way of the Weasel
9. Small is the new big - Seth Godin
10. Why diets make us fat
11. The age fix:Plastic surgeon reveals how to really look 10 years younger

So these books tell me my goals are:

1. Become a master persuader - $, F (3)
2. Improve Public speaking - $ (1)
3. Be more productive - $, F (1)
4. Idea success - $, F (2)
5. Fun 
6. Health - dieting
7. Looks - $, F (1)

Goals to Books

I'll continue to talk about my Goals in a future blog post.

Scott Adams (Dilbert) challenges Sam Harris to Debate because of Me?

My two favorite people on the internet are Scott Adams the Dilbert creator and Sam Harris. Did I just get Scott Adams to challenge Sam Harris to a debate?

Here is a tweet I set to them on ....

Could be greatest #debate of all time
.@ScottAdamsSays vs .@SamHarrisOrg
Please RT to get this to happen #Hillary vs. #Trump

— Alec Berg (@alecberg) September 23, 2016

Then today, 9/24/2016 while watching Scott Adams Periscope broadcast I asked him to debate +Sam Harris and Scott challenged Sam.

I thought I was getting fired but got a promotion instead.

Today I accepted a new position at my job. I start it on Oct. 17th.

It all started during my semi-annual review a few months ago. My boss asked me if I'd be interested in a position in another group at my company.  Now this scared me because it felt like he was asking me to leave.

One thing about the job is that it's very similar to my current job except instead of the technology department it's part of the risk department.

One weakness of my companies interview process was that they didn't ask me any technical questions.  Part of the reason was due to the interviewer knowing me from previous encounters at work.

Another strange thing is that I didn't meet the boss in person, but I was interviewed by my new boss and his boss, both over the phone.

Early in the interview process I was asked how much money was I looking for so I blirted out a roundish number that was $15,000 more than my current salary.

One of the key reasons I got the job is due to my Excel/VBA skills.  The risk department needs help in automation of report creation for various parts of my company.

One thing that came out of the new job was that I got a promotion because the salary I was asking for was too high for my current level.

I've been reluctant to tell people that I'm getting a promotion, especially one of my co-workers. He will go ballistic when he finds out that I'm at a higher level than him.

There were a lot of things I liked about my old job that I will miss. The clinching point was the promotion. I don't know how I could turn one down and stay where I am.

One wrinkle for me is getting access to my current machine when I move to my new department. I've been at this job for 9 years and over that time I have an enormous amount of useful tech that I would hate to have to develop again.

Now one of things I believed helped me was Scott Adams' the creator of Dilbert and his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. In this book he talks about persuasion techniques that appeared to work.

My last day at work

On my way home from work I had an urge for pizza.

So I stopped at Mario's and got an eggplant and Sicilian slice. 

Now this was against my diet. But this morning I lost more weight than I expected and I'm down to 166.6. 

I think I took some Metformin but I'm not sure.

Yesterday was my last day at my job at my old department and I start my new job at my new department on Monday. It wasn't that sad to leave as most of the people weren't in the office because it was Friday. I moved my computer on the subway from Wall St. to Midtown and set it up myself.  I'm a little nervous because I left my new office at 6 PM and many people were still there, especially senior managers.  Also, my co-worker Olive seemed to imply we would be very busy next week. She was also wearing jeans and talking in Russian to someone. This is already a minor annoyance for co-workers to speak a foreign language in front of me. Makes me feel excluded.

The space at my desk is much smaller than I had for the last few years. 

One thing I'm a little worried about is losing access to my data and software as the company deletes and recreates accounts when you change your dept. 

While setting up my computer I started sweating due to the high temperature in the office. Luckily I also brought my fan which worked well to cool me down.  My neighbor to my right had her garbage can blocking my desk and has some of her stuff encroaching my desk. She's moving so I'm okay with it for now.

One thing I know is to set up a proper confirmation bias my first days at work.  There are many sayings that point this out "You only get one chance to make a first impression." I wrote about this in How to pass the drivers test were I discuss my "Jersey Driver" experience.

On the way in I made my first long Periscope video of my walk from Penn Station to Wall Street.

I decided to not go to  a Squeeze concert on Sunday night just so I could be fresh on the first day of the job.

I'm moving from the tech department to the users area

My dog just got me angry for the number of times she's wanted to go in and out of the house.

So for today some things for me to accomplish are:

1. Read and return overdue library books
1. Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg
2. Invisible Influence - Jonah Berger
3. TED talks: the official TED guide to public speaking - Chris Anderson
2. Clean up my desk, family room and bedroom
3. Lower my blood sugar
4. Prep for Monday, first day of my new job
5. Clean up the yard

I bought a pair of new shoes from Macy's for $28 original list price was $125. These shoes are killing my feet. I can barely wear them. 

I attended a phone meeting where I introduced myself and I feel I didn't do that good of a job. One of my key principles is Preparation  I should always be ready to introduce myself.

Since I'm new I should Practice what to do and say when being introduced.

I've stopped doing a number of things at my old job that I especially don't want to do at the new job just because of the confirmation bias it sets:

• Making/Cleaning up after making Bullet Proof Coffee
• Wearing sneakers to the office
• Wearing headphones to block out a noisy office.
• Leaving too early

One thing I noticed in contrast to my first day 9 years ago was that I understood most of what people were talking about. I remember sitting in a meeting and thinking WTF are they talking about. I have to be careful because there's a limit to when a new person can ask a stupid question.  Also there's a fine line between a good question and a bad question.

In my first meeting I think I said too much shit. It didn't come out right and may have sounded critical.

One thing is a new person sees shit that no one else can see.  When you're new to a situation the bad process is very easy to spot. But after years of participating in the bad process you can become blind to it.

Something I need to do is introduce myself to senior managers who sit right near me.

So I'm on an adventure. I've stepped outside my comfort zone, and will have some excitement back at work which after 9 years became too habitual.  I'm going to try to reserve judgement as long as I can and try not to make the same mistakes I've made before.  Shyness doesn't get you ahead. 

Daily 5 Minute Journal - September 10, 2016

911

Day before Sep. 11th.  15 years ago wow.  I knew 2 people who where killed in the World Trade Center. They were both at a meeting at the restaurant Windows of The World.

My wife and I were lucky that she didn't work there at the time but 5 years prior worked on the floor in the north tower where one of the planes hit.

Job Interview

I have another interview on Monday with a Managing Director at my company. Fortunately it's a phone interview which is easier for many reasons. This weekend I'd like to prepare for the interview.

New Diet

I came up with a new diet which I call the stair or maybe step diet. The basics of the diet are:

1. Weigh yourself each day
2. Try to lose one pound in the weight from start that is dropping the decimal place
1. If I weight 168.4 then if I weigh 167.8 I've reached my goal
3. When you reach your goal feel free to eat foods you normally wouldn't eat to lose weight
4. Once I get above the weight loss try to get to the next weight 1 pound less
1. if I weigh 166.8, 166.6, 166.4, 166.2 or less I've reached the goal and can eat what I want
5. Repeat until you reach your goal weight.

Some examples

start weight 170.2 goal to weigh 169.8 or less

Eat moderately and try to get to 169.8 or less

If you reach 169.8 or less eat what you want

Your next weigh in might be 170.4 and your new goal is 168.8 or less.

Eat moderately and do what you have to get to the 168.8 or less level.

Keep repeating this process until you reach your goal weight.

Daily 5 Minute Journal - September 10, 2016

911

Day before Sep. 11th.  15 years ago wow.  I knew 2 people who where killed in the World Trade Center. They were both at a meeting at the restaurant Windows of The World.

My wife and I were lucky that she didn't work there at the time but 5 years prior worked on the floor in the north tower where one of the planes hit.

Job Interview

I have another interview on Monday with a Managing Director at my company. Fortunately it's a phone interview which is easier for many reasons. This weekend I'd like to prepare for the interview.

New Diet

I came up with a new diet which I call the stair or maybe step diet. The basics of the diet are:

1. Weigh yourself each day
2. Try to lose one pound in the weight from start that is dropping the decimal place
1. If I weight 168.4 then if I weigh 167.8 I've reached my goal
3. When you reach your goal feel free to eat foods you normally wouldn't eat to lose weight
4. Once I get above the weight loss try to get to the next weight 1 pound less
1. if I weigh 166.8, 166.6, 166.4, 166.2 or less I've reached the goal and can eat what I want
5. Repeat until you reach your goal weight.

Some examples

start weight 170.2 goal to weigh 169.8 or less

Eat moderately and try to get to 169.8 or less

If you reach 169.8 or less eat what you want

Your next weigh in might be 170.4 and your new goal is 168.8 or less.

Eat moderately and do what you have to get to the 168.8 or less level.

Keep repeating this process until you reach your goal weight.

Knee Pain

When I was younger around 18 years old, I had my knee hyper extended while playing hockey.

I'm starting to feel knee pain and am not sure if it's from this event or just aging.

I'm finding that the internet is good at a lot of stuff but lacks help with pains do to aging.

I'm sitting and feel no pain in my knees. I do have worse pains.

I found an article The 8 key ways to relieve knee pain that really work.

1. See your doctor
2. Lose weight
3. Improve Muscles
1. Short arc quad
2. Wall slides
3. Bridge
4. Be gentler when you exercise
5. Take an anti-inflamatory or spices
1. quercentin (apples)
2. onions
3. green tea
4. tumeric
5. cumin
6. ginger
7. capsicum
6. Heals no higher than 2 inches
7. Supplements
1. glucosamine
2. chondroitin
3. Zyflamend
8. Food Journal- Foods that can cause flareups
1. eggplant
2. tomatoes
3. citrus
4. potatoes
5. peppers

Daily 5 Minute Journal - Sept. 4, 2016

Today, my weight was 169.6 and blood sugar 111, body fat 21.3%.

My Writing Improvement

I'm reading my blog post from yesterday and noticing that it's not that good.

It starts with:

Last night I walked to Carvel with my wife and dog and as we crossed the street I picked up my phone, turned it to a bright screen and shook it in case a driver making a turn in front of us didn't see us.  I did this because I was almost hit by a car making a left turn while walking my dog.

 What if someone doesn't know what Carvel is? I could add ",the ice cream store,"

Does it matter that my wife and dog were with me?

What alternative words could I have used instead of "wife and dog?"

• family

The first sentence is poorly written. Is the following better?

Last night I almost had a NDE or Near Death Experience.

It wasn't the usual kind where you die, rise up and see the light. It was the kind where I could have died.

I was walking to the ice cream shop to help relieve a depressing day for me.  I already had some pizza for the same reason and figured a little ice cream could help.

The main reason for the depression was a lonely feeling.  I worked from home and it's been a week since my two boys left for college. 

....

So I could have made the story more interesting.

Idea of Idea Muscle

This morning while laying in bed, I came back to a thought about my Idea Muscle. +james altucher talks about how if we don't use our "idea muscle" it shrinks like regular muscles. 

The idea is to come up with 10 ideas per day on any subject. I was thinking how I could use this for any problem I'm currently having. So for example I'm looking for a way to not have to work and could come up with 10 ideas to make money. And then come up with 10 ideas on how to implement them.

Software Tools

I was also thinking about what tools could get me to where I want to go. Of course I don't have a clear picture of where that is so I'll probably continue to flounder.

One tool could be useful is to generate a blog from my Cur Task spreadsheet. This is basically my to-do list and knowledge collection tool in Excel.

Yesterday

I spent all morning on twitter. I replied to a tweet from +Mark Cuban and got mentioned more than I ever have in the past.

.@mcuban a video of him failing 2 multiply is the @realDonaldTrump? I'd bet > 99% of people not able to answer this question on live radio

— Alec Berg (@alecberg) September 3, 2016

This caused a lot of mentioned on twitter

Osteoperosis

From reading the book Antifragile by Nisam Taleb, I'm wondering if doing headstands could help. He has a picture of a woman carrying a basket on her head and stating she has good bones and posture. This reminded me of the song from Romper Room "See me walk so straight and tall, I won't let my basket fall."

Food Diary

I saw a doctor the other day for my future colonoscopy examine. He recommended I keep a food diary. 

Other Stuff

Some of the other tasks I completed yesterday were:

• Trim bushes
• Mowed front and back lawns
• Walked the Dog
• Read Antifragile
• Dinner at Chipotle
• Read a random book
• Persuasion: The Art of Influencing People
• While reading the book I looked at some reviews and accidently found that one of the reviews was mine from 2012
• Downloaded a number of audiobooks
• Think and Grow Rich
• The 5 Essential People Skills by Dale Cargenie
• Antifragile

Daily 5 Minute Journal - Sept. 3, 2016 - Near Death Experience

Near Death Experience

Last night I walked to Carvel with my wife and dog and as we crossed the street I picked up my phone, turned it to a bright screen and shook it in case a driver making a turn in front of us didn't see us.  I did this because I was almost hit by a car making a left turn while walking my dog.

As the woman in the car passed us, she said "It's good you picked up your phone, it really helped."

This has been making me think about a design flaw in cars where in the driver's seat there are two blind spots in front caused by a wider left and right frame that holds side air bags.

I've almost been hit by a few cars and I'm thinking it's mostly because of this blind spot. I wonder how many people have been killed because of this. I can think of 3 - 4 times off the top of my head where I was making a turn and didn't see a pedestrian or another driver that happened to be in this front blind spot. At night, this appears to be even more troublesome.

Empty Nest

Had ice cream and pizza last night, because I am a little depressed from my kids going to college. Also I worked from home alone most of the day. Felt I needed a pick me up.

Reach Some Goals Labor Day Weekend

I have 3 days for the labor day weekend. Sat, Sun Mon and I would like to accomplish something. I feel like I've been very distracted lately and haven't been making progress towards my goals whatever they are.

I thought that I should create a "Don't do list" and randomly select one thing per day to not do. Some things I could put on the list are:

1. No coffee
2. No BPC (Bulletproof Coffee)
3. No computer usage
4. No cell phone usage
5. No questbars
6. No carbs
7. No shoes
8. No twitter
9. No TV
10. No Scott Adams
11. No buying 

Another thing I could do is work on small tasks for a day. That is don't work on anything that will take more than 5 minutes.

Some things on my list for this weekend are:

1. Go to the beach. I haven't gone once this summer
2. Clean up my messy desk
3. Mow the lawn
4. Buy at Vitamin Shoppe
1. Coconut oil
2. Shampoo
5. Buy a weed wacker
6. Clean up my messy dresser
7. Get a doggy DNA test
8. Order real BPC ingredients
9. Get a haircut

Reminds me of the hardest question 

     What should I do now?

What are the top 5 habits I'd like to break or create?

What are the subtasks needed to reach one of the 3 goals ($LF)?

What's my top tasks to reach the 3 goals?

Another thing I'd like to accomplish is improve system for creating or delete habits or programs I have in. I haven't been good about exercising or using my laser comb.

Weight Loss

I weighed 169.4 this morning which is at least 5 pounds higher than I would like. I've been having problems losing weight. I'm not sure what caused it. But I'm certainly not following the Excel Diet I created.  This all seemed to happen after I read a book by (-mem: Gary Taubes - Good Calories Bad Calories.

Mindfulness/Meditating

I've been meditating at work with Evan and am really liking it. He leads the session. He sets a timer and we follow him. We do about 10  minutes all together of:

1. stretching
2. relaxing from head to toes
3. Counting breaths from 1 - 10 and restarting
4. Smiling while doing it

Miscellaneous

I've also been thinking "What is the proof that the holy books aren't the word of God?" Could this be used to reduce terrorism?

Last night I watched some episodes of Cesar 911. This guy is amazing on how he can take these crazy dogs (caused by the owners) and turn them normal. It's freaken amazing. 

Current Books I'm Reading/Listening to

I've been reading Antifragile by Nisam Taleb and am still liking it.  It's a book about a concept called anti-fragile which is the opposite of fragile which there is no word. Most people when asked will say unbreakable I'm up to chapter 3, unfortunately the pages aren't numbered in the PDF. Its a book that is hard to understand and could have a version that's hyperlinks or gives more info when hovering.

I've been listening to @Scott Adams' (creator of Dilbert) book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big which I got from Audible.com for $2.95 and would highly recommend. I signed out of my Amazon account and the price was $17.95 today.  He says "turn experiences into stories." I'm going to create a spreadsheet that has:

• Date time
• short name
• Experience
• Story

I've been also listening to Scott's periscope feed.

He used the term "awkward silence" in his book. This is a strange concept if you think about it. Why should silence be awkward?

Some of the other terms he's been using that I like are:

• Linguistic Kill Shot
• Bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight
• AB Test
• Visual
• confirmation bias
• talent stack
• People are irrational all the time
• Godzilla
• Confirmation bias trap
• He's got the optics
• charisma = power + empathy
• primes
• moist robot
• master persuader

Oh the Pain

One thing I'd like to resolve is my pain that I've been getting in my foot for over 2 years. Recently I've been getting pain while doing a curling motion and also knee pain.