Reddit reviews The Strangest Secret

What?! NOTHING IT related that you would find interesting enough to learn about on your own time?

Did you do this for the money? That's insane.

No Chef? No Puppet? No Docker? No obscure language? No embedded systems? No Nutanix? No ESXi? No nano server? Nothing IT related tickles your pickle? What about vulnhub? Red teaming? Game development? TELL ME.

/u/ProfFrnswrth -- I can't relate with the sentiment of not having energy after 8 hours. Hell, there are times we were updating systems until 1 or 2 AM and I STILL went home and dicked around in a VM. Do I have an unhealthy passion for this stuff? Probably.

As a child, very awkward, you can imagine, I had a computer and I was trying to play Deus Ex. The colors were terrible and the game stuttered and spewed, eventually freezing on that terrible sound looping: "EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN, EEHN" -- being borderline retarded as a child, I didn't think to turn off the speakers, I just ran and told my Dad the computer is broken.

Being a good father, he assumed what all good fathers assume: porn. I was lectured and berated about not getting caught with my weasel in my hand, my dad unplugged the computer and turned it back on. I was defeated, never again to play this game my friend told me about.

The next day, whilst at school, I told my friend, the one in which of whom recommended the game, that my computer couldn't run it, I was doomed.

"What, ho?! Nay! Bringith thine tower to my domicile once within we leavith our studies!" -- Told you, fucking awkward.

So I bring this HP wanna be Blue Bubble Macintosh computer to my friend's house. My friend and his father ripped apart the internals of that poor HP tower, and replaced what looked like the internals to the backup for Johnny Five. Some brown circuit board and a lot of fans.

I was terrified. I was instructed by my friend to take my computer back home and try Deus Ex again. So, I get home and connect everything. Fearful of being sternly spoken to about pornography again, I left the speakers unplugged.

My God, man! It's beautiful! Normal colors, smooth textures, fast movement. But there wasn't any God damn sound! Oh, the speakers, right, so I plugged the speakers back in.

From there, I said "I want to be able to fix anything". It was very humbling and earth shattering to be honest.

I mean, if you think about it, as a preteen, you don't know what a computer is. You use it and you play on it, but you don't know what it is unless you're born into a family that teaches you or you're some Matilda freak that reads CPU and motherboard manuals in your free time.

But here... My friend, my peer, my ALLY! He knew exactly what it took. He took an impossible problem (can't play a video game), and not only made it a reality, he did it with spare parts in his closet LOL!

So, because of him, I am where I am today. Do I know how to fix everything? No, of course not. Don't be silly.

But! I have taken to using scheduled, distraction free time to learn something or get better at a skill. I go into that with a furious frenzy and get shit done. An hour? Half an hour? Five hours? I don't care, I'm going to tackle the living shit out of my objective.

Scheduled, distraction free time? What in the name of Almighty Christ on his Throne is this?!

First, I recommend a very subjective and biased book:

Deep Work

The concept of "Deep Work" is not foreign, but you may not have heard it called that before. It's a great book about finding time to get work done in a world of distractions.

Second, I recommend Earl Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret". You can find the audio on Amazon or Youtube, whichever you prefer. In YouTube he sounds cooler but speaks much quicker.

Earl Nightingale, again, came up with nothing new. This is some Oprah shit before Oprah was out. This broadcast changed my life. It builds off Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and takes concepts from Philosophy and Religion. The best "Power of Positive Thinking" speech I've heard. Listen to it, and see if it vibes with you.

Anyway, get your goals down, write them. Don't put them in your God damn phone, WRITE IT DOWN. Look it everyday. If you miss a day, you have to see it, you can't just delete it from your phone (yeah, you can rip the paper out of the notebook, but I'd like to think you're not a destructive person ;) ).

You like Podcasts? Yeah? YEAH?

Check out Entrepreneur on Fire. He doesn't talk about tech, sysadmin, hacking, NOTHING. But he's super positive, he is successful, and he loves sharing his tips for success. He markets his little notebook a lot (yeah, I bought one), so take it how you will.

This last part is what no one wants to hear. Everyone knows this and rolls their eyes:

Take care of yourself. Seriously. Drink coffee, that's fine, but don't drink 6 - 10 cups a day. If you have a desert, that's fine too, but don't rely on cakes, cookies, Starbucks, Monster, Redbull, etc. as your daily driver. Eat fruits and vegetables. No, not V8/Naked/Sunny D. Eat some celery and hummus, or a salad with lettuce, kale, and olives.

Short on time? Almond Milk + 1 Orange + 1 Cup of Kale + 1 Cup of Spinach + 1 Cup of mixed berries + 1 Banana + 1 scoop Sunwarrior Protein powder. Or whatever. Don't use whey or casein. Don't buy into this hype that you need 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight or any other dumb shit bro-science that's out there.

Exercise your body: go for long walks, brisk or light jog. Calisthenics, too. Burpees, push-ups, situps, squats. Don't be one of those bench press monkeys either, do real exercises. Deadlift, Squat, Overhead Press. Don't have barbells? DON'T CARE. Goblet Squat, Farmer's Walk, Lunges, Man-Makers (Push-up + Dumbbell row), Dumbbell swings, dumbbell snatches -- Get to work. Ton of programs on the internet, and you can YouTube the exercises.

If you want to study, learn, stay abreast of tech news you can make time to do it. Schedule time, write it down, and stick to it. Don't be afraid to unplug. Leave your phone and go for a walk without headphones. Go bike riding at a park or through the woods. Go sit at a beach or pool without anything. Just listen to the birds squawking and screeching. You'll enjoy it.


Well this escalated quickly:

TL;DR

Deep Work - Book

EoF - Podcast

The Strangest Secret - Earl Nightingale broadcast

Diet and Exercise

Git Gud

Buy the mp3 of this 1950's speech by Earl Nightengale and listen to it over and over, it will give you the secret to success in life.