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Sometimes I get asked where did I read something that I share in twi and blog. So, I decided to compose a short-list of my favorite blogs. I don’t read all of them 100% regularly. Sometimes I read only 20% of headlines and 2% of posts especially if a given blog is very frequently updated. But overall most of these produce very high-quality content on a consistent basis. Enjoy!

Business, entrepreneurship, marketing, trends, technology

Ben Casnocha
Entrepreneur’s Journey
Guy Kawasaki
Lifehacker.com (Top)*
Mashable (Business)*
Mixergy
Scott Monty
Signal vs. Noise
Springwise
Techcrunch*
Under 30 CEO*
Venture Hacks*

Culture, art, science

Brain Pickings
Less Wrong
Open Culture
TED Blog

Health, training

Conditioning Research
Fitness Spotlight
Mark’s Daily Apple
Robb Wolf
Strong Lifts
The Healthy Skeptic

Travel, lifestyle

Chris Guillebeau
Traveliving

Magazines & people that cover various topics

Dan Pink
Flowing Data*
Josh Spear
Kevin Rose
Mind Hacks*
Presentation Zen
Study Hacks
Tim Ferriss

* These are updated especially frequently, so you might want to put them in separate folder.

Of course this is only a small part (less than 10%, I guess) of my subscriptions. But these are the favorites.

Plus, there is always a StumbleUpon and “Explore” function in Google Reader.

You might also like my older post on how not to get overwhelmed following lots of blogs: Save time by approaching your RSS subscriptions in a completely new way – 8 principles for effective reading of blogs.

It would be cool if you could share some of your favorites as well. Especially if we have shared interests

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2. Cool stuff digest: December 2010 & January 2011

Throughout last couple of years I’ve been collecting my personal favorite quotations from various inspirational people in my Evernote. As a result I got quite a long list of sayings which I personally consider to be one of the smartest, wittiest, daring and positive at the same time.

Moscow, 2008.

So, I thought why not to share them with you? Assuming I have a lot in common with my readers, you might enjoy them too. If you don’t then you might just skip the post and excuse me for wasting your time. Otherwise, here is the collection:

• “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

• “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

• “There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.” ~ Mark Twain

• “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” ~ Michelangelo Buonarroti

• “Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn’t be about the money.” ~ Tim O’Reilly

• “Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.” ~ Frank Tyger

• “In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away.“ ~ Shing Xiong

• “We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” ~ Albert Einstein

• “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” ~ Albert Einstein

• Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” ~ Albert Einstein

• “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” ~ Albert Einstein

• “Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.” ~ Albert Einstein

• “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” ~ Albert Einstein

• “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” ~ Albert Einstein

• “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” ~ Socrates

• “People, who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” ~ Apple Inc.

• “You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period.” ~ Pursuit of Happyness

• “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom”. ~ Viktor Frankl

• “Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right.” ~ Henry Ford

• “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” ~ Buddha
• “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”  ~ Buddha

• “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

• “I haven’t failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” ~ Thomas Edison

• “But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balbo

• “Don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your inner voice.” ~ Steve Jobs

• “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” ~ Peter F. Drucker

• “Pause now to ask yourself the following question: “Am I dreaming or awake, right now?” Be serious, really try to answer the question to the best of your ability and be ready to justify your answer.” ~ Stephen Laberge

• “It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute… that gives meaning to our lives.” ~ Anthony Robbins

• “Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.“ ~ Malcolm Gladwell

• “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” ~ Malcolm Gladwell

• “One man has enthusiasm for 30 minutes, another for 30 days, but it is the man who has it for 30 years who makes a success of his life.” ~ Edward B. Butler

• “A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” ~ Walter Gagehot

• ”Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” ~ Oscar Wilde

• “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” ~ Ayn Rand

• “Three ingredients of luxury lifestyle design are time, income, and mobility.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “Doing the unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “The most important actions are never comfortable.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “Slowing down doesn’t mean accomplishing less; it means cutting out counterproductive distractions and the perception of being rushed.” ~ Tim Ferriss

• “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” ~ Will Smith

• “Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network.  ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” ~ Nassim Taleb

• “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” ~ Ralph Nader
• “So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.” ~ Dale Carnegie

• “People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” ~ George Orwell

• “Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.” ~ Malcolm Gladwell

• “God, grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference.”~ Reinhold Niebuhr

• “Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.”~ Ayn Rand

• “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein

• “Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they lead to actions. Watch your actions, they create habits. Watch your habits, they build your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” ~ Upanishads

• “Think about what it feels like when you interact with someone who makes you notice what’s good about yourself (raising your status), who is clear with his expectations of you (increasing certainty), who lets you make decisions (increasing autonomy), who connects with you on a human level (increasing relatedness), and who treats you fairly.” ~ David Rock

• “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” ~ Muhammad Ali
• “Become one who is happy with that which you are and with that which you have – while at the same time being eager for more. That is the optimal creative vantage point. To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation – with no feeling of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it.” ~ Ask and It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks.
• “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I also wanted to include few things from The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (funny & sarcastic) as well as the text of If by Rudyard Kipling (idealistic & inspirational) and a Charlie Chaplin’s Declaration about Life on his 70th Birthday (wise & inspirational). I’m sure they totally deserve to be quoted in full. But I decided against it not to make this post too long. However, I strongly advise to take a couple of minutes and enjoy reading those if you haven’t before. Basically, that’s all I wanted to share, hope you enjoyed. Do you want to share anything of the similar kind?

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“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to always tell the difference”
Reinhold Niebuhr, Kurt Vonnegut

Cyprus, 2008.

I’ve been thinking about covering this topic in my blog for a long time and eventually decided to do it. Firstly to structure it all for myself and secondly to share some thoughts and interesting articles & videos which I collected for last couple of years. As a result, this post is quite long and wordy, so don’t open up the full article if you’re not really interested in such kind of philosophical issues and get bored easily by them. In this case you might think that this is just an unpractical gobbledegook.

I actually find the combination of how important and how ambiguous this issue is quite puzzling. Very high percentage of people respond to the question about meaning of their lives with “to be happy” answer. And very few of them actually have any particular idea what this happiness is, how to achieve & feel it. Even in their individual case, not universally.

No matter where you look there are more questions than answers. Is it possible to find an universal recipe for happiness or is it only individual, even intimate issue? Can you buy happiness or does money actually make us unhappy? Can the state of happiness be permanent or only fragmented in separate moments? Is happiness in achievement of one’s goals, in results or in process, constant “here and now”? And does the pursuit of happiness itself make us more or less happy?

Is it true that happiness is 100% subjective feeling that depends only on our perception or is it determined by external conditions that are outside of our control? Is “happiness regardless of conditions” really attainable or is it better left to psychos and Buddhist fairy tales? And if it’s attainable then how can one still keep the urge to grow and progress in this state? Can small habits change something significantly? Replies to all these questions vary greatly and often are simply opposites. Also, there are options of “truth is somewhere in between” and “both are true”. Or are these simply cliches and excuses not use one’s brain?

Why happiness level of countries differs so significantly, even on average? How is it all connected with meaning of life, success, motivation, goals, upbringing, religion, freedom of choice, level of expectations, life experience, stress, etc?

Well it’s clear that trivialities, such as “if you want to be a happy person, just be one” and “money doesn’t but happiness”, just won’t help here. Everything seems to be deeper, more ambiguous, but interesting. So, what can religion, science and various self-help popularizers tell us?

Buddhism, if you oversimplify it to an extreme, tells us that happiness can be achieved through the constant mindfulness of situation, our thoughts and feelings with simultaneous equanimity – letting everything be the way it is instead of creating internal conflicts. I think it goes beyond simple “letting go of one’s desires”. BTW, right now I listen to an awesome book which covers the topic in a greater detail — Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young.

From here we get an ages old concept of “happiness regardless of conditions” according to which we have an infinite amount of freedom between a particular thing happening to us and our reaction. Actually, this simple concept was sold billion of times by thousands of people, sometimes seasoned with different sauces and labeled differently. From enlightenment to proactivity, reframing & management of emotions.

Dan Gilbert, American psychologist in in popular and very funny TED talk presents an idea that we are actually very bad at predicting our emotional reactions to certain events. For example, people tend to largely exaggerate how happy winning in lottery would make them. And how miserable becoming disabled would make them. In fact Dan talks about same old “happiness regardless of conditions” concept, but calls it synthetic happiness. Apparently, we constantly transform our perception in order to be slightly happier. In a conclusion he talks about the same ideal state in which we realize intelligently that some scenarios are more preferable to others, but don’t pursue them with such a zeal that it undermines our equanimity & balance.

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Albert Einstein

And in other talk at the same conference Richard St Jones talks about success. But in such a meaning that is very close to the topic discussed in this post. He shares his life experience and tells us how disappointed he was after achievement of his materialistic goals. After this, he turned to antidepressants that made them fell better, but the side-effect was that he stopped giving a shit about work & customers. Eventually he returned to normal fulfilled life and came up with his own definition of success. Which is a repeating circle of 8 things: passion, work, purpose, push, ideas, improve, serve, persist.

Few months ago I shared a video of debates on the topic “Is the Pursuit of Happiness Making us Miserable?” from Fora.tv which is certainly worth watching. In essence it’s a clash between what we think of as Western and Eastern world view. As a result, audience came to conclusion that it’s more possible than not that pursuit of happiness actually makes us unhappy (a little more than a half of people voted for this opinion).

Mark Anielski, whose book Economics of Happiness I already covered in this blog is interested in happiness on a national level and in an economic context. This approach is called happynomics and I was really interested in it recently, even thought of devoting my post-graduate paper to the subject. Before I actually was rejected in my attempt to change its topic. Anyway, besides other things in his book Mark looks on different traditional communities trying to understand their values. And often they seem to value free time and their social circle much more than money which is sometimes all the way around in our modern society. BTW, there is a very good talk on the topic of happynomics as well: Measuring what makes life worthwhile.

Further developing ideas of happynomics, Nic Marks created a Happy Planet Index which is based on Satisfaction With Life Index and Ecological Footprint of countries. Not surprisingly he also talked at TED and shared his thoughts on universal character traits that happy people possess and actions they take. In brief, these are following: connect, be active, take notice, keep learning, give.

In a meanwhile, Dan Buettner once asked a question why people in some places of the world called Blue Zones live much longer than anywhere else. As it turned out, health and longevity are determined with happiness and socializing not less than by healthy lifestyle. So, what’s the secret? Purpose – reason to wake up every day, time to slow down & reflect, support of close friends, love and only then diet and exercising. Of course, Dan also talked about it at TED.

Another aspect of happiness is related to our work and career. Daniel Pink in this RSA video called “Surprising Truth About Things that Really Motivate Us“, which I already shared once, describes what one needs for happiness in professional context, at work or in business. Basically, three things: autonomy, mastery & purpose. Or, in full version, factors are autonomy, relatedness, competence, complexity, connection between effort and reward.

And to finish I will shortly tell you about Tony Hsieh. This guy started LinkExchange company in his twenties, and eventually sold it to Microsoft for few million dollars. Currently works as a CEO in Zappos. Recently he wrote a book called Delivering Happiness, which I’m really looking forward to read. He states that one of the reasons he sold LinkExchange was the fact that corporate culture was terrible and he didn’t like working there. Now Tony tries to apply happiness theories in practice using them to create the right corporate culture in Zappos. In his Google talk he speaks about all those things in more detail. His version is as follows: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness, vision/meaning.

In overall it looks that on one hand everybody talks about different things, but on the other hand about the same the same concept. I tend to think that it would make sense to divide these happiness determinants into 2 categories. First would be values and corresponding everyday states & actions. And another one would be the actual goals and achievements in areas that matter: “to be”, “to do”, “to know”, “to have”. But the most important and difficult thing is not to forbid yourself to be happy before everything is accomplished. And I still think that an attempt to understand what happiness is in one’s case is a personal journey of each one of us. While all the research and religious ideas can be used for reference and as a food for thought.

That’s all I actually wanted to share with you. Did anyone read it all? What do you think?

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Found a great video in Garry‘s posterous. It’s a visualization done by genius Cognitive Media of the Daniel Pink‘s speech summarizing recent researches into motivation and insights into its determinants: autonomy, mastery, purpose and contribution instead of monetary incentives. All told in a way that even 6 years old would understand.

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Recently, I’ve stumbled upon the video of debates with a very intriguing topic “Is the pursuit of happiness making us miserable?” and enjoyed watching it a lot. Hopefully, you will as well:

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RSS feeds is an awesome tool to save lots of time. You can get them all in the same place and not visit every single web-site to check if there are some updates. But often it becomes quite the opposite.

I personally have 573 subscriptions. That’s a lot. You risk looking at your favorite RSS feeds aggregator (like, Google Reader for example), seeing 1000+ unread items there and then spending half a day passively browsing through them. Instead of pursing your purpose and doing something that will bring you closer to your goals.

So, what are the lifehacks to minimize the time and maximize the value of reading blogs or other RSS feeds?

1. Attitude change

First and most important principle. You don’t need to read everything. All these unread items are not equal to your mail inbox. You don’t absolutely need to read, review, assign an action or even worse memorize every single one of them. It’s just a suggestion of the stuff that was published on the web that you might be interested in. If you are not, “marks all as read” button is there for you.

2. Think before adding

Often people (me included) add blogs to their reader just because of one cool post they read before or because of the author’s personality. None of these reasons necessarily mean that the blog will deliver any value to you in the future. What they do mean is that you will need to spend your time sorting these posts.

3. Judge by headlines

Reading the headlines is one of the principles of the smart and speed reading. But don’t forget to make decisions about reading judging by headlines.

Headlines should give a good understanding what value you get from the post. It may be new information you need. It may be just fun. Anyway, you need to be clear about the contents of the post before you read it. And only then you might want to proceed to the post itself. Example?

Imagine the headline “15 things every internet user must know”. I see it as a typical headline that screams:
“I’m totally useless blog post which conveys no specific value, only stupid generalities that everybody is already aware of, waste valuable 5 minutes of your time reading me and kill few thousands of brain cells!”

Often I browse through 30 headlines and then mark all the posts as read because I see no value in reading them right now. Imagine, what time would it take if I read every single post…

4. Delete bullshitters

You see headline like one I mentioned above? Probably you don’t even know what is that blog about? Or don’t remember why you added it?

Then, why not to glimpse at the last 10 headlines and decide if you even need it in your reader? Chances are you don’t. So, unsubscribe.

5. Structure

It’s much, much more productive and easier to read folder-by-folder. This is the structure I personally use in Google Reader.

0 ASAP
1 FAVORITES
2 COMMENT
ART DESIGN
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
HEALTH TRAINING
FINANCE MONEY
INSPIRATION SELFDEV GTD
LEARN SMTH NEW
LIFEHACKS
LIFESTYLE
MANAGEMENT CAREER
MARKETING SOCIAL SEO
PEOPLE
PHOTO
REVIEWS
SCIENCE FUTURE TRENDS
STUDY
TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS
TOOLS UPDATES
TRAVEL
TWITTER
VIDEO
WEBDEV DESIGN
WORLD ECONOMY
WRITING BLOGGING
YOGA

Well, names speak for themselves. It’s not perfect but allows me to process all the new information quickly and effectively. Try something that works for you.

6. Learn just “in time” vs “just in case”

It’s more effective to learn what actually need right now. Especially in the Google era when you can find almost anything almost any time. If you don’t currently need particular piece of information then you will probably do better if you don’t consume it. More about this principle on Lifehacker.

If you’re absolutely sure you are going to need in the future, then just clip it to the Evernote or like it in Google Reader. Alternatively, you can just find it using search through your subscriptions (available in Google Reader, you might also like to create a quick shortcut for Chrome)

7. Apply speed reading

There are lot of the free speed reading courses that can help you save some time and increase both comprehension and retention of the information at the same time. If you didn’t try it before you might like to do it now. Where to start? Wikipedia, video course, Tim Ferriss’ post.

8. Delete active instead of inactive

While doing a clean-up people tend to delete so called dead blogs. But usually they are not dangerous. You want even see them in the “show updated only” interface. And if they are still of some value there is no reason to delete them. Regardless of the fact that they are updated once a year.

What subscriptions should be looked closely at and questioned about their value foremost are ones that are updated frequently. My definition of “frequently” is from once a week to few times a day. These are the ones that disturb us mostly and should compensate with the great content. You can use Trends in Google Reader to get to know what feeds are updated more and less frequently.

9*. One in – one out

There is another way to reduce the information overload. I personally don’t currently use it. But you might like it anyway. Just keep the number of the subscriptions constant.

For example, you already have 100 subscriptions. It means that in order to add one more you need to delete one. Try it if nothing else works.

I hope my post didn’t fall into the 4th category!  

Good luck with implementation!

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“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.”
~ Kurt Vonnegut

This weekend I’ve spent a couple of hours watching “Philosophy – Guide to happiness” series on youtube with my girlfriend. Most of them were quite interesting, so I decided why not to share a few on my blog?

We often think of philosophy as something too vague, up in the clouds and too far from reality. Creators of videos below tried to fix it by grasping the essence of the famous philosophers’ ideas, drawing the parallel with their own destinies and projecting them to our daily life.

©

Yes, sometimes it means simplifying or even over-simplifiyng. And sometimes conclusions sound a little too banal, obvious and seemingly well-known. But still there are interesting insights and learnings to be applied in real life.

I don’t know for sure if watching these videos and attempt to apply the ideas from them will make you a happier person, but it is certainly worth watching and trying. What is surprising is that how little the world changed during last couple of thousand years and how these teachings are still vital nowadays.

I embedded the videos, so you won’t have to google them. There are 6 philosophers discussed, 3 videos for each one.

1. Socrates on self-confidence and ability to think independently:

2. Epicurus on necessary (and what’s more important unnecessary!) ingredients of happiness:

3. Seneca on anger and the importance of the realistic pessimism vs. blind optimism:

4. Montaigne on the importance of acceptance of ourselves and our limitations:

5. Nietzsche on the hardships of life and the right attitude towards them:

6. Schopenhauer on the role of genetics & biology in love:

BTW, if you still doubt the importance of so-called “philosophical” view of life, there is another documentary I watched last Friday and would also like to recommend: “Stress – Portrait of a killer”. It’s a National Geographic film about role of stress in our lives, about its connection with social ranks, its health implications (they are huge!) and ways to lower it. It’s very closely connected with the 3rd video about anger. You can either watch a 5 minutes teaser or download the full-version of film.

I would be happy if share your thoughts on the subject!

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I’ve been re-reading Getting Things Done by David Allen recently and thinking about other ways to get closer to the “Mind Like Water” state and suddenly I’ve come up with a very simple, but useful lifehack for GMail. It aligns very well with all the recent trends in productivity, time management and lifestyle design set by Tim Ferriss in his Four Hour Workweek and assumes you should minimize all the unnecessary disturbances and batch your typical actions in order to save time.

So, what I did is very simple yet really helpful and I highly recommend you to try the same approach.

1. Create 2 labels in your GMail.

First one is “! once a wk” and another one “! once a mnth”.
The idea is to group all the not so important mail and not to get interrupted every two minutes. It doesn’t necessarily need to be once a month or once a week. Probably once a day and once a week will work better for you. Anyway, you got the basic principle.

2. Create filters for these labels.

For example:

Matches: subject:(“Facebook” OR “Linkedin”)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “! once a wk

and

Matches: subject:(“Twitter” OR “Microsoft newsletter”)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label “! once a wk

Obviously, “Facebook”, “Linkedin”, “Twitter” and “Microsoft newsletter” are just examples. The point here is to put subjects or email addresses of those letters that you receive from time to time, but don’t need to read/process/reply the same second it’s received. It’s up to you to decide what these letters are, but I’m convinced that absolute majority of the letters fall into this category.

Then, you should tell your Gmail to apply the appropriate label for those letters and skip the inbox.

3. Schedule checks

Put view “once a week mail event and view once a month mail on your Google Calendar (or whatever calendar you’re using), make this event repeat every week/month correspondingly and create an email reminder.

3. Now, the most difficult step to actually practice: do not (do not!) check these two labels any other time than your scheduled time. I know these two labels look so yummy-yummy attractive when the number is more than zero, like in this screenshot (which is BTW the final result), but believe this is the habit worth developing.

Putting it all together.

So, if everything is done properly, you will have all the important mail (which is usually 1-10%) in your inbox right away and all the time consuming stuff (social networks, subscriptions, newsletters, etc) that prevents you from doing really important and inspirational things with your life will be held under two labels which are always available. Usually it takes very little time to process it all at once instead of doing it every single time when letter is delivered.

This is pretty much it. Good luck with implementing and improving! Hope, you won’t be spending the time saved in Twitter, but do something that you always wanted to start doing, but didn’t have enough time. And of course, I’m looking forward for your feedback!

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Choosing a place to live as a part of lifestyle design

In the era of globalization more and more people realize that they aren’t bounded by the city or even the country they were born in. On average we travel more, tarlk and meet people from other parts of the world more and get to know other cultures more. Technology, Internet, blogging, global careers or location independent entrepreneurship – all of these are factors contribute to it. But once we’ve realized that in the long-term we are pretty much free to decide where to live we face another challenge. And this is how we can possibly make a choice like this?

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I, personally, think that a place that can be called “the best for everyone” simply doesn’t exist. Besides, probably there is no one single place which is “best for you”. But certainly there are places which you would or will enjoy more and less, there are places where you’ll have more opportunities for self-realization and those where list of opportunities is shorter. So, what can help one to make the decision?

Location, location, location

Well, there are many approaches answer this question. And no, I don’t consider “just live where you were born” as one of them.

One of the options is to travel the world and try to live at least for a few days/weeks/months/years in each country to understand cultural differences and other distinguishing characteristics and figure out which country fits your personality, interests and passions the best. This is what Onizou guys are doing. But it’s a kind of difficult thing to do though, considering that there are 233 countries in the world. It would be time and money consuming, but probably worth doing.

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Another option is to listen to your friends, relatives and acquaintances with the similar mindset and try to catch the gist of their impressions from different parts of the world. But still the biggest risk is the subjectivity and difference in life priorities, in likes/dislikes and interests. One person cares most about safety levels and would never live in the country where crime rate is still high because family safety is the top priority for him/her, another person values adventures more and cannot live without new exciting experiences and challenges, someone else simply has some specific interest like Argentinian tango and would obviously end-up somewhere in Latin America.

What gets measured gets managed

I think that the best way to go is to combine all the methods and analyze all the available information. But let’s look on the other side of this issue.

How can official statistical information, ratings and rankings contribute to your decision making? Of course this data will be more useful for those of you who care about sustainability, safety and financial issues more, but those with other priorities will definitely benefit as well.

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There are a lot of pretty interesting international rankings and ratings that sort different countries and cities on the basis of the specific factor or set of factors. Let’s take a look on some of them:

What are the best cities to live in?

1. Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey

According to wikipedia, important criteria are safety, education, hygiene, recreation, political-economic stability and public transportation. The importance of the list lies primarily in the fact that internationally operating companies use it to determine where they will open offices or plants and how much they pay the employees.

Result:
City Country Rating
1 Vienna Austria 108.6
2 Zürich Switzerland 108
3 Geneva Switzerland 107.9
4 Vancouver Canada 107.4
Auckland New Zealand 107.4
6 Düsseldorf Germany 107.2
7 Munich Germany 107
8 Frankfurt Germany 106.8
9 Bern Switzerland 106.5
10 Sydney Australia 106.3

2. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s World’s Most Livable Cities

Each city is assigned a score for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. The categories are compiled and weighted to provide an overall rating of 1–100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal.

Result:
City Country Rating
1 Vancouver Canada 98.0
2 Vienna Austria 97.9
3 Melbourne Australia 97.5
4 Toronto Canada 97.2
5 Perth Australia 96.6
Calgary Canada 96.6
7 Helsinki Finland 96.2
8 Geneva Switzerland 96.1
Sydney Australia 96.1
Zürich Switzerland 96.1

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3. Monocle Most Liveable Cities Index

According to wikipedia, important criteria in this non-scientific survey are safety/crime, international connectivity, climate/sunshine, quality of architecture, public transportation, tolerance, Environmental issues and access to nature, urban design, business conditions, pro active policy developments and medical care.

Result:
City Country 2008
1 Zürich Switzerland (04)
2 Copenhagen Denmark (01)
3 Tokyo Japan (03)
4 Munich Germany (02)
5 Helsinki Finland (05)
6 Stockholm Sweden (07)
7 Vienna Austria (06)
8 Paris France (10)
9 Melbourne Australia (09)
10 Berlin Germany (14)

As you surely noticed, ratings are a little different. Yes, this is due to the differences in the factors and weights. I’d recommend you to follow the links above to learn more about the methodologies behind and get a better understanding of how it fits your personal priorities.

What are the most developed countries?

Here I’d suggest you to look at the list of countries by Human Development Index (top 5 are Iceland, Norway, Canada, Australia, Ireland) and the Quality-of-Life Index (top 5 are Ireland, Switzerland, Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden).

What are the richest countries?

Although money is not the ultimate measure of the quality of life, it still matters. So, if you are interested on getting to know where people on average make the most money you can take a look at the list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita.

But those are just materialistic economic measurements, how about the actual human happiness?

Well, the problem is that it’s quite complicated to measure such an ephemeral thing as human happiness. But happily there were few attempts. One of them is satisfaction with life index.

You probably want to know the result? Well, the happiest countries in 2006 were as follows:
1. Denmark;
2. Switzerland;
3. Austria;
4. Iceland
5. The Bahamas;
6. Finland;
7. Sweden;
8. Bhutan;
9. Brunei;
10. Canada.

I won’t get into the details of methodology and discussion of the cultural differences, but if you want to know more, Wikipedia is there for you.

But happy and healthy people are supposed to live longer aren’t they?

Well, there is a correlation between those factors and if you are interested in the specific figures the following indices might be interesting for you:

1. List of countries by lifespan (CIA World Factbook, 2009 estimates):
1. Macau 84.36;
2. Andorra 82.51;
3. Japan 82.12;
4. Singapore 81.98;
5. San Marino 81.97;
6. Hong-Kong 81.86;
7. Australia 81.63;
8. Canada 81.23
9. France 80.98
10. Sweden 80.86.

2. List of countries by lifespan (list by the United Nation, average for the 2005-2010 period):

1. Japan 82.6;
2. Hong-Kong 82.2;
3. Iceland 81.8;
4. Switzerland 81.7;
5. Australia 81.2;
6. Spain 80.9;
7. Sweden 80.9;
8. Israel 80.7;
9. Macau 80.7;
10. France 80.7.

These are the rankings I wanted to share with you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that you should believe them 100% and move to mentioned cities/countries ASAP. But I hope it widened your perspective on the world and gave some additional food for thought. I would love to hear your opinion or some additional information of that kind!

Bonus update – August 2010!

Best passports

I just discovered quite an interesting ranking done by Henley & Partners and reflecting visa restrictions for citizens of various countries.

Below is the 2009 global ranking that shows the number of countries citizens of different countries can travel to without need to get a visa:

1. Denmark – 157;
2. Finland – 156;
2. Ireland – 156;
2. Portugal – 156;
3. Belgium 155;
3. Germany – 155;
3. Sweden – 155;
3. United States – 155;
3. Canada – 155;
4. Italy – 154;
4. Japan – 154;
4. Luxembourg – 154;
4. Netherlands – 154;
4. Spain – 154;
5. Austria – 153;
5. Norway – 153;

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Last Friday we’ve been to the amazing presentation give by two designers traveling the world that call themselves Idea Nomads in Moscow. Oni and Zou (these are their aliases) have a goal to travel the world without taking flights.

So far, they visited China, Hong Kong, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan giving various creative/design presentations and arranging the workshops and of course doing some self-PR. They don’t seem to be willing to stop so far, the route they had drawn on the world map is far from being complete.

I don’t know about you, but it’s another source of inspiration for me:
http://www.ideanomads.com
http://twitter.com/onizou

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