Let me start by saying that this is not a formal book review, but more of a discussion of the book.

Another Harajuku Moment

I believe that the world tells you a message by having certain people or ideas pop up in groups of three. If I come across a certain concept on several different websites or books, that’s a clear message to me that I should probably write about it and share it with others who may not have come across it yet. Over the weekend, several things aligned that could not have been more coincidental for me.

• Murray posted his mission and vision for his business.
• I bought “Art of Non-Conformity” by Chris Guillebeau while in a bookstore buying moleskine notebooks, of all things.
• I have started to question where I was heading with my blog, and myself, several times a day.

It has been a bit of a whirlwind for me this weekend. I bought AoNC (the acronym Chris uses in the book and on his website) on Saturday, and finished it Tuesday night. Considering that my daughter had a bad fever and cold during that time, it’s rather incredible that I was able to finish it so quickly. The ideas found within it resonated so much. I kept thinking about my grandparents’ adventures overseas as missionaries with the YMCA, how my uncle and his wife went to Nigeria to work in schools, of my brother heading over to London to work for non-profits, and so on. My family has a history of traveling the world and working, while helping people in some capacity.

And here I am, in Western Canada, sitting at a Starbucks typing all of this.

I read Murray’s vision post and had two streams of thought happening at the same time:

• What is my vision for Four Sides
• What is my vision for my hospitality consulting business?

I really liked how he laid everything out and is extremely focused on achieving results. It made me think more about the lack of structure with my own sites and ventures. I am organized in terms of tasks and drafts of ideas for the blog, but I have not been thinking longterm for either venture nearly enough. I had Murray’s ideas of a vision sitting in the back of my head as I worked my way through AoNC when I came across this quote in the book:

It is not the decision you make that is most important; it is the degree of commitment with which you make the decision.

- Bo Bartlett, Artist

That message hit me hard.

I realize that some of my frustrations in life right now could all be centred around commitment.

• I look at other writers online and realize that they have a lot more time to commit to their blog or business ventures, but they are still more deeply committed to it than I am currently.
• I have been receiving a bit of a lack of commitment on the part of my first client for my business, waiting to hear a response about revamping the website and images, some feedback on some of the ideas I provide, etc. That lack of commitment on their part makes me question what level of commitment I should give them (of course, I am still committed to them at this point considering that they are my only client).
• I start and leave alone too many books, articles, blog posts, or even other ideas about how to market the blog or earn a bit of money.

The only part of my life that I am fully committed to right now is my daughter. That is in itself great, but I need to be committed to more in a deeper fashion.

A commitment towards my business and the blog will help me build up a legacy for myself as I grow older.

Leaving a Legacy

A part of the reason why I write online is so that I can archive my writings to share with my daughter (and maybe other children) when I grow older. I imagine myself bundling everything up into a book, and passing it down to her on her 18th birthday (or maybe on her 30th when she can appreciate it more and I hit the magical 60 – I have a feeling that there will be lots of tears about “getting old” for both parties).

The idea of leaving a legacy is hinted at in the book, but not explicitly mentioned. I think about how often Dr. Gary Parker is mentioned in the book (a surgeon working on a medical cruise ship sailing around Africa for the past 15+ years). The legacy of Dr. Gary Parker is going to involve how many people he has been helping throughout his lifetime.

My grandfather has left a legacy throughout southeast Asia with the number of YMCA’s he helped develop and the life-long friendships with other ex-patriots in China, Indonesia, and elsewhere. My own father helped develop and teach a University degree program at a college from a total of one student to a program that graduates at least ten students a year (it’s a small college in a small city). One of his former graduates went on to complete her Master’s with his encouragement and came back as a colleague.

I could list other examples from my family about this, but in the end, it comes back down to what I am doing. If I were to die tomorrow, my legacy would be about helping a couple of hotels earn a lot more money, or a community theatre going to the next level with the organization, safety, and technology of the physical theatre. Both are alright, but they certainly don’t have nearly as much of an impact that I believe I could have.

A lot of questions were opened up to me while reading AoNC, and I am busy seeking some answers to the more important questions he asks towards the end of the book. I would rather not outline everything that he asks or my answers, at this point (really, go read the book if you haven’t already), but here are the two questions I would like to highlight:

1. What do you really want to get out of life?
2. What can you offer the world that no one else can?

Go Out and Get Busy

It would be easy for me at this point to set this book aside, forget about what Murray wrote about, and scrap my blog. It is easy to conform to finding a full-time job working for someone else and forget about Why I am here in the first place. The main lesson I took away from reading The Art of Non-Conformity is that I need to conform less and get busy.

I have a lot happening in my mind right now, and I want to continue to zero in on the items I outlined in my first post of the year: Improve, Don’t Move:

1. My young family – daughter and girlfriend
2. My health – mind, body, and spirit
3. Four Sides blog

One other item needs to be added to that list, my business.

I want to start thinking more about my legacy with this blog, my business, and myself. They are all related to me, but I want to treat each one separately and then bring them together in the future (the Power of Convergence at work). I hope to outline more of the legacy for this blog by the end of the month, and I hope to include the legacy of my business with my next guest post at The Big Red Tomato Company (it should be published around April 1st, hopefully).

It is time to jump in and commit to my life the way I committed last year to losing weight. Here are my goals for the next month, and hope someone can keep me accountable for them:

• Discover and outline my legacy for my work (blog and business)
• Finish the consulting website and start marketing my services.
• Begin work on recruiting my Army (another concept from AoNC)
• Purchase at least one, if not two, products to really push me with my business (leaning towards one of the Unconventional Guides by Chris Guillebeau, or The Smart Business’ Guide For Winning New Work by Pawel Grabowski)
• Develop a newsletter for Four Sides and get it going, and explore the possibility of more exclusive content.

I also want to go through my previous blog posts and write out every idea or task that I have thought about doing, but haven’t done it yet. Also, want to finish off all of the drafts currently sitting in WordPress uncompleted.

It is time to get busy.

Buy the book, The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau

Visit his website

Find him on Twitter

Inaction breeds doubt and feat. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Dale Carnegie

[image is of Terry Fox statue in Ottawa]

Related Posts:

• Ground Work: Starting Up
• Getting in the Groove: Dress For Success
• REWORK Review: 500 Words to Improve Your Work Life
• The 4 Hour Body – Free Chapters – by Timothy Ferriss
• The Value of Being Alone

CloudFlare is a service that does one thing: make websites better.

CrunchBase

I first started to pay attention to CloudFlare when I saw the post on TechCrunch from its CEO, Matthew Prince: What Losing TechCrunch Disrupt Meant to CloudFlare: OMFG.

I was not sure what I was getting into, especially when Michael Arrington is quoted as describing the company as “Muffler Repair for the Internet,” but I bravely read on. And I’m glad I did, because I really was missing out on something.

Here are the vital stats that he mentions:

• Tens of thousands of websites have signed up with CloudFlare.
• By making sites faster we’ve helped Internet surfers collectively save nearly 1,000 years worth of time
• And we’ve stopped nearly 600 million attacks launched against our users’ websites

Of everything he mentioned, two things stood out for me: the amount of time saved, and the amount of attacks they diverted. That convinced me. So, I popped over to their website to learn more about how it works.

Muffler Repair for the Internet

The overview illustration makes it quite simple to understand. Cloudflare receives the request to view your webpage, filters the traffic, and then sends it onto your web host. Installation of it is simple and painless. It is just a matter of changing the nameserver your domain is pointed at, and giving Cloudflare all of the current addresses at your webhost.

That’s really all there is to it. After that, your site loads normally – well, not normal; faster than normal. I did not track the actual metrics, but I have been noticing a difference since I installed the service nearly a month ago. There are lots of testimonials on the website saying the same thing about the service: it’s faster.

That is only one of the benefits of Cloudflare, though.

My site is not prone to attacks from hackers or spammers, but it has blocked out 150 attacks (out of 16,000 page views).

It also clearly differentiates the search engine crawlers from the regular traffic in their analytics portion of the dashboard. They claim their analytics are more accurate than the traditional javascript located on the website. My numbers were certainly much higher than Google Analytic’s:

Unique Visitors: 1,437 (CF: 1,534)

Page Views: 2,272 (CF: 11,984)

I’m not sure if Google Analytics filters out my visits and views, since I assume I am the one that looks at the site the most. Maybe someone reading this can tell me why they think the numbers are so different.

One of the real bonuses of their analytics software is the ability to zero in on one day – from 12am to 12am, with hourly traffic numbers. I am sure someone running various marketing campaigns will find this information useful. Here is a screen shot of those analytics at work:

Three final things:

1. It’s free.
2. It keeps your site up even if your main host is down.
3. They have Cloudflare ninjas on their blog

Take a look at their site and try it today. You won’t regret it.

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When you’re receiving hundreds of emails a day, you are simply hitting reply and typing as quickly as possible—this is not communication, it’s redistributing dead energy. The same is true for responding to every single comment on your blog.

Ev Bogue is a writer that I am just starting to discover. Someone who has been on my list of people to follow on Twitter for a while, but I never devoted the time to fully engage with his work. He is a writer who writes in a different language than that is more commonly found across the Web and life. Ev Bogue is not the only writer approaching things differently when it comes to how he communicates with the audience, but I would like to focus on him.

Look at Ev’s Twitter stream, and you will pick up on how his use of that media is different than others. His phrase for his style of writing is dimensional language, but I will refer to it as Writing 2.0. Ev describes it as,

kind of like Sanskrit, but instead of facilitating a vibrational transfer it facilitates an intuitive transfer.

I struggle to fully explain this concept because it is a bit further ahead than what I normally read on a daily basis. The best way to describe it would be to break words down to the meanings they contain, the data. “A dog” contains little data compared to “German Shepherd,” for example. “A dog,” is too broad for us to completely visualize and comprehend, whereas, “German Shepherd,” is specific to a point where we all have the same image in our heads. If the concept is misunderstood, it is easier to show a picture of a German Shepherd to explain what we mean than to go through a catalogue of images to describe dog.

Ev uses more colourful language, because it contains more data. The other words of the language are “safe and pedestrian.”

Understanding that point can lead us to a future without email. Communication would happen through Twitter or text messages, because the constraints of the language means we have to choose our words more carefully. We have to choose words that contain more data to get our full points across, rather than trying to fill up space to seem more important.

If you’re receiving emails that are seven paragraphs long, you’re interacting with non-twitter users speaking old english. These people are not fluent in the advanced mental cybernetic languages described in Augmented Humanity and developing now/in the future. It is in their best interest to adopt Twitter now, or be left behind as humanity jumps ahead exponentially.

The problem of breaking away from email right now is that people are so comfortable in using it, and not so comfortable in using Twitter and text messaging. This is all changing, though. Teenagers are much more likely to text message and send messages via Facebook than they will email. Facebook has started to change how their systems work to lead the movement away from email – notice how their input area for a new message is only one line, until you reach the end or hit enter? There is also the option to have “Enter” send the message, and another option to send as a text message instead.

The use of language is changing in a dramatic way.

Ev wants to push language to the edge and keep pushing it forward to distance ourselves from the past ways of language usage. He writes his posts in “English, so that more people can understand it. This is why the post has so many words.”

I have yet to master this new form of writing myself, but I have picked up on how others have begun to change their use of language. Leaving Twitter, text messages, instant chat, etc. aside, I have found that the books I enjoy reading the most are in a different style. The blogs I enjoy reading the most, approach writing in a different manner that has me wanting to explore the concepts further. Here are two names that will be familiar to most, who I mention frequently here, who have started to approach things in a Writing 2.0 way:

Seth Godin

This is will be obvious to anyone that has read any of Seth’s books, and definitely will be if you follow his blog. His posts on his blog are always precise, short, but full of impact. And the big thing is he writes with a clarity that few writers would be able to master themselves. In roughly 300 words, Seth Godin can say what others say in 1500. His books are always quick reads, because the sections of text are broken down into easily consumed chunks that make you hunger for more. There is no glancing ahead to see how many more pages you have to read until the end of the chapter. Read a chunk, set it aside, and take a moment to breath it all in.

Jason Fried

When I sat down to write my review of REWORK, I sat down to write it in a similar fashion as the actual book. I set a fixed limit of 500 words to see if I could express myself properly and effectively without having to write for length. There is a story in the book of how they took the second to last draft of the book and slashed it down in nearly half. That is basically unheard of. Their blog posts are similarly constrained when it comes to communicating a bit of inspiration. They experiment with mainly images to tell the message, or sometimes just a quote. Their approach is like Seth’s in that they want to express ideas in a quick and easy manner, but the ideas are still really well thought out.

The most surprising thing about this movement of Writing 2.0 is that we have been here before – over 2,000 years ago.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

That’s a pretty popular quote from The Bible (1 Timothy 6:10). The Bible is full of quotable verses that have a message contained within a few sentences that people have been memorizing and quoting for centuries. It is a lost art, in many ways. How many times have you quoted the words of a book without having to double check the quote or look it up online?

Whether you want to call it dimensional language, or Writing 2.0, it is difficult to ignore that language is shifting in a direction that will be uncomfortable for many people, unless they start shifting with it themselves. People who are fluent with Twitter and text messaging, are on the right path. Those of us who still write lengthy emails frequently, may be left in the dust.

I am planning on implementing some changes in my life online, taking a cue from Ev’s writings. Here is what I plan on doing:

1. Shift my email usage down to several times a day to only once (Email is Your Sanctuary)
2. Explore and learn dimensional language, and write more focused, shorter posts. (How to be a Professional Writer)
3. To connect more with people in person from the Internet (Data Transfers from the Heart)

Three steps to help me initially improve and hope to reach a new dimension with my work. I plan on implementing a lot of this in my business venture to create a more dimensional language business – or to explore if that is even possible.

More on Ev Bogue

He is a complicated man, doing some important work. As always, it is best to explore a person at the primary source:

Ev Bogue’s blog and why he chose a blank slate

Ev Bogue on Twitter

His books: Augmented Humanity, Minimalist Business and How to Create a Movement (FREE) [links are affiliate links to help support me and my ventures]

Letter.ly – premium newsletter ($25/month). Also see Why I Use Letter.ly

Ev Bogue’s Edges – Interview done by Gwen Bell – check out Gwen Bell’s book, as well, Digital Warriorship

[image from Ev Bogue's website]

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• My Problem with Focus on the User and Making Google Relevant [Long]

As I have ventured further into the world of connecting with other bloggers, as well as, reaching out to people to help me in my entrepreneurial path, I have been spending more time in Gmail than I care to admit. There has been a lot more interacting with people than I have done in the past year. Thankfully, I enjoy working within Gmail – so much so that at my previous position, I transferred my work email to it, something unheard of at the hotels I worked at. I also wrote about how Google and Gmail inching closer to the science fiction dream of artificial intelligence.

Late last year, I discovered a tool that has helped me immensely, and recently came across another tool that has been great, as well. I thought I would take a moment to share these Google extensions with you, in case you were unaware of them.

WiseStamp

WiseStamp is the Gmail signature on steroids.

I first came across WiseStamp a week ago when I was browsing through Dino Dogan’s DIYBlogger site. He had a post asking Are You Leveraging Ancient Technologies to Improve Your Social Media Standing? I wasn’t sure what to think at the time I clicked on it, but then I was greatly impressed with the screen shots.

WiseStamp creates a digital business card and includes it as your signature for emails. It has as many options as the previous service I had mentioned, about.me, as far as importing social services goes, but keeps it simple and clean. This is good, because there is nothing worse than signatures that are 20 lines in length, not to mention the “confidential” stamps now included at the bottom of messages. I decided to keep mine basis with only Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and my GTalk and Skype names. You can add a lot more, though.

WiseStamp Demo from wisestamp on Vimeo.

Rapportive

Rapportive is the reverse of WiseStamp.

Whereas, WiseStamp is the signature that you send out to people, Rapportive is the signature people aren’t sending out to you immediately. Rapportive is the easiest way for you to discover which social networks a person is on, their latest updates, and some other interesting “Raplets.” One of them that was interesting for me was the MailChimp raplet, which tells me whether that person has subscribed to my newsletter or not (which is in the works for the main site, and I have a minor one on The 4 Hour Body Review page to gauge interest).

There you have it, two quick installs for some added social value to your Gmail account.

Do you have other tips or tricks for Gmail, or Chrome extensions you have installed for Gmail?

Leave a comment below.

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• Seth Godin’s Poke the Box: The Next Book

Ignore this book at your own peril.
- Seth Godin

Needless to say, when a man of Seth Godin’s stature recommends a book, I was not about to avoid it.

REWORK (written by Jason Fried and David Hansson) is all about re-structuring your work day, how you hire, how to structure your business, and how to do the complete opposite of what has been recommended in the past. A lot of this applies to other work other than a business, as well. For example, here are some phrases on the back:

ASAP is poison

Meetings are toxic

Fire the workaholics

Inspiration is perishable

Some of those phrases will apply to what you are doing.

This book is as a blog on paper. The sections are short and aim for high impact. This was not written with a certain length in mind or is trying to fill it up with fluff in order to appear smart. They even have an entire section about it: Build half a product, not a half-assed product.

The next-to-last draft of the book was around 57,000 words long.

They chopped it down to 27,000 words.

When was the last time you wrote something of ten pages in length and cut it down to four? Probably never. It is not how we learned to write.

This is changing though. This is Writing 2.0 (more like 955.0 but 2.0 sounds better).

REWORK is about working better, smarter, doing things in a way that has not been done before. The short sections are like nails being driven into your head with a hammer. You finish one section, turn the page, and then POW! Another great idea that you can immediately understand is suddenly in your head.

It is impossible to drag this book out over a week or longer. There is no delay in picking it up and finishing it. You will finish it in a few sittings.

But this is not to say that it isn’t full of valuable content. The only other book I have read to this point that is brief and to the point is Linchpin, by Seth Godin. No surprise that he is one of their major influencers they list at the end of the book.

There are two sections I will further highlight that I found of interest:

1. “How should you keep track of what customers want? Don’t. Listen, but then forget what people said. Seriously. The requests that really matter are the ones you’ll hear over and over. After a while, you won’t be able to forget them. Your customers will be your memory.”

2. “You don’t create a culture. It happens. This is why new companies don’t have a culture. Culture is the by-product of consistent behaviour.”

REWORK is (or will become) one of the most influential business books for the 21st century. I could write more, but why would I? REWORK is a monumental grain of sand for a book. It is that important.

Check out the excerpt on Amazon. Read the 37Signals blog. Buy the book.

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It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.

- William of Occam (c. 1288-1348) “Occam’s Razor”

[This is Part 3 of my review for The 4 Hour Body. Here are the links for Part 1, Part 2, Full Review, and a collection of free chapters from the book]

Getting through The 4 Hour Body book can be a daunting challenge. As I mentioned before, this book is massive at over 600 pages. A portion of that is the index in the back, but a nonfiction book of 500 pages is still quite lengthy. Because of the length of the book, this last part of the review is a bit over due. Nearly a month after the first parts were published, I have been taking my time to read through the final chapters, and take the pulse of the internet in terms of reception of the book.

Occam Criticism

Occam is one of Ferriss’ favourite people to bring up and form his theories around. In short, Occam is used to get results by doing only what is required of you to do. It means not doing ten different exercises in a gym session, and lowering the number of repetitions done and increasing the length of time for a repetition. Everything that Ferriss writes about Occam’s protocol is interesting and helpful. It compares very well to some of the other popular fitness routines available, namely the always popular CrossFit program and the new Primal Blueprint Fitness program.

Occam could have been put into use when it comes to the criticism found across the web, too. Several writers go at length to be critical of the book. The NY Times review, by Dwight Garner,  was fairly negative in its tone, but it does not look like they did the research about the Slow Carb Diet and why it works for so many people. For example, he writes:

Mr. Ferriss makes difficult things seem very easy. But that line from the old Tom Waits song applies here: “The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.” Mr. Ferriss, for example, makes a big deal about how, on his diet, you’re encouraged to go wild one day a week, eating whatever garbage makes you happy. “Welcome to Utopia,” he says. Everybody ready to dig in?

There is a very good reason to allow people a cheat day, or some sort of permission to indulge in foods that are normally discouraged in a diet. By giving people that option, it wipes away any guilty feelings they may have if they do cheat, or they will find it increasingly difficult to stick to a diet. Surrounded by temptation, people will generally give in to those temptations – especially with food. The Primal Blueprint allows people to cheat on 20% of their diet, so this concept is nothing new.

Penelope Trunk writes negatively about Timothy Ferriss every now and then (Tim Ferriss diet, 5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss) and appears to be very jealous of his success. Here is her snarky comment about the book:

Now, with the diet book, Tim tells us how we can take out all the emotional and mental health benefits of fitness and understanding your own body. But look. I have a better plan. You can get plastic surgery, and you can take Creatine, and you can use diuretics, and you will get the physical fitness results Tim promises in LESS than four hours a week. I should write a book.

None of these reviews and criticisms of The 4 Hour Body are very helpful for someone who is wanting to decide whether to buy it or not. I hope my review will be helpful in the end, whether you decide to purchase the book or not.

Ferriss should have heeded the advice given by Occam himself, however. This book is chock full of information that appears redundant at times as it is repeated earlier in the book, or contradicts other sections. This book would have been a much easier read if the sections were pared down to only the Slow Carb Diet, Occam’s Protocol, and the Running Faster and Farther chapters. Some of the chapters go by so quickly, they probably would have been better utilized as a blog post or extra content through the website (i.e. swinging like Babe Ruth, holding your breath longer than Houdini, perfecting sleep, etc). By the end, I felt like out of a 600 page book, maybe half of it was actually useful to me.

Garner puts it perfectly in his review:

Mr. Ferriss offers advice about so many disparate things — not simply losing weight and building muscle and improving sex and living forever, but learning to hold your breath longer than Houdini (!) and hit baseballs like Babe Ruth (!!) — that paging through “The 4-Hour Body” is like reading the sprawling menu in a dubious diner, quite certain the only thing you’d dare order is the turkey club.

There are some certain highlights of the book that I would like to mention though.

Becoming The Hulk

There are two common, perceived problems with today’s men: some men are too scrawny, others are too fat. There is also one thing almost all men want to be: stronger and bigger. Ferriss really zeroes in on this aspect of gaining muscle, as there are several sections highlighting it: From Geek to Freak (How to Gain 34 Pounds in 28 days), Occam’s Protocol, Injury Proofing Your Body, Effortless Superhuman, and Eating the Elephant (How to Add 100 Pounds to Your Bench Press). Of course, these sections are not grouped together for easy consumption. If you focused on the sections for muscle building, you will be doing a lot of page flipping to come to the proper chapters. A minor inconvenience when reading the hardcover book, but more of a nuisance if reading on a Kindle.

The techniques he outlines in the book will be recognizable to anyone that has picked up a fitness magazine in the past few years. They focus on compound movements that involve more muscles rather than focusing on small movements that only work one or two muscles. He does mention the kettlebell swing as the only exercise you really need to use to give your body a sufficient work out. I do agree that the exercise will work out your body, but I think it needs to be supplemented with at least a pushup-like exercise (to work the chest) and a pulling exercise (to work the back). I have yet to read about anyone following the one exercise only program. The reviews of Occam’s Protocol (which is the main workout program listed) are starting to come out through comments on Ferriss’ blog. Perhaps in another month or two, I will pull out some of the comments to see how people are progressing.

Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

The tagline for the book is: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. The chapters about sex (The 15 Minute Female Orgasm) are smaller in scope to the fat loss and becoming superhuman portions, but are the most useful ones. Everything else in the book requires money of some kind (buying different foods, supplement pills, extra books, exercise equipment, etc). The sex portion only requires a willing partner to give it a go.

The chapters have some of the more interesting stories shared and you also meet some people that you will rarely come across in your daily lives. Tallulah Sulis (the “female ejaculation expert”), Nina Hartley (Professor Sex), and Violet Blue (the sex pundit). This section is probably the most difficult to fully review on a site like this. There are several techniques illustrated for coitus and to help a woman achieve orgasm more easily, as well as, some steps men can take to produce more testosterone and have “sex like a wolverine.”

Without getting into too much detail here, all I will say is a lot of what he suggests does work.

Very well, in fact.

Trojan Horses

In the final chapter, before reaching the appendices, Ferriss mentions how, ” this book is a Trojan horse full of unexpected transfers.” It’s a very good assessment of the book. After staying true to one protocol, you will find benefits occur in other areas of your health and life.

After following the paleo/Primal diet for six months now, I can attest to how much more energetic I feel without eating a lot of the food others are feasting on. Before, I could devour a small pizza on my own, but now I feel incredibly bloated after even two slices. I feel sluggish after eating a few pieces of bread, too. Feeling more energetic transfers into how I feel around the house and helps me be more productive overall. It certainly helps with waking up in the mornings with my daughter. After nights of maybe five hours of sleep, I find myself waking up with her easily – without drinking pots of coffee. A handful of almonds in the morning is more beneficial than a cup of coffee in the end.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of information to take in with this book, and not all of it will be useful to you. The chapters about the Slow Carb Diet will benefit the most people if they can make the transition into it completely and stick to one cheat day a week. The fitness regimes can be discovered online easily enough, as can information about improving your sleep.

What this book does offer is a quick and easy read to touch on a lot of related subject areas. Within a week of sitting down to read this book, you can easily plan out a diet to follow, and a simple exercise routine to help sculp the body you would like to achieve. In addition, the book is a highly entertaining read as the language is simple and straight forward. The books reads more like a conversation between you and Ferriss with several people dropping in to provide their two cents.

Is It Worth It?

Ultimately, that is the question everyone thinks of when they have a book or other product in their hands. These days, books are more than just a book. They are a portal to a whole library of information with books having dedicated web pages with additional resources (Excel spreadsheets, extra articles, discounts for products, and so forth). The 4 Hour Work Week website has a lot of extra information available to the people who have purchased the book. In The 4 Hour Body, there are mentions of extra content being available on the website and a dedicated forum for readers, but that is not the case yet. There is no mention of when, or if, it will actually appear, which is disappointing.

The resources located within the book’s content will provide you the extra information you may be looking for in the end. If you are looking for a quick read and are willing to hunt for some juicy stuff, The 4 Hour Body is the way to go. If you are looking for a more polished book with access to extra information and a thriving community, I would suggest The Primal Blueprint. In addition to that book, the author Mark Sisson has a blog updated daily (Ferriss’ blog is updated around once or twice a week) about the primal movement (complete with recipes), a cookbook that can be purchased, a free eBook about fitness programs, and additional products for sale. The Primal Blueprint focuses entirely on health and diet, though.

In the end, The 4 Hour Body is an excellent introduction to many subjects and will help you transform your body through some simple programs. With a price of under $15.00 online, you will be hard pressed to find another resource that provides so much for so little.

Appendix

I compiled some resources for people to get a jump start following a 4 Hour Body or Primal Lifestyle. I personally switch between a 30 pound and 40 pound kettle bell depending on the exercise (I prefer to do more one-arm kettlebell swings then the two-arm). The Primal Blueprint Recipe Book is real tasty and easy to prepare, and the DVD was useful for me in the start of my program. I hope you find these useful:

Related Posts:

• The 4 Hour Body – Free Chapters – by Timothy Ferriss
• The 4 Hour Body Review PT 2: The Devil is in the Details
• The 4 Hour Body Review PT 1: Harajuku Moment
• Coming Soon: The 4 Hour Body
• Friday: Some Bones to Pick

Once I had posted my last link to the business cards that included a Seth Godin quote, I started to see news about a rather new website that has popped up, about.me.

About.me can be described as a grand landing page for people around on the web, but it also serves a double purpose of discovering people. You can do this either by searching by name, clicking a link and being taken to a random profile, or by looking through the directory. The directory includes only three sections: featured, spotlighted, and inspirational. I’m not entirely sure how someone would get listed in these directories, but the service is only starting out and will expand to make things like that easier to do. Right now, I have a feeling it may be based upon the number of views each of those profiles have received.

The landing page is simple. No status updates, no stream of information, no way to follow people. The landing page has a few different components to it: avatar, biography, background, and services/links. You have full control over the font used for the biography and links, as well as, all the colours used. The services that you can tie in include: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, LinkedIn, posterous, YouTube, and a few others. Once you include a service, the icon appears on your landing page for people to click on. You can also include other links (your blog, or favourite websites). The support for RSS feeds was not working for me, but I will keep experimenting with it and doing some research about the problem.

When they do click on one of the services, a pop-up will appear with the recent updates for the services in an extremely simple format.

About.me – Twitter feed

I first read about About.me back in September when a post showed up at TechCrunch. I thought nothing of it at the time because they were in a closed beta. The next thing I know, the beta is opened up to everyone, and they were purchased by Aol. The news release about the purchase is fairly upbeat, and for good reason. This service has a lot of big players advising its development that reads like a laundry list of who’s-who on the Internet: Om Malik, Timothy Ferriss, Kevin Rose, Matt Mullenwag, Peter Rojas, and more.

I know a lot of people consider their blogs as the primary landing page for them, and others use LinkedIn or a Google Profile to capture everything. Having people come to your blog as a landing spot can be a bit overwhelming. They will be surrounded by your latest posts, the most popular posts, possibly advertisements, and have to hunt for a “contact me” button. LinkedIn can pose similar problems, and the Google Profile can connect people to too much information about you if you are not selective enough. Here is the profile for Leo Laporte that seems to include everything he has touched online, for example.

About.me is a service that gives people quick and easy access to your vital information: the sites you list for your online identity, and options to connect with you directly (Facebook, Twitter, an email button). The design of it is simple and clean like a business card. If I ever have to print up business cards to promote myself, I could see myself printing cards that say “about.me/jamesmccullough” and nothing else. One of the most useful parts of an About.me profile is the opportunity to gauge your reach easily: how many clicks on your profile, on your outgoing links, how many contacts combined on your services, etc. Of course, mine is all at zeroes right now, but I can’t wait to see some of the data get entered in the coming days.

With a growing user base, and expanding media coverage, I suggest people take a visit, if only to reserve their name.

Has anyone else setup a profile there?

Related Posts:

• Getting in the Groove: Inspiration
• Talk is Cheap. Really Cheap.
• Linchpin Business Cards
• My Problem with Focus on the User and Making Google Relevant [Long]
• One of the Problems with Social Media [Short]

[This is Part 2 of my review for The 4 Hour Body. Here are the links for Part 1, Full Review, and a collection of free chapters from the book]

It’s Day 2 with The 4 Hour Body (Part 1 here), and everywhere I look, Tim Ferriss is popping up. Tonight, there was a segment on Nightline (ABC) about the book. I also came across another video interview on ZenHabits, and a fascinating interview with 37Signals about how he used their products to organize the book’s creation. Almost every interview I have come across has highlighted a different part of the book, and it’s incredible the amount of information Tim Ferriss can pull out of his head when asked a question. The other thing of interest about all of these interviews and promotional materials is that it was all planned out very thoroughly.

The Blitzkrieg

Tim Ferriss wrote about the challenges he was going to face with the release of this book: the holiday season competition, competing against The Guiness Book of World Records, and the lack of traditional media coverage that he otherwise may have received if the book had been published earlier or later (read about it at The Huffington Post). In order to drive up the sales heading into the new year (“New Year, New You” as he puts it), he was going to have to do things differently.

Being Different is much a motto for Timothy Ferris as Think Different was for Apple.

I was blown away with the buildup to this book launch: the NYC party, the $4,000,000 in giveaways, and constant drum beating of buy 3+ copies and get special gifts. This does not include the contest that was held earlier in the year to find the best advertisements to put across the web – graphic or textual. Currently, there is a contest for the person that promotes the book the best this week. This is all a new experience for me as this is the first major book launch that I have pre-ordered and have followed the buildup from announcement to launch. It has been an all-out blitzkrieg of promotion, media, rocking YouTube videos, and more.

I was thinking of all this when I started to get into the meat of the first third of the book: the diet section.

No “Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away” Slogans Here

As I mentioned in the first part of this review, the diet Ferriss suggests, The Slow-Carb Diet, is a modification of the paleo/Primal diet that I have been following for the last half of this year. Outlined in five simple rules, this is a diet that takes some adjustments to be successful at. With the first rule being “Avoid ‘White’ Carbohydrates,” it is most likely the toughest rule to get over. Majority of the cultures of the world feast on breads or grains of some form (tortillas, naan, rice, etc) and our world is full of various offerings that are too easy to go for (crackers, chips, cookies). Even for me, someone who does not indulge in a lot of sweets, it was a slow process of cutting down to one piece of toast in the morning instead of two, and cutting down on the amount of rice at night with a stir-fry. Eventually, I did get there. Another part that may be difficult to get around is the lack of fruit in the diet. This is a common thing with the paleo/primal diets, but is even more against the grain than eliminating grains is (pun intended).

Once you have cleaned up your system, you will start to be acutely aware of how sensitive your body is to certain foods. It seems to me that our body adapts and accepts some of the bad things we eat as normal, so when the body stops receiving those items, there is a period of re-adjustment back to a clean slate. Once that item hits your stomach again, watch out. At first, I noticed this effect with milk and other dairy products. My stomach was almost always upset after I even had a few slices of cheese. If I had eaten an ice cream cone as a treat, it made me suffer through the night until it had all been eliminated. Now, I’ve become more aware of the effects of bread and other carbohydrates on my system. I can almost predict when I will have a sugar crash if I treat myself to a chocolate bar.

Ferriss uses the phrase “the devil is in the details,” in a title of a section about the effects of cold temperatures to the body, and more specifically, burning off fat. I think the phrase applies aptly to the majority of the diet section, because the smallest things really do matter the most. Whether it is the foods you cut out of your diet, or the supplements you take, or following a regime of cold treatments or standardized eating times, they all add up to major improvements. As he states in his promotional video above: 2.5% effort for 95% of the results.

All that being said, the two combine into an overwhelming force. When you are faced with a blitzkrieg of small details that truly do matter, it can be tough to take it all in. Some of the paragraphs about the various supplements are daunting to myself to comprehend at times, and I think the book’s primary strength (so far) is when the information is laid out in an easy to read, comprehensible style. If the book was completely a reference guidebook, some of the meatier sections would be fine, but the combination of the two give the book a different feel compared to most.

He does recommend skipping certain sections in order to get the most valuable information in and not get too overwhelmed. It was a recommendation I did not listen to at the start, but I might follow through with it during the sections when it gets biology/chemistry heavy.

As for implementing the suggestions for a Slow-Carb Diet, I am in the planning stages of a transition. I am not one for jumping into things without some guidelines and a clear plan. Ferriss suggests starting with a change with the breakfast meal, as it will have the biggest impact on your goals overall. In the summer months, I was eating a lot more eggs than I am now, and that is when I had the biggest weight loss. Needless to say, I bought two dozen last night to get me jump started again. The rest of the cupboard space is getting cleaned out and restocked this coming weekend to take the Slow-Carb Diet head-on. I am looking forward to exploring beans and other legumes again, as that was a restriction that the Primal Blueprint advised against.

The Muscle section is coming up now. A new section to read and plan for; and surely, by the time I finish it, I will have come across several more interviews and promotions.

The 4 Hour Body Review – Part 3: Occam’s Protocol, Sex, and Trojan Horses

Appendix

I compiled some resources for people to get a jump start following a 4 Hour Body or Primal Lifestyle. I personally switch between a 30 pound and 40 pound kettle bell depending on the exercise (I prefer to do more one-arm kettlebell swings then the two-arm). The Primal Blueprint Recipe Book is real tasty and easy to prepare, and the DVD was useful for me in the start of my program. I hope you find these useful:

Related Posts:

• The 4 Hour Body Review PT 1: Harajuku Moment
• The 4 Hour Body – Free Chapters – by Timothy Ferriss
• Coming Soon: The 4 Hour Body
• 4 Hour Body Review PT3: Occam’s Protocol, Sex, and Trojan Horses
• The Paleo Leap, or A Step Back in Time

Marylin Delpy: The site got 2200 hits within 2 hours?
Mark Zuckerberg: Thousand.
Marylin Delpy: I’m sorry?
Mark Zuckerberg: Twenty-two *thousand*.

I saw The Social Network tonight with my girlfriend, and I tried to go into the movie with a clear head. After the better part of the year watching the trailers, reading the rumours about what was contained in the movie, and hearing about how they were going to portray Mark Zuckerberg in the movie, I went into it feeling a bit skeptical that it would be any good. It is certainly a good movie to watch, with a few small caveats.

I only read one review of this movie before hand, written by Jeff Jarvis (who I have written about before). I was a bit curious to read his thoughts on the movie after how highly regarded he held Mark Zuckerberg in his book (What Would Google Do) and through his discussion on shows like This Week in Google (TWiG). Like me, he does recommend people see it, but points out that not everything is accurate. Troubling for him is how Aaron Sorkin, the writer, treated the movie as fiction, not a documentary. Both Jarvis and Leo Laporte on the latest TWiG pointed out that Zuckerberg had a girlfriend during the time Facebook was created, and it was not a wild party ride for them. They also created some context for his involvement with some of the key players in Facebook’s early years.

Jeff Jarvis’ main criticism of the movie is that it doesn’t explain why Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook.

The movie quickly admits that money doesn’t matter to Zuckerberg. So why did he build Facebook? The Social Network offers no answer, except perhaps that an outsider wanted in, but that doesn’t begin to explain what he has accomplished and why; that’s nothing but simplistic prime-time plotting. The script says nothing about him wanting to connect the world or bring communities elegant organization. It doesn’t care. For this is a movie about tactics, not strategy, about people doing hard things to each other. Elsewhere, that’s just called business.

After watching the movie, I don’t think you need to explain the why behind it, even if there is one. I think one fault of our society is that we believe everything is pre-meditated. We want to believe that someone or a group sit down to plan something out and then carry that plan out to completion. But there are times when people sit around, talk things out, and find ways to do things better than someone else, or want to expend their excess energy on a project that excites them.

At times, those people may strike a chord and come up with something that they fully don’t understand themselves. I think that is what Facebook was at the time of its creation. It was a site like MySpace, Friendster, etc. but cooler. What made it cool was how exclusive it was, but making something exclusive to make it special isn’t a new concept. Clubs have done this throughout history either by creating secret societies or creating the appearance that their club is in high demand through long line-ups outside. There is even a scene in the movie that demonstrates this exclusivity with the club young Zuckerberg wants to join.

Maybe Zuckerberg had a grander vision when he set out, but maybe, just maybe, he was a reckless 19 year old that wanted to create something better and wanted to prove his worth to his peers. Teenagers are always involved in the game of one-up manship and Facebook was Zuckerberg’s version of doing something more. Once Facebook started to soar skywards after the exclusivity was removed, Zuckerberg is left trying to explain what happened and how he achieved success. The credit Zuckerberg deserves most is in how he relied on others to build the network for him, and that he programmed the servers to be robust so they could scale effectively. As he mentions in the movie, if the site is down, the users of that site will start to debate about switching to a different site altogether.

The Social Network is definitely a compelling movie with some good moments in there for geeks and non-geeks alike. The first twenty minutes or so is pure geek. I thought maybe the majority of the audience was lost within the dialogue and the fast programming of PHP scripts and wget calls, but after the movie jumps those hurdles, it becomes more entertaining for everyone. It could certainly be a classic for my generation, but it could also become a relic of the past if something comes along and replaces Facebook in the future.

Related Posts:

• My Problem with Focus on the User and Making Google Relevant [Long]
• Sons of Anarchy: Season One = Pure Awesomeness
• About.me – The Online Business Card
• Google: Ending the Search for Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Leo Laporte, President of the Internet

I am sure others have better ways to keep track of projects/emails they need to follow-up on, but my way of doing it is to Star the message in GMail, and create a calendar event to remind me. I shouldn’t have to Star a message since it is so easy to search for email within GMail. I saw this video about FollowUpThen via SwissMiss that provides a better solution that keeps my Inbox at zero, and doesn’t clog up my Calendar with reminders. Hopefully, someone else will find this useful, too.

Related Posts:

• 500 Words or Less: Email
• Two Gmail Extensions to Use – WiseStamp and Rapportive
• Blame the Programmers for the Distracted Nation
• My Problem with Focus on the User and Making Google Relevant [Long]
• One of the Problems with Social Media [Short]