I would like to give you one of the greatest skills in life.

I would like to give you three

key skills that if used, will have a massive impact on your life. I call it the WALNUT
method and I would never want to go one single day of my life without it.

The three key elements to becoming limitless in your efficiency are how to:

1. Save time
2. Create more time
3. Optimize time

It is said that the only currency every human being on this planet has an equal
amount of is time. And that is true if you look at time as a constant. But let’s not.
Let’s look at time as a variable or “Time is relative” as Einstein one hundred years
ago declared. And as with any variable you can dynamically change it in a multitude
of ways.

THE EFFECT IS MIND-BLOWING!

The effect of applying the three key

perspectives and their skills is that you can accomplish more in a shorter period of
time and enjoy what you experience to a greater extent.

I want to make the world a better place. I want to give you and every breathing
human the possibility to learn how to master themselves and live their lives to their
fullest potential. I want to give all youths in the world free access to communication
training. I want to initiate a Communication Revolution! I couldn't even dream of
doing this without the WALNUT-concept.

But enough with the pep-talk. Let’s get into gear and cover the first of the three key
skills. Saving time.

Ps. The course is launched as version 1.0 in beta at the moment. More content,
studies and exercises will be added and the course will keep on growing for years to
come.

THE INSPIRATION TO WALNUT!

SAVING TIME

The first obvious way to save time is

literally saving what time creates. You can do this by creating more vivid memories
by capturing videos and photos. A study showed that people who took photos of
events remembered the events better, most likely due to the effect of halting their
constant train of thought and becoming mindful in the moment of shooting the photo.
I use this consciously and snap photos of what I truly want to remember, I also make
a thing out of it to be even more mindful in that moment. What I have also noticed is
that you can mentally stop and shoot a consciously mental image and it will stick way
better.

SLOWING DOWN TIME

The interesting effect of doing so is the

same that you experience when you are travelling to a new place. It always feels like
it takes longer to travel to a new place due to all the new impressions then it takes to
travel back from the place. By filling your life with new positive impressions and
variation and being mindful in them you create the impression that life goes by more
slowly. For some odd reason, maybe due to my previous death anxiety this has been
the norm that I have lived my entire life through. Ever since I was 18, I have
consciously lived after the equation (XXX-number of Stimuli per time unit =
Perceived duration of time). Interestingly enough a study published in nature
 neuroscience showed that the equation was almost right but there is even more
potential in it. If you really want to slow down the perception of time. Do the following:

Create circumstances for actions that will have three different outcomes.

1. The result is better than what you anticipated

2. The result is equal to what you anticipated
3. The result is worse than you anticipated.

I create this by choosing to take deliberately optimistic/risky actions in combination

with safe actions and neutral actions.

1. Example: I never look at trailers or IMDB when going to the movies

2. Example: I order the same dish as last time at a restaurant
3. Example: I shoot for the stars and land on the moon by engaging in projects
that I can’t entirely evaluate but that I know will be enjoyable.
EMULATING

So many people before you and around you know so much more than you about so
many things. If you want to learn a new subject and choose to do so through
studying books, through your own experiences, through your own failures and
successes – you will lose out on massive amounts of time. Instead, choose to
emulate someone who has already spent 20 years doing it.

Emulating someone means that you choose a person who knows what you want to
know, who behaves like you want to behave, who thinks like you want to think. If
they are unavailable to meet you, read

their  books, watch their videos, attend

their talks! But do not focus only on their words – focus on their mentality, the
background to their words! What is their individual form of “Fundamental thinking”,
how do they behave, what actions do they take, what are they doing differently from
others? Why do they do what they do? For a while live their words, copy their
thoughts, get in their head, be them. For about three months I chose to emulate Elon
Musk and one of the key modulations I brought with me “Don’t do something twice
as good as the competition, do it a hundred times better”. And I still live by that every
day and even if I do not always achieve it the mindset makes a massive difference.
 People often come to me for emulation and I love it, I love sharing. In my case there
are predominantly two routes. The person applies and becomes a member of our
Ambassador program and through that we meet, and they learn. Second route is that
the person sends an e-mail to me or, rather, my assistant where they write that they
would love to meet. I accept as often as I can and invite them to what I call “our 20-
minute coffee meetings” at the JP-manor where they get to ask any and all
questions. Sometimes that meeting or the ambassador program leads to them
working close to me as an intern for a limited period or even an employee for a
longer time and through that they achieve maximum emulation. As they often attest,
what they learn most from is not through my words but through analyzing my actions
and behavior.

CREATE MORE TIME

Hard core rationale:

 A person who lives until 80 years of age compared to 70 created 10 more

years for himself.
 A person who lives until 80 years of age without any major health issues
compared to a person who due to multiple strokes at 50 has to live their last 30 years
of life in a sick state just lost out on 30 good years.
My vision of making the world a better place is going to take time. I need to be in my
prime until at least 80 years of age and then hopefully due to what I have created the
world will slowly change in the next 200 – 300 years.

My father had multiple strokes between

60-65 and lived his last 20 years in a sad state, losing his personality, joy, hope and
spark in life. He kind of missed out on the biggest no-nos when it came to longevity
and health by smoking and as a true british genlement drinking alcohol above
moderation.

The above two examples are my emotional Whys for longevity and whenever I lose
track, I go back to those WHYs.

In the following chapters you will find the most important keys to longevity!
But not only that, what is even more important is that you are in your prime
during most or all of the time you have on earth.

SLEEP

In the “Whitehall II Study,” British researchers discovered that if you give yourself
less than five hours of sleep it also doubles the risk of death from cardiovascular
disease.

A Canadian study showed that sleeping less than six hours increases the risk of
gaining weight and becoming obese. This may be due to leptin being 15.5 percent
lower in those who often sleep six hours or less. Leptin is responsible for feeling full
and regulating fat storages.

Missing sleep over time has a detrimental effect on your immune system, which is
one of those fairly important functions in life for longevity.
The criteria to get enough sleep is different from individual to individual. If you need
to set an alarm to get up in the morning you are sleeping too little – go to bed earlier
or get more efficient sleep. What is efficient sleep?

This is such a massive chapter in itself that I will be creating a separate toolbox for it
at JPU. But very quick tips would be to sleep undisturbed, to not drink alcohol, go to
bed at the same time every night, do not eat anything heavy after 6pm, eat
magnesium two hours prior to bedtime and purchase an oura ring or a Garmin or
Apple watch to track your sleep.

EFFICIENT SLEEP
 According to science, efficient sleep and a good night’s sleep is all about optimizing
your sleep cycle. During your time in bed you will get a dose of deep sleep, REM-
sleep and light sleep. Deep sleep helps you recuperate physically, REM-sleep helps
you recuperate mentally, and light sleep seems to be necessary but no one is
entirely sure what it does.

For deep sleep in healthy adults you would be looking to get 13-23 percent. If you
sleep the often recommended 8 hours, that would give you 62-110 minutes. As you
grow older the percentage you require less deep sleep.

For REM-sleep in healthy adults you would be looking to get 20-25 percent. With 8
hours sleep that would amount to about 1,30-2.00 hours.

When it comes to light sleep there are really no recommendations.

I wrote that 7-9 hours is the recommended amount of sleep for healthy adults. It
could also be interesting to know what it is for kids and youths:

 Toddlers: 11 to 14 hours
 Preschoolers: 10 to 13 hours
 School-aged children: 9 to 12 hours
 Teens: 8 to 10 hours
MEASURE YOUR SLEEP

Purchase a sleep tracking device. You can often find sleep tracking functionalities in
activity bands and many smart watches. I love using my oura ring which has taught
me a lot about my sleep and gives excellent recommendations!

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP!

After measuring your sleep, you might have come to the conclusion that you would
need to optimize just a bit. So, let’s go into the core tips for that!

 Reduce stress
 Go to bed at roughly the same time every night
 Sleep in a cool room
 Exercise during the day
 Meditate before going to sleep
 Place your mobile phone in another room
 Eat magnesium two hours prior to going to bed (consult your doctor before)
 Take a warm shower to increase your oxytocin levels
 Optimize the CO2 levels in your room. If they are above 1000 ppm you will
wake up with a heavy head and an unnecessary brain fog. You can measure CO2
levels with this for instance. Strive for an airflow in your room which will give you a
ppm of around 500.
PRO TIPS
 There are apps today, for instance "sleep cycle" which will wake you up when
you are in your last light sleep compared to the alarm you have set. By using that
you can wake up every morning much more alert!
 Avoid creating the habit of snoozing in the morning as it will not have any
effect on your sleep efficiency, the only thing it might do is make you drowsy.

THE ONE DIET THAT RULES THEM ALL

The one diet we know for a fact has the

greatest effect on longevity is “The Mediterranean diet”. Every other diet we know of
has not been around even remotely as long, and there is therefore not enough
evidence to support them in the same way. I personally eat 95% according to the
Mediterranean diet.

THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET (EAT THIS) – BASIC LIST

 Olive oil
 Sea food
 Fish
 Nuts, seeds
 Whole grains
 Vegetables and fruits
 Potatoes
 Eat in moderation: eggs, cheese, yoghurt, pasta
 Eat rarely: red meat
THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET (AVOID THIS) – BASIC LIST

 Refined grains
 White bread
 Pizza dough
 Refined oils
 Refined food
 Foods with added sugars
 Refined sugar as pastries, candy
 All deli meats and processed meat
GUT MICROBE

During the last couple of years studies on

the gut microbe and its massive effects on our health and mental well-being are
flooding the science papers. The basics are this. Gut microbes are fundamental to
our entire being. The more of the good ones you have the better of you will feel.

So how do you breed the good ones and starve the bad ones. By eating the diet
above with as much variation as possible. Each gut bacteria has a specific task and
if you do not entertain it, it dies out.  So, if you want to kill the excess of bad ones, for
instance candida that feeds on sugar, stop eating sugar! Antibiotics will kill your gut
microbe so stay healthy because rebuilding it takes time and effort.

FASTING

Before we became farmers, we were

hunter gatherers. We ate a varied range of foods and our gut bacteria became
optimized for that. Not only optimized for varied foods, due to limited supplies we
were forced to live according to a concept we these days call intermittent fasting.
Which in multiple studies have shown positive effects on health, aging and
disease, metabolism, and besides the studies, it also makes a lot of sense as we are
adapted to it, and I love it when things make sense!

INTERMITTENT FASTING

The most popular, and the most studied

version of intermittent fasting, and the one I personally use is the 16 / 8 setup. It is
dead simple. Whenever during the 24 hour cycle, you fast for 16 hours. The optimal
time to do so is usually from evening and then skipping breakfast. So from 8pm to 12
am is pretty common. Adjust it to what works for you but remember that you need a
minimum of 13 hours for any effect.

FASTING

Fasting for 2-3 days promotes blood sugar

control by reducing insulin resistance making you overall more efficient as it reduces
the ups and downs of energy. It reduces inflammation, I would know as I have
inflammation markers in my blood, given to me genetically =) and when I fast for 3
days it reduced the pain of the inflammation for about 3-4 months.

There are many more advantages so read up on it and get going!

 OPTIMIZE TIME

Welcome to the brilliance of optimizing

time!

First of all you need to know your base mechanism. Your brain's instinctive priority
every time you wake up is the following:

1. Avoid getting hurt, killed and preferably eaten.

2. Eat stuff that gives you energy
3. Save energy
4. Reproduce with greatest compatibility.

That is the ancient evolutionary mechanism you have to slay, defeat and harness in
order to become an efficient, productive modern human being decides what they
want to do instead of what their primal part forces them to do.

This section in the course is my favorite! Probably because compared to the

previous two sections this chapter will give you immediate results, and thanks to our
brains severely limited simulation functionality - we love immediate results. I also
know that what I am about to give you is what has created my life and my entire
career and with it I can create whatever I want - and so can you. Let’s learn to
harness that brain of yours!

Lets begin with those instincts! 

YOUR INSTINCTS
 First of all, you need to understand that
your instincts which I mentioned above are very strong driving forces, they have
after all kept every single ancestor of yours alive long enough to be able to produce
the next ancestor in line.

But left alone, your instincts in our modern day society wants to make you into a
binge eating sofa monster. Because there and then on that sofa you can fulfill all of
the three first instincts (save energy, do not get killed and eat loads of stuff).

God knows what the plan is for the fourth instinct, because the above-described
combination rarely correlates with a successful execution of the fourth.

But thanks to a beautiful piece of brain mass called your prefrontal cortex you can,
whenever you wish, choose to override your instincts. As an example: You have
probably chosen to not instinctively answer a painful e-mail immediately but instead
take a breath and wait. That's self-leadership!

Controlling your instincts with self-discipline alone will for most people be semi
successful. Controlling your instincts with habits on the other hand will make you the
master!

And finally, thanks to the beautiful mechanism of neuroplasticity you can create new
habits and behaviors whenever you want to in life. All that is needed is an initial
period of persistent training. So, what should we train?

In the following chapters you'll find my personal core tips I have hand picked
for you:

START STRONG
 I am standing here at the moment, it’s a
Saturday, 10.15, the spring birds are singing and the sun is shining. We are 2 weeks
away from the launch of JPU 2.0 and I really wanted to include this chapter in the
toolbox because I know how much it can do for you. It was also the toughest task I
had on my list and my instinct we’re saying… go out, enjoy yourself, or if you really
need to work; do those easy, fun ones instead!

I then, based on the knowledge and subsequent habit of always starting my day with
the toughest challenge, just got on with it. And here I am, and there you are
somewhere in the world reading this. What this will mean for me today is by working
away on the hardest tasks first my day will just get easier and easier and easier.

However, if you listen to your instincts, they just want to save energy so its starts
procrastinating the task that requires most energy which lead to you starting your
day with easy tasks and postponing the more energy-requiring tasks for later. This
will most commonly result in two things. 1. You will stress over the difficult tasks
coming up. 2. You will feel bad for procrastinating which will produce even more
stress and finally you probably won’t get the difficult task done at all.

The solution! Break the habit and always start with the tough tasks first!

YOUR BRAIN WANTS YOU TO DO THE FUN, QUICK, EASY STUFF FIRST

By allowing your brain that behavior you’ll

get very little of the important stuff done. The way to counteract that is to prioritize
your tasks. If I work alone, I write my tasks up in an app called Wunderlist. If I am
working with my team remotely, I also use Wunderlist with shared tasks but if I work
with my team locally, I love to write the tasks down on one of our large whiteboards!
If I am working on a larger project together with others, we use Trello!
EMOTIONS

We're not entirely sure how and when

they came about in evolution, but we know for sure that our emotions are essential to
our decision making, and that by being able to control them better is definitely a key
to mastery of yourself.

DOPAMINE

Dopamine is your motivational

neurotransmitter. It increases your focus, attention, motivation and retention. It’s the
feeling you get when you’ve ordered something new or you’re soon off to a long-
sought-after holiday, and you simply can’t stop thinking and talking about it. Imagine
harnessing that power and sensation in your everyday tasks! Let’s dive deeper into
it!

PLEASURE OR PAIN
 There are two driving forces that exist in
you, pleasure (being pulled towards something) and pain (moving away from
something painful). Both will produce the fuel dopamine or optionally the fuel cortisol
which I’ll cover in the next paragraph. Choose if you want to use pleasure or pain for
the task you want to complete.

An example of pleasure for me is my emotional why of wanting to make the world a

better place. In that emotional why I envision a world without wars, a world with
friendly, kind and loving human beings. Even if that vision is an utopia it’s still my
strongest pleasure-force, creating massive amounts of dopamine whenever I think
about it.

An example of my own pain force is visualizing and emotionally feeling my father’s

deteriorated health which gave him such an unfair last 20 years of his life. That pain
force, makes me focus on my health. In my life I have about 20 different pleasures
and pains and I consciously bring them out whenever I need to refuel dopamine, i.e.
refuel motivation, focus and attention immediately.  I never go into a project without
creating a pain or pleasure for it because I know that if I don’t have it - I will lose
speed, energy and worst of all start using cortisol as my driving force.

CORTISOL - STRESS REACTION HORMONE

Cortisol is your stress reaction hormone

and neurotransmitter and it’s your body’s reserve tank. Just as you have a reserve
tank on your car. When your brain runs out of dopamine it refuels with cortisol.
Which in a way is good because cortisol is similar to dopamine in the way that it
created focus and attention. It doesn’t however create motivation in the same way
and can also be detrimental to your memory, creativity, decision making. There is
strong evidence that people who use cortisol as their driving fuel also are more
prone to visceral fat. To give you an idea of the difference. With dopamine as your
fuel you are relentless. Imagine that you want to eat at a specific restaurant chain or
an individual restaurant. What will you go through to accomplish that? Imagine that
you really want to buy something, what will you do for it? Take a loan, drive for an
hour, pay anything at all… and a week later you couldn’t care less. Cortisol on the
other hand is the feeling of having to do all of those things because someone is
twisting your arm. You may very well get it done but the feeling is the absolute
opposite.

A good bit of knowledge on cortisol is that it impacts your cognitive abilities. And by
just having your phone close to you it will increase your stress levels and impact your
cognitive performance.

REWARD YOURSELF

Yet another trick for creating small bursts

of dopamine is to reward yourself. Say to yourself, when I complete this task, I’ll get
that cup of tea, I’ll read that exciting email, I’ll give that friend a call, I’ll go to the toilet
etc. Important here is that the reward itself is quick and not too emotionally strong
because then it may, like the Greek mythological sirens, lure you away from carrying
on with the task.

We're not entirely sure how and when they came about in evolution. But we know for
sure that our emotions are essential in our decision making. And thereby being able
to control them better is definitely a key to mastery of yourself.

THE PEPSODENT STORY

THE WOW-VISION

In the WOW Self-leadership course we

talk about the WOW vision board. My wife and I create a WOW vision board every
three years where we draw what we want the coming three years to bring. Oddly
enough it’s never failed so far. We’ve always got it hung up on the wall in our
bedroom, so we see it every day we are at home - and seeing it, feeling it, creates
an incredibly strong pull force fueled by dopamine.

This is part of the vision board me and my wife created 2 years before we purchased
the JP manor we live in and work from today. What's a bit spooky is the
resemblance, which, if you ever come here, you will be shocked by.

MOTIVATION, ARM TWIST, DISCIPLINE, MOMENTUM, HABIT

While we are on the track of dopamine, I just want to enlighten you that there are 5
ways to accomplish things in life.

Motivation Arm twist Discipline Momentum

Fueled by Dopamine Cortisol Cortisol Dopamine

Efficiency Very high Very high High High

Success rate Very high High Lowest Moderate

Required effort Low High Very High Moderate

Negative effects Low Very High Moderate Low

As you see in the table the “arm twist” is an overall bad strategy to go about life. The
best tip I can give you is to try, as much as possible, to find a positive outcome of
what you are doing as you will just be conducting mental self-harm if you frame what
you are doing in a negative way in your brain. An example is moving furniture. I don’t
really fancy moving furniture but instead of being negative about I am thankful for the
exercise.

DISCIPLINE - AWESOME BUT BE CAREFUL

In the table we can also see that discipline is an overall moderate driving force. It is
however a fundamental skill to excel in because it’s the best show starter around. It’s
just not optimal for keeping the show going. We find “momentum” in the middle and
momentum is absolutely awesome but can be fragile if used alone. You can probably
recognize yourself, in whenever you get sick or go on a vacation, you only need to
be away for about 4-5 days and it will be enough for you to lose that drive to go to
the gym or return to that great food regime that you were into. Momentum alone is
fragile but combined with motivation and discipline it’s amazing.

MOMENTUM IS GOOD BUT WEAK TO RELY ON

Sometimes momentum can last even shorter than 4-5 days. Sometimes we’re talking
minutes. If you are emptying the dishwasher and you for some reason stop doing so
mid process, starting it again often requires more energy than it would have taken to
complete it to begin with. I live according to the habit of completion and thus make
use of the beautiful power of momentum. If your habit instead is more prone to not
completing things you need to break that habit! Every single time you feel like
moving away from something you force yourself to complete it. That will slowly due
to neuro plasticity change the habit of incompletion.

HABIT WINS TOGETHER WITH MOTIVATION

On the winning side in the table we find

Habit as number one and Motivation as number two. So, to summarize those for you.
Create motivation by fueling up on dopamine from the WOW-vision boards,
emotional WHY’s, small rewards and checklists. If you do all of those often enough
you will through neuro plasticity (neural optimization of the brain) create habits. As
will happen to anything you do enough times – good or bad.

HARNESSING THE CORTEX

Let’s move on to optimizing our cortex.

The cortex helps us among many things with language, mathematics, rational
thinking, deduction. Earlier we touched upon the skill of “self-discipline” aka
 willpower which as we know it. It’s an amazing feature and very useful to have when
starting new things which you lack motivation or habit for.

But at the same we need to be careful of relying purely on discipline as it’s quite
fragile to emotional turbulence. If you suddenly feel sad it will directly impact your
willpower.

IMPROVE YOUR WILL POWER

There are a number of studies which

suggest that willpower is correlated to serotonin and our serotonin levels are highest
in the morning, thus making our decision making most efficient before lunch and
least efficient after lunch. But there are studies showing the opposite as well.

Personally, as a parent I find it easier to take disciplinary decisions in the morning

then what I do in the evening. My suggestion to you is to evaluate yourself – when
during the day, if any, do you efficiently and effortlessly make decisions? Learn from
that and optimize your decision making. Fun bit of fact. Leaders who take decisions
fast and change them slowly are more successful than leaders who take slow
decisions but change them quickly.

The fundament of self-discipline is that beautiful part of your brain called the
prefrontal cortex. You know, the only part of you which can control your emotions
and instincts. So besides optimizing our decision-making abilities how else can we
train it?

PLENTY OF WAYS!

1.   Meditation is an absolute boot

camp for your prefrontal cortex. There are several meditation techniques and the
 one you should apply here is “focus-meditation”. Click on the video and I’ll show
you how!
2. Mindfulness! As with anything in life – being aware is the first step. And that is
exactly what mindfulness will help you out with! By becoming aware of your
sensations, emotions and reactions you can more easily counteract them.
3. Sleep! You’ve probably noticed that your emotions have a tendency to spill
over more often if you are tired then if you’re not. Get enough sleep!
4. You can probably relate in the same way to stress, i.e. cortisol. When you fuel
your brain with cortisol you tend to be snappier. When you are stressed it’s easier
to get angry, rendering your prefrontal cortex less and less useful.
5. The most evident time you turn your prefrontal cortex off is when drinking
alcohol or taking drugs in the most general sense.
6. Increase your serotonin levels. Which is the focus of the next page!
7. Last but not least! This is the most important tip! A habit is the strongest force
we have! And using self-discipline to create the habit of relentlessly breaking the
pattern of that first thought of resistance could be one of the very best things you
can do for your overall ability to accomplish whatever you want! Example: You
want to go to the gym. At the very first initiation of the thought that you don’t want
to go, break it and go to the gym. Learn to feed from your thoughts of resistance
and acknowledge them as triggers where you say to yourself “You FC&%2NG
reptilian brain, Get the F&%€CK out of my head, I am in control and I am going to
the Gym”. If you break the thought of resistance enough times it will become a
habit and it will be the strongest habit you have in your life!
MEDITATION - DO IT!
GROUP YOUR TASKS

Your cortex often performs best when it’s revved up on one particular task! A pro tip
is therefore to group your tasks. Make all your phone calls that you need after each
other, answer the emails you need to answer after each other … carry on grouping
your tasks like this and you will notice a clear productivity increase.

1-MINUTE RULE

If a task suddenly appears which will only take you one minute to complete – do it
immediately. It takes longer to write it down in your TODO-list.

BRAIN FOG
 If it feels like your brain is in a fog, as if
you're living in a sense of mental sluggishness, it can be lack of sleep or
inflammation. A study from the University of Birmingham found a strong correlation
between brain fog and inflammation which you can read more about here.
Personally, as soon as I run my brain on a keto diet, i.e. making ketones the fuel of
my cells instead of glucose it clears my head up substantially.

MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE TIP! - BE ONE STEP AHEAD OF YOURSELF!

I would lose 20% of my efficiency if I didn’t

have this technique in my walnut arsenal. So much power given to the cortex! And
yet so simple. At the end of the day, your brain is filled with information on what the
next step is, what the next task is - it's got this magical holistic perspective. And then
the day comes to an end, you turn the office lights off and you go home!

The next morning you wake up, have a cup of coffee and generally have a hard time
starting your day! It usually takes until around 10-11 am before you start gaining
momentum again. That is a lot of hours lost in a year!

Here’s the tiny but powerful trick. On the previous day, before you go home you write
down the tasks that you are going to start the next day with. The next day you look at
the list and ..boom! you move yourself to the mental state and focus of yesterday in
just minutes. What I do personally is, I have a simple TODO-appointment in my
schedule which is always set for 8am. In it I write the tasks I need to start the coming
day with and when that day is over, I enter the new tasks for the next day and again
move the TODO-appointment in my schedule. I’ve moved the same one I have now
about 600 times =), just short of 2 years.

OPTIMIZING TIME BY TEAMWORK

You and your cortex only have 24 hours a

day, irrespective of how slow or fast the perception of those 24 hours are. By
delegating a task to someone in the team which would have taken you two hours just
extended your productivity to 26 hours. With the delegation of 8 hours of work to 10
people per week that would give you an additional 80 hours per week. There will of
course be losses and gains by creating teams, but the point isn’t the mathematical
accuracy but more so the basic concept of building circumstances for building teams
and becoming awesome at it!

MAX 3 VARIABLES

Your cortex ability to juggle variables to any solution is incredibly limited. And as
soon as you have more than three variables it will all start to create stress in you. In
the beginning the stress will be subtle but when you add more and more variables
the stress will become debilitating.

The solution is to be aware of this shortage of intellectual power and as soon as you
pass three variables write them down on a whiteboard or a piece of paper. Visualize
them in front of you is key. By doing so you see it all more clearly, it will reduce your
stress which in its turn will make you see everything even more clearly. All in all,
leading to a greater ability to draw a mind map and take better decisions on the
actions you need to take to move forward.
 CHOOSE YOUR MENTAL STATE

Self-leadership according to me is fundamentally about the ability to choose the

mental state you want to be in and move into that mental state within any chosen
moment. And this obviously applies here as well. Let’s learn how to, by a
combination of emotional stimuli, brain frequencies and much more!

ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY (EEG)

An EEG is a device for monitoring and

recording electrical activity of the brain. It’s usually noninvasive, with the electrodes
placed along the scalp. With it you can read your own brain waves. I currently own
two EEG’s today and use them primarily for coaching people in becoming limitless
but most often how to overcome their debilitating nervousness.

With an EEG you can read out which brain state / wave your brain is currently in.
And which one it’s in makes a big difference to your performance and behavior. So
let’s start with understanding and learning that your brain operates in these
frequencies.

 Delta waves (.5 to 3 Hz) are the slowest brain waves and occur primarily
during our deep sleep
 Theta waves (3 to 8 Hz) occur during sleep but have also been observed just
before going to sleep and in meditation.
 Alpha waves (8 to 12 Hz) are present when your brain is in its default optimal
state; they are created when daydreaming or consciously practicing mindfulness or
meditation.
 Beta waves (12-30 Hz) dominate our normal waking states of consciousness
and cognitive tasks. Beta waves are “fast” waves that activate when we are alert,
attentive, focused, and engaged in problem solving or decision making.

Now with that base knowledge lets learn which methods you can use to change your
mental state within a few seconds.

I WANT TO BE CREATIVE
 Move your brain into a state of
alpha waves. According to multiple studies alpha waves is one of two main brain
wave states which increase our creativity. A quick tips to move in to alpha waves is
to start by reflecting uponwhen you are most creative? Usually people answer: In the
shower, in the car, on the train. All of those have one thing in common, they can
create a rhythmic sound which moves your brain into an alpha state.
 You may also answer. When I take a walk, just before going to sleep. The
reason you become creative then is the closely related theta waves. They appear
when we put our brain into a relaxed state. You may have noticed that being creative
whilst stressed (beta waves) is suboptimal for creativity.
 You may feel a clear difference between alpha and beta when for instance
you are working on a project and the deadline is far away. As the deadline grows
closer you become more and more stressed and your creativity fades.
I WANT TO BE FOCUSED AND PROBLEM SOLVING

 That would actually be a

combination of beta (standard wakeful state) and alpha. Best explanation for it would
be the state where you experience a tad of stress but you’re still relaxed. You may
be able to relate to that a little bit of stress makes you more focused, you drive
better, you play better, you think better. But as soon as you go pure beta-wave you
move into anxiety, fear, fight, flight. In this case it’s all about balance! A lot of people
drink caffeine to move them into this state. The university of Arkansas studied the
effects of caffeine and it does make you more alert and better at problem solving but
has no impact on creativity.
 I can easily move in and out of this state in a balanced way by executing my
emotional WHYs which I wrote about earlier on. Another way is getting your blood
pumping by doing breathing exercises, doing sit-ups, push-ups or walking to a coffee
machine furthest away from you =)
 Most importantly of all. Turn off notifications, close tempting applications, tell
people that you are going to focus for one or two hours. Every time you lose
 attention you lose out on momentum and efficiency irrespective of how small that
disturbance was.
I WANT TO LEARN MORE EFFICIENTLY

 Your brain is in an optimal learning

state when you move it to theta brain waves. This happens automatically before
going to sleep. Repeating whatever you want to learn just before you go to sleep is a
simple trick.
 When meditating you move your brain into theta brain waves so learning
something immediately after a meditation session is also very powerful.
 Whatever you want to learn, visualize it. The key to any memory master in the
world is to visualize the fact. I will be covering memory master skills in a future
toolbox.
 Associating movement to whatever you want to learn will increase efficiency.
For instance, by launching a functional gesture with your hands that represent the
same thing you remember will make it easier. Example: You want to remember that
you are sitting in seat 134. Draw 134 in front of you with your hands and notice the
difference.
 A moment of focus. The next time you’re staying at a hotel. Just stand in front
of your hotel room and look at the number. Become present. The chances of you
remembering it now is far greater than if you hadn’t taken that moment of
mindfulness. This probably correlates with the fact that taking a photo that you want
to keep increases the chances of remembering the moment.
I WANT TO BECOME PRESENT AND GENEROUS

 The sensation of being present

comes from a neurotransmitter called Oxytocin. You can induce it by bringing up
memories of love, caring and connection.
 I personally bring up my phone and look at photos of my daughter and that
induces oxytocin in me.
 The brain wave you are looking for here is beta and you can quickly move into
it with meditation and mindfulness.
 Being consciously thankful and grateful will also induce oxytocin.
 Being generous will induce oxytocin which will make you more present and
even more generous. A perfect circle!
 After a hard day’s work, this state is beautiful to shift to before opening the
door and returning to your family! Or whenever you are going to have a meeting or
presentation which benefits from oxytocin.
I WANT TO BE MOTIVATED

 Find you emotional WHY and

repeat it until it gets your pupils dilating and your heart raising of excitement by just
thinking about it.
 Look at a WOW-vision board where you have all your goals set.
 Give yourself a reward
 Dopamine is the core neurotransmitter for motivation. Your brain doesn’t care
where it gets its dopamine from as long as it does. Problem these days is that you
can so easily get it from mobile apps, gaming, sugar, tv-series and movies! And the
problem with that stems from the brain's desire for saving energy. Thus it will always
choose the easy way turning so many people lazy. The way around it is either to do
a Dopamine detox for 7 days where you during that time limit all or most of the above
sources that I mentioned. Optionally you work toward a better balance by slowly
reducing your screen time with 15 minutes per day until you’re down to around 1
hour. And when you have achieved that you’ll notice that your motivation returns,
and your dopamine will steer you toward doing “real things” in life.
A FINAL POINT

A final point I want to make in regard to shifting between mental states is that you
probably already know how to do this with music. I believe you know that certain
songs you listen to makes you creative, focused, motivated, happy or present. Learn
from that insight and analyze which songs move you into which state and from that
you can create functional playlists. The power of that single tip is phenomenal.
 THE POMODORO METHOD

In order to become more productive, I

know a lot of people
and have a lot of friends who rave about the Pomodoro method
and it does work really well for them! I personally do not see my
productivity increase with the use of it but as I said, I know
it works in general. So, here is a quick summary of it!

SIX STEPS
1. Decide on the task to be done
2. Set a timer to 25 minutes
3. Work on the task until the timer goes of
4. Take a 5-minute break
5. Repeat 4 times
6. Take a 15-30-minute break and repeat from number 1 again.
CLEVER

I think the reason why it doesn’t make me more productive is that we are all unique
and different. And I have through the many years with my optimization techniques
and self-leadership learnt what signals to listen to in my own body and take breaks
accordingly.

Even if the underlying reasons to the pomodoro technique have never been
scientifically proven it's fairly sensible to believe that it helps you promote optimal
oxygen levels in your blood, balancing dopamine and cortisol and reducing the risk
of your brain slowly moving out of the productive alpha wave state when doing the
same thing for a long time.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!

 Practice makes perfect! Is bullshit. I don’t
appreciate the expression “perfect” because it’s the lowest standard of life as you
can never achieve it. I do however enjoy the philosophy of Sakichi Toyoda which is
the technique he developed for continuous improvements at Toyota.

And today the car makers that said – let’s make a “perfect vehicle” or let’s make this
perfect or had employees who said “I need perfect” or “I am a perfectionist” have all
been bypassed by Toyota when it comes to reliance and quality by the simple
philosophy of small but continuous improvements. And that’s where I would like to
have your mindset because that is how your brain works.

OPTIMIZING YOUR BRAIN

Your brain doesn’t strive for perfection or

do well with massive changes. Your brain is built upon small iterations of changes
called neuroplasticity. Imagine a path which you walk many times, the more times
you walk it the larger the path will come. And as your brain is energy saving by
nature and it will take the path with least resistance. That’s why habits work so well,
by initiating a new behavior in your life with the help of will power and motivation it
will become a habit if you do it long enough, if you tread that new path enough times.
What are enough times? It always depends on the width of the old path, how many
times you’ve repeated the old behavior. Luckily you don’t have to tread the new path
as often as the old path in order for the new one to take over because our brain is
better at forgetting then remembering something new. Studies on the brain and
meditation point toward 8-12 weeks of continuous use of the new path – that will
make a permanent change, but you will need to entertain the new behavior for
probably up to a year if it’s to exchange an old persistent behavior.

OPTIMIZING YOUR LIFE

 This you can take action on immediately
with all the small but incredibly powerful tips you have gotten throughout the course.
Things like the 1-minute rule, to prepare your TODO before you go home, to always
start with the tough stuff first, to move into mental states on command and so on. All
these together can if you haven’t used them before, easily increase your productivity
by a lot! And when something is fun, when you see results immediately you will build
those new habits like never before!

THE WALNUT AND MY LAST WORDS

Owning your life, owning your thoughts,

commanding your instincts and harnessing your emotions and cortex isn’t something
you do for a while, it’s a way of life. It’s a way of life where you get to choose
happiness, productivity, health and longevity. And the only one that can choose that
for you - is you.

My last words to you in this course is! Do it. It's always a SKILL, not TALENT, and
SKILLS need PRACTICE.