Documenting a Personal Journey Through Life

It just dawned on me. Every successful business have some sort of a business plan. I’m not talking about those overly ambitious ones where everything is staked out in minute details, no not those. What I’m talking about are the business plans that merely describe the outlines of the business, those that give guidelines as to how one should move the business forward in a meaningful way. Attempting to foresee all possible details will make the business very static and not very good at adapting to changing conditions.

I don’t have this kind of plan for my life. Why don’t I? It’s so obvious. If i want to succeed in life I must have a plan that describes, in broad terms, what it is that I want to achieve, where I see myself in 5, 10 or 30 years from now. How could I possibly expect to get anywhere without knowing which direction to go? Exactly, it’s so dead obvious. Though doesn’t comes as a real surprise, I’ve been working on this for the past two years, I’ve never thought of it as a life plan until now. Only now did it become clear to me that I need to write this down, put it on the wall and then start acting upon my grand plan.

Once this plan is written down I’ll share some of it with you, perhaps it can be some inspiration. Do you have a life plan?

I’m an expert at procrastination, although in later years I’ve become much better in recognising procrastination when I ’see’ it. My very special combination of words usually was, and still sometimes is, ‘When I …’. This is a very dangerous combination of words because it removes control from myself and places it into an item, or someone else.

When I get this car I will finally be popular.

When I have one million in my bank account I will be happy.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work this way. I’m sure we all have these ideas with some alterations in the perceived solution. One of my personal favourites is how efficient I would be once I acquired two computer screens. Boy-oh-boy would I be productive. Finally would I be able to produce all those documents that I for so long had wanted to write, but been hampered by the limited computer desktop space.

Seriously, it’s NOT the desktop space that is the limiting factor. I have these ‘episodes’ quite often and they seem to slip past my procrastination radar all too often. Most recently I got it into my head that having a Mac Book Pro would definitely give me the productivity boost that I so desperately require. Clearly, it will not. It’s not like my three other laptops isn’t good enough… sigh. If I sat down and analysed exactly why I think about a given item I’m confident it would sooner, rather than later, become obvious that I have no need for yet another gadget.

Overcoming the ‘When I’ problem

I’m not quite sure why I believe that these items would somehow make me stop procrastinate and get on with things. Maybe it’s related to some sort of fear for learning more about myself? Learning about my issues regarding self-discipline and self-worth?

Overcoming my ‘When I’ situation is tougher than it may sound. I’ve found much comfort (still am unfortunately) in pushing the real doing into the future waiting for the solution to arrive or magically appear. ‘When I’ is a combination I’ve been using for a long time but I’ve decided to attempt to eliminate this ‘tool’ from my procrastination arsenal.

The following items, listed in no particular order, I believe may be useful when attempting to overcome the ‘bad’ side of procrastination:

• Prioritization (efficient and useful procrastination)
• Questions, questions and questions! (Is this X really going to help me achieve my goals?)
• Honesty

It shouldn’t have to be necessary to revert back into the habit of ‘When I’ when using these tools. Procrastination can be good, if done appropriately… but one has to be careful not to confuse the good with the bad. Let’s see how it all works out. I guess becoming aware of the problem and acknowledging it is step one…

Some ranting (you can skip this if you want :-)

When I started this blog I imagined all sorts of amazing outcomes. I was going to be blogging every other day, and become a central figure on personal development from a scientific perspective. Needless to say I’ve kind of left this vision behind. Even from the very beginning this felt weird. The rigid structure of only posting every other day, following schedules to maximize readership and so forth. To write only about one topic, only because you’re supposed to help your readers and not confuse them with jumping between different subjects. I don’t just think about one thing or view things from one perspective. No, this is not me, and no longer do I attempt to live by that philosophy, I’ve gone back to my roots and do things when I feel like it.

Anyway, I felt compelled to say that, let’s move on.

Imagine if…

… everyone took your responsibilities as serious as you do and if you had a bad day and, for whatever reason couldn’t do your work, people would jump in and help out. A more concrete example of this would be helping out those cleaning our streets and emptying our dustbins. I  makes me so sad, and frustrated, when people throw cigarette buds on the street and steps on them and then walks away. It seems as if they think to themselves ‘Obviously someone is going to be clearing that up, so I won’t have to care’. The same thing goes for any other type of trash.

Responsibility people, where is your sense of responsibility? Imagine if everyone had that attitude, throwing garbage on the street just because, eventually it will be cleaned up by someone. That’s not an attitude to have in a, allegedly, advanced society of human intellectual prosperity. This thinking has to end, and we have to consider everyone else’s job our own responsibility. Only because someone is paid to do something doesn’t mean you don’t have to do that particular job yourself. Or at the very least you should appreciate the work done by others no matter how insignificant it may seem in your ‘world’.

Could this work for other jobs and tasks? I think yes. Imagine someone in your office is carrying a truck load of papers. You don’t know him, but can tell they are struggling with the load. You offer a helping hand until you reach the point where you need to turn. It’s so simple, costs nothing and can really make the day for that person you just helped out. I’m confident with a little bit of thought you can imagine all sorts of situations where a tiny gesture would make a whole lot of difference if more than one person did it.

We must stop to consider only our own situation but also see those around us, our fellow human friends. We’re in this together, earth and all. The tiniest of efforts can carry plenty of weight when carried out by a group, even more if done by a society. There really are no problems we can’t overcome, we just need to think collectively and allow our collective genius to move us forward into a unified direction.

On a Mission

I’ve made it my personal little mission to pick up some trash when walking to work. It’s dead simple, costs me nothing but could have a huge impact on our living conditions. The effects of me doing it is hardly noticeable, granted, but imagine if most people decided to do this, wow! We’d have impeccably clean streets that we could be proud of.

This  would be the very definition of collaborative efforts. I long for that day.

Shock and awe, but I’m not perfect. Believe me, it’s taken me some time to realize that I’m not. Okay, it already sounds like I’ve been full of myself, but I haven’t really been that either. Thing is, I’ve been somewhat of a control freak. Anything that I do, or undertake, I’ve attempted to do myself because I don’t trust that anyone else would do a satisfactory job. Clearly, this doesn’t really go with my attitude of trusting people (as I indicated a few posts ago). Somehow I have made myself believe that I could do a better job… sigh.

When did I make this remarkable discovery? This weekend, Saturday to be exact. When you ask? When I was ‘pasting’ (is that the word?) the walls in our hallway. Johanna and I decided to try and make our house a little bit more ours by renovating the hallway which really didn’t look all that great before. This is when I discovered that I’m not perfect, nor is my craftsmanship. And why should it be? I’ve never done any renovations before, so how could I possibly expect it to be perfect? This is me, imperfect and all. Yes there will be some crooks and nannies (yes I know, that’s not how you say it, but … whatever, sue me) but so what? I’m not a handy-man, or a professional, but it’s my work. (Well, our work!)

Admitting to not being perfect is actually kind of liberating, very liberating even. I am what I can become and I can become anything I want, it’s all about investment of time and prioritization. I felt that I, sorry we, could do a good enough job with the hallway. Would a professional have done a better job, of course, but we’d also have to pay in both our time AND money. (Work-time to earn the money to pay someone to do it), so we’d really loose out. Now we worked, earned the money and paid ourselves to do the job.

Johanna spent the day painting and did a terrific job. Tomorrow we’ll do the second run of painting and after that we’ll have some details to finish. It’s not perfect, but … again, it’s nice that it’s not, because it makes it even more personal. There is a story now. It’s not just a hallway, it’s OUR hallway in all it’s imperfect glory.

I am what I choose to become and I choose to be imperfect.

Before we delve into the depth of ideas I need to put up a little disclaimer. You see, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this subject myself. I have some on-going internal battles whether all ideas should be shared and/or to what extent. Perhaps it should be okay to keep some ideas to yourself? I don’t know. But if we widen our perspective from the rather narrow self-centred to a broader more fellow-being-greater-good type of perspective it makes very little sense to keep any idea secret.

Right now, as I write this there a lot of questions are popping up into my head and I’m having a difficult time keeping myself focused.

• Despite the fact that competition is part of human basic nature, could a collaborative mindset overcome this?
• Would society and economics as we know it still function in a society where sharing is paramount?
• What exactly are the incentives for innovation?

It’s the human nature

The Neuro Revolution

I’m currently reading a book called ‘The Neuro Revolution’ and they wrote one very interesting thing. While competition is part of human nature, nothing swings weight like collaboration. Through experiments it has been scientifically demonstrated that we are more creative and better thinkers when we collaborate.

Our society is very much built around the notion of scarcity and creating competing products. It has allowed for a somewhat diversified market where there are an abundance of products. Whether or not they are useful I’ll leave for you to decide. I honestly can’t judge whether this ‘abundance’ is a good or a bad thing. Would this alleged product abundance disappear if ideas were shared? I personally don’t think so but I can’t be sure.

In some industries, like the car-industry, we can pretty much only choose from petrol driven cars. I do realize that the last couple of years have brought us a few alternatives, hybrids, hybrid-plugin and pure electric cars. The electric car have been around for a good few decades, but it’s only now that it’s becoming a viable alternative through improvements in battery-technology and so forth. Still, the market is very much driven by a few big corporations, and they wield a massive amount of power.

I don’t know if an idea sharing society would be able to prevent these mega-corporations from getting a foot-hold in our society. My main problem with our economy today is that there is simply way too much money ’stuck’ in companies. What’s the point of having lots of money if it’s not spent? I read somewhere that if we took the money of the top so-so-number of rich people every single person on earth would have one million pound each. Even if it’s not entirely accurate it’s still some pretty staggering numbers. Imagine if we combined this with the top companies I’m pretty darn sure that we could guarantee every person on earth a very good life indeed.

Industrial-espionage paranoia

One of the biggest problem facing innovation is that we are so very afraid of sharing our ideas with others, even our close friends. Suddenly we go all industrial-espionage paranoid and seem to think that everyone around us is out to steal our idea. As if most people aren’t already too self-absorbed. Steal your idea… right. I’ve not yet managed to reach my own conclusions regarding idea ‘hording’ but I’m starting to believe that too many ideas never see the light of day because we’re just too afraid someone might steal it.

Don’t for a second think that I’m not thinking this myself, I certainly do. But I’m trying to understand my motivations for doing so. What exactly am I afraid of and is it a reasonable fear? As humans we tend to greatly overestimate dangers and risks so in that regard I’m somewhat confident that my fear of sharing ideas is not necessary.

Why should we share our ideas?

I think one of the primary reasons of why we should share our ideas is because we couldn’t possibly act on all of them. So fine, let’s keep a few to ourselves, but we shouldn’t keep all of them. If we do they will only become a thing of our mind-history and eventually be forgotten. Even if we have to do some sort of transition into a society built to reward sharing, we need to find those transitional steps, and perhaps one could be to start sharing some of our ideas. But how do we effectively share and communicate our ideas.

Well, that’s where my portal comes into the picture. I won’t talk more about it here, but keep an eye on http://www.stay-open.com, the doors will open in December or January 2010. I’ll start talking more about this idea of mine soon and it really gets me excited!

Another reason for sharing is that we need to start trusting each other. My future ideal society is very much built around trust. Our current one, is not. You can see it at work or at home, the trust is just not there 100%. I guess it might be naive to believe that we could ever get a society built on 100% trust, but we should try to strive for it at least. In a society where trust becomes implicit idea sharing wouldn’t be a problem.

Oh, just thought of another reason of why we should share ideas. Not a single person on this earth have done absolutely everything themselves. We have to rely on other people. I’m definitely a victim of thinking that I can do everything myself. If I have an idea, I want to execute it myself entirely. Clearly it’s not worked out that well for me and yesterday I realized this. Obvious one might say, but it wasn’t for me. I felt I had to be in charge of absolutely everything.

Ops, the post is getting a bit long, I’ll stop now.

I think I’m pretty good at what I do for a living, but there are always ways to  improve. In a current project that I’m assigned to I’m working as a project manager. I’ll spare you the details of the project as they are rather uninteresting, but I will share one thing with you. How to elicit honest and genuine feedback from your co-workers.

The story

As a person I’m almost always looking for ways to improve my skills, be it social, communication, or anything in between. It is however not entirely trivial to get this feedback from people, or is it? How can I create a situation where my ’subject’ will feel comfortable with telling me exactly what’s on their mind? The answer is rather simple, just ask them but be genuine and honest about your intent. I try and do what I preach. I decided to try this experiment at work.

I began with my own project manager and said I wanted to review my work, and performance so far. In the meeting I asked, that they with no hesitation or worry about ‘hurting’ me should tell me both the good and bad. I emphasised the fact that I can separate personal ‘attack’ from business. There were some good and some bad things. But, when I think about it there really only were  good things. The bad aren’t really bad, they are possibilities to change and improve. After all the purpose of this experiment was for me to learn more about myself. I did the same thing with someone that works in my project. The same thing, there were some good and some bad things.

The intention

One of my original goals with this was to establish more trust. Without trust very little can be achieved. I generally tend to, from the outset of any social contract, decide to trust the person I’m meeting or talking with. I guess to some extent this might be a naive and foolish thing to do, but honestly I feel it’s served me well. Why shouldn’t I? Surely it’s must not be better to distrust a person that I’ve never met? No, I’d much rather immediately trust the person and then let them decide what to do with that implicitly given trust. Of course, they’re not aware of it, but maybe it can be felt, I don’t know.

The results

The great thing about this little experiment was the outcome. Those asked almost seemed relieved to be able to freely speak their mind. I’m sure that they probably held back on some things, me being a crazy nuts and gojiberry eating vegan, but still, they did seem to speak their mind. What I find particularly interesting is that I was actually already aware of the things they mentioned. Oh, and I also didn’t bother trying to make excuses about the bad, but rather just acknowledged what they were saying.

Hopefully more trust was indeed built and by continually asking for feedback perhaps it can only get better? If someone asked me, what I myself have asked them, I think I would have more respect for that person. It shows that the person is not afraid of their potential vulnerabilities and also willing to expose those vulnerabilities. Granted, it’s difficult to be entirely objective in this regard because after all, I did ask these questions from a selfish perspective.

So, concluding, are you asking for it?

Do you often look up? I do and I also mean that literally. Whenever I’m on my way to work I often find myself staring up into the sky, for no real apparent reason. Having spent some time reflecting on this I actually think it represents a little bit of what I’m doing, or rather, trying to achieve. See, the sky and beyond is for all I know limitless. However looking down, into the ground, all I see are my own two feet and the ground on which I’m walking.

How is this relevant, to anything one might ask? Honestly, I still don’t know, I just like the idea. I’m very much a dreamer, often allowing myself to drift off into the distant nothing-is-impossible-land. Whenever I want to do something, I don’t limit myself to what is reasonable, or even rational, no, not me. I always imagine the unimaginable, the beyond of what should be possible. And why should I limit myself? These are my dreams to imagine and I will have nothing less.

So, what is it that I’m trying to achieve? Well, I’m reaching for the limitless. I don’t want to be confined to the rules of common sense. Not to be bound by the box of sanity. No, I want to be free. Free to imagine a life where nothing is impossible, where dreams are not just dreams but rather a visualization of a future to come. The sky is my guide. Each time I need to be cheered up all I have to do is look up. There it is. All the possibilities, the future, freedom, all that I desire.

Do you look up?

Maybe you’ve seen the movie ‘Click’ with Adam Sandler where he gets a universal remote for his life. He can choose at will to fast forward through ‘boring’ parts of but a consequences is that each time this particular ‘event’ occurs it will be automatically fast forwarded through again. Anyhow, I wasn’t planning on writing a review of it, but rather a feature of the remote, ‘Pause’.

Pausing is very powerful indeed. It will allow us to quickly run to the bathroom in the middle of a movie, make some more popcorn or perhaps just readjust the pillows for better comfort. But, I wasn’t actually thinking of the actual ‘Pause’ feature of most entertainment systems, but rather the pause button of life, yes there is one!

I spend far to little time pausing my life to just breath, relax and observe my surroundings. In the huzzle-buzzle of life, working a 9-5 job, getting consumed by doing is all to easy unfortunately. This is when it gets even more important to actually stop, put down the pen, remove oneself from the computer, make some tea, wrap oneself in a blanket and go sit outside and be quiet for a few minutes.

The sad thing is that each time I do this I get equally surprised at how calming, and nurturing it is, yet I only do it once in a while. It should be mandatory, just like having breakfast or breathing. Johanna and I have for the past two weekends spent at least an hour on our porch having breakfast and watching the sun climb the sky. It’s beautiful and utterly relaxing. I realize that we’re so very fortunate now with our new house in the countryside, but it hasn’t always been like this.

I can’t recall many days, before we got the house, where I just sat outside doing nothing. Having been on the move for the last 6-7 years, seeking a home, it has been nothing but unsettling and quite mentally draining. I could have benefited from pausing more often to appreciate the things I have and calm myself down.

That’s why I will attempt to spend more time doing nothing, pausing life to allow myself to be grounded and appreciate my current situation for what it is and what I have. I wouldn’t want to become the person that looks back at his life only to remember working and stressing about this and that.

Now I’m off for my morning walk.

I’m currently reading a book on software development practices. It’s not a regular book about the boring old, regular process. (Software requirements, use-cases and all that boring shit.) But, I will not bore you with the details, I just wanted to share something I realized while reading. While I’m sitting here reading about their approach to software development I can’t help but notice how extremely relevant this is for life in general. Read this (my notes):

• Create a clear vision
• Fuck the details, get the stuff working
• Don’t deal with problems that doesn’t yet exist
• Don’t try and please everyone
• Focus on the absolute minimum, features can come later
• Essentials only, cut the crap
• Better be a no-man, than a yes-man (Perhaps not applicable to all, but certainly to some!)
• Make only promises I can actually keep
• Iterative development is key

See what I mean? Pretty much all of these (except for, you know which one) are totally applicable to life. Take ‘Fuck the details, get the stuff working’. I could definitely use some of this in my life. How often do I find myself obsessing about details, when all I should focus on is to actually get something done. It’s almost laughable how often I do this. Details, details, details…

‘Essentials only, cut the crap’, another good one. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with all the stuff I have in my house, and it’s distracting. These days, since having become aware of the problem, I make an effort into telling myself no, especially when it comes to ‘getting stuff’. Thinking in terms of ‘Essentials only, cut the crap’ isn’t exactly bad advice.

My favourite is probably ‘Iterative development is key’. This really is true for life. Don’t try and design and figure out life in one go, it will never, ever go the way it was ’supposed’ to. It’s much better to start doing something, anything, then make small adjustments through an iterative process. Trying to get rid of a bad habit? Iterative development! Do it in stages. Don’t try and do it all at once… do it iteratively, one small piece at a time. Trying to learn how to paint? Don’t bother with getting amazing results the first time, it won’t happen (definitely not for me anyway). Iterate, one stroke at a time until you reach some results, they may not be the desired results, but they are results nonetheless.

If you’re interested in reading the book yourself, you can find it here.

It’s quite funny (or sad) when I think about it, but this is one of the few books that I’ve read through and finished in a long time, the last one was probably ‘The Da Vinci Code’. This is not to say that I’m a “light” book reader, quite the opposite, I love reading. However, the books on my shelf are not those of fiction, but non-fiction, hard to plow through factual and technical books. You see I’ve always assumed I didn’t like reading “normal” books, another one of my silly assumptions. Books that I’ve read have pretty much only been related to work, because that’s where I could apply my newly acquired knowledge. I couldn’t possibly learn anything from a normal books. Silly, silly Christoffer.

buy at Amazon

The Unincorporated Man is a sort of science-fiction story about a man that discovers he has terminal liver cancer, Justin. It’s important to point out that while the book is set in the future, it’s much, much deeper than a pure science-fiction light sabre type of story, trust me. Moving on. Justin is an incredibly successful business man with heaps of cash. Death is unacceptable and the only way forward is cryogenics, and hope for a cure in the future. A brilliant scientist builds him the life tank he needs and off to the future he goes.

This is where the story really begins and becomes incredibly interesting. The writers have imagined a future where every person born immediately becomes his, or her, own corporation with stocks. This is due to the Grand Collapse, portrayed as our present time, where the entire financial system collapsed under its own weight and because derived monetary value was never attached to reality but to the perceived value. (This really is how our economy works today!)

The government, no longer powerful, gets a mandatory 5% of all your future generated income. Your family gets 20%, the rest are up for grabs. You then start the long journey towards self-majority (>50%), or super-majority (>70%). Age is not longer a problem, we’ve reverse engineered that, and we can easily become either 20 or 70, no difference. Justin, the unincorporated man, faces the biggest challenge of all, being unincorporated in an incorporated world.

The book is very much about exploring social dogmas, and putting them on their edge. Governments with very little power, and where corporations have massive amounts of power. The birth incorporation idea is brilliant and the book carefully explains, through storytelling, the pros and cons of such a future. Being personally involved with your “investments” mean that you’ve got a vested interest in ensuring the well-being of your “assets”. The book explores the consequences of giving up bit by bit of freedom and the impact technology can have when used in the wrong context. Virtual reality becomes so real that people prefer that reality over the real reality, leading to the inevitable Grand Collapse.

It’s a brilliant story, filled with drama, technologically intriguing ideas and most of all highly entertaining from beginning to end. I highly recommend this book.