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The 2 kinds of Productivity

I think we have 2 kinds of productivity: online (digital) and offline (real).

Being productive Online means making automation and virtual reality work for you, in order to create space and time for what’s important in digital life (creating content, connecting with people, sharing valuable information, keeping our inbox clean, keeping our files in order,…).

  • •.Digital productivity is all about deleting files, editing words, graphical user interface, to alter the experience. It is all about your Operative System and the way you set it up.   

Being productive Offline means simplifying the real life to create space and time for what’s important (relationships, studying, feeling better, exercising, meditating, playing an instrument, creating something, editing some text, cooking,…).

  • •.Offline productivity is all about simplifying, decluttering and minimizing distractions. Examples of offline productivity (real life productivity) are frugality, recycling, reusing things to accomplish something with ease. Decluttering one’s bedroom shelves or restructuring a room of the house, to make it better, are excellent examples of being productive in the real world. 

What I learned from Editing

This is an important period for my blogging experience. I gave you my word about editing: It is essential to move forward, to create new things, while making the past available under a different form. What happened is now there, taking up space in both digital or real form. I would say it is therapeutic to renew one’s work to avoid stagnation and stillness.

I learned that creating space for what’s next is as important as living in the now. Editing also taught me that:

  • •.it is important to renew one’s self every now and then.  

  • •.It is important to make order in my blog’s archive.  

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Thoughts on inner and outer change

There is a time in which all we have to do is living in mindfulness, enjoying that sense of deep calmness we are surrounded by.

When making time for what’s important, we live one of the most amazing experiences our lives can offer: the power of now, living becomes condensed in what’s valuable for us. We just freeze our lives, instant by instant, step by step.

We dilute emotions in a never ending continuum of present experiences. Expression is dilated to fit every single detail with value, positivity and simplicity.

After having worked and evolved for so long now, it feels good to just stop and look back at what we’ve done, the way we’ve gone and the path we have designed behind our backs. The moment is here and now, and you’re living it. We are already there, ready to take our next step to reach what we’re looking for.

Time has come for us to realize our present condition and enjoy it: we can apply this to our computer, to our own desktop environment. We can also apply this to our physical condition. Life can be meaningful even out of little digital stuff. Entertainment can be delightful as well;

The same passion we put into shooting a photograph, we can transfer it to computing in productivity and decluttering our whole life. We can put that same passion in meditating and chilling out. We can translate this energy to written words. We can apply that to healthy eating and intermittent fasting.

Change is easier when you stop stressing about it. Productivity is also easy to reach. If you want, you can already be productive. You can already manage your time a better way. The same goes for your email inbox.

 Experimenting enables us to detach from things we don’t need. We are just left with what’s real, tangible and applicable to our lives. What’s gone will maybe return, or will be completely lost forever. The choice is up to everyone of us.

Let’s start modeling a new life-path for this new week!

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On Information Management in 2012

Experimenting and growing one’s inner character means getting rid of boundaries, limits and goals. Living without goals means waking up in the morning with no fixed plans. You basically do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want.

(Actually I’m not so free, but I’m getting closer to the whole thing). And while everything’s every day more enjoyable, I am happy to see that lots of people is living up to standards similar to mines.

Here, I want to give you an idea of what feels to live without planning. It’s sunday evening and I am thinking about the new post I want to publish on my blog. This is what I do: I enjoy reading amazing information by those bloggers and sites I enjoy following and they immediately suggest an idea I could develop in my new article. Otherwise, when I have nothing to read, I just let my mind do the talk, and the thoughts flow freely without interruptions

Now, today we talk about information management and how to do it correctly. And this time I was inspired by EvBogue. Everett Bogue is an amazing blogger. In one of his last posts, he has asked these questions to every subscriber and I feel like answering the whole list.

It’s important to manage the right information, the right way (Check the download section for my eBook “Life” about it)

This is what I personally want to share with you. Maybe it will make you think; maybe you will just find another ‘method’ to act on the big digital data input we receive each day.

.What information will need to exist next year?

I only want to see useful information. No copy/paste stuff. Just stuff we create and great content to make the most out of our lives.

This means: less time spent looking for information. Highly valuable content could also be free. What we have to pay is the effort someone made to make the information available to us.

.What form will it need to exist in?

 The most incredible information I have ever read is on paper. What is tangible will remain between us. What is tangible belongs to us. We can touch it, smell it, enjoy it in simplicity.

.How long will we need it?

For how much we need it to grow mentally and spiritually.

.How will we pay for it?

I would be happy to pay goods with other goods. I would love to get rid of money. At least, it is right to negotiate information. If you know something I’m interested about, I will share with you something you are interested about and I am experienced in. I would share value with value. If something is low value for us, but is highly valuable for someone else, it is good to share it.

An idea on money:

It is also morally right to pay money for people’s time, instead that for the content. You can study something on your own, but maybe you will not be able to guess correctly: that’s why you need an expert to guide you in the path. The more you price yourself, the more what you have to say is valuable and life-changing.
Obviously, be honest with yourself and with others: if your product sucks, there is no way in which you can make it more appealing in the long term.

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Evolving the Lifestyle: Intermittent Fasting and Freedom

1 year of intermittent fasting. And I’m feeling great.

Experimenting lead me to an extension of my fasting period.

I started this amazing 2012 with a 24h fast. Fasting this way, you set yourself free from the pressure of eating. You destroy habits. And this feels good. The result is incredible, because when everyone else is eating, I am getting things done, training, writing, experimenting, studying, reading, meditating or what I feel like doing. I do what I want to do. I just use better my time.

Freedom in lifestyle includes simplicity. When you simplify your eating, you have a saner life. You have time for what’s really important and valuable.

Even if I keep fasting again and again (in different ways) I had a weight gain, probably due to my weekly 3 or 4 archery training sessions.

In fasted mode, I mostly drink fresh water. I increased my intake of raw fruit, decreasing my intake of refined grain products. Extending the fasting period, meditation and its effectiveness are amplified. In addition to this, I’m getting used to:

  • •.greater concentration for longer periods of time 

  • •.higher creativity rates (to create stuff, think, study, etc) 

  • •.higher quality of perceptions (sounds, colors, ability to move) 

  • •.higher resistance to effort 

  • •.Better resistance to insulin peaks 

  • •.More long term thinking (which is good) 

  • •.Clear thinking 

  • •.Improved awareness  

  • •.positive attitude towards life 

  • •.Detachment from outcome  

  • •.Time? irrelevant 

  • •.Carelessness for what does not conform to my own standards 

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Digital Sabbatical: Experiments, Experience and Practical Ideas

I went completely cellphone-free during the weekend: I left it at home. I have experienced what it feels like to be disconnected from the digital world. And, the most important aspect of it…

being disconnected feels great

When I got home, I was curious to see if I had missed something important and.. well, relax folks: ahahah, nothing happened! Nobody wanted my attention during the last few days.

And it is good to see this, because when we disconnect from the digital side of our life it is far too easy to imagine the world as a distant place.  Apparently, our devices are just like passports to the digital world: ahaha, it is Life v.2.0. We can easily lose the perception of what’s real and what’s virtual. If we mistakenly exchange these two worlds in our lives, then we’re screwed.  Why? I think it is just a matter of emotions. When we get too emotionally attached to devices and technology, we get lost in an altered space/time continuum. The real problem is not the device itself; it is the digital reality we are projected into. Unlike real life, virtual reality has no space or time. That’s why it is soooooo easy to lose time perception during our connection and navigation

Digital Sabbatical to unclutter and declutter our mind

So, this makes me realize how important it is to go on digital vacation every now and then; if you can, shut your digital appliances off even for a few hours today. Shut them off during your working hours if you can, so it will be easier to concentrate on a single task. Think about it: If you keep doing this 1 hour every day, you have 7 hours of total disconnection in a week. And sure enough, you’d feel better. You can tell me at the end of the week if you want! 🙂

what you can do

Make this day count in a different way: get out of your comfort zone and get things done. If you get out of your comfort zone, you have an idea about where you are in the path of life and what you can do to better your lifestyle: you evaluate what’s working for you and what needs to be “deleted” from your life. It’s a really simple and straightforward process:

  1. 1.You decide to make an experience 

  2. 2.You evaluate the results, accepting them,  

  3. 3.You reapply the experience process or change it 

There is one thing I love: getting things done and then wonder at the beauty of the material I have created.

some practical ideas:

You can:

  • •.create music,  

  • •.write a blog post or an ebook 

  • •.do whatever you feel like doing  

  • •.read a good book  

  • •.meet your friends 

  • •.get to know new people 

  • •.meet strangers and talk to them  

  • •.exchange emotions 

  • •.play an instrument  

  • •.go training with your buddies 

  • •.exchange points of view and start creating something new.  

This weekend, for example, I am working on Ubuntulook’s content, to make it simpler to read, condensing it to few stuff, editing some html code to make it simpler to navigate in it, etc. Well, do something different from what you do every single day of what you call “a boring life”.

Life is not boring: it is just the way you make it.

A better-lived week is composed of better-lived days.

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We are the networks of our pasts: on equilibrium

Everything is related at a deep level. Day by day, 2011 is coming to an end, and I think it’s time to choose a new path to get through, in order to evolve. This is what happened in 2011: I…

  • •.have written a lot  

  • •.released a free eBook in two languages. 

  • •.I have been experimenting a lot (and still am), in order to define what I call “essential”. 

  • •.I’ve been decluttering my digital and physical life.  

  • •.I’ve been able to lose body fat and finally see my abs. 

  • •.I have discovered what it means to seat down every single day and do the work for over a year and a half now, writing wonderful and useful posts for my blog (and myself),  

  • •.I’ve been reading, meditating, training and discovering new things during these amazing 12 months.  

After lots of digitally/physically written pages and posts, it appears obvious to me that there is a bottom line in all of my work: we can live a better life. I love the way I have been living it and the things I have been doing every single wonderful day of this year.

My latest articles covered lots of different topics, themes and important points. Each one is different, but coexists perfectly with other posts and themes. Why? Because, in the end, life is a whole, and every aspect of it needs to be linked to another one, just like in a network. First of all, we are balance and equilibrium. We are the network of our past and how we have been conditioned by it. We ARE what we learned from life.

Productivity and time management would be useless if you don’t apply them to a correct lifestyle, a near-to-perfection diet (that’s why I included intermittent fasting posts in my blog) and saner way of viewing the reality you live in. Even Marketing, Antimarketing and neural activity, Maths and Physics are useless if you don’t apply them to a positive approach for living in freedom.

Deep down, I sense that living, as writing, blogging, thinking and training, is all about creating a network of interests and ideas which fit perfectly without colliding.

This is why, while experimenting with our own lifestyle, in order to create a better existence, we sometimes feel bored. The more we find out about new stuff to put into our mind, the more easily our “state” and “frame” seem to be susceptible to small changes. In part, this is due to self suggestion. Also, this happens because of the mental clutter we should clear before putting new things into our minds.

Let’s remember that:

  • •.we have all the time in the world to make a change  

  • •.We have a lifetime to become the person we want to be  

  • •.We have a lifetime to reflect, enjoy every single moment and wonder at how beautiful, yet complicated, life is. 

  • •.living productively is living in an inner equilibrium  

Why am I here?

I’ve been asking myself why I do what I do. I recently discovered writing; I included it in my life in a wonderful way: to share with you what I learned and what I keep learning and refining every single day. I perfectly know that many people wouldn’t read the stuff I write, unless they are really motivated to do so. And this is exactly what I want in my heart. I also know every single one of us has a different perception of the world in which we live, so I am happy to be only read by wonderful and open minded people. This is a blog some people can read, and very few can understand. But those who understand the messages contained herein will perceive an incredible force growing inside them. They know here they can find something they won’t find anywhere else.

In conclusion, well, I did my best to give you value. What you can find here is incredibly rich content, and only those who are very motivated about it can apply it to their lives.

  • •.I did my best to enrich your life with valuable content.  

  • •.I did my best to put effort and valuable content in what I want to exist into my life and I hope you will be able to do the same.  

In 2012 things are going to evolve. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t want to plan anything. I will just let you know along the ride. For the moment, I just want to wish everybody a wonderful and happy Christmas.

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Rethinking music and our relationship with it: part 2

‘ve been talking about the creation of a wiser relationship with the music we love to listen to and the one we’re passively exposed to. This article deepens my personal viewpoint about the topic.

Music is thought

Music is great for lifestyle design, conditioning and character modification. Music, in a given environment, really dictates our behavioral responses, conditioning our character in the long run, creating and strengthening associations between facts and emotions (read ‘reinforcement’). It sometimes creates anchors (NLP term).

Music sends waveforms from a neural network to the other, and the amazing thing about that is… you have to know what you are doing with what genre and what kind of instruments.

Information is everywhere today. We live in a world in which we have incredible amounts of music (read ‘thought forms’). This way, our personality can be shaped in various ways. We can live amazing experiences, by just collecting the right music, listening to it the right way, knowing why we listen to it.

I usually love the idea of listening and downloading free music and free stuff. I also encourage YOU to do so. Download open source and creative commons music! Enjoying free music frees us from the burden of copyrighted material. This new year is a big opportunity to catch: it is an occasion to stop consuming exclusively copyrighted material: there is a free and open world to discover out there, from digital to physical collections and libraries.

Let’s take FreeView documentaries as an exemple (for video) or the audio section of Archive.org (for music)

Free and public domain content gives value to our inner selves. We don’t need cookie-cutter made music, movies, art and news. We need to get real, about what we know about what; and what we want to know and what makes us better. The basic idea is to create a personal collection composed of useful music and thoughts. Start experimenting, also with the music you own and listen to.

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Towards a saner idea of Entertainment: Adopt Open Music

So, I’ve been talking about decluttering our digital lives for a long time now. Today I want to talk about the post-deletion process: how can we replace the messy stuff we deleted with organized, good new material? Obviously, this process applies to every kind of things, from music to movies, from ideas to your bedroom’s furniture, from your desk to your digital workspace.

The point is, we are so addicted to our social environment that we get easily used to things, ideas, concepts, services and medias everyone around us relies on. We get so used to hearing concepts everyone has in his own mind, things everybody knows, songs which play again, and again, and again on the radio. We are chronic repetitors. We repeat endlessly, again and again, and again the thought of  others, the ideas of our friends or coworkers, the opinion of a so-called “expert”. It’s ok to repeat if you feel good enough.

But if you want something more out of your life, how can you shape the life you are meant to live?

Obviously, you will only take this step if you have developed a consciousness about the role technology has in your life.

This week, we’re going to talk about music, and how to replace your old material with something better.

To me, it’s a pity that:

  • •.talented musicians have to be leaved in the background while only “gifted” (you will never know why and how!) ones succesfully reach the largest audiences.  

  • •.we usually have to pay for bad, bad music. 

  • •.We only get to know what media suggests us 

Bearing in mind the importance of experimenting and unthetering from digital clutter, I am taking several steps in order to detach, little by little, from corporation / lobbies’ music, in order to enjoy more of what’s commonly referred to as “open  music”. Open music refers to uncopyrighted music, royalty free audio and creative commons music.

When free stuff is available to us, I think we have an opportunity to catch. Not only because somewhere you can find amazing bands playing beautiful music; but also we can develop a taste in music and develop a sane attitude towards “entertaining” and the whole concept of “modern entertainment”. We also save money, time, effort; plus, we create space for what’s really important in life, our hobbies and sports.

The sounds of independent artists reach the depth of my soul; they give shape and colours to the ideas sometimes spark in my mind. And I perfectly understand now that there is something more to listening to low quality commercial stuff (Coldplay, r’n’b, rock ‘n’ roll, Led Zeppelin, Rihanna or Tiziano Ferro, for example).

While listening to commercial music I have the vague impression I am just injecting my brain with something coldly calculated, created for the sake of feeding the mass, with no apparent interest for adding valuable content to the listeners’ lives. This is just my perception, and I may be totally wrong. But, given that I have learned to trust my instinct and my heart, I sense I’m doing something right in adopting open music in my life.

Where can you find open music?  You can start by looking at: Archive.org, Netlabels in Archive.org, FMA (Free Music Archive) Jamendo.it

What about the genres and bands? I will bring this whole material into depth in next week’s article.

In the meanwhile feel free to answer these questions in the comments: I could use them in the next articles! what do you listen to? Why? How can you sleek down your entire music collection to include better qualtity music?

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The proof Intermittent Fasting really works: why, how and when?

Intermittent fasting works. I also believe it is the best way to correctly feed our body, getting rid of traditions, bad habits and other worthless cultural concepts. To me, Intermittent fasting is productivity applied to the mental and physical well being.

On the quality of my old dieting habits
As you probably know, during the last months I have been fasting intermittently. I am living without breakfast since last January. My abs have been goodlooking and I have been feeling great. Now, during the past 2-3 weeks, it happened to me to eat meals (every sort of meal, from raw fruit to pasta, to sweets), every day breaking the daily 16-18h fasting window I used to respect during the past months.

What I found out

even if I was eating whole and unprocessed foods the whole time, moving around and, as doctors say “with an active lifestyle”, I was getting fat again, regaining every single kilogram (you prefer the term pound?) I had previously lost since January 2011.

That is to say, to also confirm what I have always thought to be right, not only it is what we eat that makes the difference between  weight loss and gain: it is the time between our meals which makes the whole difference.

This confirms the ideas I have been advocating to since last January: healthy living is not meant to be complicated. Health is simple. At least 18 hours fast between our daily intake of food can completely change our life, enhancing our health and boosting our immunity.

The basic rule is: If it is complicated, it is not healthy. Eating less frees up lots of time in your day you can devote to the pursuit of meaningful activities and goals.

Eating less = more space for what really must exist in your life. Enables you to create space and silence in your life.

It enabled me to write Life, my first free eBook in just 3 days.

What am I doing now, to restablish the situation?

I started respecting strictly my diet plan again. No need to bloat myself with things I don’t need in hours I don’t feel like eating. I feel more concentrated; my energy lasts longer and my resistance is improved, especially when I am moving around town. I can focus way better on study material; I love to feel satiated at night, but I also love to respect my body for what it is: it is just a body. If I am expending time and energy on stuff I don’t need, it just makes me feel bad about what I do to my body and what I do to my mind.

For those of you who are interested in the technical details of my diet, click this way.

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When technology is The Weapon

Tomorrow, Internet may be just an idea, a concept.Sure, many of us have seen it working. Many of us have used it to satisfy a need. We know it has been part of our lives.

But should it disappear, would we be the same?

Would our lives be the same without it?

Would our personality be the same?

Generally speaking, if we take a look at the bigger picture, technology has changed our lives: it created complications. More, more and more.

Mental clutter is worse than physical clutter, because it comes from our inner person. If our bedroom is cluttered (physical clutter), it’s just our bedroom. We can go to another room of our house, right?But when all the clutter is in our own mind (mental clutter), what are we going to do? Are we going to change our mind?

Should technology be obsolete tomorrow, what would you do?

Let’s try to imagine our life without technology, hassles, complication, Internet and cloud computing. In reality, we want Internet to be everywhere. We’re convicted it’s practical (!?). By trying to catch the details of our user experience we miss the real meaning of things. We miss the bigger picture and the real sense of stuff.

  • •.Why is technology part of our lives? 

  • •.Why is Internet part of our culture? 

  • •.How can we start living a more appealing life? 

  • •.How can we detach from this speed culture? 

If we could cut back on our expenses on technology, how many books and saner information could we consume? Should I need a new piece of technology, I will ask myself how many amazing books I could buy with that budget. And will opt for spending my money on something more useful than technology.