The Demise of a Network (Beware: Dutch content)
January 24, 2008
Three years ago I was sitting with some friends and we wondered why there are so many great students that never really get together and try to support eachother and stimulate self-improvement. So we started a network that did just that. Now, three years later after a fantastic time we decided the network served it’s purpose and we are disbanding it. The reason I’m mentioning it now isn’t really because I’m dramatic about it. Actually I’d like to share some of the more popular Show & Tell presentations that we made. So here you go…
Memes and the three 3x == action rule
December 27, 2007
In a previous post I’ve mentioned the concept of memes, something I recently learned about and started to research. But how I started that research is a complete story of it’s own.. A story I’m now going to share (obviously ;-) )
I’m an avid reader. A few months ago I was reading three books:
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- Mind Performanche Hac ks by Ron Hale-Evans
There was no real reason behind this selection, just books that came on my path and I started reading. Imagine when I reached a point in all three books where they discuss (in some form) the exact same concept: memes. I’m sure this is public knowledge for everyone who’s heard about memes, but I didn’t know it at the time.
This coincidence was a perfect example of my 3 times == action rule (discussed earlier) and so I was committed to researching the topic more thoroughly. So suddenly I find myself confronted with this little gem of a theory (which may or may not be scientifically valid), and as it turns out I can actually apply this theory in two business ideas I’ve been working on for years!
On another note, Kelly Abbott from Dandelife alerted me that what what my way of ‘filtering’ topics on how much you happen to come across them is closely related to a known philosophical concept: Jungian Synchronicity. Cool! So Kelly, thanks for even more to research ;-)
(Sidebar) When I’m talking about memetics I’m talking about the theory that treats pieces of knowledge almost like biological entities that can replicate and spread… not in the way that people sometimes call a hyped idea or popular concept a ‘meme’ (They are memes of course, but only a small category)..(End of sidebar)
The Mission revealed ;-)
December 3, 2007
Yesterday, I wrote about how I finally managed to write my mission statement (after trying to for months), that post was not all bad but it missed a minor thingy.. the mission statement itself ;-)
As promised, here is the end result. I know it might sound a bit pretentious, high-browed or maybe even downright arrogant, but that’s not the intention. It’s just what happens if you want an ambitious mission I guess :-)
My Mission
I believe that the defining feature of a worthwile life is to live it according to a good and ambitious mission. There is no predetermined goal in our lives or any prearranged plan, nor is this life a simple preamble to a better ‘after-life’. We live now, and only during this life. Everything we want to do or want to be we should do or be now!
The essence of leaving a good life is to do well for others and myself in a way that is as positive and meaningful to everyone involved, which over time develops into a legacy that will determine how much my life has meant to others. I refuse to live my life according to a work-eat-watch tv-sleep routine.
Integrity
For me the most important value is integrity. To live life with honesty. good intentions and good actions. I love how it feels to be completely honest and want to be able to keep feeling that way.Do Good
In every situation and at every time I promise to myself and the world to the thing that I feel is the right thing to do. This is the only way to make a positive impact and maintain integrity. The personal consequences are of secondary importance only.
Positive
I admire loyal positive people with vision, passion and the persistence to make things happen. Those are the people to keep around me, Those are the people to be inspired by.
My general attitude should be appropriately humble, strongly empathic, resourceful and very calm/organized even in very stressful situations. Towards those close to me I want to be fun to be with and caring/loving.
Self-Development
I will always keep trying to improve myself in every aspect of life. Improving myself makes me a more capable person, which increases my capacity to do good actionsGoals
I will always make, have, keep and achieve goals that I set for myself. The most importantt of which are in this document and will be kept up to date.
All goals should follow my guidelines for integrity, doing good, being positive and self-development.
- To have a life that makes people ask “You did all that?” more and more often
- To directly improve the life of at least 1000 people significantly
- To visit every country and learn at least one important life lesson in each one
- Develop and maintain meaningful relationships with everyone I care about
- Die without regrets
I am not a saint, nor will I ever be. I will most likely slip up once in a while. This is not good, and I won’t stand for it.. but I will not be sidetracked from this mission as long as I live.
I am open about this mission and will distribute it so that others can hold me accountable for its contents and my actions.
“The worst state of being is remembering the future”
Signed,
Me.
So there you have it, it might not be the most original text ever written, but it’s who I am :-) And as you can see all the elements I discussed in yesterday’s article are there. The goals, values, philosophy, the accountability to those around me. The quote at the end is there as a ‘mission reminder’ and it sums up the lifestyle quite well I think.
I found it a difficult and fairly confronting process, but inspiring in a way. One I certainly recommend.
Cheers,
–
Wafel
How I finally got my mission
December 2, 2007
I’ve been pondering for a while, on how personal my stories here should get and very nearly decided that they shouldn’t be all too personal (I feel so.. exposed ;-) ), but in the end I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t talk about things I find interesting, personal or not.
So that leads me to this (long!) post. Personally, I am not a religious person, I don’t believe in anything really supernatural; an after-life or personal deity. For me that means that I believe I have one life, and that this life is all the more precious because it is the only one I’ll ever have. It also means that I don’t think we have a predefined destiny or goal. In this post I’ll try to explain how I got mine.
This gives full control of a life to the person leading it, and it gives the option to determine your own goal/mission/meaning. A great opportunity, but what should that mission be?
I’ve thought about that for ages, always having some ideas about what I feel is most important in my life, but I never got around to actually writing something like a mission statement. My experience: writing something like that holds something of a Catch-22:
- It feels like a huge task and so it’s hard to actually start writing it;
- When you are writing it, it feels so important (you’re deciding what you want your goals te be after all), that it’s hard to be satisfied and actually stop and finalize it
A few months ago I started working on this, first thinking about what should definitely be in my mission statement, after some thinking I settled on these aspects:
- Something about my philosophy;
- What kind of life I want and don’t want;
- What kind of person I want to be;
- What I want to do (tangible goals);
- What kind of people I want in my life.
Not likely to be a short text huh? So, where to start? Well, I tried to fill in these points.
Philosophy
I see my philosophy as a kind of optimistic secular humanism. I believe in people, I believe that we live in societies and that what we contribute to that society is a great measure of our live. I also believe that if anyone is to judge what we do, it should be the people close to us.
The kind of life I want
This was actually most easily defined by me by saying what I don’t want: I always try to fight a very common lifestyle here in the Netherlands: People wake up, they go to work, go home and sleep on the couch, eat, and sleep in bed. That eat-pee-sleep routine would be horror!
The person I’d like to be (actions and values)
The tricky part, everyone has values and everyone is able to name a few of them, but it gets harder when you try to really prioritize them. Is integrity more important than loyalty? And honesty more important than empathy? It’s almost an impossible task. What I did, being the geek that I am, I put my values in a decision matrix with the values on both rows and column heads. That way every cell is a crossing point between to values, In the cell I wrote the value that I found more important. I then counted the number of times a certain value won and ordered the list accordingly.
It’s quirky; strange and slightly ludricous.. but it worked ;-)
My list of most important values in order of decreasing importance was: Integrity, Meaningful relationships, Legacy, Honesty, Loyalty, Personal development.
Tangible goals
A not too vague list of things I really want to achieve :-)
What kind of people I want in my life
That was easy.
So… that gave me enough to go and write something that at least hopefully sounds somewhat intelligent and not too pretentious :-) The final result… will be in the next post ;-)
(To be continued)
Image by me, on Flickr
On the information overload myth…
October 19, 2007
Okay, I’m going to make a point here, and I’m going to hammer it in relentlessly: There is no such thing as information overload! I repeat: There’s no such thing as information overload! Here’s why:
Information by definition thanks it’s status to the fact that it’s somehow useful or relevant to you. If it’s not, it’s not information anymore… just a pile of data. Data + Added value = Information. If you get overloaded, what you’re experiencing is actually a lack of information, caused by an overload of data.
This may sound like a silly semantic argument, but it’s not: It’s a good illustration of how to solve the issue.. get rid of the data by converting it into useful information. What you can do is set up a “Personal Supply Chain of Knowledge” as Thomas Friedman calls it in “The World is Flat”… which sound very fancy but is very fast becoming a real option with todays technology.
With Web 2.0 sites using RSS, web services, OPML and all kinds of other technologies, we have an unparalleled capacity to pull data in, and convert it to information that is useful to us. For about two years now I’ve been trying to realize this, with mixed success.. but with tools like Netvibes and Yahoo Pipes, it’s getting so much easier!
Quality of information
For now, I’d like to stick to the essentials: What makes good information? What gives it added value? My (admittedly limited) research shows that the following factors are critical:
- The recipient. The data has to get to the right person;
- Time of arrival. It has to get there in a specific timeframe;
- Authority of/Trust in the originating source;
- The effort it takes to absorb the information;
- The ‘resolution’ of the information.
Items 1-3 are fairly easy to determine, or at least have clear opimal values: The right recipient, at the right time, from the right source. Number 4 and 5 are a bit more tricky: You want to get things as detailed as possible (high resolution), but the higher the resolution, the more effort it takes to absorb it… so these two need to balance out.
When you’ve got these bases covered on just about all data that reaches you, you’d have a dream system. Of course, that’s not going to work yet, but we can at least make a start! More about specific tools and methods later…
Kisses,
–
Wafel
Picture attributed to Buglay on Flickr
Embracing constraints
October 18, 2007
“You have to embrace the constraints”, that’s what people keep telling me about a myriad of subjects.
When you write poetry, people tell you to stick to the forms. When you write software, you have to stay within time and budgetary limits. When you dance, your style should better not be too unusual… the list just goes on and on! But why? What does it mean?
I have to admit I never really got it, I mean, I understand the logic of staying within established boundaries, but why should you embrace that like it’s a good thing?
This week, I’m happy to say.. I got it! You see, last Friday I went on a short trip to Lisbon* on an unbelievably low budget, low as in “Do I even have enough money to get back to the airport?”. And it turned out to be amazing!
You see, in Lisbon it turns out that transportation is very cheap, so we decided to check out the region for two days — the cheapest possible option.
On the first day we went hiking through the hills instead of taking the bus (which we were told is a choice you’d only make if you’re mad or masochistic), the walk was tough, but beautiful. On the second we got a free bike on loan in a beach village called Cascais, and went for a mind blowing ride along the coast of the Atlantic. If we’d have more money, I doubt we’d have gone walking and biking, busses were available both times… they’d have saved us hours.. but oh boy what we’d have missed!
I feel so lucky we were broke ;-) Embracing constraints indeed!
* = Hence my short absence here ;-)
Mental hygiene
October 10, 2007
Today, I’d like to talk a little bit about ideas and how to handle, generate and select ideas. But for that, I’d like to start somewhere else: genes and evolution. Most people nowadays believe that evolution by natural selection exists, and genes are completely accepted facts. Evolution simply means that genes replicate, they do that imperfectly (some random abberation occur) and they are mixed because the genes of our parents are mixed. These random abberations are significant, because they can lead to disadvantages or advantages to the bearer of that gene. Over time, the carriers of the advantageous trait are more likely to procreate, and so slowly more and more offspring will have that trait.
But as Richard Dawkins points out, why should this principle only work for genes? Why couldn’t it work for anything else that evolves based on imperfectly self-replicating things? Why wouldn’t work for culture for instance? Culture is based on building blocks like ideas, fashions etc. In “The Selfish Gene” he proposed the term: “meme”, which is now actually empirically studied in “memetics”. A meme is nothing more or less than an idea or concept that can be replicated between us.
The very cool thing about this theory, is that you can apply a whole lot of principles of evolution to explain how ideas (memes) are transmitted. And since there are very few limits on the capacity of ideas to ‘procreate’, we get to see very viral/parasitic patterns. Please think about the implications of this! (Then, click on the More link… :-) )
My new lifehack rule: Three times = action
October 3, 2007
How we process the information that comes to us is a curious thing. I mean, we are bombarded with information through all kinds of channels, targeted at all our senses, that we somehow know how to manage. Apparently, we see more images now each day, than people who lived a few hundred years back saw in their entire life!
Most of this information we filter out (a necessary and healthy strategy), but that comes with a risk of ignoring something that could actually be incredibly interesting. I noticed a while back though, that if I’m confronted with a word, concept, product or something like that, repeatedly (without it being advertisements) it leads me to look into it further.
This is a very logical and completely unsurprising conclusion, but if you are conscious of it, you can actually enforce it on purpose. And that’s what I do now.
An example: Let’s say I overheard someone talking about an obscure author on Friday; happened to see an interview with that author on Saturday and saw the book in a bookstore few days later. Normally, I might or might not do something with this, but I now have a new rule:
3 times means action.
So if I get confronted with something three times during a short period, I force myself to look into it (in this case, I bought the book). This way, I force myself not to think about if something fits my interests, and add an element of surprise… which goes perfectly with the whole comfort zone story! An added advantage is that automatically you follow most trends :-)
After a while you start to see the most weirdly interesting things, just because you have a somewhat randomly seeded, objective filter of what to look into, despite your frame of reference.
I know it sounds stupid and futile, but it’s cool! :-)
Do something strange each week!
October 1, 2007
In my last post I talked a bit on stress and how utterly and completely useless I think it is. But fair enough, as some people pointed out there also a thing called healthy tention.
What I try to do in my life (and find really challenging sometimes) is to try and get out of my comfort zone at least once a week. Of course I don’t manage to do that every week, but it feels nice and refreshing anyway.
As you know everyone has a comfort zone, which we are strongly urged to stay in by ourselves because we function best when we do things we actually know very well how to do. When you step out of your comfort zone, you have to think about your every move or response because your not using your normal and strengthened neural connections. This is very energy consuming, and our bodies like to conserve energy.. that’s why it really doesn’t want to go there.
On the other hand, when you do step out of your comfort zone, you feel more alive, you learn a lot and you create new neural connections for later use. You also gain the ability to look at things from different perspectives or see new connections that you didn’t see before… which might be very valuable even in business.
So what qualifies? A lot actually!
- The obvious if of course to go skydiving, paragliding or something like that (I’m planning on taking a paragliding course next year :-) woohoo!).
- But it doesn’t have to be that extreme. Why not try going to a professional conference on some topic that is completely out of your normal field of expertise (For example, I’m in IT but went to a philosophical conference on ‘what makes an educated man?’ a few weeks ago. It was amazing)
- Or even simpler: Talk to people you’d normally never talk to; Ask if you can follow someone during work for a day if they have an interesting job; do some volunteering or simply read an obscure magazine/blog!
I’ll personally take anything to stay away from the TV ;-)
Kisses and my apologies if I sound to pedantic ;-)
Have a great day,
–
Wafel
Picture attributed to Roee C. on flickr.
On the uselessness of stress…
September 28, 2007
You know, I see a lot of people around me getting stressed quite regularly (which obviously has nothing to do with my charming personality)… but no matter how much I try to understand why people experience this kind of negative stress.. I just fail to see what the use of it is. This probably makes me a social outcast, but like any social outcast: I don’t care ;-) Here’s how I see it:
Situational stress (external factors):
Almost all stress is caused by being in a situation we don’t like. Whether it’s in traffic, in shops or at work, it’s stress caused by external factors that we let get to us. Truth is:
You can either do something about the situation you don’t like (and stress will only get in your way when you’re working on it) or you can’t (In which case the only option is to accept that fact, again stress is useless). That’s about the only options there are. Now isn’t that nice and simple? A recipe for happiness I’d say ;-)
Mental stress (internal factors):
Mental stress is in essence caused by a phenomenon called “cognitive dissonance”, which is a fancy way of saying that you have conflicting thoughts, or that your thoughts/actions conflict with your believes. There’s no quick fix against this but there should be no reason to have this kind of stress if you:
- Have clear goals and visions
- Live according to your own set of standards and beliefs
- Are honest with yourself and others
So… now that that’s of my mind, I feel a lot better ;-)
Kisses,
Wafel
