Occam’s Protocol – Part 1

The 31^st of August at 22:30 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney

By: Christian Ljungbeck

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

 

Occam’s Protocol

This blog is different from my previous blogs in that the purpose of this blog is to document and track my progress during the 28-day-experiment I initiated yesterday. I have come across and been Inspired by Timothy Ferriss’ book ‘The 4-Hour Body’. The easiest way to explain what Tim does is to describe him as a human guinea pig and one of the world’s best in the field of meta-learning, which is the ability to learn anything. This ability which he has pursued has allowed him to learn several languages fluently, win a national kickboxing championship, set a guinness world record in tango, and much more. All within just a few months starting from ground zero. He puts all sorts of experiments to the test whether it’s within business, the human body, skills, abilities, and learning. It doesn’t matter what conventional wisdom says, he pursues other ways of doing things.

In the 4 Hour Body and on his blog he writes about an experiment he did himself and how he gained almost 15 kg muscle within 28 days – he called it ‘From Geek to Freak’. The online blog can be found at (http://fourhourworkweek.com/2007/04/29/from-geek-to-freak-how-i-gained-34-lbs-of-muscle-in-4-weeks/). I read it and I was quite surprised that it would actually be possible to gain that much weight in such a short period of time. But then again, I have been surprised so many times previously about what’s possible in this world, so I figured I wanted to try it out (if it works I will be saving myself a lot of time and effort in the gym in the future). I have the book in my room which describes everything in a little more detail, but the blog describes it in very short and specific points. In the book he recommends people to start out with ‘Occam’s Protocol: A Minimalist Approach to Mass’. ‘From geek to freak’ is more advanced and something you can do after having done Occam’s Protocol. For this reason I am not targeting a 15 kg muscle gain within the next 4 weeks since I, at least for now, am starting out with Occam’s Protocol. Instead the goal is probably rather around 4-5 kg within 28 days. But 4-5 kg would not be bad considering my weight hasn’t changed within the last 4+ years.

 

Complicate to Profit, Minimize to Grow

At least that’s what one of the quotes in the book says. In the following section I will document all the information about my experiment prior to starting it. The experiment runs for 28 days and involves 2 different workouts, A and B. Both workout A and B consist of just 2 or 3 exercises (the 3^rd is optional, but I do 3 exercises in both A and B). I began the experiment yesterday where I should have been working out, but when I went to the gym in the evening it had already closed, so I worked out this morning instead. My planned workout schedule can be seen below; however, changes might occur as I am crewing Tony Robbins’ seminar from Thursday morning until Monday evening where I won’t be able to work out and I am going on my spring break trip on the 26^th of September. So the conditions of my experiment isn’t completely according to the book, but I don’t think it should have any major influence that I start out with a 3-day-rest-period between workouts instead of 2, which Occam’s Protocol describes.

Below is information and measurements taken on the morning of the 30^th of August (Day 1):

 

And finally the before pictures:

 

I suppose that is everything for now. And just an important note to make: The only supplement I will consume during my experiment is ‘Vital Strenght protein powder – Lean muscle growth’ as well as protein bars.

 

Stay tuned for my regular blogs as well as updates on my experiment. You can also sign up at the bottom of this site to receive an email whenever I post something.

Exchange semester in Sydney 2014 pt. 2

The 15^th of August at 17:50 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney

By: Christian Ljungbeck

The semester begins

Monday the 28^th of July was the first official day of the semester. At this point in time I had already been at the exchange advisors office numerous times – I almost believe I must have been the most difficult student. The reason for my many visits was due to the fact that students at UNSW have to enroll in their desired classes as opposed to the Danish school system where almost all classes are set from the beginning of the degree. Enrolling in classes means you can sign up for whatever class you desire (if it is preapproved for your degree) as long as that particular class has enough capacity to accommodate it. There is nothing wrong with that way of doing it as long as you are proactive and know what kind of classes you want before they become full. However, UNSW does not allow exchange students to add or drop classes online themselves, so we had to go down to the office every time there were just a small change – and I had many changes to request. Several of the classes I originally had indicated I would like to enroll in was not offered because of too little demand. That included ‘Real Estate Finance and Investment’ as well as ‘Behavioral Finance’, which were 2 of the 3 classes I wanted the most. Having to find substitutes for these 2 classes and enroll in another took me quite some time since I wasn’t too satisfied with the supply of classes within business this semester. Firstly, I didn’t want yet another theoretical class with virtually no practical relevance and secondly, some of the classes that might have been okay were either introductory classes for people with limited business background or classes with almost the exact same course description and reading materials as some of my previous classes on CBS. When I realized this and had boiled the potential list of classes down to just a few, my top ones were almost all full and the ones that weren’t full offered several different time slots with the available ones from 6-9 PM. Not quite what I was hoping for. In my mind it would be a very bad schedule having classes from 6-9 PM 3 times a week. It would be in the middle of dinner and cut me out for many potential social activities during the semester, so I was committed to finding another way. To put it briefly: Getting from the schedule I had this day to the one I am currently enrolled in required a lot of steps and visits to the office as well as more advanced methods. These included things such as contacting the faculties or professors personally and have them approve my enrolment despite a class being full. It all worked out perfectly, and full or not, I got enrolled in my classes. Before I figured this out, there was one time when I was sitting up around midnight continuously refreshing the enrolment-website and suddenly..! One of my desired classes was open. The only problem was that I couldn’t contact anyone who could enroll me in the middle of the night. So the only thing I could do was to send an email, and before they replied back to me the next morning it was too late. In the end everything turned out fine and I am now enrolled in my 4 classes leaving me with both Thursday and Friday off every week. My current schedule looks like this:

• Monday
  • 6-9 PM: E-business: Strategy and Processes (I really wanted this class, and it was the only time slot available. But a late class on Monday seemed okay to me)
• Tuesday
  • 1-4 PM: Financial Institution Management
• Wednesday
  • 12-3 PM: Real Estate Economics and Public Policy
  • 3:30-5 PM + 6-7:30 PM: Managing and Leading People

 

Since the semester had just begun there were a lot of events going on. The Village provided a free dinner and had arranged a party at one of the local clubs at King’s Cross called Barcode where they on big signs were adverting with shots called ‘wet pussy’. And of course we had to try the wet pussy, haha. The student bar called Roundhouse also hosted their first party of the year on the 31^st of July. Since July is the middle of winter in Australia the theme of course was SNOW. It’s ironic that their snow party takes place in around 15-20 degrees C.

One of the student organizations had previously given me a flyer and urged me to sign up for their email list (they also provided awesome food which only helped the process). On the 1^st of August Mantra Meditation Club were having their first meditation session including free dinner. I decided to try it out and join them for their meditation – partly because I wanted to check out what it was and also because their food was so delicious. I arrived at the location on campus and was greeted by a young monk in a salmon colored piece of cloth. We talked a bit and apparently he had graduated as an engineer a few years back from UNSW but had chosen to become a monk. The session started with a discussion about what ‘spirituality’ is followed by a meditation session with music and singing. He and two other were playing on some simple instruments, while one of the girls was singing and the rest of us repeating what she sang. We continued this way for a long time repeating the same 4 lines over and over again and again at least 50-60 times. They didn’t give any directions on what to do, how to sit, or what to focus on, so I just sat with my eyes open looking at the words on the board and the people playing the instruments. Needless to say, the effect on me was limited. But the food afterwards was excellent though.

 

(Continued on the 18^th of August at 21:35 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney)

By: Christian Ljungbeck

 

On Saturday the 2^nd of August I made a trip to Manly Beach with Frederik and Nicolas from Germany. Frederik heard this beach should be very beautiful, so we took the ferry from the southern shore where we passed Sydney Opera House and had an amazing view over Sydney and the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

We arrived in Manly and took a walk on the beach as head south along a walk track looking at the beautiful nature and beaches.

During the next couple of days I went to the cinema with Peter, Erik, and Åsmund (All from CBS) to watch Planet of the Apes 2, did some homework, as well as some practical stuff. Inspired by Timothy Ferriss’ book ‘The 4-hour work week’ I wanted to try and see how efficient I could design my week by batching activities together. Batching means to group together activities at a specific time in order to save time by not having to do the same activities multiple times over a longer time period. Some examples of batching that I have outlined in my weekly schedule include:

• Spend 30 minutes on Sundays to look in cooking books and plan the meals for the coming week plus write a detailed grocery shopping list.
• Spend 60 minutes on grocery shopping on Monday morning buying all the food I need during the week for all my meals.
• Only cook food 4 times a week by cooking large amounts of food that lasts several meals (e.g. on Mondays I cook food to consume for lunch, afternoon, evening, and Tuesday lunch and afternoon.)
• Doing laundry on Sundays every other (maybe third) week

A full outline can be seen below. It is still in the development process, but I enjoy seeing how much time I can free up this way to other activities. (A lot of it is abbreviated such as H.W. = Home work, but you get the idea)

 

On Tuesday the 5^th I had my first class in ‘Financial Institution Management’. I was a bit late for this class so when I walked in the lecturer had already begun. I slowly walk to an empty seat and sat down. There must have been 80-90 students in the room. After having been in the class for around 5 minutes I looked around on my fellow classmates. Starting from the left side of the room I turned my head to the right observing everyone in the room. To my great surprise I was the only person with blond hair, everyone else was Asian and had black hair. There are a lot of Asian students at UNSW and especially in the business school, but me being the only one out of almost 100 students was quite surprising. During the break a guy behind me asked me if I already had a group for the team assignment coming up later in the course. I didn’t, so he tells me I can join his group, but he just wants to confirm with the 3 other girls in the group. We walk over to them and he speaks to them in Chinese for about 20 seconds and returns to me saying ‘Oh, I’m sorry but she wanted another Chinese person’. Usually I would probably take it more personally but this was just so ridiculous to me that I had to smile. So much for being the blond minority!

 

Foundation Day

During week 2 UNSW turned 65 years old and everyone celebrated what was called ’Foundation Day’. This involved a lot of different events during Thursday the 7^th such as jumping castles, mechanical bulls, music, a lot of stalls and stands etc. Coincidentally I meet Christian Langkjær (another student from CBS) who is about to look at a bike with a guy from UNSW bike club. Apparently they have a lot of bikes that have been unused for several months and therefore they have collected them before they either sell them or fix them up. I too have been looking for a bike, so I join them and both Christian and I find a bike we like. None of them are ready to ride so they need some fixing. The rear brakes on one I have chosen is so tight against the rear wheel that it cannot run around at all. Already at this point I am seriously considering if this is something I will be able to fix or whether I should just buy something that already works. By all means I prefer the latter, but nevertheless I continue with this bike on the assumption that the time I will spend fixing it will require less time than searching for bikes online and go try them before buying one (and it will be more expensive too as this one costs only $40-50). Every Tuesdays and Thursday from 12-14 the bike club has free bike repair lessons where some volunteers come and help out with fixing people’s bikes, so I agree to join them on Tuesday and start fixing up my bike with their help.

 

The last week or so I have also been trying to plan out my spring break. During spring break (from the 27^th of Sept. to the 6. of Oct.) UNSW is closed and many people travel somewhere – especially the exchange students. At the orientation STA Travel handed out a tiny booklet presenting the 5 spring break trips they have put together for UNSW students. The destinations were Thailand, Fiji, Bali, New Zealand, and a trip up the Australian east coast. Much as I want to go to New Zealand, I felt like going on the Aussie East Coast trip starting in Brisbane (10 hour drive north of Sydney) and ending north in Cairns. This trip includes sailing around Fraser Island as well as Whitsunday Island (Whitehaven Beach, one of the best beaches in the world is located here), jeep tour, rain forest, Mission Beach (where you can skydive and land on the beach), White River Rafting, Great Barrier Reef, and much more. So I met some other people who also were keen on this trip and we signed up together and got a small group discount of 5%.(Check out the tour details here: http://ww3.statravel.com.au/unsw/)

 

Since it is Foundation Day there is of course also a party. Again, Roundhouse was hosting the Foundation Day Party where the theme was masquerade. I invited Peter, Erik, Åsmund, and Frederik home to my place before the party to play some games and drink some beers. I wasn’t planning on buying any masks as there were so few people last week that had actually dressed up for the ‘snow’ theme. But Peter apparently had had a great idea for the masks. He had bought some foil trays, rubber bands, and tape which we could use to make our own masks. I have no idea how he came up with that idea, but it was fun. So we all took a foil tray and smashed it against our face. When the foil tray had taken the shape of our faces we cut holes for the eyes, put some tape on the masks, and made a string around our heads of the rubber bands. And voila, we all had our masks. Even though they were basic, the result, I believe, was quite stunning as you can see below.

 

 

Week 2 and 3 of uni

The following day UNSWOC (UNSW Outdoor Club) is hosting a free BBQ – it’s amazing so many free food events they have. At night I go out with Craig and Bruce from my ‘E-business’-class at a local bar ‘Regent’. Bruce keeps buying a new jug of beer as soon as the previous one has been poured up in our glasses. It continues this way for several jugs until we have had quite a few of them. We are sitting outside and suddenly one of the security guards comes over to our table where we have been sitting for maybe 2 hours and tells me to get inside because I am not smoking. I don’t understand what that has to do with anything, so I don’t really react as I am confused. Then he gets mad and tells me to go inside or he will throw me out of the bar. Still confused, we all 3 walk inside. Apparently it turns out that they are only allowed to have 20 people sitting outside at the same time. Had the guard given me that small piece of information I would have understood it, but he didn’t say anything about it – very weird.

 

The following day we are a bunch of guys from Denmark (and Frederik from Germany) who go to Side Bar at the Wake Up Hostel for their beer pong tournament. We all end up getting knocked out by the 2^nd round, so we go to another place where they also have a beer pong tournament. But it turned out it didn’t start until around 23 o’clock so most of us went home before that.

 

Finally Tuesday came and it was time for me to fix my bike. I go to the bike club and take a look at the bike. I almost have no idea where to start or what to do, so I ask one of the volunteers. He comes over and looks at the rear brake and wheel which is completely stuck. ‘Wow’, he says, ‘that looks like fun’. That wasn’t quite what I wanted to hear, but well, I made it this far, so I might as well continue. He tells me to get the WD-40 spray so we can try and fix the problem. I pick up the WD-40 and he tells me to spray it on. ‘No problem’, I think, ‘I know how to do this’ so I take the bottle and start spraying right on the wheel where the brake is stuck. ‘Oh, no, spray it in here’ he says and points at the nut (møtrik) holding the rear brake together. I smile, try to act like I know what I am doing, and say ‘Oh, yeah that’s right’, but on the inside I am laughing big time. He hits the brake and it releases its grib – it worked! Now we can take the wheel off which he helped out with a lot in order to align the brakes and wheel itself. We place the wheel in a special holder and he looks at it. It turns out some of the spokes (eger) on the rear wheel are very loose and 2 of them are broken. I had not seen that before as I still hadn’t really done a full condition check on the bike. They had some special tool for removing the broken stokes. He did the first one while explaining which way I should turn to loosen and tighten them, respectively. ‘Ye, ye, I can tell by looking at it and whether it comes out or goes further in’, I thought to myself. When he was done with the first one he left to get some equipment while I did the next spoke. I turned it one way, but it didn’t look like anything was happening. It seemed as if I was just turning it, so after 30 seconds I started turning it the other way. After a while with no visible changes the tire suddenly lost all its air. It went from completely full to completely flat. The volunteer returned to me and asked how I was doing. ‘I’m okay’, I replied, ‘but the tire suddenly lost all its air’. He looked at it and I could tell that he was thinking that I had probably punctured the tire, but he was very reluctant saying so, but finally he said that I might have done so. I knew that I most definitely had punctured the tire since I must have turned the spoke the wrong way and caused it to go right through the tire. Again, I was laughed inside. The clock was approaching 13, and I had a class starting soon, so I had to pack everything up again. The volunteer told me to just put the wheel back on the bike and only softly tighten the nuts so I could easily get them off the next time. I also had to put the support foot back on but for some reason this felt completely stuck to me, which was weird as it had worked just 1 hour ago. I asked him about it, and he said that it was because there was a small lock on it, so I had to press on its top before it would work (probably similar to a child lock function, haha). I assemble the bike again thinking that it was the least productive hour of fixing anything I had experienced in a long time. Not only was it very unproductive, but the bike was in an even worse condition now than when I had arrived! I left the bike club with a big grin on my face thinking if I will ever be able to ride that bike or whether I should just buy a used bike online.

 

In my class ‘Managing and Leading People’ the lecturer asked last week if anyone was a member of ‘Toastmasters’. No one was and she explained that it was a non-profit organization consisting of several thousand clubs around the world where people meet in small groups of 10-20 people to practice their public speaking and leadership skills. This sounded just like something I have been looking for for a long time. Therefore I did some research and found out that there were actually quite many clubs located in Sydney. I called on of the clubs and they invited me as a visitor to their next meeting. So on the evening on the 12^th of August I went to Sydney CBD to attend their meeting not really knowing what was going to happen. It turned out to be an awesome experience. I visited the club called ‘National Toastmasters’ which consisted of around 20 people including 6 visitors. All the members had been assigned different roles during the 2½-hour-meeting such as ah-counter, grammarian, timer, chairman, evaluator, etc. Some of them had also prepared a short speech which they would be presenting for the club. It was a lot of fun even though I as a visitor didn’t really get to participate that much other than a short introduction. But after the meeting I knew I had to sign up for one of the clubs. The questions then becomes: ‘Which one?’. Since there are many clubs I want a club where people are really focused on improving their skills and where the ambitions are great. This club was great; however, I could sense that a lot of the members were a little too comfortable with the plateau where they were currently at. So before signing up for the club I want to check out other clubs to see if I can find another where the demands are greater. When signing up you receive a monthly newsletter and a manual. Inside the manual you will find papers on the different speeches you will have to perform in order to advance to the next level. When you reach a new level you receive a new manual etc.

 

After returning home from National Toastmasters I do some research on other clubs in Sydney that I want to check out the next couple of weeks. During my research I somehow end up on Facebook looking at a post saying something along the lines of ‘If this doesn’t get you up in the morning, I don’t know what else will’. As I the last 2-3 weeks have tried to condition myself to immediately get out of bed as soon as I hear my alarm clock, I eagerly follow the link and end up on Youtube watching a short 3½ minute motivational video. Wow, it’s powerful! I even got goose bumps while watching it. I figure that this might just be the kind of leverage I need in order to get out of bed immediately in the mornings, so I download the audio file and set it as my alarm clock on my phone. I’m already excited waking up the flowing day even though I haven’t even gone to bed yet, haha. You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzm6TEManmQ. (In order to download the audio file go to www.vidtomp3.com and paste the URL from youtube).

 

During one of the tutorials in my class ‘Managing and Leading People’ the teacher divides the class into 3 groups and points out a leader in each team. She then gives the leader a pack of straws and secretly assigns each leader a leadership style which they have to play while the group collectively has to build a monument or building out of straws. It was a fun exercise but looking at it from the outside there is no way you would guess that this would be a postgraduate class. I remember thinking to myself ‘After 4 years of business studies – do things get easier or is it just me? Or perhaps this is the law of diminishing returns I have encountered?’, Haha.

 

 

On the 14^th I go to the bank to withdraw money for the spring break trip I have signed up for. The bank teller asks for the amount and my credit card. I then have to sign on the receipt before she can give me the money. I just make a quick signature and hand the receipt back to her. She looks at it and says that it doesn’t look like the one I did when I opened my bank account. She asks me to sign it again on the back. I do so, but still she says it doesn’t look like the original one they have in their system. I get a little nervous because rarely am I able to write 2 signatures that look like each other. In fact the first time I had to ‘sign’ anything was in 4^th grade. I didn’t have a signature at that time, so Elizabeth from my class actually designed one for me, and embarrassing as it sounds, it has stuck with me ever since. It is basically just ‘ChrLj’ written fast in cursive. The problem is just that they almost never look like each other. I try to sign the receipt a third time, but still no luck. She then asks me if I have used my card today and asks me some security questions. Fortunately I score 100% in this test and she gives me my money. I leave the bank knowing that I probably have to design a new signature.

 

Surf Camp

On the weekend from the 16^th to the 17^th of August we are 9 Danes who have arranged a surf camp. We got picked up at 7 AM in the morning and we drive about 1½ hours south to Wollongong, where they have an awesome beach for surfing.

Unfortunately the weather isn’t too good, but when we arrive the sun shows itself but quickly returns behind the grey skies again. The surroundings and the beach look beautiful, but in my opinion the waves are quite big. Some of them must be around 1½ meters. Fortunately I have been snowboarding for many years, so I have enough references to not let the waves intimidate me. We put on our wetsuits and grab a surfboard. The instructors explain the basic stuff about when to paddle and stand up as well as how to surf. After the short introduction we all jump in the water and start paddling out into the big waves. Even paddling out was difficult and exhausting. Once a rather big wave came your way it pushed you further in or maybe even knocked you over and before you got up on your feet again another wave was approaching pushing you even further back. After a few attempts I finally made it to the point where all the waves started breaking. I waited for the right wave, started paddling, and once I could feel the momentum and push from the wave I stood up and turned sideways. Success! My very first attempt at surfing and I even stood up and rode a wave until it died. We surfed for about 1½-2 hours before everyone until everyone was freezing and it was time for lunch. Then we headed 1½ hours further south to where we would spend the night. We unpacked and went for the afternoon surfing session. This location had even bigger waves and several of them were 2 meters tall. It wasn’t quite the conditions you would expose beginner surfers to. But again, we couldn’t change the conditions so we all jumped in the water. This time everyone seemed to face quite a challenge. With waves this big and powerful we continually got thrown around as if we were small bricks. Both on the way out as well as during our surfing attempts the waves just played around with us. Every now and then when I got off to a good start and began paddling at the right time, the waves were so fast and powerful that I suddenly found myself on top of a 2 meter wave before I gained enough momentum only to find myself nose dip almost 90 degrees straight down toward the bottom of the ocean. Wow, you could really tell the power of the ocean. We continued for around 1½ hours before going back to our small wooden houses where we prepared dinner, had a lot of beers, and partied. Late in the evening it started raining and it continued the next day with heavy rain. We were going surfing again this day, so after having driven to a new location we went for yet another 1½-2 hours surf session before going to a bar to officially end our surf camp.