PODCAST · education
Effectiveness
by Max Langen
Live more of what you want in your limited years
Episodes
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Leave Incompetence
You're in a group, a friendship, a romance, and certain things just aren't working. It might be money, it might be scheduled events, it might be communication. You've tried everything you know to try, and everyone involved is doing their best. What's happening? Someone in the situation is...
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Necessity vs. Nice
If a thing needs to happen, and the person who needs to make it happen isn't, and you don't think it's the nice thing to require them to correct their behavior, then you are misunderstanding the situation. Necessity and nice aren't opposites. Necessity means that the change has to happen - nice...
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Focus on What You're Good At
You may have wanted to be a concert pianist or an astronaut as a child. Now you discover that you have a mind for details and an intuitive grasp of numbers. You are making amazing progress as an accountant. Which should you follow? Your dreams, or your aptitudes? Both, of course! You should do…
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Play! But... when?
All work and no play makes for a dull life. But all play works worse, and playing in ways that hurts your productivity (be it work, study, or caring for people in your life) isn't a good alternative. You need to play, and you need to play at times and in ways that don't slow down other parts of...
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Let It Go
More than letting it go, you have to be happy to see it go. I mean the parts of your life that aren't working - the friendships that have gotten cold or toxic, your love for alcohol and parties that have you hung over and anti-social the rest of the week... You have to change. You have to make...
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Align Your Goals and Your Values
State your goals clearly. Find out your values. Be clear and be honest. World peace is neither a goal you have, nor a value, it's an evasion. Now consider whether your goals and your values are in agreement. Can you reach your goals while acting as your values dictate? If you can, you're great.…
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Don't Confuse Religion and Life
Religion provides a moral compass and an emotional refuge. It's a central part of normalizing our society. When we use some of the lessons and promises of religion to guide our lives, we become confused. The infinite joy that will follow this life, and the other beliefs that underpin many...
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Expectations, Goals, and Happiness
You can lower your expectations to become happier. Everyone knows this. But you have to keep your goals high, or your life decays and you have to lower your expectations further and further. The more correct way to think is that you lower your expectations for happiness, but you keep your goals...
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Eliminate the Drama
Drama is anything that isn't discussing a problem, compromising, and then resolving the problem. In other words, drama is a way to have more problems. If you have people in your life who add drama, get them away from you. If it's you... stop.
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Divide Your Pain
Pain is a part of life. Do what you can to lessen it, but once you are hurt by someone, divide the pain to get the most out of the experience. Some of the pain was bad luck - you could not have avoided it. Just accept that life contains bad luck. Don't bury how you feel about what happened -...
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Focus on Routine
Most of what you do in your life is your routine. Brushing your teeth, watching television, eating dinner. Anything that repeats, is disproportionately important in your life. If it repeats every work day, such as a commute or breakfast, it's massively important. A simple first step to improving...
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End Conflict... Brutally
You've tried resolution, win-win, and diplomacy. You've tried avoiding the conflict, and exiting the situation. Nothing has worked. The person you have conflict does not want resolution, and does not want the conflict to end. They either enjoy subjecting you to the conflict, or want you to give...
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Emotional Communication
We're emotional beings, but most communication we experience is rational. Rational communication fails to connect with the emotional side of us, and fails to convince and reassure us. When a friend, co-worker, or person you love is communicating with you, have both conversations: The rational one...
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Slower Decisions
Some decisions are urgent. You must get out of the way of a truck, or die. You are taking all other decisions too quickly. You probably aren't even giving the decisions enough rational thought; but you're definitely not giving yourself time to check your emotional feedback, and you haven't...
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Let Go of Resentment
Someone has done you wrong. Defend yourself, and make what changes need to be made to prevent it from happening again. Then, let it go. Put it from your mind. Forgive, or not - but stop paying the person, and their actions, attention. Your resentment is hurting you, not them. It's costing you...
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Externalize Your Memory
You're listening to this podcast, so you want to explore more possibilities in this time of abundance. How can you store all the tasks, notes, and appointments you make in your limited brain? Like a car externalizes transportation and your cell phone extends the reach of your voice, a to-do list…
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Do What's Next
From time to time we get overwhelmed. It's a combination of our wanting to do more, and life being unpredictable. Sometimes, it's life being more than we can handle. We shut down. We try to make sense, internally, of the chaos and fear. While we are sorting ourselves out, what do you do to keep...
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Ask!
When should you ask for what you want? Always! If you're not asking for what you want, there might be some reasons, and some ways that you can learn to start asking.
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Don't Aim For the Top
Only one can be the best, and it most likely won't be you - and the investment of effort into being the best is too large. Instead set your sights lower. Second best is still great! And it will take less effort, which you can put into reaching other goals. There's more happiness in being good at...
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Don't Avoid (Certain) Pain
Pain is inevitable in life. Some pain, like a fire, you must avoid. Some, like physical exercise, you must seek out (in moderation, under the supervision of a doctor). Emotional pain is inevitable. It comes during and at the end of almost every relationship we have. Trying to avoid it can only be...
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How to Deal With Complexity
Complex situations overwhelm us, so we avoid them. They overwhelm everyone else. Size and strength, and then ruthlessness in business used to be what life rewarded. Nowadays, those who are comfortable in complex situations get the best rewards in life. Accept that you will never understand...
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Leave the Past in the Past
As time passes we are less and less the person we used to be. We take on new identities and discard the old ones. Other than a few things, like traits of those close to us, the past doesn't offer us much that is useful. Put it in your photo album, in your diary, and live forward.
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Your Friends' Bad Decisions
You're frustrated, again and again, because your cherished friends make horrible choices. You explain, you show, you lead them toward better decisions. They nod their heads, listen carefully, agree... and then make the exact same horrible choices. Give up. The mountain they have to climb to…
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Don't Let Shame Decide
Shame is pressure on your decisions, learned from childhood. It's undefined. What it urges you to avoid may not hurt you. Consider what you are ashamed of - and then decide that you should avoid doing it, or that the shame is wrong, and you're fine with it. But be careful - if those who you care...
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Consciously Choose Your Identities
Part of why smokers have difficulty quitting is that they are also erasing a familiar identity - that of a smoker. They are saying goodbye to a cluster of habits, associations, and memories that are a part of them. You become identities - a parent, an employee, a bicycle rider. But why not choose...
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Go Toward Your Fear
Fear is an ancient signal of danger. In the stone ages we survived by respecting our fear. In a physical situation your fear needs that respect. You can be hurt or killed. In a social, financial, or romantic situation progress has shrunk bad consequences down to some shame and some ego pain. If…
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Pride, and What It Costs You
Pride in an accomplishment is great - it's one of the rewards of committed work. But pride that makes you irrational, makes you refuse to compromise, costs you solutions that you have taken off the table. Afterward, you've lost a friend, and you didn't get what they were suggesting... but you…
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Stop and Be in the Now
It's the journey, not the destination. But you must stop the journey, and savor the now - play with children and pets, enjoy the sunsets and the first sip of coffee in the mornings. The journey gets you to your destinations. On the way, stop and savor the now.
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Don't Compare
It's useful to compare yourself with others - you can learn what they are doing right, and copy it. But you can also feel envy. Others buy positional goods - fancy cars, shiny watches - for this exact reason. They want you to feel bad, so they can feel good. Status matters, but feeling bad isn't...
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Fake It, Then Make It
How do you enter social circles you aren't qualified for? How do you acquire traits and skill sets you don't have? There are three parts - confidence, always; the specific skills; and the knowledge. You must build the knowledge on your own time. You'll get the skills by joining the social circle,...
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Exercise Is Not an Option
As we live longer and longer, exercise serves to extend that life, and to improve our quality of life for the entire span. Two hundred years ago we got more exercise and lived shorter lives - today, in this time of abundance, we need exercise for the energy and physical condition to explore more…
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Long-Term Multiplier
Some effects in our lives are multiplied by the long term we live. When we think of fitness, smoking, staying within a budget, and over-eating we have a hard time remembering that some of the effects will be felt day after day for the rest of our long lives. We eat a delicious dessert and are...
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Should You Adopt Victimism?
Life is going to deal you setbacks and cause you pain. How do you deal with this? One way is to cast yourself as helpless in the face of others' actions, to be a victim. This allows you to accept bad events, lower your expectations from life, and feel good about yourself as an underdog. It also...
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Don't Watch the News
The News and Facebook contain distortions. The news has to grab your attention to sell ads, and Facebook users show only the best moments in their normal lives to make themselves feel better. These distortions mean you are giving your time and getting anxiety and sadness in return. Why make this...
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Spend Less Than You Earn
Compare what you earn with what you spend. If you earn more than you spend, you are building savings, worrying less, and have a cushion against risks. If you're spending more than you earn you're building debt, on which you are paying interest, meaning that you will build debt faster and faster....
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Stand Your Ground
If a person in your life pushes you, and you've offered to compromise or discuss, then they want to win, and they want you to lose. You are no longer in a friendly discussion. They are preferring a hostile resolution. Tell them no. Once they take a hostile position, you must not give in - and if...
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The Not Knowing
The future can be known to some small extent - but specific outcomes may be good or bad, and there are always wild cards like natural disasters and accidents that can change everything. How to do you stop worrying about the future? Worrying is a waste of time, but the future is unknowable....
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Simple Explanations Are Too Simple
Simple ideas are seductive because of how strong and clear they are. Government is corrupt and incompetent. Everyone is a thief. Food should taste good. These ideas make life simple and give clarity. They are, however, wrong. Using these simplifications as a guide in your life leaves out crucial...
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Think Several Ways
It's simpler and more efficient to be one person, have one set of values, treat people one way. But it doesn't work. People and situations are best treated differently - ideally, every person and situation must be treated in its own individual optimum way. This is silly - who can spend that much...
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Life Stages
How to live effectively changes depending on where we are in our lives, and on the obligations we have to others, and to ourselves. Some goals, such as fitness and financial stability, never change except in their details - but some goals are proper and necessary at one stage in our lives, and…
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Cooperating with Self-Interest
Everyone only does something when it furthers their own interests. How can you cooperate with them, and live well with them?
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Outgrow Failure
We all fail. It's what happens next that matters. Do you accept your part in the failure, assess what needs to change, and set about growing your skills so that you can succeed? Or do you blame others and let the failure, all failure, become a wall of fear and denial against which you will never...
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Is Consumerism a solution?
Can you replace unreliable drama-filled people with reliable things? Can you simplify your life into toys, things, and games? We're social animals - is satisfying, or partially satisfying, your social needs with computers and objects at least some solution?
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Put in Effort, or Relax?
The results in your life are proportional to the effort that you put in. Once you accept this, you can rethink the dream of sitting on a couch and having food brought to you, and accept with pleasure that effort improves your life, and the life of those you care about
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Take Some Choices Off The Table
We cherish the idea that we're completely free. And we are... but some choices are self-destructive, and others limit or prohibit futures that we may prefer. Instead of grappling constantly with a wealth of choices in this world of abundance, consider the future you intend to live and take…
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Don't Complain
Complaining isn't free. It's not like watching a sunset - pointless, but fun. Complaining prevents you from squaring off with the problems that you face. You may not be in a position to solve your problems, accept them, or change the situation, but complaining prevents you from defining them and...
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Willpower Doesn't Work
Long-term changes to your life can't be made by willpower. Make incremental change into habits, and then do it again and again. Before you can do this you must comprehend that large shifts in your choices will take time, and will be made in steps.
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T-Shaped Interests
Should you specialize or stay general? How deeply should you focus in your interests and your career. Like Sheepism, both specializing and staying general are good solutions to the abundance we experience in modern life. But both solutions exclude the deep focus, or the broad variety, of the…
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Connect With Your Purpose
Know what big things you are accomplishing. Understand how you make the world, and the lives of those you love, better. This is your purpose. Once you know this, your day-to-day tasks gain meaning, because doing them gives you progress toward your purpose. Meaning isn't external - it's inside…
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What your weak ego costs you, and how to control it
You spend time and resources trying to make others believe that you are better than you are. This episode discusses what you gain from doing so, what you give up, and how you can allocate your attention and resources for a better long term.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Live more of what you want in your limited years
HOSTED BY
Max Langen
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Effectiveness have?
Effectiveness currently has 55 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Effectiveness about?
Live more of what you want in your limited years
How often does Effectiveness release new episodes?
Effectiveness has 55 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Effectiveness?
You can listen to Effectiveness on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Effectiveness?
Effectiveness is created and hosted by Max Langen.
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