Dream Interpretation, Learning and Emotional Intelligence

Did you dream last night? What did you dream about? Was it a good dream? Did you ever have a dream that was so vivid that you were absolutely sure within the dream itself that it was real? And which dreams from your past do you still remember today? Which one’s made the greatest impression on you? Do you remember any that did?

 

Researching for this post, I read a wide range of research papers offering different theories on dreams proposed by many eminent personalities in the world of Psychology, none less than Sigmund Freud himself. The links to the articles and material containing these theories are provided at the end of this post.

 

Yet despite so much thought and philosophy on this subject, the study of dreams and their meanings remains as elusive today as the cure to the common cold. Clearly, dreams are complex and may continue to elude us for some time yet. However, amongst all the material (and do bear in mind that people have studied and hypothesized about dreams probably since the birth of mankind whilst today, the formal study of dreams is also at the cutting edge of modern psychology), I could nevertheless, find no study that formally links emotional intelligence with dreams.

 

Furthermore, I feel that very little, if any, material is available which links Emotional Intelligence to the idea of viewing the brain as a highly complex relational database or databases; which effectively creates its own dreams in order to improve its own effectivity and understanding of the world and of different complex situations. Similarly, I'm sure there has been limited or no study of the idea that dreams serve the purpose of allowing us to make new and complex neural connections whilst we are asleep, which we later need as an absolute necessity in order to operate and function normally whilst we are awake, during what we might call our ‘conscious’ hours. But, that’s a very important point, because I believe that dreams form the vital link between the conscious and the subconscious mind. I also believe that dreams go to the very heart of defining what the subconscious really is and its myriad of vital functions which keep our minds healthy and functioning optimally.

If such a study of the mind were performed (based on the idea that the brain is very much like a very complex relational database), then this study would involve an investigation of how dreams contribute to the creation of neural networks similar to the data connections between a complex relational database and this would involve a collaboration between technologists and neuroscientists which would be unlikely. Nevertheless, because of the complexity involved, I feel this is an area of research that could really value from further investigation. I also believe that no one has ever proposed a model based on the data / network model of the human brain, simply because no-one thought of it in this way. So because I have thought of it and as a data specialist, who can bring a special perspective to the subject, I decided to create this post, in order to share this unique perspective with others. I would be very interested hear the thoughts of researchers or others who have an opinion on this subject.

 

So let’s get to the point. What function do I believe do dreams have in our lives and how do they contribute to our waking life? This will also go some way towards explaining what dreams are, if we look at our minds from a relational database model perspective.

 

In one short paragraph, I believe that dreams are a way for our minds to create scenarios and situations which are not normally or physically possible in the real world, allowing us to visualize such scenarios so that we can ‘test’ our emotional responses or reactions to those scenarios and how we feel about them. In this way, I believe dreams allow us to make decisions by creating neural connections (supporting my theory of ‘Cloud Logic’) between disparate and abstract subjects. These decisions regarding how we ‘feel’ (hence the connection to emotional intelligence and the subconscious mind) allow our minds to verify whether or not a new connection is viable. Once the connection has been verified, in the same way that a relational database may check if data from different fields of a table is related and can be linked, the neural connection becomes ‘approved’ and is thus allowed to become a permanent connection. This then becomes part of whom we are (effectively, our personality) and impacts upon our outlook and opinions about related subjects when we encounter them in the real world. This in turn, affects how we respond to ‘real life’ situations and scenarios. In this simple way, neural connections formed during our dreams play an absolutely essential role in how the mind learns and retains information and forms the traits, ideas and opinions of the externally visible person, from within.

 

I believe that attempting to interpret the visual imagery of dreams as a set of predetermined images or topics, each with a singular universally applicable meaning (such as seeing yourself flying in a dream, often interpreted as someone who may have a general feeling of superiority over others) is completely the incorrect approach to gaining an understanding of the meaning of dreams. This is because not everyone’s emotional response to the idea of flying is always the same. Whilst some may view the idea of flying above the world or above others as a visual representation of being superior to, or above the petty affairs of other people, others, who may be absolutely terrified of flying may interpret that same dream image in the same way that a claustrophobic person would feel being trapped inside a small elevator or room – that is to say, with absolute abject terror. Meanwhile, someone else may interpret the same image as a visual depiction of freedom, elation or even an elevation to Heaven. And then again, the notion of Heaven itself is a completely subjective and personal matter, with each of us having a completely different view of what Heaven must be like, so the whole story changes again depending on the person experiencing the dream.  

 

With so much room for subjectivity, how then can we say that all dream images could possibly have the same meaning for all? It is simply not possible, because our emotional selves are made up of the billions and trillions of neural connections that have formed in our minds over our lifetimes and each of these in turn, has been formed as a result of billions and trillions of other factors, such as our upbringing, our religious views, our parents, our friends, our work, our environment, our interests, where we live, what we eat, what we don’t eat, our fears, our likes, our dislikes, our relationships with others, which interactions we had with the opposite sex, what we did last Tuesday, and so on and so on……….the list is virtually infinite.

 

It is this incredible complexity and almost infinite diversity in the specific individual lives of each and every one of us, that explains why each of us has a different reaction to every situation and that dreams, instead of giving us the same meaning for the same image every time, in fact are more a way for our minds to test our emotional response to unique images created by our minds, which are personal just to us. A simple analogy of this is a bit like the cravings that pregnant women get. Whilst one woman may suddenly crave a banana pizza with anchovies and pickles, another may fancy chicken wings dipped in raspberry jam (a bit extreme I know, I am just a man after all). The possible reason for these bizarre cravings is that each woman’s body is telling her – without her consciously realizing it – exactly what her body needs to meet her nutritional requirements at that specific time. So maybe there is something in the bananas or the raspberry jam that the woman needs to keep her body in nutritional balance at that specific time. Similarly, with dreams, I believe we create very personal images that are specific to us, based on billions of factors, again each specific to us and then, based on our existing emotional framework, we assess our emotional response to the dream image, in order to accept or reject the formation of new neural connections and just like the cravings of pregnant women, dreams serve to give us images which are very specific to us and our lives at any particular point in time, which we need and apply exclusively to our specific needs and circumstances. And so becometh the man. 

 

Dreams allow us to test our emotional reactions to scenarios which, if for no reason other than the simple laws of physics, are not normally possible in reality. The dream serves the purpose of creating these scenarios, these impossible worlds for us to view as a third party and to then reflect upon our emotional reaction to them, basically by acting as an emotional processing center. The truth is that for the proper functioning of the brain and for it to understand the outside world, it needs to ‘step’ out of itself and see things as an outsider, effectively, as a third party. Our minds need that third party reaction, because we cannot possibly convey every thought, every feeling, every nuance of emotion externally, to another person or to an external source for processing and reflection, so nature provides us this mechanism for us to be able to do it within ourselves. (It’s not too dissimilar to other autonomous bodily capabilities, which we can perform without the need of others, if you know what mean). In this way, we can say that dreams allow us the ultimate capability for self-reflection. Even if we designed such a capability, we could not come up with something better than what has simply been given to us naturally and for free by God or through the process of evolution (depending on your belief system). In fact, one of the reasons that some people talk to themselves is a visible symptom of this type of ‘third party’ reflection, where the person steps out of themselves to seek an objective opinion from one no other than themselves. It’s a funny notion, but true.  

 

Based on this, it would be a very interesting study to see if those people who have very deep, highly intuitive and highly communicative relationships, where emotions are often and easily shared, tend to dream less frequently and less vividly than people who don’t have such relationships. Because clearly, those who do have such relationships, would already have the third party reflection available to them, hence reducing the need for them to dream so much in order to self-reflect, thus rendering them ‘lazy dreamers’ as I like to call them J

    

An interesting point to note here is that there are also some people who say they never dream. So how do these people form new neural connections? Well firstly, I believe that it is unlikely that they do not dream at all. More likely is that they are not able to remember having dreamt, but nevertheless, having dreamt anyway. The emotional centres of the brain controlled by the subconscious need some way to analyse the vast amounts of information that enters the mind every microsecond of every day, and I believe one of the absolutely essential roles that sleep plays in our lives is to give the mind a period of complete external sensory shut down, so that no more data or information can get in, thus allowing the mind time to process the data which has already been assimilated during the day or in the past (hence, why we dream about past events or people too). Dreams, which occur during sleep, work together with sleep in deciding how that data is to be interpreted, understood and whether or not it needs to be retained in the form of a neural connection or connections. Hence those who claim not to have any dreams may still be dreaming, so that they have a way of assessing and interpreting disparate and abstract information streams via emotional reactions, however, they simply may not be dreaming in the conventional way that most of us understand and recognise. Thus, instead of having the conventional visual images, which we all know to be dreams, those who don’t dream may have other ways of assessing emotional responses instead. These could be audible dreams for example, or dreams based on other sensory attributes other than visual ones. As these are not visual dreams they may not be as easy to remember (because visual images are a very powerful memory tool). Hence, such people are still able to process information and generate emotional responses to the information, without the need for visual images to prompt the reaction.

 

If we consider the above ideas as possible explanations for the almost infinite variances in dreams and dream types for different individuals, then clearly, one cannot say that objects in dreams mean the same to all people. Furthermore, one cannot even define what a dream is by applying the same definition to all people. So where does that leave us? Well, in fact, the only thing we can say with any degree of surety, is that the process of formation of neural connections requires a subconscious rearranging of the mind during a period when all sensory perception is switched off (or at its minimal operation). This ‘special time’ allows the individual’s brain to sort and organise existing data by assessing one’s emotional responses to it and it is this whole process which we call a dream, in whichever form that the dream may manifest itself. So in some way we can define a dream as an inner self-assessment and organisation process, not too dissimilar to a relational database defrag operation, only far more complex.

 

I read recently (see ‘You Are Not So Smart’ by David McRaney) that the human brain is effectively two brains in one. The left brain takes in information as does the right brain. At some point, that information is then exchanged and re-processed and re-assessed by the opposite hemisphere, almost like an information verification process. It’s a bit like two accountants doing the accounts for a company. One accountant uses ‘Sage’ accounting software whilst the other uses ‘Excel’. They are both doing the accounts for the same company. Then, the accountants exchange their results with each other to see if the other accountant gets the same results using his accounting package. By doing this, they effectively consolidate and reconcile the accounts. Similarly, I believe the two sides (hemispheres) of the human mind work in the same way. Physiologically speaking, the connections between the two are clearly visible and well documented, so this is a hypothesis based on solid evidence. However, what is a pure hypothesis, which I believe could value immensely from further study and investigation, is that during the dream state, one of the essential functions of the dream is to carry out the left / right reconciliation, whereby the left side with its particular infrastructure and specialist anatomy takes information from the right side to understand and interpret that information in its own ‘special way, whilst the right side does exactly the same, taking information processed initially by the left side and then re-interpreting and re-assessing that information with its specialist perception and structure and anatomy, the two sides thus forming a complete and holistic view of the world over time. A sleep study to see if there is significantly increased neurotransmitter activity between the specific neurons that connect the left and right brain during dream sleep would go some way towards proving this hypothesis as valid. Furthermore, I believe this may go some way towards explaining why dreams are so very unusual and show us images and realities that are so different to real life, because somewhere in the middle, the two sides create a reality directly within the mind which cannot possibly exist in the real world and then carry out an ‘emotional’ reconciliation to make that reality fit within the infrastructure of the mind. All of this of course, also goes a very long way towards explaining my theory of ‘Cloud Logic’ and the ‘Relational Data Model of theHuman Brain’. And this is where I really want to go with this whole study of dreams. (See other Blogs and YouTube).

 

Thus in conclusion, In order to understand the meaning of an object in a dream (dreaming of an animal, a place, a specific person or group of people, a situation, a building, or a concept or idea which one might have ‘seen’ in a dream) one has to understand what that object means specifically to the person who dreams it just like a field in a database. That field is linked to billions of other fields each specific to the individual, just like a very complex relational database. I firmly believe that in our minds, these connections are verified by our emotional responses to the object or set of objects as represented by the images presented to the dreamer within the dream. In this way, the mind is constantly asking questions such as ‘what is my emotional or subconscious connection with the object? How do I feel about it, relate to it and respond to it?’ This question-response behaviour of our ‘internal’ relational database forms the basis, I believe, of emotional intelligence’. Once we see a dream in this way, only then can one 'translate' the dream correctly and accurately. Furthermore, I believe that such a way of looking at our minds gives us a deep insight into neuroplasticity, or the flexibility of our minds to learn and change as a result of experience. (Please see the link).

 

To draw an analogy, let’s consider horoscopes. It is impossible to group people by horoscope and generalise their behaviour traits simply by looking at their star sign. A more accurate interpretation would only be ascertained by analysing their exact date and time of birth down to the minute. Only then could you make a truly accurate prediction about the person’s future (assuming you believe in the ability of astrology to predict one’s future in the first place). So it is with dreams. We cannot possibly generalise about dream imagery without considering the specific person and what that imagery might mean to them in the first place. (Effectively, this means that we have to accurately map the fields in the person’s internal relational database first, before just generally considering what their database is outputting, because if we do this, the results will be completely nonsensical). Expanding on the subject of horoscopes, would it not be more accurate to take the exact time of conception rather than the exact time of birth? But I digress....... 

 

Moving further from what has been discussed above, the mind, in assimilating data and viewing possibilities, permutations, connections and probable outcomes creates its own ‘Logic Cloud’. This cloud is a fluid and constantly evolving entity, naturally seeking connections where logic dictates that there should be a connection. Again, the actual logic of whether or not a neural connection between two objects could and should be possible is completely dependent on the logic structure of the individual. And again, because each individual is completely different to another, so the logic, whilst having similarities with others, will also be completely unique and different to the logic of others. In this way, rather than simply describing the subconscious mind, the cloud is the subconscious mind. The cloud is fed by data assimilated by our senses which goes straight into the subconscious (as it may not even be usable by the conscious mind) and in most cases may not even be noticed by the person who thus may not even realize that their subconscious has assimilated any information or data. For example, how many times have you just ‘felt’ that something is right or wrong, without having any clue as to why you feel it and later on finding that your feelings were absolutely 100% correct? One might call this intuition. But I am convinced that not all of this intuition comes only from what we are born with. I believe that a lot of it comes from the information that has been assimilated and processed by the subconscious, then partly passed through the dream filter and other neural processing methods of the brain, only to eventually re-emerge as an intuitive instinct about something that ‘feels’ right or wrong when the real life situation arises. The processing of this ‘secret’ and hidden data is the basis of my ideas on dreams, which ultimately form one major constituent of how all information is processed and used by the subconscious mind, ultimately forming the person you are.  I believe the subconscious mind performs many of the above functions during dreaming and this might also explain pre-cognitive dreams, where disparate information is processed and one possible permutation, outcome or interpretation appears as a dream and once in a while, the prediction or the possible outcome is the same as what happens in reality and may even be perceived by the person as a feeling of deja-vu.

 

How could we use this understanding to improve our lives and the lives of others? Could we use it to improve the world of business for example? Or maybe we could improve the way we learn or memorise things. Maybe we could use this to somehow help solve major issues such as Global warming or to further fine tune our minds to solve major challenges such as the conquest of deep space or to find cures to major diseases. The possibilities are so many I cannot possibly list them all here, however for sure there is much to be achieved by considering how we may use our understanding of how we learn and form neural connections (through dreams and otherwise) to reverse the process from being a passive one to a pro-active one by actively inputting into our dreams and thus hyper-intensifying the speed with which the human race learns. I wonder, could we switch or reverse somehow the passivity of the subconscious by maybe creating scenarios and watching others’ reflection on them in gaming worlds, or simulated realities for example? Could we apply a technique or methodology perhaps from which we can value in wider spheres? I believe these ideas need serious consideration for the good of mankind, for we cannot possibly hope to overcome our challenges if our minds are simply not yet capable of it. We need to fast track it and make it less of a hit and miss approach.


 

It is the only way that we can fast track our civilization to become a super civilization envisaged by so many Sci-Fi writers and Visionaries. This of course, ties in closely with the idea that our existence is merely a creation of our perception, or put more simply, we create the world around us. Thus If we can change what we perceive and somehow make that a collective exercise across civilizations, we can change the world.


Here are some cool links:


Einstein: The Most Emotionally Intelligent Man in History.......


I Challenge Freud!!!! His interpretation of Dreams here is illogical.......


About.com: Various theories on dreams, none with my explanation.......


Alan Lightman: Einstein's Dreams.......


Frontiers: Dreaming as mind wandering.......


Forbes: Intelligence is overrated......


UCS: The Emotionally Intelligent Robot.......


Michael Lazerow: Wierdo's Outperform Normals.......


Psycholawlogy: Emotional Intelligence in the Legal World.......


Above All, Be Extraordinary, Because it's Bloody Boring Being Ordinary!

How to Learn Anything Fast using 'Cloud Logic'!

How many times have you tried over and over again to do something (it could be anything from fixing something in the home or trying to resolve a technical problem with your phone or computer) only to find that it simply does not work no matter what you try? So eventually, you decide to just walk away from it all and try again another day. Then, you go back to the problem some time or some days later and suddenly you see a new perspective you missed before, you try it and, hey presto, you resolve the problem in no time at all!

So what happened during the time in-between? What changed the second time around that suddenly made your vision clearer and gave you a fresh perspective on the problem, which then enabled you to solve it? Apart from the regular explanations like 'the second time around your mind was fresher' or 'this time around, you had less urgent matters to deal with, so you were able to focus better', I personally think there are far more powerful forces quietly at work behind the scenes within your subconscious mind, which are not given the credit they deserve for enabling you to resolve the problem second time around. I believe, your subconscious mind is creating connections which you don’t know about J

I explain this phenomenon - and nobody can say that it hasn’t happened to them, because it happens to all of us - as my theory of 'Cloud Logic'. Yes readers, you heard it here first (or at least as applied to the functioning of the mind and Emotional Intelligence anyway).

Now in order to explain how 'Cloud Logic' works and how it helps you solve problems and learn unexpected things over time, we first must consider the essential workings of the mind. Here, we consider what is genearlly known by science today, and this is that the brain processes information by transmitting and distributing electrical and chemical signals across neurons which are essentially, specialized nerve cells transmitting impulses across neural networks. Such networks or groupings of neurons allow the connecting of disparate information where a suitable connection might exist or be feasible between the information (as I mention in another post, this is not too dissimilar to the workings of a relational database, in which related fields containing linked information creates networks that manipulate data; resulting in various outputs from the database; except that neural networks are infinitely faster, more efficient and more complex than any man made relational database - See my video on 'Relational Data Model of the Human Brain below). Thus, as the neurons make more networks and these networks connect to each other where feasible or logical connections exist, so the capability of the subconscious mind increases in being able to make decisions and learn about many varied and different subjects. 

 

To envisage this on a practical level let us for example, say that you are experienced in wood carving. For many years, you have learned to feel the smooth curvature of wood forms and to 'see' with the touch of your hands, what feels like a beautiful sculpture to you, even before you start carving. You will have learnt to know how good quality a certain piece of wood is and how well you will be able to carve the form you want from it not only by looking at it, but just by the smell of it, or the color or the sound it makes when you tap it. In truth, you probably will not even be able to quantify exactly which of your senses were involved in making a decision about whether a piece of wood will 'work' for you. All you know is that you just 'know'. This is the essence of emotional intelligence, where critical decisions are made based on the neural connections and deep rooted networks created when the emotional centers of your brain are stimulated over time towards a certain subject or aspect. Now, this is in no way a conscious act; it lies purely in the realms of the subconscious mind.

Intelligence itself, by one definition, can be considered to be the ability of the mind to select between trillions of potential outcomes or possibilities, the one possibility that is optimal, a bit like a very complex and sophisticated difference engine or computer. But what separates us from computers is the aspect of emotional intelligence, whereby the neural networks of the emotional brain, lend the mental 'difference engine' a helping hand in actually deciding what actually defines 'optimal' in the first place. 'Optimal' is different for different people, so the mind, helped and guided by emotional intelligence, not only needs to decide which is the 'optimal' outcome it also needs to work out what 'optimal' actually means, without any external interference (as is the case with every computer available today which needs programming by an external operator, because unlike us, computers have no emotional intelligence capability, even the most sophisticated ones!).

Going back to the wood carver example, let us now say you, the wood carver, now decide to turn your attention to learning mathematics. Now this may seem a totally off-track subject for a wood carver to decide to learn, but let' say you have an interest and let's say that's just what you decided that you wanted to learn. Now unbeknownst to you, at your conscious level, you have already been doing complex mathematics for years in creating the curvatures and shapes of wood structures at a subconscious level. Through this ongoing subconscious process, the emotional centers of your mind will also be already accustomed to deciding the optimal outcome given trillions of possible outcomes using subconscious 'emotional' mathematics. 

But the study of mathematics (at the beginning anyway) is all about procedure and following rules. How could a wood carver, who previously only followed 'instinctive' rules, now adjust to following structured, hard rules? This is where 'Cloud Logic' comes in. Based on the idea which I discussed earlier, that neural networks seek to form connections wherever it is feasible to do so, much like a relational database, all the wood carver has to do, is to continue to learn mathematics, even if it makes no sense at all whatsoever for quite some time and simply allow the neural connections in the subconscious / emotional mind to seek each other out and form by themselves. There is no more effort required other than a genuine interest in the subject and the ability of one's emotional and subconscious mind to make connections where they exist, which it does all the time anyway. In fact, if the wood carver were to leave it to the conscious mind to do this job, he or she would get nowhere and simply become frustrated. But if he or she decided to just learn and free the mind to take information as a free flow without impediment, then he or she will be able to do complex mathematics in no time. Even the person themselves will not realize where and how the connections exist between wood carving and mathematics, but surely, they do exist and will naturally form, given the opportunity to do so.

In this way, deep hidden connections exist between many different and disparate subject matters and because as people, we become conditioned by society to be 'typecast' in who we are and what our capabilities are, the vast majority of us completely miss the opportunity of experiencing the true wide range of potential experiences and learning which we could enjoy, if only we were to trust in the capabilities of our subconscious mind to take us wherever we want to go.       

Thus, in my theory, which I call 'Cloud Logic' one could view the neural network as a cloud, much like a real rain cloud into which data and information is absorbed just as tiny moisture particles are absorbed by a rain cloud from the atmosphere. Now, in a real raincloud, these particles coalesce (or condense) to form droplets which, once they reach a critical mass, become too heavy to sustain by the cloud and so, they fall to the ground as rain drops. So it is with the brain! The brain's neural network processes the tiny 'packets' or 'particles' of data which are fed to it by the senses. The network automatically seeks connections between these packets of data and tries to make them coalesce wherever and whenever possible. When a critical mass of information is reached, which makes sense to the conscious mind, an output is created, just like the raincloud, hence the term ‘Cloud Logic’.

It is the core logic system of the brain that decides how and if, those connections should be made (This interestingly enough, could also be why we all see things differently and have differences in opinion, because after all, the core logic system is affected by our upbringing, environment and surroundings amongst other things) For now, the most important point is that we do not actually have to do anything to help the brain make those connections. The brain is automatically creating those connections without our conscious involvement in the process. Such is the power of subconscious ‘Cloud Logic’. Therefore, all we have to do is to trust our brain to make those connections and to feed the brain neural network with the raw data. The neural network ‘Cloud’ will do the rest. The process is working all the time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for our entire lifetime and especially so during our sleep (see my post on dreams), when the core data sorting and processing is carried out by the network cloud (much like a computer running a batch process at night).

Therefore, going back to the task above, when you left the problem for a few hours or days, what you actually did was to allow the ‘Cloud’ in your mind to form ‘Logical Raindrops’ until a critical mass was reached, at which point, you went back and fixed the problem.

In our day to day modern lives which are full of information coming at us from all sides, not all of which provides tangible value to us in improving who we are, it is very important to remember to decide what exactly you are feeding your ‘cloud’ with. Is it junk information from the media or other sources which feed information to us randomly and indiscriminately, or do we choose selected information that enriches our lives, our minds and makes more educated individuals out of us? This is a question that only you can answer.

In this post I have tried to begin describing my theory and how it may work for you. I use the theory myself to great effect for language learning, yet I am absolutely convinced that it can be used for virtually any type of learning. I have seen it work and I am convinced that it can work for anybody who chooses to apply it!

Be Extraordinary, It's Bloody Boring Being Ordinary!

Here also is my video on the subject of speed learning:

Related articles and links:

This one is not too closely linked to my subject matter, but I found it absolutely fascinating as it explains what happens when you DON'T allow freedom of Emotional Intelligence:

Emotional Suppresion

This link provides an excellent explanation of the natural chemical tranmitters within the Human Brain:

Chemical Transmitters

Microtasking - Turning the achievement of personal GOALS into an integrated part of your life Philosophy.

The last time you went to the newsagent and looked at the magazine shelves, how many magazines did you see that offer advice and help on how you can improve yourself? Amongst the vast multitude of eye catching titles covering celebrity gossip, political scandal and everything in between, you will have noticed a significant percentage covering self-improvement topics. If asked, you could probably recite from memory, a list of the most common titles which seem to recur month after month, switching between different magazines, but retaining more or less the same content every time you look. You've seen them before right? Here are some examples:  ‘Lose 7 inches from your waistline in one month’; ‘5 sure fire tips on stopping smoking in one week ’; ’Eat as much as you want and still have the body of a goddess’. How about ‘Grow a new you’; ‘De-clutter your life instantly’; ‘Transform yourself today’; or ‘How to break a bad habit in eight easy, short steps’? They all sound vaguely familiar right? And that’s just the magazines. In reality, today, the ‘self-help’ message permeates almost every facet of media to which we are exposed, both online and offline. On TV, in books, in advertising and just about everywhere else you look, you will read and see material on how to improve your health, how to be a better parent, how to improve your management or business skills or even how to learn a language and how to do it all so very quickly. 

It seems that the inherent quality of the typical ‘self-help’ message is that the message itself is only valid if there is a suitable timeline associated with it, within which you ‘should’ have achieved the self-help objective. This could be seven days, a week, a month and so on. If you didn't manage to achieve it in time, no problem, you just go out and buy next month’s issue and start again with whatever they’re advising you this time, which you might possibly wish to improve about yourself. And so, it goes on and you keep buying or watching or clicking, because of course, there is so very much that is wrong with you and you have so many flaws, all of which you should really ‘address’ with just a little bit of TLC and how better to love yourself than to ‘indulge’ in a little bit of occasional ‘Self-help‘ right?

Yet, despite this slightly cynical synopsis, this is not so say that any of the information available on self-help is not valid nor useful or well researched. Additionally, it would be unfair not to acknowledge that in most cases, the material is extremely well written or produced and indeed many books on the subject of self-help do indeed make a significant and valuable contribution to our understanding and knowledge of who we are and demonstrate how we can improve many aspects of our modern and highly complex lives. However, the more poignant reality to bear in mind is that although the available media on self-help provides highly interesting and compelling material for us to engage with and to even be inspired by from time to time, to the extent that we may often actually take the advice and run with it for a few days, a few weeks and maybe even a month or so; nevertheless, most of us eventually revert back to our old habits and routines and return to our search of the next fad, the next big thing which we can adopt and follow in another cycle of inspiration followed by eventual self-disappointment rather than achieving any real ‘self-help’.

Certainly, if we applied the principles advocated and were able to incorporate them right into the intrinsic fabric of our lives by somehow adopting them on a more permanent basis, then and only then, could we possibly hope to truly succeed in our goals. The trouble is, there are just a couple of critical missing layers in the operating framework of our daily lives, without which we cannot possibly hope to achieve any of our self-help goals.

The missing layers:

The first missing layer is the knowledge layer, which essentially boils down to whether or not we truly know what our goals actually are. Now, even the smartest of us don’t actually know what our goals are most of the time. We like to think that we do, but we don’t, because unless we very specifically take the time to focus on and carry out the activity of setting our long and short term goals on a regular basis, continually modifying and fine tuning them, we end up simply leaving them to chance. Most people do this without realizing it and some (you know who you are) may drift through life with no clear idea on the shape or form of the life they really want. Bearing this in mind, how can one possibly instigate change if one has taken no time to think about what that change should look like?

This takes us into very dangerous territory because it makes us susceptible to suggestion by external sources, in particular, the media, which in the absence of our own clear perception of what our goals should be, provides us with a very convenient source in helping us to decide. Ultimately, we take the media suggestions of what our goals should be and adopt them as our own. Succumbing to suggestion in this way is, for sure, a highly risky practice in any sphere of life. As any successful businessperson will tell you. If you don’t have a unique proposition of your own and you follow suggestion or are led by others, you are doomed to failure from the outset, for you will never achieve anything new or innovative. Not to mention the fact that the media has its own agenda when setting your goals for you, which to put it quite simply, is to sell more media to you, the consuming public. The media, as much as we love it for its entertainment value and its endless stream of information, some of which is aimed at improving and making a transformed and better you, does not have your interests at heart. The only way to replace its somewhat toxic influence in your life with something of real value to you personally is to expand the depth of your knowledge layer and to deeper understand who you are and what you want out of your life. Creating that person is a different matter, but it can be done if you really want that person to materialize. (See additional articles on visualization, motivation, procrastination, uncertainty and risk etc). 

The Second and probably even more important missing layer in our daily operational framework is the execution layer. The execution layer is the one that keeps us going and enables us to actually reach our goals by consistently keeping us on track. It does this by embedding itself right into the fabric of one’s everyday life. Without this layer, we would and most often do, run out of emotional steam by losing the will to persevere, long before we reach any of our personal goals. It is this execution layer, its methodology and how to create and integrate it into your life, that forms the key subject matter of this article.

Now, one self-help message that I most certainly subscribe to is the notion that throughout one’s lifetime, one should always be learning. Many of us will have heard this message extolled by great leaders, scholars and those who have attained greatness in their lives both personally and in the public domain; essentially those who have looked deeply and understood the true needs of the human psyche; to develop as an individual, to be fulfilled in one’s work, to be acknowledged by one’s peers and loved ones as someone who makes an important contribution to their lives and to attain deep self-confidence through inner contentment and understanding of oneself and of others. Only knowledge is the unifying factor which fulfills all these needs, for it is only through knowledge that we understand our reality, our boundless possibilities, our world, our universe and most importantly, ourselves. Only once we know ourselves can we truly know others and this is the most beautiful and bountiful use to which we can put our learning and therefore, our knowledge.

Furthermore, the definition of learning extends far beyond what we may traditionally conceive as learning. Learning is not just about assimilating, retaining and using information. If that was all that learning entails, we would be nothing more than automatons, computers; slaves to a machine. We would certainly not be the creators, lateral thinkers and artists that we are. No, learning, my friend, is far richer and infinitely more colorful than that. Learning is just about everything we do, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night and even during our dreams (subject of a different article). Not only do we teach our minds, we also teach our bodies. For example, when we exercise, is one’s body not learning, albeit not on a mental or neurological level, but learning nevertheless? Our muscles ‘learn’ through their development which is generated by exercise, our lungs ‘learn’ to work more efficiently, our skin ‘learns’ how to control body temperature better and our minds learn how to fine tune our exercise technique for optimal results. And what about the autonomous functions in our bodies or indeed our reflexes? How about our immune systems? Are all these hidden, yet essential systems not always in a constant state of learning and development?  For example, our immune system is constantly ‘learning’ through the development of antibodies to connect - in a multitude of possible permutations - with antigens on the surfaces of pathogens and foreign bodies which may infiltrate our blood stream.

In fact, is nature itself not is always in a constant state of flux, continually reshaping and improving itself and therefore learning and re-expressing itself through the process of evolution? Learning and it’s outcome, knowledge, is the universal truth, the only truth which reveals all that is hidden and which unlocks the infinite beauty of the universe all around us, our universe and therefore our own creation propagated through our mental perception. Here, we may even digress into pondering how nature stores the huge amount of information that it ‘learns’ about itself, for there is no database or ‘cloud’ server on which it can store all the data it has assimilated about its own evolutionary self. Nature’s database exists in nature itself. In the leaves of plants, in the DNA of every living organism, in the trees, in the wind, in the sea, in the motion of the planets, in fact all of creation itself is a huge database which stores archived information about itself. The most perfect database in fact, because it has been able to store data about itself, completely and perfectly, right from the beginning of time and is able to retrieve that data instantly to create the change with which it improves itself. What a beautiful notion this is: To understand nature itself and how it is able to create itself. This is the power of true knowledge, the knowledge of the Universe and therefore the knowledge and nature of pure learning itself. No magazine or TV programme or website can show you this, you have to seek and find this truth yourself.

Now that we have defined the wider scope of what learning is, let us go back to our important missing layer, which we should look to weave into the fabric of our everyday lives. I call this the ‘execution layer’.

As aforementioned, we know how important learning and knowledge is to absolutely all aspects of our lives. We also know how important it is to clearly define what we want out of our lives and how crucial it is to set our own goals and not to follow the goals set for us by others. Your goals should be your goals first and only then, should they be supported by external sources and not vice versa. So now, the only question remains is how to integrate the achievement of those goals into the fabric of our everyday lives, so that such goal achievement becomes a habit, something we do naturally without even thinking, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute and even second by second, so that whenever one chooses to do so, each moment of one’s life counts for something and has meaning beyond the ordinary. How to achieve this, forms the idea behind ‘Microtasking’ and successful attainment of one’s goals is the singular aim of ‘Microtasking’.

Microtasking to learn a language:

Let’s say one of your goals is to learn a new language. You take language classes and learn a lot during these. However, it seems that you’ve been taking the classes for some time and still you are not quite using it to the level you want and you feel that you are not fully absorbing everything you learn to a level where your spoken word or your written material in that language is as accurate or articulate as you would want it to be. You feel that you simply cannot cross that barrier between being a basic speaker to a level where you are truly using the language to communicate and express fully everything that is on your mind.  So what do you do? How do you take it to the next level?

By applying a number of simple Microtasking techniques, you can achieve this goal without drastically changing your life or taking away the pleasure out of learning the language altogether. To tackle this task, quite simply set yourself a very small task (or Microtask) to learn just two words per day. You could make it two words or two grammatical formations or indeed anything you wish, relating to what you wish to learn. If you wish, you could even make it just one word or one grammatical formation; it doesn’t affect the effectiveness of the Microtask. For now, let’s say you have set yourself just one word per day as your target. To learn this word completely and in all contexts, you would need to know its meaning in your own language, how it is written and how it is spoken. Additionally you may decide to construct a few sentences to understand how and in which context the word is used. You then focus for just a few minutes during the day to learning that word. If possible, use the word in your conversation if indeed you are using the language on a day to day basis or living / working in the country where the language is spoken. Repeatedly and whenever you have a moment, just write the word down if it is a complicated word which needs to be written down a few times. Take the tiny ‘Micro’ moments of your day, just when you may have thirty seconds or a few minutes and use them to think about and learn that word. For example, you may be waiting for somebody and you may wish to practice the word then or you may have a moment whilst you are performing a mundane task like washing or cleaning. Whenever, you do it, do commit yourself to learning that one word before the day is up. If you really consider the options, for example, when you are washing or waiting for someone, you could either just think about nothing in particular as we normally do when we are carrying out such activities or you could consciously decide to focus your mind just for those few moments towards more productive or gainful thoughts.

Most of the time, when we are in ‘automatic’ mode, we think about all sorts of things that are not necessarily so important; so when you have those fleeting moments of time during the day when your mind is not really occupied in any specific activity, then why not put it to better use? It is simply a matter of making a conscious decision to do so and being better aware of the times when a ‘Microtask’ can be applied.  

Furthermore, isn’t it far more useful to your personal development if you had already planned for those moments and had decided to actually use them for something like learning? By the end of the day, using just a few tiny micro moments you will know one full word, how it is spoken, written and the sentences in which it appears. Now this may not seem like a huge achievement. However, try repeating with a new word every day for a whole year. If you do nothing else, not even go to language classes, you will still know a full 365 words or grammatical formations of a new language by the end of the year. How about if you were learning two words per day? That’s 730 new words or grammatical formations in a year. Did you change your lifestyle? Did you take out any special time to learn? The answer is no! Yet you taught yourself or significantly improved upon a new language in a year. Many expats living overseas still do not speak the language after two or three years living in the country. Yet if you apply the principles of Microtasking, you can get there in less than a year. Now let’s consider other possibilities. Let’s say you drive to work. Why not play a language CD in the car whilst you are on the road. It’s idle time anyway right? How about picking up the newspaper in the foreign language and just reading it? Don’t worry if you don’t understand it, just try to read it. You will be amazed at your own capabilities to absorb, retain and process information that seemingly makes no sense, yet still somehow takes shape and form within the processes of your mind. (See additional article on speed learning and the ability of the brain to organize disparate non-connected information + video on the relational data model of the human mind. Plus article on learning for the fast developing minds of children). 

Another possibility, how about using an online translator every day to just learn one sentence per day? What about watching a movie that you know and enjoy, but switching to foreign language sub-titles? The possibilities are limitless. Your mind simply cannot help but learn the language, without you even trying or making any conscious effort to do so. I taught myself how to speak German in three months simply by printing sheets with essential words and grammatical formations and taking them into the sauna with me during my daily visit to the gym. Whilst I sweated it out, I used those few moments to teach myself German. Sure, I occasionally got a few inquisitive looks from others, but who cares? I knew what I wanted to achieve and set out to achieve it in the few 'Micro-moments' during my day when I really have nothing else to do or occupy my mind, so I really don’t give a monkeys ass about what anyone else thinks. This is the essence of Microtasking, knowing what you want and being just a little brave in going out to get it, without significantly disturbing the regular pattern of your life.

All of this may make logical sense and seems like the obvious, but how many people adopt such a method towards their development? I haven’t seen or heard of many. Yet it is so very effective.

Microtasking to Improve health:

Let’s take another example. Let’s say your goal is to get fitter and reduce a little weight. So with the Microtasking approach, what would you do? Firstly, and most simply, when in buildings with more than one floor, you could just decide to always take the stairs instead of the lift. Even one flight of 20 stairs multiplied by 365 days equates to 7300 steps climbed in one year. That’s five times to the top of the Eiffel Tower or one seventh of the climb to the top of Mount Everest.  How about every time you go for the bus? Even if you are well in time, why not run to the bus stop instead of walking? What about walking to the local store to pick up a few items instead of taking the car every time? On their own, such activities seem insignificant, however, combine them and repeat them on a regular basis and suddenly the Microtasks all add up to macro level activities which add significant value to your personal development. There are hundreds of such Microtasks that you could apply during your day which will contribute towards your fitness and health without you really making any more significant effort than you did before. This does not mean that we should all cancel our gym memberships and resort to running up and down stairs in tall buildings instead. No, the main point is that you can incorporate Microtasking right into the fabric of your life without changing your lifestyle significantly, to achieve amazing results. In fact, even at the gym, Microtasking can be applied in various ways. For example, many people go to the gym and work mediocrely hard at some exercises, not because they really enjoy them, but more because they feel they have to, in order to get fit. However, how much more could you achieve if you were to switch your activities to doing only those which you actually enjoy? Some people like to run, some to lift weights and others still, might like the more structured approach of spinning classes or aerobics or weight lifting. However, many people will do one type of activity over another, not necessarily because they like it, but because they feel it will make them fitter and may therefore ’feel‘ it’s the right thing to do. But that’s counterproductive, for you can never truly excel in something, if you are doing it for the wrong reasons.

Given that one always performs better when doing something one likes, why not switch to doing what you like to do? Chances are that you will enjoy the experience more and as a result work harder at it, enabling you to thus become fitter in a shorter space of time.

Microtasking to lose weight:

For the weight loss part, let’s say you take one sugar in your tea or coffee. So during an average day in which you consume maybe two or three cups of tea or coffee, why not drop the spoon of sugar from just one of them? You’re not stopping all the sugar you consume in one day, just one single ‘micro’ spoon of sugar less per day. It is an amount small enough not to cause you to want to compensate by binge eating or cause you to have sugar cravings, yet it is enough to make a significant difference in the long term. One spoon less per day equates to several 1kg bags of sugar less circulating your bloodstream every year and it does not matter how you look at it, you cannot deny that there must be at least some health benefits associated with such an insignificant, yet essential reduction in sugar consumption.

It is a little known scientific fact that there is a time delay between the consumption of food (especially fat) and the sending of the message to your mental receptors that you have consumed enough and that you are now ‘full up’. This time delay is typically between 15 to 20 minutes. It is also not so well known that it really does not take much food to fill up an average stomach and that anything in excess of this is simply stored around the organs and under the skin as subcutaneous fat. So how can we deploy a tricky little Microtask to turn these facts to our advantage? Now, the truth is, that when you feel hungry, you feel that you could eat a lot. It is not that your capacity for food has increased, nor that you are a greedy person. Quite simply, it is a case that your brain is overcompensating for your hunger by demanding a lot of food. This goes back to our primitive nature, dating back to when food was scarce. Thus in times when food was available, our evolving minds were programmed to consume as much as possible in order to conserve energy within the body to overcome periods of food scarcity. However, as aforementioned, there is a trigger mechanism in the brain that tells our bodies to stop eating once we have reached a certain capacity. This trigger has a time delay built into it to allow us to over-consume for the aforementioned reasons. The trouble with this is that although this mechanism served our ancestors very well, today, we no longer need to conserve energy as food is in plentiful supply, in fact, most would agree, too plentiful. Nevertheless, we can ‘trick’ this mechanism in order to eat less with the help of a simple ‘Microtask’. Next time you are really hungry, don’t worry, go ahead and cook or order as much as you like. But this time, also make sure you cook or order a big starter dish, even if you don’t do so normally. Now go ahead and enjoy that starter. Once this is done, you’ll most likely still feel hungry as your mind is attuned to expect more (as it was only a starter right?) and your primitive self demands more because it thinks it’s going hunting later on in sub-zero temperatures with nothing more than an animal skin to keep it warm. So it thinks it’s going to need the extra energy anyway. Now here’s the ‘Micro-trick’: Before you start on the main course, just give yourself 15 to 20 minutes. Don’t worry even if the food is ready and hot and calling out to you. Just wait for that short period of time. After this waiting time, it is an almost guaranteed fact that miraculously, you will not feel hungry anymore. At the very least, you will feel significantly less hungry and therefore less able to eat the full main course. There you go, you have just ‘Microtasked’ your way out of consuming more calories than you need, simply by giving your stomach the time to send the message to your mental receptors that you are now ‘full-up’. Try it, it really works! Sure, on this occasion, you may end up wasting some food, but as this little ‘Microtask’ becomes a habit, not only will you confer health benefits upon yourself by reducing your tendency to overeat, you will also most likely save yourself some money by reducing your restaurant or shopping bills.

Microtasking to improve your finances:

As we’re on the subject, let’s now move onto the application of ‘Microtasking’ to personal finance. As much as we all like to believe the notion that someday, we will all become rich (and how do we define ‘rich’ anyway? See article on winning the race of life) most of us come to the realization at some point, that the only way we are going to accrue the required financial resources to secure our future, is going to have to be through slogging it out in our careers and saving as much as possible over a long period of time. Trouble is, that many of us realize this really late in our lives (probably as a result of the increasing burden of responsibility that comes with time). So how do we ‘Microtask’ our long term savings and the growth of our financial safety net?

Firstly, never treat a loan like a loan! Invest part of it back! If you must take a loan for whatever reason, then why not apply a ‘Microtask’ to it? If possible, when you take the loan try to take a ‘Micro-amount’ more than you need. This could be any small percentage such as 1% to 5% of the original amount that you had decided you needed. It is this ‘Micro-amount’ that is the most value to you out of the whole loan, because it is precisely this ‘Micro-amount’ that you should use to invest either in a safe saving plan or maybe a safe trading option on the stock market which you might assess with the help of a reputable stock trading agency or professional (if you are not comfortable with it yourself). Or you may simply put it away into your savings account for a rainy day. The beauty of this is that the Micro extra amount you borrowed (which forms part of the much larger amount that you were going to borrow anyway), instead of becoming a burden, will actually work the opposite way to ultimately reduce a little bit of your burden in the long term. Furthermore, the Micro amount extra that you will have borrowed, will not significantly increase the payments that you were going to make anyway to repay the full loan, so on one hand you will have the loan and on the other, you will be using at least a small part of the same loan towards savings and, as we all know, small amounts eventually add up to big amounts!

Whilst, I accept that such a proposal may be unrealistic and untenable for many people as they may already be borrowing to their limit, nevertheless, the example gives you an idea of how the principles of ‘Microtasking’ can be applied across many and varied aspects of your life. It also gets you thinking about creative ‘Microtasking’ solutions to a wide spectrum of life’s challenges and this is the more important point to consider here. Personal finance is a sensitive issue for many people and this article does not purport to advise anyone on what to do or not to do, nevertheless, the example simply illustrates one possibility amongst many which you can find simply by switching your focus a little towards a different approach to getting the best out of every situation.

Microtasking to curb undesirable habits:

Let us now move onto habitual behavior. Let’s say you are a smoker. Now as a smoker, there a number of additional habits surrounding your smoking habit, which you will have acquired over time and which serve to reinforce your smoking habit. Also as a smoker, you will know what these are, such always smoking after a meal or always smoking with your cup of tea or coffee in the mornings. Put all of these factors together and you realize that you have created justifying sub-habits or ‘Micro-habits’ that support and influence your main smoking habit and as a result, you find that you just can’t quit. That’s OK, don’t quit if you don’t want to. However, you can at the very least, ‘Microtask’ your way to smoking less.

Let’s say that in a given 24 hours you spend 8 hours sleeping and about one hour occupied in other activities, like getting ready for work in the morning etc. This leaves 15 hours during which you may potentially smoke. As a long term smoker and based on this timing, you may have settled down to a steady 15 cigarettes per day, which is approximately one cigarette per hour. In some of these hours, you may smoke more and in others, maybe less, but on average, it’s about 15 per day. Now, do you think it may just be possible, at the very least, to reduce this to 14 (instead of 15) cigarettes per day with the application of a Microtask? The way to achieve this it is to do just one ‘Micro-activity’ differently during your day with the application of a tiny ‘Micro-change’ in the habits that support your smoking habit. Maybe you could skip the tea or coffee in the morning, after which you always smoke, or maybe have one cigarette less on your journey home from work, opting instead to occupy your mind in an alternative activity just for the few moments when you have the craving to smoke?  If you travel by train, maybe occupy your mind by reading a short snippet from the newspaper whilst you wait for the train (when you might normally smoke a cigarette) or if you drive and smoke, maybe switch to a different radio station and occupy yourself for a few moments in finding the best one? These are just examples, in reality, there are lots of options open to you. If you try this, you will be amazed at how quickly your mind can be diverted and how you find that before long, you have broken your habitual cycle, even if it was just for one hour and even if it resulted in you smoking just one less cigarette per day. Nothing significant will have changed in your life; however, you will find that by making ‘Micro-changes’ to the supporting ‘Micro-habits’, results in a multitude of knock-on changes in your actions towards your 'bigger' undesirable habits.

Let’s consider the benefits of this. If you were to overcome just one of those cravings during the day by applying a ‘Microtask’ and put off smoking for just one hour (based on an average of one cigarette per hour, it could also be half an hour if, for example, you are smoking 30 per day), then that one less cigarette smoked per day equates to 365 cigarettes smoked less per year. That’s almost two duty free packs of 200 cigarettes that you will have smoked less of per year. What if were to reduce by two a day, and so on? The enormous benefits very quickly start to add up and it’s not possible to conceive, by any stretch of the imagination, that this could not be a good thing! If nothing else, you will have saved a significant amount of money and that’s got to be beneficial!

When it comes to any undesirable habit which may harm you or those around you, whether financially or otherwise, it becomes a very difficult task to reconcile the harm you do, with the overpowering compulsion of the habit itself. Most times, the habit wins. Thus, you ultimately admit defeat and surrender to the habit, realizing in the process, that you can’t conceivably beat it or overcome it. With ‘Microtasking’, you’re not dealing with the big habit any more. Instead, you are dealing with the ‘Micro-habits’ which surround the addictive or undesirable habit. These ‘Micro-habits’ are not addictive and therefore, far more manageable. Consider then, how one might apply ‘Microtasking’ to helping overcome habitual gambling? The possibilities are limitless!

In fact, the boundless applications of Microtasking can be applied to learning, self-development, self-improvement, personal relationships and many other areas of one’s life. On a very simplistic level, the principle underlying the idea of Microtasking is that you treat your life’s goals as a series of ‘goal’ buckets. Each bucket represents a goal which you have decided for yourself, that you wish to fulfill. Now imagine drops of water filling up those buckets over a period of time. These drops are your ‘Microtasks’. Just like regular buckets, eventually they will fill up and overflow with water. It’s the same with your ‘goal’ buckets. Keep filling them with ‘Microtasks’ and before you know it, you will start reaching your goals because one by one, your ‘goal’ buckets will fill up too. Thus, you succeed in your goals ‘Micro-drop’ by ‘Micro-drop’.  As one bucket is filled, you switch to another, which could be a new goal. What’s more, you can even combine Microtasks to magnify their effect. For example, the earlier mentioned reduction in sugar could be combined with the reduction in smoking by simply dropping one cup of coffee or tea completely from your day, assuming that you have sugar in your drink and that you are also a smoker.  All this, by simply going about your daily activities, much the same as you have always done, except that now, you’re filling those tiny time and activity gaps, that were there anyway in your life, with gainful, focused activity. Over time, you become a habitual ‘Microtasker’ and therefore, more efficient and successful at achieving your goals.

With ‘Microtasking’, no matter how large the tasks in hand, taken in small manageable amounts, your goals suddenly become easy and possible to achieve. Furthermore, with Microtasking, you formalize the individual processes in reaching a goal and allow them to become integrated directly into your life in a highly focused way. This is very empowering and allows you to take control of events that lead to success. I even applied Microtasking to the writing of this article after a long period of postponement. Now, I feel in control again and confident that I will be able to manage and actually complete all my writing projects much better through Microtasking. 

Conversely, if you perceive all your goals and tasks as one huge task which must be achieved all at once, it seems like an impossible mountain to climb and you are defeated by your own pre-conceptions, fears and inhibitions before you even make a start.

In this way, Microtasking is a philosophy you adopt within your life which empowers you to achieve your goals. It enables your subconscious decisions to become conscious, manageable and executable actions with tangible results. In particular, the decisions about how you use Micro amounts of your time start to have a deeper significance and add greater value to your life when you Microtask. Even if you have the determination and resources to succeed, but you lack the life philosophy which integrates your life fully with the achievement of your goals, your attempts at achieving your goals become an increasing challenge and burden which eventually you cannot bear. Thus, you return to your old self, which is what you don't want. The more you Microtask, the better you become at recognizing and achieving your personal goals!

Suddenly, you find that your Microtasks have become Macrotasks with Macro level results. The only stipulation or 'rule' that should be applied for successful Microtasking is that you should be consistent. Whatever you decide you want to apply Microtasking to, you should ensure that you Microtask on that goal or subject regularly and consistently. Only then do you see the BIG result of all the Micortasks accumulated together. Clearly, just carrying out individual Microtasks once in a while, will bear no real tangible results. This is why, in particular, Microtasking is best applied to activities that are already regularly present in your life and have reached a steady state whereby they are quite constant and unchanging. Examples as mentioned above are, languages, where you've reached a certain level to communicate enough to get by, but you can't really jump to the next level; or eating habits, whereby you are settled in your eating behavior but you want to make a change for the better; or smoking, whereby you have reached a steady state of cigarettes that you smoke per day and want to instigate a reduction in how much you smoke, and so on. It is a little like a train heading on one track towards the wrong station. The train is going one way and the only way to make a change in its direction will be to very slightly move the tracks, so that over the long journey, the train eventually arrives at the right station. You cannot change the momentum of the train, nor can you just switch it to a completely different track or direction all of a sudden. It will crash if you do this. So you gently steer it in the right direction and over time, it follows the correct path with little change in speed or momentum. 

Also you should only apply Microtasks to the number of 'Goals' that you can manage. There is no point in 'Microtasking' everything. If you do this, all the Microtasks become one big 'Macrotask' and are thus rendered ineffective. Plus, you need time for yourself and to live your life freely. Microtasking is simply filling gaps that you can afford to fill and not meant as a complete take-over of your life. This should nevertheless, not be a 'get-out clause'. Decide to 'Microtask' a limited number of aspects of your life, but do stick with the plan you made for yourself once you have started!       

 

I like to develop and ‘help’ myself every day, but so far, I have been fortunate with being able dispense with the need to turn to magazines, morning TV shows or online articles to tell me how to do so. I just Microtask based on the goals I’ve set for myself, which I (and only I) have decided are important to me and make each moment of my life count as much as I possibly can.

Be Extraordinary, it’s bloody boring being Ordinary!