On New Years

A couple of people asked me what my New Years Resolutions are, expecting something like "exercise more" and "procrastinate less." This year, like all of the past years, I don't. I've never been one much for NYRs. Not really a pretentious "I don't NEED the crutch" thing. Okay, maybe it is. But at least I can support it!

Trying to explain the idea behind NYRs would be just illustrating the obvious. Nonetheless, as a terrible illustrator I desperately need the practice. We see years as discrete units, 2012 separated from 2011 by a vast, insurmountable gulf. The new year is a chance to see the world in an entirely new light, turning a symbolic beginning into a new one. We see this in a lot of places- moving to college is a big one, as is the beginning of a quarter.

My issues with NYR stem from the same source. By being such a symbolic change, it ties the idea of making real changes to itself. We do not think of making resolutions on Christmas or Presidents Day or the beginning of a month. It's only New Years that has the Resolutions. Does New Years make us less likely to make other changes? I'd argue so. By so strongly associating one with the other, we lose our power to make resolutions at any time, at any place. Even if I really want to stop eating meat, I probably won't stop on a random Tuesday. This creates a time lag between having a resolution and implementing it. And lag time is the exact same as lost time.

The other problem is more pragmatic. One day a year is culturally associated with permanent change. If you can only make resolutions one day a year, what kind will you make? Big, sweeping ones, or small, specific ones? But change is not a discrete process. We can't say "I will now stop eating candy" and expect to hold it for the rest of the year. We'll be lucky to last a month. True change works best through small, manageable, and cumulative changes. These are the changes we won't make, because we don't want to "miss a change".

Most people drop their sweeping New Years Resolutions within months, if not weeks. I'd say it's better to not think about grand and sudden changes and focus on making small changes all of the time. Sure, grand changes can be useful, but they have their time and place. Giving it a specific time and a specific place just makes it artificial.

On a sidenote, I'm saying that many small changes = good. This is actually a new thing for me. I'm failing so many of the Millennium Goals (post up later) I've started exploring new structures of self improvement. We'll see how this fares. And I'll put my money where my mouth is, and start a small change right now: from now on, I will update this blog once a week. In the immortal words of Ke$ha: let’s go-o-o (Let’s go)

Glimpses of the Past

Last week was finals week. Like everyone else around here, I had two goals. One: convince everybody I was studying really hard. Two: not study. I emailed a bunch of people I hadn't talked to in a while. I went downtown a couple of times to "clear my mind". I revised an already-submitted paper "just in case". Then, lacking anything else to do, I started Googling random things. Eventually I searched an old username of mine and, unsurprisingly, I got a hit.

Finding the old post wasn't unusual. I mean, I've been posting on forums since I was ten. I've left a data trail a mile wide. Bit what struck me was the content. 16 year-old me wrote a long self description. He detailed his incredible abilities, his intense antisocialness, and his cold logical thinking. "It is always better," he proudly wrote, "to kill one person than let ten die."

Oy.

I want to go back in time so I can meet him, and then punch him in the face. For all his bragging about his pragmatic ruthlessness, he was a pretty terrible fighter. I mean, he couldn't even do a pushup. And I'm pretty sure that his ego was even more fragile than 19 year-old me. And that guy went on a two day depression bender because nobody laughed at one of his skits.

Still, I'm incredibly glad I found that sample. I had no idea I changed that much in four years. It's one thing to constantly wax poetic about self-improvement, quite another to see it happen. Since then I've been obsessively tracking down everything else I can find. I'm constructing a timeline from old chat logs, pictures, and posts. Slowly, agonizingly, the picture emerges. My prior stupidity left gaping holes. I remember being proud of how good I was at avoiding pictures. I remember gleefully picking usernames that would be impossible to search. I remember wiping my hard disks "so nobody could learn more about my past." I was wanted to look mysterious. I was an idiot.

Even so, it's possible to see some patterns. The growth is subtle and continuous, a long chain of imperceptible changes that add up over time. Age 14 me is the same as age 15 me is the same as age 16, but the two ends are slightly different. On the other hand, upheavals can cause incredibly rapid change. Between 12 and 13 I moved to another state. The growth quickly follows. But really, did we expect anything else?

A lot of my dialogues on self-improvement are entirely philosophical. Now I have real world data. It's not much, but at least it's something. Looking at it, it seems improvement happens in one of two ways. One, it's gradual and imperceptible, something you only realized happened when you look back on your past self. Alternatively, it can be sudden, rapid, and extremely painful. It's either long and boring or agonizing. Often it's both. Not that appealing, is it?

Nobody ever said it was easy. Trying to consciously improve as a person is the most difficult thing I've ever done. I have to stare hard at my failings, dig out the ingrained bad habits, and push the limits of my comfort zones. I have to constantly question myself and never, ever, ever be satisfied with my successes. It's hard and slow and it hurts all the time. I know people who refuse to consider it, and while I find this completely incomprehensible the idea is sometimes very, very tempting. But now I can see how far I've come. I know for sure there's a light at the end of the tunnel, because I've been in tunnels before and found that light. And if it hurts, well, it hurt before. I got over it.

I wonder how much these patterns I see are influenced by my own biases. I've talked about external events breaking stagnation. Did this make me want to see the upheavals as causing growth? Or did I already know about the upheavals and unconsciously worked that into the externals? They could be the same, all externals upheavals. In that case, we are one step closer to consciously triggering periods of growth. At the same time, we have to accept that such periods will be quite an ordeal.

I head back to Michigan on the 20th. Once in my parents' home I can kick this project into high gear, scouring old photobooks and reading stories and search for diaries. If I'm really lucky I'll be able to contact people from my New Jersey days. I'm seriously regretting leaving so little behind. But I'll do my best to get it all, and I won't be making the same mistake again.

Teeth

Those of you who knew me last year probably remember my problems spring quarter. All of my wisdom teeth got infected at once. I had four extractions and three root canals in under a month. At the peak I was going in twice a week, gutting my family's savings and my time. By the end I had developed a resistance to Novocaine. No wonder I was so depressed and assholeish that quarter.

I remember my relief at the end of the quarter, knowing that the ordeal was finally behind me. I was wrong. Yesterday I went in for a routine checkup. I left with three root canals. If I'm lucky I'll only need two more appointments. The next one is tomorrow. Already I can feel the crushing dread: it never gets better and it never ends.

Then again, I'm not the same person I was six months ago. Back then I would have curled into a ball and cried. Now... well, I still want to curl into a ball and cry, but I'm also wondering if I can benefit from this. They say that hardship makes us stronger. In order to overcome our obstacles we have to grow and develop the power to cope.

 The short term hardships are:

• Pain (operation)
• Pain (recovery)
• Time loss (transit, dental work)
• Fear (hopelessness, needles, pain)
• Negativity (grouchiness, anger, from other hardships)

The time loss is inevitable. At least this is all before reading period and not during prime study seasons. The pain is also unavoidable. The needles hurt a lot, and there will be a 2-3 day period where my teeth will hurt like hell. Painkuillers can only do so much. I've gotten pretty good at eating with sore teeth, and I no longer I accidentally rap them on each other. My pain tolerance is improving a little bit. Silver linings.

So the big things are learning to live with the fear and not worsening my personality in the process. The fear happened because every time I came in for my last appointment they'd schedule "just two more". Nothing would be okay ever again. Every time I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel would stretch. And even when I thought it was all over... yeah, I think I have good reason to be afraid.

There are two things I can do to deal with this. First, I've arranged both of my next appointments to be before I go home for break. If you need "just two more", too bad. I get a two week break before the next evisceration. There's a hard cap on when I last go in. Certainly not as bad as "first week to eleventh."

Number two. It might help to understand the core of the fear. I think it's all a manifestation of my feelings of powerlessness. There was no way I could have prevented my teeth problems. There's no way I can reduce the number or costs of my appointments. I don't even know when it is going to end; the goalposts shift so much I lose even that tiny bit of knowledge. I feel like I have absolutely no control over my situation. This isn't something I can just accept; the only way to deal with it is to take back my agency. Only then can I escape the omnipresent fear.

How do I do that? I dunno. I've tried to keep the pain and time loss from impacting my academic and social life. Keep at least a little bit of power over the rest of my life. That's the only thing I can do. I might be able to extend this. If I do more I will have more things in my life that I can control, which takes the edge off the dread.

This segues nicely into the personality problems. I'm sure at least a couple of you noticed how irrationally controlling and spiteful I got last quarter, and I'm feeling that start up again. The pain and stress and fear mess with my head. I know this is hard to quantify- how do we know what we have felt in different circumstances?- but it's obviously there. I used to swear pretty rarely, and only with great effort and gravity. The day I got my wisdom teeth out I started swearing like a sailor. That definitely wasn't a natural evolution of my personality.

This is the thing I worry about least and should worry about most. It's an incredibly subtle hardship that can hurt both me and others without me ever realizing why. It also emphasizes a flaw I have: I let fear/anger/pain cloud my thinking. A Better Me would be able to function at least as well as Current Me even under extreme stress. I may not necessarily be able to stop feeling the fear/anger/pain, but I should be able to cope with it. I think this can be improved by being constantly aware of how my personality is changing. So if any of you see me acting more abrasive/sociopathic/angsty than normal, give me hell about it.

Eleven hours until my next appointment. I'm not looking forward to it.

On Elitism

Hm, haven't been here in a while. Life has a bad habit of sneaking up on you, then clubbing you with a tire iron and running off with your cell phone. I'd like to reflect on a set of ideologies I've encountered over the past few years. It's not directly related to improvement, but I think understanding how the ideals work is rather important to our growth and maturation.

Most people are unconscious. They do things without understanding why they are doing them. Other people are conscious and have developed a soul. They understand themselves and can influence the people around them. Only the conscious are really aware of what's going on.

Most people are background characters. The story of life passes them by, and they just go through the motions without understanding them. Some people have narratives. They have agency over their own lives and those of the backgrounds. Only the main characters are really aware of what's going on.

Most people are sheep. They follow the will of society without thinking about it. Other people are the shepherds. They see how the societal machine Works and can make it affect them less, or influence it. Only the shepherds are really aware of what's going on.

Seeing a pattern? The first one was something somebody I respect said last year. The second was said two years ago by somebody close to me. The third was what I believed three years ago. This is an idea that was independently developed by three very intelligent people. It made the world seem so obvious.

The overarching thema is to divide society into two groups. There's the unconscious/sheep/unwashed masses who do not have agency or influence over their own life or, as one person put it, the ability to consciously analyze reality. The other group is the conscious/shepherds/elites who have this ability to think for themselves. They are the movers and shakers of the world. Naturally, everybody who comes up with this idea automatically assumes they are part of group two.

Now this is an extremely comforting idea, the idea that you are more special than the faceless horde around you. It also has a lot of glaring problems. For example:

-Just because you don't know another person's life in depth does not mean you can make a sweeping condemnation of it. Most people have dreams, aspirations, and self-doubts just like you do. You might not be able to get in their head, but they cannot get in yours either. Can they see your eliteness glowing like a beacon? If not, maybe you can't see theirs.

-Self awareness isn't a discrete unit. You can have a measure of consciousness between "stick" and "Buddha". You can't break people into "self aware" and "not self aware", because people are things besides sticks and Buddhas. Imagine trying to break people into "babies" and "geezers" with nothing in between. That's what we're trying to do here.

-Similarly, self-awareness can't actually be maximized. Becoming one of "the conscious" implies that you have achieved the epitome of awakenedness, which would be like trying to achieve absolute mastery over lifting things. In the grand scheme of things you will never, ever, become Buddha. Additionally, self-awareness isn't a one-dimensional thing. I may understand more about what makes me angry, but you might know more about what makes you happy. Trying to compare one person's consciousness to another's is mathematically meaningless.

-The entire idea is just Objectivism with a heaping scoop of metaphysical superiority.

It's poison. It convinces you that you are Above other people and know more about them they do themselves. They will never understand you, for you are an Elite and they are just the Sheep. It's not a large step to start believing that you can ignore other people's opinions on matters and even violate the rules that keep civilization functioning. I've certainly been there. Once you start believing only the Elite posses the truth, you're no longer part of the "little people".

I can't say why this belief is so popular. I mean, all three of us came up with it, and I'm sure far more have too. I think it might be a defense mechanism. The world isn't an unimaginably complex network of connections where the aspirations of a guy in Kansas can tank the price of your morning coffee. A world where billions of people are fighting tooth and claw to achieve their dreams. Much easier to believe that only a few people affect things, and the rest are along for the ride. Easier to think that everybody's dreams and "2.5 children and a white picket fence" and only you, only you, truly hold a burning desire. It makes you special. You don't have to prove to the world that you deserve what you want. By being Elite you already deserve it, and it's only a matter of taking what should be yours.*

But you are not special. You do not hold the secret truth that ascends you as a human, the one thought that makes you a render of worlds. Everybody else  has their dreams and desires, hates and revulsions, struggles with themselves, just as you do. Everybody else has gone through trials and tribulations, gained reality and revelations just as you did. Everybody is just as awake and just as conscious as you are. You do not tower above humanity. You are looking it in the eye and saying "I'm taller." But you're not. We are all the same height, and only by standing on the shoulders of others can we see further.

My thoughts do not make me Elite. If anything, my actions do. We must prove our worth, not steal it through Right of Consciousness. We all have our brilliance inside. All that matters is how we face the outside.

*A friend just suggested a third reason. We judge ourselves with respect to others. When we say "I am good," we really mean "I am better than everybody else." Believing ourselves to be Elite allows us to say "I are inherently better than others", and therefore "I am a Good Person."

Experiment Results!

Bad idea.

Going to class is actually pretty useful. At the very least it forces you to add more structure to your day. Structure is good.

On Stagnation

Stagation.

The third state. The one we fall into without a thought, trapped in our railroads and empty routines. The worst state, where where growth is stunted and our fire goes out. Stagnation is what kills us in the end. We may try to improve ourselves to death, but that blaze is never in reach. We stop improving, we stagnate, and then we die.

I used to think that stagnation was an anomalous state, an aberration caused by... something. I don't know. Trying to write it out just emphasizes how pervasive it is. Nothing causes stagnation. After we've grown enough it simply happens. It's the normal state, I think. Only serious external events really knock us out of complacency and back into growth. Otherwise we're stuck. We can temporarily force ourselves to fight, but not for long. We grow tired and our will fails us.

As you can tell, I want to improve. So stagnation is a biiiiiiit of a problem.

Solving it is essential. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do this. It seems almost impossible. The entire point of stagnation is that if you aren't doing your damnest every single day to avoid it, you succumb to it. And it's really hard to do your damnest.

Case in point: last night I got badly drenched by the storm. Really badly, "shoes are soaked completely through" badly. There was no way for me to get to campus today, so I stayed home. My plan was to get ahead on all of my work. Over the past ten hours I have... done my reading for one class, read five pages for my research job, and did the dishes. I spent the rest of it vegging out in front of the computer and playing with the rabbit. Hell, I just managed to force myself to do my laundry. The place isn't cleaned, I haven't made tomorrow's lunch, I haven't graded a single homework... you get the idea. Writing this post is taking a huge amount of effort. Today I stagnated.

So stagnation is something we have to use every ounce of will to beat, for a short time, and without much gain. To stop stagnating we have to gain infinite willpower or be physically addicted to improvement or something. It's a shadow under which we live with our whole lives. It has always has the upper hand, and the rules say it always wins.

But what if we cheat?

Is there a way to beat stagnation without inhuman willpower? Maybe. Could we set things up so there's always external events kicking us out of the rut? I have no idea. But it's an idea worth pursuing.

The most important part in self improvement is also the hardest to do. How do we beat stagnation? I've been trying to figure this out for years and have gotten nowhere. But maybe this is the year. If not, next year. If not, the year after that...

An Ignoble Experiment

When my computer died I thought I'd be more productive in class. This is technically true, in that I'm doing a lot of grading and writing in class. My attention to class hasn't improved in the slightest. I go to class out of a sense of duty; that as a student I should go through all of the motions of learning. For a long time I've wondered if this is impeding my actual learning. Maybe if I pushed myself those 16 hours I spend in class per week could be put to much better use.

So I'm going to try an experiment this week. I am only going to necessary classes- classes with either discussions or homework due. During the class hours I will only be able to work on class material, work on homework, do my jobs, and work towards Millennium Goals. At the end of the week I'll post a rundown of how things went. Cool? Cool.

Myth of the Ultimate Person

A few days ago some of us had a conversation on facebook about the possibility of robots outcompeting humanity. Standard science fiction stuff. The one person asked "can we create an ultimate person?" I thought this was an incredibly interesting question, given my general outlook on life. If there is an ultimate person, obviously I'd want to work towards that. So it kinda sucks that there isn't.

Let's get the obvious problem out of the way. We can trivially define the UP to be "in absolute perfect physical, mental, and spiritual condition." This already causes a bit of an issue. For one, 'absolute perfect physical condition' doesn't actually exist. Every physical ability corresponds to some physical attribute, and these attributes often clash with each other. It's not just a matter of finite time and resources. Sometimes getting better at one thing actively makes you worse at another. Become the best football player in the world? Good luck doing gymnastics. Prefer to master contortion? You won't have the strength to do well in a fight.  This even holds true in subfields of physical abilities, where the best marathoners make terrible sprinters. You can be the best in the world at something, sure, but for everything else you'll have to settle for merely 'good'.

Okay, this isn't a huge deal. Instead of requiring UPs be absolutely perfect we just have them maximize competence, whatever that means. Being damn good in a bunch of things is better than being the best in one if we're trying to achieve ultimacy. In which case our problem shifts to the whole 'mental and spiritual part'. What does it mean to have a good mind? A good soul? Is being a biologist better than an economist? A NeoKantian better than a hedonist? A quiet man better than a brash and outgoing one?

Ultimately, 'the best' is incredibly sensitive to cultural assumptions. Five hundred years ago racism was perfectly okay. Heck, you don't even need go back in time. Just look at the difference between the ideas of academic success between American and Chinese universities. Any conception of the ultimate person is intrinsically tied to the cultural assumptions you use to decide what is "best". There is no absolute metric, and so no absolute "ultimate". My conception of the ultimate person can be your conception of the quintessential asshole, and we'd both be right.

So where does that leave self improvement? Why do we self improve if there's no reasonable culmination? We can't just say "we'll improve to our cultural norms." Part of self improvement is avoiding misperception, which means we have to rise above our intrinsic assumptions. But while there is no 'ultimate person', there is still a 'better person'. Someone who clearly isn't above mankind or whom maximizes his cultural value, but a person who is capable of doing a little more. The person who has a little more control over his own mind and emotions, who can choose to be a pacifist or a killer depending on what he chooses. Clearly you hit problems if this control becomes absolute, because a person who could change their personality at will isn't a human anymore. But it's a goal constructed of smaller, attainable goals.

Looking back, this entire post makes very little sense. Proof that I shouldn't try updating at three in the morning.

On Misperception

All of the improvement I've talked about so far are action improvements. They're about things like optimizing free time and messing with risk reward. All of the millennium goals, save one, are about doing something, or doing something better. Even the patience one is about gaining the ability to sit still, not the mind to do it. There's only one millennium goal directly related to how I think, the one about emotional hypersensitivity. I think this is a huge shame. It's generally much easier to improve ourselves physically and professionally than mentally. But mental improvement is the absolute core of self growth. Without the ability to change our perceptions, we can't truly say we've become better people.

We're human. That has a lot of meaning behind it, but there's only one I'm concerned with right now: flawed. To be human means to be imperfect in countless numbers of ways, from our failing bodies to our holes in our knowledge. But by far the worst flaws are the ones where we see the world in a wrong way. A few ways immediately leap to mind: racism, homeopathism, theism/atheism to atheists/theists, etcetera. More subtle are the ones that don't define a mode of thought but hide in the cracks of our interactions. If I miss a day of training I've failed. Only a genius can write a program. I don't have the time to learn this thing. I'm spineless. I am set in my ways.

What makes these so terrible is how hard they are to fix. First of all, you have to notice them. Finding a flaw in your perception is like needing to fix a car that you don't know is broken. The flaw is just another part of how you deal with the world. Unless something huge happens to you or you spend a lot of time introspecting, you'll never realize you have it. Writing that short list was incredibly difficult for that reason. I just couldn't think of possible flaws in perception. They were there, certainly in me and certainly in others, but they're almost invisible.

Then you have to realize it's a flaw. It was only recently that I learned to "loosen up" with my training regimen. I used to think that if I didn't run for a day, I failed at exercising. That would lead to me just giving up and abandoning my work. I didn't think this was a problem, though. I was holding myself to a high standard, where the price of failure was so great that I should never even consider missing a day. But now I think that part of working hard at something is to be adaptable. I am not defined by what I do or don't do. I can be a runner without running, a writer who doesn't write, even a physicist without physics. Rather it's a mode of thought and focus, not the act of doing those things but the will and desire to do them. I am not a runner because I run. I run because I'm a runner. And this means that even if I don't run for a day, I'm still a runner. My former perception of "fail once fail forever" was invalid, to be replaced with "a miss is a blip on the radar."

((Incidentally, I'm staying up late to write this, so instead of exercising in the early morning I'll just jog and lift after my class today. Adaptability means keeping the ritual while allowing yourself to break free of the routine.))

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, you have to know that you can change a perception. This may very well be the hardest part. A lot of them are self inhibiting. Say you think you lack willpower or patience. Will you have the willpower to build patience and the patience to build willpower? Not until you stop thinking you lack them. Catch twenty-two. We never change, and so we live our forlorn lives. We stay angry and hurt and petty and down, never once truly believing that we can make ourselves better.

Is there an easy way to change perception? I wish there was. The question is pretty much the same as: is there a fast track to becoming a better person? The past 4000 years of theology say 'no'. And I'm not gonna argue with the Buddha. We have to try, though. If we want to really improve as people and not just pick up new skills and tricks, we have to change our perceptions. It's a slow and agonizing process, one from which I've often strayed away. But I keep coming back. There's no other way.

My past few posts have been small ramblings on the metagame, so I figure it's time to talk about where I currently am. Two of the millennium goals are completed, and I'm working on five more. The photography and Spanish ones have unfortunately fallen by the wayside, and I'm not putting as much time into anaerobics as I should. But still, they're coming along! I'm confident that I'll have at least five more of the short term ones done by winter. That's only two terrible movies I have to watch. I'm gonna restart the Spanish effort this week, maybe reserve the photography one for a winter-break reading marathon. It's one of the goals that can be completed in a very short intense time, unlike the steady pace ones I'm currently doing.

I think I've hit my limit. What are your thoughts on misperception? Can you think of any powerful ones people don't notice? How do you work on changing them?

On Activity

My computer died today.

It still works, technically, but it won't recharge. If I'm lucky I might be able to borrow somebody else's battery, use it to back up all of my important files. Otherwise it's dead. Looks like it's time to get a new computer.

I'm going to hold off as long as possible. This is going to be the first time in two years I'm not constantly wired to the internet. I'll only get small doses whenever I can get to a library or steal somebody's laptop. I think this will be good for me. Let me explain why.

We can roughly divide people's actions into high intensity and low intensity. High intensity is commonly seen as "productive". This is self improvement, working a job, doing homework. Low intensity is generally "relaxing". Meditation, watching television, playing video games, going for a walk. This is not to say that these boundaries are well-defined. Sports are high intensity relaxation, knitting is low intensity productive/relaxation, cooking can be high intensity or low depending on what you're doing, etc. Maximizing the value of your time is to walk the fine line between high intensity and low intensity activities. Too much of the former and you crash, too much of the latter and you don't burn.

But there's another side of this, a third thing you can do besides production and relaxation. That's stagnation. Time you don't spend burning or healing yourself. Time you spend eroding, slowly falling apart through complacency and lethargy. It's the dark side of relaxation. We relax to eventually work again. We stagnate to continue stagnating.

The problem is how thin the line is. A lot of things we do to relax can be easily turned into stagnation. Think about the difference between playing two games of Starcraft and playing twenty.* I definitely have a problem with this. I'm really afraid of relaxing, not because I'm some sort of working machine but because I know how easily it will turn into wasting. So I spend more time in high intensity, which leads to me crashing more often. Then I need to relax a crapton, which quickly turns into stagnation, which makes the next productive zone a little less productive... so yeah. My time schedule is completely out of whack. I need to cut my high time, boost my low time, and do away with my stagnation periods.

Where does the computer fit into all of this? Being jacked to the net makes stagnation incredibly easy. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. Worse, it's often high intensity. I've somehow managed to make surfing the web physically draining. Might explain why I'm so underweight. It also means that when I finally drag myself away from the internet I'm in a worse place than when I started. Surfing the web is one thing, snorting it is another. I do the latter.

That's why I think losing it will be good for me. I'm going through a detox here. Being semi-cut off from the internet should help me learn to use my time more wisely. Of course, I can't go cold turkey. There's still work and academics to worry about. But I think this will be enough.

You might call this sour grapes. I mean, I'm trying to justify why losing my computer is a good thing. I see this as optimism. If things go right I'll walk out of this a better person than I came in. I'm taking a bad situation and trying to spin it to my advantage. Isn't that what luck is? Every setback is an opportunity. Here's hoping this one pays off.

On Procrastination

I was planning on writing a post about motivation, but procrastinated it into oblivion. Then I thought "Hey, why not write a post about procrastination" and here we are.

There are a lot of things I really want to do but never get around to. Uploading my Chile pictures. Finish my fiction. Update my blog. But I don't. I trade long term satisfaction for the immediate pleasure of surfin' da web. And it really is da web that's my procrastination locus. But not the only one. In Chile I'd not brting my computer home for precisely this reason. I ended up spending all of my time sleeping and reading trashy fantasy.

We are life with a question: why short term over long term? I'd say it's two reasons. Short term satisfaction absorbs the mind, so I don't remember the long term projects. This can be beaten by having constant reminders in always-novel forms. Any sort of daily planer becomes mundane and useless for remembering, after all. My This of course assumes I remember to set this up, which runs back into the procrastination problem.

But why seek short term pleasure at all? It's addictive, of course. Amusement and satisfaction provided in blazing-fast time?! Count me in! And once you start, the inertia keeps you going. Kinda like how you put going to bed off for just five minutes, then five again... How do we beat this? Either make the addiction provide less pleasure or the virtues provide more. I think this can be accomplished by a three-tiered approach.

1) Make slacking off less enjoyable. Install locks and conditions that make it tedious and difficult to reap rewards. This is easy to implement: Only one "addiction tab" can be open at once. I'm going to start this right now.

2) Make the reward more tangible. Give victory a taste. I can do this by encouraging friends to remind me about the benefits of my goals. Then actually improving is part getting what I need and gaining prestige among my friends. This should make putting in the effort a lot more appealing.

3) Make the process of improvement more enjoyable. Turn it into an addicting game. Set and reward milestones. This one is the hardest to figure out and implement, and will have to wait for another post.

Now I'm turning the question to you all. Why do you procrastinate? How do you overcome it?

Millennium Goals

My big projects for the year are the Millennium Goals, two sets of nine achievements that have to be completed at various points. The first set has to be done by the beginning of January, and the second by the end of finals week. For every one I fail I have to watch a not-X-rated movie chosen by my peers. I'm already queued up to watch Barbie's Magical Adventures. Lists are below.

Short Term
 
Successfully replicate a restaurant dish.
Read two books on photography. 
Run a 7.5 minute mile.
Bench press 140 pounds.
Flash five balls.
Sit still for 20 minutes.
Get an A- in Grad Math Methods and a A in Statmech.
Stop instinctively avoiding eye contact. 
Write a 500 word creative piece in Spanish.

Long Term

Cook a three course fusion meal.
Get something published in a student zine.
Get my resting heart rate to or below 60 BPM.
Bench press 200 pounds.Juggle five balls.
Sit still for 60 minutes. 
Get an 870 or above on the GRE.
Trim my emotional hypersensitivity. 
Pass the Spanish language competency exam.

Another blog?!

Apparently a rambling blog, a travel blog, and two private diaries were not enough for me. So I'm starting another blog.

Those of you who know me well know that I take a very keen interest in improving myself. Those of you who don't know me well: I take a very keen interest in improving myself. I can't really explain why; when people ask that I tend to go all crazy-eyed and mutter something about life being a quest or whatever. Needless to say, it's something I try to do a lot. Some time in August I realized that it's a hell of a lot easier to keep on track with things when you know that everybody's watching. You won't surf the web when your boss is looking over your shoulder.

Suddenly this blog! If everybody can watch me ramble about raising my lactate threshold or teaching myself photography I'll be a lot less inclined to be lazy. This will hopefully be somewhat of an interactive blog. People should shame me if I start slacking off. People should shame me harder if I give up entirely.

Good? Good. Let's get started.