Things I've learned recently - The Black Swan

The Black Swan is teaching me a few things.  One of those things is that when you look back on how you might have made decisions previously, you'll use your current frame of mind to understand those decisions.  Therefore, writing down your decision process and what you were thinking at the time can be very valuable to see where you've come from and to understand how you're different now than you were before.  In that way, you can help yourself make better decisions because you can understand decisions you made previously that you would not make in the same way now.  It wasn't because you were stupider back then, but because you were working under a different set of rules at the time.  I plan on using this information to understand my decision process as I think about going back to get my MBA.

If I really am focused on becoming happier myself and sharing that around, then there are some things I have to do.  For instance, I'm trying many  of the things that I read that give an idea about making me happier.  However, I want to know if all of them apply to me or not.  Therefore, I need to experiment and document what actually makes me happier.  One of the things I'm a bit skeptical about is whether meditation will be helpful for me.  Today the benefit that I got from it was that it allowed me to separate from my normal thought process and gave me some space to start thinking about different ideas.  I expect that this may be very common and it could be the intention and point of meditation.  Therefore, I'll be trying to track how this works and if it continues to offer new ideas and inspiration for me.  Also, is it proportional to the amount of time I spend meditating?  I'm curious what the ideal amount of time for me to meditate would be.  I'll start with a short amount of time first, and then as I have time, I'll experiment with more time to see what happens.  This first time I only did it for just a few minutes, but it still seemed to be helpful.  This blog post is actually inspired by the meditating I just did.

50,000 Ft. Goals and assumptions

I'm actually shocked to realize that this was way easier to do than I thought it would be.  I had a fit of inspiration in the shower, and I was able to knock this out in however much time since my last post.  I did cheat and listened to a short chapter in Getting Things Done about the 40,000 and 50,000 ft. goals.  I also looked at a lesson on stephencovey.com about the different areas for setting goals, the body, mind, heart, and spirit.  I really enjoy both of these books.

50,000 Ft. Goals and assumptions

Core Goal

My goal in life is to maximize the overall amount of happiness in the world.  I had the most impact that I could because I kept my body strong.  I was an ever increasing influence because I kept improving my mind.  My connections with other people allowed me to make this impact.  The spirit is what this is all about.

Belief and Assumptions

This can be best done by giving away the amount of happiness that you are most interested in

It will always come back to you stronger

You get the most attention or anything else by paying attention to others in the area

You get the most X by giving away the most X.

Maximizing the length of life without maximizing the quality isn’t worth it.  That’s because all the areas are connected.  Maximizing life without paying attention to the other areas is worthless.

Life is a multi variable equation, and some things go up and others go down.  You have to try and work on the variable that has the biggest dominance in the area you’re working.  In the end, I believe that happiness is the independent variable.

We’re constantly optimizing the next variable up.  Life is getting more and more complex, at an increasing speed.

The world is full of S curves of improvement

People can be happier when they know more about themselves and how things work.  I believe this because it is true for me, and it is taught in many philosophies.

Buddhism is a great philosophy, mainly because it’s an introspective look at how the world works

The world is an infinite place.  There’s too much scarcity thinking in the world and that generally holds people back.

There is always better than now, it just may be difficult to achieve.

Openness is good.  It’s hard to improve without it.  Openness breeds more openness.

Money is neither good nor evil; it’s all about what you do with it.

I believe I can do more good with a business than I could working at an NGO.

Children are one of the most difficult and most worthy proofs that you can actually execute on what you’re saying.

Knowing without executing isn’t worthless, but it’s not worth a whole lot either.

Absolutes are rarely that.

My next post goal

Part of the reason I started this blog was to try and hold myself personally accountable for the things I want to do.  I figured there's no better way of doing that then publishing something on the internet for the world to see.  Well, that's not quite right.  The best way is to publish it to all your friends and family.  Since I'm not quite ready for that, I'll do it here, much more anonymously.  I'm trying to come up with my life goals.  I won't guarantee they won't change, but I want to have something that I'm aiming for.  My goal is that my next post will be those goals.

First Post

I'm creating a blog not because I feel like it will be useful for anyone else, but mostly because it seems like a cheap and easy way to create a log of what I was thinking about all sorts of random shit at that time.  Hopefully I'll use it regularly, but if I don't, no harm, no foul.  My goal is to keep the time limited and not to invest any more than I'll actually get out of it later.  Since I don't know how much I'll get out of it later, I'll be starting with minimal investment.