Free your feet, and your mind will follow. That’s a marketing slogan for the Vibram FiveFingers shoes, but it also happens to be the truth.

I first heard about these minimalist shoes when Tim Ferriss wrote about them. I always get ticked when I learn that a product has been designed to screw me over, whether it be the QWERTY keyboard, chairs, or in this case, shoes. But I still wasn’t motivated enough to go out and get them.

Later, when I developed shin splints that made it painful to even walk, I figured it was time to try them out. I got the KSOs, one of three styles available at the time, though today there are many more. They cured me pretty much instantly, and I’ve been wearing them on and off for a year and a half since.

The idea behind them is to offer some protection while coming as close as possible to the barefoot experience, letting the foot work the way it was meant to. Normal shoes have a raised heel that throws off your posture, arch support that prevents your arches from working as springs, and thick padding that deprives your nerves of all sensory input.

I love these shoes, and I wish I never had to burden my feet with the traditional clodhoppers we’re expected to wear. They just make walking fun, particularly on soft surfaces or uneven terrain.

There are some downsides though.

One, they’re not exactly office-appropriate. See the Vivo Barefoot Dharma for a compromise you can actually wear to work. They’re very comfortable compared to normal shoes, but no match for the FiveFingers, and I don’t know why they’re so expensive.

Two, you’ll be about a half inch shorter without the raised heel. But then you’ll feel like a giant in normal shoes.

Three, big rocks hurt, so you have to watch your step. They’re certainly not great in the snow, since the freezing water soaks right through.

Four, there’s definitely a risk of injury. Your feet have a lot of joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons that have become very weak over the years, and you can’t expect them to return to full function without a break-in period (which will take a lot longer than you think). Just take it as easy as you possibly can, and stop if you feel the slightest pain.

Finally, some people think that wearing gloves on your foot is not all that fashionable, perhaps calling them “frog feet.” Mine are black/grey so they can escape the peripheral vision of most passersby, but whenever someone noticed them, I used to get prepared to give a long explanation. Today, it seems that most people already know what they are, so they just say they like them or ask if they’re comfortable.

I wish Vibram had an affiliate program, because they’ve certainly gotten enough free advertising from me. Do any of you have them, and how do you like them?

Richard Branson has a new book out called Screw Business As Usual, about how it’s time for businesses to shift from being purely profit-driven to caring about people, communities, and the planet.

Sounds good in theory, but a better title for this book would have been “Richard Branson’s Résumé.” At least that’s the feeling I had in the beginning.

About a third of the way through, it gets better, and you think, “Wow, Virgin Unite really is doing good things.” But it’s an awful lot of stories, and not a lot you can really put to use.

Great message, but not such a great book. The book I’m reading now, Shake the World, looks like a much better book on a similar topic.

Dirk de Bruin (perhaps better known on the internet as Diggy) has released his Confidence Black Book, a complete 30-day guide to becoming a more confident person in all areas of life.

I had initially assumed that it was about dating, but it really has a much broader scope, covering diet, exercise, relationships, career, and other things. In short, it’s about conquering limiting beliefs that stand in the way of increased happiness, success, and goal achievement.

I appreciate that he based the book on his own personal experiences, as he spent seven years learning how to build confidence and the kind of life he wants to live. That’s how he can say for certain that his stuff works, because he used it all himself.

While I thought he had a lot of good insights in the book, I cheated by skipping the 30 daily tasks he gives. (Tip: don’t do this!) I also skipped over the bonuses (12 motivational videos and an NLP visualization method video, so there’s even more value than meets the eye.

He’s set up an opt-in page to a series of free videos with tips and insight into becoming more confident. I haven’t seen them, but if you want the secret to indestructible confidence, you know what to do.

I want to try a little experiment, if you have a minute.

Think of a two digit number between 1 and 50. Both digits should be odd, but not the same number. Don’t scroll down until you’ve picked a number.

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I’m starting to see it now…
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Is your number 37?

I saw this on a TV magic show a long time ago. A guy was doing this to random people on the street, and there were only two different reactions. Either he’d be wrong, and they’d wonder why anyone would even try such a dumb trick, or he’d be right, and they’d be amazed.

Although it might seem that there are many possible numbers that fit the given conditions, there are only eight (13, 15, 17, 19, 31, 35, 37, 39). And for whatever reason, people pick 37 far more than its fair share – the show claimed it was more than half the time.

So the trick doesn’t always work, but when you guess someone’s number with complete confidence, it’s hard for them not to be impressed.

We know that “people don’t do random,” even when it comes to meaningless things like picking a number. I’d wager that 35 is a common choice and 13 is not, though I couldn’t really tell you why. I actually picked 37 the first time, and changed it to 39 only because I realized that 37 was too obvious.

People have wonderful abilities of intuition and pattern recognition, but a downside of this is the tendency to see meaning when it’s not there. Sometimes a random number really is 19, despite our desire for it to be 37.

Oswin Craton has a nice article about extrasensory perception, and how he was able to make many people think they had some degree of ESP with a test involving questions like the 37 thing.

(However, beware of the straw man argument – out of all the people I know who say they’re psychic, none of them claim to be mind readers.)

Please leave a comment with the number you picked – I just want to see how often this works.

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

- James Madison, Federalist No. 51

Akemi Gaines at Real Life Spirituality left a comment on Secrets Of The Millionaire Dropouts, saying she questioned whether democracy was the best form of government.

Back in 2000, I watched the Great American Think-Off debate, with the topic of “Is Democracy Fair?” (Ironically, this was just a few months before Florida had to recount its votes in the Bush-Gore election.) There were many questions posed with no easy answers, such as “If democracy isn’t fair, then what form of government is better?” and “How can you defend democracy, when Hitler came to power through democratic elections?”

In the end, the audience voted that democracy was fair. (See anything ironic about that?) If I recall correctly, the winner’s main argument was that while people are mostly apathetic, when things really get bad enough, they’ll vote for change. (Though apparently, they’re willing to let things get really really bad first.)

But while we might be able to agree that democracy is fair at least to some extent, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best way. Akemi pointed out some of the problems:

“History has shown democracy fails. In ancient Greece, it deteriorated to mob rule. In modern times, it has become a popularity contest, manipulated by the media. The French Revolution turned to a horrible blood bath and only a brilliant man who enthroned himself could end it.

This is because we cannot agree with what we don’t understand. So our intelligence limits our decision making (= vote). Think what might happen if a company (even a medium size one) is run by democracy. I am sure it will go out of business soon.

But then, when we entrust the pros who know better (sometimes called rulers, sometimes politicians), it creates a perfect ground to breed corruption. We are in a catch 22.”

The part about running a company by democracy reminded me of The Office, when Michael and Jim were both made co-regional managers of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch. Of course, nothing got done because they were too busy trying to overpower each other. As Oscar sarcastically said,

“Look, it doesn’t take a genius to know that every organization thrives when it has two leaders. Go ahead, name a country that doesn’t have two presidents. A boat that set sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be, without the popes?”

And that’s with just two decision makers. Yes, democracy is very inefficient by nature. Autocracy is very efficient, but then, you take your chances. Oligarchy is in the middle, but who decides who’s on top?

It’s a tall order to fill; a form of government that doesn’t rely on voter rationality, wants what’s best for everyone, enforces checks and balances on itself, and gets things done without red tape. Maybe Churchill had it right:

“Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

“You’ve been fed a lie. The lie is that if you study hard, get good grades, get into a good college, and get a degree, then your success in life is guaranteed.”

We’ve all heard this lie, and it’s certainly a convincing one. After all, it used to be true. But many people didn’t notice it gradually becoming less true as the world changed, with tuition skyrocketing and job prospects dimming.

In The Education of Millionaires, Michael Ellsberg explores alternative paths followed by millionaire and billionaire college dropouts. His point isn’t that education is unimportant, but that it doesn’t have to come from a lecture hall. He makes a strong case that what it really takes to get ahead today is self education over formal education, practical intelligence over academic intelligence.

Although I’ve read several books on this theme, I found this one to be perhaps the best of them. In fact, the only thing I didn’t love about this book was the title (just because it’s a little bland). Everything else was great.

Specifically, I liked:

• The plethora of interviews and case studies of the rich and famous, including Russell Simmons (fashion), Dustin Moskovitz and Sean Parker (Facebook), Matt Mullenwag (WordPress), David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Phillip Ruffin (casinos), and John Paul DeJoria (hair care products)
• The interviews of the not-quite-yet rich and famous (such as he and his wife), whose situations may be easier for most of us to relate to
• The practical information about key success skills such as networking, marketing, sales, branding, and bootstrapping, and his style of “teaching you how to teach yourself how to fish”
• How he anticipates and overcomes objections that most authors ignore, like “well, that might work if you have endless amounts of money to burn, but what if…”

Are we in an education bubble that will burst in the coming years? It’s hard to be sure. In the meantime, consider this book mandatory reading for any student of success, dropout or not.

Could the world’s greatest Taoist be a fuzzy, plump, lovable bear? Perhaps.

In Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff uses characters from Winnie-the-Pooh to explain the principles of Taoism.

“While Eeyore frets …
… and Piglet hesitates
… and Rabbit calculates
… and Owl pontificates
…Pooh just is.
And that’s a clue to the secret wisdom of the Taoists.”

For those who aren’t sure what Taoism is, the story behind The Vinegar Tasters explains it well. This painting shows Confucius, Buddha, and Laozi (representing Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) around a vat of vinegar, reacting to its taste.

Confucius finds the vinegar sour (people are degenerates and need rules to correct them), Buddha finds it bitter (life is full of pain and suffering), but Laozi is smiling (life is fundamentally good in its natural state, and nothing needs to be judged).

While this book is certainly a good read and a useful introduction to Taoism, I found myself constantly wondering how Taoism is supposed to apply to real life.

If you’re a bear without a care in the world, fine. But if you’re a human being, this kind of “hakuna matata” attitude strikes me as an incomplete life philosophy at best.

The book gives Thomas Edison as an example of someone who found success by modeling Pooh, which is where it really fell apart for me. Edison was a Rabbit/Owl, and absolutely not a Pooh.

So, this is meant to be a recommendation for the book, though it may not sound like it. If any Taoists out there want to show me the way, I’d like to hear from them.

A month ago, Jason Calacanis wrote an intriguing and controversial post – Do We Deserve–or Even Want–More Jobs? – about the declining work ethic of Gen-Y. Check it out if you haven’t already.

I have something to add to this, for all the people who think there aren’t any jobs out there.

For the last month, the company I work at has been trying to hire a programmer for some simple SQL Server tasks. It’s a relatively high-paying and very easy job, for someone with relevant experience. I’ve been doing the interviewing, and I think I’ve set the bar really low.

First, I ask a few simple questions in a phone screening, to confirm that the candidate has a pulse. People who are able to string a few coherent sentences together are invited in for an on-site interview, where I give a written test with two easy problems and two moderately challenging problems.

I quickly learned that I had to scrap the moderately challenging problems because everyone was getting their ass kicked by the easy ones. I’ve had more than one person make the claim of “Expert in SQL Server” on their resume, who turned out to not even know what an outer join is. This is roughly equivalent to someone claiming to be an expert carpenter, but not knowing what a hammer is.

Out of the 15 or so people I interviewed, only one of them was able to pass the dumbed down version of the test. In the end, the position was eliminated.

And yet we keep hearing about how there aren’t any jobs out there. Maybe people just need to try a little harder.

As far as Grammar Nazis go, I’m about as lenient as they get. I don’t have a problem with incomplete sentences (“Apology accepted.”), split infinitives (“to boldly go”), ending a sentence with a preposition (“Give them what they asked for.”), or pronoun disagreement (“Somebody left their book.”).

I just don’t think that the way we use English, particularly spoken English, can be completely prescribed by arbitrary rules that were written hundreds of years ago. As language evolves, sometimes the rules need to change. Which is why I don’t have a problem with ”a whole nother,” a phrase that drives many people crazy, but is really no different from ”abso-freakin-lutely.”

Yes, it’s OK to break some rules. But there are other rules that are there for a reason, and breaking them annoys the bejesus out of anyone with the slightest appreciation for the English language. Here are some of the best ways to have the Grammar Nazis knocking at your door.

1. I could care less

This is my number one pet peeve because it’s so common, and so obviously the opposite of the intended meaning. When someone says “I could care less,” I wonder, “Well, why don’t you?”

If they could care less, that means that they do care to some extent. What they want to say is “I couldn’t care less,” meaning that they don’t care at all.

Come to think of it, no one seems to have trouble with “I couldn’t be happier” or “I couldn’t agree more.” Why?

2. Literally

On second thought, this is my biggest pet peeve.

Maybe someone wants to say “My mind is exploding with new ideas,” but they think this figure of speech isn’t strong enough. They decide that they need to embellish a little, or you won’t take them seriously. So instead, they say “My mind is literally exploding with new ideas.”

Well, if their mind is literally exploding, you should call 911. But chances are, they meant that their mind was exploding in a figurative sense. This meaning would have been perfectly clear without saying “figuratively,” but for some reason they decided to clarify their thoughts by adding a word meaning the exact opposite.

On those rare occasions where the word is used correctly, it’s often useless. If someone says “It literally changed my life,” that’s correct, but they could have simply said “It changed my life” with no loss of clarity.

It’s only necessary to say “literally” when your statement is likely to be misinterpreted as a figure of speech. My difficulty in coming up with a reasonable example suggests how rarely this happens, but for example, “Girls like that are a dime a dozen. Literally – I’ve never seen mail-order bride prices this low!”

3. Apostrophes

Apostrophes are not garnishes whose use is limited only by your imagination. They are used in contractions and possessives, not for plurals, and not whenever you want to spice up a sentence.

“Its about time you got you’re apostrophe’s right, dont ya’ think?”

4. Could of, would of, should of

“Could’ve” is a contraction of “could have.” Unfortunately, “could’ve” sounds like “could of,” and that’s how a lot of people write it. Maybe they could’ve, would’ve, should’ve learned some grammar.

5. Different than

The correct phrase is “different from.” Doesn’t ”I’m different than you” sound like fingernails on the blackboard? There’s a difference between “than” and “from.” You would never say “I’m taller from you,” would you?

6. Homophones

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same, but which have different meanings. They are usually spelled differently (which technically makes them heterographs), which allows the potential to pick the wrong word.

Suppose someone says, “They’re too experiments really peaked my interest. Eye thought they wood have a huge affect on me, but they barely phased me.” The words they were looking for were “their,” “two,” “piqued,” “I,” “would,” “effect,” and “fazed.”

You don’t notice when you here it, but you sure do when you sea it. So take just a split second to decide between then/than, principle/principal, complimentary/complementary, discreet/discreet, to/too/two, there/their/they’re, right/write/rite, and all the other words that sound the same, but aren’t.

7. I vs. me

This one is controversial because the correct usage sometimes violates our instincts, as in “He’s taller than I.” It’s grammatically correct, but it sounds weird. I guess we’re all so used to hearing everyone say it wrong, including ourselves.

So people say “He’s taller than me” because it sounds right, and even some grammarians will look the other way. (BTW, it’s much easier to see what’s right when you add the missing verb at the end – “He’s taller than I am” vs. “He’s taller than me is.”)

What I can’t stand though, is when people hypercorrect their overusage of “me” by using “I” when “me” is actually the right word, resulting in ridiculous sentences like “Tom’s coming to the movie with Fred and I.”

While their intentions are good, there’s no need to use bad grammar and look pompous at the same time. “I” is a subject, and “me” is an object. Tom isn’t coming to the movie with I, he’s coming with me.

Honorable mentions

This post is long enough already, but I didn’t want to finish without giving a quick nod to some of my other favorites: “I’m going to lay down,” “Everything’s going good,” “Think different,” “Nip it in the butt,” “Let’s try and do it,” “I have less apples than you,” and “I entered my PIN number at the ATM machine.”

What else you would add to this list? And what is the role of Grammar Nazis in today’s society?

Photo by kenposan

“One of the reasons you may not be getting what you want from life is because you don’t know what you want,” says Marelisa Fabrega in her latest free ebook.

Very true. Too often, people find themselves nearing the end of their life, not being sure what they wanted to do, just knowing that they didn’t do it.

If you’re not entirely sure about all the things you want to do in your time here on earth, you can get a lot of great suggestions from
1,250 Ideas for Your Bucket List.

A bucket list (as in, things to do before you kick the bucket) is a goal-setting tool to keep you motivated and focused on whatever you decide your priorities are.

I have no idea how she came up with so many, but yes, these really are 1,250 legitimate things to do, broken out into the following categories:

• Sports/Athletics Bucket List
• Languages Bucket List
• Music, Song, and Dance Bucket List
• Adventures to Go On Bucket List
• Places to Visit Bucket List
• Hobbies Bucket List
• Personal Development Bucket List
• Appearance Bucket List
• Education Bucket List
• People to Meet Bucket List
• Financial Bucket List
• The High Life Bucket List
• Family Life Bucket List
• Dwelling Bucket List
• Spirituality Bucket List
• Contributions Bucket List
• Vocation/Career Bucket List
• Things to Audition For Bucket List
• Hit the Big Time Bucket List
• Spectator Bucket List
• Food and Drink Bucket List
• Holiday Bucket List
• Supernatural Bucket List
• “Just Because” Bucket List

Take a look at it, and see if you find anything you want to add to your own bucket list. Anyone who accomplishes all 1,250 by Friday will receive a prize.