What’s up ? This is THE stephane ANDRE ! I watched an Olivier Roland’s video and I learned some good stuff.

Nature has given an extraordinary tool to every human being. This tool has different performance depending on the people but it’s the best for solving problems compared to the tools invented by humans.

This tool is our brain. This tool is better than a computer because a computer needs a human to work. For now, artificial intelligence has lower performance than the human brain.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t use our brains to find solutions and solve problems that are important to us. Many of us consume a lot of distractions. The question is : « Are we asking enough questions to our brain to find solution ? ». If you don’t give problems to your brain, your brain will be less and less efficient. It’s the same principle for your body.

If you give junk food to your body all day long, you will be fat, bitter, you will not have any more energy, you will not have any more libido. Everything that will comes out of you brain will be diminished in quality and quantity. If you will give healthy food to your body all day long, you will be slim, you will have more energy, you will have a better libido. Everything that comes out of your brain will be increased in quality and quantity.

Training your brain

To improve the brain to solve problems, it’s necessary to ask questions. A question is the interface between our brain and reality. This is what will put the brain in mode : « search for solutions ». By asking questions, you will look for different angles of approach to deal with the problem. The better the question and the better the solution to the reality of the world.

To have a good quality of question, it’s necessary to learn to educate oneself with books, trainings, meeting people who share their experiences, etc. Realize that you have to dedicate time to solve problems, allows you to organize your days. It’s like dedicating a few hours in your day to play sports. There is a method that I advise you to test, it’s to have a diary.

Attention, it’s a special diary because you’ll ask yourself questions. The first thing is that you’ll tell events of your life and this will allow you to better understand them and better understand yourself. And the second thing is that you’re going to ask yourself questions. There will be general questions like: « How can I become happier ? ». And more specific questions like : « How can I become happier with the 80/20’s law (Pareto’s principle) from today and see a measurable result next week ? ».

With questions, you put your brain in mode : « search for solutions » and you find several ideas to test to solve the problem. It’s the human process to find a solution since first hominids. Imagine, millions years ago, first hominids already found solutions because of a constraint. Imagine this scene, a hominid finds an animal with a carapace that is dead. The hominid is hungry and seeing the animal dead, he’s even more hungry. He asks himself this question : « How can I eat this animal that I can’t eat ? ». His brain goes into mode : « search for solutions ». After a few minutes, he remembers that by tapping a stone on something, the stone become sharper. After several tests, he manages to cut the animal with a carapace that dead to eat it.

Virtuous circle

This human process is a virtuous circle. You ask yourself questions to find solutions to problems. These solutions create other constraints that lead to others problems. So you have to ask yourself other questions to find a solutions. To evolve, we need challenges and there are always challenges in the world. Do you realize that millions of years ago, first hominids created tools with stones and wood and today we have internet technology ? With internet, people from distant country can read my blog’s articles 24/24 7/7, it’s incredible.

Among these questions, there will always be questions that will have different answers depending on what the situation you’re in your life. For example the question : « How can I become happier ? ». When you’re single, you have a solution. When you’re in a relationship, you have another solution and when you have children, you have another different solution. Solutions are influenced by different variants in your life and it’s important to ask yourself this question throughout your life.

Reserve some time in you day to ask yourself questions to solve problems. It’s a kind of physical activity for your brain. It’s a good process to become a better version of yourself. But beware, there are solutions that you will find quickly and others, it will be necessary to work on for months or years to find the solution.

Subscribe to my newsletter and share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

I watched an Olivier Roland’s video and I learned good stuff.

Use a crowdfunding’s platform is interesting to create a product. What is also cool is that by looking at projects we can have an idea of the future products.

Crowdfunding allow you to sell a product before creating it but there is a difference compared do the Lean Startup method :

With the Lean Startup method, a startup must create as soon as possible a prototype (minimum viable product) to test it in the real world (the market).
With the crowdfunding, a product must be of sufficient interest to people to invest their money in the project. It’s mainly a relationship based on trust, people believe your promises.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding’s platforms have their own rules to protect their communities. Imagine you need $300 000.- to create your product. Unfortunately you can reach only $200 000.-. As you have not reached $300 000.- required, the money is refunded to people. Nobody lose money.

The truth is that sell content on crowdfunding’s platform is very difficult. Video games work well, there are video games that reached $1 million. Movies and short films also work well. For exemple, fans of mangas or comics make a movie about their heros. On the other hand, books are really a small percentage.

For an author it can work but you already have a large community, already have an authority or already have credibility in another area.

If you start from scratch and you want to create a blog but nobody know you and you don’t have a community, it will be extremely complicated to have funding with this type of platform.

And the reason is very simple, everybody know that we can create a blog for free.

Self made

And it’s precisely because it’s free (or not expensive) that makes the blog’s strength.

You can create a blog today from your home and work on it (part-time) next to your school/work.

With a good strategy, you blog is a company. Do you know how it was 30 years ago to start a company ? You needed to have a minimum capital and you had to do a market research by buying files or paying experts. Now with internet, you can do it from your home, it’s cool.

To have a blog that work well, you need to have a strategy and one of the points of the strategy is to reduce your distractions. Decreases distractions that prevent you from evolving your blog. A distraction I’ve decreased is the number of hours watching TV show or Youtube. I spent easily 3 hours a day watching what doesn’t matter, now I decreased to 45 minutes.

With Youtube, I subscribed only 13 channels and it’s channels that learn something or motivate me to develop my blog.

To have a blog, it’s a little bit utilize the Lean Startup method because your’re quickly in touch with reality to see if what you are doing interest people (number of views), you use feedbacks from your community to improve your content and you build your audience little by little so that your blog become a real company.

Share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

I read an Nerd Fitness article and there is good stuff.

You’ve heard we use only 10 % of our brain. Do you imagine be able to use 100 % of your brain ?

The book and the movie « Limitless » are based on it and when I watched the movie, I liked it. A lot of people liked because we dream about it for years.

« Limitless » is the Eddie Mora’s story who by chance find pills that give a unlimited power to his brain. He write a book in 4 days, he leans several new langages, he stops smoking, he lose weight and gain muscle. He earns a lot of money in stock market.

This guy transformed his life in video game (he becomes a little bit like James Bond). Is it possible to become more productive without medications ?

How

To become limitless, here is the list of things we should be able to do :

Read more often – We can read a book very very quick and remember all the important things.
Write a book – We can write a book in few days or weeks instead years.
Learn a langage – We can talk a langage in few weeks and we can have a nice conversation with people with that langage is their native langage.
Have an excellent physique – We can train in an effective way without spend several hours in the gym to see results.

Maybe you will change some things in this list but I think this list is fun.

The concept is to accomplish more things by spending less time :

The ability to retain more information
The ability to spend more time to learn
Make the time you spend learning to be more effective
The ability to learn more different things quickly

First : Exercice

Here a excerpt from an article of Scott’s website « Live Your Legend » :

While on a boat with Richard Branson, a man asked « How can I be more productive ? » Keep in mind, Richard is the founder and operator of a 400-company conglomerate. He also has dyslexia and a pretty piss poor academic track record.

Yet somehow, from space travel to deep sea exploration, to music and cell phones, this guy has literally been able to accomplish a bazillion times more than the average Joe. And he’s still only 61.

Hence, the crowd of boat passengers hung on the edge of their seat cushions in anticipation of what turned out to be an unbelievably simple answer…

Richard responded: « Work out ».

Charles Basch of Columbia University summarized how exercices affect functions :

Increase oxygen flux to the brain
Increase brain neurotransmitters
Increase neurotrophins that ensure the survival of neurons in the areas responsible for learning, memory and higher thinking

Dr John Rathey who wrote « Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain »

and « Driven to Distraction: The Study of Attention Deficit Hyper Disorder »

give many studies on physical activity and the increase of focus and the increase of the memorization when we study. « Exercices don’t make you more intelligent but they help to optimize the brain to learn ».

It’s with this study that Charles Hillman discovered that do a few phyical exercices before school can increase memory of 5-10 % among children.

Second : the plan

Malcolm Gladwell says in his book « Outliers »

that people become expert after 10 000 hours of pratice. Warning, you must learn in the good way, otherwise you become an expert by doing it with a bad execution.

It’s mean, if we learn something in the good way, 8 hours per day everydays, we should be an expert in 3 years and a half.

But we don’t have all this time and we don’t want to be the master of the experts.

When we learn a langage, a dance, a martial art or a new musical instrument, we need to identify the key movements or the key words. We need to become proficient in the skill. Don’t worry about the rest of the stuff.

Exemple :

A new instrument

Rather than studying complex compositions of classical music, look current music and studies the patterns.

If you learn basic guitar chords, you can learn 80 % of popular music.

If you learn basic piano chords, you can quickly learn pop music you always wanted to play.

The goal isn’t to to play in a symphonic orchestra but to learn the basics and take pleasure in making progress.

Look this book « The Talent Code »

to have more information to learn properly.

Third : Environment

Now our brains are ready to learn and we identified the skills or goals we want to have, it’s the time to create an environment for success.

I wrote an article to create your headquarter . We will do the same thing to help us to become limitless.

A : Stop to being multitasking

Often people advise to be able to do several thing in the same time but the only thing this behavior do is to decrease your ability to learn and your productivity. Look the results you have when you work and every 10 minutes you watch a video on YouTube. Every time you change activity before you finish, you become less creative and productive.

Si you want be productive, focus on one thing and finish it. If you learn a new langage, dedicate time only for it and nothing else.

B : Remove all distractions

Often people thing they can do their passion in evening around 21h-22h (9pm-10pm). It’s not true because people are distracted very easy all day. They spend a lot of time on Facebook, Youtube, Gmail, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Then when everybody sleep, it’s at this moment they work on their passion.

Work on your passion immediately after your school/work and you will see the difference. It’s guarantee !

There are apps like « Self Control » to allow you to not be distract any more

If you want write a book, go in a boring place. Don’t go in a place where there is a lot of cool stuff.

If you want read a book, go in a place where there isn’t TV. Don’t be tempted or cancel you cable (we can watch everything on internet now).

Be Limitless

Here principles :

Exercice. In the morning 10 minutes of bodyweight’s exercice

Plan. You know exactly the 2 skills you need to study and they must be done before 16h (4pm).

Environment. Blocks for a certain time websites that can disctract you. Cancel your cable also.

Hack

Everydays

James Clear’s tip . If you learn a musical instrument or a langage, do it for 5 minutes each day. Create this habit is more important than the « perfect » time.

Use help of others

If you want learn something quickly, you can find some people who learned this skill quickly. Ask to this person how he/she learned this and test it.

Make mistakes the 1st day

You can learn a langage with a grammar book for years but if you don’t speak this langage with people, it’s useless. It’s like deadlift or something else, accepts that failure is a part of the process to be better.

Learn 1-2 new skills

Learn Taekwondo, piano and spanish is too much. Select 1-2 and stay focus on it.

Different kind of music

If you try to read more or be more productive at work, experiment different type of music like rap, electro, classical music, movie soundtrack, etc. At different moment of the day, you need to be in a different state of mind (calm, aggressive), use music to be more productive.

Sleep more

In the movie « Limitless », Eddie Mora lives with the minimal hours of sleep every day. In the reality, it isn’t possible to sleep 4h. A body lacking sleep functions similarly to an intoxicated body .

What skill or goal you want reach ?

-Steph

Do you want a free training program ? Click here

Je ne sais plus depuis combien de temps mon casque à fil ne marchait plus comme avant. Des fois, en faisant un mouvement pendant l’entraînement, il n’y avait plus de son et ça m’énervais beaucoup, surtout pendant le squat. Ça cassait quelque chose et j’avais moins de motivation. Et il y a pas longtemps, le casque s’est cassé en plein entraînement. J’ai dû me contenter du son de la radio de la salle et c’est vraiment à chier.

Alors je me suis acheter un casque bluetooth et je l’adore. Il est vraiment trop cool et je super motivé parce que je peux enfin écouter mes morceaux avec une bonne qualité de son sans me dire que dans quelques mois ça va déconner. Et je me suis souvenu des premières fois que je m’entraînais sans musique ou en écoutant la musique de la radio de la salle (MTV ou la radio pour moi c’est pareil). C’est pas la même chose, mon état d’esprit n’est pas pareil et je pense que tu l’a remarqué aussi.

Tu me connais, quand j’ai une question je vais voir tout de suite sur Google et tu sais quoi ? Il y a plusieurs explications et une sur Wikipedia, tiens le lien. Maintenant je vais te dire ce que j’ai compris :

Ta musique est une bonne distractions pour toi parce que t’es moins conscients de tes efforts, ce qui améliore tes performances jusqu’à 15 %. Les musiques avec des tempos rapides sont bien parce qu’ils y a tellement d’informations que ton cerveau doit traité qu’il met ton esprit en mode veille.

Ta musique augmente tes performances, te fait travailler plus dur avec un tempo rapide entre 120 et 140 beats par minutes (bpm). Avec ce BPM tu as le maximum d’effets, trop rapide, ça marche pas.

Ta musique te met dans « la zone ». Quand tu mets une musique que t’aimes , ça te mets dans l’état d’esprit (en mode « N°1 ») parce que tu te souvenir de quelques de cool. Et cette musique boost la puissance de ta motivation.

Le rythme de ta musique stimule la zone motrice de ton cerveau pendant les mouvements (course ou soulevé de poids). Cela t’aide à utiliser l’énergie plus efficacement car ton corps garder ce rythme régulier jusqu’à la fin du morceau.

Ta musique améliore ton humeur et tu as plus conscience de toi. Cela te permet de réfléchir sur toi-même, de te demander qui tu veux être et d’imaginer ton futur. Peu importe ce qui t’es arrivé dans la journée, ta musique t’aides à t’évader des choses négatives, tu sens ta propre puissance pendant l’entraînement et tu te sens bien quand c’est fini.

Ta musique te donne envie de bouger. Tu ne peux pas arrêter le rythme, ta musique qui a une bonne qualité de groove, excite ton cerveau ce qui te provoque des mouvements. A la base une playlist est faite pour te faire bouger peut importe si c’est pour danser ou t’entraîner.

Amuse-toi, prend du plaisir pendant tes entraînements avec ta bande-son, ta bande-son de fou.

-Steph

bouger