If you've been following the site for a while, you know I'm a huge fan of the Mac application "Self-Control." You put in websites you don't want to access, you turn it on, and they're blocked for up to a day (you choose the time length).

Well, a brilliant reader of the site out in Dubai shared with me some Terminal commands to extend the maximum length of blocking sites up to one month.

Be careful if you do this.

I actually had to take off some of the "mostly bad but occasionally necessary" sites from my blacklist, because I don't want to commit to a month of not using them. But for pure distraction, here you go.

Self-Control is only a Mac OSX application, so this works on Mac. To make it so you can block sites for a month, open "Terminal" and enter these two lines one at a time --

Michael Smith has graciously written up how he decided to quit alcohol by measuring his subjective happiness levels. He runs Teratech, an emergency service to diagnose and repair broken web applications, and he blogs at AbundantMichael.com.

 "How I Gave Up Drinking Alcohol By Measuring My Daily Happiness Level"

I was working on my money issues and I was at a festival that I went to every year that I usually drank at. At that time, I usually drank most days and got drunk about once a week. I was practicing connecting and then had one glass of wine and noticed that I could no longer connect until after the "hangover" time for the wine was over a few hours later. (By "hangover" time I mean the dip in energy that occurs after the buzz of the alcohol had worn off)

Then a few weeks later I was really happy about something, I felt 10/10 happy and I decided to have a drink to celebrate. After a few minutes I checked in on my happiness level and I was only 9/10 happy. But I had always thought alcohol made you happier?! I realized that it is actually a mild depressive and it is just the inhibiting of consciousness and worries that makes it seem happier. Plus that it can be a cue for being silly or talkative.

So I decided to see if I could give it up for a year. It was hard because I had lots of sub-habits and cues about drinking. eg "its Friday evening, I am tired after work, I deserve a drink", "I am at a party and want a drink", "I am on vacation, it is lunchtime, I want a drink", "I am feeling upset, I want a drink", "I am feeling happy, I want a drink", "Someone is offering me a drink, I want a drink" etc. There were about 20 of them that I discovered over the first 6 months and I processed each using EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) until my desire for a drink was 0/10. (In EFT you measure how intense an issue is on a 0-10 scale then repeatedly tap on the issue until the level is 0). After a year of not drinking at all I felt so much healthier and happier I decided to continue my experiment indefinitely. Now I don't get the urge to drink even if I am around the old cues or with others drinking. And I find I can do silly things, play or talk with strangers without a drink in my hand.

Question from a reader --

Heroes by Carlyle

Question from a reader --

Hi Sebastian,

You mentioned in "On Disagreeing With A Client's Plans" that there are benefits to being good at politics, looking good, etc. Why should one invest his or her energy in politics (activity A) rather than activities X, Y, and Z?

Sincerely,

INTERNAL SCORECARD #3

We're now three weeks into me publishing a weekly internal scorecard. I do this to try to give people an idea of what looking to be productive actually looks like across multiple domains. This week was a very strange week, but there are lessons worth learning here.

Question from a reader --

Is there a Godfather Series marathon on AMC or something?

But alright, let's get down to the faccenda at hand. 

Question from a reader --

We had our second GiveGetWin All Hands meeting a couple days ago, and there were two gems that stuck out from the call. Mixed in with going over the things we've accomplished and strategizing on recruiting, marketing, and building, we also share personal observations, productivity, and help each other out.

Two gems --

Zach Obront shared a key point about batching activities. Every activity your perform has mental overhead. By putting a single block on the calendar (one hour, two hours, whatever) to deal with that entire block of things, you can then forget about the individual details.

I'm around 95% Kindle. Here's the big 3 I use --

Kindle for Mac, Kindle for iPhone, Kindle Cloudreader. 

The iPhone Kindle app is pretty good and gets most of my attention. I'll only carry around a physical book if that's the only way I can find a book, and then for a limited time.

Paulo Ribeiro is one of the team at GiveGetWin, and a blogger on strategy in Portugese at his site Estrategistas. He recruited Timothy Kenny recently and worked with Zach Obront to launch an excellent deal on Accelerated Learning For Entrepreneurs. 

This is the first GiveGetWin deal that I didn’t personally touch before launch -- meaning we’re growing into a real organization and our processes are starting to work. They kicked a lot of ass with this, and I asked Paulo if he’d like to write up his experience. Here’s what he wrote up for you --

"Doing Big Things Across Borders" by Paulo Ribeiro

If someone asked me a couple of years ago whether I thought it was possible to do work that you like, be connected to great people and still make impact on the world, I’d probably say no. But hey, that is exactly what I’ve been doing for the past couple of months. And enjoying the heck out of it.

I had an insight a few of weeks ago and asked myself: “if I had an income 1000x bigger, what would I be working on right now?” And GiveGetWin stayed on top of my priorities. I guess that’s the beauty of it: if you like to do the stuff no matter how much money you’re making, that’s probably making you happier (without needing the money).