You could be extraordinary

I could be on a plane to Windhoek (Namibia) next Thursday with a hot girl I like but, I am probably not going to go.  And why? Because it would cost a lot of money, it would cost me a month worth of work, it could cost me a publication, cost me 10 days of vacation, because I am not done yet with my panic attacks and the girl probably isn’t even really  in to me.  There are a lot of other good reasons not to go and maybe most importantly a gut feeling telling me “I don’t want to”.

But, I could be on a plane to Windhoek next Thursday and see lions and cheetahs. It is quiet sad to realize that I could have an extraordinary life and that for some reason deep within me I am choosing a regular one just because I am so good at it.

We are alive. We are meant to be extraordinary. We are not meant to sit in front of the TV and watch sitcoms or get drunk each weekend at some party and discuss the silly things we did a couple of years ago when we were drunk at a party. It is time to start being extraordinary. The life up to now was a preparation for that but the preparations are done. Start small but start doing something extraordinary you want.

Seeds of change

Changing something is hard but sustaining the change is even harder. Whether it is something small like keeping my desk clean or something big like being less afraid of failing does not matter. If done right changing something you do not like can be done quiet easily. I started small by cleaning up a part of my desk and by caring less about winning during a card game with friends. With these little steps I was able to change the things I did not like about me and it wasn’t so hard after all.

But .. after two weeks I found myself back at square one without ever doing something wrong or even realizing when I fell back into my old habits. This is something that happens quiet easily. A bad habit is still a habit and without control the brain falls back in its default mode executing known habits instead of the new and improved habits that you would like to foster. In order to introduce a new habit you have to overcome the old one and you should be fully aware that the old habit is there for a reason. You might think that you should go for a run every evening after work instead of relax in front of the TV with a beer but maybe your mind really needs this relaxation time to keep sane. However, if you are sure you want to introduce a change in you behaviour there is a small trick I’ve learned to sustain a change in your life: The seed of change.

Do not try to change your whole behaviour at once and try to sustain that because it will just overwhelm and crush you. Instead, introduce one piece of change in the desired direction and pour your energy into sustaining that seed of change. If you take care of that seed for long enough it will grow and gradually influence other parts of your life. I started by cleaning up half my desk and making sure that this part of the desk remained tidy. I tidied it up every evening (which was pretty easy since it started tidy in the morning) and the interesting thing that happened was that after a couple of days the clutter started to disappear from the rest of my desk. This happened because when I cleaned up stuff from my “clean spot” in the evening I sometimes put things from other parts of the desk away as well (I didn’t force myself to do this it just occurred naturally because I was putting away a related item). I did (and still am) doing the same thing with my fear of loosing. I allow myself to be as afraid of loosing as I want to be except when playing games with friends. In such situations I consciously focus on enjoying the games and accepting to loose. I played chess with a friend last week and found a daring gambit which sacrificed a lot of material for a small chance of a really nice combination. At that point I was already winning and it took a real effort to play this funny line instead of going for the simple win. It turned out I was wrong and the gambit lost me the game but I am convinced it was the right thing to do because it was much more fun that way. By defending this seed of change ferociously against the onslaught of my competitive mind I allow it to grow and as it grows it slowly but steadily allows me to overcome my fear of loosing. And, at one point it will have grown into a habit that sustains itself.

Keeping this part tidy was pretty simple since it started ou

How to get your wishes granted by a shooting star

Lore holds that you are granted a wish when you see a shooting star. At first glance it seems to be obvious that shooting stars do not have wish-granting powers since they are just small tiny rocks burning up in the atmosphere. On second glance however are a lot of people doing it and I wouldn’t be surprised if seeing a shooting star and formulating a wish does not enhance the chances of that wish coming true. My rationale behind this came when I recently saw a shooting star and was implicitly offered my wish. In the first second several trivial things sprang to mind. However, wishing for fame, fortune or things in that direction felt wrong. It took me several minutes of hard thinking to come up with a good and realistic wish that would really enhance my life and this is probably the power of the shooting star. Once you see one you are really forced to formulate your wish and just knowing what wish you would like to see granted will allow you to focus on it and will greatly enhance the chances of this wish coming true.

It took me quite a while to work out some sensible guidelines to shooting-star wishing that might actually get granted:

1. Don’t wish for something you have no control over. Wishing to win the lottery won’t help a bit because small pieces of rock burning up in the atmosphere do not influence plastic balls several days later.
2. Wishing for something fairly general like “I wish I were happier” or “I wish work wouldn’t be so hard” is a good start because it will guide your thought process to the thing that’s bothering you most at the moment. Try to think of a more concrete wish. What could happen that would help you with your problem?
3. Try to wish for something small that would make your life better. The smaller the better. It will cost a lot of brain-power to find this small grain of sand that is keeping the machine from running smoothly but it is probably worth it.
4. Shooting stars don’t work linearly. If you see four shooting stars you are not granted four wishes. Try to focus on one wish at a time.
5. Write down your wish and pin it somewhere where you will see it every day for a week. Just keeping the wish active in your mind will help.
6. Try to think of a small active step you can take to help the shooting-star change the probabilities in your favor.

As it turned out I got my wish granted. Ok, it wasn’t the Lamborghini Gallardo I first wished for and it also took some work for me to get this wish but it was a small thing which actually made my life a bit easier. Shooting stars do grant wishes but only if (and only because) you formulate your wishes precisely and don’t wish for something that is not completely out of your hands. It’s like a metaphysical placebo effect

A less crowded ToDo list

I had a rush for the last couple of days and my ToDo list is getting less and less crowded. This might just be a natural occurring high but maybe it is due to my new approach to handling my next actions. Over the last few weeks I’ve consequently dealt with “next actions” that were stuck or unpleasant. If they were to big I’ve hacked them to smaller pieces, if they were really unpleasant I’ve scheduled them for a fixed time and if they were unclear I’ve thought about what  really wanted to do with respect to them and redefined them. Furthermore, I’ve adopted a strategy against perfectionism: I just start doing the things and make them in a efficient and solid manner, tick the item of in my ToDo list and then (if I feel it is not good enough, which is seldom the case) add another item to the ToDo list with a concrete improvement.

The most important ideas for owning the ToDo list are:

1. Keep it flowing: if something is on the ToDo list for more than two weeks it should be kicked, reformulated, hacked down into smaller pieces or dealt with in some other way.
2. High throughput is more important than perfection: Do the things quickly and aim for “good” instead of “perfect”. Once you’ve finished you can check if it is good enough and add another item to the list to improve it.
3. Don’t be afraid to discard actions: Just because something is on your ToDo list doesn’t mean you actually have to do it.  If you think about it and come to the conclusion that it is not important, that you don’t have time for it right now or that it is just not feasible right now you are allowed to remove it from the list. You can put it on the someday/maybe or the “ideas for another time” list if you still feel it is important. But, it has to be a conscious decision “not to do it”.
4. Eating frogs: Randy Pausch said it in his awesome lecture on Time Managment “If you have to eat a frog, don’t send too much time looking at it. If you have to eat three frogs don’t start with the small one!

Would you rather be successful or happy?

What would you rather be? Successful or happy? Almost everybody would probably answer with “happy” very quickly but it is my guess that a lot of us would be lying. We live in a world where you are easily  judged based on your success.  And even worse we judge ourselves based on our success. This is normal and gives you a good warm feeling of accomplishment when you’re goals are achievable but it can wreck you if they are not. I generally set my goals to high and am therefore constantly living with the feeling that I ought to perform better. This allows me to push myself beyond my normal limits when the deadlines approach but it comes at the price of happiness. Living under this constant pressure of not “being as good as I should be” blocks me from just enjoying myself. I can’t enjoy lying around on the lake with friends because I keep thinking I should be more communicative, I should enjoy it more, I should think about what I want to do with my life, …

Coming back to the original question: Would you rather be happy or successful? If this question arises to you, chances are you are doing something wrong. In a healthy state you are setting yourself goals that are achievable and you are feeling happy because you are achieving your goals. In the unhealthy state where you are forced to choose, you are either:

1. Setting yourself unrealistic goals
2. Setting yourself goals that are not your own
3. Are not progressing towards the goal as you planned

Once you’ve realized that you can start to work against this. In case of 1. and 2. you have to revise your goals in case of 3. you should do some organization and planning. Sounds easy enough. Is hard enough but is doable nevertheless. And imagine the price if you succeed. Not having to choose between success and happiness anymore but actually getting both.

Computer problems

This morning a guy from the electric company was in the building and he informed me that he had to turn down the power for a couple of minutes. So while I was waiting if he needed anything else (which took about an hour) I didn’t turn on my computer. This was a somewhat weird experience. I’m just very used to my computer always running while I’m at home. I read a book instead and enjoyed a long drawn out breakfast which was also nice even though I was feeling a certain amount of stress because I hadn’t checked my email.

I think I’m somewhat addicted to my computer. Not heavily addicted since I am very well able to function without one when I’m on holidays but still a little addicted. But, breaking an addiction is hard or even impossible if there is nothing to take the place of the addiction. I can force myself not to turn on the computer when I come home in the evening but unless I find something else to do with the time this won’t work for long. I think that’s the same with lots of addictions.

I’ll have to brainstorm on alternatives to sitting in front of my computer, watching TV series and playing games.

Overcoming ennui

I’m feeling ennui. Maybe it’s the weather, maybe I just need some rest and relaxation but probably it’s my minds way of telling me that something is not right. I am just not doing what I want to be doing. That means I should change something. Most texts I’ve read on this topic tell me I should set goals that are my own and follow them and basically just do what I want to do. This sounds very straight forward but the bitter truth is, it isn’t. I just don’t know what I want to do. Or maybe I’m not yet at a point where I can realize what I really want. Realizing your dreams is a fine concept but what if you’re not sleeping well enough to dream?

So, my current hypothesis is that if you know that something is wrong you should change something. And if that does not work you should just change anything. Changing things has two big advantages: 1. Things might get better and 2. You get comfortable with change which makes breaking out of an undesirable status quo more easy.

So, I’ll try this idea by implementing changes. I’m probably overburdening myself but I’ll try three lifestyle changes:

1. No more coffee except on weekends
2. Eat at least 3 meals per day but don’t eat till I’m overfull (maybe this will allow me to gain a few pounds)
3. Reduce number of a-movie-and-a-beer evenings

And three personal changes:

1. Make one quick decision every day
2. Tell one person what I’m thinking without considering the consequences once every day
3. Talk to someone I would normally not talk to once every day

Maybe this will get me somewhere more fun

Cargo Cult

Some time ago I realized that my approach to happiness and especially the points where it fails is somewhat similar to a cargo cult. I keep up behavioural patterns way beyond their expiration date. Swimming is a good example. It made me very happy for a while and I was always leaving the water with a feeling of accomplishment. But, at some point my ambition took over. It drove me to practice harder and enjoy the sport less. I was getting much better during that time but at one point it just wasn’t fun anymore. Here the cargo cult kicked in, where I didn’t realize that the planes with the goods were gone. I kept repeating the same behavioural patterns hoping that if I repeat the same actions as before the same good feeling would come but that, of course, does not work.

I think the same thing is true to some extend for everyone. You keep on doing the same things that brought you happiness earlier even when the true reason for the happiness is long gone. You keep doing sports you don’t like, you keep hanging out with people that annoy you and you stay together with your girlfriend because it made you happy at some point in the past.

When you find yourself performing rituals without that have become hollow and no longer satisfy you it is time to take a step back and think. What has gone wrong? Why is this not fun anymore? How could this be fun again?  If the problem is not solvable or the problem not identifiable then maybe it is time to stop building control towers out of bamboo hoping for the planes to return. I stopped swimming and took up cycling instead. I love cycling now but I went swimming a couple of days ago and it was really fun. Stopping cargo cult behaviour is always a good thing.

Why am I not doing AI research?

I originally got interested in informatics because I loved the sentient artificial intelligences from the movies and always wanted to built one of those. I see now that programming AIs is not as easy as I thought it would. I now even realise that I will probably not see real AIs in my lifetime and I won’t be able to play a major part in creating AIs. But, all of this should not stop me from doing research in this field. I got a bit derailed during my studies when I first found out how difficult and different from my expectations machine learning is in reality. After that I just went with the flow and ended up doing computer vision research. This is fine for getting my PhD but I should refocus my original goal.

Most of the time we do not know what we really want in life and we just rely on moral standards, assumed expectations of others and the way of the least resistance to guide us through decisions. This is completely okay and natural and is probably the only thing keeping us running in the modern society. But, on the occasions when we do know what we want we should realize that and pursue our goals, dreams and hopes with everything at our disposal. We might fail anyway but if we don’t invest ourselves in the areas which interest us we can just sit back press the big “fast forward” button of life and wait till it’s over.

Control

Control

Over the last few days I realized that what I really need in my life is more control. I don’t have the feeling of being in control of my own life and that is something that can’t go on if I want to be happier. I gave away control to my boss, friends and a diffuse set of people because I was afraid of the responsibilities that come with control. So, I let them make the decisions and rationalized this behaviour by telling myself that I could stop whenever I wanted to. But the truth is that giving away control in favour of being secure and being liked is a really stupid move. Other people don’t miraculously do what’s best for you. And if you don’t tell the world what you think or want you won’t be able to be happy.

Getting in the driver seat is not that hard. Being in control means accepting failure. Being in control means that the result you of your action is your responsibility. It might turn out that the result you get is not as good as you hoped it would be. If you are not in control and things go wahoonie shaped it is someone else’s fault allowing you to keep a perfect track record of never failing. But never failing is worthless if you never win.

I often don’t know what I want and am therefore afraid to take the helm of the ship. I guess it is natural to not always know what I want but using that as an excuse not to make any decisson is no good. It’s like being lost in a forest. I might be lost now, but standing still won’t help a bit. I have to be in charge in order to find out what I really like.

It is impossible to get happy or real if I’m not in charge. So I will try to take control of my life, my work and my relationships.