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hey this is Leo for actualised org in this video what I want to talk about is ways that technology can be used to advance your personal development so what do I mean by this I think that I'm gonna make this short and sweet and straight to the point and just give a couple of examples in ways that I've been personally able to use technology to help me advance my growth and contrast with ways that technology is actually counterproductive because I think that a lot of people go out there they buy gadgets and those gadgets they think they're gonna get a lot of benefit from and they're gonna get a lot of personal growth from but they end up not and so I want to contrast compare and contrast where the differences are between using technology to advance yourself and not and I think that there are very legitimate uses for where technology can be used to give you a lot of personal growth really fast and so that's great in modern in modern times we have so many gadgets so much technology the trick is not so much in the technology it's not the technology is gonna solve the problem it's the thinking that you're gonna have to put into it to use the technology as a tool to get you to some sort of end so you what you have to do is you have to you have to make the bridge between the technology that you're buying and what you want it to accomplish for you and then of course you have to make that connection there so let's give a couple of examples you know there's been a lot of times where I've bought technology and I thought that I would be happier because of it and I didn't get any happier in fact I was very let down by it and usually that happens because you just buy a gadget and you think that just because it's sitting there on your shelf or on your desk that it's gonna be doing some work for you and that tends not to be the case unless you go out there and you deliberately think about this so let me give you an example one purchase that really surprised me that I made a few years back was that I bought a notebook so I just bought a macbook air laptop and before that I didn't really have any mobile computing I was just my cell phone but I was doing all my computing just on a desktop and that notebook behind that notebook had made a huge change in my personal development because the reason I actually bought it I didn't just buy a notebook I bought it because I wanted to journal and I wanted to have an extensive journal really a commonplace book and I talked about commonplace books in the blueprint and other videos you could find it there but I wanted to really have one repository where I can be putting all my ideas together because what was happening up until that point my life is that I would always be having ideas I'm pretty creative kind of person so I'm always thinking about stuff analyzing having ideas having ideas for business having ideas from what I want to be doing with my life etc and just things that I'm running across in books and seminars and people and what I wanted to do was start to compile them together actually what I was doing was that I had just reams of paper just plain white paper like printer paper that I was using to take notes on and I ended up having stacks of this stuff I would would accumulate over over the years and the months and I just have stacks of these notes notes that I take on books ideas that I have and what happened was that it got so big it was just impossible to file it it was impossible to to review it it was just very cumbersome and clunky and therefore I felt like I needed more organization to this whole process and so I thought that it would be nice would be to have this on something small and portable that I could carry around with me and that I could conveniently use when I'm sitting on my couch and see this is what I mean is this was a specific problem that I had because I was lazy and I didn't want to sit in front of a computer like a desktop at my desk at my chair because I would already spend 810 hours a day working at my desktop and I didn't want to then go back in Journal and do my note-taking and all that also on the desktop it was just bad for my posture I didn't want to sit at my computer that long I had eye strain and I wanted to be able to be in other rooms I wanted to be able to transport this thing so for me that was a specific problem and I remember at that point I was wondering is buying this laptop this notebook and this MacBook Air was fairly expensive it was like 1,300 bucks was it really going to lead to personal growth for me or was that just a justification to get me to buy a new gadget because we all like to buy new gadgets new things and then we buy them and then we forget about them and they just collect dust I didn't want that to be happening especially with a $1300 purchase because I tend to be pretty frugal I want to use my money effectively what end up happening though was that in this case it turned out really well and I was so surprised by how much growth I got out of this because what I did is that I transcribed all of my notes through a long process from paper into my notebook and then from now on from then on I spent the next few years really organizing all my thoughts on all my ideas and creating a really robust commonplace book and also journal that I was able to use for all sorts of things from business to my personal life to relationships just compiling all that together and having a way to organize it for me in a notebook was huge and I'm still using it to this day and it's still one of my most powerful tools right now and this is one of the examples Evan Pegg and I kind of stole this idea from him is he talks about using the with the limited willpower that you get every day putting it to use to create external circumstances in your life that will create the necessary enforcement that is going to get you trained and doing the things that you need to be doing because you do have limited willpower and your willpower runs out as the day progresses and what tends to happen is that most people waste that willpower in putting it into the wrong places they worry about a relationship they worry about some petty problem that they have they get mad at someone they bicker with someone or they wasted watching TV instead what you want to be doing is you want to be doing these kinds of things where for example you're thinking about okay what do I need oh I need a journal and if I can get a laptop for example that's going to be convenient for me to sit there and use on the couch then my brain is gonna want to actually do that whereas right now my brain doesn't want to be sitting on a desktop for an extra two hours after I've already been sitting there for 10 hours which would make 12 hours it's too tiring I'm not going to do it so you kind of have to find these ways of making life a little easier for you and that's not where I think technology can be great is that it can be used very strategically to create to create these kind of downhill slopes for yourself where you're not bad constantly having to battle uphill to to improve your life a couple of other examples that I'll just throw out here just to give you a little bit of a bigger list I think for example if you're going to the gym and you're starting a new gym routine and you're finding going to the gym boring and you're finding it painful then for example getting an iPod and putting a bunch of your favorite songs on it would be a really great way to use technology to get yourself to do something that is challenging at first building a gym routine and even if you're a veteran gym goer sometimes one of the problems you get as a veteran is that you just get so bored because you're always doing the same things even if you're varying your routine up it can still get boring and tiring and so having something on your on your iPod there that you can play is really nice or if you're using a smartphone that can also work but there's two components to it it's one is having the device the second component is really having the the music or maybe you prefer audio programs maybe you prefer some sort of meditation track maybe you prefer some sort of nature sounds whatever works for you so figuring out what that is and then actually putting it in place if you don't have it that can make your life of the gym much easier so I think that's another great use of technology there a couple of other uses that I found in my own life just and these can be very simple things these don't have to be expensive purchases for example for me I had a problem that I started taking a lot of supplements I got into into taking supplements and then if you've ever gone down that route what happens is you start with just taking three supplements then it goes to five supplements 10 supplements 20 supplements right now I'm taking over 50 supplements every day so like fifty pills and what happened with me there is that it got too tedious literally to go to the to the medicine cabinet and pull out fifty bottles and get each one unscrew it take out a pill swallow it it was just too tedious that would take like 20 minutes to do every day and I didn't want to do that so I found I found myself not sticking with my habits and my goals of taking search supplements every day and so I was struggling that for a long time until I discovered the very simple solution which I should have really discovered much sooner of using a pill box basically it's just like a plastic box with seven slots in it one slot for each day of the week where what you can do is once a week instead of doing this every day once a week I'll pull out all my my supplement bottles and I'll sort all the pills put them into into their individual compartments and then I'll have that for the whole week and then it's really easy I just go into my bathroom grab the pill box open one compartment and then swallow all the pills that takes me one minute instead of 20 so much simpler and that has really made it very easy for me to be taking my supplements and so now I take them fairly regularly without a lot of problems and that pill box ended up costing me what seven bucks something like that I ordered it on Amazon actually interesting point with this piece of technology is that the first time what I did is I bought a small pill box and that was working for me fine until it end up happening was that literally I had more supplements that I could cram into the slots that were there because it was it was kind of small and what that did is that prevented me from buying more supplements because I said well I have like about ten supplements now and I just can't stuff any more into these boxes into these little slots and again it was kind of stupid on my part because it was pretty obvious what the solution should have been the solution should have been get a bigger box but at that point I didn't really know that I could get a better bigger box or that bigger boxes existed and so it really took me months of struggle again which kind of halted my growth with supplements is that I was stuck there at like ten pills even though I wanted to buy or because my box was limiting me and so what happened was that again a couple of months passed and I was slipping up I wasn't as excited about researching supplements because I was already I felt like I was maxed out and then only a few months later did I realize after some introspection that there's probably a bigger box out there somewhere and it took me time to go find it because I really needed a big one and I'm going on Amazon researching it finding a really huge one that's like a foot long and it can fit literally like a hundred different pills in it in each little compartment and so now I bought that one and for me now that's giving me room to grow now I ballooned from ten supplement pills a day to like fifty and I feel I still have room to grow there so that right there that those multiple purchases and kind of upgrading the pill box was huge for me that really advanced me even though those were really small purchases so the point with this example being that you don't need to go some outlandish route and go buy something really really fancy or expensive to get a lot of a lot of a lot of growth from this tool because even a very simple tool can empower you it might be something as simple as going out there and right right now if you don't have a nice diary that you can journal in and if you are the type of person that likes the feel of a nice diary and you like the look of a nice like leather-bound high-quality diary then maybe what you got to do is you got to go out and learn John one you know if it costs fifty bucks to buy a really nice diary so what if that's if that's what it's gonna take to actually get you to sit down and write in it just because you like the way it feels then that's what it takes you know and sometimes you have to indulge yourself a little bit because it's kind of like bribing yourself you know it's kind of like giving yourself a little carrot a little incentive to be doing the hard work that you're gonna be doing by writing this diary all this time and if you just have a couple of loose sheets of paper you're probably not going to be as excited and motivated to sit down a journal everyday as you would be if you had a really nice spiral down diary or maybe for you you don't like writing you don't like writing with you don't like handwriting you filled that that's archaic so maybe for you it is that notebook or an iPad or whatever it is putting it in a digital format right and then of course finding the right software that makes you feel good about using it so that can be also an important kind of Avenue where you can go down with with a technology route so I think those are some good examples I could probably throw out a bunch of other ones one one other one that actually I will throw out there that I've been doing recently is that I wanted to I felt like I could better use my my time in the shower and my my morning ritual when I'm going to the bathroom and shaving and showering and doing all that stuff is I felt like I could use that time for some personal development and so what I thought I would do is I would listen to some audio tapes seminars various programs that I have and I was thinking about how do I actually do that in the shower so that it's convenient and practical and what I ended up figuring out was that I can get one of those they sell these little like docking stations I got a Phillips one but they have like Bose little docking stations and you can slide your iPod in there or you can slide your iPhone into it and what I did is that ona Pamela I iPod Touch that I slide in there and this thing can run on batteries so I can take it into the bathroom and it'll run on batteries for a long time and I know pain like a hundred bucks for this thing but it was really well worth it because now I can take this little basic it's like a little boombox I could take it into the bathroom and if I'm showering and doing my morning routine for 30 minutes that's 30 minutes of of listening to seminars or audios that I can get you know into my into my day and actually I found that when I do that every single day it kind of gets me charged up for the day because I'm listening to this amazing to these amazing ideas this wisdom that's coming from some seminar or some audio tape that I have and then when I get out of the shower all of a sudden I've already got ideas in my mind about stuff that I want to be doing articles I want to be writing videos I want to be shooting I'm just put into like a higher consciousness state just because I do that and to me that's really valuable that's something that I like really forward to now that's a really nice habit to have built in and it's just enabled by making a simple hundred dollar purchase so what I want to basically end on here is the point that I want you to do this exercise sit down after this video is over sit down pull out a piece of paper or your journal and I want you to write down and think about five different ways right now that you can use some piece of technology to really advance your own development so whatever that is for you maybe it's getting a Kindle because you don't like having a bookshelf full of books maybe it's getting an iPad because you like sitting on the couch and being able to browse Wikipedia articles there or maybe it's about you know getting a journal a diary something that you can do in the bathroom maybe a magazine subscription you could buy you know what can you do how can you use your resources to kind of automatically put personal growth into your life I want you to jot down five different ways really think about it and make sure that it works for you make sure that it's practical a lot of times I find that I need to test this stuff out sometimes I think that a little gadget that I'll buy or an expensive get piece of gadget that I'll buy will do the trick and I end up finding that it's not practical and doesn't really work so I tend to find that you know save those receipts make sure that you buy it you test it out and that it actually ends up doing what you want it to be doing right so if you buy something for your shower make sure that it's actually working for you and that it's convenient you can use it and the batteries run and all that stuff and if you're buying a journal make sure that your journal or your diary you like the feel of it and that it's bound nicely and that you can actually write in it and it doesn't smudge or whatever the practical considerations are for you so go ahead and do this exercise find those five things those five gadgets are pieces of technology that you could use to improve your life and then go out there and start with one pick the the most the one that you think is going to be the biggest bang for your buck and go out there and buy it and try to implement it and just see how much you can get from that I think that's a good way to prove to yourself this process works then once you do it and you have a success with one piece of technology then you'll be able to find more you'll be able to spot those opportunities and you'll be on the lookout for those you'll have four more that are on this list but then you'll also then have this habit for the rest of your life is you're always going to be on the lookout maybe you're going to be walking through the Walmart or a Best Buy or you're gonna be browsing on the internet and you're gonna see something there that might help you with your personal growth and your brain is gonna make the connection that oh I can use that to get this I can use that to make my life a little bit easier so that I'm more likely to get this thing done that I've been struggling to get done and the other way around is that if you're having a problem in your life and you keep struggling with something and you keep falling off track you keep falling off track and you keep struggling to make a habit then you can always ask yourself kind of like what kind of technology might make my ease that burden for me and you can kind of think that way and then you can go online and you can search for and see if something like that exists all right so that's it go ahead and do this exercise I think you'll get a lot of benefit out of it I know I certainly have gotten a lot of benefit over the last few years from using technology for my personal development you