In theory there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice there is

⚾ one of my favourite quotes of all times

Quotes

Theory is useful but not 100%

“To illustrate a principle, you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.”

Interesting Philosophy

Power of Exageration

Consciousness is the experiential quality of existence. It's whatever feels to be us. Consciousness operates with sensory inputs (images, sounds etc) ... but ultimately is a black box form a scientific point of view. But since each of this experience is fundamentally personal we can not build on it. What we do is equate existence with what we can explain with words, abstract concepts and so on. These are important but they are not an accurate representation of existence.

Consciousness is LIGHTS ON

We live with the delusion we are the authors of our thoughts. That there is a small dictator in our brain thinking stuff. However upon investigation thoughts seem to come up independent of a self. Subjectively though just emerge. "You don't pick your thought or opinions"Meditation & psychedelics (LSD etc) are tools to break this spell. With consistence practice it become clear that the real freedom begins once these attachment to identify with our thoughts is let go. You are not the originator of consciousness, you are consciousness. Consciousness is a mediator between "us" and the reality.

Breaking the spell of self with meditation & psychedelics

At the extremes consciousness can be a side-effect of information processing (neurons firing in our brain causing this feeling of "being me") or panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is fundamental to the structure of the universe (atoms are conscious).Sam Harris is agnostic on the scientific issue. However while the scientific approach has merits, he thinks our methodology is wrong. We tend to break reality into mind and matter, a Western division that (upon investigation) does not match our lived experience.

The sources of consciousness

Sam Harris didn't try DMT, mainly because he does look at its effects as psychotic. After ingestion (usually through smoking) people are "teleported" to the center of the universe where they claim to meet aliens or angels. This fundamentally different than an "acid trip" (LSD) where your openness to reality heightens.

Psychedelics vs psychotic drugs

Sam Harris's problem with general AI is that it might get to a level where a robot behaves like a conscious being. And since conscious is a scientific mystery still we will have no other option but to believe them. Because consciousness is an experience more than an explanation. Life is not a something that can be explained but something that needs to be experienced. So we might have perfect imitations of conscious behaviour but we have no way of knowing if that's real or not.

AI and Conscious Robots

Sam Harris thinks free will is an illusion. He combined scientific materialism or Buddhism non-dualism to reach this conclusion. The practical element is just that hate stops making sense: "If we cannot assign blame to the workings of the universe, how can evil people be held responsible for their actions? In the deepest sense, it seems, they can’t be. But in a practical sense, they must be. I see no contradiction in this." Harris argues that once we accept the truth of determinism, we’ll be less concerned about assigning blame and seeking retribution via punishment.

The illusion of free will & the futility of hate

2 slow talking people discussing deep topics 

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Psychedelics

Sam Harris @ Lex Fridman: Consciousness, Free Will & Psychedelics

Branding is a potential marketing rathole for startups, particularly early-stage ones. Startups who prioritise branding are putting the cart before the horse. Focus should be on product and business first - the real work to prove product-market-fit.Branding comes after PMF. "You don’t need a brand before you have PMF."Even when branding makes sense, a startup usually focuses on the wrong elements, eg: the logo instead of the targeting. Targeting matters, the value prop matters, positioning matters. The visual identity and brand values not so much.

The Branding Mirage for Startups

Do want to build a brand? Go sell some software. Want to improve your brand perception? Go sell some software. Want to have a distinctive brand visual territory? Go sell some software.

Branding may seem a hairy topic but it can be broken down into: <ul><li>Brand targeting: Who Do We Sell To?</li><li>Brand promise: Why Do They Buy From Our Company?</li><li>Brand positioning: Why Do They Buy Our Product?</li><li>Brand identity: Do We Look Like Us?</li><li>Brand values: What Do We Stand For?</li><li>Brand voice: Do We Sound Like Us?</li></ul>

6 elements of Branding

This is brandspeak for figuring out who you’re selling to.  Think STP (segment, target, position).<ul><li>Figure out a mechanism to segment the market — e.g., by company size, by vertical industry, by adjacent systems</li><li>Target one or more of those segments. For startups, fewer is better.</li><li>Position your product to those target segments.</li></ul>

Brand Targeting for Startups

The high-level expression of why someone should buy from your company, often more simply known as the value proposition. For tech startups they tend to fall into a few patterns:<ul><li>We are you (e.g., Mosaic, we built it for ourselves at Palantir).</li><li>We fixed it. We took the last-generation leader and made it better (e.g., Cube to Adaptive, Pigment to Anaplan)</li><li>We rebuilt it.  We run on the modern stack with modern technology (e.g., OnPlan to Vena)</li><li>We verticalized it (e.g., Plannuh for marketing, Place for SaaS)</li></ul>

Brand promises for Startups

Positioning comes down to answering one of two questions:<ol><li>Why buy one? (Benefit oriented)</li><li>Why buy yours? (Differentiation oriented)</li></ol>Startups who are alone in defining their category need to focus on the first question. Those in crowded categories (either a new market with several nascent entrants or a more developed category with the usual suspects), the emphasis needs to be on why buy mine.

Brand Positioning for Startups

Focusing on the logo and brand values before having a business is like putting the cart before the horse.

Products & Innovation 

Dave Kellog on Startup Branding

Seeing paywalls is key for revenue on consumer apps. <ul><li>Most important metric is App Install → Paywall. Revenue moves (almost linearly) with this metric.</li><li>Second most important metric. Paywall views per free user. Around the 7th paywall view on average.</li></ul>Best setup to start with: Paywall BEFORE Onboarding + Paywall AFTER Onboarding + Paywall EVERY App Open. Best if the first paywall includes a screen recording. Show the user exactly what they are getting with a free trial.Send push notifications out daily. Each app open = paywall view.

Paywalls Views Matter

Run drip campaigns:<ol><li>Lower prices on day 0, day 3, day 7, day 14, day 30.</li><li>Send reminders via push but also SMS or email</li><li>Link to web checkout: You should have a URL like <a href="https://t.co/oDGocLt5G2">http://appname.com/checkout?app_user_id=100…</a> that deep links to your app after purchase.</li></ol>

Constantly lower price with drip campaigns

Sales can account for 20% of total revenue: <ul><li>Christmas</li><li>Black Friday</li><li>New Years</li><li>Memorial Day</li><li>Labor Day</li><li>Spring Sale</li><li>Fall Sale</li><li>Summer Sale</li><li>Father’s Day</li><li>Mother’s Day</li></ul>Offer a discount like 50% off.

Use Sales 

Price testing is useful but not as important as one may expect. First test weekly prices. Then monthly. Then annual. Analyze cohorts over time:<ul><li>For weekly, test $1.99, $2.99, $3.99, $4.99, $7.99, $9.99. Test 3 and 7 day trials. When you find a winner, go onto monthly.</li><li>For monthly, test $4.99, $7.99, $9.99, $12.49, $14.99, $19.99, $29.99, $49,99. Test 3 or 7 day trials. When you find a winner, go onto yearly.</li><li>For yearly, test $29.99, $39.99, $49.99, $59.99, $89.99, $119.99, $129.99, $149.99, $189.99. </li></ul>Alos test 3 and 7 day trials.

Test Pricing

Hide a cheaper priced plan in your subscription group. For ex, offer users $89.99/yr in app, but add a $59.99/yr product called Secret Discount.When users go to cancel, they'll see the discount. I've seen setups increase revenue by 10%.If the user cancels their trial, add a floating UI above your app’s homescreen showing them # of days till their trial expires. Link to a paywall with a discount.

Winback campaign with discounts

<ul><li>You must also be able to change questions very easily. Simplest setup is to show typeform surveys on app open. Add app user id as a hidden parameter. This lets you change questions over time.</li><li>Send two types of surveys out: trial cancel survey & product market fit (Asking how would user feel if the product went away). Use local notifications for trial cancel surveys.</li><li>For trial cancel survey, ask the following (1) why did you cancel? (Multiple choice) (2) how can we improve (free response). End with a discount via Stripe.</li></ul>

Dynamic User Surveys

<ul><li>The first rating request should be as fast as possible. Maybe even in the onboarding. Introduced with the text "How is it going so far?"</li><li>If the user completed a survey with a question "Why do you love the app?" use that text for the review. </li><li>After your first rating request, only ask for an in app rating after the use of a core feature.</li><li>Only ask if the app version is different from the last time you asked for a rating.</li></ul>

Get More Ratings

You must balance completion rates and paywall conversion rates. Higher completion rate = more paywall views. Longer onboarding = higher paywall conversion rates (due to sunk cost bias).<ul><li>Personal info like name, age, email etc. have the lowest completion rates. Offload as much as possible to after a paywall view.</li><li>Sort each step in descending completion rate. Lowest converting steps will have a higher chance of converting at the end due to Sunk Cost bias.</li><li>First paywall test should test your messaging. This will inform everything from feature development to later iterations. </li></ul>

Onboarding Tips

When your paywall is dismissed w/o paying, ask why in a free response survey.Use responses determine multiple choice Qs. Use a word cloud to analyse free responses.

Survey after paywall dismissal 

Being able to remotely update your paywall is essential. Use Firebase's Remote Config to alter pricing, text and images remotely. You can simulate a fully remotely-configurable paywall by using images as static UI elements.

Remotely Update Your Paywalls

Keyword at the beginning of your Title and Subtitle carry far more weight than those at the end. Frontload ing keywords is a popular hack. This is the time to care LESS about your brand and MORE about being practical.Use Apple Ads to find the best keywords for your description: <ol><li>Overpay for clicks if you need to. Don't worry about profitability</li><li>Send keyword attribution to your analytics tracking & see which have highest install to paid conversion & 30d retention rates.</li><li>Take the top result & change your app's title to “Keyword - App Name”. </li><li>Use the rest in your subtitle. Don’t worry about grammar.</li></ol>

ASO Keyword Payloading

Create in-app events via App Store Connect. Titles you use can rank organically in search results. Hint: If you choose a start date of around 1hr after you submit for review, your app review will be expidited.

AppStore In-App Events

<ul><li>Use native ad SDKs when you can. No need to use Appsflyer for Facebook ads.</li><li>With FB, stick to Automated App Ads (AAA). They let you upload 50 images or videos and 5 sets of text. They handle the rest (including audience). </li><li>Optimize for trial starts if you have enough events</li><li>Create two AAA campaigns to begin with. Tier 1 targeting only the US. Tier 2 targeting Canada, UK, Australia and Germany. Split spend 90% Tier 1 and 10% Tier 2 countries.</li></ul>

Ads Tech Setup

Hiring influencers (via TikTok mainly is essential). Use them to create content for ads, not for an ROI positive influencer campaign, that’s too hard to achieve on a small scale.<ul><li>Pay out influencers based on performance if you can. Again, this isn’t to make sure you’re ROI positive, it’s to make sure interests are aligned so their videos make for great ads.</li><li>Buy / negotiate the right to use your influencer’s videos in your ads. Don’t use them without asking! Use them in your AAA campaigns.</li></ul>

Influencers based campaigns

<ul><li>Target users with ad creatives, not with ad settings. Its always cheaper to cast a wider net with open targeting – videos & text will attract users who resonate with the problem your solving and the solution you are advertising.</li><li>Ask “who do you think would benefit most from using your app?” These responses are your personas. Make ad creatives for each of your personas.</li></ul>

User Creatives from Users

Don’t hide old feature releases from new users. They aren’t as curious as you think. Take screen recordings of new features as you release them. Send email + push notification tips on how to use them. Send every 48 hrs. Start from the beginning for each new user

Market Old Features As New

Practical ideas on monetising mobile apps

Monetisation Secrets from Jake Mor

For many years Duolingo offered a free app, the company running on investor money. After they raised an 100M VC round from Google they realised they have to start making money:<ul><li>Their first iteration was a user generated translation service they offered to CNN & Buzzfeed. It made them so little money it was shut down.</li><li>They finally landed on ads as a way to incentivise people to get a pro subscription.</li></ul>The ads were chosen because offering the app for free was a key value proposition. The challenging part was convincing the team to go with it, as most of Duolingo thought ads were inherently evil.

Duolingo's Journey to Monetization

Duolingo has a userbase split between:<ul><li>Professionals who want to learn English. Because knowing English is the universal booster to your career.</li><li>Hobbyists who think playing language games are better than scrolling Instagram.</li></ul>Considering the split, phone apps like Insta or Tiktok are Duolingo's biggest competitors.

Duolingo's Userbase

Duolingo is the biggest learning app in the world and the founder was cool to share some honest insights.

Luis von Ahn, Co-Founder and CEO of Duolingo — How to Be (Truly) Mission-Driven, Monetization Experiments, 10x Growth, Org Chart Iterations for Impacting Metrics, The Intricate Path to an IPO, Best Hiring Practices, Catching Exam Cheaters, The Allure of Toto Toilets, The Future of Duolingo, and How to Stand Out in Your Career | Brought to you by Athletic Greens all-in-one nutritional supplement, Helix Sleep premium mattresses, and LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with 800M+ users. More on all three below.Luis von Ahn (@LuisvonAhn) is an entrepreneur and consulting professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who is considered one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing. He is known for co-inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur fellow, and selling two companies to Google in his twenties.He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, a language-learning platform created to bring free language education to the world. With more than 500 million users, it is now the most popular language-learning platform and the most downloaded education app in the world.Luis has been named one of the Brilliant 10 by Popular Science, one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover, one of the Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. Luis also won the 2018 Lemelson-MIT prize, the largest cash prize for invention in the U.S.This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 800 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim.*This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 by Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.*This episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the #1 overall mattress of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Strategy

The Co-Founder of Duolingo on Tim Ferriss

Long form content is nothing but connecting ideas. That's why writing is linear and serial. And one side-effect of communicating serially is that you have to force ideas into some sort of order. With stories the authors flatten clouds of connected ideas into linear stories (lossy). Readers unbundle these linear stories, and stitch them into their own nonlinear cloud of connected ideas (lossy). In a constant game of bundling and unbundling information.

Linear Stories vs Blocks

If you smash a lego collection you get blocks you can reuse to build new things. It's what makes it fun. It's the same with books or articles: break them down into smaller, reusable blocks.Most written documents are made up of something like a series of smaller “idea chunks”, usually paragraphs. What if we blew these documents apart, so that each “idea chunk” became a thought lego, a block we could address?Working with blocks of knowledge is what tools like Roam or apps like Deepstash are enabling.

Breaking up long form content

An article is like a lego construction: the blocks representing the ideas connected in a serial format. The process however can go the other way ...

Writing is linear, serial, and one side-effect of communicating serially is that you have to force ideas into some sort of order. And so: stories. Authors flatten clouds of connected ideas into linear stories (lossy). Readers unbundle these linear stories, and stitch them into their own nonlinear cloud of connected ideas (lossy).

Meta Learning 

Long form content is like Legos

The history of Rome is a slow transition from a limited government to tyranny. But military centralisation worked better than economic one:<ul><li>During Cesar's time wheat prices were fixed and wheat was offered to people in Rome for free. 1/3 of Roman citizens were supported by the government. </li><li>All emperors (with few exception) debased the currency, paying for public works with inflation</li><li>Diocletian was the worst as he tried to fix the prices of all goods. It led to famine & suffering. </li></ul>Rome's economy was constantly fighting inflation, but their tools (issuing currency & fixing prices) led them to ruin.

Romans were not great economists

“Rome perished because it did not adjust its moral code & its legal system to the requirements of the market economy. The policy of interventionism and its political corollary, the Fuhrer principle, decomposed the mighty empire.”

There are so many parallels between what the Romans did to their economy and what's happening now. Same same. 

Modern central-planning busybodies would do well to study ancient Roman history. Prosperity comes from free markets and the recognition of property rights.

History

How the Romans Destroyed Their Economy

The book is a collection of short stories that combione combine SF and magic, celebrating the wonders of our everyday life with sprinkles of magic.The influence of Chinese culture that was common in every story, such as the introduction of literomancy that details the history and beauty of the Chinese language. Liu also draws on the popular chinese character “Sun Wukong” as an imaginary companion of a litigator who makes a brave choice. Liu also retells Chinese folklore such as the story of Guan Yu, the popular Chinese military general, in All the Flavours.

Ken Liu's Short Stories

In this story, a literomancer can tell people's fortunes based on the characters in their names and the characters they pick."The Chinese invented writing as an aid to divination, so Chinese characters always had a deep magic to them. From characters, I can tell what's bothering people and what lies in their past and future."

Literomancer

A very cool collections of short stories that combine science fiction with Chinese mysticism 

Presents the author's selection of his best short stories, as well as a new piece, in a collection that includes "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary," "Mono No Aware" and "The Waves."

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

These will serve as guidelines for regaining emotional, social, financial & spiritual freedom.<ol><li>Meet life with Full Presence</li><li>Reclaim your Agenda</li><li>Defeat your Demons</li><li>Advance with Abandon</li><li>Practice Joy & Gratitude</li><li>Do NOT break Integrity</li><li>Amplify Love</li><li>Inspire Greatness</li><li>Slow Time</li></ol>

The 9 Declarations

Personal Freedom means liberty from the restrictions of social oppression & the tragic self-oppression that is fear. Freed, we have the ability to express who we truly are and pursue what we deeply desire without restrictions set by others.Ironically, we are loosing our freedom because of abundance. We are being caged by our vices.

Personal Freedom

Personal Freedom does not mean the release of responsibility, it also does not necessarily mean the absence of struggle. Some might hope that “freedom” means we can give up or release responsibilities from our lives, but nothing could be further from the truth. The thinking goes, “If I am free, shouldn’t I be free from all responsibilities?”We must be conscious and responsible for our beliefs and behaviours if we are ever to be free.

Responsibility for our Freedom

Avoidance may be the best short-term strategy to avoid pain and conflict, but it is also the best long-term strategy to ensure suffering.In any given moment we can play a combination of vital roles:<ul><li>Observer - the default viewer</li><li>Director - us in control</li><li>Guardian - to our mind, body & soul. Protect what we eat, what we listen, what we read etc ...</li><li>Warrior - fight for something we believe in</li><li>Lover - who are we fighting for?</li><li>Leader - provide vision & discipline to others so they can achieve their dreams</li></ul>No matter the role we should never detach from our daily lives. We must choose to live in reality.

1. Meet Life with Full Presence & Power

<ol><li>On one hand we are becoming slaves to our own tools, especially our mobile phones. We must understand that our time can be spent meaningfully or wasted. But in order to spend it mindfully we need to clarify our needs & desires. </li><li>On the other, we are under the pressure of social obligations. We have to reply artfully & forcefully to those who are always demanding of our time. We can not subordinate our agenda to those whose lives are not in order.</li></ol>Only then we can live a purposeful life and be free. If you want to live a life of purpose you need to be spending your time on your own adventure.

2. Reclaim Our Agenda

We spend more time checking our stats than our souls.

The demands of the whimsically needy or the terminally ill-prepared are not our issue. Their lives are NOT our responsibility. This idea is freeing:I am not in charge or responsible for the wrecks others have created in their lives and I don't need to save everyone in my life.

You are not responsible for the happiness of others

We all host a 3 serpent head demon which makes us miserable: <ol><li>Doubt -  questions our worth & course of action. </li><li>Delay - use our fear to stop us from doing anything</li><li>Division - we feel everyone around us is an idiot or unworthy of trust.</li></ol>We are able to beat the demon back with <ol><li>Faith - “I believe in my ability to learn & figure things out.”</li><li>Action - "I will move fwd in spite of my fear"</li><li>Love ❤️  - "We are all made of the same purity, all fighting our own demons" </li></ol>

3. Defeat your Demons

We must believe that we can bend reality to our own preferences, crafting the lives we desire through disciplined learning. And we must ACT.The issue is we have been conditioned to believe the opposite. Instead of bold action we have to be cautious and follow the rules. Instead of ambition we are thought to ask for permission. Instead of being proud about our success, be ashamed of it.These assumptions come from an unenlightened mind blinded by scarcity and jealousy. However, progress is good. And we should be proud of our success.

4. Advance with Abandon

A great tidal wave of cynicism & pessimism has washed ashore and drowned the dreams of our people. The emotional energy of the world is flatlining. We risk turning into a culture of slow-moving, low-aiming, negativity-spewing brats and blamers.We will swim away from whirlpool of negativity & rekindle the magic of life. We will act like happy children again & again:<ul><li>Be curious.</li><li>Release expectation.</li><li>Take pleasure in small things and expect good things.</li><li>Cheerfully engage the moment.</li></ul>Let this become our practice, our mastery, and our art.

5. Practice Joy & Gratitude

In our darkest hours we compromise on who we are, what we believe in and we act against what we know to be true. Most of these breaks are small in scale but they compound. We should commit to the 6 practices of integrity:<ol><li>Think before we act</li><li>Never commit to anything we lack passion for</li><li>Keep our word</li><li>Always treat others with respect</li><li>Tell the truth</li><li>Always favour action</li></ol>These emotions are usually when we compromise: impatience, disappointment, desperation, aggression, hurt, loyalty & power.

6. Do Not Break Integrity

Integrity is learning to feel hurt but not integrate its darkness into our soul or cast it onto another.﻿

When loyalty is chosen over truth, corruption is always near.

Love is our origin & our final destination. But we stop giving it or receiving it because we were hurt & we don't feel safe doing it.Hurt has nothing to do with love, and love is unaffiliated with and unaffected by pain.

7. Amplify Love

We no doubt live in a noisy, numb, narcissistic age. The talents and attentions of the majority are not invested in personal mastery and social responsibility but squandered on games, voyeurism, and base sensationalism. As leaders, we will ask for more from those around us. Let us demand:<ol><li>Honesty</li><li>Responsibility</li><li>Intelligence</li><li>Excellence - strive for the highest level in everything</li><li>Courage </li><li>Respect for others - fairness, empathy, love</li><li>Vigilance - "Know what stands in our way"</li><li>Service - "Make a difference"</li><li>Unity - "We are in this together"</li></ol>

8. Inspire Greatness

We are not supposed to miss this moment. Awareness is humanity’s best weapon against time. So let us always remember our capacities to be gifted time benders.To slow down the moment, we must heighten our senses. To feel something more, we must either take more in, or more deeply sense that which is already here. <ul><li>Touch more things around us. Feel the textures.</li><li>We should love the sounds in our ears: the car driving by; the house finch trilling in the birch tree; the beautiful, unique voice speaking to us. </li><li>Appreciate the food </li><li>Look at things like for the first time </li><li>etc ...</li></ul>

9. Slow Time

We can train our awareness with a practice called 2 (heart) beats longer:Do not breathe so quickly. Take in air for two beats longer. Do not scan the room. Sense the room by gazing into each shadow and corner for two beats longer. Do not merely glance at her. Look into her eyes and hold them for two beats longer.In time the practice becomes stronger and, over time, more automatic. This is how you slow down time.

2 beats longer

Self help books are usually trash. This author however shows tremendous mastery over words. The ideas are just 10% of the book and if you remotely like them pick up the book and marvel at all the fancy expression Brendon came up with. 

"The Motivation Manifesto is a poetic and powerful call to reclaim our lives and find our own personal freedom. It’s a triumphant work that transcends the title, lifting the reader from mere motivation into a soaringly purposeful and meaningful life. I love this book." —Paulo Coelho The Motivation Manifesto is a pulsing, articulate, ferocious call to claim our personal power. World-renowned high performance trainer Brendon Burchard reveals that the main motive of humankind is the pursuit of greater Personal Freedom. We desire the grand liberties of choice—time freedom, emotional freedom, social freedom, financial freedom, spiritual freedom. Only two enemies stand in our way: an external enemy, defined as the social oppression of who we are by the mediocre masses, and an internal enemy, a sort of self-oppression caused by our own doubt and fear. The march to Personal Freedom, Burchard argues, can be won only by declaring our intent and independence, stepping into our personal power, and battling through self-doubt and the distractions of the day until full victory is won. Recalling the revolutionist voices of the past that chose freedom over tyranny, Burchard—at times poetic yet always fierce—motivates us to free ourselves from fear and take back our lives once and for all.

Theory is useful but not 100%

Power of Exageration

Sam Harris @ Lex Fridman: Consciousness, Free Will & Psychedelics

Dave Kellog on Startup Branding

Monetisation Secrets from Jake Mor

Vladimir Oane