What Should Nintendo Do To Ensure That Pokémon Is a Long-Lasting Franchise?

Nik

I’ve spent 1000s of hours playing Pokémon.

My parents got me a Game Boy when I was 8 years old. All of my elementary school breaks afterwards were spent playing the game. I regularly attended the local Pokémon trading card game league. I’ve watched all the movies. Even the ones that never made it to Germany (where I was born and raised). I’ve walked dozens of kilometers with my phone in hand this year. Even now, I still occasionally play the card game online.

This franchise has been with me for 17 of the 25 years that I’m alive, so naturally I care about its future.

(a pic of the local Pokémon Go hotspot in the summer of 2016, Mannheim, Germany)

I think this questions contains many sub-questions, which, if answered in order, can be pieced back together to a proper answer.

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How To Make Yourself Memorable With Weird Bits About Bestsellers

Nik

One of the most common conversations I remember from sitting in high school classrooms is the “Why should I remember this?”-debate.

“Why should I memorize where carbon is in the periodic table of elements, if I can just look it up any second on my phone?”

“Why should I remember when the Vietnam War started, if it’s on Wikipedia?”

“Why should I…”

It’s true that memorizing facts simply for the sake of memorizing facts has become useless.

Except for the one case where it hasn’t:

Being interesting.

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How To Improve Your Reading Habit

Nik

To answer this question, I’d like to tell a story. Full disclosure: This is an edited version of lesson 6 of my free email course, Time 2 Read.

Barney Stinson’s First Second Date

“Sooo, this was fun. Can I call you, or?”

For the first time in his life, Barney Stinson asked for a second date. Across the table in the lovely 1920s style diner sat Nora, one of Robin’s co-workers, and likely the first girl to ever give Barney Stinson a hard time – let alone match his intellect.

“Barney, you’re funny, handsome and really quite clever. But you’re also a sociopath.”

The two had spent the previous two hours listing and listening to all the lies Barney had ever told to get laid – not what most people would call a fun evening, but a necessary spree of honesty nonetheless.

“Well, I count three pros and one con, so…“

“How do you still think you have a chance with me?”

“Because you sat here all night? You could’ve left right away, but you didn’t. Look, Nora, all those lies – that’s the old me. But I swear to you, I am trying to change. You make me want to change.”

“How do I know that’s not a lie?”

“I’ll prove it. I will prove how serious I am. I will NOT leave this diner until I get a second date with you.”

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How Can I Motivate Myself To Read More Books Rather Than Spending Time on the Internet?

Nik

In a nutshell: Learn how to read more books by spending time on the internet. Make the transition easy on yourself.

What this does it keeps you inside the comfort zone initially (you’re used to browsing around the web), but the content you read will steer you away from the web and into books.

Basically procrastinate in a way that drives you right into the thing you actually want to do.

Read lots of content about books, learn more about books you’ve always wanted to read, watch video reviews by other people and you’ll naturally feel drawn to books more and over time, the urge to pick them up and read them will get stronger and stronger – until you’ll naturally make the jump!

For example, I have a 12,000+ word blog post that’s a visual list of motivational book index cards. It’s fun to explore, look around, share, but it also really makes you want to read those books 🙂

Here’s a sample:

You can start exploring that list here.

Alternatively, you can try this: I’ve spent the past 4 months creating a free email course to help you build a daily reading habit. It’s a digital way of learning how to read more books 🙂 You can sign up here.

This Is What They Teach Students About Being A CEO

Nik

In October 2016 I started a Master’s Degree program at the Technical University of Munich, which is widely ranked as one of the best universities in the world.

This semester, I’m taking a class about strategies of global organizations.

Basically, it’s supposed to teach us how to think like the CEO of a global company, which I expect a rare few of my fellow students to become (don’t look at me, I wanna do my own thing).

Today, I’d like to start an experiment by sharing what I learned from the first of six chapters of that class. If the feedback is good, I’ll turn this into a series.

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The No Game: How To Figure Out What You Want

Nik

Being 25 is hard. When you look at the big truths that roll around the quarter century mark, it becomes easy to see why ‘quarter-life crisis’ has become a thing: Your happy, careless, worry-free, post-teenage phase is definitely over at this point. You’ve already spent 90% of the time you’ll ever spent with your parents and closest family.

However, you still have the majority of your own life ahead of you…but no idea what to do with it.

The land of opportunity has never been this big. If you own a laptop with an internet connection, you have more production power than a 200-person company had in 1970. This power is so great that it paralyzes us.

Petrified by the paradox of choice, we can’t decide whether we want to become a freelance Facebook ad designer, surf novel writer, or start a cupcake business – because we know all of it is possible, we think we want each choice equally as much. Like Buridan’s donkey, we’re just as hungry as we are thirsty, stuck between hay and water.

Or are we?

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On Being Vulnerable: What If You Didn’t Numb It?

Nik

Stories from the metaphorical operating table…

The other day I summarized a book called Daring Greatly by Brené Brown, which is about vulnerability. It’s been stuck in my head for days, so today, I want to share this idea with you.

Here’s what Google tells you when you ask it to “define vulnerable”:

exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.

Therefore, by definition, being vulnerable is dangerous. It’s unsafe, uncertain and uncomfortable. So naturally, we don’t like it and we try to escape this state as soon as possible.

When we feel exposed, endangered or on the spot, our usual reaction is to numb that feeling.

Today I want to ask you: what if you didn’t?

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Average Is for Losers: How to Be the Best in the World

Nik

You know the feeling. You’re watching a Youtube video or reading a book, and in a sudden moment of clarity, you realize you just heard the truth.

Of course you agree, but it also forces you to admit something, because it’s not just any truth – it’s an ugly truth.

Not ugly in general. Ugly for you, because you’re not living in alignment with it. Over the past few days, I’ve had plenty of these moments.

Most of them came from reading The Dip by Seth Godin. If I could recommend just one book for you to read, this would be it. That means something, coming from someone who’s written over 365 book summaries in 2016.

His words are still ringing in my ears.

“Mediocrity is for losers.”

And then he explained how to be the best in the world.

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