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How to make a delicious five-a-day fruit and vegetable smoothie March 11, 2008

Posted by Niels in : How to , 2 comments

Struggling to get your daily vegetables? Get 8 servings in a tasty berry smoothie!

Most people are familiar with the “5-a-day” campaign, encouraging people to eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables every day. Most people fall far short of that, and even those who try don’t realize that:

That’s a lot of veggies! Trying to eat healthier, my roommate and I were intimidated until we realized we could blend an entire bag of spinach into one of our berry smoothies without even changing the taste. After that, the sky was the limit. There have been some near disasters, but nothing undrinkable. We’re still experimenting, but for now I present to you our baseline smoothie. It’s got eight - that’s right, eight - servings of fruits and vegetables and tastes better than anything you can get at Jamba Juice.

We get our frozen berries from Trader Joe’s and the frozen cooked squash from Safeway.

Niels and Craig’s Five-a-Day Smoothie

Blend spinach and orange juice. Liquefy. If your bananas are unfrozen, add them. Blend. Microwave the squash for 15 seconds so you can break the frozen block up into ice-cube sized pieces by hand. (You can skip this if you’ve got a better blender, but our $150 blender is pretty good and we still have to break up the squash.) Add all remaining ingredients. Blend.

Fills two glasses with a little left over. Whether this serves one or two is up to you.

Your thoughts?

My recommended business and social psychology books March 10, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Links , 2 comments

A commenter on a previous post asked what business and social psychology books are on my bookshelf. Here are some of my favorites:

First of all, Daniel Gilbert’s TED talk on synthetic happiness is short, free, and cannot be missed. It rocked my world.

Robert Cialdini’s Influence should be read by anyone who has ever sold something, bought something, or tried to change someone’s mind. It’s both entertaining and informative. I remember reading through all the different methods he describes about how people are persuaded to do things and remember thinking for each one, “Yeah, I’ve noticed this and already guard myself against it.” Then he got to “scarcity” and I realized that explained both the $140 worth of sheets I just bought and the useless bottle of coconut syrup on my shelf. Damn.

Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick explains why some ideas are remembered and others aren’t. They illustrate the concept with a class that is asked to present a persuasive speech and rank their classmates. Thirty minutes later, they’re surprised with another request - to write down what they remembered from each classmate’s speech. Turns out speaking ability and idea stickiness are completely separate concepts, and in many cases, the latter is more important.

Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational rocks my world. His lecture here in Seattle was fantastic and the book includes all the speech’s examples plus way way more. The book is about behavioral economics - why people don’t make the rational choices that traditional economics expects us to. However, their irrational behavior is predictable and exploitable (if you choose to take that route).

Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice. I’m including it here for completeness. It’s a great book, but 75% of it is covered in Dan Gilbert’s TED talk and Dan Ariely’s book. Schwartz includes their ideas under a slightly different framework and has a few other great points (like why it’s crucial to leave on a high note), so it’s still worth a read.

Your thoughts?

Crazy weekend March 10, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Personal , 4 comments

I give it a 7 out of 10 on the crazy scale, from barhopping with friends on Friday to searching for socks downtown on Saturday, Belltown silliness Saturday night, new friends and old drama Sunday, finally culminating with a solid three hours of Spanish conversation practice Sunday night.

Spanish conversation is exhausting! It mentally and physically exhausts me the same way just going out to bars used to. But I’m optimistic; if two years later I can enjoy myself in a bar, I expect to eventually get to a conversational level in Spanish. After just an hour, I was ready to go but I stuck it out for two more. This year’s resolution of putting more time into learning languages is the only New Year’s resolution I’ve made in my life - I figure I ought to push myself a bit.

Also, at the time this post is going up I am once again top for a google search for “niels”. Take that, Niels Bohr, you are less important than my sock shopping.

Your thoughts?

Harry Potter swears in Spanish March 8, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Personal , 1 comment so far

Well, Ron, actually. In book 4:

“¡Vete a la mierda, Malfoy!” -le dijo Ron.

Literally: “Go to shit!”
I can’t wait for book seven to get translated. I bet when Mrs. Weasley uses the word “bitch” it’s going to get translated to something really nasty. Excellent.

Your thoughts?

Back to sales with a new resume, and gratitude! March 7, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Personal , 3 comments

I rewrote my resume today. I’ve had internships at NIST, ARL, ViaSat, Cray, and Philips, but none of them are particularly applicable to a sales job. My work at Pickup 101, however, has been great fodder as I rewrote my resume from a chronological job-based resume to a skills-oriented version.

I really enjoyed writing the copy for my own resume, which is strange because writing the copy for my public speaking website was absolutely miserable. I’m not sure why the website makes me so much more self-conscious. There’s an opportunity for introspection here.

In other news, after reading Paradox of Choice, I will be writing down five things each night that I am grateful for. I’ve already turned from a bit of a pessimist into a stalwart optimist; now I’m hoping to reduce my maximizing tendencies and become more of a satisfier.

First five:

Your thoughts?