Being a publisher on a small scale, I know how hard it is to get attention on your work. Often we invest way more time in our work and words, than our audience gets to consume it. Starting small, means a lot of wasted efforts. By knowing this, I’ve made a commitment that I will support small publishers and indie developers across the globe.

When you are big, you already have all the attention you need, but the little guys are yet to grow. And following their growth is exciting, proving that there is a content driven people industry, that will transform the lives across the planet. That is the power of the internet, to transform, and give voice to those who wouldn’t be heard otherwise.

This idea has been growing for a while in my head…

As a growing one man publisher, I’ve came to conclusion that rising stars invest way more time into their content than the established websites and so called guru’s.

Hence they have a special place in my RSS, and it’s a dominant one. Our industry is yet to thrive, and change the landscape of the modern web culture.

Alternate locations to find your favorite indie publishers

YouTube is the big guy, and also a conglomerate of future of media, the future of whom part I don’t want to be a part of. There are a lot of video publishers on Vimeo, that are having a very different approach, with way more class and style. Cats video aren’t as frequent, but the content of the highest quality is there, and completely worthy of your attention. It’s not mainstream.

No I am not advocating hipsterism

You might be a hipster if you are a huge fan of mainstream Instagram, yet ignore the platforms like EyeEm (or let alone, you even haven’t heard of something like that).

Hipsters are the fans of Gotye, I am talking about the quality, not contemporary artwork.

Hipsterism is mainstream, despite them wanting to call it alternative.

And not necessarily liberal arts (quite the opposite in my case).

So for whom do I advocate for?

I do advocate for bloggers, indie developers, small fiction writers and people who contribute to the community, yet aren’t established. I encourage you to buy their small products, to encourage their work and if they are good enough, liberate themselves from the corporate tyranny.

Make the phrase: By the people, for the people have a whole new meaning. When you plug out of corporate infrastructure, you are encouraging widespread entrepreneurship. Putting your money where your mouth is. Don’t listen to CNN, BBC and Fox News, go straight to the center of the happenings.

Start delivering value and finding customers in the people. Because I know, that when I pay money to a indie developer, I have a sense of fulfillment knowing that I am feeding his children, and not investors already fat pockets.

Supporting the ideas

When you support the small people, you are making the cultural shift away from corporate consumerism and advertising. You are finding simple solutions to your life, that would otherwise be depersonalized in the endless stream of data consumed by the corporate world.

You are encouraging connected more efficient world, where people aren’t treated like replaceable slaves. They are rewarded for their contribution.

Alternate Search Engine

That is exactly the reason why I use DuckDuckGo as the search engine. It is search engine operated by a single individual, and if I find an advertisement that suits my need, I know that my click is going to feed one hungry mouth, and support that individual specifically.

Now specifically the guy behind DuckDuckGo helped me avoid a nasty Google Addiction, with the search engine that doesn’t track me. Isn’t this entrepreneurship at it’s highest level? See what I mean when I say that we can operate outside of the corporate boundaries.

Sometimes we can get limited, sometimes the results I get from DDG, aren’t the perfect results, but at least, this way I am supporting the liberation of corporate slavery.

Make them replaceable

By using the smaller alternatives you are incentivizing the industry, sparking a revolution of scales, where we stuck up the middle finger to corporate overlords and send them a clear message: “You are REPLACEABLE!” The same way they treat their employees.

The world is not going to collapse once they’re gone. The power is in our productive hands!

Don’t go over the board with this…

Of course you won’t always be able to follow this path, as sometimes the alternative solutions won’t be available, or simply they won’t be good enough to satisfy your needs. We are after all living in a corporate dominated culture, but having that stance, where you can show them that a work of a single person can replace their machinery is brilliant, and over the time, the peer2peer network of entrepreneurs will be able to fragmentize the whole industries on open principles.

One size fits all is outdated model, and small niche markets will dominate the economies of the future. This way I am supporting all those people who satisfy my special diversified needs. In return liberating them, and myself from corporate tyranny.

Final Thoughts

Don’t stop on supporting, make it count by becoming. Start your own thing that we can support and let you become free as well. Be a part of a global solution. Do the thing you love, deliver value, and watch the world transforms in front of your very eyes.

How supporting Indie and small publishers transforms the world is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

The one and only measure of my productivity for the day is how much I wrote. And today I’ve breached that record. I’ve written around 5000 words today, and keep pushing that limit. Out of those 5000, 2k have been published and 1k schedule.

I am exhausted pretty much. I’ve been out of the house for the whole day, but my writing was primary thing in my mind, and laptop allowed for some mobile work. And still is. Going to sleep with the keyboard in my head and mind, pushing words through, while I sleep.

The goal and determination to make it

That is all that matters. And when you are making those days that push all limits, you notice how much change they put on you. How more meaningful your existence can be. Now I am starting to fully live Alpha Efficiency instead of writing about it.

That is the point, living your words to the fullest, while being mindful of your actions. Going through the roof and breaching your comfort zone. The deal is, I haven’t landed where I want to be yet, and every effort that isn’t contributing to landing there is a second of life wasted.

Increasing focus

Focus has been extremely important in accomplishments of today. Luckily I’ve gained a luck streak with Pomodoro technique. I’ve managed to push 5 timed Pomodoro’s and I would say that I went along with another one of full focus on writing that I wasn’t measuring.

My goal was 10k words in one day, something that still seems unobtainable, and would require superhuman effort on my end, but somehow I know that there is space for improvement up till that point. That is dedication and that is paying the price. Success comes in daly increments. Sometimes small, but true success comes from those big sacrifices.

Not managing to get everything done

Somehow yet, when you focus on one thing other things become lost through the cracks. And that is also fine. It shouldn’t guilt trip anyone who is steering on the right path. The person that knows where he is going, will find a way to do something, above other things. When you have your priorities straight, you just stop feeling guilty about not getting things done, that are irrelevant.

Relevancy is a long forgotten art form in decision making. People don’t know what is relevant anymore, we are sucking up advertising badly. We’re mindless sheep buying yet another consumer product after another in hopes and aspirations of fixing our wrongs.

Avoiding guilt

But the fact remains, nothing is wrong with us, except with our minds that think that we are inadequate. Forget the guilt, the guilt is a social construct. It’s not relevant human emotion. It’s a negative emotion. And in this case, it’s extremely important avoiding this emotion for productivity, that is why I am talking about it in the first place.

Removing guilt, and letting yourself fly free is the best thing you will allow yourself to do. Stop feeling guilty, and make a firm decision, that today you will do what matters, and not feeling guilty about skipping all those things that are completely irrelevant to you. Commit to your own long term happiness. It comes at a price.

So how did I do this?

Apart from neglecting some of my daily chores on other fronts, I’ve also managed to do this, by shutting down internal distractions, first and foremost this was the biggest time sink, as I could seldomly dive into day dreaming, or thinking about the future, instead of the current moment and current word.

Being absent is the mutilator of the writers flow. In order to accomplish this, I vibes well with music. I’ve turned on random Radio station on Spotify, but any kind of radio will do for this purpose. Shutting off everything unnecessary was also a key. There were no email distractions, no social media notifications, literally nothing to the best of my ability. And of course My blind typing skills certainly helped.

Final thoughts

Ego tripping from all of this work done. Certainly I am. But the polish on the articles isn’t as good, as when I invest time to properly edit them and give them some thought. Most of this writing comes straight from my head, with no preparation or revision what-so-ever. Is it good? I have no idea, and sometimes I wanna act like Blenderhead and just hit publish without too much thinking. If somebody doesn’t like it, fuck it. I can’t and won’t appease to everyone. This is designed to help you, if you can’t extract the value out of it, than this is not the thing for you, and you can click the X right away. On the other hand, if this does help you, you’re welcome to serve yourself, with as many articles as I can humanly write. And inhumanly too. Whatever I achieve first.

How does it look when you write 5000+ words in one day… is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

In personal terms, some big things happened last week, I’ve bought my tickets for USA, and now it’s a flight waiting game. As I make my move, I believe it will have a dramatic impact on my work, my style and even topics that I write here. Health wise I felt dramatically better, so I’ve started working out again, ending a brief delay.

What I wrote

This week was a bit more productive in terms of publishing. I have some new publishing guidelines, so here is a bit longer list than usually:

1. Further down the “Fallacy of Systems thinking” Discussion
2. Impact of @1password on my @Evernote and @Lastpass usage
3. Slightly different publishing approach
4. The RSS replacement

Personally the most important piece of writing done this week is actually the short RSS article, because I feel as if it is the biggest paradigm shift in my content consuming habits. After that comes the big shift in publishing approach on Alpha Efficiency. And than the changes that occurred with 1Password.

Some changes occurred in my working environment, and I feel they are for the better. Simplification and a bit of fragmentation. But that’s the way it goes.

What I found interesting around the web

This week I was more focused on going out and about, solving my tickets, so I didn’t get to consume as much, but from this limited selection I’ve got some great stuff you need to check out.

Podcast

This is something that left the most profound effect on me from all the things I’ve consumed for past 7 days. It’s a typography episode of Mac Power Users , where David and Katie discuss fonts with Inna Saltz.

If you are a web designer, or any kind of digital publisher, this is a mandatory listening material.

The book

The book of the week is Markdown by David Sparks and Eddie Smith. Again, if you are writing for the web, and you want to truly do something for your productivity, this is the book for you. Check it out on the iBooks store for your iPad, or download it as a PDF if it’s not yet featured in your country.

Articles

1. My internet pal Brain Cutlery is making a rather massive influence on my grammar, so he shared me this article on the differences between “its” and “it’s” in hopes that it will prevent me from making this mistake in the future. Let’s hope he is right.
2. Speaking of my friend, he posted Brain Cutlery Manifesto, which is his powerful mission and purpose statement, and a worthy read worth checking out. It focuses on paperless and productivity.
3. Social media tends to consume our lives, and therefore it’s a prerogative to put it under control. Guys at Social Media Camp have ideas on how to use Pomodoro to tame social media

Blog of the week

Bullet Proof Executive is certainly putting a different angle on biohacking, impact of hormones and nutrition on our performance. They’ve inspired me through couple of their posts in the past, but I am subscriber of their blog and RSS feed. Website that made a tremendous impact on the future of this website, and the future research I will be conducting.

That would be it for this week. Hope you enjoyed the selection. Please let me know how you like this section of Alpha Efficiency and what you like most about it.

Weekly Review – Impact of @1Password, Typography and @BrainCutlery Manifesto is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

It’s been a while since the Google announced the murder of Reader. And for the past two months I was waiting for a replacement that would be worthy of my attention. But than I’ve reconsidered majorly how I started using RSS lately, and the same way as Podcasts, they were mostly read on iPhone.

Downsizing, again

My minimalistic aspirations are making me reconsider and lower the number of applications that I am using. Since iPhone is always with me, and RSS is mostly scanning and saving to Pocket for later reading, I figured, why just not kill RSS applications on Mac and underused iPad altogether ?

Contemplation on less sync

Than I gave a thought to that scenario, and realized a small list of benefits:

1. I won’t have to pay a dime – Reederapp that I am using is perfect and will let me have the whole setup offline
2. Mac and iPad will have more reading time in Pocket, iBooks and Kindle – for what I mostly have been using them if I was consuming material.
3. I won’t have to worry about sync
4. My RSS will always be with me, so nothing to worry about there

Simplification

Seems I’m doing this for a second time and putting a bit emphasis on iPhone mini work. This is the second article today written on it, and I am moving more and more of my work straight to the palm of my hand, accessible everywhere.

This seems to be the natural progression. Seems that I am localizing all the distractions basically in the device that I am feeling most personal with, and on top of it all spend most of my free time.

The RSS replacement is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of blogs like Daring Fireball and Brooks Review, and often I’ve found myself having a desire to write short articles in bursts and just hit publish. For a long while, this simply was not possible on iOS.

Also I’ve found Mars Edit bookmarklet quite useful in sharing thoughts and snippets from other places around the web, straight to WordPress. This might slightly increase my random content, but I’ll still aspire to leave a blaze of 2 "meaty" articles a week, coupled with 1 weekly review, that usually comes out on Sunday or Monday.

How will this impact your RSS reader?

Well, the posting frequency might increase up to 15 entries per week, but most likely it will be in 6-8 range, depending on the inspiration. That is the 100% increase, so I thought I needed to let you know.

There will also be iOS made only articles, created in @draftsapp and they will most likely contain far less links than the articles I write in Mars Edit.

This way I will cover the things as they happen, and generally write and publish way more useful information. Hope you will like the change, and get the most out of it.

Any thoughts and ideas regarding these changes are welcomed.

Slightly different publishing approach is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

Keeping your information secure is important factor in our daily lives. For a long while I’ve kept a lot of my important private information hidden inside of Evernote. And never have I been confident in it, I knew it was not a safe solution, but I took the risk.

As the time goes by, and more and more of my financial and identity information reside in the cloud, I’ve decided to pull a plug, and make it at least a little bit secure, yet still retain the benefits of the cloud.

Recently I was lucky enough to get review copy of 1Password and wanted to honestly compare it with LastPass. While my honest opinion of the battle between the two is a close match on the functionality side, 1Password is in the lead when it comes to design and user experience. But something more important happened. 1Password made an impact on my Evernote usage.

Meet Wallet

Even though LastPass has similar functionality as 1Password wallet, it simply doesn’t have the details and time invested into it the same way as the former does. And than there is another reason. As any large database, your LastPass is compromised to a certain degree. It is found in centralized location, with a layer of hashed password as a protection. Though I am not a security expert, I can safely assume that your username database is located with everyone else residing in the cloud. It’s centralized database.

So if I was a hacker, all I would need to do is to obtain the database, and I would have all the usernames, and I could attempt brute force attacks from there. The same would go for Evernote, which happened a couple of months ago. 

Let’s take it from another angle now. You have 1Password, and your database is within Dropbox. I am a hacker attacking a large Dropbox database. Once I breach the database, I brute force your account, but once I am in, instead of having the access to your sensitive information, I actually have another layer of protection. If I want to access your sensitive information I have to breach your master password of your encrypted database of 1Password.

In my mind this is giving me a peace of mind, that it will be really hard for anyone to hijack my sensitive information. And that is why I started storing my credit cards, passports, id copies and other sensitive information in Wallet instead of LastPass and Evernote.

So how does it look like now?

Well, now I have another layer of fragmentation of my data, but I believe it was necessary. Perhaps some of my information is scattered across the services, but I have a necessary peace of mind in the world where digital information is equally important as physical one. I don’t have to worry nor wait when will Evernote introduce 2 factor authentication. I can safely sleep knowing that my data is mathematically impenetrable for the duration of my life.

Also seems like I am moving away from LastPass for majority of my passwords, and making 1Password slowly but surely my only password manager on my main browser. LastPass will certainly have it’s place and purpose. Kinda feel bad that I stated that LastPass is more secure password manager, because it seems they are on pair. And in the end, I always yearn for a more qualified user experience.

Impact of @1password on my @Evernote and @Lastpass usage is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

Times and times again, I’ve seen GTD enthusiast try to convince me that GTD is for “everyone” and that it is for normal people. My dear friend Brian Cutlery is on it again. He replied to my Systems thinking article and this time around I am replying to his response to it, that can be found here.

Exhibit A: The Review process ‘doesn’t work’

In this section Brain Cutlery claims that he is reviewing daily, and that he spends around 15–30 minutes blasting his reviews every single day. Which consists of 405 minutes a month of time spent reviewing what has been done. Let’s say that he earns 30$ an hour, that would be an investment of 210$ into productivity system every month, considering that he is diligent about his habit. And that’s at the least level of investment of 15 minutes a day.

While I applaud his decision of doing daily review, I’d trim it down to 2–3 minutes, or perhaps up to 6–8 minutes if he is running a daily journal of his achievements, and blissful ideas that come to him.

But as I’ve stated, productivity beginner shouldn’t flaunt around with review, he should be setting up healthy habit of doing his most important goal getting task, like a true Alpha would. And reviewing isn’t getting you anywhere closer to your goals.

Exhibit B: Systems are a substitute for mindfulness

You don’t need a system to promote mindfulness. The habit of mindfulness is something that is built by you, not by the system. Systems can never be a substitute for mindfulness, because they will never be able to increase your level of awareness that you get by practicing mindfulness.

I wouldn’t say that they are a substitute, but rather a poor band aid, to a problem that is much deeper. Here he mentioned the issue of “trust” into the system. I don’t trust the system, I ultimately trust myself. If I didn’t found something as important, that’s all the prioritization that I needed. I didn’t do it, it’s gone, it wasn’t that important after all.

People are very very good at prioritizing. Just the big problem is that they sometimes have decisions that they regret. If you truly care about something, you won’t need to prioritize. Prioritization is important when you get lazy, and you don’t want to really do anything. And that is just a hidden form of procrastination, where you are lying to yourself how you need to do these easier tasks before jumping on the heavy hitting tasks.

If you were mindful in the first place, you wouldn’t need a system to tell you what’s important. You know what’s important, you are a powerful human being, you don’t need band aids to help you make decisions. You just need to stop running your life on auto pilot.

Exhibit C: Systems aren’t for normal people

Really no argument here that I need to counter here.

Exhibit D: Systems are designed for normal people

If normal people suck at organizing/designing/planning/executing, what makes you think they will be good at running a GTD system, or any other systematic approach for that matter? It’s like claiming that another layer of complexity is going to solve the existing problem of complexity that normal people already have. It doesn’t work that way.

No compass, no GPS and no directions will help you, if they require more time to learn and implement than actually doing your task. All the time spent on learning the “system” is time that could be spent improving your goal getting activity. Something that requires more work, than actually doing the work is not the kind of help you need.

Exhibit E: System thinkers they they are superior

Perhaps I should have been more clear here. I didn’t want to put my friend Brain Cutlery in the same bracket with guilt tripping OCD maniacs trying to sell you their latest implement XYZ methodology into ZYX product.

But beside marketers there is that other cultish breed, that forces it’s chosen productivity solution to others, claiming it’s the only way, shoving systems down everyone else’s throat, as the only way to get closer to your goals.

The gorgeous display of this type of people can be found in Bill’s Im-perfect Time Management adventure. Luckily I know my friend Brain Cutlery is not one of these people.

Closing Statement: To each their own

There are people out there who will embrace the geekery and complexity of some systems. There are people who love that structure. And eventually even if you follow the Alpha Efficiency path from Step 1, you might develop a system of your own. Systematic approach can have benefits, but for majority of people, starting with systems is like learning how to do complex math, before even knowing what the numbers are.

Some people indeed will never need them, some will hate them, while some will reap the benefits from them. Whichever your group is, don’t shove your solution as the ultimate one. Not everything is the right fit for everybody.

Further down the “Fallacy of Systems thinking” Discussion is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

I was a bit under the weather the whole week, but I enjoyed a lot of quality content, especially in the book section. So here goes:

What I wrote

My usual two articles a week were quite related. My first was a semi-rant on “systems thinking”, where I explained why newbies shouldn’t implement systems as their starting point, and my second article explains what is the best way to start your own productivity journey.

1. Fallacy of Systems Thinking and Reversing the Productivity Game
2. The Very First Steps To Becoming Alpha Efficient

I am particularly proud of the second article, as it is going to be a foundation for any newcomer to the website. Something that will put the people on the right track, without putting the restrains of systematic approach. It talks about habits and mindfulness. Simplifying the productivity, instead of making it more complex.

What I found Interesting this week

Podcast

Biohacking is a popular subject, but never have I known that there is such a diverse community behind it. In this podcast you’ll hear some crazy AWESOME ideas from Ari Meisel, who is a guest on the BulletProof Executive show. Apart from his amazing ideas on virtual assistants and commitment to improving your efficiency in modern age, you will hear a lot of nutrition facts that will blow your mind.

The Book

Bill’s Im-Perfect Time Management Adventure – Points on the smartphone, and people hard core enforcing “their” method, as the only way to go about things. It’s really well written book, that pumps up your emotions, makes you feel the despair of bad time management and how it feels being lost in sea of information.

Articles

Productivity Placebo – This article talks about some weird things we tend to do with our productivity system. Here he argues how using LCP for inputing information on Fantastical is actually slower and more redundant, and actually less productive. While I might argue with him that he is right, I’ve been doing the similar thing with Drafts. I wasn’t calculating the taps I’ve had to do, but I know it would get saved in Drafts ecosystem, and let me send an email or text message to the person with the date and time.

Apart from this little disagreement with the article on certain cases, I believe it brings up a rather awesome point, that some people are adding up, instead of watering down their productivity ecosystems. Here is the quote that should make you think about your own virtual environment:

— It’s easy to get sucked into the tools. You can spend hours tweaking and “optimizing” your tools and not really get anything done. Tweaking your workflow is the new procrastinating. It’s a placebo that feels like work, but it really isn’t.

Plugging off the internet – The Verge article from their prolific writer getting paid to disconnect from the internet for the whole year. Man, getting paid to get off the very thing that makes you money. And that for the whole year. Not sure I could pull off what he did there, but I certainly try to separate my offline and online life. For the time being they are largely different as they coexist in different languages. My Serbian ego lives in the realm of physical, and my virtual self lives in the English virtual world.

But the story of this article is quite profound. Tells a lot about him, but also tells that people will find things to waste time on, equally as good, as without internet. Life without internet can be cool, but the deal is not to go over the board and stepping too much into either of the spheres. There are far to many advantages to web to leave it ignored.

The blog of the week

For blog of this week, I’d have to commend Mike Vardy’s Productivityist got a clean redesign, and a constant stream of quality content. If you are a blogger, you can find a lot of inspiration in Mike Vardy’s blog. Something extremely awesome is coming up in his Productivityist Workbook. I have already bought and read some of Mike Vardy’s work, and I vouch that the book he is working on right now is going to be a game changer for many.

Weekly Review – Disconnecting from the internet and Biohacking is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

Perhaps you started with tips and tricks on Lifehacker, or you’ve read a book or two about organizing yourself and improving your productivity. Or you are brand new to this. But you still don’t have a clear idea where to start your productivity journey. I was thinking hard about where to send of a person who is brand new to productivity, and deliver him instant results. What are those first steps that will make a true difference in your life?

Developing mindfulness

Mindfulness is a Buddhist concept and it means focusing your attention and awareness. Even though it originates from religion, it is not strictly attached to it, and can be taught independently. In this age of distraction and interruption, mindfulness is a concept we need more than we ever did before. It was not as necessary 100 years ago, when we didn’t have to live in the era of distractions.

But today, we have far to much beeps and buzzes creeping on us. On top of that we’re constantly being interrupted by intrusive advertising. Being interrupted became the new norm. We became used to all of these interruptions, and when they are gone, we crave them, and search them out to fill our void.

Your first step

First you need to stop, detach yourself from the your current inner world, and come to a peaceful place, where you can think for yourself, by yourself. In the book 7 Steps to Alpha Efficiency, Mike, one of my mentors described this as "doing your own thinking". He mentioned me this concept ages ago. But what I didn’t realize back than, was the fact that "doing your own thinking" actually required me to be alone, and actually do the thinking. Sit quietly, and think about your life. Be mindful of what’s going on.

The actual first step is sitting alone, and clarifying your Source Code.

There are some questions that might pop out, some of them might seem distant and unrelated, but the fact that they are crossing your mind, means that they have importance for you. All these thoughts need to be transmuted into your personal constitution, or Source Code as I like to call it. Every day we go through our life defining things around us, but never do we stop and define ourselves.

This "source code" is something you’re building for yourself. It doesn’t have the form, rules or definitions how you can write it. It’s completely up to you.

But this exercise is the practice of mindfulness over your life. It is the first step in defining your productivity. What actually productivity means to you, what are the things that are making you feel more productive. For the purpose of this exercise you need only two things:

1. Pen
2. Paper

Everything else is redundant. I don’t want you to get distracted in gadgets and technology. All you need is you, and your true thoughts down on paper.

The problems I’ve encountered while writing Source Code

Eventually I created a recurring task on my smart phone, where I forced myself to read through the Source Code, and I’ve found myself doing it, but rushing through it. I wasn’t actually being mindful. Some words would remain, but I would be in such a rush to get back to other things that were on my list. Perhaps it became boring to read the same thing over and over again, so I started evolving it. I started changing and adding sentences, finding what are the words that sound true to me.

Don’t consider this exercise as a chore, it’s an exercise of mindfulness. It has little to do with what’s written, it has everything to do with what you are thinking. This is my substitute to meditation, even though it might not appear to you that way.

The way you feel as you define and redefine yourself

This is the way of Athlete. He has a clear vision of earning a Gold medal and being the best. He is visualizing the prize in his mind, prize and recognition, and he’s focusing on the end result and end result alone. He knows that he needs to pay the price off his success in advance, in order to get where his mind takes him. Everything starts within your mind, and mindfulness of where you want to be. It’s like a synchronization of your goals and reality.

We all have hopes, dreams and ideas on how we want to accomplish our goals, but more often than not, we’re not mindful of those ambitions and we aren’t connected to them. Nor we are conscious of the ways that we want to obtain them. The end goal of this exercise, which can last anywhere between 5 minutes, or a whole lifetime of search, is finding your main activity, that will allow your dreams to transmute into reality.

Once your goals are set…

…you need to identify that activity, or activities that are linking you to your dreams. That is where the magic happens. Once you realize what are the actions that you feel you need to take, than you can move on working on them, and practicing mindfulness while approaching your goals.

It is bringing your thoughts and actions together to work in harmony. That should be the cornerstone of your productivity. And one mighty way to start and create results right away.

Summary

1. Practice mindfulness about your life
2. Write those thoughts down into Source Code
3. Identify your goals
4. Make a habit of those activities that are leading you towards your goals
5. Repeat them daily and do them mindfully
6. Devote yourself to continuous progress

Final thoughts

If I was starting all over again, I wish I started here. In a simple place, where I can build up, and avoid reading things that aren’t of value or use for me. This is a foundation of Alpha Efficiency. Finding out what truly matters to you, and how to get there.

The strength of this approach lies in it’s simplicity. It puts you in a "drivers seat" from the get go. It puts emphasis on what’s important to you, not some arbitrary idea of what’s important.

Let me know how this went for you. Did you sit down and thought about your Source Code? Did you identify your productive activity? Did you focus on making a habit out of it. Let me know in the comments, and when you’re ready, than it is time to move on to the Next Step…

The very first step to becoming Alpha Efficient is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!

The problem with productivity enthusiasts these days, is that they will pay more attention to the hacks and tricks, than doing the actual work. We’ve created this “work masturbation” environment, where doing it better is more important than doing it at all.

The problem lies with the saturation of the marketers in the field. They are creating all these artificial needs, like systems, and gadgets, in order to sustain themselves and their continuous work. There is always that new thing, like: setting up your system on iOS, setting up your system within XYZ New Wave application that everybody seems to recommend….

First you need wake up to the truth…

…that system is irrelevant. You doing the work is what matters. The biggest problem doesn’t lie in low productivity and efficiency, it lies in not doing the work at all. You don’t need prioritization systems in order to know what is relevant, or irrelevant. You know it by heart the moment you are mindful of what is going on.

You are justifying your procrastination by doing what has perceived notion of urgency, instead of doing what is important. That has nothing to do with the system, but has everything to do with procrastination or even hidden procrastination. At any given moment, you can stop and reflect wether your work is actually work, or something that you use an excuse to delay the important.

The habit of mindfulness and it’s impact on productivity

For a long while I was procrastinating on mindfulness, it sounded to me like yet another fad. Until I’ve noticed people mentioning mindfulness as a way of treatment of people with eating disorders and addiction patterns. Than the lightbulb switched in my head. Realizing that the true problem is actually an addiction to procrastination.

As any other addiction, procrastination can be cured by being completely mindful of what you are doing in any given time. When you are present in procrastination, it will feel unpleasant, as opposed to your work making you feel that way.

When you are mindful of what you are doing, the chances you will procrastinate are significantly lower. And no, I don’t have empirical data to support this fact, I am going on with my hunch that you will get it. The same way I can’t empirically describe what exactly mindfulness is.

Brain patterns and Mindfulness

Up until recently, I thought that meditation is a form of weird way of getting people into cults. But than I’ve listened to Bulletproof Executive podcast (episode 18), where the show host mentioned that meditation is not about cleaning your mind, it is actually about lowering your heart rate.

According to him, when your heart operates at the lower rate, your brain patterns simply change. Which is completely plausible. And makes sense from scientific point of view.

Some thoughts for the system thinkers

Before you go crazy about me radicalizing the idea that the systems are bad, I don’t completely believe in that. If you are an old productivity enthusiast, and you are not encountering this idea of productivity for the first time, you are probably already heavily invested into this philosophy. But what is the thing that makes system work? Is it the system itself or the underlaying principles of mindfulness? Isn’t the system just a band aid for explaining the mindfulness?

As we all know, the main issue that system thinkers have, is the actual review process, where we sit down and reflect the things we’ve done. And for majority of people, this approach to weekly review, proved to be a complete disaster.

My habit of reviewing isn’t heavily ingrained yet. But the reason why lies in it’s inconsistency. If you want to make a habit, you have to make it daily, not weekly. And if you opt in to develop a habit of mindfulness, you are basically in the review phase all the time.

Systems don’t work because of all the things being written down, and processed through some task managers. They work, because they make you mindful of your actions. When we write thins down, we FORCE ourselves to realize the physical component of work. That is why most systems are related to pen and paper. Because there is a different link to the brain when you are physically writing something down, as opposed to making a computer input.

The underlaying principle of systems is in fact mindfulness principle. When you start from there, you start to get a lot more work done. Treat the cause of the problem, not the consequence. Solve your productivity issues from inside out, not outside in.

Why is this the right way for a beginner?

As someone who implemented systems, I can safely assume that not many people would like to take that route. When I described my newfound way of working to my friends, they were thinking that I was nuts. Rightfully so. Because a lot of normal people, won’t EVER use systems. They sound like work. And nobody likes more work, on top of the work they already have. Sounds logical?

If you are a system thinker, you need to remind yourself, that you are not the normal people. That is why mindfulness is designed for normal people, before they start buying task managers, organizers and other sorts of note taking applications.

I am not saying that you are wrong as a system thinker, I am saying that the route we took towards the end goal is not a right fit for everyone. As a matter of fact, it’s not designed for normal people.

And my final message to systems thinker evangelists

No, you are not the chosen one, because you are following a productivity method that people think are weird. It doesn’t elevate you above the people, nor it makes you a practitioner of some dark art, that only your cult knows about. In most of the cases, especially if you’re just starting out, it is making you less productive.

Investing the same amount of time in building the habit of mindfulness would harness results that would return higher returns of investment, than duplicating your work. The systems will grow by themselves, we don’t have to enforce them as the only solution.

When people feel the need that things need to be organized, they will develop their own systems. Just the fact that you’ve built it, doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to shove your way of thinking as the only way of truly being productive. Calm your “religious zeal” of following the systems and imposing them on others as religion. It makes you look weird. And no one wants to be that douchebag.

Fallacy of systems thinking and reversing the productivity game is a post from: Alpha Efficiency. Written by Bojan - Act differently!