Toluu

The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek and Lifestyle Design Blog

Two Short Videos - How and Why to Be Unreasonable, The Art of TweakingYesterday

Just take a right at…. huh? (Street signs in Wales)

In the wee morning hours of September, I took my first trip to Wales to experience The Do Lectures, which is held in tents in the Cardigan wilderness.

Not only did I get to sleep under deer skins in a high-end geodesic dome (not kidding), I got to dropkick my brain reading Welsh and drink the best peppermint tea I’ve ever had. Fun times indeed. Even water buffalo came to the party (again, not kidding). I put some pics at the end of this post.

My 15-20-minute presentation — the first video below — was titled “How and Why to Be Unreasonable.” The Do Lectures have a clear environmental focus, but I’ve never done anything large in conservation or enviro-activism, so I decided to explore more universal principles of doing big things.

Here’s the thumbnail description:

“Case studies of how to think big and test assumptions to accomplish the impossible, whether launching a #1 bestselling product, setting a world record, or changing the world”…

The blog post I mention at the end is

Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work for YouOctober 3

The sky is falling!

Ever since the media’s Chicken Little response to the tremors in the financial markets, I’ve felt like shouting from the rooftops “now you know how it feels to be an entrepreneur!”

I just lost 9% overnight?! Fill a bathtub and get the toaster. I’ve had enough.
Wait… I actually gained 13% while in the bathroom? I’m f**king Superman!

This is a guest post on capitalizing on — vs. countering — the “entrepreneur’s disease” (manic depression) through 4 cyclical stages. This is done by pairing appropriate activities to specific — though not necessarily positive — emotional states…

The author is Cameron Herold, former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, whose professional resume includes:

-Helping build revenues from $2 Million to $105 Million in 6 years (no debt or outside shareholders)
-Building a PR team that landed more than 5,000 stories in those same 6 years
-Hiring 220 people in 4 months
-Leading the sale, branding, and integration of 450+ franchise locations.
-Teaching his psychological theories at the Entrepreneurial Masters Program at MIT.

I first saw this presentation at an Entepreneurs’ Organization (EO) event in Omaha prior to my successful Warren Buffett quest at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.

I encourage you all to read this, especially with the fear mongering that is just getting started.

Rethinking the Office - Dutch Design (Plus: Pics of My Home Office)September 30

Interpolis - unconventional but damn effective. (photo: jsigharas)

Through simple redesign of workspaces, Interpolis of Holland increased productivity 20%, and sick leave has dropped from 9% to 2.5%. Last but not least, their new design also brings in 90,000 visitors a year.

How was it done?

How do you create a Results-Only-Work-Environment (ROWE) for yourself or a company — and increase profits — by tweaking your surroundings?

The following is an exclusive excerpt from the new German hit “Morgen komm ich später rein” (Rough idiomatic translation: I’ll be coming in later tomorrow.), translated for you all by author and fellow reader Markus Albers, who also interviewed me for German Vanity Fair. Danke, Markus!

###

Thanks to a sophisticated office structure, the headquarters of Interpolis insurance in the Dutch town of Tilburg has freed up 51 percent of their wo

Why Language Classes Don’t Work: How to Cut Classes and Double Your Learning Rate (Plus: Madrid Update)September 22

Coffee shops vs. classrooms - who wins? (Photo: eye2eye)

This is one of several articles planned as supplements to the original “How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour.” This piece focuses on acquisition of new material; for reactivating “forgotten” languages and vocab, I recommend also reading “How to Resurrect Your High School Spanish… or Any Language.”

Let us begin…

From the academic environments of Princeton University (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian) and the Middlebury Language Schools (Japanese), to the disappointing results observed as a curriculum designer at Berlitz International (Japanese, English), I have sought for more than 10 years to answer the question to a simple question: why do most language classes simply not work?

After testing the waters with more than 20 languages and achieving conversational and written fluency in 6, I have identified several cardinal sins that, when fixed, can easily cut the time to fluency by 50-80%…

1. Teachers are viewed as saviors when materials are actually the determining factor.

Teachers are merely conduits for the material and sequencing.

By analogy, it is better to have a decent cook with excellent easy-to-follow recipe than a great cook with terrible recipe. It is the material that will restrict or elevate the teacher, and a good teacher forced to follow bad material will hinder, not hasten, learning progress. I don’t sit in on classes or otherwise consider a school until I’ve reviewed both hand-out materials and text books.

Judge materials before you judge teachers, and no matter what, do not begin with classes or texts that solely use the target language (e.g., Spanish textbooks in Spanish). This approach reflects a school’s laziness and willingness to hire monolingual teachers, not the result of their search for the ideal method.

2. Classes move as slowly as the slowest student.

Seek a school with daily homework assignments that eliminate—effectively fire—students from the class who don’t perform.

The school should have a strict curriculum that doesn’t bend for a minority of the class who can’t cope. Downgrading students is only possible in larger schools with at least five proficiency levels for separate classes—beginner, intermediate, and advanced is woefully inadequate. Students can only be moved if the jumps between classes are relatively small and there are a sufficient number of students at each level for the school to justify paying separate teachers.

At the Hartnackschule in Berlin, Germany, where I studied for 10 weeks after evaluating a dozen schools, there are at least 20 different skill levels.

3. Conversation can be learned but not taught.

Somewhat like riding a bike, though unfortunately not as permanent, language fluency is more dependent on practicing the right things than learning the right things. The rules (grammar) can be learned through materials and classes, but the necessary tools (vocabulary and idiomatic usage) will come from independent study and practice in a native environment.

I achieved fluency in German in 10 weeks using a combination of grammatical practice at the Hartnackschule (four hours daily for the first month, two hours daily for the second) and daily two-person language exchanges with students of English.

Grammar can be learned with writing exercises in a class of 20, whereas “conversation” cannot be learned in anything but a realistic one-on-one environment where your brain is forced to adapt to normal speed and adopt coping mechanisms such as delaying tactics (“in other words,” “let me think for a second,” etc.).

Separate grammar from conversation practice. I recommend choosing one school for grammar and several native books or comics to identify sticking points, which are then discussed in one-one-one language exchanges, where your partner provides examples of usage and does not explain rules.

Getting into trouble in Greek and Chinese in Athens with the help of Stefanos Kofopoulos, ouzo, and wine.

4. Teachers are often prescriptive instead of descriptive.

Many teachers take it upon themselves to be arbiters of taste and linguistic conservationists, refusing to explain slang and insisting on correct but essentially unused grammatical constructions (e.g., “with whom were you speaking?” versus “who were you speaking to?”).

Progress will be faster when you find a teacher who describes rather than prescribes usage. They should be able and willing to explain, for example, how Konjunktiv I is generally used in place of Konjunktiv II in German, even though it is technically incorrect. They should also be able to save you time by explaining what to practice based on actual frequency of use, not inclusion in a grammar text. For example, the simple past is almost always used in place of the perfect tense in Argentina, but some teachers still spend equal time on both.

To avoid those who act as defenders of language purity, it is often easier to target 20-30-year old teachers and those who are good at teaching inductively (providing examples to explain principles). Ask them to explain a few common colloquial grammatical constructions before signing up.

In conclusion—the learner is the problem (what?)

The above sins certainly inhibit the speed of learning, but the principal problem is the learner his or herself, who—more often than not—uses classes as a substitute for, and not supplement to, real ego-crushing interaction.

Classes are easily used to infinitely postpone making the thousands of mistakes necessary to achieve fluency. In boxing, they say “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Well, in language learning, we could just as easily say that “everyone has the perfect conversation in mind until they speak to a real native.”

Don’t waste time on more than learning more than a handful of conjugations for primarily first-person singular (I) and second-person singular (you) in the past, present, and future tenses, along with common phrases that illustrate them. Throw in a few auxilaries (to want to V, to need to V, to like to V, etc.) and jump on a plane before learning any more of what you’ll just need to relearn anyway. Even after you land, you do not need more than two months of classes in-country, and remember that, like training wheels, the goal is get off of them as quickly as possible.

Don’t go to classes because you have no social network outside of class, or because you want the illusion of progress with a coddling teacher who understands your Tarzan attempts at her language. If you are taking classes because they are enjoyable, fine, but understand that you are better off spending time elsewhere.

Make it your goal to screw up as often as possible in uncontrolled environments. Explicitly ask friends to correct you and reward them with thanks and praise when they catch you spouting nonsense, particularly the small understandable mistakes. I was able to pass the Certificado de Espanol Avanzado, the most diffucult Spanish certification test in South America, in eight weeks, which is said to require near-native fluency and years of immersion. How? By following the above fixes and making more mistakes in eight weeks than most make in eight years.

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field,” or so said Physicist Niels Bohr. Luckily, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to use his advice. Choose schools carefully and then, once they’ve served their purpose, abandon them.

The real world is where mistakes are made, weaknesses are found, and fluency is achieved.

###

Some random videos:

A promo for bookstores in Spain. It’s not easy to suppress my Argentine accent.

How to Never Forget Anything AgainSeptember 17

Systems allow stress-free productivity without wasting mental RAM. (Photo: Fotopakismo)

The human brain is a wonderful thing, but it’s a bit faulty as a tool for remembering things. Luckily for us (and for our frazzled brains), technology has stepped in to help out.

With the proper habits and the right tools, you and your brain won’t have to remember a thing again.

There are a host of tech tools that can help with taking notes, managing projects and to-dos, and manage your email and calendar needs just fine. Though I’ll include the best choices below, these tools are just one piece of the puzzle. There are more elegant methods (ever scheduled something in Google Calendar via voicemail?)…

To really never have to remember a thing again, you have to combine a few tools in smart and comprehensive fashion, and even more important, you have to develop specific habits that will ensure that things don’t slip between the cracks … because the cracks just get bigger and bigger with more time and more data.

In this post I’ll look at some of the requirements of a “Never Forget Again” system, along with 4 key habits for using that system. I’ll include my setup, as well as some other tools you can use to develop your own setup.