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  <title>Freestyle Mind</title>
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  <updated>2010-03-10T10:12:59+01:00</updated>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am-day-17</id>
    <published>2010-03-10T13:00:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-03-10T10:12:59+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">30 Days Habit Change - Waking up At 5 am Day 17</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am-day-17" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Today is the 17th day of my &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am"&gt;waking up at 5 am&lt;/a&gt; experiment.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s incredible I&amp;#8217;ve made it so far. Especially waking up at 5am on saturdays and sundays was strange at first, but it&amp;#8217;s very rewarding, and not that difficult.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The nice thing is that you really get a lot of time when you wake up early.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After the firsts days when the hype is high and you just work on the list of things that were accumulated in your todo list, you then start to appreciate your new lifestyle, at the point that you begin to wonder what you can do with all that time.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This week I came to the realization that we really have too much time, the problem is that we use it in the wrong way. If you wake up and fill your entire day until 6-7-8pm with work, you&amp;#8217;ll get nothing done. Seriously, how can you pretend to focus at 9pm after 8 hours of work, maybe 1 hour of commute and thousands of interruptions? You can&amp;#8217;t unless you are a night owl (2 persons every 10 on average), but even then you need to work at a job where you can start late, otherwise if you go to sleep at 3am and wake up at 7am you may have other problems.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now let&amp;#8217;s look at a different scenario. You wake up at at 5am, and you work on your personal projects (writing, studying, singing, you name it) until you have to go to work. Assuming that you start at 9 am and you have 1 hour of commute, you can get almost 3 hours of real work, without any kind of interruptions. Who cares if you have to go to bed at 9 or 10? Is watching tv really important?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Of course everything&amp;#8217;s fine if you don&amp;#8217;t need the time, but in the case you were looking for more hours in the day, well, you know what to do.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I have a lot to say about this experiment, and I&amp;#8217;ll write the next update at the end of the 30 days. I&amp;#8217;m pretty sure tough that I&amp;#8217;ll not switch back to my old lifestyle.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:internet-marketing</id>
    <published>2010-03-08T13:00:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-03-08T13:03:17+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">Internet Marketing - Back to Basics</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/internet-marketing" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;I am preparing some material for the &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/10000-euros-month-february-update"&gt;I Rock!&lt;/a&gt; program, and one thing that I will teach over and over again is some basic internet marketing.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I think this material will be useful to many, so I&amp;#8217;m sharing it here. Feel free to steal it, and use it for your own secret project to conquer the world.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;The first rule of internet marketing: build something remarkable&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/im/which-website-will-the-visitor-choose.png" alt="remarkable" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s the first rule of internet marketing: &lt;strong&gt;create something that stands out&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#8217;t matter if you are creating a web application, selling a product, or you simply have a blog where you share your experiences, create something that stands out.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The secret is to create something remarkable.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can only create something remarkable by creating something that&amp;#8217;s different.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You know, we don&amp;#8217;t pay attention to boring things, or something that has been done over and over again, but we do like new things, or new ways to solve a problem.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So how do you create something that&amp;#8217;s different?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In order to create something that&amp;#8217;s different, you don&amp;#8217;t have to meet expectations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/im/bonus-expectation.jpg" alt="expectations" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;small&gt;&lt;a href="http://sigg3.net/"&gt;Credits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/small&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If everyone expects a product to behave in a certain way, they&amp;#8217;ll notice if you&amp;#8217;re doing it differently.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Your brain loves to learn new things, and by exposing it to unexpected events you&amp;#8217;ll feed its curiosity, and as a bonus you&amp;#8217;ll feel smarter at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t expect everyone to be happy with your product tough. Not everyone likes to use google, or the &lt;a href="http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257"&gt;ipod&lt;/a&gt;, and certainly not everyone will always agree with everything you have to say.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;The second rule of internet marketing: it&amp;#8217;s not about you!&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I have to thank &lt;a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/"&gt;Kathy Sierra&lt;/a&gt; for opening my eyes. Repeat after me: &lt;strong&gt;It&amp;#8217;s not about you, it&amp;#8217;s only about how your users will feel as a result of interacting with your product or service.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t build a business around you. Create something for your users instead, something that when they&amp;#8217;ll visit your website their only reaction will be: &amp;#8220;Holy shit, this is fucking great!&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If your users think that they rock as a result of using your product or service, then you&amp;#8217;ll need no marketing at all, because they will do everything for you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t underestimate the power of this rule. Most people are not willing to reveal all their secrets, yet that&amp;#8217;s often what they really want to know. Give it. Teach them everything you know about your subject and make sure it&amp;#8217;s in a format suitable for them, not for you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Work smart, but don&amp;#8217;t forget to work&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; this last part of the article is exclusively about article marketing, but it&amp;#8217;s still an interesting read.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Do you know why most people fail to make money with affiliate marketing? Because they don&amp;#8217;t follow the instructions of course.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/im/internet-marketing-process.png" alt="internet-marketing" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This chart represent how you should approach &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/interview-with-glen-allsopp/"&gt;affiliate marketing&lt;/a&gt; (but not only that). I know I&amp;#8217;m not an expert at it, but the process is always the same, and my point is not about making money per se anyway.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Each of those steps is crucial, and your success depends completely on how you implement those steps.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Especially the first, &lt;strong&gt;find something you love&lt;/strong&gt;, is vital. Without that, how can you create something remarkable?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you ignore that first step, you&amp;#8217;ll end up like me, deleting all your websites like I did on the last month, simply because you didn&amp;#8217;t give a fuck about them. Don&amp;#8217;t repeat my mistake, you are smarter than me.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Assuming you can find something you love, doing the work is where 90% of people will fail (&lt;strong&gt;but not you&lt;/strong&gt;).  If you want to see some results, you have to work hard, &lt;strong&gt;every day&lt;/strong&gt;. If you choose to promote your website through article marketing for example, you have to write at least 5-10 articles per day, every day, if you want to see real &lt;a href="http://www.wakeupcloud.com/article-marketing-ingela-interview/"&gt;results&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After three months of 10 articles per day, you&amp;#8217;ll have done the incredible job of creating 900 articles for your website (who ever thought of that to be possible?). It&amp;#8217;s there that you can start to see if what you are doing works or not.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You may wondering why you need to automate/delegate, but it&amp;#8217;s simple. Let&amp;#8217;s say  that your 900 articles brings you 100 visitors per day, and only one of them will make you $10. That means in one month you can only make $300 (before taxes). It&amp;#8217;s no surprise then that you need to automate or delegate, unless you can live comfortably with $300 dollars per month of course.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But hey, that is what everyone else is doing, you can always do it differently.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And I would like to add, do it differently. Find a way to offer real value to your customers, and maybe they will be more likely to come to your website on their own without you having to create tens of promotional articles per day.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Does the world need yet another (insert common product or service)? Yes, if you can make something that stands out and improves our lives. I doubt that the world needed facebook when we already had myspace, but now it&amp;#8217;s number one in the world. And it&amp;#8217;s the same with many other things.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:how-to-overcome-fear</id>
    <published>2010-03-08T13:00:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-03-01T06:40:22+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">How to Overcome the Fear of Taking Action</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/how-to-overcome-fear" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Fear is perhaps the single most important reason that you are not taking action right now.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Fear is the response to change that our brain sends us when we try to break the status quo. What if something goes wrong? I&amp;#8217;m sure you asked yourself this question a lot of times, sometimes in your subconscious, and then refused to take action because you didn&amp;#8217;t know the answer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#8217;t even want to think about how many opportunities I lost because of fear. Fear must be the root of all evil!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t get me wrong, fear is important for us and without it, we would risk our life many times in a day, so you should not try to remove it completely (assuming you&amp;#8217;re able to). What you can do instead, is try to remove the fear of breaking the status quo.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, there&amp;#8217;s a simple yet very powerful hack that you can use to overcome the fear of doing something new, which I&amp;#8217;m sure you have use it already many times without even knowing it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But first, let me tell you about two things that will help to make sense of the rest later. The first one is that fear of breaking the status quo is highly related to lack of experience. Your brain produces fear because it doesn&amp;#8217;t know what will happen. The second one is that your brain doesn&amp;#8217;t distinguish between real situations and imaginary ones. Indeed top class athletes use to run entire races on the back of their mind as a part of their training.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Knowing that, it&amp;#8217;s easy to come up with this hack. &lt;strong&gt;If you want to overcome fear of doing something, simply imagine doing it on the back of your mind.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This technique, called visualization, is like pure experience for your brain, and it&amp;#8217;s so effective that you&amp;#8217;ll want to use it every time once you&amp;#8217;ll learn how to use it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So how does this visualization thing work?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To start using visualization, &lt;strong&gt;just think of something you are postponing every time&lt;/strong&gt;, perhaps because you are afraid of doing it. It doesn&amp;#8217;t have to be something dangerous, you can just use this technique to beat procrastination and laziness.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For example, let&amp;#8217;s think about a common scenario, waking up one hour earlier in order to do some physical activity. Unless you are already doing it, I guess your brain is not too happy at the idea of waking up earlier to do something that will provoke fatigue. I guess the discussion between you and your brain would be something like this:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You:&lt;/em&gt; Hey, I want to wake up one hour earlier tomorrow.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Brain:&lt;/em&gt; You&amp;#8217;re crazy? Why?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;You:&lt;/em&gt; Eh, I&amp;#8217;d like to do some physical activity.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Brain:&lt;/em&gt; No way.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So how do you convince your brain that doing some movement is not that bad idea? Trough visualization of course. Let&amp;#8217;s look how.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s how you would use visualization. Close your eyes and imagine that you are already doing it. Visualize yourself switching back your alarm clock of one hour and going to bed earlier. See yourself waking up, going to the bathroom (or whatever your morning routine is), and then finally do some exercise. If you like running, see yourself wearing your running clothes and &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/barefoot-running"&gt;shoes&lt;/a&gt; and going outside, and running. If you don&amp;#8217;t know what to do, see yourself doing some basic stretching exercises and some pushups and pullups, after a good session of warming up of course.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The more realistic your visualization is, the better.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Every time you do this exercise, you are lowering your level of fear, so if what you want to do is really scaring, feel free to repeat this exercise until you feel more secure.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I personally use this technique every time I can. As I said earlier, you can use it to fight resistance on doing scaring things (that you know are not that dangerous), but also to fight procrastination and laziness. For example you may visualize yourself working one hour every day on a particular project, and enjoying the benefits.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Of course this is not a substitute for taking action. This is only a hack to eliminate fear of taking action, but you still have to do it in the real world. The good news is that after you have visualized a specific experience, it&amp;#8217;ll be easier to do it, because somehow you&amp;#8217;ll have already done it before.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:5-unique-ways-to-sell-yourself</id>
    <published>2010-03-05T01:00:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-02-18T09:44:36+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">5 Unique Ways to Sell Yourself</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/5-unique-ways-to-sell-yourself" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Editor note:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a guest post from Ian Nuttal of &lt;a href="http://www.leashoptional.com/"&gt;leashoptional.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Before you can even think about selling products &amp;#8211; information or otherwise &amp;#8211; you need to first &lt;strong&gt;sell yourself&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now I&amp;#8217;m not talking about becoming a snake oil salesman that talks the talk and walks the walk but is only looking to sell the product that makes him the most commission and has no regard for you the customer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Selling yourself is about building rapport, creating real connections, listening to the wants and needs of your customers and then providing the right solution for their specific problem.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!--more--&gt;The process itself is quite simple.  Nothing really unique or innovative here.  What makes selling yourself so unique is that few people will actually stick with the steps needed to build authority and have enough influence to sell without being slimey.  To stand out, &lt;strong&gt;really stand out&lt;/strong&gt;, you need to sell yourself in a way that nobody else can.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Sales is sales no matter if it is online, consumer, business, telesales, job interviews or talking to girls.  The process can be taken and applied to any number of different opportunities.  If you&amp;#8217;re working for the man then you can sell yourself to get a promotion, make more money selling more products or just influence the hot girl in accounting to get that date you&amp;#8217;ve always wanted.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are five unique ways to start selling yourself right now and getting what you want from life by being open, honest and passionate.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be you.&lt;/strong&gt; The best way to do anything is your way.  Start selling yourself to the right people by being yourself.  You will then meet people that relate to you, understand what you&amp;#8217;re saying and you&amp;#8217;ll be more able to provide a product to solve their pain if you have &amp;#8211; or have had &amp;#8211; a similar pain.Furthermore, you will find that it is so much easier to relate with people and build real rapport by just being yourself.  It requires less effort on your part and your customers will see you as an authentic and genuine person &amp;#8211; making it far easier to sell to them later.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Share yourself.&lt;/strong&gt; I had a fantastic comment on a post about improving your innovation by Henri from the Wake Up Cloud  that inspired this post.  To be unique, stand out and sell yourself you have to share your mistakes.  Share your successes.  Share your failures.  Share everything!There will always be someone out there who can relate to what you&amp;#8217;re saying and the best way &amp;#8211; the only way &amp;#8211; to connect with them is by just sharing who you are.  Ever had a salesman tell you &amp;#8220;I&amp;#8217;ve actually got one [the product] myself and it&amp;#8217;s brilliant!&amp;#8221;?&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Believe you&amp;#8217;re worth selling.&lt;/strong&gt; You have to be sold on yourself if you ever intend to sell yourself to others.  Being confident and comfortable as you usually takes some time &amp;#8211; it&amp;#8217;s not an overnight fix.  Here are a couple of ideas to get the ball rolling:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
	&lt;li&gt; &lt;em&gt;No more complaints.&lt;/em&gt; Once you stop complaining about things &amp;#8211; including yourself &amp;#8211; the glass suddenly seems half full again.  It&amp;#8217;s a wonderful way to discover how much potential you have as a person.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do something outrageous (for you).&lt;/em&gt; Talk to a random hot girl in line at the movies or sing loudly in public for no apparent reason.  Push your thresholds and be uncomfortable.  You will soon start to see that you&amp;#8217;re an awesome person.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meditate.&lt;/em&gt; I&amp;#8217;m not talking about sitting cross legged and repeating &amp;#8220;ohmmmmm&amp;#8221; for ten minutes.  What I&amp;#8217;m talking about is quiet reflection focusing on nothing but your breathing to allow all the chaos and negativity to leave your mind and body.  You&amp;#8217;ll be instantly happier.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask questions, and listen!&lt;/strong&gt; Building rapport with your boss, your customers and the hot girl in accounting is as simple as asking them questions and listening to the answers.  This is how you build real, honest relationships with people.  Ask someone an open question about a product/service/hobby/whatever that they are interested in and then sit back and listen to them talk your ear off about it.It&amp;#8217;s worth emphasising the listening part again too.  Once you&amp;#8217;ve listened to their pains, you&amp;#8217;ll be able to provide them with a solution.  Whether that&amp;#8217;s a product that solves their pain or a meal for the hungry girl in accounting, you&amp;#8217;ll be better equipped to offer them exactly what they need.&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smile.&lt;/strong&gt; You can instantly change your mood, and the mood of someone else with a smile.  You&amp;#8217;ll find that people are much more open, honest and responsive to you if you are a friendly and approachable looking person.Online you can&amp;#8217;t smile through a computer but you can talk in way that lets people know you&amp;#8217;re a happy-go-lucky type of guy/gal.  If all else fails; take your pick &amp;#8211; :) :D ;)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;p&gt;One final tip: Don&amp;#8217;t be afraid of offending people or losing customers because of who you are.  Learn not to worry about what others think because as the old clich&#233; goes; &lt;em&gt;&amp;#8220;Those who mind don&amp;#8217;t matter and those that matter don&amp;#8217;t mind.&amp;#8221;&lt;/em&gt; You&amp;#8217;ll find your peers if you just continue to be open and honest.  Just be you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image by &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/giuera-fashion/"&gt;GiueraFashion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:10000-euros-month-february-update</id>
    <published>2010-03-03T08:30:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-03-03T12:49:48+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">10,000 Euros Month - February Update</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/10000-euros-month-february-update" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;February has been a life changing month for me. So many thing have happened that I had to step back and think about what to do next.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In particular, I started my &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am"&gt;waking up at 5 am&lt;/a&gt; experiment and at the same time I started to work from home full time.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This resulted in a lot more free time, while still maintaining my day job. Suffice to say I now have 3 full hours every day to work on what I want. I&amp;#8217;ll talk more about this in a future post, but for now let&amp;#8217;s just say that when you have all that free time available, you start to think about what you can do with it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Not that I didn&amp;#8217;t know what to do. Indeed 1 week ago I posted a tweet where I announced that I was working on a big affiliate website. Hard work but big potential. Except one small detail.. I didn&amp;#8217;t care!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You know, I could spend 1 hour every day working on that, and maybe make some big money in just 2-3 months, but what&amp;#8217;s the point?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Lesson learned: &lt;strong&gt;don&amp;#8217;t work on something you don&amp;#8217;t really love&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I learned this the hard way but now it&amp;#8217;s time to look ahead. What&amp;#8217;s ahead? The stuff I love to do of course, which happens to be creating stuff that people care. For example this blog is something I &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; love. Other things I really love is creating software and web applications.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And you know what? When I work on something I love, it works. So from now on my focus will be exclusively on creating stuff for people, and this update will become a place to share what I&amp;#8217;ve done in that sense. The good news is that this means these updates will be all about you, not about me (you&amp;#8217;ll see how soon).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I will still share my numbers here, but my primary goal is no longer making a specific amount of money, but instead to create value doing what I love. Money will follow.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;A present for you&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; All two spots are now gone. If you are still interested in this, stay tuned because I will open another two spots soon. I will also share everything here.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2:&lt;/strong&gt; In reality I will have 3 or 4 people following this program right now. You guys rock!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you want to start building something online, here&amp;#8217;s a good news for you. I&amp;#8217;m going to offer to two of you a free 1-2 hours per month consultation.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I will give you step by step instructions to create something that will make you kick ass, based on what you love (I&amp;#8217;ll help you to figure it out). Of course if what you want is to make money, that&amp;#8217;s perfectly fine, indeed most of the times is what you&amp;#8217;ll end up with anyway.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The only thing you need is 1 free hour per day to work on this, for at least 3 months. Oh, and you also have to do what I tell you to do.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Please note that this will be completely free. The only cost will be $9 to buy a domain name if necessary, but except for that I&amp;#8217;m not going to sell you anything.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The only thing I ask in return is the permission to share the process here. You&amp;#8217;ll always remain anonymous of course, but I do want to share the experience with others, so that I can help as many people as possible.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To apply, simply send me an email to oscar [at] thisdomain [dot] com with subject &amp;#8220;I rock!&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you want to be part of this, send me an email now. We&amp;#8217;ll figure out together what you can do, so don&amp;#8217;t worry if you don&amp;#8217;t know that already.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In the last six months I made nearly $400 by working less than 4 hours. I know it&amp;#8217;s nothing, but I wanted to concentrate on the blog and a few other projects instead.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that I finally have the time, I could easily make a high monthly figure if I wanted to, but instead I want to focus on building stuff. I still want to make those money, the difference is that I am abandoning the easy and secure way to make money through article marketing in order to try something new.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What do you think? If you had three free hours per day to work on anything you want, would you use that time to work on a secure way to make money, or would you rather take the chance to explore a new path by doing what you really love? I&amp;#8217;d love to hear your opinion.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:january-and-february-2009-reading-list</id>
    <published>2010-03-01T13:00:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-03-01T09:32:47+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">January and February Reading List</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/january-and-february-2009-reading-list" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;One of the goals I have for this year is to read 50 books, which means one book per week, and I thought that it would be nice to share with you what I have been reading so far.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The following is a list of all the books I read (cover to cover) in january and february.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;Law of Attraction&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0973224002?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0973224002"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/law-of-attraction.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is a good book on the law of attraction and &lt;acronym title="Neuro Linguistic Programming"&gt;&lt;span class="caps"&gt;NLP&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/acronym&gt; and it&amp;#8217;s full of exercises to unlock your inner power.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553277472?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0553277472"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I read the italian version of the book, and I was delighted. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance is an awesome book (which has very little to do with motorcycle maintenance). I highly recommend to read this book if you haven&amp;#8217;t already.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;Brain Rules&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979777704?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0979777704"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/brain-rules.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is a book on the human brain. You can find a detailed review here: &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/5-powerful-lessons-from-brain-rules"&gt;brain rules review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;Eat That Frog&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583762027?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1583762027"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/eat-that-frog.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I had already read this book two years ago, but I thought about reading it again because it&amp;#8217;s a tremendous motivational book. Short and sweet.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;Mind Hacks&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596007795?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0596007795"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/mind-hacks.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I bought this book in Seattle two years ago and read it for the second time this year. This book is full of explanations of how our brain and mind works, and many, many examples of all the theory behind. I recommend this book to all the curious people.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;Born to Run&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307266303?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0307266303"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/born-to-run.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is possible the most fascinating book I have read in a long time. It doesn&amp;#8217;t matter if you are a runner or not, you should read this book as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;The 4-Hour Workweek&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307465357?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0307465357"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/the-4-hour-workweek.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is the updated version of the original book. It&amp;#8217;s a very good book on escaping the 9 to 5 life, and you should definitely apply the advices you find on this book (so maybe you&amp;#8217;ll start working from home like I do).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;Design Elements &amp;#8211; A Graphic Style Manual&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592532616?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1592532616"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/design-elements-a-graphic-style-manual.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is a book on the basis of design. I am a complete newbie on design, but I really enjoyed this book.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;Tribes&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591842336?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1591842336"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/tribes-book.jpg"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is a fantastic book by Seth Godin in which he talks about creating communities and how everyone is a leader. Should be required reading to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I had a lot of fun reading all of these books. Note that one book per week means less than one hour per day if you read slowly and take notes (like I do), so it&amp;#8217;s not impossible at all.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I have also started reading some other books, mostly technical, but I will post their titles once I have finished reading them, as they take more time to completely read and understand.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am-day-4</id>
    <published>2010-02-25T18:51:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-02-25T18:52:21+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">30 Days Habit Change - Waking up At 5 am Day 4</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am-day-4" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Today is the 4th day of my &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am"&gt;waking up at 5 am experiment&lt;/a&gt; and also the first one where I was allowed to sleep more.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As I said, every thursday I&amp;#8217;m allowed to sleep more because I usually go to bed late on wednesday morning. Last night I went to bed at around 11.40 but I managed to get up naturally at 7.30 am this morning anyway, 15 minutes before I had set the alarm clock, which was very nice.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing is that because I could not wake up at 5 today, I wasn&amp;#8217;t able to work on any of my personal projects. When I wake up at 5 am instead, I can get a lot done before 9 am.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If I had to decide today about continuing or not to wake up at 5 am or not, I&amp;#8217;d certainly do, because it&amp;#8217;s incredible the amount of work I can get done with an extra 4 hours per day, and I&amp;#8217;m not even rushing my schedule yet.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;When I wake up early I can also stop working early. It&amp;#8217;s true that I go to bed between 9 pm and 10 pm, but at 6 pm I can usually shut down my computer. This gives me a good 3 hours to detoxicate from a full day of work in front of a laptop, which I never did before starting this experiment but I&amp;#8217;m glad I&amp;#8217;m doing it now.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;m going to start recording what I do starting from tomorrow, so you can actually get an idea of what it means to have an extra 3 &amp;#8211; 4 hours per day. Next update will be next week.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:barefoot-running</id>
    <published>2010-02-23T13:20:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-02-23T14:48:40+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">Barefoot Running or How you Can Run Injury Free Too</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/barefoot-running" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Everything we know about running is wrong, or at least, everything the running industry told us about running is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I used to think that running injury-free was only a matter of having the right shoes, which one way or another I could never find.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Each foot contains 26 joints, 33 bones and more than 100 muscles and tendons, which is quite a lot. And the goal of running shoes is to support that already powerful structure.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But what happens when you wrap a powerful tool like the human foot in a soft shoe with cushion? It becomes weak, of course. So weak that if you try to run 1 mile barefoot, you might experience soreness the day after.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Stanford coach &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/VinLananna"&gt;Vin Lananna&lt;/a&gt; knew this. When two Nike representatives visited the university a few years ago, they noticed that the students were running with&amp;#8230; no shoes at all. The reason was that by including barefoot running as a part of their training, they were able to reinforce the muscles in their lower legs, and prevent injuries. The nice thing is that Nike was already sponsoring the university, so they could have chosen from every running shoe model if they wanted, imagine their face when they discovered that the students were running barefoot instead.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At that point Nike and other shoes companies began to take the problem seriously. After all, if the best way of running was barefoot, how the hell were they going to make a buck from it?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Each company released some new model, for example the Nike free are the result of years of study on barefoot running, yet they are often a joke among minimalist runners.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Lananna was not the only one who knew this. In those years many other people were discovering that by running barefoot, they could prevent injuries. For example, Ted McDonalds, also known as &lt;a href="http://barefootted.com/"&gt;barefootted&lt;/a&gt;, discovered this by accident. He had just bought a new pair of expensive running shoes and began jogging around the corner, only to discover that his pain was still there. He threw aways his new shoes and decided to head bac home barefoot, discovering that his pain was gone. He run barefoot or with minimalist shoes since then, and it&amp;#8217;s always present at ultra marathons (50, 100 miles per race).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara"&gt;Tarahumara&lt;/a&gt; is a mexican population who lives outside of the civilized world. They are generally very poor except that they are recognized for their long running abilities. For long runs I mean something like 100 miles, which translates in two days of non-stop running. They have, of course, no running shoes. They just have sandals, dirty sandals they made themselves.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Born to run&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What if I tell you that we evolved to run? I know that you would probably think it&amp;#8217;s bullshit, like many &lt;a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/did-humans-evolve-to-be-long-distance-runners/"&gt;others&lt;/a&gt; do. Still, I would not exclude this hypothesis, as &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting"&gt;persistence hunting&lt;/a&gt; through running might have been one way used to hunt food in the past. By the way there are still rare populations that continue to practice persistence hunting, so it&amp;#8217;t not that impossible.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Christopher McDougall has written a wonderful &lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307266303?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0307266303"&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; around this subject. He talks about barefoot running, the tarahumara and many world class athletes while narrating the greatest running race that the world has never seen. It all begun with a simple question: &lt;strong&gt;Why does my foot hurt?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307266303?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=oscardelben-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0307266303"&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/born-to-run.jpg" alt="born to run" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At the time of this writing, the book has over 400 reviews on amazon in less than one year from its publication, with an average of 5 stars. It&amp;#8217;s a tremendous book to read. Even if you are not a runner it could easily be the best book you&amp;#8217;ll read in a long time.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Minimalist shoes&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I personally discovered the power of barefoot running thanks to the &lt;a href="http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/"&gt;Vibram Five Fingers&lt;/a&gt; shoes. These minimalist shoes are so minimal that they are almost like running barefoot, except that they provide some protection. I bought and &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/vibram-first-look/"&gt;reviewed&lt;/a&gt; a pair last year, which I used a lot for training outside during summer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With the arrival of winter however, I had to wear normal shoes again, thus experiencing some pain on the knee. But after reading born to run, I knew what it was the cause of my pain and what I had to do.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At that point I bought another pair of Vibram five shoes, the flow model (picture below) and I began running with them. I tested them in different kind of roads, and so far I&amp;#8217;m extremely satisfied with them, and the knew pain is gone again.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/vibram-flow.jpg" alt="vibram five fingers flow" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Last sunday I took a run with my normal running shoes, and guess what? Arch pain (note: I did not think about it, so I exclude a placebo effect). I think I now know how I&amp;#8217;m going to run next.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Where I usually run&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is where I tested the vibram five fingers flow. The circuit is 5 miles long.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/road-1.jpg" alt="vibram five fingers flow road testing" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/road-2.jpg" alt="vibram five fingers flow road testing" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/road-3.jpg" alt="vibram five fingers flow road testing" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/road-4.jpg" alt="vibram five fingers flow road testing" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/road-5.jpg" alt="vibram five fingers flow road testing" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/freestylemind/road-6.jpg" alt="vibram five fingers flow road testing" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#8217;t know if the human was born to run distances like a marathon or more, but I do know that some running is essential for our health. Up until now I had to avoid running too much because of the injuries and stress. Now I fully enjoy it and I&amp;#8217;m starting to train for a marathon, simply because I enjoy it so much and it doesn&amp;#8217;t hurt.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Resources&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you want more, here are a few starting places.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://runningbarefoot.org/"&gt;RunningBarefoot.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://barefootted.com/"&gt;Barefoot Ted&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/"&gt;Vibram Five Fingers official website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1170253/The-painful-truth-trainers-Are-expensive-running-shoes-waste-money.html"&gt;Daily Mail article about barefoot running&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://groups.google.com/group/huaraches"&gt;Barefoot forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am-day-1</id>
    <published>2010-02-22T16:35:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-02-22T17:03:50+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">30 Days Habit Change - Waking up At 5 am Day 1</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am-day-1" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;This is the first update to my &lt;a href="http://www.freestylemind.com/30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am"&gt;waking up at 5 am&lt;/a&gt; experiment. I think the firsts days are important in order to make an habit, so here we go.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This morning I woke up at 5 am without much trouble. Last night I went to bed at 9.30 so I slept 7.30 hours.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The first thing I did was going to the bathroom to drink some water and do some basic exercise to properly awake my body.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At 5.15 I sit down in front of my computer and I was ready to start working. When I just wake up I like to write. I use a software named &lt;a href="http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom"&gt;writeroom&lt;/a&gt; when I write in the morning, so I can write without distractions and without stressing my eyes.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I wrote for my upcoming free book on the law of attraction (will be available for &lt;span class="caps"&gt;RSS&lt;/span&gt; readers) until 6 am.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;From 6 am to 7 am I accomplished some internet tasks that I needed to get done, and then I took the time to organize all my projects.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At 7 am I had breakfast. Two toasts and water when I would usually only have a brioch. After that I began working on personal projects until 9 am.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;From 9 am to 12 I worked for my regular job, and I continued for one more hour after lunch at noon (yes, I work at home).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After lunch I managed to study a bit and take a nap. I took a nap not because I was tired, but rather because I wanted to perserve a high level of productivity.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At 14.30 I started working again, and as of this writing, I&amp;#8217;m just taking a break in order to write this short update. I don&amp;#8217;t feel tired and I have a lot of energy, but I&amp;#8217;ll probably see some effects in the evening.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;One thing I want to say is that I got a lot done in the early hours of the morning. From 5 am to 9 am I was able to do what would usually take me 3 days of working after my regular job. And with the planning I did this morning, I expect to double that productivity starting from tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If every day goes like today, I&amp;#8217;m not sure if I&amp;#8217;ll ever want to sleep late again :D&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <author>
      <name>Oscar</name>
    </author>
    <id>urn:uuid:30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am</id>
    <published>2010-02-21T01:00:00+01:00</published>
    <updated>2010-02-21T19:02:04+01:00</updated>
    <title type="html">30 Days Habit Change - Waking up At 5 am</title>
    <link href="http://www.freestylemind.com/30-days-habit-change-waking-up-at-5am" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;If there&amp;#8217;s one thing I always hear about becoming successful is &lt;strong&gt;the importance of getting up early in the morning.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And I know this to be true, because when I get up early, I can get much more done and I have much more energy during the day. Until now, I used to get up between 6 am and 7 am, depending on the days.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Based on my experience until today, I&amp;#8217;m more productive in the first hours of the day, but my energy level begins to drop after lunch. This is true regardless of what time I get up, and even if I take a nap after lunch, it&amp;#8217;s very hard for me to be as productive as in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;When I was managing an online store a few years ago, I used to go to sleep late, usually at 2 am, and then I&amp;#8217;d never get up before 10 am. At that time I would never thought of getting up before 9 am. That worked because I used to work only 2-3 hours per day, at home, without having to respond to anyone.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But I still wouldn&amp;#8217;t join that lifestyle again (there&amp;#8217;s a reason if I quit) and I don&amp;#8217;t mind if everyone else at my age are doing their best to sleep as late as possible. I learned that if something is done by the vast majority of people, it&amp;#8217;s probably wrong.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, starting from tomorrow, I&amp;#8217;m going to enter a 30 days challenge where I&amp;#8217;m going to get up at 5 am every morning.&lt;/strong&gt; Not because I have to, but because I want to see what will happen.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are the rules:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;I have to wake up at 5 am every day except thursday. I leave out thursday morning because I usually go to the gym on wednesday night, and I don&amp;#8217;t want to stop that.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;I can take a nap if I want to during the afternoon, however my goal is to wake up refreshed, not with sleep deprivation. Thus, the afternoon nap would be an incentive to increase productivity, not to compensate sleep.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At the end of these 30 days I&amp;#8217;ll decide wherever to continue with this new schedule or not. I&amp;#8217;m also eager to find out if all this hype around becoming an early riser is really worth.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I know the first week will be challenging but I hope my body will adjust quickly.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At what time will I go to sleep? in order to get up at 5 am, I guess it&amp;#8217;ll be something between 9 pm and 10 pm. But again, I don&amp;#8217;t know yet and I&amp;#8217;m curious to find it out too.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ll blog about this experience, how I&amp;#8217;ll feel during the days, if it will be difficult to get up at that time and anything else that may come out.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
  </entry>
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