Locking Yourself In

Most people fantasize about mastering certain skills, or changing their life; most take halting steps towards bettering themselves. But for each decision to change, very little action is taking: people give up for a variety of reasons – poorly defined goals, life circumstances, being overly ambitious, or simply laziness or lack of motivation. I’m certainly guilty of this.

One way I’ve found to prevent reneging on my promises is to lock myself into a commitment. There are two ways to do this, a right way and a wrong way.

Photo by Stebulus

The wrong way is this: You decide you want to work out. So you sign up for a gym membership and show up a few times. And then you stop going, and then you feel guilty and have a monthly expense that you don’t want to give up, because it means you’ve given up on your dreams. Furthermore, the expense not only represents your goals, but it also represents the daily toil necessary to accomplish them. Toil that exhausts you and keeps you from frivolous entertainments. Going to the gym becomes your goal, and you begin to forget why.

The right way is to set the goal and make a definite commitment that other people can see, and then to work towards that goal. The commitment is not drudgery or something you can’t do: it’s an exciting reward that stretches your capabilities.

For instance, I’d talked about traveling outside the country for literally years. Then, I promised a relative that I would visit her in Germany within 12 months. I wanted to weasel out of it – after all, planning the trip would be a lot of work. But I couldn’t take back my promise. A month or two later, I bought a plane ticket – then I was definitely locked in. Anyway, it wasn’t a sentence, it was an opportunity to see some cool museums and experience a new culture.

I’ve done the same thing this year. I wasn’t sure whether I would travel, or if I’d keep dallying on the dates. So I bought the ticket, and now I have no choice – my past self decided and I’m simply carried along for the ride. Furthermore, because I know that my German is good enough to communicate but bad enough that I’ll feel embarrassed, I have a reason to continue studying each day. My reward will be some awesome times traveling, and a feeling of comfort while communicating in a foreign language, in a foreign country.

You can apply this anywhere. If you’re a competent musician, sign up for an Open Mic – now you have a reason to practice, and the reward is showing off on stage. If you want to get in shape, don’t think about flat abs or checking off each gym day on a calendar – sign up for a Tough Mudder or a triathlon and picture what a badass you’ll be. Be creative.

Leave a Comment
by m741 on January 8, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Thoughts, Tips
Tagged , ,

Posted by m741 on January 8, 2012

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/locking-yourself-in/

2011 in Review: Part II

In Part I of this update, I reviewed 2011. Now I’d like to look ahead and plan for 2012. At first I was overly ambitious and wanted to change ALL OF THE THINGS. But that’s neither wise nor achievable. I’m going to set goals in the following areas: Health, Finances, Adventure, Programming, Writing

2012 Theme

I want to brand 2012 as The Year of Excitement. I don’t want it to simply be a repeat of 2011, and I’ve overall felt very lethargic – due to poor fitness, sleep deprivation, stress, boredom, etc. I want to get excited again about programming and writing and I want to explore and have adventures. Strong health and strong finances are key to achieving this.

Health

My single highest priority for 2012 is transforming my health. I firmly believe that health is a lever which can influence each area of a person’s life. I could go on at length about my motivations, but I’ll spare you.

In a comment on Part I, someone suggested I run a triathlon. I think that’s a bit beyond what I can commit to training right now. However, I do like the idea of training with a goal in mind. Running is cheap, requires very few supplies, is relatively effective, and opens doorways to other activities I’ve held off on (playing ultimate frisbee again, and trying soccer).

So, in the next week, I will be signing up for a 5k, 10k, or half marathon (or some combination of these). There are a few reasonable options in mid-February.

For 2012 in general, I will track all my macronutrients, lose 20 pounds, cut junk food out of my diet (except for once a week), and develop a maintainable (for me) bodyweight training routine. More details to follow.

Finances

2011 was a financial success for me, and I expect 2012 to be the same. My overall goal is simply to reduce spending and increase dividend income.

I will be moving to a new apartment, and I’m hoping to find something cheaper than where I currently live. I’m already checking out a few places, but there aren’t many which represent a good compromise between comfort and price. Currently, housing is a whopping two thirds of my total budget. I’m also looking to become a more sophisticated investor, to continue contributing to the financial independence community, and to reduce some of the most egregious expenses (such as stopping by the grocery store every night after work).

Adventure

As detailed in Part I, I simply didn’t take advantage of living in NYC. I also have some savings and it doesn’t make sense to entirely defer my travel dreams until retirement.

After my last trip, I dreamt of returning to Germany, to see the Rhein. I was thinking of taking a week to travel. I typically waste a lot of my vacation doing nothing – on Monday morning I wake up and decide that I just don’t want to go to work. It’s totally ludicrous: I feel guilty and don’t really enjoy these days.

Fortuitously I started checking airline prices and noticed I could stopover in Reykjavik – I’ve always wanted to see Iceland – and then I made the commitment to stockpile vacation days. I sat on this decision for a few days and was practically salivating at the thought of the two week vacation I had planned. So, I bought airline tickets – one way – to Europe. Right now, the plan is to go NYC – Reykjavik – Amsterdam – Köln – Mainz – München. I’ll get to see parts of three kickass countries and it will certainly be an adventure. There’s no turning back now, with the tickets purchased.

Closer to home, I would simply like to try something new each week. One week that could be trying a new restaurant in my area, but it could also be something more ambitious, such as visiting a new neighborhood or restaurant, a museum or concert, or a meetup, I don’t particularly care. As long as I can do it on a budget, I’ll be happy. I’ve been stuck in a rut.

Programming

I did precious little programming on my own in 2011. I’d like to focus on three languages in 2012: Java, Python, and Clojure. Python, I simply enjoy programming in. I like it as a web development language (using the Django framework). I programmed in Java for most of college, but I’m very rusty; it seems competent for game development, which I want to get into. And finally Clojure, because it’s a lisp dialect that can harness java libraries.

I’m currently running through some Clojure code katas, of which there are 130, ranging from basic syntax through complicated tree parsing or list operations. It’s fun, because I’m doing some Code Golfing to familiarize myself with the syntax.

In 2012 want to participate in 3-4 Ludum Dare-like challenges (not necessarily official, I can do them myself). I’ve done next to zero game development, so these would be starting from the very basics. Finally, I’d like to develop and publish a moderately complex Django site.

Writing

I’m satisfied with the way things are going on this site and elsewhere. I just want to be more regular. So I will be committing to posting three updates to this blog per week. They don’t have to be long. I just want to get in a steady routine of expressing and refining my thoughts.

1 Comment
by m741 on January 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in m741's Progress
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by m741 on January 2, 2012

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/2011-in-review-part-ii/

2011 in Review: Part I

This is a two-part update. I will review 2011, and plan 2012. My focus will be my (m741′s) personal goals, and overall what I did during the course of the year. In Part I I’m going to review what went well (or didn’t) in 2011.

This is a relatively personal look at things. But personally, I enjoy reading about people’s progress, so hopefully you find it useful or at least entertaining.

What Went Well In 2011

I made progress in many areas, but three stick out.

Finance

Although I didn’t anticipate it working out this way, 2011 became my Year of Finance. In one way or another, most of my biggest achievements were tied to personal finance. I went from semi-frugal but clueless to frugal and driven. Now I am totally in control of my financial destiny. A few highlights:

  • Started the year with 28 months of expenses saved. Finished it with 80 months
  • In January, I was spending $3000/month. Currently spending $2200/month
  • Quadrupled monthly investment income
  • More than doubled savings
  • Tracked every expense and source of income
  • Developed routine to tabulate and check various savings accounts monthly

These are all huge, but most important of all is that I now have plans. I know that on my current trajectory, in 2-5 years I will have the financial resources to do whatever I want.

Writing

In 2011, I began to actively participate in an online community for the first time. Funny, given that I’ve been online for almost 15 years at this point. Part of that included writing regularly about things that were personally meaningful to me I would estimate that I wrote a paragraph or two every day. However, I didn’t edit or stop or write as consciously as I could have.

I also started this blog in the fall and have been relatively consistent with updates – I’ve published about 23 so far. I feel like my writing style has progressed, and I’ve begun to experiment and write less formulaic essays. I’m satisfied with my progress and will seek to develop further in 2012. Experience and deliberate practice are the only way to improve.

‘Personal Development’

I don’t know how to quantify or categorize it, but I feel that I learned and internalized lots of little skills or knowledge while at work. I have a better idea how to conduct myself intelligently in a business environment, and developed various skills for project management, personal interaction, planning, mindset, etc.

Not everything went my way – there were 2-3 projects that I feel objectively were failures. In other cases, I didn’t handle myself well or did something that in retrospect was foolish. But I’ve learned, and might be a little smarter in the future.

I also had to deal with a series of family problems, and I’m proud of how I conducted myself under stress.

What Didn’t go Well in 2011

Health

This was a busy and stressful year for me, and my health fell by the wayside. Currently, I’m not in terrible shape. But relative to where I was 3 years ago, there’s no comparison. I don’t have a working bathroom scale, but I believe I gained 10-15 pounds over the course of 2011. Basic things are more difficult than they ought to be; clothes are beginning to feel tight; I’m more self-conscious; I’m frequently exhausted. Overall, I simply don’t feel comfortable. Regaining my health is my number one priority for 2012.

In 2011, I made sporadic attempts to exercise and eat well. But I didn’t allow myself enough slack, and when my routine got disrupted by vacation or became congested, I stopped.

Exploring

Exploring, and having spontaneous adventures is kinda the point of life. Otherwise, you’re just counting down the hours and making time pass. Opportunities to explore kept presenting themselves – and I ignored them.

After all, I live in NYC, and one of the things I should have done was to explore each neighborhood. This is a huge city and it has so much to do – the museums, sights, restaurants, activity groups, etc. I won’t be living here forever, but I’ve spend 3 years here and know very little about the city. Most nights and weekends, I stayed in my apartment and slept or watched TV.

I did travel outside of North America for the first time, to Germany for a week. It’s something I could easily have postponed or put off. Instead, I planned and executed, and everything went better than expected. It was a great experience. In 2012, I want to travel more.

Various Skills

I was far from dedicated or consistent enough in my pursuit of various skills. Among them: learning German, practicing various musical instruments, programming for fun, etc.

I made various desultory efforts in each of these, but none was consistent enough to pay dividends. Was I too ambitious? Mostly I overestimated my resilience and energy. Too frequently, I dallied and wasted time watching television, movies, or surfing the web.

Conclusion

Overall, 2011 was a very positive year in terms of personal development, skill acquisition, and money saved. I would rate it as a 7/10: definitely good, but I didn’t execute as well as I could have and I’m excited that 2012 could be even better.

4 Comments
by m741 on December 28, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in m741's Progress
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by m741 on December 28, 2011

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/2011-in-review-part-i/

Unusual Metrics

First, I apologize for the lack of updates – the holidays have kept me busy!

If you track your personal finance numbers they can get a little bit stale. Typically people track monthly expenses and income. They can break these expenses down by category. These are very cool metrics if you were previously in the dark about your finances. They’re your bread-and-butter, meat-and-potatoes metrics. But there are other zesty, spicy metrics you can easily track. Essentially they’re just the output of a formula, but the meaning they convey is immense.

Daily Expenses

Tracking monthly expenses is fine, but suppose you like to travel? Typically people will not have consistent expenses for a month when traveling. It’s not normal to rent an apartment when you’re visiting another country (though it may be the rational thing to do)! Instead, the typical expense tends to be on a daily timeframe.

Let’s try a thought experiment: you always wanted to visit Thailand. The awesome cheap food, warm weather, exotic culture, ancient temples, rainforest and beaches had you daydreaming during office meetings.

The only problem? It costs $2000 to fly from the US to Thailand (this is just a rough number). Suppose you can pack up everything you own and leave it with friends or family for a while. This means you won’t pay rent at home. How long would you need to stay in Thailand to make up for the cost of the flight? Let’s say you assume that all your expenses will be a wash, except that lodging will be much cheaper for you.

You’ve put in all the effort to track your monthly stats. Take your average monthly expenses, multiply by 12, and divide by 365. Let’s say you live in Boston or NY, and share an apartment. You’d probably be spending about $1000 a month, or about $35/day. You do some research online and determine you can get a private room in a hostel on backpacking mecca Khao San Road for about $8/night.

Doing the math: 2000/(35-8)=74 days. In other words, lodging per night in Bangkok is so much cheaper than where you live now, you’d make up the intimidating cost of that flight in a little over two months. And that’s ignoring the cheap food and entertainment. Very cool!

ROI to Retire Today

When you start tracking everything, you can sometimes feel like you’ve got a long ways to go. To be honest, you probably do. It’s a journey you’ll have to embrace. But sometimes you want to daydream. you’ll think “how lucky do I have to be in order to retire today?”

While you’re unlikely to win the lottery, other things could happen that are at least a little remunerative. The magic formula here is:

Monthly expenses * 12 / Total Savings * 100

This will give you the percent you’d need to make to retire now.

Suppose you’ve been working for a few years and accumulated $50,000. You’re relatively frugal and spend $1000/month. In order to retire today, the formula says you’d need to earn 25% on your investments. That’s a lot, but it’s not unheard of. It might be possible to find a great rental property that gives you a 25% return. Or if you found a particularly volatile stock, you might make 25% in a year.

Each percent your required ROI goes, the more conceivable it becomes. Some REITs return 20% in dividends annually. Some MLPs will give you 12%. Or the market could easily have 3-4 big days in a week and end up 10%. Or maybe inflation could stay at 0 and you could earn 8% on safe corporate bonds.

Are any of these plausible? Well, not initially. But they’re not outside the realm of possibility. So they’re great for daydreams. They’ll help you stay optimistic as you approach the magic threshold of 3-4% ROI, generally considered sustainable.

So – numbers are useful. And some numbers you’d want to check every day. But each number is more than a metric, it also tells a story if you just listen to what it says.

Leave a Comment
by m741 on December 22, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in m741's Progress
Tagged , ,

Posted by m741 on December 22, 2011

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/unusual-metrics/

The Ethics of Hard Work

I’d like to explore a simple question: Is hard work ethical by nature?

To clarify, I’m assuming this is hard work on a typical job. We’re obviously not talking about hard-working Nazis or Khmer Rouge. We’re also not talking about hard-working volunteers. Rather – is hard work in a standard corporate environment worthy of our respect?

The default assumption is that, yes, it is. An unqualified “Yes!” for American readers. “Hard work” is the greatest virtue to most Americans – and also in many other places in the world (Japan comes to mind).

But first, what is hard work? I think there are two components: the first is the total dedication and expenditure of energy on the task at hand. No holding back. And the second is spending more time than is required in order to do this work. When we celebrate hard work, it isn’t a single virtue, but rather a multiplicity loosely disguised. Among them:

  1. Sacrifice of the self
  2. The endurance to exert oneself for long periods of time
  3. The independence associated with professional life
  4. A sort of conscious asceticism

There’s certainly a power to hard work. We want to believe in the Horatio Alger story: work hard, and you will achieve your dreams. There’s a dignity, as well. After all, you’re sacrificing on behalf of something outside yourself. In some cases you simply lose free time; in other cases it is your comfort or even your health. Finally, there’s a satisfaction in a job well done, in supporting your teammates. When we see someone idling on the job, it’s difficult to respect them.

Hard work is a democratic virtue. We may not be born beautiful, or born geniuses, or born athletic or wealthy. However, we can make a conscious decision to work hard. That choice is our own.

But ultimately, kneeling before the god of hard work is honoring a false idol. Stop and think: when you sacrifice yourself for hard work, you’re sacrificing yourself on behalf of a corporation. Is there anything more repugnant? A corporation, after all, is an organization designed around the abdication of all human responsibility in pursuit of profit.

By indulging in hard work and long hours, you make a decision. I believe it is a cowardly decision. Your decide to sacrifice your time to the corporation – rather than become a better individual, or help your community, or spend time with your family, or volunteer to help those in need.

Many of my co-workers are extremely hardworking individuals. They arrive in the office before 8am, and leave it at 8pm. They are busy every hour on the job, eat at their desk, and they log in to work computers from home or check their blackberries in the middle of the night. They don’t need to do this in order to survive: it’s a choice they made.

These same individuals have a spouse and kids. Many of them commute hours to and from work every day, so their kids can go to the best schools. Both parents work so they can afford child-care. This makes me so sad. I want to shake my co-workers and shout: “Your kids are growing up without their parents!” I think these parents love the organization they work for as much as they love their own children. They would dispute this vigorously, if I asked them. But their actions speak louder than any words. They spend more waking hours working than the company needs of them. Meanwhile, children need parents. Spouses need each other.

I would go further. Even if you’re single, without kids, is sacrificing your own health and happiness for the good of your employer ever admirable at all? I don’t think so. There are things more worthy of your attention than your job. If you’re happy you’ll be a better friend and a more conscientious member of your local community, than if you’re harried and stressed. If you’re healthy, you won’t suffer from lifestyle diseases and overload the healthcare system. You won’t increase the insurance premiums of your neighbors. You’ll be more able to care for your elderly parents in person, rather than shuffling them off to languish in anonymity in a nursing home.

So please, don’t jump to conclusions about someone based on hours worked. It’s so difficult to overcome these cultural biases that hard work is Virtue Number One. But being a hard worker isn’t always a good thing. It simply means your first priority is the company you work for. Once you understand that, you understand that means that the worker values himself less than the company, his family less than the company, and the community less than the company.

4 Comments
by m741 on December 19, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in On Working, Thoughts
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by m741 on December 19, 2011

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/the-ethics-of-hard-work/

Overcoming Static Friction

Let me tell you a story. Our intrepid heroes: Steve and Laura. They’re married in their early 30s, no kids, and settled into a hard-working professional life. But neither is entirely happy; their 9-to-5 life lacks adventure. One weekend, Steve’s buddy Phil invites the two to go camping with him. The following weekend finds the three of them backpacking in a nearby state park.

Steve and Laura are smitten. Steve loves how independent he feels; Laura is enjoying the fresh air outside the suburbs. They see a moose and go swimming under a beautiful waterfall. The hike is exhausting – particularly for two desk jockeys – but they finally arrive at a cute lean-to and get settled in. That evening they make s’mores and kick back by the fire. Phil tells some great stories and brought some whiskey with him. Everyone has a good time. The next day on the way out Steve can’t stop talking about the experience.

Sitting at her desk on Monday, Laura feels dejected. It’s so dull to be sitting in the office again. The two talk that evening and Steve feels the same way. They daydream of the weekend. Friday evening they go out the mall and pick up some adventurewear from REI.

Six months pass, and they haven’t gone camping again.

What happened? Maybe the cynic in you says that they just wanted an excuse to spend money on appearances. Is that it, or is something else going on?

I think it’s something deeper. When Steve imagines camping, he’s thinking about the great hike and how masculine he felt. Laura thinks about the flickering fire and how wonderful it was to rediscover her muscles.

Neither thinks about all the preparation that went into the hike. Phil was there for most of that. They had to search for decent hikes. They had to pack. They had to wake up before sunrise to drive over to the park. They got lost in the parking lot before they finally found the right blazes on the trees for their trail. Even during the hike, Steve was sometimes uncomfortable. He got some blisters, and Laura scraped her hand on some rocks.

All of these are trivial tasks. Let’s be honest: even the most diligent person will only take an hour to pack his equipment. The other barriers are similarly low. They may be low – but collectively, they’re high enough. They might as well form a barricade across the highway, preventing the couple from reaching the park. As time passes, the effort that went into setting up the hike begins to dominate the mind. In the end, they’ll probably go camping a few more times. And they’ll really, truly love it. But it won’t stick, because they can’t overcome the static friction.

This static friction – the friction of jumping from immobility into action, has a huge impact on whether you do what you love. It builds in your mind until it seems insurmountable. Little tasks take on the aspect of daunting challenges. Meanwhile, the kayaks and surfboards and sailboats and tents gather dust in the garage.

Don’t think this just applies to adventure sports. I love programming. It’s one of only three or four activities where I’ve felt entirely absorbed – so much so that I can forget to eat, and I don’t want to sleep. When I’m working on a problem, I think about it constantly, whether I’m walking to the store or in the shower.

And yet: I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve programmed on my own time in the past year. I assure you that I do enjoy it. It’s just that there’s lots of little barriers. I need to figure out a project to work on, and if it’s something new I’ll need to put in some time to learning it. Most languages require you to install a program in order to do anything. And sometimes those will be out of date, or find something wrong with your machine, and you’ll spend hours trying to debug the most trivial issues, downloading various files and installing them, restarting the computer, and so on. That stuff is not programming, and it’s not enjoyable.

It’s enough to deter me from doing anything. Instead I watch TV, which I don’t particularly enjoy. At least it’s easy.

I don’t have any suggestions, yet. But I think understanding how static friction affects your mind is an important step. And understanding that other people have the same problem, maybe you’ll feel a bit more charitable when you see all the unused things in their garage.

Leave a Comment
by m741 on December 17, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Thoughts

Posted by m741 on December 17, 2011

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/overcoming-static-friction/

Books

I currently rent an apartment. Consequently, I move relatively frequently, every few years. I don’t own much – no car, no fancy furniture, not much in the way of clothes or dishes, but one thing I’ve always had a *lot* of is books. I would guess at the peak I owned enough books to completely fill 6-7 floor-to-ceiling bookcases. This was a huge pain to deal with.

I had a complicated relationship with these books. Remember, they’re simply physical posessions, a collection of sheets of paper. I just love books, and love being surrounded by them. Some books I owned because they meant something to me. Some books I owned because I had to buy them in order to read them, and I didn’t want to get rid of them. And finally, some books I owned simply because I bought them used, in anticipation of reading them someday.

Even worse, I was caught up in what the books said about me, and how they represented my memory – as though the books were physical manifestations of what was stored in my head. If I discarded the book, would those memories slowly recede and evaporate?

So far this year I’ve read 58 books. That sounds like a lot, but it doesn’t amount to much out of that huge library. Let’s just say that my relationship with books was complicated.

I don’t exactly feel comfortable posting a suggestion to buy something, but I’ll make an exception in this case.

A week ago I picked up the new Kindle, and I have to say it changes everything. I doubt there’s much distinction between the Kindle and the Nook, I just saw the Kindle was cheaper and I prefer to buy online from Amazon rather than B&N, so I went with it. Consider this an endorsement of this generation of e-readers, rather than a specific product.

First off, the Kindle is light. You don’t have to flip pages, you can switch between books at will, and carry a huge amount with you. It’s more comfortable to lay down with and read than a paperback (never mind a huge hardcover). It’s easy to operate, the battery lasts forever

There are downsides. Browsing books is painful/impossible, as is flipping through them. There’s none of that lovely “book smell,” and I miss the texture of a real book. I suspect the Kindle is not as resistant to water damage.

Still, the current generation of e-readers is simply better than a book.

So, I’ve started to get rid of all those books I was so attached to. There’s a huge chunk of books that I feel I can let go of, because they mean nothing to me or I was able to locate a digital copy. As for all those books I’d read and didn’t want to discard because I felt my memories were bound up in them? Well, I can keep a digital copy. And I can keep a record of what I’ve read on GoodReads. That’s enough to feel that they’re not lost to the sands of time.

I’ve discarded about a bookcase worth of stuff in the past week, donating it to the library. There’s still a lot more to go through. And I don’t intend to get rid of all my books. Some have sentimental value, others are books that I love and want a physical copy of. Comic books or photo-oriented books don’t work on the Kindle at all. But letting go of all those heavy books I didn’t care too much about feels like releasing an anchor that was tied to my leg.

1 Comment
by m741 on December 10, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Minimalism
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by m741 on December 10, 2011

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/books/

Specialization

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

I dislike Robert Heinlein. His novels mostly amount to ponderous diatribes. Nonetheless: this is an admirable set of goals for a human being to strive to achieve. Too frequently we focus on acquiring provincial skills, and we shut our minds to the greater wonder of the world. We learn only to change the oil in the car, or to play a C scale. Yes, those are useful skills. But they shouldn’t be the end goal. Rather, the end goal should be the cultivation of wisdom, and learning how to connect to other human beings (yes, even for us introverts!). What could be more important than comforting the dying, or being able to lead, or simply knowing how to listen?

Leave a Comment
by m741 on December 6, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Quotes
Tagged ,

Posted by m741 on December 6, 2011

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/specialization/

Banking the hours

What if you could save up all those hours that you knew in advance would be wasted, and spend them when they mattered most?

For instance, after work there’s an hour or two where I don’t do much of anything. In the morning on weekends I usually just surf the web.

It would be so much better if I were able to save these up and redeem them when I’m going to a concert or bar with friends. Or maybe when I’m spending a magical evening on a date, or when I’m enjoying a beautiful sunset. Or even when I’m simply in a contemplative or satisfied mood.

Given the choice, I’d do it in a heartbeat!

Incidentally, this is what happens with Daylight Savings Time. As you know, in the spring you lose an hour due to daylight savings, and in the fall, you gain an hour. Spring forward, fall back. This is the equivalent of putting an hour in the bank. In the spring you’re banking an hour that you redeem later in the year.

What if I said you could do this all the time? Take hours you didn’t care about, ‘bank’ them, and then redeem them later. Lets go further and say that hours when you’re doing *something,* you’re unable to bank. For instance, if you’re driving somewhere, that’s not bankable.

What’s the point of this hypothetical scenario. After all, it’s surely science fiction, right? No, there’s a way to do it in reality.

Sleep.

Sleep operates just like a bank account. You can choose to go into sleep debt, and you can choose to run a slight sleep surplus. Having a sleep surplus accumulates interest in the form of being more wakeful, and you can redeem it in the near-term when it means the most to you.

Normally, when I’m not mindful, I will accumulate a sleep debt during the week and then pay that debt on the weekend. This is totally foolish and backwards. The hours after work when I could be sleeping are the least rewarding personal hours of my life. Meanwhile, the weekend represents a solid block of time during which I could do anything I wanted. In other words, the most rewarding hours of my day. I could go further. Rather than driving somewhere, I could take the train or a bus, and get some (admittedly low-quality) sleep. For long distance travel, this is usually cheaper, anyway.

Think about it. You can jump into the science fiction future simply by manipulating your sleeping hours.

6 Comments
by m741 on December 4, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Sleep, Thoughts, Tips

Posted by m741 on December 4, 2011

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/banking-the-hours/

Skill Acquisition and Sleep

Some skills or habits can act as enormous levers. Think about the habit of setting goals, writing to-do lists, and achieving those goals. This is a kickass lever to have in your arsenal of skills, even though it’s a little dorky and seems as though it doesn’t have any tangible benefit.

Simply put, if you write to-do lists, you’ll be more organized and deliberate about skill acquisition in another area – whether it’s learning gardening or sailing a ship.

One of these levers that people routinely ignore is sleep. If you have poor sleep habits, you will feel perpetually tired, and without any energy it’s difficult to get anything done. There’s a lot to say about proper sleep habits, and it’s an area I’m only starting to explore – my own “sleep hygiene” is quite poor right now.

That said, there’s one property of sleep I’ve taken advantage of in the past. I recently attended a talk given by a sleep doctor at NYU, and he confirmed what I’ve long suspected: sleep acts as a caching mechanism. Suppose you take two groups of people and have them try to learn something; one group then sleeps while the other group does not. The group that was able to sleep will retain the learned information better than the group that was not. Something happens while we sleep where information acquired over the day is shuffled around and put into long-term memory. Personally, I believe that dreams have something to do with this: they feel as though part of the brain is trying to interpret the caching that’s going on elsewhere in the brain.

I applied this property of sleep in college. As I believe is common with many engineering disciplines, in the first year or two there’s usually a course that’s designed to “test” majors in the subject and see if they really care about it. Where I went to school, this was a class for sophomores where we had to design and write a Stratego game with a visual display, some sort of AI, and networking capabilities so that people on different computers could play each other. There was a *lot* to learn in one semester and the project itself was basically the entire grade for the course.

On weekends when I still had a lot to do before delivering something, I found the most effective routine was a pattern where I worked for about 3 hours, took an hour break, and then slept for 2 hours. This had two advantages: first, I was able to regularly step away from the problem I was facing, allowing my brain to take a break (more on this in a later post). Second, I was able to sleep, which is the best thing to do when you step away from a problem for the reasons above.

The pattern that worked for me in this particular situation is certainly not applicable for everyone, or for long periods of time. Still, I would encourage anyone reading this to go ahead and experiment with breaking skill acquisition up: instead of doing a lot at night, do a little at night, sleep, wake up early and do something in the morning as well. Experiment with sleep and see what works best for you.

1 Comment
by m741 on November 28, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Sleep, Tips
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by m741 on November 28, 2011

http://skillsfire.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/skill-acquisition-and-sleep/

« Older Posts
Newer Posts »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.