Always do your best

“Always do your best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse and regret.”

The fourth of the four agreements #

Goals vs Systems

Scott Adams wrote about the importance of Systems over Goals (he’s since gone a bit crazy but I still like this thinking)

“…I talk about using systems instead of goals. For example, losing ten pounds is a goal (that most people can’t maintain), whereas learning to eat right is a system that substitutes knowledge for willpower.

Scott Adams

Here’s another example. Going to the gym 3-4 times a week is a goal. And it can be a hard one to accomplish for people who don’t enjoy exercise. Exercising 3-4 times a week can feel like punishment – especially if you overdo it because you’re impatient to get results. When you associate discomfort with exercise you inadvertently train yourself to stop doing it. Eventually you will find yourself “too busy” to keep up your 3-4 days of exercise. The real reason will be because it just hurts and you don’t want to do it anymore. And if you do manage to stay with your goal, you use up your limited supply of willpower.

Scott Adams

Compare the goal of exercising 3-4 times a week with a system of being active every day at a level that /feels/ good, while continuously learning about the best methods of exercise. Before long your body will be trained, like Pavlov’s dogs, to crave the psychological lift you get from being active every day. It will soon become easier to exercise than to skip it – no willpower required. And your natural inclination for challenge and variety will gently nudge you toward higher levels of daily activity while at the same time you are learning in your spare time how to exercise in the most effective way. That’s a system.”

Scott Adams

Imposter Syndrome

“The root cause of the impostor syndrome is a hugely unhelpful picture of what other people are really like. We feel like impostors not because we are uniquely flawed, but because we fail to imagine how deeply flawed everyone else must also be beneath a more-or-less polished surface.”

School of Life #

Perspective

“When life’s knocked you around a bit and when you’ve seen a few things, and time has happened and you’ve got some years under your belt, you start to think more highly of modest things like flowers and a pretty sky, or just a morning where nothing’s wrong and everyone’s been pretty nice to each other.”

Alain de Botton

“remember the system is for us, we are not for the system”

Unknown

“It wasn’t until I committed to traveling a journey of intentional self growth that I discovered where life is really lived—in the mundane. Life is lived in those in-between moments we often hurry past. It’s in the car rides to school, standing in the grocery line with your son, reading to your kids before bed time, or clearing off the dinner table as a family.”

Eric Ungs #

“Whatever happens, it’ll be a new experience. Even if it’s horrible, it’ll be a new kind of horrible.”

Overheard in The Big Issue Magazine

“Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” It might sound like something straight out of a horror movie, but for 38 minutes terrified Hawaiian residents thought the world was going to end.

At 8:07am on Saturday (local time), locals and tourists on the small island woke up to a message that many have feared amid North Korea’s development of a ballistic nuclear weapon.

Panicked residents gathered family members, ran out onto the streets and desperately sought shelter as they awaited the attack.

Cars were reportedly abandoned on highways and people who were outside at the time hid in the homes of neighbours as others prepared to flee.

Those watching television also had their broadcasts interrupted by the ballistic missile threat alert, according to NBC.”

A true story – some perspective for when you feel bad about your production bug #

Quotes

“Under the hood, most critical software you use every day (like Mac OS X, or Facebook) contains a terrifying number of hacks and shortcuts that happen to barely fit together into a working whole. It would be like taking apart a brand-new 747 and discovering that the fuel line is held in place by a coat-hanger and the landing gear is attached with duct tape.”

Ben Cherry

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we’ve created and by the constant barrage of so called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful… The place of stillness that you have to go to write, but also read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world…”

Jonathan Franzen

Three Hobbies

“Find 3 hobbies, 1 to make you money, 1 to keep you in shape, and 1 that let’s you be creative.”

Unknown

I’ve seen this a few times, I don’t know the original source, but I think about it a fair bit as it’s much better than the usual ‘do what you love’ mantra.

My (current) hobby for making money is software/web development, my (current) hobby for keeping me in shape is bush walking and my (current) hobby for being creative is visual art.

I have found recognizing and focusing on all three leads to a more balanced and healthier life.