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Poor Bjorn's Notes to Self

Read Books – Conduct Experiments – Grow

  • Reading List 2018
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Here is where you find my reading- and recommendation lists!

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  • Favorite Books of 2017
  • Favorite Books of 2016

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  • Reading List 2018
  • Reading List 2017
  • Reading List 2016

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  • Reading List 2018
  • Reading List 2017
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  • Favorite Books of 2017
  • Favorite Books 2016
  • Blog posts

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Could it be that more we focus on finding and following our passions the more discontent we become with our work? Cal Newport makes an argument that you should throw passion aside and get really good first, then passion will follow! —— So what makes for an rewarding career? Room for creativity, Impact and Control are some important factors - and how do you attain that? You GIIIT GUUUUD at something rare and valuable! —— 📝 on Deliberate practice: “If you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re probably stuck at an “acceptable level”. —— 📝 on Craftsman mindset: Focuses relentlessly on what value you can offer the world. —— 📝 on Passion mindset: Focus on what the world can offer you. —— ⭐️ TAKEAWAYS: Make small bets. In the wake of Tim Farris “The 4-hour work week” tons of people quit their job to become bloggers with passive income streams from internet sites. Lifestyle design is cool and all, but many became disillusioned quickly and realize how hard it is to make money online. Make many small bets when you are transitioning into a new area of work instead of only one really big one.. Ask yourself what are people really willing to pay you for? And prove it. Some things will have to remain just a hobby. —— 🔸VERDICT —— This is the perfect book for someone who just starting his/her career. But for the ones of us that have 15-30 years of work experience have probably already learned these things (maybe even the hard way), and have less to gain from this book. If that’s the case, then then study these books and concepts instead: —— 📖 “Bhagavad Gita” about freedom from outcome. —— 📖 “Mastery” by Robert Greene about being persistent. —— 📖 “Outliers“ by Gladwell about deliberate practice. —— 3/5 —— What are you reading this week? 🤔
“Conduct experiments” is one of the pillars in my bio that hasn’t got the love it deserves from me lately. Let’s change that! --------------------------- The Lab Report - 003 - "Socks Sucks" --------------------------- The motto is that you are not allowed to complain about not having “enough time” until you have certain systems in place that removes unnecessary complexity. Ones those are in place, then at least you have tried your best - And automation and simplification of everyday task is a good place to start. --------------------------- Socks are a hassle - or to be more precise: to pair them is mindnumpingly boring and like all couples they break-up up, are gone for a whole and come back form new formation. --------------------------- The idea is simple: buy all your socks at the same time and stick to one model. Ones a few of them starts to get worn the rest will usually follow, then throw all of them away and fill up with new ones. Repeat. --------------------------- Short term effects: ⭐️⭐️ --------------------------- - Your closet become more bland. --------------------------- Long term effects: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ --------------------------- - You avoid decision-making-fatigue by removing small everyday choices. - Easy to do laundry. Pair however you want and you will still get a match. --------------------------- Sustainability: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ --------------------------- - The drawback of having less variety can be remedied by having a small selection of colorful and cool on the side for special occasions. - Shop big and seldom. Easy! --------------------------- FINAL VERDICT: ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️ --------------------------- - It just works! Easy to execute and sustain, but the positive impact is hard to measure. --------------------------- Check out #poorbjornsexperiments (then press “recent”) for more Lab Reports!
We have all seen a world record being broken. The athlete crosses the finish line and a new bar has been set. But you have also seen that the athlete is alive and moving. Which means he/she had more to give! —— What sets the limit of human endurance? Is it mental or physical? What is the absolute limit given we found the perfect athlete and perfect condition? These are some of the questions this book tries to answer. —— Some notes: —— 📝 Expectations matter! How many tries you know you have to do something impact how you pace yourself. Even if you’re told to do your max for each rep. —— 📝 Gabrselassie (marathon champ) sweats up to 3.6 Liters/hour. —— 📝 The extraction of mindfulness from it’s Buddhist context began in the 1970’s with Jon Kanbat-Zinn. —— 📝 Central governor, Anticipatory regulation, Pacing instinct - it goes by many names - basically, the theory that the brain stops us from running ourselves to death. —— 📝 Pain in training leads to a higher threshold for pain. High intensity training heightens your pain tolerance while medium intensity doesn’t. —— 📝 Experiment shows that seeing a smiling face, even subliminally, induces a sense of ease. —— ⭐️ Takeaway: Nr.1 advice (except training) is to presue motivational self talk training. Cuz it really works! Training is the cake and believing is the icing. —— 🔸Verdict:🔸 My second favorite book with a title that starts with “endure”. 😉 Well, that wasn’t a helpful measuring stick. Haha. To be fair, it’s a good book, but I wouldn’t recommend it to people that don’t have a special interest in human performance and endurance. You need a bit of passion to stay focused with all the data being presented. Spoiler: all the conclusions are: “it’s unclear”, “we have to wait for the final data” or “its complicated.” But I rather have that, than oversimplification. —— What’s my favorite book that starts with “endure”? “Endurance” by Lansing! About captain Shackleton’s amazing polar expedition. High stakes endurance! 👌🏻 —— 3/5
For me each year comes with it’s own discoveries and obsessions! —— 2015 it was Stoicism. —— 2016 was filled with New Age and miscellaneous woo woo books. (Eckhart Tolle, Bhagavad Gita, Spiral dynamics etc..) —— 2017 was the year of Buddhist teachings. (Siddhartha, Beginners Mind, Hardcore Zen, Marathon Monks etc..) —— 2018 looks like it’s going to be the year of Jungian psychology. An interest triggered by Dr. Jordan Peterson’s “12 rules for life” and followed by “Man and His Symbols” by the man himself. And I’m looking forward to it! —— What’s your latest obsession? 😀🤔
In 1897, three swedish scientists leaves for a polar expedition in a hydrogen balloon. Thirty years later they are found, by accident, dead on a deserted island. What happened to them and why did they die? ——- The author, Bea Uusma (@bea_uusma ), gets obsessed by the subject and spends decades trying to find out what really happened. This is her account of what happened and the journey to uncover the last missing pieces of the puzzle. ——- What I really loved about this book how each chapter uses very different narrative tools; diary entries from the crew, chart of data, maps, test results and research journals - This makes you feel like you are apart of an ongoing mystery investigation. 👌🏻 ——- 📝 The hydrogen balloon leaked gas from the start. It was expected to last 30 days but it was useless after a day or two. 🎈 —— 📝 Sea charts of the Arctic region are just white. This goes on for page after page. Nothing exists there. 🗺 —— 📝 Eating the lever from of polar bears can lead to vitamin-a poisoning. The crew knew this and avoided it. The same goes for seals...but this they didn’t know! 🤢 —— 📝 After spending two weeks building a hut, the ice cracked underneath it and it had to be abandoned. 😬 —— 📝 Polar bears can attack unprovoked. They can wander 100km a day on ice and a smell seals form 30km. 🐻 —— ⭐️ TAKEAWAY: Freud mentions 3 main sources of human suffering; The external environment, our aging body and other people. This book reminds me of the relentless and brutish traits of nature untamed. Civilization (and with it; other people.) might be a cheap prize to pay for not having death lurking around every corner. —— 4/5 —— “The Expedition: A Love Story” —— What are you reading this week? 🤔
New book arrivals! ————— 📖 “Tao te Ching” - Lao Tsu 📖 ————— I’m home with a fever. I might have to wait with this one. I already feel like my physical form is dissolving and this might just be the final nudge that merge me with infinity and with the universe 🎇. Anno 6th century BC. ————— 📖 “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” - Gracian 📖 ————— I don’t know what this is, but @booknotes101 recommended it and I like the title! Anno 1637. ————— 📖 “Man and his symbols” - Carl Jung 📖 ————— Teach me daddy! I want to know all about synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious, the psychological complex, and extraversion and introversion. Got this one on recommendation by @literary.libations . Anno 1964. ——————- 🤔——————— What’s your next book and why are you excited about it?
Ah Montaigne! I’m glad I got to know you. You are now officially added to my list of peculiar historical men that fascinate me to no end - alongside Ben Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt. —- He wrote 107 essays with simple titles like “of Friendship”, “of Cannibals”, “of Names” and “of Cripples”. He was an observer of the world but most of all he observed and wrote about himself. —- 📝 He was send out by his parents to be nursed by peasants as an infant in a weird attempt to create a bond with “the commoners” that he would one day need to help. —- 📝 His parents educational experiment continued; Montaigne was brought up as a native Latin speaker! A tough plan to put in practice since the were almost no native latin speakers around. The rest of the household spoke minimal or no Latin. —- 📝 “A man... should touch his wife prudently and soberly, lest if he caresses her too lasciviously the pleasure should transport her outside the bound of reason” Montaigne quoted Aristotle. Saying, basically, the conventional notion in those days that being a passionate husband would turn the wife into a nymphomaniac. 😂 —- 📝 Pay attention! As Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for paying attention is to write about everything. Just to describe simple things in the world opens your eyes to how marvelous they are. —- 📝 “Still French was his language of choice”. His essays gives a weird reason for this: French could not be expected to last in the same way as the classical languages (I.e. Latin). This was freeing. If his writing was flawed, there was less pressure on him since the where doomed anyway. —— 📝 He was a big fan of Hellenistic philosophy; Stoicism and Skepticism in particular. Stoicism encourages wise detachment and skeptics held themselves back on principle. His motto was “What do I know?”. —— 📝 In “on cripples” Montaigne writes about a rumor that lame women are more enjoyable in bed, and as Aristotle before him, he speculates that it must be that “their vaginas are more muscular because they receive the nourishment of which the legs are deprived.” 😂 —- It’s a fascinating biography even for the uninitiated! Now I just need to read his actual essays! —- 4/5
Dropping this one off in the rolling library we call “the subway” in support of @booksonthetub s initiative to #MakeSwedenReadAgain . —— Wherever you go, you always bring yourself with you. It's easy to think that with a new job at a new company we will finally be happy (or at least). A few months in, after scoring that new job, we will start to make up new obstacles for happiness: "If only I could only escape this small town and move to a big city, then I will be happy.” —— Believing that external circumstances will bring inner peace is a trap. We re-live the same pattern over and over again until we die. OR we start to appreciate where we are right now, come to terms with ourselves, and surrender to the present moment. When we are fully present, the world in which we live becomes extraordinary. But of course this is easier said than done! 😎 —— 📝 "So at the beginning, you might want to stay with your breath, or use it as an anchor to bring you back when you are carried away. Try it for a few years and see what happens" Quite a different time frame than the "10-min abs" and other silver bullet treatments. Refreshing! —— 📝 In ancient times, when it got dark people gathered by the fires. There was not enough light to continue doing stuff and we got a natural break for stillness. Today we don't have to be limited by daylight and we can be kept busy 24-7. ——- 📝 "The joy of non-doing is that nothing else needs to happen for this moment to be complete" ——- ⭐️ TAKEAWAY: "Going to 10-day meditation retreats might not be a big deal for some, but when you decide to start a family it gets harder." See your children as your practice and your teachers! They will test your mindfulness, selflessness and push all your buttons - It's like a 18 year retreat! —- How are your stress-levels?

Recent Posts

  • Thoughts on: “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport 20 April, 2018
  • Simplicity 101: Socks sucks! 15 April, 2018
  • Thoughts on: “Endure” by Alex Hutchinson 9 April, 2018
  • Raw & Unedited Notes: “12 Rules for Life” by Jordan B. Peterson 3 April, 2018
  • This Years Obsession Reveals itself! 2 April, 2018
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  • Top 10 Books of 2017
  • Reading Lists
  • Reading List 2018
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