Prisoners of the Present

In my quest to become more efficient I've dabbled in a lot of scientific explorations of the brain, in various formats. I'm ADHD. I'm not one of these people who thinks they have it or “everyone has it to some degree”. I don't use it as an excuse, in fact it's usually a weakness, but that doesn't stop me from trying to use it as a strength.

In his book, Spark, Dr John Ratey talks about the beneficial effects of exercise on the brain. He almost goes as far as to say, the more out of shape, less exercise you do, and consequently, the fatter you are, the dumber you'll get. If you don't like that tough...humans weren't designed to be fat, so do something about it. If you don't know what to do I'd love to help and I'll point you in the right direction in future blog posts. The most difficult part about becoming healthy is creating new habits (see Shawn Achor's book The Happiness Advantage) which takes work.

Technically, only 4% of humans are ADHD, more in kids. I am one of the 4%, is it genetic or epigenetic or environmental...I don't care. In fact, I'm going to put a challenge out there. I HATE GENETICS as an excuse. I can't help it I'm fat, it's in my genes, I can't help it I'm not good at math, I can't help it I'm ADHD. It's all BS. Humans have the power to do anything they want. The fact of the matter is most people fail at something and give up, they find an excuse for why they failed as if that somehow justifies the failure when it doesn't. As Edison said, “I found 1000 ways to fail at making a lightbulb,” did he give up? Was it his genetics that held back his brain, was he stupid, was he lazy? No, he simply persevered.

Dr Ratey calls ADHD people “Prisoners of the Present” because they tend to only do things right now; that which has the most immediate gratification. Why? Because ADHD people have a problem with the reward center of the brain. Things just don't seem interesting, because the brain doesn't send out the right signals saying “Dude, check this out, this is awesome,” so we kind of just go, “meh.” The reward center tells the prefrontal cortex how to respond to a situation and without that “telling” the prefrontal cortex doesn't send out the right stuff. What is the right stuff, Dopamine and Norepinephrine.

Norepinephrine and Dopamine are neurotransmitters that regulate our attention system. It is A LOT more complex than I'm making it out to be here but essentially people with ADHD don't produce these chemicals in the proper amount.  See wikipedia for more on these neurotransmitters.

OK, so produce more norepinephrine and dopamine, it's that easy. How? EXERCISE and MEDITATION. And, I'm pretty sure diet plays a major role as well. Specifically glycogen. This will then have to link to the Slow Carb diet, which is all about the glucose level.

So, there's a bunch of problems with the prefrontal cortex in people who have ADHD. Dr Ratey goes on to talk about the effects of exercise. ADHD people often have a love/hate relationship with structure. (I know I do.) Love it but HATE to execute it. Evidence has shown that an extremely rigid structure helps curb ADHD symtoms. Things like martial arts, dancing, gymnastics, mountain biking, and snowboarding all require complex movements in the midst of heavy exertion and have a greater impact than aerobics alone. I'd say just about any exercise will help increase your dopamine an norepinephrine levels but the ones where you have to think, a lot, while physically exerting yourself seem to help the most.

Hence, a lot of what I'll write here will be on health, brain, MTB, snowboarding, MMA, meditation and efficiency. To me, they are all part of the same puzzle.

As I am ADHD and assume most readers are, I'll stop here. I'm going to continue with meditation and ADHD next time. If want, google norepinephrine + meditation and dopamine + meditation for more info on what's next. After that, we'll start to talk about the Slow Carb diet.

#1 Pareto's Law

Let's become effective
I'm not really saying anything new here. Well, I'm rarely saying anything new, just synthesizing information and distributing that information through my own unique synthesis. (Yay for starting my blog posts at the second highest level of Bloom's Taxonomy).  There is so much to talk about and how it all fits together.  Law of Attraction, Occom's Razor, Happiness, Brain Function, Exercise, Health, MMA, Self Help, Discipline, Falun Dafa, etc.  Where to begin?


Pareto's Law: 80/20 Principal
There is a plethora of information on Pareto's Law available on the internet, just Google it to find more.  Essentially it is this: 20% of anything accounts for about 80% of the results.  20% of the world's population holds about 80% of the wealth (a popular one).  20% of Pareto's garden peas accounted for 80% of his yield.  The list goes on and on and typically can vary even more so towards 90/10, 95/5 and 99/1.  I've been on a quest for efficiency as of late, about that last year or so.  Something that's helping is to continually ask myself, "What's the 80 and what's the 20 in situation x?"  


I'm starting a new company, currently called Sunexos, a data driven SEO company.  More about how I decided to start this particular company later.  For now, I'll say I ran a brief market analysis using Google Adwords to discover what people were looking for on the internet when it came to search engine optimization, viz., how do I get to number one in search engine page rank? (SERPS).  Overwhelmingly, about 97% of the campaign pointed towards the same thing.  I was shocked and pissed at the same time.  I'd spent about 20 hours compiling lists of keywords about the industry to determine what people cared about.  I had to cut down from 456 to 150 keywords.  When my final list was done, only 2 mattered.  2 out of 456 originally, or just under 0.5%.  Here is a case of the 99.5/0.5 rule, wow.


What does this mean?
First, at least 80% of what I write on this blog, any blog, anywhere in the world, will be totally crap to you!  You, is key though, someone else may find something else particularly useful and you think it's useless.  That's cool, it's part of the law.  Of the 20% of articles you find useful, 80% of the content in those 20% will be useless.  So, I'll try to keep posts short.


80% of what I write won't even be helpful to me.


It's time to become hyper efficient in life.  In all aspects.  The guiding principal behind everything I do now comes from Pareto's Law, (technically not a law because you can never fully prove it, it's more of a principle).  However, due to such crazy ideas as the Law of Attraction, Pareto's Law, Occom's Razor, The Golden Ratio, etc, I'm confident that I'm more capable than at least 80% of the other companies out there in the internet marketing business.  Why, because I'm basing all company action on the 80/20 principle.  Sunexos does something different than everyone else out there.  We'll Analyze data, look for the 20% that's useful and then act on that.  Rather than throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks, everything will be based on data driven decision making.  Cutting out the crap, and focusing on the Critical Few.  Thanks Avinash, you've managed to explain something to me that I already knew in yet a different way so that I'd understand it better.  And thanks Tim, you managed to help me get my ass in gear.