Justin Spencer

20170422

"The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman

One of the beautiful things about learning any subject is the fact that you don't need to know everything--you only need to understand a few critically important concepts that provide most of the value. Once you have a solid scaffold of core principles to work from, building upon your knowledge and making progress becomes much faster.
Knowing what’s critically important in every business is the first step in making good business decisions. The more you know about the essential questions to ask in your current situation, the more quickly you’ll be able to find the answer you need to move forward.
Large companies move slowly.
Climbing the corporate ladder is an obstacle to doing great work.
Frustration leads to burnout.
Every successful business (1) creates or provides something of value that (2) other people want or need (3) at a price they’re willing to pay, in a way that (4) satisfies the purchaser's needs and expectations and (5) provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.
Value can’t be created without understanding what people want (market research).
Every business is created by people and survives by benefiting other people in some way.
Skip business school. Educate yourself.
Business schools don’t create successful people. They simply accept them, then take credit for their success.
The on significant benefit that business schools do provide is better access to Fortune 50 recruiters, consulting firms, large accounting firms, and investment banks via on-campus recruiting and alumni networks.
I can’t emphasize this enough: the quickest and easiest way to screw up your life is to take on too much debt.
The primary reason people spend decades working in jobs they despise is to pay off their creditors.
Many business resources (and all business schools) conflate management and leadership skills with business skills; they’re not the same thing.
Repetition inevitably leads to mastery, and the better you internalize these concepts, the more you’ll improve your results.
Every successful business creates something of value.
The best businesses in the world are the ones that create the most value for other people.
Roughly defined, a business is a repeatable process that:

Creates and delivers something of value…
That other people want or need…
At a price they’re willing to pay…
In a way that satisfies the customer’s needs and expectations…
So that the business brings in enough profit to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.

At the core, every business is fundamentally a collection of five interdependent processes, each of which flows into the next:

Value creation. Discovering what people need or want, then creating it.
Marketing. Attracting attention and building demand for what you’ve created.
Sales. Turning prospective customers into paying customers.
Value delivery. Giving your customers what you’re promised and ensuring that they are satisfied.
Finance. Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.

Business is not (and has never been) rocket science--it’s simple a process of identifying a problem and finding a way to solve it that benefits both parties.
The five parts of every business are the basis of the every good business idea and business plan.
If you want to improve your value as a businessperson, focus on improving skills directly related to the five parts of every business.
Without enough revenue to sustain it, any business will fail.
Your revenue is completely dependent on people actually wanting what you have to offer.
The iron law of the market is cold, hard, and unforgiving: if you don’t have a large group of people who really want what you have to offer, your chances of building a viable business are very slim.
All human beings have four core human drives that have profound influence on our decisions and actions:

The drive to acquire. The desire to obtain or collect physical objects, as well as immaterial qualities like status, power, and influence.
The drive to bond. The desire to feel valued and loved by forming relationships with others, either platonic or romantic.
The drive to learn. The desire to satisfy our curiosity.
The drive to defend. The desire to protect ourselves ,our loved ones, and our property.

The drive to feel. The desire for new sensory stimulus, intense emotional experiences, pleasure, excitement, entertainment, and anticipation.
At the core, all successful business sell some combination of money, status, power, love, and knowledge, protection, pleasure, and excitement.
The ten ways to evaluate a market provide a back-of-the-napkin method you can use to identify the attractiveness of any potential market.

Urgency: How badly do people want or need this right now?
Market size: How many people are actively purchasing things like this?
Pricing potential: What is the highest price a typical purchaser would be willing to spend for a solution?
Cost of customer acquisition: How easy is it to acquire a new customer? On average, how much will it cost to generate a sale, in both money and effort?
Cost of value delivery: How much would it cost to create and deliver the value offered, both in money and effort?
Uniqueness of offer: How unique is your offer versus competing offerings in the market, and how easy is it for potential competitors to copy you?
Speed to market: How quickly can you create something to sell?
Up-front investment--How much will you have to invest before you’re ready to sell?
Up-sell potential: Are there related secondary offers that you could also present to purchasing customers?
Evergreen potential: Once the initial offer has been created, how much additional work will you have to put into it in order to continue selling?

The existence of a market means you're already on the right side of the iron law of the marker, so you can spend more time developing your offer instead of proving a market exists.
Learn everything you can from your competition, and then create something even more valuable.
Don’t start a business for the money alone. Here’s why: starting and running a business always takes more effort than you first expect.
Pay very close attention to the things you find yourself coming back to over and over again.
Building or finishing anything is mostly a matter of starting over and over again; don’t ignore what pulls you.
Finding that market is mostly a matter of patience and active exploration.
Changing the world is difficult if you can’t pay the bills.
Economic value usually take son one of twelve standard forms:

Product. Create a single tangible item or entity, then sell and deliver it for more than what it cost to make.
Service. Provide help or assistance, then charge a fee for the benefits rendered.
Shared resource. Create a benefit on an ongoing basis, and charge a recurring fee.
Resale. Acquire an asset from a wholesaler, then sell that asset to a retail buyer at a higher price.
Lease. Acquire an asset, then allow another person to use that asset for a predefined amount of time in exchange for a fee.
Agency. Market and sell an asset or service you don’t own on behalf of a third party, then collect a percentage of the transaction price as a fee.
Audience Aggregation. Get the attention of a group of people with certain characteristics, then sell access in the form of advertising to another business looking to reach that audience.
Loan. Lend a certain amount of money, then collect payments over a predefined period of time equal to the original loan plus a predefined interest rate.
Option. Offer the ability to take a predefined action for a fixed period of time in exchange for a fee.
Insurance. Take on the risk of some specific bad things happening to the policy holder in exchange for a predefined series of payments, they pay out claims only when the bad thing actually happens.
Capital. Purchase an ownership stake in a business, then collect a corresponding portion of the profit as a one-time payout or ongoing dividend.

The higher the perceived value of your offering, the more you’ll be able to charge for it, which significantly improves your chances of succeeding.
On their own, ideas are largely worthless--discovering whether or not you can actually make them work in reality is the most important job of any entrepreneur.
When creating a new offering, your primary goal should be to work your way through each iteration cycles as quickly as possible. Iteration is a structured form of learning that helps you make your offering better; the faster you learn, the more quickly you’ll be able to improve. The faster you move through the iteration cycle, the better your offering will become.
Getting useful feedback from your potential customers is the core of the iteration cycle. Useful feedback from real prospects helps you understand how well your offer meets their needs before development is complete, which allows you to make changes before you start selling.
If no one seems to care about what you’ve created, you don't have a viable business idea.
As a rule, people never accept trade-offs unless they’re forced to make a decision. If the perfect option existed, they’d buy it. Since there’s no such thing as the perfect offering, people are happy to settle for the next best alternative.
Critically important assumptions are facts or characteristics that must be true in the real world for your business or offering to be successful.
It’s much smarter to minimize your risk by testing your offering with real paying customers before you fully commit to making it real.
Shadow testing is the process of selling an offering before it actually exists.
As long as you’re completely upfront with your potential customers that the offering is still in development, shadow testing is a very useful strategy you can use to actually test your CIAs with real customers quickly and inexpensively.
A minimum economically viable offer is an offer that promises and/or provides the smallest number of benefits necessary to produce an actual sale. A MEVO is essentially a prototype that’s been developed to the point that someone will actually pull out their wallet and commit to making a purchase.
Using what you make everyday is the best way to improve the quality of what you’re offering. Nothing will help you find ways to make your offer better than being its most avid and demanding customer.
Rule #1 of marketing is that your potential customers’ available attention is limited.
The fastest way to be ignored by anyone is to start talking about something they don’t care about.
If no one knows you exist, no one will buy what you have to sell.
Being remarkable is the best way to attract attention.
Attempting to appeal to everyone is a waste of time and money: focus your marketing efforts on you're probably purchaser.
Marketing is most effective when it focuses on the desired end result, which is usually a distinctive experience or emotion related to a core human drive.
The essence of effective marketing is discovering what people already want, then presenting your offer in a way that intersects with that preexisting desire.
The best marketing is similar to education based selling: it shows the prospect how the offer will help them achieve what they desire. Your job as a marketers isn't to convince people to want what you’re offering: it’s to help your prospects convince themselves that what you’re offering will help them get what they really want.
The most effective way to get people to want something is to encourage them to visualize what their life would be like once they’ve accepted your offer.
A hook is a single phrase or sentence that describes an offer’s primary benefit.
The most effective marketing messages give the recipient or prospect a single, very clear, very short action to take next.
The best calls-to-action ask directly either for the sale or for permission to follow up.
When you’re starting a new business, the object is to get to the point where you make your first profitable transaction as quickly as you possibly can, because that's the point where you transition from being a project to being a business.
The best salespeople are the ones who can listen intently for the things the customer really wants.
In every negotiation, there are three universal currencies: resources, time, and flexibility. Any one of these currencies can be traded for more or less of the others.
As a rule of thumb: don’t give anyone unfettered control over decisions that directly affect your money.
As a social force, reciprocation is one of the primary psychological tendencies that underlie human cooperation.
Providing free value builds your social capital, making it more likely the people you benefit will reciprocate when you make an offer down the road.
Your prospects know you’re not perfect, so don’t pretend to be. People actually get suspicious when something appears to be “too good to be true.”
Instead of making them wonder, tell them yourself. By being upfront with your prospects regarding drawbacks and tradeoffs, you’ll enhance your trustworthiness and close more sales.
Selling anything is largely the process of identifying and eliminating barriers to purchase: risks, unknowns, and concerns that prevent your prospects from buying what you offer.
Your primary job as a salesperson is to identify and eliminate barriers standing in the way of completing the transaction. Eliminate your prospects objections and barriers, and you’ll close the dead.
There are five standard objections that appear in sales of all kinds:

It costs too much.
It won’t work.
It won’t work for ME.
I can wait.
It’s too difficult.

Reactivation is typically quicker, simpler, and more effective approach to increasing revenue than attractive new customers.
A customer’s perception of quality relies on two criteria: expectations and performance.
Do whatever you can do to provide something that unexpectedly delight your customers.
There are three primary factors that influence the predictability of an offer: uniformity, consistency, and reliability.

Uniformity means delivering the same characteristics every time.
Consistency means delivering the same value over time.
Reliability means being able to count on delivery of the value without error or delay.

Throughput is the rate at which a system achieves its desired goal.
The best way to begin increasing throughput is to start measuring it.
Combining duplication with automation allows you to deliver value to more people and close more sales as a result.
Multiplication is duplication for an entire process or system.
Scale is the ability to reliably duplicate or multiply a process as volume increases.
If your goal is to create a business that doesn’t require your direct daily involvement, scalability should be a major consideration.
Humans don’t scale.
Some helpful or harmful behaviors and inputs tend to accumulate over time, producing huge results.
The more time and energy you spend following your competition, the less time and energy you have to actually build your business.
Don’t focus on competing--focus on delivering even more value. Your competition will take care of itself.
Investing in force multipliers makes sense because you can get more done with the same amount of effort.
As a general rule, the only good use of debt or outside capital in setting up a system is to give you access to force multipliers you would not be able to access any other way.
Always choose the best tools that you can obtain and afford. Quality tools give you maximum output with a minimum of input.
A system is a process made explicit and repeatable--a series of steps that has been formalized in some way.
The primary benefit of creating a system is that you can examine the process and make improvements.
If you can’t systematize your process, you can’t automate it.
Finance is the art and science of watching the money flowing into and out of a business, then deciding how to allocate it and determining whether or not what you’re doing is producing the results you want.
Business is not about what you make--it’s about what you keep.
Profit margin is the difference between how much revenue you capture and how much you spend to capture it, expressed in percentage terms.
When something is a “good deal,” customers tend to continue to patronize the business and spread the word to other potential customers.
As long as you’re bringing in enough to keep doing what you’re doing, there’s no need to fight for every last penny.
Dollars aren’t an end in themselves: money is a tool, and the usefulness of that tool depends on what you intend to do with it.
Believe it or not, there are only four ways to increase our business’s revenue:

Increase the number of customers you serve.
Increase the average size of each transaction by selling more.
Increase the frequency of transactions per customer.
Raise your prices.

Remember the lesson of qualification: not every customer is a good customer.
Always focus the majority of your efforts on serving your ideal customers.
Imagine doubling your current prices. If you’d lose less than half of your customers, it’s probably a good idea.
Pricing power is related to a concept economists call “price elasticity.” If customers are very sensitive to the price of your offer, you'll lose many customers with even a slight increase in price, meaning demand is “elastic.” If your customers aren’t price sensitive, you could quadruple the price with little change in sales.
Lifetime value is the total value of a customer's business over the lifetime of their relationship with your company. The more a customer purchases from you and the longer they stay with you, the more valuable that customer is to your business.
Once you understand the lifetime value of a prospect, you can calculate the maximum amount of time and resources you’re willing to spend to acquire a new prospect.
Overhead represents the minimum ongoing resources required for a business to continue operation.
Overhead is critically important if you are building your company on a fixed amount of capital.
The slower the burn [rate], the more time you have to create a successful business.
The lower your overhead, the more flexibility you’ll have and the easier it will be to sustain your business operations indefinitely.
Fixed costs are incurred no matter how much value you create.
Variable costs are directly related to how much value you create.
Reductions in fixed costs accumulate; reductions in variable costs are amplified by volume.
The better you understand your costs, the more likely you are to find ways of producing as much value as possible without spending everything you make.
Saving money doesn’t help you if you degrade the quality of your offer.
Creating and delivering more value is a much better way to to enhance your bottom line.
Break-even is the point where your business’s total revenue exceeds its total expenses--it’s the point where you business starts creating wealth instead of consuming it.
Amortization is the process of spreading the costs of a resource investment over the estimated useful life of that investment.
Amortization can help you determine whether or not a big expense is a good idea.
IOU’s don’t pay the bills--if you can’t pay your employees or keep the lights on, you’re done.
Purchasing power is the sum total of all liquid assets a business has at its disposal.
Keeping track of your available purchasing power makes it much easier to run a business.
Receivables are promises of payment you’ve accepted from others.
Ideally, try to get paid immediately, even before buying raw materials and delivering value.
It’s best to avoid using debt or lines of credit if you don’t absolutely need to, but increasing available credit certainly increases your purchasing power.
The more purchasing power you have, the more resilient your business is and the better your ability to handle the unexpected.
Opportunity cost is the value you’re giving up by making a decision.
Opportunity cost is important because it’s hidden.
Don’t get bogged down with all of the options available--consider only what appear to be the best alternatives at the time of your decision.
A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. How much more depends on what you chose to do with that dollar.
Calculating the time value of money is a way of making decisions in the face of opportunity costs.
I recommend picking up The McGraw Hill 36-Hour Course in Finance for Nonfinancial Managers by Robert A. Cooke.
Compounding is important because it creates the possibility of huge gains in surprisingly short periods of time.
Compounding is the secret that explains how small companies that reinvest their profits become large companies in a few short years.
Leverage is the practice of using borrowed money to magnify potential gains.
Leverage is a form of financial amplification--it magnifies the potential for both gains and losses.
Never use leverage unless you’re fully aware of the consequences and are prepared to accept them.
Funding is the business equivalent of rocket fuel. If your business needs additional capacity and is already pointed in the right direction, judicious use of financing can help you accelerate the operations growth.
Personal cash is by far the best form of financing. Investing cash you already own is quick, easy, and requires no approval or paperwork.
Angel capital is where we shift from loans to capital. An “angel” is an individual private investor--someone who has excess wealth they'd like to invest in a private business, typically $10,000 to $1 million. In exchange, they’ll own 1 to 10 percent of the business.
Venture capital takes over where angels leave off. Venture Capitalists are extremely wealthy investors with very large sums of capital available: tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars in a single investment. Funding via venture capital happens in “rounds” that start small, then grow as more capital is needed. Later rounds can dilute the ownership percentage of current shareholders, so they're typically a great deal of negotiation involved. VCs also require large amount of control in exchange for large amounts of capital, which usually means seats on the company’s board of directors.
A public stock offering involves selling partial ownership of the company to investors on the open market. This is typically down via investment banks: companies that will provide a business with enormous amounts of capital in exchange for the shares of that company to sell on the public stock market.
Whoever owns the most shares in the company controls it, so “going public” creates the risk of a hostile takeover: the mass purchasing of shares in an effort to control the company.
Public stock offerings enable investors to sell their shares in exchange for money, so it’s common for angels and VCs to push successful companies to “go public” or be acquired by another company as quickly as possible in order to “cash out” of the investment.
The more people you’re required to consult with before making decisions, the slower your company will operate.
Investors increased communication overhead, which can adversely affect your ability to get things done quickly.
It’s also not uncommon for investors to remove executives of a company that’s not performing well, even if those executives are the founders of the company.
Bootstrapping is the art of building and operating a business without funding.
Bootstrapping allows you to grow your business while maintaining 100 percent control over the business's operations.
For best results, bootstrap as far as you can go, then move up the hierarchy of funding only as needed.
Return on investment (ROI) is the value created from an investment of time or resources.
Sunk costs are investments of time, energy, and money that can’t be recovered once they've been made. No matter what you do, you can’t get those resources back.
Making mistakes is inevitable: no one is perfect.
If the reward isn't’ worth the investment required to obtain it or the risk, don’t invest.
Business are built by people for people.
Your brain and body simply aren’t optimized for the modern world.
Taking care of yourself should be your primary concern if you want to get important things done without burning out.
Even low intensity physical activity increases energy, improves mental performance, and enhances your ability to focus.
Going to bed early helps you get up early, which is very useful if you do creative work.
One of the best things you can do to get more done is to dissociate yourself from the voice in your head.
Living organisms--including human beings--are essentially very complex perceptual control systems: we act in ways to keep our perception of the world within acceptable boundaries.
There are three kinds of reference levels: set points, ranges, and errors. A set point is a minimum or maximum value. A range is a spread of acceptable values. An error is a set point defined as zero--any perception that’s not zero is out of control.
If you want to change a behavior, you must either change the system’s reference level or change the environment in which the system is operation.
Here’s a universal truth of human nature: people are generally lazy. The critical insight is that being lazy is a feature, not a bug.
If you want to successfully change a behavior, don't’ try to change the behavior directly. Change the structure that influences or supports the behavior, and the behavior will change automatically.
Change the structure of your environment, and your behavior will change automatically.
Our brains are natural pattern matching machines. The brain is constantly busy trying to find patterns in what we perceive, then associating new patterns with outer patterns that are stored in memory.
Every time we recall something, the memory is saved in a different location, with a twist: the new memory will include any alterations we’ve made to it.
It’s possible to change your beliefs and mental simulations consciously by recalling and actively reinterpreting past events.
Process to reinterpret past events in a simple and useful way:

Identify the undesirable pattern.
Name the underlying belief.
Identify the source of the belief in memory, including as much sensory detail as possible.
Describe possible alternate interpretations of the memory.
Realize that your original belief is an interpretation, not reality.
Consciously choose to reject the original belief as “false.”
Consciously choose to accept your reinterpretation as “true.”

Our reserves of willpower are very limited and become depleted with use.
Save your willpower: focus on using it to change your environment, and you’ll have more available to use whenever inhibition is necessary.
Loss aversion is the idea that people hate to lose things more than they like to gain them. People respond twice as strongly to potential loss as they do to the opportunity of an equivalent gain.
Eliminate this perception of risk by offering a money-back guaranteed or similar risk reversal offer, and people will feel the decision is less risky, resulting in more sales.
If you’re ever in the unfortunate situations of having to lay off workers, it's best to do it quickly, cleanly, and all at once.
The mind gets overwhelmed, so it starts simplifying reality to compensate.
Because the brain is a pattern matching machine, it’s constantly trying to figure out what’s associated with what. As a result, your mind effortlessly forms associations--even between things that aren’t logically connected.
Absence blindness is a cognitive bias that prevents us from identifying what we can’t observe. Our perceptual faculties evolved to detect objects that are present in the environment. It’s far more difficult for people to notice or identify what’s missing.
Make a note to remind yourself to handsomely reward the low-drama manager who quietly and effectively gets things done.
Always state benefits in positive, immediate, concrete, and specific terms by focusing on things the user can directly experience.
Framing is a way to control the perception of contrast.
Scarcity encourages people to make decisions quickly.
Novelty--the presence of new sensory data--is critical of you want to attract and maintain attention over a long period of time.
Ideally, you want to focus the full powers of your energy and attention on a single subject at a time.
Eliminate potential distractions and interruptions.
Depending on the level of cognitive activity required to complete your work, it's all take ten to thirty minutes before your mind becomes absorbed in what you’re doing.
Every time you switch the focus of your attention from one subject to another, you incur the cognitive switching penalty.
There are really only four ways to “do” something: completion, deletion, delegation, and deferment.
Habits are easier to install if you look for triggers that signal when it’s time to act.
It’s possible to extract most of the useful content in almost any nonfiction book in less than twenty minutes.
No decisions, large or small, is ever made with complete information.
Don’t feel you need to have all of the information before you decide--the world is too complicated to make accurate predictions.
Collect just enough information to make an informed decision, then make your decision and move forward.
Focus only on the action you need to take next to move toward your goal.
Asking yourself good questions helps you discover good answers. Make it a habit to constantly ask yourself good questions, and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to overcome the challenges you face.
Counterfactual--”what if”--questions allow you to directly access your brains simulation capabilities. You can think of counterfactual simulation as applied imagination--you’re consciously posing a “what if” or “what would happen if” question to your mind, then sitting back and letting your brain do what it does best
When you run a counterfactual simulation, you assume the event or end state you’re simulations is already true. By supplying your mind with an artificial destination, it will automatically start to fill in the blanks between point A and point B.
Assume each task will take no more than ten minutes to complete, then begin.
The more incompetent a person is, the less they realize they’re incompetent. The more a person actually knows, the better they are to doubt their capabilities until they have enough experience to know they’ve master the subject.
Paradoxically, one of the best ways to figure out whether or not you’re right is to actively look for information that proves you're wrong.
The more strongly held the opinion or belief, the more we ignore sources of information the challenge that position.
The best way to counteract confirmation bias is to intentionally seek out source of information that challenge your current hypothesis or belief.
All human relationships are based on power-the ability to influence the actions of other people.
The use of power typically takes one of two fundamental forms: influence or compulsion. Influence is the ability to encourage someone else to want what you suggest. Compulsion is the ability to force someone else to do what you command.
The best way to increase your power is to do the things that increase your influence and reputation. The more people know your capabilities and respect the reputation you’ve built, the more power you will have.
Communication overhead is the proportion of time you spend communicating with members of your team instead of getting productive work done.
Focus on what you can do well, and work with others to accomplish the rest.
The solution to communication overhead is simple but not easy: make your team as small as possible.
Studies of effective teamwork usually recommend working in groups of three to eight people.
Everyone has a fundamental need to feel important.
If you want to make others feel important and safe around you, always remember to treat people with appreciation, courtesy, and respect.
Humans are predisposed to look for behavioral causes. People will be more receipt veto any request if you give them a reason why. Any reason will do.
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
Commander’s intent is a much better method of delegation tasks: whenever you assign a task to someone, tell them why it must be done. The more your agent understand the purpose behind your actions, the better they’ll be able to respond appropriately when the situation changes.
When you communicate the intent behind your plans, you allow the people you work with to intelligently respond to changes as they happen.
The best way to eliminate bystander apathy in project management is to ensure that all tasks have single, clear owners and deadlines. Unless every individual on your team knows exactly what they are responsible for and when it must be done, it’s very unlikely that they’ll actually do it.
When delegation responsibilities, always assign tasks to a single owner with a clear deadline. Only then will people feel responsible for getting things done.
People are consistently and uniformly horrendous at planning.
Most plans drastically underestimate the amount of slack necessary to make the plan accurate. If you’re responsible for complete a complex project, including a few months of slack time is appropriate--unexpected delays, vacation, sicknesses, and other unforeseen events are likely to make things take longer than expected.
The value of planning is in mental simulation: the thought process required to create the plan itself.
Given the choice, people always prefer to interact with people they know and like. Referrals make it far easier for people to decide to work with someone they don’t know.
Over time, you become more and more like those whom you spend time with, and less like people in other groups.
The values and behaviors of the people you interact with on a daily basis exert constant pressures on you to adopt the same values and behaviors.
Breaking away from groups that aren’t serving you is painful but necessary to grow.
People have an inherent tendency to comply with authority figures. As a result, when an authority figure asks us to do something, we're very likely to comply--even if the request isn’t appropriate or doesn’t make sense.
Authority figures are automatically and strongly persuasive. In the presence of an authority figure, people will do things they’d otherwise view as reprehensible, or wouldn’t consider in the first place--the source of many a s scandal involving famous and powerful people.
Individuals tend to rise to the level of other people’s expectations of them.
Focus on options, not issues, and you’ll be able to handle any situation life throws at you.
Based on what we’ve learned thus far, here are six simple principles of effective real-world management:

Recruit the smallest group of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly and with high quality.
Clearly communicate the desired end results, who is responsible for what, and the current status.
Treat people with respect.
Create an environment where everyone can be as productive as possible, then let people do their work.
Refrain from having unrealistic expectations regarding certainty and prediction.
Measure to see if what you’re doing is working--if not, try another approach.

Small, elite teams are best.
All complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked.
The only thing you can do about change is increase your flexibility to handle a wide variety of different circumstances. The more flexibility you are, the more resilient you’ll be when things inevitably change.
Changing some aspect of a complex system always introduces second order effects, some of which may be antithetical to the original intent of the change.
The larger and more complex the system, the higher the likelihood that something will eventually go very, very wrong.
To analyze a system, deconstruct complex systems into subsystems that are easier to understand, then build your understanding of the system from the ground up.
Measuring something is the first step to improving it.
What gets measured gets managed.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are measurements of the critical parts of a system.
Measurements that don’t help you make improvements to your system are worse than worthless: they’re a waste of your limited attention and energy.
Typically, business-related KPIs are directly related to either the five parts of every business or throughput.
Garbage in, garbage out is a straightforward principle: put useless input into a system, and you'll get useless output.
Sampling is the process of taking at random a small percentage of the total output, then using it as a proxy for the winter system.
Beware of misleading measurements based on small sample sizes.
When it comes to analytical confidence, more data is always better--collect the largest samples you can.
Correlation is not causation. Even if you notice that one measurement is highly associated with another, that does not prove that one thing caused the other.
Norms are measures that use historical data as a tool to provide context for current measurements.
Deconstruction is the process of separating complex system into the smallest possible subsystems in order to understand how things work. Instead of trying to understand the system all at once, you break up the system into parts, then work on understanding the subsystems and how they interact with one another.
Creating and improving system is the threat to successful business practice.
For best results, focus on the critical inputs that produce the most of the results you want.
All good things are subject to diminishing returns--after a certain point, having more of something can actually be detrimental.
So many people get wrapped up in making the perfect decision that they wind up overwhelming himself and doing nothing. Focus on doing a few simple things that will produce most of the results you’re looking for, then call it a day.
Removing small amounts of Friction consistently over time accumulates large improvements in both quality and efficiency.
Here’s the paradox of automation: the more efficient the automated system, the more crucial the contribution of the human operators of that system. When an error happens, operators need to identify and fix the situation quickly or shut the system down--otherwise, the automated system will continue to multiply the error.
Create standard operating procedures for important recurring tasks, and you’ll see your productivity skyrocket.
Want to make sure an important task is done correctly every single time? Create a checklist.
Once the checklist has been created, it’s easier to see how to improve or automate the system.
Even simple processes can benefit from systematization and the use of checklists.
Checklisting can produce major improvements in your ability to do quality work, as well as your ability to delegate work effectively.
For best results, create explicit checklists for the five parts of your business, then make sure they're followed every single time.
Sometimes the best way to impose a system is to stop doing so much.
Cessation takes guts. It's often unpopular or unpalatable to do nothing, even if doing nothing is actually the right solution.
Resilience is a massively underrated quality in business. Having the toughness and flexibility to handle anything life throws at your is a major asset that can save your skin--literally and metaphorically. Your ability to adjust your strategy and tactics as conditions change can be the difference between survival and disaster.
Preparing for the unexpected makes you more resilient.
Here’s what make s a business resilient:

low (preferably zero) outstanding debt
low overhead, fixed costs, and operating expenses
substantial cash reserves for unexpected contingencies
multiple independent products/industries/lines of business
flexible workers/employees who can handle many responsibilities well
no single point of failure
fail-safes/backup systems for all core processes

In order to be effective, fail-safes must be developed before you need them. If you wait to develop backup systems until you need them, it’s too late to make a difference.
The people who experience the most success in this world are the people who accept the uncertainty and fear as best they can, learn from their experiences, and keep trying new things.
Constant experimentation is the only way you can identify what will actually produce the result you desire. Often, the best (or only) way to learn things is to jump in and try.
All failures are temporary-what you learn in the process always helps you move forward.

20170421

"Zen Habits" by Leo Babauta

Smile, breathe and go slowly. -- Thich Nhat Hanh
If you feel stressed out and overwhelmed, breathe.
Breath. And enjoy each moment of this life. They're too fleeting and few to waste.
Be at peace with being still.
All the rushing around is counter productive.
Just be in the moment.
Slow down. Be present. Find happiness now, in this moment, instead of waiting for it.
Life can be ridiculously complicated, if you let it.
If you live without goals, you'll explore new territory.
Goals as a system are set up for failure.
Plans are not really different than goals. They set you on a predetermined path.
Don't worry about mistakes.
Always remember: the journey is all. The destination is beside the point.
Solitude, in these days as much as ever, is an absolute necessity.
The best art is created in solitude, for good reason: it's only when we are alone that we can reach into ourselves and find truth, beauty, soul.
Take a walk every day.
Think of nothing that happens as either good or bad. Stop judging, and stop expecting.
When you stop judging things as good or bad, you are no longer burdened by the emotions of this judgment, and can live lighter, freer.
Without the human mind, things just happen, and they are not good or bad.
It's our expectations that force us to judge whether something is good or bad.
When people disappoint you, it's not their fault. They're just being who they are. Your expectations are at fault.
Accept people for who they are.
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. -- Zen proverb
In the chaos of the modern world, there is a beauty in simply doing.
When walking, walk. When eating, eat. -- Zen proverb
Excesses lead to all kinds of problems, but the biggest problem is that life is less enjoyable.
It's the little things that make life enjoyable.
We've been conditioned to believe that busier is better, but actually the speed of doing is not as important as what we focus on doing.
The most important step is a realization that life is better when you move at a slower, more relaxed pace, instead of hurrying and rushing and trying to cram too much into every day.
Life as a whole is better if you go slowly, and take the time to savor it, appreciate every moment. That's the simplest reason to slow down.
Take responsibility for your life.
Your environment doesn't control your life--you do.
Do less. Cut back on your projects, on your task list, on how much you try to do each day.
Focus not on the quantity but quality.
Have fewer meetings. Meetings are usually a huge waste of time.
Practice being comfortable with sitting, doing nothing.
Realize that if it doesn't get done, that's OK.
Start to eliminate the unnecessary.
Simply learn to live in the present, rather than thinking so much about the future or the past.
Slowly eliminate commitments.
Unsubscribe from everything.
When you find yourself wanting to buy something, pause. Then think of how you can live without buying it.
Think of the restrictions you impose on yourself, and see if you can lift a few of them.
The number 1 creative habit: solitude.
The number 2 creative habit: participation.
Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.
Don't consume and create at the same time--separate the processes.
Just get it out, no matter how crappy the first draft.
Teach and you'll learn.
Most of the important stuff is available for free.
Find others who are doing it [the thing you love] well and study them closely.
You'll learn most be doing. Start doing it for free.
Never stop learning, getting better.
Start small, expand only as much as your income allows. Buy as little equipment as you can get away with at first.
If you get good at something you'll be in demand.
People who wake late miss one of the greatest feats of nature, repeated in full stereo vision each and every day--the rise of the sun.
You should have one goal that you want to accomplish this week. And every morning, you should decide what one thing you can do today to move yourself further towards that goal.
Make time to pursue your passion, no matter how busy you are.
The people you make friends with are so much more important than your job or the things you buy.
There are really only two steps to simplifying:

Identify what's most important to you.
Eliminate everything else.

Focus on the essential tasks and eliminate the rest.
Learn to say no. If you can't say no, you will take on too much.
Simplify your wardrobe by getting rid of anything you don't actually wear.
The key to keeping your life simple is to create simple routines.
Learn what "enough" is. Figure out how much is "enough". And then stop when you get there.
Have a place for everything.
Simplify your goals. Instead of having half a dozen goals or more, simplify to one goal.
Single-task. Multi-tasking is more complicated, more stressful, and generally less productive. Instead, do one task at a time.
Set just three very important things you want to accomplish each day.
Go for quality, not quantity.
Always ask: Will this simplify my life? If the answer is no, reconsider.
Clutter is a form of visual distraction, and everything in our vision pulls at our attention at least a little. The less clutter, the less visual stress we have.
If you think about your goal every day, it is much more likely to become true.
Motivation is not a constant thing that is always there for you. It comes and goes, and comes and goes again, like the tide.
Whatever you do, don't give up.
Start small. Start really small. If you're having a hard time getting started, it may be because you're thinking too big.
The four laws of simplicity:

Collect everything in one place.
Choose the essential.
Eliminate the rest.
Organize the remaining stuff neatly and nicely.

Examine all your commitments, and ask yourself if they are really important to you, if they give you great value for your time, and if they are related to what is truly important.
Simplifying isn't meant to leave your life empty--it's meant to leave space in your life for what you really want to do.
You should focus on the few things that get you the most benefit.
The key to Haiku Productivity is to limit yourself to an arbitrary but small number of things, forcing yourself to focus on the important stuff and eliminate all else.
The rule of Haiku Productivity is: put limits on everything you do. That's it. One rule.
Example: 1 goal at a time. 2 times you can check email per day. 3 most-important-tasks per day. 4 batched tasks. 5 sentence email limit.
5-sentence rule: No email can be longer than 5 sentences.
By restricting yourself to a small number of things, you force yourself to focus only on the essential.
Once you've simplified your life, the way to keep it simple is by creating simple systems for everything you do regularly.
People find greatest enjoyment not when they're passively mindless, but when they're absorbed in a mindful challenge.
The simpler the tools, the better.
Ten habits of Zen-to-Done:

collect: Carry a small notebook and write done any tasks, ideas, projects, or other information that pops into your head. Get it out of your head and onto paper, so you don't forget it.
process: Make quick decisions on things in your inbox, do not put them off.

Process your inboxes at least once a day, from top to bottom, making a decision on each item: do it, trash it, delegate it, or put it on your to-do list or calendar for later.

plan: Set MITs for the week and day.

Each day, create a list of 1-3 MITs and be sure to accomplish them.

do (focus): Do one task at a time, without distractions.
simple trusted system: Keep lists simple, and check them daily.

Don't create a complicated system, and don't keep trying out new tools.

organize: Have a place for everything.

Put things where they belong, right away, instead of piling them up to sort later.

review: Review your system and goals weekly.

During your weekly review, you should go over each of your yearly goals, see what progress you made on them in the last week, and what action steps you're going to take to move forward in the coming week.

simplify: Reduce goals and tasks to the essential.

Remove everything but the essential projects and tasks, so you can focus on them.

routine: Set and keep routines.
find your passion: Seek work for which you're passionate.

Getting things done is really about one thing, and one thing only: overcoming resistance to doing what we need to do.
Become aware of resistance. Once you become aware of it, you can fight it, and beat it.
Become a pro. The professional, unlike the amateur, comes to work ready to work.
Before you start the day, be very clear about what you want to accomplish.
Close all programs except the ones you need to do the important task in front of you.
Make your first important task a daily appointment.
Just sit down and start. Only doing actually helps. And the only way to do something is to just start.
It's paradoxical, but if you work fewer hours, and know that your time is limited, you will be more focused.
You're only productive if you are doing work that moves you towards a goal.
If you have an impulse to buy something you don't absolutely need, put it on a 30-day list.
Make your finances automatic.
You can save thousands a year with a smaller house. Many times, if you get rid of a lot of clutter, you don't need a large house.
A cell phone is not a necessity. It's a convenience.
Simplify your [todo] list down to the barest essentials, and you can eliminate the need for complex systems.
Slowly, you can eliminate your commitments to a very small number--only have those commitments in your life that really give you joy and value.
You don't need a huge to-do list to be productive--just do the stuff that matters.
Here's your planning system each day: write down your three most important tasks on a sheet of paper. That's it. Check off those tasks when you finish them. Devote your entire day, if possible, to those three tasks, or at least devote the first half of your day to them.
Do your MITs first, and then do all the small tasks at the same time.
If can't afford to buy something with cash you have now, then you can't afford to buy it.
The basic idea of the debt snowball is that you apply and extra amount of money every month to your smallest debt until it's paid off, and then take the amount you were paying for that debt and apply it to the next biggest debt, and so on until you've paid off all your debts.
What are you good at? What excites you? What do you read about? What have you secretly dreamed of?
The biggest obstacle for most people is self doubt and fear of failure.
Take how much you usually do, and do less than that.
Spend at least five minutes each day doing nothing.
Finding your passion:

What are you good at?

Unless you're just starting out in life, you have some skills or talent, shown some kind of aptitude.

What excites you?

What do you read about?
What have you spent hours reading about and researching?

What have you secretly dreamed of?

Learn, ask, take notes.
Pick one thing from the list that excites you the most. This is your first candidate.
Now read up on it, talk to people who've been successful in the field.
Make a list of notes of things you need to learn, need to improve on, skills you want to master, people to talk to.
Study up on it, but don't wait too long before diving into the next step.

Experiment, try.

Here's where the learning really takes place. If you haven't been already, start to do the things you've chosen. Pay attention to how you feel doing it--is this something you look forward to, that gets you excited, that you love to share?

Narrow things down.

I recommend that you pick 3-5 things from your list, if it's longer than that, and do steps 5 & 6 with them.
Pick one, or two at the most, and focus on that. You're going to do the next three steps with it: banish your fears, find the time, and make it a career if possible.
If it doesn't work out, you can try the next thing on your list--there's no shame in giving something a shot and failing, because it'll teach you valuable lessons that will help you to be successful in the next attempt.

Banish your fears.

This is the biggest obstacle for most people--self-doubt and fear of failure. You're going to face it and banish it.
First, acknowledge it rather than ignoring or denying it. Second, write it down, to externalize it. Third, feel it and be OK with having it. Fourth, ask yourself, "What's the worst that could happen?" Usually it's not catastrophic. Fifth, prepare yourself for doing it anyway, and then do it.
Take small steps, as tiny as possible, and forget about what might happen--focus on what is actually happening, right now.

Find the time.

Make the time, dammit! If this a priority, you'll make the time--rearrange your life until you have the time.
Do what it takes.

How to make a living doing it.

This doesn't happen overnight. You need to do something, get good at it, be passionate about it. This could take months or years, but if you're having fun, that's what's most important.
When you get to the point that someone would pay you for it, then you're golden.
Build a reputation, find people who are interested in what you do, demonstrate your knowledge and passion.

20170420

"RippedBody.com" by Andy Morgan

Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out the obvious.
A training or diet method is merely a means of achieving your goal.
The ability of the body to recover is hampered when dieting as it stresses the central nervous system.
When overfeeding we will always gain some fat with the muscle, and when underfeeding we'll always burn some muscle with the fat.
Looking ripped or shredded is a function of two things: low levels of body fat and sufficient muscle mass.
What we're going to do different:

Shift the focus to diet rather than training.
Physique is 70% diet, and 30% training. So, we'll focus on things in that proportion.
Purposefully skip breakfast.
Eating fewer meals allows you to have larger meals, feel full, and still maintain a deficit.

Eat more food when your body needs it.
Eat more carbs on training days to help with recovering, and eat more post-workout to take advantage of nutrient uptake.

Simple Set-up: The Diet

skip breakfast; just eat lunch and dinner (i.e. 8-hour window)
don't eat anything the other 16-hours of the day (tea is okay)
getting it right 90% of the time is good enough
meal frequency doesn't matter (two meals is just simpler)
weight-train 3 days a week, rest 4 days a week
training days: eat more carbs, less fat
rest days: eat more fat, less carbs
keep protein high both days

Simple Set-up: The Training

strength-train 3 days a week
training times can vary.
The only requirement is that you have time to eat after training and before going to bed.
don't bother with cardio

In the short-term, anything [training] will provide a training effect, this is why there is so much BS out there.
Barbells are better for incremental loading then dumbbells.
Do big compound movements and forget about the rest.
The hierarchy of importance for diet: calorie balance > macros > micros > meal timing & frequency > supplements.
Counting macros is just a more detailed way of counting calories.
Muscle weighs more than fat. If you're gaining muscle and losing fat you're changing your body, but the scale won't show it.
Eat the same meals frequently and often for ease. This way you only have to count the macros in each of your favorite meals once.
An effective training routine must follow the principle of progressive overload.
A beginner needs less overall training volume to bring about change than an advanced lifter. Do the minimum you can do to keep progressing at a sustainable rate.
The most important thing for a beginner trainee is that you get a good strength training program then stick to it.
The most important thing for the intermediate and advanced trainee becomes not what program you follow, but how you tweak it to follow the principle of progressive overload so you can keep advancing with your training.
Programming ADHD--the search for the perfect training program--is the cause of the phenomenon of the perpetual beginner.
Adaptation of the body to progressive increasing load is essential.
There are a variety of ways you can create overload to force adaptation.
Continuing to workout with the same load is called 'exercise', not 'training'.
The "principle of overload" tells you that it is necessary to stimulate the body with a stimulus (overload) which exceeds the stimulus the body receives on a regular basis in order to make the body adapt for your intended purpose.
There are several ways to create overload in resistance training, such as: increasing the weight lifted, increasing the number of reps per set, increasing the number of sets, shortening rest times, increasing the difficulty of the exercise, expanding the range of motion, increasing the frequency of training.
If continued training adaptation is desired, it is necessary to increase the training load little by little (progressively) in line with increases in physical strength.
Novice or experienced trainee, if you are cutting you want to be using a linear progression routine.
Novices will gain strength for a time regardless of whether they are in a caloric surplus or deficit.
Gains in strength cannot continue forever in an energy deficit, no matter how smart the programming.
Your goal is to maintain your strength gains for the duration of the cut, until you achieve your desired level of leanness and then start increasing calorie intake.
For muscle mass retention purposes, I see no reason that someone needs to strength train more frequently than three days a week.
You can't continue to progress forever on a linear progression routine because it gets to the point where the stress from the training is too high for you to be able to recover from.
To increase work capacity, instead of trying to increase the amount of weight you're lifting, increase the amount of volume you handle each week or each session.
When ripped you may look bigger due to the increased definition, but the chest and limb measurements will go down.
Experienced trainees shouldn't panic if their lifts go down a little [while cutting].
Top 10 nutrition myths:

bread/carbs are bad
eggs are bad
red meat causes cancer
saturated fat is bad
salt causes high blood pressure and should be avoided
whole-grain is better than white
high-fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar
too much protein can cause kidney damage
vitamins from food are better then supplemented vitamins
eating small meals throughout the day "stokes the metabolism"

Less refined foods will keep you fuller longer.
Casein [protein], being absorbed slowest is best with the last meal of the day.
Whey [protein], being absorbed the quickest is better with the other meals.
As a general rule, weigh your un-cooked meats and carbs and eyeball everything else.
Snacking won't make a difference in your diet as long as it fits your macros.
You need to get a consistent 7-9 hours of sleep each night for fat loss to work well.
Sleep 'deficits' cannot be recovered from with a long rest.
More sleep improves everything. Make it a priority.
Research to date has shown that meal frequency really isn't as important as we once thought.
When in a deficit, protein needs are higher.
Training is the catalyst for change; diet allows the change to happen.
If a particular diet is suggesting you eliminate any food group in excess, your BS meter should go up.
The single most important piece of the puzzle is getting your energy intake right.
Deficits can (and arguably should be) greater than surpluses.
Fat can be lost quicker than muscle is gained, so those cutting will experience quicker and more obvious visual changes than those looking to gain muscle.
Diet should determine whether you are in an energy surplus or deficit, not training.
Training should be determined by goal, not used to address the energy balance equation.
It's essential to realize that any [BMR] calculation will just be a best guess.
How to get calorie intake right:

Set weight loss targets based on current body fat percentage, and weight gain targets based on training status (beginner, intermediate, advanced).
Calculate the theoretical deficit or surplus needed to achieve that.
Adjust energy intake upwards or downwards accordingly based on how the scale weight changes over a few weeks of consistent implementation.

There is a theoretical limit to how much fat can be released from the fat stores in a single day, and this is inversely proportionate to how lean you are.
Just because you can lose more, doesn't mean that you should if it makes your life miserable.
Unlike fat loss, where body-fat percentage determines how quickly we can lose weight, rates of potential muscle growth are determined by how advanced someone is with their training.
Whereas fat can be lost relatively quickly, muscle gain happens slowly.
Muscle growth potential:

beginner: 2-3 lbs/month -> +200-300 kCals/day
intermediate: 1-2 lbs/month -> +100-200 kCals/day
advanced: 0.5 lbs/month -> slight surplus

If your weight doesn't change on a cut, decrease calorie intake by 100-200 kCals/day, or 5-10%.
If weight is lost too quickly, there is a risk of muscle loss, so increase calories.
Macro recommendations:

cutting:

protein: 1.1-1.4 g/lb
fat: 0.4-0.6 g/lb
carbs: the rest

bulking:

protein: 0.8-1.0 g/lb
fat: 20-30% of calories
carbs: the rest

Protein helps us recover from workouts, it preserves lean tissue when dieting, helps us grow more muscle when bulking, and has the highest effect on satiety of all the macronutrients.
The most important factor in determining our protein intake requirement is lean body mass. The more you have, the more you need.
Determine lean body mass by taking your weight and subtracting your body fat.
Protein helps spare muscle mass when in a calorie deficit, so the requirements are higher when cutting.
Consumption of dietary fat is important for regular hormonal function, especially testosterone production.
Fat is the most energy dense macronutrient, so decreasing fat intake is an easy way to make large changes to your overall energy intake.
Carbohydrates are the only macronutrient we can live without. However, carbs have a positive impact on hormones, help fuel us through our workouts, replace muscle glycogen, and make life a lot tastier.
You need to eat enough carbohydrates to still get effective workouts so that you can maintain your muscle mass--which a lot of people find isn't possible when restricting carbs severely.
Fiber is a classification of carbohydrate. Fiber keeps us feeling fuller without adding significantly to the calorie content of food, lowers blood sugar levels and delays digestion of food, lowers cholesterol, helps us avoid constipation, and reduces colon cancer risk.
Fiber recommendation: 25g or 20% of carb intake.
Alcohol has calories. 1g contains 7kCal and that is usually combined with carbs.
Macronutrients are protein, fat, and carbohydrates.
Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals.
Macronutrients are generally measured in grams, while micronutrients are generally measured in milligrams.
Vitamins are organic. Minerals are non-organic.
The industry profits from our desire to feel special by inventing issues for us to imagine we have and then selling solutions to these invented problems.
Water is important for fat loss and performance.
How many meals should you be eating: 2-3 when cutting, 2-4 when bulking.
I suggest you eat the minimum number of meals that you can get away with without compromising your goals.
Simpler -> higher adherence rate -> higher long-term success rate
It can be beneficial psychologically to have fewer meals because you can eat more at each meal.
When should you be eating: within two hours of finishing your training, more calories post workout then before, some carbs post workout, not completely fasted.
Fasted training: 10g BCAAs pre-workout, then 10g BCAAs every two hours until your first meal. Split calories between meals evenly.
Evening training: Lunch ~40% calories, training, dinner ~60% calories.
Calorie cycling is the purposeful increase and decrease of calorie intake relative to the days you train, while maintaining the calorie balance for the week.
Macro cycling is the purposeful repositioning of certain macronutrients across your training week--with a goal to improve body composition, training effect, or performance--while maintaining the macronutrient balance for the week.
You want to give yourself more calories on your training days, less on your rest days. Try anywhere from 25% to a 50% difference between the two days.
How to implement calorie/macro cycling:

Decide how much you'd like the calorie split to be.
Add calories to the daily energy intake for the training day and subtract for the rest day.
Adjust to maintain the calorie intake target for the week.

Significantly more carbs should be consumed on the training days than the rest days.
Significantly less fat should be consumed on the training days than the rest days.
There is a definite window of opportunity for nutrient partitioning in the post workout window.
Supplements are not needed to transform your physique and in many cases constitute an unnecessary expense.
No single supplements is going to have more impact on your diet than getting your diet right in the first place.
Protein powder is convenient, BCAAs are arguably necessary for fasted training, caffeine can give you the right kick to make a more effective workout, and by many standards, fish oil seems to improve just about everything to a small degree which makes them worth considering. The end.
Creatine is probably the most researched supplement out there. It is safe, cheap, can boost strength and has neroprotective and cardioprotective properties.
Creatine: 5g a day, taken with meals. Loading isn't necessary. The standard creatine monohydrate is the cheapest and just as effective as any other type. Creatine cycling isn't necessary.
Fat loss happens in pretty much a predetermined order. As we get leaner, it gets more and more difficult to shift the fat. The very last places where fat comes off are like that due to poorer blood flow in these areas and the alpha/beta receptor ratio.
Protein powders are a cheap way to hit your protein targets but food is going to keep you fuller.
Whey in the day, casein at night.
I highly advise you to go for a 'cut' first, as starting a 'slow-bulk' when 'abs lean' gives you significant hormonal advantages for gaining muscle with minimal fat.
Body-recomp: +20% kCals on training days, -20% kCals on rest days.
The key to keeping abs with slow bulking is quite simple, make sure you have enough of a deficit on your rest-day so that you burn the stored fat from the training day.
There is not one perfect macro-ratio.
When eating above maintenance calories, the fat we consume is easier to be stored, so it is best to keep fat intake lower on this day.
If a food fits your macros for the day, then you can eat it.
If you can make it simple and have success on the simplified system you can continue it in the long term.
Skipping breakfast allows for bigger, more satisfying meals.
Simple Steps for lean gains:

Calculate BMR.
Adjust for activity (calc TDEE).
Chose goal: cut/slow-bulk/body-recomp.
Calculate training-day/rest-day calories.
Calc training-day/rest-day macronutrients.
Make your menu to fit your macros.

There is roughly 3500 kCals in one pound of fat.
The core of building a strong body is the squat, deadlift, bench and their variants. Anybody that tells you otherwise is simple ill-informed.
Big 3 workout:

squat 5x5
bench 5x5
deadlift 5x5
Same weight across each set.
Perform 3-days per week.

[Weight] increases need to be slow and incremental to allow your body to adapt to the load. This is not just about muscle growth, but the connecting tissues, nervous system, and bone density changes.
To have success in dieting tracking your progress is vital.
You're either as lean as you like or you aren't. I strongly recommend you forget about body-fat percentage.
To make objective decisions you need consistent data and that will lead you to success.
Consistency is key to accurate tracking. This means that measurements need to be taken at the same time of the day, under the same circumstances. The best time to measure is in the morning, after you wake.
Tense/flex your muscles for each measurement as this enables more consistent results.
Measure to the nearest 0.1 centimeter.
Nine areas to measure:

chest (nipple line)
right arm (flexed, widest point)
left arm (flexed, widest point)
2" above navel (two fingers)
navel
2" below navel (two fingers)
hips (widest point)
right thigh (widest point)
left thigh (widest point)

Your weight will fluctuate throughout the week, so weigh yourself every morning after using the toilet. Average this value at the end of the week.
Take two photos, front and side, once every four weeks.
Always look to gauge progress by looking at data over a four week period and assessing the trend, never before. There will always be fluctuations during the initial weeks.
When around 15% body fat or lower, fat comes off the upper abs first, before that there doesn't seem to be any pattern.
Strength increases correlate well to muscle gains.
Muscle growth will hide fat loss, so don't just rely on the scale.
For more experienced trainees that are cutting the goal is muscle preservation. Strength maintenance is a good sign of muscle maintenance, however there is the mechanical inefficiency of getting leaner that you need to be aware of.
The goal should always be to have the smallest calorie deficit that you can get away with while still progressing with your diet.
The best diet is the one you can keep.
The leaner you get, the less body fat you can burn a day.
Carbs suck in 3-4x their weight in water.
The lighter you get the fewer calories you burn.
Lack of patience leads to rushed decisions.
Cardio, as a tool for fat loss, is over-rated, over-used, and overall a very poor time investment for the I.F. user.
Stubborn body fat is physiologically different from other fat in your body and this makes removal difficult.
Typically, stubborn fat is found in the lower abs, back and glutes in men; thighs, glutes and hips in women.
There is a theoretical limit on how much fat can be oxidized (burned) before the body will fuel itself by breaking down muscle mass.
For fat loss, three things need to happen.

Fat needs to be broken down into free fatty acids (FFAs) and released from the fat cell into the blood stream (lipolysis).
The FFAs need to be transported through the blood to somewhere where they can be used for fuel.
Tissues somewhere in the body need to pluck these FFAs from the blood stream and use them for energy (oxidation).

Unfavorable alpha/beta receptor ratio differences in the stubborn fat areas of the body are what makes it difficult for lipolysis to take place.
Morning fasting, by increasing catecholamine output and lowering insulin in the blood stream, creates circumstances which help get around the receptor issues to allow the fat to escape the fat cells.
Blood flow to the stubborn fat areas is poorer. Cardio can increase blood flow to these areas. Yohimbine HCL can also increase blood flow to these areas.
Reverse Pyramid Training (RPT) is a style of set-rep pattern where the trainee puts their heaviest set first, then 'pyramids down' to a lighter weight, usually with more reps for the latter sets.
Exaggerate a problem, call it a scary name and people will flock to it.
We want to make the minimum changes required when dieting to keep fat loses going to avoid unnecessarily high levels of metabolic slow-down.
Before looking to cut your energy intake, consider taking a diet break.
Reduce energy intake primarily via your fat and carb macros.
Don't go below 0.4 g/lb-LBM of fat.
When you can't make any more reductions from your rest days, start making reductions from your training days.

20170419

"Focus" by Leo Babauta

Our ability to focus will allow us to create in ways that perhaps we haven't in years.
It's not that "less is more", but "less is better".
Focusing on smaller things will make us more effective.
With so much competing for our attention, and so little time to focus on real work, it's a wonder we get anything done at all.
There's instant positive feedback to such constant activities as checking email, surfing the web, checking social networks such as blogs, forums, twitter and facebook. That's why it's so easy to become addicted to being connected and distracted.
Computers are taking over our lives.
Being connected all the time, being part of this constant stream of distraction, is an expectation that society now has of us.
If you're someone who creates, in any way, focus should be important to you.
Focus is crucial to those who create, because creating is so difficult without it.
Creating is a completely separate process from consuming and communicating.
Separate your day: a time for creating, and a time for consuming and communicating. And never the twain shall meet.
Quiet and solitude and reflection lead to greater happiness when they're a part of our daily lives, at least in some degree.
A good policy is to leave your work behind when you're done with work.
Like any addiction, connection has very quick positive reinforcements and only long-term negative consequences.
If the new habit is something you don't enjoy, you'll quit before long.
One of the powerful things about rituals is that we often give them a special importance.
Single-task on this [most] important task as long as you can--ideally until it's done.
The more connected a person becomes on the internet, the more distractions they face in their day.
Choose what you consume and how much you communicate carefully.
Limit your stream to only the most essential information and communications, and you'll free up hours of time for creating and doing amazing things.
I suggest starting from scratch. Assume that nothing is sacred, empty your plate, and only put back on it what you absolutely need or love. Let the rest fade away.
It's crucial that you admit to yourself: you can't read and consume everything.
Try eliminating at least one thing each day.
Slowly reduce your stream, leaving only the essential.
Just as importantly, reduce the time you spend using the essentials.
Place limits on the time you spend reading and communicating--a small limit for each channel. The smaller the overall limit, the better.
The need to keep up consumes much of our day, and creates a kind of anxiety our minds barely register.
This obsession with keeping up with information takes away from the things that are most important to us.
Examine each fear individually and test them.
When we shine a light on our fears, they lose power. When we test them to see their validity, they will usually fail, and we can overcome them.
If something really bad is happening, we'll know.
Get your task list out of your inbox.
Do your work with your email closed.
What tasks will have the most impact on your life and work, rather than just seeming urgent right now?
Remember that urges are only temporary.
Each distraction fills a need in some way. You do the distraction for a reason.
The only way to beat fears is to face them, and confront them with facts.
Slowing down and focusing is always more effective.
Rushing produces errors.
When you appreciate things, you enjoy them more.
Life as a whole is better if you go slowly, and take time to savor it, appreciate every moment.
Take responsibility for your life.
Your environment doesn't control your life, you do.
Do less.
Meetings are usually a big waste of time.
Life is better when un-rushed.
It helps to see things as funny, rather than frustrating.
Accept that the world is constantly changing, and we are a part of that change.
Be like water. Flow, respond to the landscape, move around obstacles, and be graceful in your movement.
Learn to let things unfold naturally instead of pushing them to happen.
If you have too many tasks, the solution is too simplify your task list.
Early in the day, focus on the important tasks.
If you're dreading a task, put it aside for now, and pick something more interesting.
When you simplify, you remove the extraneous and allow yourself to focus.
The key is to find what matters most to you, and to eliminate as much of the rest as possible.
A simpler life probably means fewer possessions.
You have to learn to say "no" to others.
Focus on fewer but higher-impact tasks.
It's crucial that you take a step back and figure out what's most important to you.
Take 10 minutes a day to simplify your commitments, what you do, and what comes in to your life.
Every day, first thing in the morning, figure out something amazing that you want to work on today.
Multi-tasking is less efficient, due to the need to switch gears for each new task, and the switch back again.
Pick just a few tasks each day.
Don't do anything else before doing the first thing on your short list of most important tasks.
Keep things simple, focused and effective by single-tasking. Focus on one task until it's done, then move to the next.
Keep a very short to-do list, clear distractions, do one thing at a time, until the list is finished. That's single-tasking productivity at its essence.
The best companies are those with laser focus. They do less, but they do it better.
A narrower focus allows you to do a better job--to be better than anyone else, perhaps, at the narrower thing that you're good at.
One of the biggest problems many people have in their careers, with work projects, with their businesses, is too broad of a focus.
Slowly do less, one thing at a time, and you'll see how it can transform your work.
There are two keys to reading longer pieces or books: 1) clearing away everything else, and 2) shutting off the internet.
The simple act of walking can be a tremendous boost to your focus, productivity, clarity of mind, not to mention your health and waistline.
Staff or coworkers only interrupt you because they have the expectation that you'll respond and that it's OK to interrupt you at any time.
When we try to push others to make changes, they often resist.
Busywork isn't important work.
Create an environment where focus is possible.

20170418

"The Stubborn Fat Solution" by Lyle McDonald

As with so many aspects of physique enhancement, there is a lot of lore and outright bullshit when it comes to the topic of stubborn body fat and what to do about it.
Stubborn fat not only stores calories more effectively, but it is hellishly resistant to giving it up. That's why it's stubborn.
Men don't need to be concerned with stubborn body fat until they're around 10%.
The body always takes fat from the least stubborn places first; until you get rid of the easy stuff, there's no point in targeting the stubborn stuff.
Blood flow is a huge area of importance for getting rid of stubborn body fat.
Spot reduction is an absurd myth that refuses to die and is, fundamentally, a physiological impossibility.
When you're in a calorie deficit, your body needs to mobilize fuel. Because the body can't easily get stubborn fat to use for fuel (and there's no other body fat left to use), in a deficit situation it will turn to muscle mass.
By forcing the body to mobilize stubborn body fat for fuel, not only do you get leaner faster at the end of your diet, you spare muscle loss.
Please note: getting this lean (i.e. six-pack lean) even once will screw you up for the rest of your life; once you've been uber-lean anything above that feels fat.
The more technical term for body fat is adipose tissue, with individual cells being called adipocytes.
In humans, the primary type of fat cell is called white adipose tissue, or WAT, so named because of its color. While there is another type of fat, called brown adipose tissue or BAT, it's generally thought that humans didn't have much BAT and hence it could be ignore.
In humans, fat cell number can vary drastically. Lean individuals may have anywhere from 41 to 65 billion fat cells, while obese individuals can have upwards of 200 billion fat cells; fat cell number can also vary based on genetics, race, and the area of fat you're looking at.
Contrary to popular belief, fat cell number can change up or down.
For the record, one pound of fat is 454 grams and let's assume 90% lipid on average.
When burned by the body, one gram of fat provides 9 calories, so 400 grams of fat contains about 3600 calories of stored energy. Now you know where the old maxim of ~3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat comes from.
Some very obese individuals have been fasted for up to a year without problems.
Body fat is truly an ideal storage form of energy.
If fat cells get too big, your body will make more.
Unfortunately, getting rid of fat cells is nearly (but not completely) impossible. Sure, liposuction is always available, but beyond that, eliminating fat cells is very difficult and only occurs under extremely severe conditions.
Excess adiposity is associated with a number of health consequences, most of them bad. Getting and staying fat in the long-term is generally not healthy.
One of the roles of body fat is as a physical cushion for your internal organs. Fat cells also act as insulation, keeping folks warm when it gets cold.
Simply put, running chronically high blood glucose causes a lot of damage to the body.
Muscle tissue has a limit to how much glucose it can store as glycogen.
Diabetics can't get blood glucose into the cells because they are insulin deficient (Type 1) or insulin resistant (Type 2).
Essential body fat refers to the fat found around your organs (where it serves an important cushioning role), in your nervous system (nerves are surrounded by sheaths of fat), and especially your brain.
As the name implies, essential body fat is exactly that: essential. You can't lose it and, even if you could, you wouldn't want to because you'd be dead.
In men, essential body fat typically makes up about 3% of total weight or so.
Physiologically, a body fat percentage of 1% is impossible, as it would require getting rid of the essential fat.
Visceral fat is found around your internal organs and can be thought of as gut fat. But it's not the fat you see on top of your stomach; it's actually underneath your abdominal muscles surrounding your organs.
People who carry a lot of visceral fat are referred to as having central obesity and their tummy pooches out quite a bit from their body.
Visceral fat is more metabolically active than subcutaneous fat. Meaning that it responds more effectively to fat mobilizing/burning stimuli than other types of body fat.
Visceral fat also has better blood flow compared to other body fat, meaning it's easier to get the fat out of the fat cell.
Subcutaneous just means 'under the skin' which is where this fat is found.
Of your total body fat, subcutaneous fat is the most prominent. Anywhere from 40% to 60% of your total body fat is found under the skin, which is what allows you to estimate body fat percentage with methods such as skinfolds.
Recent research has identified three different areas of abdominal fat. Deep abdominal fat is a lot like visceral fat and is relatively easy to get rid of. Superficial abdominal fat can be further subdivided into upper and lower pieces with the upper fat being easier to mobilize than the lower bit.
Regular fat is the stuff that comes off fairly easily. Just adjust diet and exercise a bit and it comes off without too much trouble.
Stubborn fat is the other kind, the fat that just doesn't seem to want to come off without nearly superhuman effort. Even then it doesn't always come off. There are a number of physiological reasons why this is the case.
When your body can't get fat to burn, but needs energy because you're cutting calories, it starts going after muscle at a quicker rate. This is one of several reasons that muscle loss accelerates when people get super lean.
For the most part, losing ab/low back fat is far less an issue of major diet and training manipulations and more an issue or patience.
Many men can and do get plenty lean (at least to the level of 6-pack abdominals) with nothing but the standard diet and exercise advice.
In general, fat will come off the body from least to most stubborn and there is a clear hierarchy in how fat comes off the human body.
Fat cell hyperplasia refers to an increase in fat cell number (normally, fat cells increase by growing in size via hypertrophy); this is also called adipogenesis.
Apoptosis is a term referring to the death and removal of cells. With a few exceptions, fat cells don't generally undergo apoptosis except under very extreme circumstances.
Lipogenesis simply means the formation of new fat in fat cells from glycerol and three free fatty acids.
Lipolysis refers to the breakdown of fat in fat cells, producing glycerol and free fatty acids.
Body fat is actually made up of stored triglyceride (TG).
The majority of dietary fat that you eat is also in the form of TG's.
In a general sense, fat storage is a process whereby the fat cells take three fatty acids and a molecule of glycerol and puts them together, storing them as TG in a lipid droplet.
ATP is the only fuel that cells can use directly and you can consider it to be the basic energy currency of all cells in the body; other fuels are only valuable in that they can be oxidized to produce ATP.
Fundamentally, there are three primary steps [to fat burning]: breakdown, transport, and oxidation (burning).
The first step in burning off body fat is getting it out of your fat cells.
All hormones work through specific receptors.
There are two major types of adrenoceptors: beta and alpha which are found all over the body.
There are at least 3 (and maybe 4) different beta-receptors, called, imaginatively: beta-1, beta-2, beta-3, and beta-4.
Alpha-adrenoceptors come in at least two flavors, alpha-1 and alpha-2.
The main receptors we need to worry about in human fat cells are alpha-2 receptors and beta-2 receptors, both of which actively bind the catecholamine hormones.
As it turns out, different areas of fat have different levels of alpha and beta adrenoceptors, and this controls, to a massive degree, whether any given exercise stimulus has a net lipolytic or antilipolytic effect.
All you need to remember is that adrenoreceptors ultimately determine whether the catecholamines end up stimulating fat breakdown or not.
I should note that insulin pretty much always wins the battle over fat cell metabolism.
The next, and critically important step, is to get the fatty acids away from the fat cell, to other tissues where they can actually be burned. This process is dependant on blood flow through the adipose tissue.
If the fatty acids aren't moved out of the adipose tissue, the body will happily re-store them (a process called re-esterification).
Aerobic exercise tends to increase adipose tissue blood flow with the effect becoming greater as the duration increases.
Interestingly, blood flow to fat cells increases with long-term fasting, probably to help the body mobilize fatty acids for fuel.
Adipose tissue blood flow is also profoundly controlled by adrenoceptor levels. Beta-adrenoceptor activity increases adipose tissue blood flow; alpha-adrenoreceptor activation inhibits it.
Glycogen is a long carbohydrate chain stored in your muscles or liver.
By depleting full body glycogen stores, fat oxidation is ramped up ensuring that mobilized fatty acids will get burned for energy.
Insulin inhibits fat breakdown even at low levels.
Insulin is primarily under control of the diet and can be affected by changing either the quality (type) or quantity (amount) of carbohydrates that you're eating. Insulin levels will be reduced if you pick lower glycemic index carbs or simply reduce the quantity of carbohydrates that you're eating.
Released when blood sugar levels fall, glucagon's primary responsibility is to stimulate the liver to break down stored glycogen and release glucose.
Adrenaline is released from the adrenal gland, noradrenaline from the nerve terminals.
Adrenaline and noradrenaline are involved in mobilizing fuel for the body. In the liver, they promote the breakdown of liver glycogen to glucose; in fat cells the generally increase fatty acid mobilization to provide fuel to the body.
Just about any stressor from physical to psychological will increase the release of adrenaline and noradrenaline, but exercise is, generally speaking, what we'll use to control these hormones. The type and intensity of exercise that you do affects how adrenaline/noradrenaline are released and this is a big key to targeting stubborn fat.
Ephedrine not only mimics adrenaline/noradrenaline in the body, it increases the output of those hormones.
Growth Hormone (GH) does do amazing things in people who are deficient and have their levels replaced. However, increasing GH in otherwise normal individuals has far less of an impact.
Raising GH with various supplements and training strategies does nothing for muscle growth.
Exercise of just about any sort raises GH.
Chronically elevated cortisol, which can occur during conditions of sustained stress, is distinctly a bad thing.
One of cortisol's primary effects is to mobilize glucose to sustain blood glucose levels, it does this by increasing the production of glucose in the liver.
It is profoundly easy to overtrain when dieting to extremely low body fat levels and most people try to train too hard too often while they are dieting.
When dieting to extremely low levels, it's crucial to keep training volume under control to avoid over training.
Leptin is possibly one of the single most important hormones in terms of body weight regulation, appetite, etc.
Released primarily from fat cells, leptin signals the brain about how much fat you're carrying and how much you're eating.
Leptin doesn't do much to prevent folks from gaining weight. Where it shines is as an 'anti-starvation' hormone; leptin controls most of the body's response to fasting/caloric restriction/weight loss, acting to slow further weight loss to keep people alive until food becomes available again.
When someone diets, leptin goes down much faster than fat mass and this has the primary controlling effect on metabolic rate, hormones, appetite, immune function and a host of other processes.
Increasing leptin above normal levels has little effect; keeping leptin from dropping on a diet has absolutely massive effects.
Leptin stimulates fat oxidation in skeletal muscle and liver, and plays a role in fat mobilization from fat cells.
Cut calories or get lean and leptin drops precipitously.
Dieting of any sort will lower leptin. Overfeeding with high calories and high carbohydrates raise it.
A huge part of the problem with stubborn fat is that the adrenoceptor ratios present make it difficult to mobilize stubborn body fat.
Testosterone generally crashes when men get super lean anyhow so it's not something folks need to worry about or work to achieve.
Beta-2-receptors can be thought of as the 'good' receptors, increasing lipolysis and adipose tissue blood flow. In contrast, alpha-2-receptors are distinctly bad, inhibiting lipolysis and adipose tissue blood flow.
Certain fat deposits have significantly poorer blood flow than others.
Poor blood flow has two consequences here. First and foremost, it means that blood borne hormones can't get to the fat cells. Second, poor blood flow makes it harder to get mobilized fat away from the fat cell so that it can be burned elsewhere.
A receptor agonist is any compound that activates a specific receptor, in the same way that the body's own hormones would. In contrast, a receptor antagonist does the opposite. When it binds to the receptor in question, it either sends a negative signal or, by preventing the body's normal hormone from binding, prevents the normal signal from being sent.
You can essentially think of beta-receptors as accelerators of whatever system you're looking at. Similarly, you can think of alpha-receptors as acting like a brake.
From the standpoint of fat loss, beta-receptors are 'good' and alpha-receptors are 'bad'.
Yohimbe is a naturally occurring alpha-2 receptor antagonist.
Yohimbe is the herbal/bark-derived version, yohimbine HCL is the synthetic version.
I strongly recommend that dieters who want to use this compound obtain the synthetic yohimbine HCL.
Yohimbine does not affect testosterone levels.
All the effects of yohimbine do nothing but help with the mobilization of stubborn body fat.
Yohimbine HCL is a much cleaner compound with all of the benefits and a few of the side effects of the herbal.
The effects of yohimbine are eliminated by even small amounts of insulin which means that yohimbine needs to be taken several hours from a meal or first thing in the morning.
Note that yohimbine has a sort of passive stimulant effect. By itself it won't do a whole lot, but it tends to amplify the effects of other stimulating things such as exercise, ephedrine or caffeine; I don't recommend it be taken with ephedrine (or within 4 hours of an ephedrine does) for this reason.
Taking yohimbine before high intensity activities such as weight training or intervals can make people feel like their heart is going to come out of their chest.
Interestingly, with chronic long-term use, yohimbine builds up in tissues and the effect on fat loss seems to accelerate.
It's important to note that yohimbine can also cause water retention.
Low intensity activity is any steady state aerobic exercise that can be done for extended periods below the lactate threshold (LT, this is the point at which the body starts producing tremendous amounts of acid, causing fatigue).
Weight training or interval training (of any high intensity nature) that is done above lactate threshold will be considered high intensity activity.
High intensity activity seems to be able to overcome the lipolytic insensitivity associated with stubborn fat.
At high intensities of exercise, the body doesn't burn fatty acids for fuel, preferring to use glucose instead.
We can inhibit alpha-receptors naturally with either a very low carbohydrate diet or by using oral yohimbine.
Exercise is arguably the most potent weapon in our arsenal to accomplish the goal of beta-receptor stimulation.
While fasting is inappropriate for a lean dieter, low carbohydrate diets mimic fasting and may have the same impact on adipose tissue blood flow.
The main thing to keep in mind is that insulin should be lowered prior to attacking stubborn body fat.
Lowering carbohydrate intake, especially in conjunction with exercise that depletes muscle glycogen, is known to enhance whole body fat oxidation.
I think most people diet too long without a break.
A male can often get contest ripped eating lots of carbohydrates and doing nothing more esoteric than fasted morning cardio. Women, generally speaking, can't.
[For women] Even done fasted, if the diet is chronically carb-based, with nothing but low intensity cardio, lower body fat will never come off.
There's this weird mentality by which people think that their training volume and frequency should go up when dieting; this is backwards as recovery is always hampered when calories are restricted.
At best, the SFP 1.0/2.0 can be done twice weekly and the occasional freak of nature might get away with it three times weekly.
You are NOT the person who can handle high intensity interval training daily without running yourself.
When in doubt, err on the side of conservatism, doing a little bit less for longer usually works better than trying to do too much and blowing up.
Many people have noted that fat loss is often discontinuous, that is it often happens in stops and starts. So you'll by dieting and dieting and doing everything correctly with nothing to show for it. Then, boom, almost overnight, you drop 4 pounds and look leaner.
Protocol 1: low-carbohydrate diet plus low intensity aerobic activity
Reducing carbs to 20% or less of total calories will allow the good stuff to happen. That alone can be coupled with basic steady state cardio which can be done fasted or not. Ideally, the cardio would be done after consumption of some caffeine (100-200mg) consumed 30-60 minutes before. As far as duration, 45-60 minutes per session is plenty; if you need to do more than that, you should split the sessions up. Intensity should be low to moderate, maybe a heart rate of 130-140.
Protocol 1 can easily be used daily and will fit safely into just about any training program anybody could come up with.
Protocol 2: oral yohimbine plus low intensity aerobic intensity
Use oral yohimbine at a dose of 0.2mg/kg.
Although many recommend splitting the yohimbine dose throughout the day, this is not the best way to take it for stubborn fat mobilization; the entire dose should be taken all at once, ideally with caffeine (100-200 mg depending on body weight) 30-60 minutes before low intensity aerobic activity.
The yohimbine/caffeine/cardio combination should either be done fasted first thing in the morning or 3-4 hours after a meal.
Protocol 2 is more or less appropriate for everyone and can be used daily if needed or desired.
It would be best to start with a half-dose of yohimbine for the first few times through the protocol to assess your tolerance.
A duration of 45-60 minutes at a low to moderate intensity is appropriate.
Protocol 3: the original stubborn fat protocol (SFP 1.0)

Done first thing in the morning fasted.
30 minutes beforehand: consume 200mg caffeine, 0.2mg/kg yohimbine, and 1-3 grams L-tyrosine. NO ephedrine.
5-10 minute easy warm up.
10 minutes of interval training.
Rest completely for 5 minutes to allow fatty acids to be released into the bloodstream.
Perform 20-40 minutes of aerobic activity, ideally near the lactate threshold as this is where fat oxidation tends to be maximized.
Wait an hour to eat following the protocol.

The body keeps burning fat for fuel after high intensity training even in the presence of insulin.
Protocol 1.5: the new and improved stubborn fat protocol 1.0

Can be done any time of the day. Ideally, the protocol should come 3 or more hours after a meal.
Caffeine (100-200 mg), yohimbine (0.2mg/kg), tyrosine (1-3 grams) 30 minutes before. All supplements are optional.
5-10 minute easy warm up.
10 minutes of intervals or up to 20 minutes of high rep/short rest weight training.
Rest completely for 5 minutes.
20-40 minutes steady state cardio at an RPE of 3-4.
Can eat immediately afterwards.

Realistically, the SFP 1.0 should only be used twice per week under most situations.
I've long advocated putting interval training on the same day that people train legs. Yes, this makes for one hell of a hard day, but it gives the legs more total days of recovery per week.
Protocol 4: the stubborn fat protocol 2.0 (SFP 2.0)

Can be done fasted or not. If not, try to do it at least 3 hours after eating.
Can take caffeine (100-200 mg), oral yohimbine (0.2mg/kg), L-tyrosine (1-3 grams) 30 minutes beforehand.
5-10 minutes easy warm-up. This will drop insulin if you've eaten beforehand.
5 minutes of short intervals.
Rest for 5 minutes.
20-40 minutes of steady state cardio at a low to moderate intensity, 130-140 HR or an RPE of about 3-4.
5-10 minutes of long intervals.
3-5 minutes easy cooldown.
Feel free to eat a normal diet afterwards, at least have a protein shake if you're not hungry.

I don't recommend running for intervals.
Since SFP 2.0 is specifically for dieting, I'd generally say to do the SFP 2.0 in the morning and weights in the evening. Your weights will probably suffer but that's the price you have to pay.
I'd strongly suggest using a mode of exercise for the intervals where you aren't at risk for turning an ankle or knee from fatigue.
Trainees should always be watching out for impending signs of overtraining such as lethargy, fatigue, lack of motivation, sleep problems, etc.
How hormones impact body fat is a key to understanding why stubborn fat is stubborn.

Pages

20170422

"The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman

20170421

"Zen Habits" by Leo Babauta

20170420

"RippedBody.com" by Andy Morgan

20170419

"Focus" by Leo Babauta

20170418

"The Stubborn Fat Solution" by Lyle McDonald