In the past, many endeavors fell victim to rigid application of mostly self-inflicted rules or resolutions. I may resolve to write into my diary every day, for instance, to meditate for 40 minutes at 6am every day, or to always take the stairs instead of the elevator.

“Strictness” or intolerance will eventually always lead to the situation where there is some reason, be it “justified” or not, to break the rule or resolution. And to then condemn myself for “failing”, not even being able to follow my own rules - what a horrible loss of face - and then end up scrapping it altogether, out of disappointment.
Over the past years, in contrast, I have learnt to actively counter this impulse by using the “imperfection” of the real world and profiting from its creative and happiness generating potential.

I set a rule of meditating daily - no matter at what time and for what duration. Or of taking the stairs to our apartment on the sixth floor unless the elevator is already at the ground floor when I enter the building (which happens very rarely). Or of flossing my teeth only every other day, instead of every day - which is still way better than flossing them daily for a while until I fail to and then stop doing it altogether.

The effect of applying “the tolerance tool” is a much more resilient practice to pursue the goal of inner robustness. I maintain my “rules” for years instead of weeks or months, and in addition, I get to enjoy “breaking a rule” with relish and in a fully controlled way. Imagine how I enjoy that rare ride on our super fast elevator, or how I am glad I can sleep in without “having to meditate”, or how I can fall to bed because I had already sat in the afternoon.

Obviously this post is meant to challenge you to think about the many things that you “always wanted to do” but never manage to do regularly, or about the ways in which we can apply “the tolerance tool” in other scopes, like our relationships, or in our business.

Does an example cross your mind? How would you apply “the tolerance tool” to it?

I intuitively aim for robustness in everything that is within my scope of influence, and for flexibility in everything else. This fortifies my happiness capability.

This is what I mean by aiming for robustness inside:

• constantly following my curiosity about my original self, my values, my weaknesses, my strengths, my personality
• practicing activities and patterns to strengthen my discipline and focus my mind - so that I have a chance to work properly in extreme circumstances
• trying to keep as many aspects of my physical body healthy and well balanced; eating and moving deliberately.

This is what I mean by aiming for flexibility outside:

• constantly watching for changes in my environment
• aiming to stay emotionally independent of everything outside my scope of influence
• recognizing the value of opportunities when they arise, and seizing them

In sum, the aim is to develop the robustness within my scope of influence so that any outside circumstances can be reacted upon
decidedly.

Obviously, this applies for any scope of influence I may have (think of the holarchies).

• Ride the Bus instead of the tube!
• You avoid the incredibly dirty air of the London underground system.
• You get much more of a feel of the streets and parks and squares of London as you ride along.
• You get a rest from the overwhelming crowds of this big city. This is especially relaxing for people from tiny cities and countries like Zurich and Switzerland…
• If you can catch one of the seats in the front row of the upper deck of a double decker bus: enjoy the view!
• Save money. The tickets are significantly less expensive than the tube tickets.
• Go to the London Buddhist Center. You will find an entire community of people in a peaceful mindset. There are several affiliated businesses (Store, Restaurant, Yoga, etc.), and a lot of different classes and events. Forget buddhism: just contemplate the big building and its inconspicuous little door…
• Taste the coffee at the Flat White. I have never been served a better coffee. Maybe I should return to Australia/New Zealand after all…
• Drink smoothies! Compared to Switzerland, there is a lot more choice of tasty smoothies.
• Go to the Pub, the bar, the restaurant, and enjoy that it’s smoke free! I can’t wait for smoking to be banned in Switzerland.

• Wenn ich rasch ein paar Internet-Links mit jemandem teilen möchte
• Wenn ich rasch einen komplizierten Unix-Befehl von einem PC zum andern transferieren möchte
• Wenn ich auf Reisen gehe und einige Informationen (Passnummer, Adressen, Telefonnummern, Notfall-Informationen) online möglichst unmittelbar, aber trotzdem “geheim” (verschlüsselt) zur Verfügung haben möchte.
• Wenn ich mich mit einigen Leuten online und verschlüsselt unterhalten möchte
• Wenn ich einen Text verfassen möchte, auf den ich einfach und von überall her zugreifen kann, den ich verschlüsseln kann, und den ich selbst redundant an andere Orte (PC, FTP server, u.s.w.) kopieren kann

Dies ist ein kleines Projekt, das ich a priori für mich selbst gestartet habe, das ich aber gerne der Öffentlichkeit zur freien Verfügung stelle.

Wünsche und Feedback sind jederzeit sehr willkommen.

After my previous post about web design (in german), I overhauled my own site, and here is the result. I will try to keep it up to date regularly…

Diese Kommentare gelten genau gleich für den Computerfan, der seine kleine persönliche Internetseite selber macht, wie auch die Geschäftsführerin eines KMU oder gar die Web-Abteilung einer grossen Firma.

Ich nenne die exemplarische erwartete Besucherin meiner Internetseite Uma:

• Uma repräsentiert meine Zielgruppe: Ich darf ihren Besuch nicht verschwenden.
• Uma steht mitten in ihrem Leben, und befindet sich gerade jetzt vor meiner Internetseite: Ich muss sie dort abholen.
• Ich will Uma mit meiner Internetseite nützlich sein - einerlei ob ich sie kostenlos über etwas informieren möchte, oder ob ich Ihrer Firma zu mehr Umsatz verhelfen möchte, indem ich ihr einen Jumbo Jet verkaufe.
• Uma hat keine Zeit: Ich muss sie rasch dorthin führen, wo sie einen Nutzen erkennt.
• Uma ist ein Mensch, und Menschen reagieren am besten mit Menschen: ich muss meiner Internetseite ein “Gesicht” geben. Das können Porträts sein, Lebensläufe, frühere Kundenprojekte, Zitate, alles was sinngemäss ist und der Seite einen menschlichen Charakter gibt.
• Je nach dem, was die Existenzberechtigung meiner Internetseite ist, gibt es einen natürlich vorgegebenen Ablauf, der Uma von ihrer Situation hin zum Konsum meines Angebots führt. Die Teile dieses Ablaufs, die auf dem Internet stattfinden können, sollen so präzise wie möglich vorgepfadet sein.
  Beispiel einer technischen Industriereinigungslösung - je nach Organisationsgrösse ist jeder Punkt ein Abschnitt auf einer Seite, eine eigene Seite, oder gar ein mehrseitiger Bereich der Internetpräsenz:
1. Beschreibung des Status Quo bei der potentiellen Kundin: eine Gelegenheit, mein Wissen über den aktuellen Alltag bei meinen potentiellen Kunden zur Schau zu stellen
2. Information über Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten
3. Wie meine Firma diese Möglichkeiten ausschöpft
4. Hintergrund meiner Firma, resp. Beschreibung meines Teams, Porträts und Erfahrung meiner Spezialisten
5. Kontaktmöglichkeit resp. Anmeldung für eine persönliche Vorführung meiner Angebote

So einfach ist es.

Falls Du ein konkretes Beispiel hast, können wir diese Punkte gerne anhand dessen durch besprechen. Melde Dich einfach hier.

I suspect google is the first big player who has had the idea I have been carrying around for the last few years: the obvious way to get around ad blocking software.

Ad blockers (e.g. the tremendously useful Firefox Add-on “Adblock Plus“) work with the very simple fact that - up until now - most ads were served from specific locations (specific directories, servers, etc.) that were different from the ones that the content came from. Therefore, the URL of any embedded javascript, picture or other object contained some indication that it was an ad. So all an adblocker needs to do is filter out those URLs. The quality of adblockers differed in the way you could configure that blocking - how you could use wildcards, whether you could collectively share blocking expressions, etc. It may be that CSS classes and other markers could be used to recognize advertisement as well.
The very obvious way to get around this blocking mechanism is to make content URLs and objects indistinguishable from ads - and the best would be to even set all those URLs, CSS classes etc. randomly and dynamically. Obviously, this would immediately make the adblockers useless, but it puts a higher load on the delivering server - because it needs to perform all the replacements dynamically and in real time.

I do suspect that google has now done this deed. For a few days now, I start seeing the ads inside my gmail account. If I look at the pages source code, I start seeing a lot of random strings in class names etc.

I wonder how soon this will be adopted by other websites and CMS. When I had thought of this idea in the past, I always concluded there wasn’t a way to make a business of it, and I did want to enjoy ad-free life while it lasted, instead of “sharing the secret”. Now that it’s out there, let’s see how quickly it spreads…

Update: Thanks to Wladimir Palant of Adblock Plus, I realize that google isn’t quite there yet. They have just obfuscated the code a bit more, but ads are still distinguishable enough for adblockers to work after adapting the filters. So we still have a bit more ad-free time ahead. 

This is an exercise: when I am about to sneeze, I try to catch the very impulse to sneeze itself. The amazing thing is that if I concentrate on it well enough, I can catch it, and let go of it - and I don’t sneeze! Any distraction, be it in my mind or around me, makes me fail.