Some inflammation in my hand (carpal tunnel?). Nearly skipped exercise this morning, then thought there’s plenty to do without hand-stuff (that just sounds dirty). Such as knee rehab, for instance. Bummer not to be able to practice pull-ups and handstands, though.

I have started to set the rules. Here’s the first one:

Rule #1: Get up at 06:30.

That may not seem like much, but when I have had trouble falling asleep, a late night having drinks with friends, or just woken up repeatedly because of mosquities, I tend to press that snooze button more than a few times. Any exceptions have to be determined beforehand. These are: being sick, and recovering from jet lag (which I will manage according to a new app I downloaded). Update: Totally forgot about the app…

Apart from the “how”, which from now on I shall call the mode, I have found that the “where” also makes a great difference. Being in my study all day can become a drag, especially when you’re not finding flow. For me, the answer is often to simply go do the same work somewhere else. I like going to coffee shops or restaurants – and these should preferably not be fancy. Some kind of franchise with horrific décor is perfect for me. I put on the noise-canceling headphones, a jazz album, and go. (Weirdly, this is pretty much the only time I listen to jazz.) I especially like to have a booth to myself, and waiters that aren’t too attentive. If they get to know you, so much the better, since they know you do not want to be disturbed until your cup is empty. Because I’m taking up table space on not having anything to eat, I make sure to always leave a big tip – upwards of 30%.

Once again, it is a day filled with tiny and annoying tasks, including physically going to the bank, (why does this still exist?). To make this more bearable, and to sneak in a little mini-flow, which I am just assuming exists, I am grabbing an hour at a coffee place to work on setting and solving some equations. Because I am out of the house, there is little distraction regarding the move, and I can get focused very quickly. For the same reason, I love working on long flights. Most of the movies suck anyway, but when my brain gets full I will turn to something which probably has many, many explosions. (“Bullet Train” really hit the spot on my last flight.) To make this work, you have to experiment a bit in order to get to know your own style. On the plane, I won’t do very high-level conceptual work, but rather hands-on things, like writing or calculating. This means that it is vital to decide on what to do beforehand. Same with the restaurant. If I have a clear idea of what to do, I bring only the relevant material and get stuck in immediately. The mental act of preparation and the physical act of isolation gets me to a very good place, very quickly, and I have spent many of my best working sessions this way.

Back to goals. Now that I have a purpose, I need the high, hard goals. Since these are supposed to contribute directly to my purpose, I am going to let these have a timeframe of several months to years. My feeling is that you should be a different person once these have been achieved, in the sense that you will be much closer to the person who can fulfill that purpose. It should be tangibly closer.

I am not trying to have the best goals possible at the moment. I just need something to get me started. It is okay for your goals to shift, until they feel right. You don’t have to get it right out of the gate! Finding the right goals is an exercise in self-exploration, and I urge you to approach it that way. I have set many goals in my life that I have never achieved, and, to be honest, did not particularly want to. This is because those goals originated in what I thought I had to be doing and in the expectations of others. When you explore your goals, you might even find out that your purpose gets adjusted, as well.

You should spend time on your purpose before you write it down, diving deep into what will satisfy you. But I do not recommend spending so long on it and making it such a big deal that you are paralyzed for weeks. Take a few hours, write it down, work on your goals, and re-think. Self-knowledge does not arise overnight. Pay careful attention to your feelings; they are there to let you know whether you are on the right track. They do not lie. And as you evolve, so might your purpose and goals.

A warning is necessary here. I am not advocating that goals should be easily discarded when something new and shiny comes along. Pursuing a goal is hard, and that is what makes it satisfying. Really invest in the soul-searching. For myself, I have found myself out of alignment with certain goals, but that was not because the goal was wrong. Rather, my mode was wrong, in the sense that I was approaching the goal in the way I though it should be done, rather than the way which is true to my specific character and neurology.

Tablets – a must for reading and note-taking

Drove back from dropping the cat off this morning. Driving sometimes wipes me out, especially a difficult, pothole-ridden road like this, and added to that is the emotional burden of having said goodbye to one of my favorite creatures of all time. There is a mountain before me this week, consisting of the thousand tasks to make the move to Canada possible. I don’t want my Flow experiment to take a back seat, but the more I can get done this week regarding the move, the more I can schedule work sessions for the next without being weighed down by a mind drifting to all that is unaccomplished. Less than a month to go before getting on the plane.

One of the biggest problems when you have many, many small things to do in a limited time frame is knowing which order to do them in. I feel the pressure creeping up on me, and am a little paralyzed. In such a case, I only know one way to get momentum: do the easiest possible thing. It is of course common wisdom that the most difficult task should be done first, but that mindset only leads me to procrastinate. I prefer doing the easiest, quickest thing, which gives me a tiny nudge, building my momentum so that I realize I can get the next one done, and so on. Now, this does not work when you have only one or two major tasks for the day, because you might actually use the accomplishment of these small tasks as a method of procrastination. As I’ve said previously, you can do something to get into flow, like I’m doing with writing, it just should not serve as a means of avoidance.

But back to goals. I now have two, high-level goals that give me an inspired direction for my life. When I feel like skipping a morning workout, I can remind myself of the second one. When I feel like watching Netflix instead of reading up on my field, I can remind myself of the first one, and know that every wasted moves that goal further away from me.

That is still not enough. When your goals are lofty, it is sometimes easy to ignore them, especially when you’re not certain what the next step is. So we have to introduce the high, hard goals, as Kotler calls them. This is one step below the previous, and should be more achievable, but contribute to the purpose-related goals.

This is a page for things that I am finding useful in my search for flow, and in my life in general.

My new favourite thing (kind of): The Supernote A5X. I love taking notes by hand, but was sick and tired of having ten notebooks for all the things I’m reading and interested in. I was using the Rocketbook, but that essentially contained only notes for work. It was still isomorphic to an ordinary notebook as well, so switching between topics was not effortless, and space ran out quickly. With the Supernote, I can do all the writing I want, knowing they’ll be synced to my Dropbox, and can use the same device for every topic.

I did a lot of research on E-ink notebooks before settling on the Supernote, and it is a pleasure to use. However! There is one big problem! My battery runs down markedly overnight, when it is supposed to be sleeping. I can lose anywhere from 20 to 50% overnight, which often means I have to charge it in the morning before I can start working. Of course, you can use it while charging, but the cable is a pain. I am going to give Supernote the benefit of the doubt though, and assume this is not normal behaviour. I have already contacted support and will update here if they come through – or not.

UPDATE: The Supernote seems to have stabilized. Whilst I did not hear back from Supernote support after initial contact, battery life seems to have increased over time and I can now get many days of hard use from it. No more mystery drains. I am loving it more and more.

Sony Headphones

Usually my “favourite thing” list was topped by my Kindle Fire or my Sony headphones, before the Supernote arrived. There is simply no better way to shut the world out than Sony’s noise-cancelling technology. And, they are bloody brilliant on planes – I never want to fly without them again. I go nowhere without these.

Art of Impossible

This really is the starting point. If you are at all interested in flow, get this.

L-Tyrosine

I am no medical doctor, and you should always consult with someone about supplements, especially if you have any underlying conditions. But this stuff is great! It works on your dopamine levels, and so should not be taken every day, if you’re taking it for focus. I use it twice a week, maximum. Those are often the two best days of the week…

Removable Whiteboard

This is not the exact brand I am using, since that one seems to have disappeared from Amazon. This is such a simple idea, but it works brilliantly. It’s great for keeping a project outline visible in my office and adjusting as needed. I also love thinking a problem through on a whiteboard, and of course it’s ideal for collaboration.

Still at the parents-in-law. The cat is settling in better than expected, but still requires a lot of attention. She is demanding, as befits the queen of all she surveys.

I’m getting in a substantial amount of pondering, at least, in-between trying to keep the cat from scaling every tree and destroying everything in sight. Still struggling with my purpose and main goals. That’s okay. Maybe I shouldn’t take it too seriously. Just take a purpose, write it down, see if it works, and change if it doesn’t. Try this one:

Purpose goal 1: Optimize my life and my mind so that I am able to finish one research-level project each month, whilst having more fun working than should be humanly possible.

What makes that resonate with me is that it is very much focused on the how, the process. On the other hand, it has a component that doesn’t seem to be measurable. How do you measure fun? Also, it’s not really “change the world” type stuff, is it? But perhaps that is okay, too. The important thing is to have something to get me going. At the end of the day, I want to look back and go, “That was great! Can’t wait to do it again!”

Something Kotler emphasizes is the need to accomplish more than one thing at the same time. This does not mean splitting focus, but that you should carefully choose your pursuits so they can contribute to more than one aspect of your life. In the spirit of this, I am going to add another purpose-level goal, even though the first one hasn’t yet been formulated properly.

Purpose goal 2: Ski a double black diamond.

This is something that is dear to my heart. I started wrestling at an early age, had to quit because of injuries, took up cycling and Tai Chi, which I am practicing to this day. Additionally, I maintain fitness through various other forms of exercise (e.g., calisthenics and kettlebells, swimming). I am not in peak shape at the moment, but physical activity is such a major part of my life that it would feel wrong if I did not include it on my purpose-level. Additionally, I know how much this impacts my mental capabilities, mood and getting into flow. Neglecting it it inconceivable.

For those of you who ski often, the above might not seem to be much of a goal. Just remember that I am 48 and have spent a total of two days on a snowboard. More than that, I sustained a catastrophic knee injury about five years ago (two torn ligaments, torn tendon, ruptured meniscus, cracked bone). I did tons of rehab, and things were going well – until I re-injured it by pushing too hard. The knee has never been the same, and since I am a 6’4”, 230-pound human, it has a lot of work to do. Even the thought of getting on the snow fills me with a slight terror, but man, I want to ski!

Adding in a torn ligament on the other knee from my wrestling days, plus several ankle tears, it’s going to take a lot of work. Right now, I’m following this guy: