In part 1 I summarized all blog posts until the end of 2010. So here we begin with 2011.
Mandatory New Year Post 2011 2010 year of reflection, 2011 to be year of action. Declutter, unfriending people I don’t know.
Week 23 transitional week. Ran, hit the gym. Stuff about making the year good, rather than hoping for a good year.
Week 24. Sleep-and-water rule, Measurement = management, being fit = awesome, challenge paradigm.
Week 30: Successful people have good routines, I should too. List of routines I’d like to adopt.
The Challenge: In which I try to live my life like a video game.
The Facebook Fast: Me realizing that I suck at life when I spend too much time on Facebook
Waste Elimination Challenge revisit this! see what you can cut out.
Attempts to quit smoking: Day 1, Day 2, eventual failure
Anything about yourself that pisses you off? Formspring question. I get pissed off with myself whenever I get pissed off. If I had to answer this question today, I get pissed off by my habit of self-deception. I cheat myself.
Attempted Sense:
The Most Important Question existential, philosophical post. Explores the idea of being a vessel or a conduit. Doesn’t dig as deep as I thought it would have.
The University Dilemma In which I explore my frustration/confusion/troubled thoughts about University. For the first time?
music, language, communication, biology, design, cross-discipline, simplicity a general word vomit on concepts and ideas.
wisdom of the universe and the maps we create to try and understand it on consciousness and map-making
books, knowledge, assimilation, repetition, philosophy important to re-read books because you’re a different person each time. mindful repetition makes you aware of subtle differences. philosophy should aid decisionmaking. there is philosophical value or wisdom in anything true or real- there’s always something to learn.
personal system and how it looks like- trying to visualise. pointless redundant exercise on hindsight, but it was fun to do. version 2.0, and version 2.1
Prescriptive Guides:
Labels and why you should avoid them basically they’re limited and limiting, and we’re more than that. we can’t escape the need for them, but we should never forget that they are just tools, and we should never mistake the map for the territory.
5 prerequisites to greatness Vision, Skills, Incentives, Resources, Action Plan.
Managing Emotions emotions, well managed, are rocket fuel. Funnily, in a meta moment, I’m doing this huge chunk of work because i’m feeling riled up.
Embrace The Detours Life will fuck up your plans. Realize this in advance, and roll with the punches. Enjoy the sights you see on the detours. Don’t brood over the past, keep moving forward.
Demolish Boredom. I was bored because I lacked vision. Gamify this. Revisit this.
Why Self-Help Books Don’t Work lack of immersion, repetition, experimentation- better to read one book over and over again and digest it and absorb it, than to read many books and just get by.
7 Steps To Unlocking Superhuman Clarity of Mind Sleep, Exercise, Meditation, Hydration, Relationships, Reading, Diminishing Stimulant-Dependency
Self-Mastery and the Journey Of The Hero thoughts about developing myself, and the fundamental principle behind my NS 90 week project (which kinda went a little flaccid at the end.) Could use a re-write!
Personal Development and Symbolism of the Hero just me expressing my love for the concept and ideas of storytelling, and of heroism.
Thoughts/opinions/realizations
my bank balance has been steadily rising: what gets measured gets managed
wave of mindfulness after a gym workout exercise is useful!!
Thoughts on the Japan earthquake: Beautiful how everybody rallies together in sympathy and support, but a little sad about how we always have to wait for disasters before we start investing in the things that make a real difference. Sandy Hook tragedy evokes the same thing a year later.
thoughts on running, management and life Running reveals to me the weaknesses and inconsistencies and structural failings of my body, and gives me an opportunity to strengthen them. I suppose we could say the same of any kind of focused, directed hardship- be it for an individual, for relationships or for larger systems like businesses or even governments, maybe? What then, is protectionism? (Importance of stressors)
Happiness in hardship, misery in comfort I feel we don’t sufficiently explore the idea that, while broader forces exist and affect us, we do have some degree of control over our own happiness. We ought to spend some time meditating on this fact.
persistence an acknowledgement of my general sucktitude, but at least I never give up. never tell anybody to give up, ever. don’t crush people. be constructive.
spontaneity and routines in the absence of good routines we will fall into bad ones for we are creatures of habit. “I might be most productive as a writer if I start writing immediately after I get home from work, or immediately after I wake up.” Feb 2011.
future and uncertainty kids are growing up in a different world. information is free now. having information isn’t as useful as having the ability to access and manage information. surviving into the future is going to require a new way of thinking. Something is Not Right about University.
Random thoughts before bed: Importance of sleep and water. Realization that my sleeping habits during JC were terrible.
Thoughts on sleep and systems. Suggested experiment to sleep as much as possible. Never actually executed this. Should do it. Attempts to interpret the living of life into a complex system of integrated parts.
Paradigm Shift Inwards to Outwards After taking some time off to reflect and think, I came to the conclusion that I had to share my thoughts.
Potential blog posts. a list to go through, and then delete afterwards
On scaffolding exploring Wittgenstein’s Ladder, the idea that sometimes you need to go through strange or redundant things before you get to the good stuff. These things are redundant on hindsight, and can be subsequently discarded, but are necessary in moving forward. In short, the necessity of extraneous “chatter” and other seemingly pointless random nonsense.
on faith we are all creatures of faith whether we realize it or not, like it or not. there are some things about life and the world that we simply take for granted. to question everything would be endlessly tiresome. What matters is that we don’t make assumptions about things that involve the livelihoods of others.
Links/Inspiration:
Jonthan Diener on the future of the music industry: The world is changing and you better adapt to survive, or perish.
Ray Kurzweil says that technology grows exponentially, so eventually solar energy should become viable even for people who don’t care about the environment. Doubles every 2 years or so.
Ezra Klein on mistakes economists make. Insightful! Revisit and analyse.
Countering Stress and Depression, by the Dalai Lama Be kind, compassionate and respectful towards others, and you will have little to worry about. Importance of training and transforming your mind.
Wisdom of Jim Rohn lots of great ideas.
Singapore:
MM Lee’s urgings feel awkward. In which I feel like LKY has begun to get disconnected from the everyday Singaporean (which he acknowledges in his book Hard Truths.)
Temasek Review’s comparison of SG/Japan. I express frustration with HOW we conduct our civil discourse, as opposed to what we discuss.
Why Singaporeans Don’t Feel That They Belong We feel belonging to wherever we add value to. Having been depoliticized, many of us don’t feel like we have much control over our circumstances. We own HDBs, yes, but we don’t feel like we own much else of the rest of the country. Part 2
conversations:
about the future, with ayesha. optimism, mind-sharing, clean power, natural selection, video games, searching for meaning.
about phase cycling, with sam. simple idea that things happen in ebbs and flows and that we should work with them.
on doubt, with izzy. “life has a dehumanizing effect”.
on systems, with sam do things that get large naturally get corrupted? building something powerful/meaningful
on communication, hive minds and god, with sam relationships, humanism, religion
Writing:
I don’t need to write. Actually, I do.
2:25 am
infinite a poem
Deleted Posts:
intelligence and decisionmaking: here’s a simple idea- if you call yourself intelligent, but you’re dissatisfied with life, why not apply your intelligence to the problems you face, and resolve them? either you’re not as intelligent as you think, or your intelligence isn’t worth as much. (this was directed at myself.)
what you should focus on: the intersection of “things that matter” and “things you can control”
Idea: Weeks and Months are more useful than days and years. Days are too short, years are too long, weeks and months are better measurements for living. If you live to be 80 years, you have 960 months, or 4160 weeks. Those numbers somehow speak to me more powerfully. I’d like to divide my life into months and weeks.
Pareto Principle: Power of resourcefulness. Focus all your energy on the few things that make the most difference.
The Big Move: On April 1st 2011, I moved my blog from wordpress.com to my own domain, visakanv.com. It was a childhood dream realized. I felt like I had arrived. Enjoying the little annoyances because this time it’s mine.
“Promise me something” – deleted this. This 2011, promise me that you’ll pursue something that excites you. Do something that makes you want to wake up in the morning, that makes you feel like you’re contributing to something greater than yourself, that makes you feel alive, relevant, valuable and powerful. What excites you? What truly, truly excites you? And what are you doing about it?
Pimp My Post Titles: I went through a phase where I decided to sit down and improve on my titles.
How Happy Are You? How Many Dates Have You Had? Apparently the order of these two questions affects the answers that you get. So what you focus on affects how you feel. So we need to be careful and deliberate with what we choose to focus on. Here’s Dan and Chip Heath on why incentives backfire
Bet On Yourself deleted this post because I wasn’t feeling it. Thought of using the idea of putting money towards some sort of fund whenever I fail to accomplish a task. It got a bit too convoluted for my liking.
observation, improved decisionmaking I feel like I’m making progress. trying to build a personal interface for myself. (feb 6 2011)
we are now halfway into 2011
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