It basically started when I read that the deep back muscles cannot be trained by voluntary tensing but only by unconsciously during keeping balance. This appears to be oversimplisitic but it led me to the idea of one leg balancing in everyday situations. After starting to use it in a few limited situations (preparing fruit basket) I added more and more situations and now use it automatically in most situations that involve standing like washing, preparing meals, waiting for commute etc. It doesn't cost you any time adds some minor fun to many of these tasks and as far as I can see has reduced my back problems.
Beside the balancing I started to add some more gymnastic-like motions to my program when I started fencing. E.g. when (un)loading the dish-washer I do quat-like or lounge step motions. When lifting things I focus on avoiding to bend over but instead use the 'correct' weight lifting motions. And I take the fencing stance or parts thereof as often as I can.
I can't remember where I read about this. Could have been this source (German) or this one. After quite some searching I turned up these English links: Wikipedia on the relevant muscles with some exercises and this physiotherapy article with many details. The latter explicitly mentions unstable balancing as one exercise in a complex therapy setup.
For a while now I've been very interested in learning useful knowledge and acquiring useful skills. Of course there's no shortage of useful knowledge and skills to acquire, and so I've often thought about how best to spend my limited time learning.
When I came across the concept of Force Multiplication, it seemed like an appropriate metaphor for a strategy to apply to choosing where to invest my time and energy in acquiring useful skills and knowledge. I started to think about what areas or skills would make sense to learn about or acquire first, to:
There have been a small number of skills/areas that have helped me surge forward in progress towards my goals. I look back at these areas and wish only that I had come across them sooner. As most of my adult life has been focused on business, most of those areas that have had a tremendous impact on my progress have been business related, but not all.
So far I've found it hard to identify these areas in advance. Almost all of the skills or knowledge that I learned, that had a large impact on progress towards success, I pursued for unrelated reasons, or I had no concept of how truly useful they would be. The only solution I currently have for identifying force multipliers is to ask other people, and especially those more accomplished than me, what they've learned that had the most impact on their progress towards success.
So, what have you learned that had the most impact on your progress towards success (whatever that might be)?
Can you think of any other ways to identify areas of force multiplication?