5 Reasons To Ditch The Booze And Have A Sober September – Porto Part 5

Sober September Challenge – Porto Part 5

My life lately is like a working heart rate monitor.  Today, I received some excellent news and some terrible news.

I feel like Sasha Baron Cohen just informed me that I am HIV Aladeen (which means positive and negative).

After stressing out a bit too much yesterday, I feel like I ran out of f*cks, so I am more ok with being more not ok than usual.

Also, it helps a lot that I am working in front of a pool with a stunning mountain view.  I love my office today.  In the background, I see my friend is dancing without a worry in the world in his way too short to be 100% hetero Bermuda shorts.

Travelling has taught me, however, that a true vagabond needs very little.  So, in theory, if you decide for minimalism, you also have less to lose in a sense.  Less to fear.
Liberation through stoicism is real, what you still can lose; however, is your mind and your health.

Lately, my nutritional philosophy reminds me more and more of the movie Super-Size Me.  So, I decided to make some changes to my lifestyle, starting as of now.

Less Charles Bukowski more Dave Asprey.

So, while contemplating the best ideas to create a plan that allows me to survive the rest of my 20s, I had to think of a day that I had on this journey.

Cascata Tahiti

Earlier this week my crew and I decided to check out some national parks in the Braga district, and we ended up at Cascada de Tahiti, a beautiful waterfall in the mountains of Portugal.

We casually ignored the warnings on Trip Advisor that the rock formations are super slippery, and that a tourist is still in a coma after hitting his head there.

And, it did not take long till some of us fell on our behinds.  So extra caution was needed.
We climbed along the waterfall and the small river that winds itself like a snake through the giant rock formations.  A thick forest of pine trees covered the endless mountains.
While jumping inelegantly from rock to rock, I feel free and liberated.  Liberated because while climbing, you need to focus, so you do not fall off the rock and dash your head in.
There is something meditative about focusing on a single task.  You are focused on surviving and worrying about your problems on the other side of the world is not the highest priority for your brain.  So, you are 100% in the now.

It was a bitter needed break for my brain from all the sh*t that I have going on in my life right now.

The combination of sports and nature is really the strongest antidepressant there is.

After jumping off a cliff into a fresh sweet water lake, I felt like all my problems got washed away with it.

Since I am a giant goofball, and I am terribly slow at climbing, so I lost my friends for a while.  So, I had some time to think.

The Duality Of Things

I wondered if modern hedonism is a form of self-hate.  On the one side, I am a health and biohacking fanatic, and I love the idea of getting better a little bit every day.

But I also like beer and Kinder Pingui.

I think we all have opposite motivating forces and competing behaviours.

We all like the idea of having a six-pack.  But we also like chocolate cake.

Since I have the habit of going all the way into the rabbit hole and living on the edge, moderation for me is really hard.  Or at least this is what I was telling myself.
So I was evaluating taking better care of myself and laying off the booze for a while.  This is why I decided to start a new experiment: Sober September, and I invite all of you to participate.

It is effortless, so only one rule, no booze of any kind in the entirety of September.

On the way back from the Cascada de Tahiti, I talked to my friend about the importance of deconstructing problems.  So, I thought about the typical demeanours of my latest struggles.

I felt that booze is a great food for my monkey mind and that it was playing a role in triggering mild crises from time to time.  And, with a mild crisis, I mean me casually contemplating doing a sexy backflip off a very high bridge.

So, in the spirit of bad science, let us see what happens if we take out a variable.
Do you not feel like joining the Sober September Challenge?  Here are some reasons to try it.

5 Reasons For Sober September

Money

The first reason for a Sober September is that you will safe a ton of money.  We all know that unpleasant feeling when looking at the receipts in your wallet on a Sunday morning, and realising that you in your drunken rage, you broke your iPhone screen again.

As a digital nomad, one of the hardest challenges is to deal with the fact that in theory, it is Friday for the rest of your life.  So, you have to be mature enough to handle your freedom—something I really suck at.

Your wallet, however, will be grateful.  So instead of a night out in a club, invest the money in something that is equally or even more fun.  The idea is for you not to feel like you are sacrificing in Sober September, but that you are actually gaining quality in your life.

Self-Efficacy Boost

No one believes you can do it.  Not even yourself.  And you and your friends have very good evidence to back it up.

We all have been that guy who told everyone that they are going to stop drinking forever on a Sunday morning, only to break our sworn vows the next weekend.  This is why I decided to post this today.  Maybe some of you fckfaces feel the weekend in your bones.

Sober September will not only prove your friends wrong, but you will also actually boost your self-efficacy, which means the belief in your own abilities.

We all can change in an instant, and there are very few adjustments that are as strong as to stop poisoning yourself.  Instead of focusing on finding the next nutritional philosophy,  try for a while to just stop with the obvious stuff that makes you weak.

So, sit down for a few seconds and create a strategy that will be successful.  Do not rely on your willpower!  Make preparations while you are motivated.  Write down the reasons for yourself, why your body deserves a break from drinking, and what you will actually gain by stopping for a while.

A fundamental principle of behaviour psychology is that if there is competing behaviour, the more natural behaviour wins.  So, make drinking in September hard for yourself.

No booze in your house.  If you do not feel strong enough to go to a bar, do not go.
Create a system of accountability.  Make a small video on social media that you upload or give your friend 100 bucks that they can keep if you slip.

Happiness

If there was a recipe for depression, alcohol, and financial problems, it would be on top of the list.  In my pursuit of deconstructing unhappiness and learning more about mood disorders, I interviewed hundreds of case studies.  A significant amount of them had some form of alcohol problem or even addictive tendencies.

Happiness is as much physical as it is psychological.  Stopping consuming poison regularly will boost not only your health but also your mood.

After Sober September you can still decide if it is worthwhile for you to miss out on some craziness in order to invest in your health.

You, Will, Look Better

Pete Dority’s heroin look is out, as I realized on this journey that the combination of port wine and Natas really made me gain some weight, or to be more honest, I got a little fat here.

So, after a solid dose of self-shaming, I thought why not use Sober September to swap bad habits with some nice ones, and actually get back in shape.

My basketball season is going to start in two weeks, and today I realized that my zipper required a little extra pull to get my trousers closed.  Sober September will change you pretty quick, and you will be surprised by how much people will notice.

You, Will, Have More Willpower

No drinking in September will not only boost your looks, and your financial situation, but you will have more willpower actually.  You will prove to yourself that you are in charge, that you can stop any time, with anything, and since you are more energetic, you have more willpower to say no to other things.  So, the next time your friend asks you if you want to come to an all you can eat Chinese restaurant, you will be more likely to say no.

So why not use Sober September to invest an entire month into yourself.

So as always thank you guys for reading, and I wish you a happy Sober September!

How To Use Pain As Fuel — The Deck Of Cards Workout

I Write Mostly About Psychological Topics, Why Write About A Workout Method?

I believe in order to improve our state and wellbeing; we need to improve holistically.  This means that we need to become the best versions of ourselves in mind, body, and spirit.

When I was researching the clinically depressed in psychiatric facilities, I noticed that the patients needed to take long walks and participate in sports classes, because sports boosts serotonin and mitochondrial function, for example.

One of the commonalities among patients was that they all had either no gym routine at all or a bad one.  On the other hand, I found that successful people all had some kind of exercise regimen.

If you want to improve your brain, you also need to improve your body.  Think of your brain as the driver; your body is the vehicle.  If you are motivated and you have goals in your life, you do not want the ford fiesta; you want the fucking Ferrari.

Who Is Ray Lewis?

Ray Lewis is a former American football player who played 17 years for the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL.  He is arguably the best and most feared linebackers of all time.  When I was researching the habits and routines of successful people, I looked at Ray’s workout routines and tried to emulate them.

I was particularly interested in Ray because he had a very troubled childhood.  I always look for people who seem to be self-made.  I believe you can steal more habits and routines from them than, for example, someone who was born with all the resources in the world.

I look for people who succeed despite their circumstances, and not because of circumstances.

Ray developed the Deck of Cards workout when he was a child.  Other men constantly abused his mother.  To protect his mother from the brutal beatings of his stepdad, he started working out as a child.  I was particularly interested and fascinated by athletes who used sports as an escape.  To use the pain that they had in their life as fuel, they somehow find a way to tap into that pain and trauma and use it to transform into drive.  Click here to read my article on how you can turn your trauma into a superpower.

There is this upper echelon of pro athletes and high achievers with troubled backgrounds who all seemingly have something dark in common when it comes to their relentless drive.

They do not only seem motivated by external gain, but by a personal escape forwards.  A fight inside that is invisible to the outside world.  When Ray took his deck of cards as a child and worked out, it was to get stronger to protect his mother from his abusive stepfather.  He worked out, so he was strong enough to save his beloved mother.

My Stepfather hit my mother so hard that she would bleed from her eyes, and I remember looking at him with this rage in my eyes.  I could not help here because I was not strong enough.  So, I went to the next room and grabbed my deck of cards.  I was training because I was sick and tired of what pain and powerlessness feels like”.  Ray Lewis

So, What Is The Ray Lewis Deck Of Cards Workout?

Ray’s workouts are intense, but not scientific.  They are born out of necessity.  They are as simplistic as they come.

What you need: A Deck of Cards with 52 Cards.  That is it.

Manual:

Shuffle a deck of cards.  Then pick a card.  If you draw an 8, for example, you do eight push-ups.  Any face card is worth 10 push-ups, an ace 25, and a joker 50.  That is it.  Repeat until you have gone through the deck.

In Ray’s NFL days, he went through three decks of cards for each exercise.  That is a shit ton of push-ups!  You can do the Deck of Cards workout for sit-ups, pull-ups, and for whatever area you want to stress.  If you are not strong enough yet, start with a personalised version of the workout.  If you are a beginner, then instead of doing 10 push-ups, do 3 push-ups.

As a Digital Nomad, I love the Deck of Cards workout, because you can have an amazing workout anytime and anyplace, and you do not need anything else but your body.  For me, it motivates me a lot to know the history of the workout, and I visualise Ray doing the same workout that I do every morning.  One of the main pillars of my philosophies is that if we start doing the things successful and strong people do, we eventually will get the same results.

If you want to develop the habit of an insane work ethic, then stay with me.

Why Do I Write This Article?

Caution Soul striptease ahead: This dark escape forwards was something I did not need to emulate.  I already possessed the ability to use pain as fuel.  It was already eternal in me.  I grew up in a rather rough neighbourhood, under very simplistic conditions, in a single-parent household.  Rich in spirit, but rather poor economically.  In my neighbourhood, you had a lot of tough, violent kids.  I was rather soft at that time, and I was skinny as hell (about 40 pounds underweight).  I was interested in poetry, arts, and basketball.  As you can imagine, being a bookworm when you grow up in an environment full of sharks was not the cool thing to be.

In consequence, I was laughed at, and they beat the living daylights out of me daily.  It was bad.  Sensing that something was off, my amazing mother bought me a basketball, and with it, an escape, a way of channelling all of the accumulated pain and leave it all on the court.

Suddenly, it was not only cool to be a tall skinny kid, but it was an advantage.  I was hooked immediately.  I began practising every day, all day.  I became known as a gym rat.  Working out longer and harder than others.  In basketball, weight training is kind of mandatory.  Turns out that if your hobby is to push other 2 meter tall dudes around all day, you get strong rather fast.  The next time the school bullies picked on me, I fought back.  The bullying stopped.

There is a scene in the beautiful movie “Moonlight”.

The movie is about a young gay kid who grows up in a ghetto, who is constantly bullied and beaten until he loses it, fights back, and becomes a bully himself and invents a completely new persona, which he calls “black”.  I do not want to glamorise violence in any form, but I believe we must make use of all of our resources, and if we have pain in our life, we might as well use it to move forward to a safer place.

Although I was completely safe afterwards, the habit of working extra hard and using pain as fuel still resides in me to some extent.

What Is The Psychology Behind Escaping Forwards?

I believe that the habit of escaping forwards is exactly that: a habit.

All automated behaviour patterns work after the same principles.  Click here to read my article on how habits work.  Let us dissect Ray Lewis’ behaviour.

3 Rs are important, according to Charles Duhigg.

  1. Reminder
  2. Routine
  3. Reward/Punishment

Ray Lewis’ reminder was that his mother was beaten.  His routine was the deck of cards workout.  His reward was that he felt 1% closer to protecting his mother.  Now that is intense behavioural psychology.  Pain can be an incredible motivator.

Working out was his coping mechanism.  So, through years, he automated his routine of extreme work ethic.

After Ray stepped up and protected his mother from his piece of shit Stepfather, what do you think happened to the habit?

That is right; it remained.

Did you ever ask yourself why successful people do not stop after they have made it?  It is because of habit.

After some years, Ray was a millionaire, and his mother and his family were secure.  How come he still continues to work like he has not made it?  It is because of habit.

Habits do not care whether you have made it or not.  Ray installed, by accident, this relentless work ethic software in his brain.

If you break automated habits, you also take the automated reward away.  After enough repetition, you are addicted to that reward, and eventually, we do things just because we do them.  Breaking that habit would mean crazy discomfort for Ray because he has linked pleasure and the feeling of security to his crazy workouts.  Also, we do things out of familiarity, and we feel discomfort towards non-routine behaviours.

Also, when it comes to habits, people are much more motivated by pain than by pleasure.

If you have a negative, pain-causing variable in your life, you will pay almost any amount to get rid of it.  This effect, in my opinion, far outweighs the psychology of gaining something positive.

Our brain is wired to protect us.  Almost everything we do is to avoid pain.

Working out for Ray meant that the physical abuse of his mother would stop; this neural association was ridiculously powerful.  To me, this somehow explains his insane intensity on the football field.  While to us as observers, he is only playing football, to him, it was internal.  A fight nobody knew about.  What is your inner battle?

We all will have pain in our life; it is unavoidable.  What we can choose is the way we cope with it.  We can use bad habits, such as drugs, avoidance, or procrastination to deal with our pain, or we can use pain as fuel to use the bad things that are given to us as a resource and transform it into something beautiful, working out, dedicating ourselves to our craft, learning, travelling.

The habits that we choose will eventually determine what kind of person we become.

Are you going to use your pain?  Or are you going to let your pain control you?

I made my choice.

How To Use Electro Shocks To Get Rid Of Bad Habits

Do you struggle from time to time with bad habits?  Do you want to quit smoking?  Do you hit the snooze button when you wake up?  Do you eat sugar?  If you are the kind of person that wants to get in charge of their life and their habits, then the gadget that I am presenting in this article might be of value to you

We, humans, spend more than 50% of our lives on autopilot.  Or, as I prefer to say inhabit.

Whether we have good habits or bad ones determine what kind of person we are.  Think about it.  In my opinion, the difference between a millionaire and a broke person lies in their different habits.

I think of your brain as your iPhone.  Habits are apps that you can download.  If you have too many bad apps on your phone, your iPhone becomes slow and dysfunctional.  If you have good apps on your iPhone, your phone becomes an amazing device that is capable of helping you in major ways.  A good habit could be, for example, the habit of learning languages daily, or an exercise regimen, or meditation practice.  This would be the equivalent of a good app such as Evernote or Duolingo.

A bad habit could be, for example, the habit of smoking, or overeating, procrastination, or doing drugs.  This would be the equivalent of bad apps.  It robs your iPhone of its precious memory that you could use for something productive.

Therefore, it is essential that you learn how to delete bad apps from your brain phone and replace them with better ones.  I wrote an article about habits.

We are what we REPEATEDLY DO.  Success is not an action but a Habit” Aristotle

I am a bit geek when it comes to behaviour-changing technology and biohacking devices.  The following article shows you one gadget that helps you to get rid of bad habits.  Humans are horrible when it comes to self-discipline.  We all know that smoking is not good for us, but we do it anyway.  We know that snoozing is a bad habit to have, but we do it anyway.  We all know that procrastinating with social media robs us of precious time, but we do it anyway.  We all want to go to the gym daily, but we do not do it.

As a behaviour designer, it is now the focal point of my work, on teaching people how to design against undesired behaviours.  Relying on willpower and motivation is not enough, because if that would be the case, we all would have six-packs and would speak eight languages.  Somehow, our lazy brain always goes for the most comfortable way to immediate gratification.  We must actively design our environment against behaviours and habits that we do not want to have, and we must change the very things that we link pain and pleasure to.  Our brain will always want to get pleasure and avoid pain.  If we hack this pain and pleasure system, we can guide our behaviour and become the person that we want to become.  So what is Pavlok!

What Is Pavlok?

Pavlok is a biohacking bracelet that you wear around your wrist that is designed to help you break bad habits.  It does so by giving you mild electric shocks when you perform an undesired behaviour.   First, you identify the habits that you want to break.  This can be, for example, that you have the bad habit of smoking.  Every time you succumb to the temptation of smoking, you receive an electric shock from the wristband!

  1. First, you identify the bad behaviour that you want to eradicate.
  2. Then, Pavlok will monitor your behaviour. It monitors your behaviour with sophisticated sensors and algorithms.
  3. Now, when you perform the bad habit, Pavlok will give an electric shock, or you give yourself a shock with Pavlok.

Pavlok also has automated features where you combine, for example, a plugin for your browser with Pavlok, and every time you go to Facebook, you get zapped.

If you want to buy the device, click here. 

If you want to know more about the product, click here.

What Is The Theory Behind Pavlok?

The device was named after a Russian physiologist who was mainly known for his work in classical conditioning, the most famous and important psychological contribution ever made.

So What Is Classical Conditioning?

You might have heard of Ivan Pavlov as the crazy scientist who trained his dog to produce spit every time his dog heard a bell.

The idea is easy: to create an intended response, pair it with a trigger and repeat it until the stimuli alone creates the response.

In his experiment, Pavlov rang a bell and gave his dog some delicious dog food.

And, the dog produced saliva.  After some time, the dog began to salivate when Pavlov entered the room.  The dog was anticipating the delicious dog food and produced salvia in advance.  Amazing right?!

To test the theory, he created an easy experiment.  To prove that the dog was producing saliva in anticipation of the food, he rang a bell every time he gave his dog some delicious dog food.

After a while, he rang the bell without giving his dog the food.

And, the dog produced salvia just as a result of hearing the ring!

Pavlov and his experiment with his cute salvia producing dog are way more than just a classical psychology lesson.  Classical conditioning can be used as a tool to get rid of the undesired behaviour.

Remember, operant conditioning is best suited for forming new habits, which means that our brain wants to repeat what is rewarded.

Classical conditioning is there to get rid of bad habits.  By pairing a behaviour with a negative stimulus (pain or discomfort, for example), you can weaken bad habits.

Do you have bad habits like eating junk food?  Skipping workouts?  Being depressive?  Playing video games instead of following your dreams?  You can weaken them all!

So what is the link between classical conditioning and getting rid of bad habits?

I mentioned earlier that to create a new habit, it is best to add a reward at the end of the behaviour.

If you want to get rid of a bad habit, that alone I found adding a reward is not enough.  You have to add a negative stimulus to the bad habit—a little punishment.

In psychology, this is called aversion therapy.  It means that you add a negative consequence to your behaviour.

It is great practice in the military.  If you are interested in that, you should read the book “Living with a Seal: 31 Days with the Toughest Man on the Planet” from Jesse Itzler and Tony Goggin’s.  Click here to buy the book.

Think of your brain as your dog, and that you train him either by giving him food or punishing him a little bit.  If your dog pees on your couch again, and you immediately show him that you are not happy with his action, he will link discomfort to that behaviour and will try to avoid it.  Humans and animals learn very similarly when it comes to behaviour.

3 Takeaways From The Pavlok

It Is Fast

Pavlok promises that with their device that you can break a bad habit in 5 days, in only 5 minutes.  It forces you to basically zap yourself every time you want to have a cigarette.  After only 5 days, your brain does not link cigarettes to pleasure anymore.  Your brain associates the cigarette with an electric shock.  This may sound crazy and radical, but the speed is amazing.

Yes, training your brain by inflicting a little trauma is extreme as well, but so is smoking for years.  If you can stop a bad habit like smoking and you manage to substitute the emotional reward that you were getting in a healthy way, you have won.

Pavlok Uses Aversion Therapy

Pavlok uses proven psychological mechanisms of Aversion Therapy that was developed in the 60-90ties.  It sounds super harsh to use punishment as a form of changing your behaviour, but the makers of Pavlok have found that even minimal punishment works, and it works ridiculously well.  Due to social reasons, punishment and aversion therapy have a bad reputation.  But I am quite the extreme guy, and I understand the concerns.  It is basically training the dog by kicking him.  But the pain that one receives from Pavlok is so minimal that it does not cause any harm.

It Is Expensive

170 dollars is a fucking lot.  But in my opinion, it is a worthwhile investment.  Think of the possibilities you will have when you are in charge of your behaviour.  Let us say you have the bad habit of Netflix binging.  Think of the time you save if you could eradicate this habit in 5 days.  Let us say, for example, you want to stop smoking.  With this device, you not only prevent yourself from getting lung cancer, but you also save a whole lot of money because you do not have to buy cigarettes.  170 is a lot, yes, but the possible return of being fully in charge of your life is a bargain, in my opinion.

Lifehack: What Do I Do If I Do Not Have 170 Dollars For Buying Pavlok?

I totally get it, 170 dollars for Pavlok is a lot, and if you are not a psychology geek like me, you will probably hesitate.  If you want to condition yourself; starting today, I would recommend that you use a rubber band and snap it every time you succumb to the bad habit.

What I Do Not Like About Pavlok

The idea that habits simply can be broken sounds almost too good to be true, and in my opinion, it is.  Just using aversion therapy is not enough.  Each and every behaviour that we have has an emotional reward that we get from performing that behaviour.  If we take a bad habit away, we must first analyse what the bad habit was giving us.  What was the reward that this behaviour was giving us, or what was the promise that this habit was making?

Identifying the reward can be a complicated process, but to really change our behaviour, we must also look at the needs of humans.  Let us take, for example, the bad habit of smoking.  We want to quit, and with Pavlok, we will be able to ruin the fun in smoking, and we will stop eventually.  But smoking was important to us because it was giving us relief, and company, and coolness even, maybe.  Often, we are not even aware of what a behaviour is giving us.  To completely get rid of a habit, we must find a habit that gives us the same kind of emotional reward.  A habit that gives us what the previous habit was giving us but in a healthier way.

If smoking was giving you stress relief, you can, for example, form a meditation practice.  If drinking gives us self-esteem, then maybe an exercise regimen can similarly boost your self-esteem.  I think Pavlok does not emphasise enough that there are reasons why we have bad habits and that we have to substitute them in order to fight them.

If you break a bad habit, but you do not substitute it, the person will find a different behaviour that is scratching the itch.  We must face what our true needs are and what pleasure we are getting out of a bad habit.

Also, I think it is understated that to design against undesired habits we must change our environment.

We are all products of our environment, and if we want to form positive habits, we must not live in toxic environments.

Finding an environment of hungry, inspirational positive people is key.  It sadly also works the other way around, if toxic people surround you, you will most likely learn their dysfunctional habits almost by accident.

How I Managed To Read 30 Books In One Month — The Speed Reading Habit

One of my favourites movies of all time is, The Matrix, and one scene, in particular, stands out for me—the scene where Neo fights Morpheus in a Test Program.  In the scene before that epic fight, Neo gets plugged in with a wire, and one of the Techies onboard of the Nebuchadnezzar uploads kung fu data into Neo’s brain.  Seconds later, the upload is completed, and Neo opens his eyes and is a master in kung fu and says, “I know Kung Fu“.

After watching that scene for the first time, I thought how badass and useful it would be if you could learn any skill that fasts.  Too bad that it is impossible in real life.  But is it really?  What if we could 10 x or 100 x our reading speed?  What would happen to our life if we could accelerate our learning exponentially?  Is not the life that we are living right now a direct reflection of the things that we have learned up to this point.

I always enjoyed learning.  What I did not enjoy, were the hours you had to put in to learn something complex.

Sometimes, reading a book took me forever.  Being the lazy bastard that I am, I always look for shortcuts.  Shortly after, I found myself fascinated with accelerated learning and speed reading in particular.  If you have read my other articles then, you know that I have the superpower to fail spectacularly.  I got kicked out of multiple schools, and I failed so many exams that at a certain point, I began to question my very self.  Maybe school just was not for me.  Maybe I was not smart enough.  Luckily for me, I started studying psychology.  I began to study the ways of how our brain processes information, how we store memory, and how we learn.  I also learned that our school system was founded like 100 years ago, and during that time, we knew very little about how humans learn, and that the entire system sucks.

This, to me, was a revelation and the lifting of a burden.  It was not that my brain was not capable enough; I was not too stupid; it was a combination of bad habits and a system that did not understand, really, how our brain learns.  We get taught basically that intelligence is a fixed entity.  When I learned how our brain really works, I also learned that I did not have to stay stupid.  That I can get smart, and that I can get smarter fast.

In the following article, I describe an easy hack that allowed me to up my book total from 1-2 books a year to 200 plus.  In my past, I had tons of learning disabilities and problems in general with my education.  Eventually, I became tired of fucking up and really started to research what learning is about.  I studied memory champions, speed readers, and read tons of books about accelerated learning.  Have you ever started a book and it took you forever to finish it?  Then this article might be something for you.

The Px Project —How To Improve Your Reading Speed By 300%

What is the Px Project?

The Px Project is a cognitive speed reading experiment.  It is based on the human visual system and works with mechanisms that eliminate eye movement inefficiencies that we have while reading.  The improvement rate of this experiment is bananas.  In a 3- hour cognitive experiment, the average increase in reading speed was 386%.  I tried the method for myself, and within 20 minutes, I doubled my reading speed.  A 20-minute investment and you read 100% faster for the rest of your life?  Fuck Bitcoins, now this is what I call a return!  Tim wrote an amazing article on the topic, and I highly recommend that you check his blog out.  Click here.

Who is Tim Ferris

Tim Ferris is a bestselling American author, entrepreneur, and self-proclaimed “human guinea pig”.  He is most famous for his self-help books.  You might have heard of his book, “The 4- Hour Workweek.  But, what he is most famous for is his Podcast, The Tim Ferris Show, which has over 80 million downloads.  In his podcast, Tim interviews world experts and masters of any field imaginable.  Guests like Peter Diamandis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Fox, Dave Asprey, and other incredible high achievers.

How Do We Read?

We read in saccadic movements.  That means, we read in jumps.  I always thought for example, that we read in a straight line, but what is wrong is our eye jumps to a certain point and stays there for a millisecond.  Imagine your eye like a camera rather than a video recorder.  Your eye camera takes different, separated pictures, and your brains binds them together in a holistic picture.

So What Are The 3 Bullet Points Of Speed Reading?

We must minimise the number of jumps and the duration of the fixations per line.

  1. We do not read in a straight line.
  2. We must eliminate jumping in the wrong direction.
  3. If we increase our vision (think of it as getting a better and wider camera objective), we can increase the number of words in our focus.

So, speed reading is not about skipping content; it is about implementing information of how our visual system actually works.  Think of your eyes as your car, and the word lines in a book as your streets.  So far, you always took the long route.  Implementing knowledge about how our eyes move is basically taking a shortcut or the most efficient way to your goal.

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