I think I've said this before but its 3 things that all end up having the same effect.
1) Meditation to get my mind in check
2) Fitness/Diet, making sure I'm at an appropriate weight and fitness level
3) Sleep, shouldn't require any explanation.
Having these 3 things in check is the equivalent of 10+ IQ points. The last two items shouldn't require any explanation but Meditation is one that people often have issues seeing the value of.
For me meditation does 2 things,
1) it allows you to master the art of "staying in the zone". Lots of meditation is just accepting that you mind has many thoughts at once, acknowledging them and continuing on with what you are doing.
Once you can master the art of acknowledging your thoughts but not letting them disturb you, it lets you maintain a flow state in the real world.
I can now get interrupted and almost without fail immediately get back into a productive work state.
2) I've noticed that as I get older that most of what makes a person look smart in a conversation is that they've already had the same conversation and thought through their opinions.
When mediating on an idea, its very similar to having these conversations about ideas. You get to flesh out your ideas by having this conversation with yourself. It's an invaluable took to have.
I was about to write my own reply, but you literally hit every point I was about to make.
There is one thing that I would like to add.
4. Task making/Goal setting- The domain of this MUST encompass your entire life.
(Personal/Professional/Health/Hobbies/Relationships).
Try not to put an emphasis on professional/business things.
Generally those have the highest priorities, and don't need as much active attention in this context.
Goals should start at 5 years out and work backwards to next week.
Every morning/ start of each week/start of each month- review your goals and allocate "hard time" to them.
Want to learn guitar? Good. Tomorrow at 3 o'clock go to the store and buy one. Don't research the best guitar manufacturer for weeks and eventually buy it, just ask the guy behind the counter his recommendation and buy it on the spot. Next week, Tuesday 6pm- Sign up for music lessons for every Wednesday at 6pm for the next 6 months. No exceptions. Do not let anyone or anything take that time slot away from you.
But you may say, I'm the only one that can do "X" task and I'm needed at that time slot every week. Then build fault-tolerance in that task. Either with multiple people knowing how to do what you do, through documentation or automation. Engineer a solution to your time problem.
Or if you're the founder of your startup, and you can't justify taking a 3 hour break once a week.
You're lying to yourself.
I highly doubt you are completing work at 100% duty cycle if you are working 60-80 hours a week. Getting a few hours a week of "you" time each week is a small time investment, for huge returns in more effective decision making for the rest of the week.
This may vaguely fall under meditation, but knowing that you are tangibly and actively working towards things that you value, will prevent you from getting "time depression".
Yes, I just made up that term. "Time Depression" as I call it, is doing the "same" thing day-in and day-out. As a result, you get depressed since you "feel" like you didn't accomplish anything.On paper, you closed 90 issue tickets last month and committed more code than anyone else on your team.If you did all that, and don't have a feeling of accomplishment. Then you need "you" time.
Nothing that I'm sure would "Just work" for everyone. For me a few things I do when I'm trying to build a habit, this is general to building habits and not specific to meditation.
1) Like going to the gym you need to do it on a schedule. Even if you don't feel like going to the gym just go for 5 minutes, if you don't feel it then leave.
Meditation is the same. Just do it for 5 minutes, if you aren't feeling it then stop.
2) do it every day, even if its not the same time each day, even if you get interrupted, even if you aren't feeling it, just do it. 5 minutes each day is better than not trying because you believe you are too busy. I do it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
3) Track it to make sure you are making progress. Something about what gets measured gets done. Truer words have never been spoken.
4) Give it time, again using the gym analogy, expect it to be a good month before you start to see results. I mean you might see results earlier, but doing it for a week and getting frustrated that you aren't seeing any results is, well, silly. But I think alot of people actually make this very mistake.
You wouldn't expect to run 3 times and then run a marathon on your next outing. Meditation follows the "before you are good, you'll be very bad at it" law that most things follow.
Do it anytime you remember to. You can take one conscious breath right now. Two or twenty when you’re driving. A few more when walking.
My takeaway from meditation is that it changes my perception of me and the mind — from a thinking machine limited to and suffering of the limitations of that — to a much more expansive being for which thinking is one of many modalities, a modality occupying a tiny part of a vast, vast space.
Dwelling as this entity is infinitely more productive and joyous than dwelling in the tiny (by comparison) confines of the thinking one.
Spending more and more of the time as that is where it’s at for me.
The way? Remember that I am identified with the thinking one and use my attention to resensitize myself into the rest.
I recommend “Turning your mind into an ally.” Excellent little book.
There are apps that will count your streak. Some paid, some free. I've seen that help lots of people get consistent with it.
My own is to pick an easy time and duration to meditate for, such as every night before you get into bed for 5 minutes. I think for folks on the lazier side (like me) the habit for something like meditation should start with as much convenience as possible. That's how I started flossing every night (and started having good visits to the dentist for once).
I wish I had known when I was younger that a lot of the people who shoot down ideas, minimize your creativity, and say "that's impossible" aren't smarter than you. They're just more insecure.
It's easier to say no to everything and look like a genius, then to say "I wonder...", and try, and fail, and try some more -- and perhaps (who knows?) actually be a genius. With all of the concomitant messiness and failures and actual real life kept in the mix.
>Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
Realizing that other people aren't way more intelligent than me and i'm stupid. It's just a perception based on nothing more then them acting more confidently, because they had an upbringing that gave them more self esteem. When the time came to perform I always exceeded the expectations of those around me because I always beat myself up and told myself I was stupid and not good enough. The insecurity pushed me to always try harder but in the end I was better than I realized. I just one day had to let it go and realize those thoughts of not being good enough weren't real.
Another thing is stopping relationships with people that would belittle, insult or use me. I instead paid close attention to who was there for me and built me up. I gave those people 5x the attention and built a stronger relationship with them because thats who you want in your life. Quality friends > Quantity. If someone keeps blowing you off you aren't a priority in their life, and you should treat them the same.
Oo last one.
Ask that cute girl out, if you're reading this, I know you are more than good enough.
If it makes you feel any better, almost everyone I know who bought it early, sold it way too early as well. Some could've had millions if they kept it all until today, but they just made a decent amount.
Wanted to put in $7k, at $7, so 1,000 coins. But I didn't want to send a copy of my passport to some shady (Magic the Gathering) exchange in Japan. And it would take 3+ weeks before I could get my coins. What an idiot I was.
So in the beginning you could mine bitcoin on a computer but as the price went up to continue mining and pay for power you need better hardware. I believe he just set up the machine to autopay the electricity bill as it mined so he essentially lost his bitcoins paying the bills. Basically there was no payout for mining on the same hardware as time went on.
Definitely a technical thing... but I agree using a tiling windows manager has brought new and improved changes to my work flow as a developer. The thing no one ever talks about is you must also have a standard (gnome, kde, etc) windows manager handy to use at a moments notice because there are things that will be hidden in a tiling manager and you won't know they are gone if it is the first time running a program. Setting up a VPN, doing heavy duty network config, and system administration I would advocate are better suited trying for the first time without a tiling manager. After the steps have been mastered and the command are known is when i3wm really shines. I'm sure there are many counterpoints speaking to how easy it is to use i3wm to configure XYZ but after years of using it I am drawn to launching new programs without it to get a feel for them until I learn the requisite commands and switch over to i3wm.
For the last week I've been making a conscious effort to only eat foods with no sugar.
It turns out, this is way easier said than done. It seems like this limits your diet only to vegetables and meats (or meat substitutes).
Things I would've never expected with sugar nutritional facts. Things like whole wheat loaf bread, plain unflavored yogurt, and cottage cheese. One would think they would have sugar-free options if you look hard enough, I can't seem to find any.
Sugar is in bread and yogurt and cheese naturally.
It's required for the fermentation process to happen. The real concern IMO is sugar added. This should be pretty easy to find for cheese and yogurt, for bread you might have to get into homemade / high quality sourdough (real sourdough) to not have sugar added.
For me it's been to stop trying to learn software development just because it's hip and there are a lot of jobs in it. I just really could not care less about it. It's let me spend more time on things I do care about like hardware development and industrial design. If I can't physically touch something I don't care about working on it.
Oh, and meditation, L-Theanine, and taking walks outside during work breaks.
Joined an ultimate frisbee rec league, a year ago. And I'd never played a team sport before, unless you count middle school basketball.
It's turned out to be a great community. Plus it's great exercise, of course. And it encouraged me to improve my cardiovascular system, so I wouldn't poop out so quickly on the field. The community is the big thing though.
I (at least partially) wish I didn’t spend so much time looking for my „true calling” (which I didn’t find), and just ground my way to early retirement in high paying jobs. The search made me a more interesting person, but without it, I could be retired already.
I decided quite early to separate calling and job, but tried to keep a balance between both. A part-time career is difficult too :)
I'm currently grinding an a 40h-week. My plan is to do it for a year for money and reputation and than find something part time, which sadly is quite difficult as a product owner/project manager. Maaaybe some start-up that doesn't want to pay full price :).
Hmm... I don't really have one. Oh, I've made lots of mistakes and done lots of things at the wrong times, but that is what has made me who I am. I kind of like who I am, so I wouldn't want to change that.
For our company (http://fairpixels.pro) it was productisation. We used to operate like any other UI design agency, prospecting, talking to potential clients, going to networking events etc. But by productising our service, building a sales funnel and treating the entire flow as that of a SaaS. It enabled us to:
* Lower prices (Since we didn't have to spend time networking, prospecting etc.)
* Create predictable sales funnels
* Spend more time working on the stuff we love, instead of wasting time with prospects that weren't interested in the first place.
1) Meditation to get my mind in check
2) Fitness/Diet, making sure I'm at an appropriate weight and fitness level
3) Sleep, shouldn't require any explanation.
Having these 3 things in check is the equivalent of 10+ IQ points. The last two items shouldn't require any explanation but Meditation is one that people often have issues seeing the value of.
For me meditation does 2 things,
1) it allows you to master the art of "staying in the zone". Lots of meditation is just accepting that you mind has many thoughts at once, acknowledging them and continuing on with what you are doing.
Once you can master the art of acknowledging your thoughts but not letting them disturb you, it lets you maintain a flow state in the real world.
I can now get interrupted and almost without fail immediately get back into a productive work state.
2) I've noticed that as I get older that most of what makes a person look smart in a conversation is that they've already had the same conversation and thought through their opinions.
When mediating on an idea, its very similar to having these conversations about ideas. You get to flesh out your ideas by having this conversation with yourself. It's an invaluable took to have.