Priority

During my first Minimalist meet up the other day, the one attendee explained to me that productivity is a major issue for most people. The main reason being that there’s is so much distraction.

Whatever you are doing right now and hopefully that’s reading this article, that is your priority.

A priority for me is something that I have decided that I will be doing next for however long it takes to complete it. So for me that’s writing this article. I decided before I started that this would be my next priority. It helps that I’m on a train into Birmingham at the moment with very little to do and the decision was to either read something, waste time on social media or write about something I had learnt from a fellow minimalist. So I decided to write and allow this to be shared with others.

When you are spending time on Facebook then in that moment you’ve decided that this is your priority for however long you spend on it, which very likely will be quite a while.

There might be a dozen other things that need to be done in that moment, clearing out that cupboard, tidying up your clothing, changing the bed and many more tasks that will have to wait, because it’s not a priority.

Happy choosing!

Michael de Groot

Look at me

One thing that’s becoming very clear on Social Media these days and that’s our incessant need to be noticed and gain recognition. Whether it’s by doing Facebook Lives, LinkedIn Natives, these are videos on LinkedIn by the way, or just regular or irregular posts, we have a need to be seen.

Because there’s a constant stream of noise, we are now becoming extremely good at zoning out most of the posts that don’t grab our immediate attention and most of the time our brain is searching for stuff that will makes us laugh or go ‘wow look at that’.

When Facebook first appeared, I was excited, I was so excited, I even predicted, stupidly and correctly that Facebook would be the equivalent of Google, it’s own eco-system, not needing google at all and creating its own massive web presence.

Of course I hadn’t realised it would become reality and neither did I appreciate that it would just be a massive advertising engine for brands and individuals with their tiny business pages.

And slowly over the years I have come to realise that Facebook is a monster, something that IS doing evil and dishonesty in the process. However when over 2 billion people are on the network, the marketers who have billions of goods to sell, have to put their ads there. Google isn’t coming even close.

For the rest of us, we’re all doomed into mental health armageddon.

Have fun there!

Michael de Groot

Algorithm

If I see one more post on Facebook that says ‘I’ve just found out that Facebook has yet another algorithm’, I swear that I’m going to rage quit Facebook. Just kidding of course I won’t, but these messages are definitely causing me some rage!

The fact is all the Social Networks are changing things every single week. Have you ever noticed Facebook’s weekly app update with the following words:

‘Thanks for using Facebook. To make our app better for you we bring updates to the App Store regularly. Every update of our Facebook includes improvements for speed and reliability. As new features become available, we’ll highlight those for you in the app.’

What is missing from that statement?

‘And we will also adjust our algorithm every week to ensure that we continue to maximise adverts for you and benefit our advertisers and also ensure that you will see more of those in your newsfeed compared with posts and updates from your friends, family and the brands that you adore.’

You haven’t been seeing relevant stuff in your newsfeed for years and now you’re jumping on the bandwagon of tricking your friends and family by asking them to leave a message on your post and you are also asking them to send that ridiculous message to their own newsfeeds. The crazy thing is that many are actually reacting to the request and guess what they’ve all seen your message! By asking those mugs to react to your post, it won’t mean that you will see more of their posts, it just means they will see more of yours, but then again that’s the whole purpose of this magic trick and you knew that!

Do you really know what has happened to you and why you are copying others on FB? Is there a slight possibility that you’re addicted to the network and that you are believing all the rubbish that’s being posted on there?

Get a life!

Michael de Groot

ps. Below is the real text of a real Facebook post that I see being posted on a daily basis. I only deleted the emojis that were interpsersed after each para/sentence. #OMG!

My apologies but it seems Ive missed births, marriages, birthdays and also really important stuff recently !!!

I was wondering why my newsfeed looked so different lately well It seems like I keep seeing the same 25 people!I’ve Just found out that Facebook has yet another new algorithm. So I’m doing a simple check, with your help.

Can everybody do me a quick favour?? If you’re seeing this, leave me a comment — just a quick “Hey” or your favourite emoji or gif would be great. The more interaction you have with people, the more friends will show up on your feed. Otherwise Facebook CHOOSES who you see!

Feel free to copy and paste to your own wall so you can have more interaction as well!
Technology!!

Thanks everyone and happy new year

Truth

As ordinary citizens in the world we trust our leaders, right?

Wrong.

How many times do we learn that our leaders, lie, make up stories, create spin, avoid answering our questions and blame and hide behind someone else.

Queue Donald Trump’s team and you find out that many of his leadership team have indeed been very untruthful. How much we will learn after the Robert Mueller investigations have been completed.

However you don’t need to wait until then, you can learn first hand how the US ambassador located in the Netherlands has blatantly been making up stories that are grossly untrue. He even denies something he said a few minutes earlier in the interview.

Watch in this video below by the David Packman show. They do a great job of unpacking his lies in front of the Dutch press.

[embed]https://youtu.be/MBfkvWaSNKU[/embed]

Our leaders have no idea what impact they have on their citizens and the young people in the world. We’re always told how mature adults should be role models for young people. Well, I can truly say that our role models that we have elected to run our countries in the world are lightyears away from being appropriate examples for young people.

The only saving grace is that they will never be in power longer then 8 years, in the so-called civilised western world that is and usually they will be shown to be incapable or they will resign. One or the other means they will at least be replaced by someone else who can make a mess of things.

Happy leading!

Michael de Groot

Growth

Governments, corporations, nations and investors are obsessed with growth. I know, I know it’s how wealth is created, how jobs exist and the fear that accompanies growth is not to be underestimated.

Every single day, news broadcasters are searching for stories to let us know how well or how bad we are doing with growth in our economy in the country of our residence.

And there’s absolutely nothing you and I can do about growth.

The decision is out of our hands. It totally depends how well the people that sell stuff are doing at creating more great stuff that we think we need, but really we do not.

Scott Galloway professor at NYU describes this brilliantly.
He say that the four horsemen, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all appeal to different parts of our bodies.
Google appeals to our brain, Facebook to our hearts, Amazon to our stomachs/guts and Apple to our reproductive system.

In the case of growth all these companies are totally obsessed by it and their investors definitely are.

Let’s just take one of those, Amazon. Amazon is growing at an alarming rate and grabbing marketshare, share value and all the products in the world that can be sold via the web. They even own all the logistics now to bring you those products to your front door faster then anyone else.

We likely have 10–100 times more stuff than we actually need in our homes, but we keep buying more stuff and because it can be delivered faster, we are happy to buy more of it. Our stomachs/guts to buy more stuff is growing exponentially each year and Amazon knows this.

Growth might be an obsession in the world economies, but for sure the stuff that you own doesn’t need to grow any larger at all. More than likely you can feed yourself and your family for at least 90 days on all the food that sits in your store cupboards and not feel hungry.

The only growth we need is the growth in our thinking, the growth in our emotional intelligence and the growth in helping out the more unfortunate people in our society who have been dealt a tough hand.

Happy consuming!

Michael de Groot

Stuff

You don’t need the stuff that you already have. So why are you buying more of it?

Because society, the retailers, the brands, the advertising moguls and governments say and convince you that you should. After all without stuff the economy won’t grow, without growth you will starve and then you will die, oh and your family will die too.

If your family dies, your name will be forgotten forever.

Wrong!

None of that is actually true is it? There will always be growth, because the population grows, whether we like it or not.

The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100.
Source: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-report

We don’t need to worry, we are adding 1.2 billion people in the next 12 years. Did you read that? The next 12 years!!

Growth will happen without us even trying.

https://www.becomingminimalist.com/clutter-stats/

The average American home has 300,000 items. Even if you halved it for the average British home that would still be 150,000 items. Can you even get your mind around that?

It feels suffocating doesn’t it? And it is, stuff causes dense energy in and around you, causing you to feel demotivated, depressed and lethargic. Have you ever felt what it feels like when you have tidied up any clutter? It feels good doesn’t it?

We have all been brainwashed from a very very early age that we need stuff to feel good and actually it makes us feel bad, it gets us into debt and then we don’t find a way out.

Get real, get rid.

Michael de Groot

Smartphone

The very first concept of a Smartphone is said to have been envisioned back in the mid-1970s, but that idea didn’t come into fruition until almost 20 years later when IBM’s Simon Personal Communicator first showed its face in 1992.

Most of us will consider that Apple’s release of the iPhone in 2007 was the start of the smartphone revolution. It probably made the smartphone a commercial success and killed all the others off in the process although they didn’t know it yet until years later.

Today your smartphone has become an extension of your hand and occupies a large part of your brain too. You have literally hard wired your brain to be connected to your smartphone almost all of the time. If it’s not actually on your person, you will very likely be wondering where it is, wanting it to be back in your immediate surroundings, preferably your hand or at least where you can see it. Tethered to your power lead, making sure it has enough battery life in the worry that it might actually run out.

Most of us complain of not having enough battery life although manufacturers have been increasing battery life every single year and whenever a new smartphone comes out. It may even be one of the biggest reasons, subconsciously of course, that we upgrade our phones every year, when actually there’s no need to. It’s an illusion that you need more battery life. The reason your battery goes down so fast is that you spend more time thumbing your way through it, more than you ever did.

Remember before smartphones, if you are old enough, there was nothing to do on the mobiles of those early days, apart from making calls and texting, the battery used to last for days. And batteries today are thinner and last longer and because we’re constantly on them it means the battery is being used constantly.

Not the manufacturer’s fault, it’s your fault.

You place your smartphone by your bed at night and pick it up first thing in the morning. You check it more than 100 times per day at least, at the very least.

It is so bad that it’s believed that research needs to take place into the psychodynamics of these technologies, in terms of the emotional and possibly psychopathological function they are serving in people’s lives.

Next time you pick up your smartphone just know that your brain can’t function without it, you are literally hardwired and addicted.

Enjoy!

Michael de Groot

Beliefs

I heard a great quote on a podcast by The Minimalists who had their friend as a guest on stage, his name is JP Sears. A very funny guy and his YouTube channel is a scream, he really doesn’t take life seriously at all and neither should you.

His quote was:

“Don’t believe your beliefs”.

Wow that really struck a chord with me and got me thinking, just a bit.

We form many beliefs over our very very short lifetime and they either serve us or they don’t. But what if none of them were actually true and we made it all up, because society showed us stuff and we decided to believe that stuff.

Wow, now I am really questioning my own beliefs and wondering whether what I believe is just a load of nonsense and none of it is actually reality. Now that would really mess with my mind, in fact it already is.

There is good news though. As most of our own beliefs are limiting beliefs or negative beliefs, then actually this is very very good news, because none of them are actually true, none of them, not one single one.

If anything would set you free then this should but for some reason the hardest thing for anyone of us is tackling our limiting beliefs.

He had another quote.

“There are 2 kinds of people in the world. Those that believe that they have limiting beliefs and those that are in denial believing they have no limiting beliefs”.

It’s a bit of a tongue twister and it’s so true, we all have them, every single one of us.

It’s worth repeating, “Stop believing your beliefs”.

Michael de Groot

Bitcoin

There’s so much hype these days about bitcoin and many different (1,300) crypto currencies are going on the bandwagon too. Governments are supposedly coming up with the rules and regulations for trading them too. Likely that the US stock markets will be first.

Doesn’t this go against the whole concept of bitcoin? The whole reason is to exclude the current monetary system in existence and that includes governments, right?

There have already been crimes committed in the short existence of bitcoin and people have gone to jail accused of using bitcoin to sell drugs and use it for money laundering. Interesting then that nobody has gone to jail for the 2008 global financial crash and banks receive tiny fines for their banks being used to fund terrorists. There are suggestions of a two-tier system being created.

Bitcoin is not a physical currency, like we know today and many commentators suggest that it will never be a mainstream currency either.

So why has the price gone up so significantly over the past year (2017)?

For me it is the same reason the stock market goes up and down, ‘emotion’.

When investors and the public influenced by investors start discussing a way of making lots of money, albeit in a currency nobody can actually touch and hold, everyone’s emotional brain engages in that direction.

As soon as something rises so fast it has the potential to drop even faster. Remember the .com boom and bust?

Warren Buffet, probably the world’s most successful investor has suggested to stay away from it, but what happens when other famous investors do go after Bitcoin? Does Joe Public follow too? Trouble is experienced investors do not have their money in one basket and that means they spread their risk. Joe Public will likely take their savings and invest it into bitcoin with the potential of losing all their money, invested in one non-mainstream currency.

Or worse still they will bet on the currency going up and down, which will likely cause stress and fear.

As humans we are consumed by greed and it is true that greed for money and stuff runs through everyone’s veins.

My philosophy is simple. Unless you are happy to lose all your investment, like gambling then invest, if not, stay away.

More reading:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/08/bitcoin-is-the-new-middle-ages

https://medium.com/the-new-york-times/how-the-winklevoss-twins-found-vindication-in-a-bitcoin-fortune-1e78981452bc

Michael de Groot

Times Up Now

I am not qualified to write about this because I’m a man?

However I have witnessed throughout my previous 28 year employed career how men behaved around me towards women. How senior people wielded their seniority to take advantage of women and kept them in fear of losing their jobs.

I must admit that at times I feel ashamed to be a man when I see those stories of sexual harassment. Whether men think that they were different times or not, they believed (believe) it was (is) acceptable to behave in this way. I appreciate that men are sexually assaulted too.

To think that my brothers, that’s what we’re supposed to call each other, carried out these crimes towards women really doesn’t make me proud of them, not in the slightest.

In my employed career I saw how senior more mature managers sexually harassed and assaulted young women during the annual Christmas party. In those days it was laughed at and people shrugged their shoulders. But every year we knew the same thing would happen and many wondered who would be his victim this year. As far as I know the person never got reprimanded and I was far too junior to say anything. And yes I do regret not saying anything, but I could have lost my job and I had a mortgage to pay. This made me a victim too!

In addition we know that men carry out abuse towards 1 in 3 women, which makes me feel sick. This means I know many women who are living in silence and fear or have left their partners trying to repair the broken pieces of their lives. It also means I know many men, but they remain unknown to me, who are the abusers who carried out these crimes. I worry sometimes about the men that I might call my friends.

There are still whole countries, religions and regimes who treat women in a subservient manner and this means that the world will continue to carry out crimes towards women and nobody is doing anything, all governments are guilty.

I am proud of the women who are standing up against this and are saying that #timesupnow.

Michael de Groot

How many leads are you really converting?

#leadgeneration.png

Current reality is likely to be fantasy. The fact is that the four horsemen, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are the winners. [Scott Galloway's book The Four Horsemen: http://amzn.to/2CWn5jv]

Their engines are huge, their pockets are even deeper and you have very likely spent a big junk of your earnings with these 4 mammoth organisations.

They are buying up all their competition whenever they pose a threat and will own the internet space for many a year to come, you might as well get used to it.

The only way you are competing on the internet is by spending on ads with Google and Facebook and at this time Facebook is the winner.

Facebook will make $60 billion at least from mobile ads by 2020, that's just in a couple of years time.

You are hoping that AI and automation will save the day and actually it probably won't. The only way you have a chance is to become super personal with your customers and potential buyers. This means spending more on the front end with training your employees to become outstanding communicators and making sure you retain them for longer.

Millennials will rage quit at the drop of a hat, so you better know what they value about your company and make sure you deliver this to them daily.

Lead generation is going to be a much hotter topic in years to come and you will be experimenting with many snake oil providers before settling down with something that you feel happy with.

Remember the customer knows when she's being sold to

The best organisations are becoming better at storytelling and linking al their teams together and sharing the same message.

Here on LinkedIn in by the way is where this can be most effective. The trouble is most organisations ignore this potential and their employees LinkedIn profiles are a mess. Sorry to be so direct, but it's true.

When your employees have to become better communicators they actually have to become better storytellers. Their own story and that of the company they work for. A perfect blend of the two will create trust and loyalty.

Better get started...

Purgatory: the place to which Roman Catholics believe that the spirits of dead people go and suffer for the evil acts that they did while they were alive, before they are able to go to heaven. Humorous: an extremely unpleasant experience that causes suffering.

Mental Health

Mental Health disease is already a bigger issue compared to cardiovascular disease when it comes to the impact on work absenteeism but companies are unlikely to have the stats to confirm it.

Mental Health can be more impactful for a longer period of time compared to a physical ailment. It can cause long absenteeism periods and often individuals will use other reasons to hide behind the fact that something is wrong mentally.

There’s still a massive stigma attached to it.

Mental Health can’t be seen and often we don’t admit to it ourselves.

If the latest reports are to be believed, Donald Trump has some Mental Health issues. Actually we don’t need to be convinced by the reports or Michael Wolff’s latest book on the White House, all you need to do is look at Trump’s tweets and you will appreciate that something isn’t quite right.

Indeed all you need to do is look at Social Media and people’s Facebook posts and Twitter rants and you know something is not going well for them. At some level we all have Mental Health challenges but we are mostly in denial about them and we mask them through our Facebook personas, trying to make things appear much better than they actually are.

If the predictions are to be believed Mental Health will be the biggest condition affecting the global population far out stretching all other diseases combined.

This episode of Horizon looks at the issues that will change the way we live our lives in the future. Rather than relying on the minds of science fiction writers, mathematician Hannah Fry delves into the data we have today to provide an evidence-based vision of tomorrow. With the help of the BBC’s science experts — and a few surprise guests — Hannah investigates the questions the British public want answered about the future. Mental Health is discussed in this report.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5rwvk3

Michael de Groot

Meltdown

It’s quite interesting that a significant report has emerged about the vulnerabilities in ARM-based and Intel CPUs, whatever that might mean. It’s being described as Meltdown and Spectre and it always worry me slightly when we identify these issues with names that will freak most of us out.

More information on Apple’s support article:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394

By the way nobody expected that this would ever happen to Apple, so now everyone’s wondering why they overpaid for Apple, because vulnerabilities aren’t supposed to happen on Apple devices correct, that’s why we pay over the odds for there devices!

And of course at the time of writing, there’s a major storm hitting the east coast of the USA being described as a ‘Bomb Cyclone’ and it looks nasty alright, even Florida has had snow for the first time in 3 decades.

Therefore meltdown is definitely appropriately named to coincide with the snowstorm and the inevitable meltdown that will ensue.

Plus meltdown is a term often used when people lose their mental rational minds and freak out, lose their temper or indeed have a major event occur in their lives that cause some major stress episode.

Well in the case of Donald Trump, who features in all the news headlines yet again on a daily basis is having such a meltdown because of a forthcoming book (released on Friday January 5th, 2017) by Michael Wolff, author of ‘Fire and Fury’, inside the Trump Whitehouse. He’s even tried to stop the publication of this book. Well you know what they say ‘there’s no smoke without fire’ and this president has created some fires that’s for sure.

You can locate the kindle version here: http://amzn.to/2CFmh1s

[embed]https://www.nbcnews.com/widget/video-embed/1130041411871[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDFZKAS5eQw[/embed]

Michael de Groot

Meditation

I’m no expert or even experienced at meditation but what I have learnt from listening to hours of the ‘10% happier’ podcast that trying to stop your thoughts is impossible.

The main trick is to find stillness in the moments between your thoughts when you’re focusing on your breath and maybe your body.

Another great tip is to repeat in your mind over and over the following sentence; ‘I’m not my body and I’m not even my mind.’ It really helps to drown out any further thoughts. I learnt this from Sadhguru.

But when thoughts do come up, just acknowledge them and let them float away and refocus on your breath and/or that sentence.

Small steps, small steps.

Michael de Groot

Signature

Most of you who are using lengthy email signatures to promote all your business details are stuck in the 90's.

Who gave you the disclaimer advice? Your solicitor? Probably not, you copied it from other people’s email signatures.

Do you use an email signature in your messaging on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp or Snapchat? Very likely not and if you do, then there’s no hope.

See with an email address, as long as it’s corporate and these are the ones I am referencing here, you are already giving your website address and with an email address they can already very likely find you on LinkedIn and other platforms if they wish to. If you are in business and are still using yahoo, live or gmail, you are also still stuck in the 90's.

There’s only one thing they need on your email signature. Your mobile phone.

Have you ever witnessed a corrupted email thread because someone has an email signature as long as your arm? In fact the email text takes up a fraction of the space compared to your signature and that means your message can be totally lost.

It really is time to change your approach to email signatures.

Here’s some further reading on the topic.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2015/01/email_addresses_in_email_signatures_no_you_don_t_need_to_do_it.html

Michael de Groot

Addiction

I embraced Social Media massively, studied many hours to become an expert in it and learnt from the best in the world.

Then at a business networking meeting at least 5 years ago, when I introduced myself as a Social Media trainer, the response was oh really not another one?

It made me think, I was already overwhelmed with all the networks I had to master, so I decided to specialise in LinkedIn only, I’ve always enjoyed B2B.

I came across the image below on @therealbanksy twitter and for me it really sums up the world of Social Media we live in today.

And last month (December 2017) 5 years after I became a LinkedIn trainer I stopped.

Why?

I am no longer as passionate about Social Media as I once was and I also believe it is a massive time grabber, which affects millions of us as it did for me.

99.9% of the posts that are being put out there get virtually no engagement or are never seen. I call it the ‘falling tree syndrome’. Millions of trees fall over and nobody is there to witness it. Just like your latest social media post.

Michael de Groot

100,000

I overheard on the radio that in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) has just 100,000 beds.

Between 1987/8 and 2016/17, the total number of NHS hospital beds fell by approximately 52.4 per cent — from 299,364 to 142,568. Within this total number, there are different categories of bed across which the scale of change has varied considerably. See image.

The number of overnight general and acute beds has fallen by 43.4 per cent between 1987/8 and 2016/17 — from around 180,889 to 102,269. However, within this category beds for the long-term care of older people fell more substantially. Between 1987/8 and 2009/10 — when beds for older people were recorded separately — numbers fell 60.8 per cent, from more than 53,000 to slightly less than 20,900.

The largest percentage falls have occurred in overnight mental health and learning disability beds, which fell by 72.1 and 96.4 per cent respectively between 1987/8 and 2016/17. This was underpinned by a policy shift to providing care for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities in the community rather than in institutional settings.

Data from: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers

Considering that Mental Health will be a growing problem in years to come and that there is a time bomb in connection with a growth in older age people, I will leave it to you to decide whether the current UK government have done a good job or not when it comes to looking after the nation’s health?

Michael de Groot

Donald Trump

Will 2018 be the year when Donald Trump (US President) be found out and proven to be corrupt and have used Russian ties to seal his presidency in 2016?

Probably not.

Just like Brexit is becoming a daily dose of non-sense so are Trumps constant stream of tweets filled with abusive and threatening language to the rest of the world. It’s as if he’s trying desperately to be loved by ‘The American People’.

By using language, in every other sentence, like ‘USA First’, he’s trying to get as much of the USA on his side. After all it’s this sort of language that managed to get him the presidency in the first place, so why not keep using it?

No matter what he does, as long as he keeps stating that he’s doing it in the interest of ‘The American People’ then ‘They’ will continue to believe him, right?

Patriotic feelings is something most people have towards the country of their birth, but in the USA it’s something that has always been very strong. Kids grow up being brainwashed so much about this that a very large percentage have never travelled outside of the USA and I promise when I say, I have even met people who have no idea where Europe is.

Trump will potentially be regarded as the MOST unpopular US president in history and he believes that can’t be a bad thing.

The stock markets believe that when there’s growth there’s profit and where there’s profit there will be dividends.

That’s basically the only reason Trump will likely last his full term.

Money talks…

Lewis Hamilton

He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last celebrity or non-celebrity to remove themselves from Social Media.

It’s all wonderful when your so-called fans seem to adore you and are addicted to seeing your personal life unfold in front of them.

That’s until you make a genuine mistake and then the trolling, the judging and hate starts to flood into your surroundings, as if you’ve committed this disastrous crime, you are banished to the outer edges of your mind with nowhere to hide.

Social Media has managed to infiltrate into every crevice of a celebrity’s mind that receiving hate messages will eventually takes its toll and push them into submission when even their ego can’t take anymore.

I feel saddened for a human being who just wanted to be great at their passion and share genuine stories with their fans and now feels they can no longer be so public any longer.

The trolls did win but mental health is more important.