A Letter From The Year 2070

Phôi pha

Finding reasons to agree

What’s your reaction when somebody is telling something you don’t like? Is it unconditionally “Yes”? Is it unconditionally “No”? It’s something in between? Do you usually find reasons to agree or to disagree? I ask because finding reasons to agree seems to be one of the most difficult mindsets these days.

We seem to be programmed to challenge, to fight, to counterattack. We seem to be conditioned to loudly mark our point of vue, most of the time by openly disagreeing with the other part, like this would be the only way our personality could survive. There is a whole mindset in favor of disagreeing. Every time somebody is trying to say something, we seem to first find reasons to reject what the other just said, and only if we haven’t find any, then we agree.

That’s weird. That’s a mindset of fear. A mindset of rejection. A defensive strategy. Defensive against what? Are we really acting like every other person is our enemy (or, if you prefer business terms, competition)? Have you ever thought how time consuming is this strategy? How much energy you spend only to identify reasons to disagree?

Growing versus Resistance

If you have a mindset of disagreeing you’re resisting, you’re not growing. If you analyze constantly what other are saying, trying to find breches for your own ideas, trying to find their mistakes, trying to find their negligences, you’re acting against your nature. You’re not here to reject others. Even if you’re going to succeed, the result will be pretty sad: you’ll end up alone.

On the other hand, finding reasons to agree gives you room to grow. Even if overall you’re not totally agreeing with the other guy, the simple shift in attitude towards agreement will give you something back. Will give you a new perspective, will make you understand more. It’s not about what makes you unique, about your originality and ideas, you’ll always have that, no need to make your personality visible by contrasting with other people – it’s about your attitude. An attitude of acceptance rather than rejection.

I am pretty sure that plants, water and sun have a lot of reasons to agree. They seems to go along pretty well. I don’t see how a plant could disagree with the water, because is different from it, and accept it only if it passes some kind of test. I also don’t see how the sunlight could disagree with the plants and not offering them what they need in order to grow. The agreement here is total. And constant. Those nature parts are having an attitude of agreement. Sometimes they’re rejecting each other, when the size is too big for instance (too much sun or too much water are not good for the plants). But initially, they’re having an unconditional agreement.

Agreement versus Obeisance

Finding reasons to agree doesn’t mean you’re blindly accepting everything others are saying. It’s not like you’re going to take everything for granted. Finding reasons to agree means first assessing what the other part is saying or doing. Means trying to understand what the other is talking about, what are the reasons behind his talk. Finding reasons to agree means accepting the other guy reality.

Obeisance, on the other hand, means walking in the other shoes without any assessment whatsoever. Obeisance means listening without understanding. It’s like obeying a direct order. Which is something necessary if you’re in a war and you’re a soldier. But you’re not in a war, and you’re not a soldier. Most of the time.

What’s The Catch?

Finding reasons to agree as opposed to finding reasons to disagree is a very thin but important line in one’s behavior. I’ve been on both realms many times. I’ve been a bully entrepreneur, ready to fight for my “ideas”, or products, or services. I had this mindset of “let’s try to find a mistake here”. I looked at people waiting for their first wrong move. And it doesn’t felt good.

I mean, you can have results if you’re behaving like this. I know I had. And many successful entrepreneurs are very aggressive and intimidating. They’re relying on the other guy wrong move. They’re acting with the mindset of “finding reasons to disagree”. The only downside of this attitude, at least for me, was the incredible weariness I had to face after a full day of work. It was like I was pushing a 100 wagons train by myself. I was literally drained.

When you act like this, you’re cutting your energy refilling sources. If you’re finding reasons to disagree, you’re telling the Universe he’s wrong. And the Universe respond back as you intended: wrong. You’re alone and your connection with others is burned. That’s the catch.

Finding reasons to agree works in a very different way. When I first started to apply this mindset I noticed that my day was less energy consuming than usual. I started to pay attention to the other guy reasons, I tried to visualize things the way he did it and started to find reasons to agree. Not always the final result was an agreement, there were situation in which we simply couldn’t align. We’re different people.

But it happened that we reached those conclusions in a much lighter and decent manner than before. By finding reasons to agree first, I built a connection. Some energy field was opened. And I started to function better. And so did the other guy. By openly accepting the difference between us, we created a common vibration. And that made the energy exchange way smoother.

And. to be honest, this mindset shift opened the door to a lot of new stuff. Until a certain point, I applied it only in my relationships. I was finding reasons to agree only if I was in an interaction. But then I gradually started to apply this in other areas as well.

I started to find reasons to agree with myself. I started to find reasons to agree with specific events. I started to find reasons to agree with concepts or situations.

That’s the real catch. Finding reasons to agree with your life is so much better than finding reasons to beat yourself up.

Source: Dragosroua.com

To the new year

Bất kể bạn có mê tín hay không vẫn xin bạn đọc bài văn dưới đây. Xin gởi lá thư này đi cho những người bạn mà bạn muốn chúc phúc.Có một số người có thể bạn đã dần dần quên đi người đó, nhưng nếu lòng bạn vẫn còn hình bóng người ấy, thì họ cũng sẽ gặp nhiều may mắn.

Nên ăn nhiều lương thực thô.

Đừng nên dễ dàng tin vào những gì bạn nghe, đừng tiêu xài hết tiền bạn đang có, không nên muốn ngủ bao lâu thì ngủ bao lâu.

Xin thành thật và thật lòng khi nói câu “I love you”

Bất kể lúc nào khi nói câu “xin lỗi”, xin hãy nhìn thẳng vào mắt của đối phương.

Hãy tin vào tiếng sét ái tình.

Đừng bao giờ coi thường mơ ước của người khác.

Bạn có thể bị tổn thương nếu yêu một người một cách say đắm, nhưng nó là phương pháp duy nhất khiến con người bạn trở nên toàn diện.

Dùng phương pháp tinh vi và xác thật để giải quyết tranh chấp, không nên xúc phạm người khác.

Đừng bao giờ đánh giá con người qua bề ngoài.

Nói từ từ nhưng phải suy nghĩ nhanh.

Khi người khác hỏi những điều mà bạn không muốn trả lời, xin hãy cười và nói “tại sao bạn lại muốn biết điều đó?”

Gọi điện thoại cho mẹ, nếu không thể, ít nhất trong lòng bạn phải nghĩ về mẹ.

Một khi gặp phải thất bại, bạn nên nhớ phải lấy đó làm kinh nghiệm học tập của bạn.

Hãy ghi nhớ ba chữ “trọng”: tôn trọng mình; tôn trọng người khác; giữ lấy tôn trọng, phải có trách nhiệm đối với hành vi của mình.

Đừng nên để việc tranh chấp nhỏ đi hủy hoại tình bạn vĩ đại.

Bất luận lúc nào khi bạn phát hiện bạn làm sai, xin hết lòng tìm cách bù đắp. Phải nhanh chân lên!

Bất luận lúc nào khi bạn nghe điện thoại, khi nhấc điện thoại lên xin bạn hãy cười lên, vì đối phương sẽ cảm nhận được nụ cười của bạn!

Hãy kết hôn với người mà bạn thích chuyện trò với người đó, vì khi bạn già đi, bạn sẽ phát hiện, thích chuyện trò là một ưu điểm lớn.

Nên chấp nhận sự thay đổi, nhưng không phải vứt bỏ quan niệm của mình.

Hãy nhớ rằng, im lặng là vàng.

Hãy dành nhiều thời gian để đọc sách, ít xem ti vi.

Tin tưởng vào thượng đế, nhưng đừng quên khóa cửa.

Khi bạn cãi vã với người yêu, xin hãy giải quyết bằng lý trí, không nên moi những gì đã qua ra nói.

Đừng trốn tránh ngày hôm qua.

Nên chú ý ý nghĩa từng câu nói của bạn.

Cùng chia sẽ kiến thức của bạn với người khác, đó mới là đạo vĩnh hằng.

Hãy làm những gì mà bạn phải làm.

Đừng nên tin người không bao giờ nhắm mắt khi hôn bạn

Mỗi năm ít nhất đi một nơi mà bạn chưa hề đi qua.

Nếu bạn kiếm được nhiều tiền, nên làm nhiều việc thiện khi bạn còn sống, đó là một cách trả báo tốt nhất cho bạn.

Hiểu sâu và lý giải đúng tất cả các quy tắc, hợp lý cải tiến những quy tắc đó.

Ghi nhớ rằng: quan hệ tốt nhất là yêu và cho người khác hơn là yêu cầu người khác.

Hãy nhìn lại mục đích mà bạn thề sẽ đạt được và phân tích mình đã thành công đến mức nào.

Bất luận trong nấu ăn hay trong tình yêu, bạn đều phải dùng 100% trách nhiệm trong thái độ đối xử .

Sưu tầm.

I wana know what love is

Vô tình

Vô tình anh gặp em
Rồi vô tình thương nhớ
Đời vô tình nghiệt ngã
Nên chúng mình yêu nhau

Vô tình nói một câu
Thế là em hờn dỗi
Vô tình anh không nói
Nên đôi mình xa nhau


Chẳng ai hiểu vì đâu
Đường đời chia hai ngả
Chẳng ai có lỗi cả
Chỉ vô tình mà thôi

Vô tình suốt cuộc đời
Anh buồn đau mải miết
Vô tình em không biết
Hay vô tình quên đi

--Puskin--

Understanding emotions

Taking the plunge on such a complicated topic as emotions is something that I wanted to do long time ago. In fact, this post is staying as a draft in my MacJournal for more than 2 months now. I always wanted to start writing about it, but also felt a little uncomfortable with it. It was like something was not still clear. I had the overall idea but there was some inconsistency in my approach.

Today I’ll go for it because I simply feel like doing it. Noticed the reason? “I simply feel like doing it”. The trigger for starting to write this was an emotion. A feeling.

Being A Prisoner Of Your Own Emotions

I always was quite an emotional person. I am a Scorpio sign, which is a Water sign, and Water signs are well known to be extremely emotional. My rising sign is Capricorn, an Earth sign. Among all the Earth signs, Capricorn is known to be the most sensitive. Quite an emotional super mix here, right?

When I was younger I was always emotions driven. My emotions were so intense that I often mistaken them for thoughts. I often acted out of impulse instead of reason. I was so immersed in my own emotional field that I was convinced that I’m thinking when I was in fact only reacting to some stimulus, same way as the Pavlov’s dog.

Needless to say that when you act only and only by emotions you get hurt . Sometimes you get hurt big time. But your acting pattern is already set and even if you promise to yourself not to repeat the same mistake again, you’ll do it. You say you won’t do that thing that caused you pain, but you go straight to it. And get hurt again.

I’m sure many of you experienced the same pattern. You get emotional on some situation, act, do something wrong because you acted only as a result of that emotion, and then get hurt. And then do the exact situation again. You get hit by the same emotion, do the exact same thing and get hurt again.

Sooner or later you start to feel embarrassed by your own emotional system. You start to actually feel bad on a whole different level, by being able to predict how you will act on a certain circumstance. I won’t see this movie because it will make me cry. I won’t meet those people because I’m shy and I’ll do something stupid. I won’t talk to my parents because I always felt like they wanted to control me.

You don’t do a rational assessment of the situation, you just remember you acted in a hurting way, and start to avoid the whole situation, regardless of the potential. Each and every circumstance has a potential. Most of the time is about a learning potential. But if your actions are emotions driven, you won’t see that potential.

Acting only by emotion is the easiest way toward manipulation. The more emotional you get, and the less assessment you put into your life, the easier for you to be manipulated. You will attract people or situations in which you will be the puppet, and they will be the puppeteer. You won’t even realize that, of course, you will just notice how your life becomes more and more miserable.

Emotions As A Feedback System

It took me some time to understand that emotions are just a feedback system. As strange as it may seem, emotions are not part of “us”. They’re only with “us”. Our main being, so to call it, has nothing to do with emotions. It can exists pretty much without emotions. But it needs them in order to give us feedback about what we’re doing.

Seeing emotions as a feedback mechanism was a healing way to look at my life. Breaking apart from my emotional system gave me the space and light needed to assess whatever triggered those impulses that causes hurt. Didn’t happened at once, and I’m not always completely detached from my emotions. They’re still part of my system, but they’re not the leading force, just the co-pilot.

The biggest mistake people make about emotions is to deny them. To repress their feelings and try to obey to a path of correctness or “spiritual health”. That’s even worse than acting only by emotion, without assessment.

Emotions are a fantastic tool and they should be used as such. Imagine how you would walk into a dark forrest without a compass. You won’t know where you’re heading. You won’t know where you are. The forrest may be dark and scary, but that has nothing to do with your compass. The forrest is not your compass.

Thinking that the compass is the only possible answer to your quest is just dumb. The compass will just show you where you are. It will also tell you what to do, but if you don’t do it, don’t blame it on the compass. To get out of the forrest you need to act, and take into account what the compass is telling you.

If you deny the compass you’re also out of track. You will rely only on luck to get out of the forrest, and that’s stupid. If you have such a good tool with you why ignore it? Just because you ignored it in the past and didn’t do nothing? Acting only by emotion is to pretend you’re following your compass, when in fact you didn’t. You just talk about it and expect things to change around. Well, a compass wouldn’t change stuff around. You will change stuff around.

Follow Your Thoughts And Be Guided By Your Emotions

Emotions are just informations about your path. You walk on your path by following your thoughts. Every single thought you had it will materialize sooner or better. It will become your reality, one way or another. I won’t go now into details about how this will happen, I plan to write about this in more detail later. For now it’s ok to understand that your thoughts are the drivers of your vehicle.

If you still think that your emotions are part of your being, you will tend to mix emotions into your thoughts. Some thoughts will please you, some don’t. Some thoughts will seem easier to follow, some will seem really scary. You will even twist your thinking patterns based on emotions your thoughts triggers.

If you separate your emotions into an external feedback system, your thoughts will be just thoughts. You will think to do something and that’s that. After the thought has been released, it will be followed by an emotion. It will generate a feedback. But not in the same moment, a little bit later. That’s your emotional feedback mechanism.

How can you use this feedback mechanism? Well, there are permissive emotions and non-permissive emotions. If you experience joy, enthusiasm, hope, you’ll be on the permissive side. If you’ll experience sadness, anger, depression, you’ll be on the non-permissive side.

The permissive emotions are green lights. The non-permissive emotions are red lights. Whenever your thoughts trigger a permissive emotion it will be like “go” signal. Your thought is ready to be transformed in action. Whenever your thoughts trigger a non-permissive emotion it will be like a “stop” signal. Don’t go there, don’t do that, your thought won’t be worth of becoming an action.

When used like this, your emotional feedback mechanism will prove to be incredibly helpful. It will not be a cause of pain. You will understand that the only one who creates pain is you. The one who creates happiness is also you. And you will be told that by your emotional feedback mechanism. It will be an enlightening experience. Simple, but enlightening.

Following this feedback mechanism is not simple though. Yes, when you manage to follow it in a constant way you will experience alignment and happiness. But until you manage to do it completely and correctly you will have to spend some time. There are people that think this is the whole purpose of the life. Finding happiness is only a matter of aligning your thoughts with your emotions, and then release the positive thoughts into actions.

Twisted Feedback Mechanism

What’s happening if your compass is broken? If your emotional feedback mechanism is corrupt? If the thoughts triggers are chaotic and your actions are inconsistent? Well, you fix the compass. That’s all you have to do. And if you know that this is only a compass, and is outside of you, you will save yourself same shame and guilt by thinking that is “something wrong with you”.

The vast majority of people has broken compasses, in fact. They act in disharmony with their true emotional feedback mechanism. That mechanism has been broken long time ago and they’re still using it. Many people don’t know there’s something wrong with their emotional feedback mechanism. But it is.

One of the biggest emotional corruptions is fear. Fear is the anticipation of something that might be going wrong in the future, and experiencing the outcome in the present moment. You fear something that it isn’t real, but it might be. Fear is one of the most powerful emotions we have and in fact it is only a modified version of hope. Hope is the anticipation of something that it will go right in the future, and experiencing the outcome in the present moment.

Many awaken people give advice to follow your fears. Or at least to confront them. Facing the fears equals to face the worst outcome from the future in the present moment. You fear confrontation with a business associate? You’re afraid of what this can do to your business status? It’s only in the future, it’s only a potential of this current reality, better bring it in the present. And confront it. You will see that the negative outcome was just something you created in your mind. It’s not real, only your fear makes it real by projecting it into the future. Bringing your fears in the present moment will destroy the projection.

Fear is an emotion that you should follow. Back in time, fear was a very healthy way to stay alive. If there was something bad in meeting a leopard with your bare hands, and that leaved some scars, well, your emotional feedback system will trigger some fear next time you’ll be near a leopard. You know what fears tell you, that you had negative experiences in the past, and then you’ll do your acting. You may confront the leopard or run. Fight or flight.

But fear was so corrupted during the last hundreds of years. It is used as a social conditioning mechanism. Traditional media – tv, newspapers, et all – is projecting potential bad outcome and that triggers fear in a lot of people. That raises the “fight or flight” state in all the media consumers. Why? Because it’s easier to control people in a state of fear. They will try to protect themselves from the future bad outcome and they will do whatever it takes for that.

This is the most relevant example of a twisted emotional feedback mechanism. There are also a lot of false hopes floating around, like fake religions, and a lot of physically induced positive emotions, like drug addictions. These are all corruptions of your own emotional feedback mechanism. If you want to travel safely, just keep your emotional feedback system away.

It’s crucial to trust your emotions. It’s crucial to rely on your own feedback in order to avoid traps. Denying your emotions or allowing them to be twisted by false fears, false hopes, or drugs, will be as bad as breaking your compass during a storm. You might get out of the current storm, but nobody guarantees that you will survive the next one.

Your journey is fantastic. You have so much to do, so much to learn and so much space to grow. Your travel must be well guided so you can experience all what you deserve. Keep your compass clean. Trust your emotions, but don’t become a prisoner to them, as they are your only true friend. Don’t let anyone twist your emotions. Follow your heart means trust your true self, face your fears and search for real, deep and simple joy.

Source: Dragosroua.com

How to escape the internet jungle in 5 small steps

Personal History

I am on the Internet for more than 14 years. Since the very beginning. I won’t tell you my Internet history here, as it has little to do with our main topic. But I will tell you a little story about my first Internet full-contact.

10 years ago I started my own web company. Part of it was of course, internet access. Maybe it sounds pre-historical, but believe me, that was a time when dial-up was mainstream. Having cable internet was still a dream. So, I had the chance to get an office in the same building with an Internet Service Provider. A simple ethernet link from them and voila: I had 10 mbs internet access. Wow! And I mean, WOW!

To make a long story short, the following 3 weeks are a black hole in my mind. I hardly remember anything from that time other than dumbly looking at hundreds and hundreds of websites. Without recollecting any of them, of course. At some point, I realized I started to lose weight, to stare at people without a specific reason and that also my sleep was completely screwed.

That was the moment I started to structure my own Internet learning strategy.

1. Isolate From It For A While

Internet is highly addictive. If you really want to take advantage of it, you must first isolate from it for a while. Find out what you really need first. Go online only when you have a clear image about what you want to incorporate. During the first 3 weeks of full-contact Internet I was looking at anything: graphics, forums, cars, tech, directory. Everything. After the first 3 weeks, I decided it’s time to focus on only several areas: learning the basics of server maintenance and PHP. For the next 6 months I didn’t do anything on the Internet except that.

Over the years I found this approach extremely effective. When I decided to start blogging I took a little bit of a break from my regular browsing habits. I just isolated for a few weeks and then I started to browse only blogs. And from blogs, only personal development blogs. And from personal development blogs, only the ones that I liked. Taking some distance from the source will surely help you decide how do you really want to use the source.

2. Restrain Your Insertion Points

How’s the home page of your browser looking? How are your bookmarks organized? How many feeds do you have in your feed reader? I ask because those are your insertion points on the Internet. You are entering the information highway through those roads. And if you have too many access roads you’ll be tempted to use them regardless of their value. Hence, losing precious time just browsing around.

I recommend having under 5 insertion points. One of them would be your feed reader, of course, and it’s your job to constantly peruse it and get rid of old or uninteresting content. The next ones are based on what I call “functional web”. For instance, I do a lot of research. And for research I use only Google. Usually the front page does the trick if I ask the good question. For interaction and human advice I use Twitter. And for growing relationships I use Facebook. As you may see, I still have one spot open.

3. Pick The Right Tools

Harvesting information is one of the most difficult tasks ever. Much more difficult than harvesting crops. This is why you’re going to need some tools. And your tools will be influenced by the type of information you’re harvesting. If you’re after design or art, you’re going to have a good image storing application. If you’re into writing, then some sort of database will have to be at hand. I use only 2 tools to organize my work, and those are Evernote and MacJournal.

Regardless of what type of information you’re harvesting, I think that, as a rule of thumb, any tool you’ll use needs to have at least those features:

• some sort of tagging or category grouping
• integrated search
• export capabilities in other formats
• online / backup capabilities

4. Transform It

After you have this setup in place, start to transform all this information into something useful. It could be a research project, a new career, a new business, whatever. Just make sure you use all the info and you’re not letting it slip away. A learning process must end with something comparable. Keeping a log of your learning activities will definitely help, but most of the time just assessing yourself at certain time intervals will do it too.

From my experience, feeling lost in the jungle of the Internet is often just an expression of a slow progress. Kind of like frustration. The information wave we’re trying to ride is so big that our efforts are looking insignificant. Having a clear way to assess progress will dramatically decrease frustration. Sometimes, just feeling good about what you’ve find on the Internet will alleviate your feelings of being lost in this jungle.

5. Create An Internet Free Day

Remember, your muscle grows not when you lift weights, but when you rest. Staying in contact with your learning source too much won’t make you smarter. On the contrary. You need time to incorporate that new information. You need distance to start making comparisons. You need some space to start making experiments. Staying away from the Internet is equally important if you’re really trying to learn something out of it.

Depending on your schedule and regular work, this Internet free day may be a weekly day, or monthly day. What counts is that during that day you’re totally offline. A subtle effect is that you’re letting those outer energies work by themselves. I often find traffic spikes on my blog after taking an internet day off. It seems like if you’re staying too long there you start getting in the way of something. So, take a day off every once in a while.

Source: Dragosroua.com

How to defrag your mind in 5 easy steps

Defrag Your Mind? What Exactly Is That?

For the non-geeky versions of my readers, I will briefly outline what a defragmentation is. Although it sounds pretty harsh, it’s nothing but an optimization process. The data on your computer hard-disk is not written and read in sequential order. It’s broken down into smaller pieces and written at arbitrary locations. Now, after a certain period, the effort for retrieving that information, scattered around your entire hard-disk, could become really time consuming.

This is where defragmentation comes in: it re-arranges the data on your hard-disk so it would be much more easier to access. The expected result of such a process is an increase in speed and a higher reliability of your equipment. In other words: you’re going to work not only faster, but also much safer.

Now, how can you do this to your mind? Here is my take on it, in 5 easy steps:

1. Chose Your Dominant Setup

Maybe you’ll be in travel mood for the next couple of weeks. Or maybe you’ll have to deliver something big at your job. Or maybe you’ll want to learn something new. Whatever the case, you’ll have to identify your major focus in the next few days or weeks. This is what I call your “dominant” setup. It will be your main concern, your essential duty.

Similarly, there are computer setups for video processing or for games. There are setups for text or image processing. Depending on these setups, your hard-disk algorithms may change. This is why it’s important to do an assessment first and understand what are you going to perform in the next few weeks. You’re going to setup your mind exactly for that.

Based on this initial assessment, when you’ll chose a dominant configuration for the next period. try to identify it with a single word or a small sentence: “finish project”, “workout” or “visit Rocky Mountains”. Your whole defragmentation process will target this dominant setup.

2. Identify Necessary Information

Once you correctly identified the main concern for the next period, start to identify related areas. What information do you need to succeed? Are there any important actions you need to perform on a regular basis? Are there any specific attitudes you need to adopt? Any habits you need to implement? All these items are part of your main setup.

Identifying your necessary information should be done rather slowly but thoroughly, than quickly and fuzzy. If you’re going to establish a new algorithm for your main central unit, you’d better make sure you won’t let out something important. That will only make the whole process slow if you’d have to go back and re-start it again.

One tip in this step would be to make a log of it. If it’s something about holiday, just write down the “cloud” of necessary information, actions and habits in a list format. Next time you go on a holiday, you’ll have the info available and spend less time on assessing it. Another tip that could significantly shorten this step is to use mind-mapping. A non-linear document would be more appropriate for this process than a sequential one.

3. Establish Priorities

You know the setup, you have the tools, now all you have to do is to establish priorities. If you ever witnessed a defragmentation, you saw that the most frequently accessed information is usually moved in the first sectors of your hard-disk. That would make it easier and faster to be accessed. And you’re going to do exactly that: make things easier to manage.

Identifying priorities is obviously closely related to the dominant setup. If you’re going to work more than usual, then one of your priorities would probably be to have your laptop charged as often as possible. If your main setup would be traveling related, maybe the tool which should be constantly charged is your mobile phone.

The easiest way to assess the priority is to use a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being the higher point of the scale. Take the previously gathered information and run it through this filter. Ok, this is a laptop, on a scale from 1 to 5 how important is that for my dominant setup? Ok, will give it a 2. Just start practicing and in time you’ll get better at it.

4. Ignore The Unimportant

One of the biggest clutter sources in our lives is the excess luggage we’re carrying around because we think it’s necessary. Or because somebody else has already decided for us it’s necessary. Or simply because we didn’t do any assessment whatsoever and we’re still carrying around those lose ends. Our focus is too loaded with too many lenses.

The 4th stage of your mind defragmentation should address exactly this question. If you moved all the important stuff closer to your core in the previous step, now you’re going to take the unnecessary bits and pieces and move them far away from your reach. Don’t get rid of them, of course, just offer them a well deserved break.

For instance, if you’re going to travel, you may totally ignore your office suits. Push them away, ignore. If you’re going to learn something new, decide you’re going to cut on your distractions: ignore watching TV or social activities. The most important function of this step is to actually write down what are you going to ignore. Don’t expect it to happen naturally.

5. Run A Dry Test

Once your dominant new setup is in place, try to run a dry test. It won’t have the benefits of actually implementing the whole things, but it will still be useful. Take 15 minutes to imagine a whole day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you get to bed. Every information you need is in place? Are your priorities well balanced? Is the clutter properly stowed away?

If you’re satisfied, congrats, you just had your first mind defragmentation.

A Real Life Example

1. The Dominant Setup

I do a little bit of defragmentation every time I enter a new milestone for my blog. One of the dominant setups this year would be “monetize my blog”. These are at least 3 main functions I should perform under this new setup:

• create new products
• identify markets for the products
• promote my new products
• increase blog traffic

2. Necessary Information, Actions and Habits

• focus on creating extra products (text, audio and video)
• focus on promoting my blog via social media
• allocate at least 2 extra hours each day for new products
• evaluate the promotion and generated income

3. Establish Priorities

• the most important thing: create products (priority 1)
• the second most important thing: promote the products (priority 1)
• the third most important thing: increase blog traffic (priority 2)

4. What To Ignore

• spend less time reading other blogs
• spend less time on other projects (workshops, for instance)
• ignore alternative monetization like display advertising

5. Run A Dry Test

As you may already know I already have 5 books published on Amazon and things are going pretty well on this direction. The dry-test started on early January and just finished a few days ago when my 5th book was approved. I know how my dominant setup will look like for the next few months.

Well this is how a basic mind defragmentation process looks like. This is really sketchy but I hope you got the idea.

How Often To Defrag?

Similar concepts in productivity metodologies (like GTD), suggests that a thorough review should be done weekly. In my experience, there’s no need for a weekly review in order to keep your mind defragged. It’s more about how often you will change your dominant setup, or your goals. This is also closely related to your own lifestyle.

For instance, I do think you should do a defrag every time you leave on holiday, but only if a holiday will mean a major shift in your regular lifestyle. If your current lifestyle is a nomadic one, living location independent, maybe you should do a defrag every time you check in to a new country.

Source: Dragosroua.com