Adam Decker

Want to Wake Up with Energy? Plan Something You’re Exited to Wake Up For

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I am a morning person.

You have no idea how weird it is to say that. I’ve never been a morning person. I’ve always been the one who stays up as late as he can, just to read the book, play the game, surf the web, or just stay awake a few minutes longer. No longer. So, how did I do it?

Think back to the last time you woke up excited and ready to go. Was it the morning of a vacation trip? A birthday? Was it back as a child waiting for Christmas morning when you couldn’t bear the excitement of waiting a moment longer?

We wake up energized when we are excited for what happens in the morning. It’s as simple as that.

The thing that helped me realize this was a book my coach, Jodi Phillips, recommended I read. It’s called The Miracle Morning.

The Miracle Morning takes 6 of the best self-development practices and starts your morning with all of them. A typical morning looks like this:

  • 5 Minutes Meditating
  • 5 Minutes of Affirmations
  • 5 Minutes Visualizing Goals
  • 10-20 Minutes Exercising
  • 5-15 Minutes Reading
  • 5-10 Minutes Writing

Most folks will do one or two of these a day. Beginning your day with all 6 super-charges your morning and puts you in a fantastic growth mindset.

Try it once. Set your intention the night before or you won’t have the energy. What goals will you visualize? What will you read and write?

If you don’t want to wake up an hour early (it’s really not that hard once you experience how awesome this day is) then do half an hour or even just 6 minutes. One minute for each activity.

Personalize it. Don’t do these activities just because I said so. Take a personal development practice that matters to you and do that. I’ve added working memory exercises and a strategy game called Tak to many of my mornings. Make it yours.

I’m a morning person. So are you.

Randomly Useful Memories and Percussive Maintenance

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It’s late, and I’m tired, so I’ll try to keep this one shorter.

About a week ago, one out of the four blinker lights on my car went out. Great. Not horrible car trouble, but still annoying. People behind me wouldn’t know when I was turning left, and there was that awful rapid clicking signal yelling “Something’s wrong!! I don’t have my partner anymore!!” whenever I put it on.

As I continued driving,  the signal came back on. Then it went off again. Then on again. This was getting annoying. Was my light dead or not?

Eventually, it went dead and stayed dead. I drove over to Autozone to get either a new light or a new fuse or whatever electronic bit controlled the lights, because I didn’t really think the light was dead.

It wasn’t the light. It also wasn’t the electronics. I was stumped, the Autozone guy was stumped, and thought maybe something in the electronics leading to the light was wrong. He sent me away with a list of local shops that might be able to help.

That was yesterday. Today I went to a Christmas party with some friends. After we said goodnight, I decided to check the light one more time. Still broken.

A thought popped into my head. A memory from years ago, listening to NPR’s Car Talk on a Saturday morning driving somewhere with my Dad.

The man called in to the show with a story of an odd problem that he solved by literally hitting his engine with a wrench. One of the hosts said ‘yeah, sometimes problems can be fixed like that.’

I knew there was practically no way this was going to work, but I was a little frustrated, and there was a chance. So I hit the light. It started blinking.

As I drove home, I thought about how random it was that that that particular memory that had no right to still be in my head would pop up right when it could be useful. I realized that it’s really the reason why we learn almost anything. At some point, it could solve a problem for us.

So remember everything you can. Notice things that are odd, or out of place. You never know when they might pop into your head and make themselves useful.

I’d Almost Prefer It If You Didn’t Read This

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I didn’t want to write this blog. This is the one where I tell you what I’m doing with my life.

I’ve always been a private person. To my friends, I would joke that I was “mysterious” and so forth. It was a lie that I hid behind.

I used to do a lot of things just for the sake of appearing mysterious. They were actually to hide from my insecurities.

I would avoid many social risks, even as I took others. I would only take the risks that were sure bets. Ones where there were no consequences if I failed.

I would almost never say what I really felt while in high-stress situations. I would almost never reach out to possible new friends where I wasn’t sure I was really wanted. I would go to great lengths to try to avoid any action that might possibly hurt someone, or even just go against their expectations of me.

I’ve avoided risks where I could fail and be criticized.

I am afraid of criticism.

Well screw that.

My name is Adam Decker. I am a college rebel. I have dropped out and have no intention of going back.

I am in an entrepreneurial apprenticeship program called Praxis. I am learning how to add value to companies I work with using an entrepreneurial mindset. I will be getting a paid apprenticeship at a startup through their network very soon.

I have studied several hundred hours learning about entrepreneurship and peak performance. My education comes from books, my mentors who have become successful, and the application projects I do.

I have spent this month  blogging every day (two posts have not been published, but they were written.) I’ve written about the books I read last fall, the Etsy store I made earlier this year, and the way I remember much of what I learn.

I’ll continue to write about things that matter to me. The rest of the books I haven’t reviewed yet, the projects I’d like to work on at some point. I’ll be posting them to Facebook.

I didn’t want to write that last sentence either. But I promised myself I would act when I saw myself holding back from doing something I needed to. So for the rest of the month, I imagine my Facebook feed will be busier that it’s even been. I hope I can entertain anyone who reads here and maybe even help a few friends with what I write.

How to Achieve Your Goals

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Over the last few days, I’ve given what I’ve learned from the first 4 books in a crash course on entrepreneurship my mentor had me read last fall. These four, The 10X Rule, Think and Grow Rich, The Compound Effect, and The One Thing, are all focused around actions and mindsets I need to have in order to reach the goals I set for myself.

Before I read them, he let me know that the books could combine into a bigger picture. Each one was powerful, but if they were combined, they would be incredible. After I finished reading The One Thing, I saw what he meant.

The 10X Rule tells you to multiply your goals, your expected needed effort, and your actions to reach your goals by 10. Think and Grow Rich tells you to imagine your goals so vividly that it already feels real, and have a plan to add value either with that money or for that money. The Compound Effect teaches that if you do something every day, the effects from it will gather and increase like compound interest. The One Thing Teaches you to ask “what’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?”

Now take all of those lessons and apply them to a single objective. What is your goal? Now multiply it by ten. Do it again. How much effort/actions will it take to reach that goal? Multiply that by ten. Visualize yourself already having achieved your goal. Touch it, smell it, see it, live it. What good are you going to do with it or for it? Visualize that. Ask yourself what the most effective single action towards accomplishing your goal is. Now do that every single day.

It’s not easy. It requires a lot of thought, soul searching, and planning. But if you do it, really, truly do it, you’ll actually achieve what you intend to. It won’t be fast and it won’t be easy, but you will achieve your goal, unlike 90% of people who set out.

Fall 2015 Crash Course Booklist

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Last year around September, my mentor gave me a challenge. At the time I had been working on a card game for a good while, and he saw how I was able to stick to it. (Remember that. People get impressed when you stick with something.)

He decided to coach me, and challenged me to read the 11 business books that had gotten him started and helped him run a fantastically successful Kickstarter. He gave me the list around the end of August or beginning of September, and challenged me to read them all by Christmas. 4 months.

I was done in 3.

I needed to learn. I needed it. I had to know how to make things change from an idea in my mind to a real thing. Looking at the list, I could see how everything could fit together into something bigger than the sum of its parts. This was going to be amazing.

The Books

The Ten X Rule by Grant Cardone

Think and Grow Rich

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

The One Thing by Gary Keller

22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

Hooked

Fascinate

Made To Stick

Mating Intelligence Unleashed

The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene

Influence by Robert Cialdini

Holy shoot.

I had spent 3 months reading nearly a book a week. I also had used the mind palace memory technique (I’ll talk about that in another blog.) to remember many of the major principles. I was darn proud.

I began trying to apply the principles in my mind and could begin to see the gears working in companies. It was amazing, and I was eager to apply the principles to my own projects as soon as I could. I tried to apply the principles with my card game but really began to succeed a bit a few months later when I started my Etsy store that I wrote about a few weeks ago.

Over the next while, I’ll be writing about each of these books, what they’re about, and what I learned from them. I’d love for you to follow along, but to be perfectly honest, I’d recommend you start reading them yourself. You’ll get more out of it that way.

The Story Thus Far…

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Ideas are my lifeblood.

Ever since I was a child I’ve loved ideas that spark the imagination. When I was a kid, I would spend hours imagining riding on a pterosaur like the skybax riders of Dinotopia or theorizing how to make a working lightsaber or webshooters.

I thought I would grow up to be an inventor, because I loved imagining how technology could create the fantastic. That didn’t end up happening. But my love of ideas grew stronger.

I opted out of finishing college after 4 years of spinning my wheels. I couldn’t find anything that struck me as something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted more than just a day job and a secure paycheck.

During the last year and a half of my college experience, I came across a book called The 4 Hour Workweek. I was inspired by it and the lifestyle it said was possible, so I started experimenting and learning.

I learned about e-commerce, took a course on copywriting, tried selling my skill as a copywriter, and began making a card game. Nothing stuck until I found a mentor.

My mentor was a successful entrepreneur and set me to work reading the books that had laid his foundation. He gave me 11 books to read and told me to discuss each with him after I had read them. I finished them all in 3 1/2 months.

I devoured those books about achievement, about marketing, and about psychology. The principles from them, according to my mentor, would form a blueprint for creating businesses and products that captured their audiences. I loved learning these principles, and they did make that blueprint.

I’ve never been without a new book since. Books on finance, on positive psychology, and on building businesses have been the main ones, with several books simply for enjoyment mixed in.

I’ve tried many different projects and niches since then, including building a number of prototypes for a superhero card game and making a successful Etsy shop that sold miniatures of pop culture dragons (that did great, but hand-making dragons the size of a penny takes too much time for the return.)

At that point my sister, a teacher down in Arizona, met Cameron Soresby of Praxis. She recommended I email him and look into the program.

When I spoke to Cameron and continued to investigate Praxis, I found a community of people who love ideas and implementing them just as I do. People who take the ideas that light them on fire and make them happen. That was a group of people I wanted to work with and learn from.

Now I’m learning from this fantastic community how to bring real value to any businesses I work with, and improving myself in a systematic way. It’s fantastic.

So here I am, learning how to make ideas become reality. I love doing this. I think it’s practically a superpower.