Review of Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Hey folks

As you can probably guess by the title this post will be about Heidi Grant Halvorson's book 'Succeed'. (Or so I thought until it turned out my own experiences could become a prime example of why Grant Halvorson makes such a good point in her book). Succeed is one of the quickest and most useful reads (at least in the first third) I've read in the past few weeks (and if you're following my blog you'll know I've been reading a lot. This read at least 1 hour a day thing is working out well for me).

It's my fourth finished book in 2019. (Yes I'm just showing off with this statement.)

Anyway. I never thought I'd relate to someone who uses their children in examples as much as Grant Halvorson does. Seriously. There is something about them in almost every chapter post the one-third mark of the book. This doesn't so much offend me (no matter what that first line might sound like) as it actually intrigues me because this author (as opposed to other self-help book writers) brings almost as many day-to-day examples from her own life than just random laboratory situations into the book. That is enjoyable and reads a bit like a memoir rather than strictly aloof science.

I digress with the examples though. We want to get to the meat of the story.

Let's start with the most important message of the book: It is better to be someone who wants to learn and improve rather than someone who just wants to be good. Why? Because being good leaves you in a huge depression if at some point it gets so hard you're no longer incredibly good or find your work easy.

Case in point: WriteBot.

WriteBot has a history of finding things very easy and not challenging enough. WriteBot does... a little less than its best and still passes every test and project and problem with flying colours. Until it doesn't. And if it doesn't it gets depressed and can't work for months. Story of my life. You'd think a mechanical entity that lives only to write would do great at writing... and yet often there are problems not pre-configured in WriteBot's algorithms. These make WriteBot insanely unhappy when they cannot be solved as near-instantly as all other problems.

A lot of these effects (depression or feeling unmotivated or like a failure) come from what Grant Halvorson calls 'be-good' goals - which are essentially there to allow you to show off. In fact this 'be-good' mindset is a concept she talks about a lot - you have a certain skillset and you're good and you strive to show everyone how good you are. This works when you're trying to hit deadlines maybe or when you want quick results. Any results in these cases is often better than none. Not so in other areas of life/work.
Grant Halvorson then goes on to reinforce (for me) what I've learned after I realized being-good (her label for the kind of thinking described above) just didn't work. The only way to continue after you're somewhat successful and want to reach that HUNDRED MILE ALL IMPORTANT GOAL is to change your mindset to a learning mindset. This, Grant Halvorson calls getting-better mindset, as opposed to the be-good show off mindset mentioned above.

The rest of the book basically builds on those two concepts. There are optimists who often rush rush rush through tasks and do them well but maybe not excellent (be-good mindset). They won't put much thought into what they are doing because they believe they will succeed either way. And on the other side of the spectrum you have pessimists. The ones who think of everything that could go wrong and work much more conservatively. Those are often the people who take their time and try to get-better at things.

Of course it's not that simple. There are other factors to take into consideration as well but this post is simply an overview of the most important point in the book.

That being said... I do recommend you read it. It's short. It's written in an easy-to-understand way (while still being backed by scientific data of Grant Halvorson's and her colleagues' experiments) and the first third in which she explains why be-good can sometimes have disadvantages to getting-better goals is really worth it. The last two thirds are somewhat vague and perhaps a bit rushed for the pages they are given but all in all the book has given me some good information with which to work on my own goal setting skills. I hope it might do the same for you!

Have a good night/day!
WriteBot.

PS: tomorrow I'ma make Kimchi. I'm hyped.

On Reading Goals

Hey folks!

As the title says today's post will deal with reading goals! (2018 and 2019!)

I've read 65 books this year and am going to start reading the 66th (probably) tomorrow. That's approximately twice as much as I managed in the years before that for various reasons. A bit less than a third of the 65 books (20) were non-fiction.

A few of my 2018 favourites were:

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley (definitely my number one favourite this year)

The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt (love Tim Pratt! You must read his books! And he's such a chill and approachable guy.) 

Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport

Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh (surprisingly awesome YA romance set in a fantasy version of feudal Japan)

Planetfall by Emma Newman (also surprising considering the main character was actually a complete mess)

Thoraiya Dyer's Titan's Forest novels (these are such great fun!)

The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell (a short story collection with interconnected stories)

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

Semiosis by Sue Burke

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham

I had a vague goal in mind at the beginning of 2018 to read 52 books this year (one book a week). In the first third of the year (January to April) I didn't have a lot of time because of work and wasn't able to read much. In the second third (April-August) I did most of my reading. I then started to do a degree... and had absolutely no time to read at all. All the carefully selected books that I'd bought to read (way too many!) started collecting dust on the shelves. BUT fast forward to mid-November and I've decided to quit the degree in favour of focusing on things that matter to me (including my health).

I've read about 5-6 books since then.

If everything goes well the plan is to read 2-5 more books this year. As always depending on how much time I have to read (in addition to writing and planning) and how my depression is doing day to day. I'd actually love to hit 70 books this year. That'd be an achievement! Almost twice as much as I've read in the years before.

If this goal is achieved then next year's goal is obviously to top it. 70 books this year = at least 71 books next year. Or more. I'd like to get to the 100 books a year mark at some point, but 60 is the absolute minimum.

The list of books for next year (up to 60) is almost complete... However, I've actually already started reading from it so might need more suggestions. These are easy to come by apparently. Just yesterday I thought 'I'll never be able read all the books on my (other, huge, ongoing) list' and yet kept adding more and more to them. Today, too. I've found approximately 5 new books that definitely need to go on some reading list.

This means 2019's Reading List (the beginnings of which can be found here) has had a few books added. (And a few subtracted that I've already read. Soulbinder by Sebastien de Castell, The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham, and The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy - although the last one will require a quick re-read considering I only had it on audio and audio is not ideal for me to retain information).

The new books are these (and I have no doubt the list will be even longer tomorrow...):

44. China Mountain Zhang
45. The Shattered Gates (Rifter)

46. Journey to the Center of the Earth

47. The Skeleton Tree (maybe)

48. For One More Day
49 Total Focus by Brandon Web
50. Nightflyers by G.R.R.M.
51. Spellslinger 5 (Absolutely love Spellslinger! You should definitely read it if you're into YA-ish fantasy Westerns)

52. Focal Point

53. Among Others by Jo Walton

54. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

55. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

How about you guys? How's the reading goal going this year? It's almost time to tally up! How many books do you still hope to read this year?

All the best with your goals from WriteBot! Have a good night/day!

Review of Darren Hardy's The Compound Effect

Hey folks

I've been listening to the audio book these last few days (I don't usually like audio books at all but non-fiction seems to be easier to listen to than fiction) and wanted to give you a review of it!

All right. The Compound Effect. Most of the book's advice is pretty generic and not actual fresh and/or unique research. It's the sort of book that tells you 'The more you practice the luckier you get'. (The usual spiel about people not being actually 'lucky' but working hard so that when the opportunity arises they can take it. Whereas other people don't work hard enough so they cannot get 'lucky' when an opportunity presents itself.)

The author also likes to pat himself on the back with how many famous people he knows at different companies (Apple for example) and how their CEOs personally interacted with him at some point. That can be a bit annoying.

The gist of the book is hard/diligent/persistent work over time = success.

A piece of important information in the book is that small changes (in things such as habits) should be pursued over time rather than every big change you'd like to have in your life all at once. This means when you want to exercise regularly and get a better body it's important to start small-ish (say about 20 minutes of exercise a day) because if you start big (2 hours of exercise a day) then you won't be able to keep it up infinitely. It is important to create small habits that over time will compound into big habits with visible effects.

The concept is very similar to James Clear's Atomic Habits. Review of Atomic Habits here.

As Hardy explains his concept of compounding effect he also cautions against giving up too easily. It's quite obvious that if you go to the gym twice or eat one less meal once (if you're trying to lose weight) you won't immediately see the benefits. The same goes for writing. If you want to write a book, write 500 words on two days, then give up because you don't have a book yet, your whole endeavour is somewhat pointless. If, however, you keep going to your desk and you keep adding words, 500 words a day will eventually stack up, and in less than a year your novel of 100k word will be finished (as finished as a first draft usually is in any case). At the start of any endeavour you don't want to burn yourself out with either exercise (2 hours a day) or writing 9000 words a day (been there done that) and then not have the energy to finish at all. If you're just starting out it's fine to write 100 words a day. Or 200. And maybe exercise only for 20 minutes or only do 10 push-ups instead of the 100 you're yearning to do (crazy folks!).

You can obviously increase the amount of x you do once you get better at it. If you start small you can up the ante after some time: If you're used to writing 200 words a day it's much easier to make the jump to 300 and later 500. In no time you'll be writing those elusive 2000 (or even 5000/10.000) words a day.

However. The compound effect does not only refer to creating good habits but also how the small little tasks you do every day (conscious or not) make up your bad habits. This could be for example eating a piece of chocolate every day after lunch because you crave it (I usually crave something sweet after lunch). It doesn't matter much on one day, but if you do it every day, it has the same effect as writing 500 words a day. After a while it will become a detriment to your health. This is why Hardy also talks about how to break bad habits. He suggests to write down your habits in a list in order to easily see what you could 'drop' so to speak. An example he gives is saving more money than usual. How can you see where you're spending money unnecessarily?

You are to write down every single thing you spend money on during the week.

A cup of coffee at Starbucks? A candy bar from the shop to treat yourself after work? That's a few dollars right there you can save if you know about them. And in a week, or month, if you buy these things regularly, the amount you can save instead of spend will exponentially increase. The same goes for calories when you're trying to lose weight. Are you actually eating more than you need? Tracking your habits will tell you exactly WHERE you can change your behaviour to go from loss (for example of money by spending on 'little things' or loss of health by eating too many 'little unhealthy things') to gain.

The same loss goes for accumulating knowledge (in the news) that you will not use and which therefore goes to waste. Ask yourself: Do you really need to watch/read the news three times a day? How much of 'useless' knowledge are you gaining this way? Wouldn't it be better to spend the time to read up on information you can actually put to use (perhaps a book on weight loss/nutrition/personal finance/other hobbies you have long been interested in)?

Hardy also maintains that as you're doing all these little things to improve yourself it's also important not to be discouraged. As with anything you do there will be setbacks. If after two months of training at the gym or writing on the novel you still don't have that thin stomach or the complete novel, it's easy to become lazy. It takes a lot of time to obtain significant results. (Here the old adage comes into play, doesn't it? 'Nothing worth having comes free'.) You're guaranteed to want to quit at some point (can confirm this from personal experience with both exercise and writing!), but then you must become the proverbial tortoise and soldier on. Slow and steady wins the race. You put your head down and you take one step at a time. One scene at a time. One minute of exercise at a time.

I hope you enjoyed this review. If you'd like to check out Hardy's book on account of this review it's probably best to buy it at Amazon (am still not affiliated with them). The Kindle ebook is somewhere around $7 and from the audio book it sounded like a fairly easy read. Although if you've already bought James Clear's Atomic habits it might not be as relevant for you any more.

WriteBot.

Art for Seafarer!

Hey everyone!

I wanted to share with you a piece of art that was made for one of my stories:

Seafarer. Seafarer is one of the stories that will be published in Worlds of Magic when it is released on the 7th of December. The story of Seafarer follows a young woman as she tries to find out how her mother fell in love with her partner. It's a tale of how the pirate queen acquired herself a princess. The two main characters are shown on the image!

In a way this post is a character introduction as well. I give you: Aaea and Isolde! (Click to enlarge!)

(by Ngo Hung)

Isn't it pretty?

This story is one of friendship and love and light. It is about mysterious magics and screaming kings and pirates who steal underwear. It's a fun story of adventure as well as deep and insightful into the nature of human relationships.

Excited? It's coming out on the 7th of December! Stay tuned.

WriteBot.

Review of James Clear's Atomic Habits

Hi folks!

This post will be a quick review of James Clear's Atomic Habits. I finished it about an hour ago and found it... all right. It didn't blow me away (although some tips were useful!) and the writing was quite dry. It took me several days to finish (that should be an indicator how dry the writing was!) and I want to with this post simply give you an overview of Clear's most important (my opinion) points.

Why did I read it? I thought I could improve my work ethic when it comes to writing - but I'm not sure it actually worked. I am still tired after writing only a little bit (hello depression!) and can't think of any way to improve my habit of doing nothing whatsoever instead of writing most of the time.

All right! Let's get started.

Atomic Habits is a book about... well you guessed it. Habits. Atomic means small and therefore the book is about (guessing it again?) SMALL HABITS. And how SMALL HABITS stack up to over time become BIG HABITS/YOUR LIFESTYLE.

The first point Clear makes is that you should not try to change your whole life all at once. It's much too difficult (can confirm. I've tried it multiple times.). You're supposed to start small. AND you're supposed to change not because of the goal you want to to achieve (example: you want to lose weight and therefore decide to run) but because of the type of person you wish to become (example cont.: you want to become a healthy person at a good weight).

This way of thinking will supposedly help you stick to your habits much easier than if your goal were simply to lose a few kilos. Let me elaborate on that example a bit.

Your goal: lose 10 kilos
Your habits: eating cheeseburger every day for breakfast (don't judge. It has happened to me. Incl. pizza)

IF you only attempt to lose weight then you might do so by sheer force of will (been there done that - eat fruit/cereals instead of that cheeseburger for a few weeks). This is extremely hard and a bit pointless because as soon as you go back to your old HABITS (eating cheeseburger for breakfast) you will rapidly regain that weight.

HOWEVER.

If your goal becomes to change your lifestyle (be a healthier person) then James Clear suggests building small habits around that (as opposed to using SHEER FORCE OF WILL) will serve you better in the long run. This means you are replacing your habit of cheeseburger for breakfast with a habit of something healthy (???) for breakfast instead. This is a small change and you can even start by only going through the motions. Instead of warming up that frozen burger/pizza/sweetened cereal you'd start taking out your healthy cereals and fruit and what not. You don't even have to eat them just yet. The habit of taking them out of your storage needs to come first. You do this every day and at some point you'll be like 'heck I'm starting to make two meals (you're still taking out your burger/sweetened cereals/etc too at this point) and this is inconvenient'. 'Heck. The healthy stuff is already out - might as well eat that and then the cheeseburger if I'm still hungry'.

This is how it starts.

In a few months then you'll cultivate the habit of eating your healthy foods (the things you started taking out of storage first thing in the morning) and will (hopefully) forget all about pizza for breakfast entirely after a while.

The same principle goes for anything else you want to do. Write a book? Start by switching on your PC/writing program or carrying a notebook with you. Commit yourself to writing only two minutes a day. You are allowed only to make this SMALL CHANGE. You must do it every day. After a while you will be tempted to write more. And then more. And suddenly you have a BIG HABIT.

The second (most useful) tip in Atomic Habits is this:

Have a schedule and schedule the habits you want to cultivate one after another. This can be done by certain time or after another activity. The formula goes something like this:

If I wake up at 7:00 AM the next step in my day will be to make a cup of tea (habit you're probably already doing?). After this habit or while the water boils I will do (if you want to change to a healthier lifestyle) five pushups. This will usually be around 7:02 AM.

In this way you have two 'schedules':

1: At 7:02 AM I will do five pushups.
2: While the water boils for my morning tea I will do five pushups.

You can schedule other things this way as well.

If you want to be more productive at work: After getting on the train and finding a seat I will take out my notepad and write 2 new ideas I could develop during the day.
If you want to reduce your calorie intake: After sitting down to eat a meal I will drink a glass of water.
If you want to get better at drawing: I will draw one object every day before sleep (ca. 10 PM)
If you want to learn about physics: During my lunch break (12 lunchtime) I will read an article/watch a video on physics

You get it? After a habit you're already doing (going to lunch break/getting out of bed) you will 'stack' up another habit (referred to as HABIT STACKING in Atomic Habits).

The third piece of juicy advice:

MAKE IT EASY.

This is one very no-brain and yet very difficult to follow through with.

We all know this issue: If you're hungry you'll just grab whatever snack is available no matter if it's healthy or not. (And you're probably still hungry afterwards so have to eat a normal/healthy snack on top of it.)

We also all know this: There's an exciting book/new game/TV series RIGHT THERE when you're supposed to be doing work. What is easier? Sit back and relax or work on that difficult project you've been procrastinating on the whole week? Which one will you automatically do? Grab the controller or try to make your brain solve your work issue?

You don't have to answer that (but you can if you want to!). All of us have good intentions but rarely choose the difficult thing over an easier option.

The same it is with habits. Our bad habits are usually easy. The TV controller is right there. So is that greasy snack that won't fill you so you'll have to eat more later/immediately.

James Clear proposes this:

Make your GOOD HABITS EASY and your BAD HABITS HARD.

In practice this means:

Food: Don't buy unhealthy snacks. If you have to go to the store before you can eat them... well there's a good chance you'll be too lazy to go to the store and thus won't eat them.

Pre-cut your healthy snacks during the weekend (says James Clear - but personally I think the healthy fruit and vegetable snacks he's referring to will be rather gross later on if you pre-cut them too early) so they're always ready to eat. I want to suggest rather than pre-cutting the whole week's cucumbers and apples on the weekend to simply make them more visible and pre-cut them the evening before or in the morning of. How to make them more visible? Put them everywhere. Put them in your (unhealthy) snack drawer. Put them on your tables and desks. Put them on your nightstand. (This is a trick learned from a hotel. They had apples in a basket and I was hungry. I ate an apple instead of unpacking my candy from my bag simply because it was THERE already.)

TV: If you want to reduce the hours spent watching TV - Hide the TV. This is paraphrased from Clear's idea to PUT YOUR TV IN THE CLOSET. This will automatically make you roll it out only when you DESPERATELY want to watch something. Alternatively (and easier): hide your remote or remove its batteries.

Sports: Prepare your workout clothes in advance. If you have to search for them, you're likely to skip your workout. If they're right there, well, then you're just lazy if you don't go, and nobody wants to be lazy.

Obviously this can be done with a lot more than just these three categories of habits! Try to come up with new tactics yourself! I'd love to hear about them in the comments too!


Overall thoughts:

They book was dry as Parmesan (PS: cheese should only be eaten in moderation) but had some valuable tips (as listed above). I would definitely recommend the book simply because it has more tips than what I've personally listed and everyone has their own style of learning/changing and their own goals to meet. This means that while the above advice is valuable to me there might be other important things in the book for YOU to learn.

Only YOU know what YOU need to change/learn about yourself/in your life. That is why you personally should read this book.

WriteBot thinks everyone can benefit from this book. It can be found easily on Amazon (I am not affiliated with James Clear or Amazon in any way by the way) and probably other stores and isn't very long either. You might learn something about yourself with this book!

WriteBot out.

A poem for YOU!

Hi everyone!

Here's a quick poem to make you think about your (artistic) duty today!

In a temple stood a girl of stone

A brother never read the letter of tears she sent

His sister however did the deed

and went to all the temples in the world

to kiss all the girls she could find

until one of them

a girl with alabaster skin

white hair

and silver eyes

melted out of the stone and blinked at her

You found me, she said

Well, no one else would, so I had to do it myself

Do you also have a girl trapped somewhere in stone? A statue you're trying to shape out of marble? A book you're trying to excavate from your mind to display it on paper?

Let me know in the comments! I'd love to know!

WriteBot hopes you enjoyed this short poem and you'll have a good day/night!