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