Here’s an easy (yummy) Paleo meal.

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1 banana
• (about) 3/4 cup of almond meal
• (about) 1/2 cup of coconut cream
• coconut oil

Method:

• Mash the banana
• Add the egg and mix
• Add the coconut cream and mix
• Add the almond meal bit by bit and mix until you get a batter consistency
• Heat a pan, melt the oil, cook like pancakes
• Eat (with maple syrup if you’re being a little naughty)

I’ve just released a new website. It’s called The Portable Athlete. The site caters for those who want to keep fit whilst travelling. It may be that you travel for work or you are taking a hard earned break or you’re venturing out of your comfort zone for a few months. The Portable Athlete includes reviews of equipment, clothing, websites etc., as well as training ideas, stories from travelling athletes and more.

It’s still a work in progress but it would be great if you could bounce over there, take a look and comment and rate the site.

Thank you.

Life is just a collection of experiences. Every moment provides you with an opportunity to learn. Success gurus are always talking about learning from successful people. Now, that makes a whole lot of sense. I’ve always loved Brad Sugars’s saying to the effect of “you’ll never get rich following the advice of a poor person.” Classic.

Whilst it’s true to aim to learn your lessons from people you admire and from people who have already achieved what you’re trying to achieve, I think we can learn from the unsuccessful, from the duds, from the idiots! We can learn exactly what not to do.

Here are some examples of what I’ve learned from this less than illustrious group (some details have been change to protect the guilty):

From one unsuccessful businessman I learned that trying to be everyone’s best friend doesn’t promote business growth. Giving products and services away, being less than honest in order to be liked (the truth hurts) and craving acceptance does not make for good business decisions.

From a shopping centre take away shop I learned the value of listening to customers. Making a kebab to order shouldn’t be too hard, especially when three people are working on it and there’s only one customer…you. But alas, when ordering a chicken kebab, I ended up with an overpriced, under filled lamb kebab.

From the management at a software group I’ve learned how not to build a team. Moral is very important and the leader can’t be stressed and anxious. He must lead from the front and promote a fulfilling and interesting workplace. Focusing solely on meeting the numbers is no way to build the level of camaraderie and cohesion necessary in a professional sales team.

What have you learned from an idiot?

“Tao is a concept found in Taoism, Confucianism, and more generally in ancient Chinese philosophy and East Asian religions. While the word itself translates as ‘way’, ‘path’, or ‘route’, or sometimes more loosely as ‘doctrine’ or ‘principle’, it is often used philosophically to signify the fundamental or true nature of the world.” (Wikipedia)

Oh, the internet is a marvellous place! For a number of years now I’ve been drafting ideas for my magnum opus, A Book About Nothing (I’ll finish it one day). The basic premise being that zeroing out your life can makes things a whole lot easier! And lo and behold Melvin Mann has been talking about the same kinda thing online in his Inbox Zero video, a in the real world in presentations and – some day soon – his book. The Life Zero podcast has been extolling the virtues of Zen and Lifestyle Design. And Tim Ferriss and his many followers have been looking at how to outsource just about everything to attain a Four Hour Work Week and an awesome lifestyle to boot. Oh yeah, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has been waxing lyrical about the joy of a simple life for years. Beautiful.

So, let’s pull it all together. This is the first Tao of Zero post (I hope there will be more).

Here are a few areas of your life that could do with zeroing out:

• Your email
  • Clean out your email inbox (this could take some time)
  • Delete as many messages as you can
  • Archive the messages that are no longer relevant but you can’t delete
  • Create a task list so you will action any items that come from emails you have received
  • Remember that you email inbox is not a task list
  • Zero out your inbox every day; yes that means deleting, tagging (or filing), archiving and actioning everything straight away!
• Your brain
  • Dump all your ideas on to paper (or a software package like TextEdit, NotePad, emacs or vi)
  • Stop trying to remember everything, you will just agonise over it because your brain isn’t that good at it
  • Zero out your brain every night before bed
• Your in-tray
  • Sort through the items in your in-tray
  • Prioritise, delegate, remove, defer, act
  • Get your tasks under control
  • Zero out your inbox every day (or at least once a week)

Next time, we’ll look at other things to zero out. Have you got any suggestions?

Here are my five Hs of lifting:

1. Head – your head has to be in the lift, you have to know you can do it or be prepared to fail
2. Heart – you have to have the heart to push when you feel like you can’t push any more
3. Hips – you have to use your hips to generate the force you require to executte the movement properly
4. Heels – you have to push through your heels and keep constant contact with the ground
5. Hurt – you have to be prepared to hurt to achieve your lifting goals

Lift heavy, eat meat, sleep!