I just read the very interesting Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher (recommended to me by Paul Strobl of Confide Coaching). It’s about the types of people she calls “scanners” (as opposed to “divers”); people who would rather survey the whole horizon than go diving as deep as they can in one spot. She calls them scanners, I call them polymaths, but they’re very similar.

The copy I picked up at the library had the subtitle A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love. I thought this was a little odd, as I didn’t see why doing everything you love would be such a big challenge, aside from productivity issues. Like Nike said, just do it.

But when I looked it up on Amazon, I came across the alternate subtitle “Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams.” I found this much more intriguing, though perhaps overly ambitious. But it made me wonder if it was just a different subtitle, or a completely revised edition.

And now I’ve written yet another subtitle in my headline, so I’m not exactly helping. Anyway, my comments are based on the version I read.

The main thing I got out of this book was that it’s OK to be a scanner, it’s just how we’re wired and not something we should try to suppress, and in fact it’s a good thing. Which I already knew, of course, but it was nice to see a recognized life coach saying so and talking about her clients who have successfully pursued their diverse interests.

One example of how she shows that scanners are OK: the false stigma of quitting. Many scanners get very frustrated with themselves for not being able to finish what they set out to do. Barbara explains why this is not a sign of failure, but a sign of having goals that are achieved before a project appears to be done. When a bee gets nectar from a flower and then moves on to the next one, do you call it a quitter for not sticking around?

I especially like how she separately addresses all the different types of scanners. From her experiences with working with so many scanners, she’s found that they don’t all fit the same pattern. Instead, there are two broad groups – cyclical scanners, who keep returning to the same interests, and sequential scanners, who don’t. Then these groups are further broken down into nine types:

• Cyclical Scanners
  • The Double Agent
  • The Sybil
  • The Plate Spinner
• Sequential Scanners
  • The Serial Specialist
  • The Serial Master
  • The Jack-of-All-Trades
  • The Wanderer
  • The Sampler
  • The High-Speed Indecisive

She talks about the unique challenges of each type, and goes into practical methods for managing your time, staying focused, and doing what you want to do.

However, don’t assume you’ll fit neatly into one category. I identified myself as a combination of the Sybil, Serial Master, Jack-of-All-Trades, Wanderer, and Sampler, thereby spanning more than half the categories. Oh well, I guess I’m difficult.

Hats off to Barbara Sher for standing up for scanners. When the world demands that you choose a path, what is a scanner to do? Simple: refuse to choose!

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

Currently priced at just $9.50 (that’s 5.76 cents per page for you value shoppers), I’m inclined to say “just go buy it – how can you go wrong with something by Marelisa at that price?” But perhaps I can manage a better introduction.

As long as I’ve known Marelisa, she’s been big on life lists, also known as bucket lists. You know, those 100 or so things you want to accomplish before you die, or the things you’d most regret not doing if you suddenly found you didn’t have long to live. She’s well known for her popular and high-ranking Squidoo lens on this topic, so who better to write an ebook about life lists?

And that’s what she’s done with How To Live Your Best Life – The Essential Guide for Creating and Achieving Your Life List. This ebook is designed to help you rekindle your adventurous spirit, figure out exactly what you want in each area of your life, break through falsely perceived limits, and thereby achieve your life list.

Do I have a life list? You betcha (though I lost the original version, and the current one exists only in my head). Here are some items I’ve recently added to it:

• Complete all 100 levels on Wii Tanks (seemed impossible, until I did it in a lucky outlier run lasting nearly two hours, with 10 lives to spare)
• Run a marathon in under 5 hours (seems impossible at this point, but who knows?)
• Write ten novels (one down, nine to go)
• Create a steady income stream from playing poker (just started reading books and playing at the lowest limits)
• Have lunch at every restaurant in the vicinity of my workplace (every day is a field trip for me and my lunch buddy)

This ebook is both inspirational and practical, so different people may get different things out of it. Since I prefer to follow my impulses and let my life list unfold naturally, I especially liked the stories and lessons from both average Joes and famous people. Those who prefer a more organized and systematic approach will appreciate the exercises and instructions where she walks you through the process of creating your life list and starting to cross off the items.

I’ve included an abridged version of the table of contents below, so you can see at a glance how much Marelisa has managed to pack into this guide. If you’re serious about achieving your life goals, read How To Live Your Best Life!

Introduction

Part VII: What Are You Waiting For? Get Going
Chapter Twenty-Five: Keep a Journal of Your Journey
Chapter Twenty-Six: Your Victory List
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ithaca

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

We were warned. 2012 is in sight. And mesothelioma will never be the same again.

After a brief but furious sprint of pounding out words that seemed to come from the heavens, followed by a virtual eternity of painstaking proofreading and editing, my first novel is now available on Amazon.com.

Named after the town that holds the key to the 2012 mystery, the novel is called Mesothelioma Lawyers, New York: The Truth About 2012. It can loosely be described as a cross between The Da Vinci Code, 24, and Wayne’s World.

To make things interesting, I’d like to offer a prize to the first person to find and decipher the Easter eggs. An “Easter egg” in a book, movie, game, etc. is a hidden message, inside joke, or feature. For example, a hidden track on a CD, or a flight simulator hidden in a spreadsheet application.

The prize will be one of the books that I’d like to recycle (mailed anywhere in the world). I’m not exactly sure what they are, but at a minimum, your choices will include:

• Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina
• Achieve Anything in Just One Year by Jason Harvey
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Some hints for you:

• There are 5 Easter eggs, and they all follow the same pattern.
• While the novel is filled with inside jokes, the ones meant as Easter eggs will be self-evident, at least in my opinion.
• If not, the fact that there are exactly five, all fitting the same pattern, will leave no doubt as to whether you have found them.
• You have to not just find them, but explain their significance.

If you figure them out, send me an email listing the five Easter eggs and their significance (don’t ruin it for others by revealing them in a comment). If you’re right, then you get to pick a book. I’ll update this post to indicate when the contest is over.

Boy, it feels great to finally get this book out there! Thanks for giving me an audience to write for. Retweets and reviews on Amazon or your blog are greatly appreciated.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

How do you choose between a smaller reward now and a bigger reward later? You might expect that people who think with their gut would foolishly choose short term satisfaction, while people who think with their brain would wisely do what’s better in the long run. But the study found that people who were given complete information about their options were more likely to take the quick reward.

One of the researchers said “To fully appreciate a long-term option, you have to choose it repeatedly and begin to feel the benefits.” In other words, you have to train your gut, because your head isn’t making the decision, even when you give it all the information it needs.

The study involved racking up points in a computer program, with a cash incentive for good performance. Subjects were repeatedly given two options. One option gave more points now, while the other gave the possibility of more points later. The subjects who were given full and accurate information were twice as likely to take the quick payoff as those who were given incomplete or false information about what they were giving up.

(I had a couple of problems with the article. One, it was really vague about the long term option. What were the odds of it paying off (it appeared to not be guaranteed), and how much would it pay off (presumably more points than you gave up in the short term, but it doesn’t say)? But I’m assuming it was apparent to the subjects that the long term option was logically the better choice. Two, it leaves its title hanging – it doesn’t offer any explanation as to why having more information causes you to make the wrong choice.)

This reminded me of the marshmallow test. In this study, marshmallows were placed in front of hungry four year olds. They were told they could eat one marshmallow now, or they could have two if they waited a few minutes. 14 years later, the ones who were able to hold out for two marshmallows were more socially competent, optimistic, assertive, dependable, trustworthy, and scored 210 points higher on the SAT.

However, in the marshmallow test (and maybe the computer program test too), the long term choice is clearly better. Your second marshmallow is guaranteed, and coming in just a few minutes. But is the long term winner always the better choice?

Here’s an example from the “armed with information” article: “In a real-life scenario, a student who stayed home to study and then learned he had missed a fun party would be less likely to study next time in a similar situation – even if that option provides more long-term benefits.”

OK, but is that a bad thing? Are they supposed to skip all parties so they can spend all of their time studying? Once you’ve studied enough, how much benefit is there in studying a little more, compared to going to a party?

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss says “This book is not about saving and will not recommend you abandon your daily glass of red wine for a million dollars 50 years from now. I’d rather have the wine.” That’s a reasonable choice. Not necessarily the one everyone should make, but a reasonable one.

It’s important to consider the cost of instant gratification. But it’s also important to consider the cost of waiting. How much is the wine worth to you?

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

Is it best to make rational decisions with your brain, or just go with your gut? Are people who insist on logic making the best use of all available information, or are they missing out on something far more powerful?

We always hear that sometimes you just have to listen to your gut. What exactly is the gut, anyway? Dictionary.com offers this definition:

“the alimentary canal, esp. between the pylorus and the anus, or some portion of it”

If I had to pick a body part other than the brain to listen to, I’m not sure this would have been my first choice. Why not the skin, heart, or solar plexus, or even the appendix? But anyway, I’m willing to consider that maybe we do underestimate the decision-making power of our intestines.

I asked about it on Twitter, and got a couple of responses. @Armen said:

“My gut has told me some very smart things that I have ignored and paid for, but I hear your point there [that the brain is more likely to be right]…It sure is overrated. On the other hand, it is underrated by folks who ignore it until problems show up…Some that come to mind here are gut telling to see dentist, or to come clean on lie, or to try a biz opportunity”

But even if the gut works in these cases, is it the best source of advice?

Regarding the dentist, you can listen to the calendar that says to go every six months, or to your nerves that say you have a toothache. Regarding the lie, you could listen to your conscience and not lie in the first place.

As for the business opportunity, this is where I can see the gut being helpful. Many business ideas that looked crazy on paper have become huge successes. In these cases, only a gut feeling could convince someone to follow through without a logical reason.

But gut feelings can also lead people astray, such as the gambler who “just knows” that his luck is about to change (only it doesn’t). How do you sort out the accurate gut feelings from all the rest?

Maybe the best idea is to use the gut not as a replacement for the brain, but as an idea generator to brainstorm (intestinestorm?) potential options before handing them over to the brain for evaluation.

Back to Twitter, @MiscBytes said:

“Gut” is just our brain using shortcuts it’s already figured out! http://www.miscbytes.com/gut-feelings/

The linked post mentions a book that talks about the brain quickly using rules of thumb to make its best guess without analyzing all the data. This best guess is known as a “gut feeling.”

It’s not always right, of course. Gut feelings would tell you that a bowling ball falls faster than a grape, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that there are no irrational numbers in the Cantor set, and that it’s better to upgrade a Prius than a Suburban (see When Logic And Intuition Fail).

But while poring over all the data might be better in theory, a gut feeling often works well when facing a shortage of time. An excess of data can also overwhelm you, blinding you to the answer that your intuition can clearly see.

Right now, think of some either-or decision you have to make, something you haven’t thought out yet. Going to work tomorrow vs. taking a day off, having a healthy meal vs. junk food, buying this house vs. the other one, something like that.

I’m going to flip a coin to help you decide. Heads, you take the first option. Tails, you take the second. Ready?

The coin is in the air…I’ve caught it, and it’s…

But I don’t need to say what it is. You already know what you want it to be. This is your gut talking. Does it conflict with your brain? And which organ will win?

Photo by mikebaird

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

Thus begins the classic 1980 computer game known as Zork I. The player is suddenly thrust into this world, and given little direction. The possibilities are endless, and it turns out that the narrator understands English fairly well.

It occurred to me that someone’s response in this situation could serve as a psychological test of sorts. Like an inkblot, there’s not really a right answer, but your choice could reveal factors such as motivation, temper, patience, initiative, persistence, creativity, assertiveness, etc.

Left to your own devices, what would you do if you found yourself standing west of a white house, next to a small mailbox? (The following are all valid commands and actual responses from the game.)

>look at house
The house is a beautiful colonial house which is painted white. It is clear that the owners must have been extremely wealthy.

>walk
What do you want to walk?

>walk me
You should supply a direction!

>walk to house
It’s here!

>find house
It’s right here! Are you blind or something?

>knock on door
Nobody’s home.

>enter house
I can’t see how to get in from here.

>kick door
Kicking the door has no effect.

>hit door
What do you want to hit the door with?

>hit door with hands
I’ve known strange people, but fighting a door?

>look at mailbox
The small mailbox is closed.

>clean mailbox
If you wish, but heaven only knows why.

>eat mailbox
I don’t think that the small mailbox would agree with you.

>drive mailbox
What a bizarre concept!

>kiss mailbox
I’d sooner kiss a pig.

>burn house
What do you want to burn the house with?

>inventory
You are empty-handed.

>burn house with hands
With a pair of hands??!?

>destroy house with mailbox
Trying to destroy the white house with a small mailbox is futile.

>destroy mailbox with house
Trying to destroy the small mailbox with a white house is futile.

>kill myself
What do you want to kill the myself with?

>kill myself with hands
Suicide is not the answer.

>kill troll
What do you want to kill the troll with?

>kill troll with hands
You can’t see any troll here!

>wait
Time passes…

>stand
You are already standing, I think.

>swim
Go jump in a lake!

>jump in a lake
You can’t see any lake here!

>jump
Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!

>jump
Are you enjoying yourself?

>jump
Do you expect me to applaud?

>jump
Very good. Now you can go to the second grade.

>talk
What do you want to talk to?

>talk to house
You can’t talk to the white house!

>talk to myself
Talking to yourself is said to be a sign of impending mental collapse.

>damn
Such language in a high-class establishment like this!

>eat myself
Auto-cannibalism is not the answer.

>pick up mailbox
It is securely anchored.

>pick up house
You can’t be serious.

>pick up house
A valiant attempt.

>what is
What do you want to what?

>what is love
I don’t know the word “love”.

>kick mailbox
Kicking the small mailbox isn’t notably helpful.

>touch mailbox
Fiddling with the small mailbox doesn’t seem to work.

>open mailbox
Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet.

>take leaflet
Taken.

>read leaflet
“WELCOME TO ZORK!

ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No computer should be without one!”

>zork
At your service!

>xyzzy
A hollow voice says “Fool.”

>destroy leaflet
What do you want to destroy the leaflet with?

>destroy leaflet with hands
Trying to destroy the leaflet with a pair of hands is futile.

>drop
What do you want to drop?

>drop all except leaflet
It’s not clear what you’re referring to.

>drop myself
You don’t have the you.

>drop leaflet
Dropped.

>say “hello”
Hello.

>say “hello”
Good day.

>say “hello”
Goodbye.

>say “hello”
Nice weather we’re having.

>listen to myself
The you makes no sound.

>take myself
How romantic!

>win
Naturally!

>lose
Preposterous!

>mumble
You’ll have to speak up if you expect me to hear you!

>yell
Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

>repent
It could very well be too late!

>find myself
You’re around here somewhere…

>count myself
You have lost your mind.

>look at myself
That’s difficult unless your eyes are prehensile.

>smell myself
It smells like a you.

>damn myself
Insults of this nature won’t help you.

>don’t
I don’t know the word “don’t”.

>say “goodbye”
Nothing happens.

>quit
Your score is 0 (total of 350 points), in 75 moves.
This gives you the rank of Beginner.
Do you wish to leave the game? (Y is affirmative?): >y
***END OF SESSION***

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

I recently had the opportunity to interview Milton Bradley. No, not that Milton Bradley, though there is a board game connection. I happened to stumble across Milt’s site, where he talks about the benefits of the ancient board game of Go, why he finds it far superior to chess, and how he taught it to hundreds of kids in an experimental after school program.

Perhaps most interesting to me was his claim that many of the world’s biggest problems are caused by poor decisions resulting from undeveloped reasoning skills, and that we can actually make progress towards solving them by learning this game. I couldn’t pass up the chance to ask him a few questions.

Hunter: First things first. What is reasoning, and why is it important?

Milt: Wikipedia says: “Reasoning is the cognitive process of looking for reasons, beliefs, conclusions, actions or feelings.” I prefer to think of it more simply, as “the logical mental process through which one arrives at answers to real world problems.”

My own definition appears in the Preface to my autobiography. [Bottom of the post]

Hunter: Don’t schools already teach reasoning? Maybe not explicitly as a subject in its own right, but don’t we pick it up along the way? And if not, then what is the purpose of formal education?

Milt: No, absolutely not! The emphasis in the schools is primarily on facts and the application of formulas to the solution of problems with exact solutions (e.g. math and the sciences). The vital subject of decision making in messy real world situations is really never addressed.

Hunter: You say that a full solution to the problem would require that schools teach reasoning, starting in pre-school and continuing throughout one’s entire academic career. Noting that this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, you suggest an alternative partial solution – teaching the strategy board game of Go, which can start right now.

Most people in the West have never heard of Go. I had barely heard of it until recently, and while I’m beginning to gain an appreciation for it, I know I’m far from really getting it. So I’m sure you’ve encountered a lot of people who are skeptical of your ambitious claim. Tell us, how can a board game play an important role in solving the world’s problems?

Milt: In terms of learning the process of situational appraisal and then deciding upon an appropriate strategy and the specific tactics with which to implement it, the process in Go is much like that involved in solving real world problems. So mastering the former process theoretically should help learning it in the latter, but there remains the difficult problem of skill transference from the neat, clearly defined realm of the Go board to the messy, immensely complex real world (especially considering its emotional implications). So whether or not my inference in this regard will prove correct is currently unknown.

Hunter: In the U.S., we play board games with a large element of luck, such as Monopoly, Life, and Sorry (to say nothing of roulette, the lottery, and Super Bowl squares). Eurogames, such as The Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, and Imperial, require much more thought and planning. And in Asia, they play Go and games resembling chess.

Does this tell us something about the different cultures, or am I reading too much into it?

Milt: Hard to be sure, although that’s a reasonable inference. But that’s a possibly unknowable question about historical origins which is almost entirely irrelevant to the key issue of what we do with and about the games we now play.

Hunter: I’m very interested in brain plasticity, the ability of our neurons to adapt to new experiences, an ability that decreases with age. I don’t think it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but let’s face it, some tricks are much easier for young dogs. Perfect pitch is a good example; anyone is probably inherently capable of it, but if you don’t speak a tonal language or receive musical training very early, the window closes forever.

It seems that all the great Go players started learning from a very early age. Go Seigen was an exception, becoming possibly the greatest player of all time, despite not starting until the ripe old age of 9.

For people who are far older than 9, is it too late to learn Go, or reasoning?

Milt: A good question. It’s certainly harder to attain the highest levels of proficiency, and the main reason for that is that Go is a game of pattern recognition, and it seems that the brain’s ability to absorb and internalize patterns declines quickly as a child ages. And a key here that should not be overlooked is that these top players who began as small children only were able to do so because the patterns they were exposed to as young children were on a very high level, so what they learned “by osmosis” was correct. If their exposure had been to error full low level play the result would have been quite different!

Hunter: Forgive my playing devil’s advocate, but they already play Go in Japan, and that’s not exactly a utopia. Like any other country, they have their pros and cons (see my discussion with Akemi Gaines where we compared the U.S. and Japan, or my tongue-in-cheek 10 Reasons America is Better Than Japan).

Is this because Go has been insufficient to fully develop reasoning in the Japanese, or because good reasoning isn’t enough?

Milt: Both! And because of the skill transference problem I alluded to earlier. It’s relatively easy to be objective in playing Go compared to the real world where all kinds of emotional issues intrude on the decision making process. As earlier noted, this is a key issue that must be addressed.

Hunter: Being smart isn’t considered cool. Any ideas on how to change that?

Milt: What you’re talking about is a quite temporary (and manifestly counterproductive) artifact of our current prevalent “pop” culture! Our society has enough problems that we aren’t currently coming near to solving for this sort of mass stupidity to continue indefinitely without sounding its own death knell! So this will either change sometime in the fairly near future or our survival prospects will be even dimmer than they already are.

Milt’s Go Page is filled with insightful articles about the benefits of Go and his experience with teaching it to kids after school for eight years. When I asked him to write a bio for this post, he provided the entire preface to his autobiography, so read on for more content!

In January 1943, age 15 years and 10 months, I graduated from the newly created Bronx High School of Science, then arguably the best high school in the entire United States. At the same time I was also an overweight, friendless, indifferent student who was seriously contemplating committing suicide! But on my 16th birthday only two months later, thru sheer force of will I overcame that negative thinking, and began to transform both mind and body to turn my life around.

As a result, I can look back today with pride at the creative output and epiphany of my “retirement” years, which have resulted in the writing of 8 books, 3 of which are in print and one that’s published FREE on the internet, all brought to fruition after the age of 75, with the last just this year at age 82! But I’m now also unquestionably in the twilight of my life, suffering from incurable, invariably fatal Acute Myeloid Leukemia, while my 88 year old wife has fallen victim to both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. But I soldier on despite those burdens, still writing, and still hoping to see my most significant work published. This autobiography is high in that category as is my novel The Vigilante Murders, but first and foremost is what I consider to be my most important work, Reasoning And Problem Solving, which is the result of some unique insights which I believe have made my life worth living and writing about.

The primary theme of this autobiography can be viewed as the story of my triumph of wit and will over adversity. But that’s an oft told tale, not infrequently by others who’ve had far more serious challenges to overcome than mine. So a reasonable reader might question why they should be interested in a rather detailed exposition of my life and its accompanying problems, trials and triumphs. The most straightforward answer is that I believe my story is intrinsically interesting! But even more important is that it lays out the intellectual substrate upon which my sometimes unique insights were generated.

This memoir begins with a brief look at my familial pre-history, then continues by relating the events and circumstances of my childhood that brought me to the devastating state of mind noted above, in which I was prepared to prematurely end my then still very young life. It then proceeds through my WWII Navy service and subsequent “GI Bill” education, meeting my wife and beginning my now 62 year long marriage, and the many, often traumatic professional and personal triumphs and tragedies that followed during my working career.

Among the most unusual and noteworthy of my many personal interfaces detailed herein were intimate daily contact with four individuals who made local and national front page headlines! The first of these occurred at Bronx Science, when for 3 years I sat at the next desk to Harold Brown, who later went on to become US Secretary Of The Air Force in The Johnson Defense and Secretary of Defense in the Carter Administration. Slightly more than a decade after that, I spent 4 years as a Quality Control Engineer at the RCA Receiving Tube Plant in Harrison, New Jersey, working daily with John Butenko, who soon after was unmasked, tried and convicted as the second most important Soviet spy ever in the US! Fast forward another decade or so to when I was supervising the redesign of the NYC Parking Violations Bureau’s computer system, when I spent year long daily working interface with PVB’s Deputy Director Geoffrey Lindenauer, who was soon thereafter exposed as a leading conspirator in their infamous scandal! And not too long after that, Eric Klein, who had been one of my personal programmer/analyst staff at the NYC DOT, was arrested and convicted as the largest counterfeiter of subway tokens in City history!

In attempting to establish a context in which an objective assessment of this autobiography is possible, I believe that it’s essential for the reader to consider some interesting facts. Even for those few in human history who have achieved great renown, the details of their daily lives all too often don’t offer much insight into the origins of their monumental achievements.

As a result, it’s reasonable to conclude that perhaps value in an autobiography shouldn’t be sought in the facts of the author’s life, but rather in the quality of the insights that his story generates in the reader. Or at least that’s what I try to convince myself of in attempting to justify this effort.

To really appreciate the uniqueness of my insights, it would help greatly if the reader understands (and hopefully agrees with) my most important premise – that most of the world’s myriad serious problems on the personal, interpersonal, group, enterprise, national, and even international level result from a single failing – an inability to adequately Reason objectively, unfettered by biases, prejudices, loyalties, and the “canned” prescriptions and proscriptions imposed by authority figures and institutions.

Although this precept seems to violate the principle that “Simplistic solutions to complex problems are almost invariably wrong,” I believe that this case constitutes one of the rare exceptions!

To be sure that there’s no ambiguity concerning what I mean by Reasoning, I conceive it to consist of:
1. The ability to objectively perceive and analyze an often complex problem situation, and then
2. Arrive logically and unemotionally at the course(s) of action required to best resolve the significant points of difficulty and/or contention involved.

When I arrived at this key realization of the almost universal difficulty most people experience in objectively solving real world problems, I believed that I had uncovered one of the central impediments to human progress throughout its history, and one whose conquest would rank among the most significant. And I also somewhat naively expected that this insight couldn’t possibly be one uniquely developed by me, but that surely some great thinker had long since both addressed this transcendentally important problem and solved it! But I discovered to my great surprise that not only was that not true, I was unable to find any reference to the fact that anyone had heretofore explicitly acknowledged that it was a even significant issue worthy of attention!

If this seems strange or improbable, I refer the reader to a bit of history in the field of mathematics by way of analogy (recognizing that, by their very nature, all analogies are necessarily imperfect). In this (possibly apocryphal) story, when John Napier, then an unknown Scot, published his treatise on Logarithms in 1614, it was so revolutionary that the head of the prestigious British Mathematical Society made a special trip from cosmopolitan London to semi-rural Scotland to meet him. As the story goes, on finally meeting Napier, the great man from London sat for perhaps a full half hour simply staring at him before finally saying something to the effect that “How can it be that this marvelous idea (of logarithms) escaped the best minds in all of humanity for thousands of years, yet was finally discovered by someone as ordinary as you?” I, of course, make no claim to intellectual equality with either Napier himself or his accomplishment, but mention this anecdote to emphasize my favorite dictum:

The validity and worth of an idea are unrelated to:
- Who proposed it.
- How long it has been believed.
- The number and importance of those who believe it.
- The vehemence with which they profess that belief.

History is replete with instances of the entire world believing something that was later acknowledged to be manifestly false (“The world is flat”), followed by a single man proposing an idea completely at variance with then conventional, accepted thinking, and ultimately prevailing. Galileo is perhaps the best known and most often cited example of this, and Einstein is another. But they were both operating in the world of physical science, where absolute proofs are possible. In the realm of ideas in which I’m operating no such absolute proofs exist, only opinion. Despite that, perhaps, just perhaps, it’s possible that, despite the uniqueness and novelty of my insight about Reasoning, I really might have discovered something that’s worth listening to!

Although I certainly wasn’t aware of it at the time, in retrospect it now seems that creating this new Reasoning paradigm was the goal toward which all of my training and life experiences had been pointing. How interestingly I describe those experiences and whether or not any of that really provides the reader with useful insights are crucial issues that only you can properly judge for yourself after you’ve perused what follows! Hopefully the result will satisfy us both.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

You’re not going to learn any martial arts techniques, but you’ll learn how to mentally prepare yourself to avoid danger or get yourself out of it. And that can be much more important.

As Lori says, ”Thinking like a black belt means thinking ahead, wearing a wary eye, and presenting yourself to the world in a way that makes you less visible and less desirable to the criminals and predators who populate your life.”

Her target market appears to be women and teens, but this information is applicable to anyone.

I know a guy who has absolutely no trouble defending himself. He was once attacked by a guy with a knife, and not only did he escape injury, but he broke the guy’s neck.

However, he didn’t know how to think like a black belt. When walking through an area that wasn’t even considered particularly dangerous, he was lured into an alley by a homeless woman who called him. It was a setup, and two guys robbed him at gunpoint. He wasn’t hurt and only lost $40, but thinking like a black belt would have let him avoid the whole thing.

Thinking like a black belt could also reduce the number of fatalities in something like the Virginia Tech shooting. The details aren’t clear, but by some accounts, there were long pauses during which the shooter was reloading. He would have been vulnerable during these times, but fear kept anyone from taking action.

Sure, it’s easy to say what people should have done in hindsight, but it’s very different when you’re actually in the middle of it. That’s the point. When your adrenaline is rushing in a life and death situation, it’s not easy to think straight. That’s why you need to learn how to control your adrenaline ahead of time.

Your inner warrior is ready to be awakened. Be safe, not sorry.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

You’ve probably heard about Stephen Covey’s classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. A great book, but what could be 11 times better?* How about The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People?

This free ebook is a joint venture masterminded by Mark Foo, involving myself and 47 other personal development bloggers. The collaborative nature means a variety of different voices, but they’re all focused on one thing: how ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.

48 top notch bloggers. 77 essential success traits. 233 captivating pages. Free with your email opt-in.

* OK, maybe not 11 times better, but you get the idea.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

Here’s an old post that I’ve had sitting around unpublished for two years. With the 24 premiere tonight, it seemed like a good time to put it out there.

First Blood, the first of the Rambo movies, is about a troubled Vietnam war hero trying to get readjusted to life in America. He’s just learned that the only other survivor from his unit has died from cancer due to Agent Orange exposure, but he gets no sympathy from a sheriff who doesn’t like drifters. What lessons might we take away from this?

1. Don’t be too quick to judge people.

Sheriff Teasle makes it clear that his town doesn’t want people like Rambo because of the way he looks. He didn’t consider that Rambo might have issues that for now are more important than getting a haircut or cleaning his jacket. All the ensuing conflict would have been avoided if Teasle hadn’t decided to make an enemy for no good reason. As Rambo said, “All I wanted was something to eat.”

2. Sometimes what you say is less important than how you say it.

Rambo defends his actions by saying “They drew first blood, not me.” Of course, this is just a tough guy way of saying “But Colonel, they started it!”

3. Know when you’re outmatched.

Colonel Trautman’s advice to Teasle was that instead of sending a bunch of poorly trained cops into the woods against an expert in guerrilla warfare, they should just let him go and arrest him later when no one would get hurt. Teasle repeatedly ignores this, always thinking that somehow his next attempt would be different.

4. When you get caught up in something, it’s easy to lose perspective.

Although something may make perfect sense to people right in the middle of it, sometimes an outside observer can see how ridiculous it is. Like how Colonel Trautman sums up Rambo’s crime: “Vagrancy, wasn’t it? That’s gonna look real good on his gravestone in Arlington: Here lies John Rambo, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, survivor of countless incursions behind enemy lines. Killed for vagrancy in Jerkwater, USA.”

5. Some job skills don’t transfer well.

Rambo found that his extensive training was useless when he came back from Vietnam, and he wasn’t able to find something else he could do nearly as well. He said: “Back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment. Back here I can’t even hold a job parking cars!” A tough problem, but maybe the solution is to become a Career Renegade.

6. Sometimes it’s best to just let it go.

Sheriff Teasle refused to give up on his maniacal desire to catch Rambo, who had never done anything wrong in the first place. This resulted in the accidental death of one cop, many injuries, and major property damage. Still, he refused to back off, even when he acknowledged that it could cost him his life. These are the times when you need to walk away (and solve the problem in a better way).

7. War is bad.

Of course we know this, but usually just as statistics in the news. It’s very different when you actually see the results. You have to feel sorry for people who consider themselves lucky to survive with post-traumatic stress disorder.

8. Sometimes the movie is better than the book.

For some reason there’s a widespread assumption that the book has to be better than the movie. I don’t think that’s always true, and here’s a good example. The book was much more violent and portrayed Rambo as a psychotic killer. In the movie, Rambo was a sympathetic character who went on to become Ronald Reagan’s hero.

9. Be prepared to seize opportunities.

After Kirk Douglas gave up the role of Colonel Trautman over a script dispute, Richard Crenna stepped in after filming had already begun. Although he had already been in 28 movies, this would become his most famous role. You never know when your big break will come, so you have to keep your eyes open.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It