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Padel Progress Report – Year 1 (2017)

Last updated: February 06, 2021Leave a Comment

Group shot after the padel masterclass with top players Gemma Triay and Lucia Sainz.

I will remember 2017 as a great year from a sporting perspective, mainly because I really got addicted to padel and trained seriously to improve my game.

Early on during the year, I decided that I would focus a lot of time and energy on this sport and follow the example of the Expert in a Year website and the controversial 10,000 hour rule and associated books. Basically, the idea is to give it my best shot and see how far I can go. It’s one more challenge for me.

In recent years I realized that my personality type is best suited to focus on a big projects for a number of years before moving on to something else. I have a wide range of interest and I also find it easy to focus really hard on something that catches my fancy, but I can only do it for a few years before something else catches my eye. For the next few years, I hope that padel will be one of these big projects.

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Best Car Rental and Car Sharing Websites in Spain

Last updated: March 25, 20247 Comments

Here are the best car rental and car sharing websites that I’ve come across in Spain. Some of them offer ridesharing too, which is a good alternative to traveling by bus, train or airplane.

Blablacar

Blablacar is a great way to travel cheaply around Spain by sharing rides with other drivers. As a passenger, you benefit from paying lower fares, and as a driver, you can make money by taking on board passengers.

Yescapa

Yescapa is available in several countries and is a great platform if you want to hire motorhomes and campervans from other people.

Getaround

Getaround is another platform for renting cars from other people, without having to use a car rental company. This will give you a wider choice of cars and better prices.

Mental Training for Padel

Published: December 26, 20171 Comment

Mental preparation is a big factor in padel matches. Here are some tips to prepare yourself in the best way for your next padel matches.

Use Affirmations and Internal Dialogue

Practice these techniques during training as well as during competitive matches. During the tough moments of a match, encourage yourself with internal Diageo such as “I can do it!”. Don’t allow thoughts such as “My adversary seems to be better than I am” to enter your head. If you serve a bad ball or make a silly mistake in a volley, keep calm and move forward. Select a phrase that you can go back to during tough moments.

Utilize Breathing Routines

Regularly practice full breathing exercises. Before a match it’s very helpful to listen to music that aids in calming you down and breathe deeply. You can also select a visual image to go with this breathing routine. For example, you can imagine yourself returning a ball in spectacular fashion. This will ensure that you enter the match fully focused and confident in your abilities, while at the same time getting rid of debilitating states such as anxiety and stress.

Relax

After tough training sessions practice progressive relaxation to rid your muscles of the tension that naturally builds up. Keep in mind that while playing and training you are also using your brain and that is also a resource that gets depleted, just like your legs. You need to sleep well and enjoy periods of relaxation so that your mental status returns back to the very best before you approach your next training session or match.

Practice Visualisation

The top athletes of any sport make heavy use of visualisation. Basically this consists of visualising yourself playing in a match and going through the motions. Imagine you are serving in a particular way, and how your opponent will return the ball and where you will place the next shot. This will help internalise certain tactics and they will come out naturally during the actual match.

Under this heading we can also put watching top players in their matches. On YouTube you will find the recordings of the finals of the World Padel Tour, and you can also watch them live if you wish. I like to pick a side during matches so that I will feel all the pressure that they would feel if they are on the losing end, and also keep the concentration when they are winning. A very common mistake is that of having different levels of concentration during matches, and watching other matches while making the effort to maintain full concentration of each ball will help you in your own matches.

Consider Your Opponents

Try to obtain as much information about your opponents as possible. You can watch videoclips of them playing, or watch them playing in previous matches of the tournament that you are playing in. If none of those opportunities present themselves, make sure you use the warming up time of your match to observe how your opponent hits the ball and what are his weak and strong shots. Make sure you exchange information with your partner, as he will be warming up in parallel with the other opponent.

Use Video Recordings

Try to record your matches and later analyse them to see what your weaknesses are. Many times we think we are doing something one way, but when we see ourselves on video we realise that our image doesn’t match at all with our actual behaviour. That is a sure indication that something is off and needs correcting. Your coach will also help you in identifying these weaknesses and help you correct them.

Create Your Winning Imagery

Imagine yourself winning the match and how you would behave, and feel the happiness that comes with it. Go into your match with a definite expectation that your visualisation is a future reality, and the rest of the match is just the journey that will take you there.

Create a Pre-Match Routine

Anticipate distractions, prepare for them and minimise them. Familiarise yourself with the court you will be playing at, check out the weather and the sounds. Thirty minutes before the match, make sure you start your routine and enter your zone of maximum focus. Use whatever tools you prefer, such as a breathing exercise, listening to a particular tune, etc.

Hope you will find these tips on mental preparation for padel matches useful. Do you use any other techniques? Let me know!

6 Principles to Influence and Persuade People

Published: December 21, 2017Leave a Comment

Here’s another post from my old blog (originally published in 2008), that I thought would be good to re-publish here.

A couple of years back Dr Robert Cialdini, an expert psychologist came up with a set of principles that can be applied in order to harness the power of persuasion and thus influence people. In today’s article I will talk about these six principles and how they can be used.

Principle No. 1 – Liking
People like those who are like them and who create bonds with them. It is important to create early bonds with new acquaintances by informally discovering common interests. This will make them more comfortable and increase their willingness to trust you. Praising other people will also generate more willing compliance.

Principle No. 2 – Reciprocity
People repay in kind, therefore you should develop a habit of giving what you want to receive. Help someone in need and it will be much more likely that he will help you back later.

Principle No. 3 – Social Proof
People follow the lead of similar others. Harness the power of peer power by getting one person from a group to approve your new initiative, the others will most likely follow.

Principle No. 4 – Consistency
People fulfill written, public, and voluntary commitments. Get things down in writing and publicise commitments, then it is more likely that people will fulfill those commitments.

Principle No. 5 – Authority
People believe experts who provide shortcuts to decisions requiring specialised information. The key here is to establish your expertise beforehand by for example describing how you solved a problem similar to the one at hand, or talking about your qualifications and experience, without being boastful.

Principle No. 6 – Scarcity
People value what’s scarce. This is a fact that can be observed in all areas of human behaviour eg. relationships, buying trends etc. You can also use it to your advantage by using exclusive information to persuade. Arouse their curiosity and attention by offering them something nobody knows about eg. “Very few people have heard about this technique…”

Apply these 6 principles in your relationships and you will see that your persuasion power will be better than ever before. Do you have any of your own tips on how to persuade and influence people?

🛒 Best Online Shops that Ship to Malta

Last updated: January 12, 202335 Comments

With Malta being a small island, local shopping is pretty limited compared to what you find abroad. This has led to the Maltese quickly getting hooked on online shopping. While a few years back only a few websites offered to ship to Malta, nowadays there are many sites that offer European-wide shipping, in some cases even offering free shipping and returns.

Here are some of my favorite sites:

How to Buy Cheap Electronics Online in Malta

Malta has the most expensive consumer electronics in the EU. However, you don’t need to be paying the high prices at local shops for your laptops, sound equipment, hardware, etc.

The solution is, of course, to shop online.

Shopping for Electronics in Malta at Amazon

I highly recommend using Amazon for all your online shopping needs. You can not only buy books and electronics from Amazon, but pretty much anything else. Many Maltese buy clothes from Amazon too, for example. There’s much more choice than the local shops, and you can easily send the stuff you don’t like back.

Amazon has the most amazing support and customer service I ever encountered. Say for example you order a book and it’s received slightly damaged because the postman didn’t take good care of it, or it just got damaged during the shipping process. All you need to do is file an issue with Amazon and they’ll either give you a refund or send you another copy. It happened to me more than once and Amazon staff have always been super helpful in finding a resolution.

On another occasion, I ordered a piece of hardware that never got delivered, even though it was sent via courier. Again, all I had to do was contact Amazon, and it was them who dealt with the courier. In the meantime, they just sent me the hardware once again and apologised profusely for the inconvenience.

I hope that convinces you that there is absolutely no problem with shopping online at Amazon. If anything, you’ll get better support and customer service than you would at your local shop.

Which Amazon site to use

Now Amazon doesn’t have a site specifically for the Maltese islands, so you will need to choose a site dedicated to one the bigger countries in Europe. There are several options, but most people will drift to the Amazon.co.uk website, simply because it is in English and has the biggest range of products.

Beware that the prices on Amazon.co.uk are in GBP, and since the exchange rate between GBP and EUR is always fluctuating, you might not be getting a great deal. On the other hand, you might be lucky and profit from a weak British pound. The easiest way to check whether you’re losing or gaining from the exchange rate is to search for the same product on Amazon.es or Amazon.de (Spanish and German Amazon sites). It will take the same time to arrive to Malta and postage rates are the same for most products. However, since the Spanish and German sites sell their items in Euro you will be able to compare and see whether it make sense to buy in GBP from the Amazon.co.uk site or to buy in Euro from Spain or Germany.

Hope that helps. I have used Amazon for over 10 years now and I get all my electronics from there, including expensive items like photographic equipment and laptops.

If you have any questions about shopping online at Amazon just leave a question below, I’ll be happy to help out.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

🛒 A Simple Trick to Save Money When Buying From Amazon UK

When buying from Amazon UK and shipping to Malta (or any other country except the UK itself), you will be given the option to pay in GBP or your local currency (EUR in Malta’s case).

By default EUR will be selected, so make sure you switch that to GBP. Amazon uses an exchange rate that is worse than the one offered by your local bank, and you would, therefore, be losing money if you pay in EUR.

I then make the payment using my TransferWise Borderless Mastercard debit card, as it automatically takes my Euros and converts them to GBP to make the payment at the best rates. Not only that, but I can also convert Euro to GBP at any point in time and store them in the Borderless account. Then when I pay on Amazon UK it will use the funds in the GBP account I have.

See also: N26 vs Revolut

When traveling abroad you will encounter this choice when paying at shops and restaurants as well, and even in those cases, you should always pay in the currency of that country by using a card like N26 or Revolut. The amount saved really adds up over time especially if you are making larger purchases from Amazon.

Other Sites for Getting Electronics to Malta on the Cheap

Apart from Amazon, there are other sites that can be ideal for particular niches. I tend to use Amazon for any kind of purchase, be it electronics, shoes, clothes, or household goods.

When it comes to electronics, though, in addition to Amazon I also check the following websites:

These are Chinese websites, although they have a limited supply of their stock available in European warehouses. Shipping tends to be slower than Amazon, but you can use expedited shipping to get your items within 5 business days. Note that you will usually have to pay VAT on the products’ arrival to Malta. This applies mostly to the higher-priced items; on smaller items they just let them through usually. In the case that you’ll need to pay VAT, the delivery person will collect the VAT in cash when he delivers the item to you.

These two websites are also not limited to electronics, but you won’t find the same range as Amazon. On the other hand, if you know that the product you want is manufactured in China, the chances are that you’ll find it at a lower price on Banggood or Gearbest rather than Amazon, since you’re cutting out the middleman in Europe.