7 years, 7 goals

One of the book series I really enjoyed this year is the ‘Lightbringer‘ series by Brent Weeks. In the fictional Lightbringer world, people who wield power/magic die faster with its use. The main character Gavin is known as the “Prism”, who is the most powerful person in the world – but he has only seven years to live. One of the main themes in this series then, is Gavin’s own seven great goals that he’s set for himself over his estimated seven years of life left. Another interesting thing about this series is how accepted the notion is that these magic users will have a shorter life span and without spoiling the content of the book too much, they basically willingly end their lives at a rather young age because it is the social norm.

Now, age and mortality is a topic that I’ve thought about a lot. My basic view on this subject is that it sucks that we all get old and expire, and that the world would be a better place if could live to longer (or become immortal) while still being healthy/productive. I could rant a lot on this topic, but that’s really not the purpose of this post.

I’m 27 now and about to be 28 in less than 1 month. In seven years, I’ll be almost 35 (which, in my current view is pretty much the last age that I could consider myself as kind of young) and this is a fine time to set seven great goals for myself in the next seven years.

Seven years, seven goals
Live healthier
Develop at least 3 new hobbies
Gain mastery in an area I’m passionate about
Have a major career change
Get married
Have children
To be determined

Original post: http://www.dong-ming.net/7-years-7-goal/

TED talk: Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html

According to this talk, being happy leads to success and it isn't the other way around (success -> happiness).

The few simple changes he recommends to improve happiness are:

1. 3 Gratitudes (write down 3 things you are grateful for every day)

2. Journaling (Journal about one positive experience over the last 24h)

3. Exercise

4. Meditation

5. Random Acts of Kindness

Polyphasic sleep update

I have not been very consistent or successful with polyphasic sleep but at this point I've tried it out enough times to report some initial findings.

The main problem is that I have a lot of trouble actually getting up when I'm supposed to, it's especially hard to convince myself to get up when I don't actually have anything better to do than sleep. The other thing is, sleep is fun and comfortable, so if I stick to a polyphasic sleep schedule then that means I am giving that up =(

With that out of the way, on to the key discovery so far:

1. With the Everyman method (where you nap 3 times a day and have 1 core sleep totally 4h of sleep), I gave up after 2 days and it was simply because I was tired after waking up and I went back to sleep =) I blame 50% lack of discipline and 50% on just hardness to adjust. I read online as well that Everyman takes about a week or two to adjust to, and well.. I gave up after 2 days. I may revisit this at some point but see point below.

2. With the Uberman method, where you sleep a total of 2h over 6 naps of 20min a day - I actually had pretty reasonable successes with this. Namely, I did this for one whole day without feeling tired at all. I accidentally overslept the second day, but that again was because I didn't have anything pressing to do on a Sunday morning... I blame this fail 85% on lack of discipline.

From the two points above, I think I will persue the Uberman method. With my current schedule, I figured out it was best if I stick to a 1-5-9 schedule, and nap at 1, 5, 9 AM/PM. 1PM-2PM will be my lunch hour/nap time between work. And I will be at work between 9:30-1PM and 2-4:30PMish. Yeah, this means I'm at work for 7H a day but then my work is pretty flexible so I can always work from home in the other extra hours I gain to make up for this.

Some challenges I see ahead & potential solutions:

Problem #1: Motivation/discipline to stick to this

Potential solution: I need to write up a list of things I can do with my extra time, and then actually stick to it. Finding that list of things isn't hard, I'll publish that in a later post - but sticking to it has always been hard for me. Let's make 'being more disciplined' a goal for this year =)

Problem #2: Strict napping schedules are bound to get upset by random events. Also makes my schedule not so flexible

Potential solutions: I think there should generally be about a 1 hour or so window that I can do my make-up nap in without being upset. I think I will also have to account for times when I can't get that and just get owned instead. So assuming the latter case happens, there are a couple of things I want to experiment with to combat this:

1. Can I switch between polyphasic and normal sleep and just do poly-phasic sleep when it suits me? My 1 day experiment says I can, since the next day I was able to sleep at regular times for regular hours without any problems. This may be because I generally screw with my sleep cycles for the heck of it so maybe I'm used to this. But definitely need more investigations here to see if I can really pull this off long term. I really like this idea if it works because this would mean I can still enjoy sleep and sleeping for the sake of sleeping when I want to, but I can also not if I have better things to do.

2. Assuming #1 doesn't work out, the other option is to just take the hit and still stick to the strict schedule. Maybe make up for it every now and then, so like maybe for 1 day of the week I can sleep regularly to make up for any potential sleep lost during the interrupted days.

Well that's it for now, will report back with more interesting findings as I experiment more.