Archives November 2022

Week 8: Want vs Planned

Last week I wrote about happiness, and as part of that I mentioned that I might be planning too much instead of doing what I truly want, and if that might reduce my overall happiness. For that reason, I mentioned that my Weekly goal was to have no goals and do everything on pure desire/want for a week.

While the past week was perhaps not the most “normal” with, more than normal, amount of social activities (Bank Meetings, Lectures, Coaching, Boardgaming and even a Diamond Wedding in the Family), I think it still gives value to dedicate this post to the out on what happened more or less

Remember also to enjoy it…

On 3 separate occasions this week, I was directly reminded of this by someone (most of them not reading the blog)… What are freedom and a privileged situation worth, if you spend all your time planning… I often blame others for going on vacations that they overplan too much (“scheduling every minute of the vacation to see the site, etc.”) resulting in them needing relaxation after the vacation (aka a vacation from the vacation), but reflecting, It seems that I do just the same, but with my life… The past week with no plans showed glimpses of that, and indicate to me that I need to go with the flow a bit more and enjoy it instead of thinking of it as a checkmark, that can be checked off… (Thank you to the people that reminded me over the week🙏)

It was a long week; in a good way

So now that the past week is over, I feel it was a lifetime ago since it was last Monday, sitting and writing about Happiness. If I did not have a calendar I could have sworn that some of the things during the week feels like 2-3 weeks ago.

Normally something feeling long is a bad thing, but here and now it just feels like “a good long week where lots of nice and interesting things happened”. I think it was because the week was so varied; it did not feel like “another week doing x,y,z…”. It just feels good and there is a desire for the same/more going forward.

The week in summary (what was more and what was less)

Here are the changes to the usual stuff I do, when desire controls over planned and reflection on the various topics.

Fitness

Even acting on pure desire, the want to be active is still very much in place. Running every morning is a delightful routine (it feels so good after) and the perfect start of the day for me. I’m slowly ramping up the length of the runs (still keeping a watchful eye on my knees), but the feeling of being in better shape overall is all worth it.
The same goes for walks, which I do way more often now (on average I run/walk at least 10k each day) [I walk instead of bike/bus to all activities I need to do if they are less than 5k from my home]… Helping with the motivation is also my Apple Watch that I bought purely for Run and Sleep back in October, but I now wear it all day… It gently reminds me to stand up from the computer and closing the rings has become a joyful “goal” each day 🙂 I can strongly recommend it despite not seeing the big deal about smart watches for years…

Best purchase I’ve done in a long while!

Sleep

Sleep during the week is overall better (average is finally over 7h), with one low hour-amount day… As it is getting colder and darker outside I’ve started to sleep a bit later (going later to bed so still the same amount of hours) so running is not too cold and in complete darkness.

Mindfulness

I’ve scaled back active mindfulness back a bit only doing 10 min instead of 15 each morning/evening and most focusing on breathing exercises as that type of meditation works best for me it seems. I see mindfulness as something to incorporate as much as possible in regular activity and direct meditation as a tool to overcome occasional stress or “too many thoughts”… Do think I will soon revisit my mindfulness book, to see if there is a “next step” in the practice, or things are good as they are.

Food and Weight

Pure want vs food made me realize that my meals and choices had become a bit too samey. So during the week I mixed it up a bit more and indulged a bit more from time to time; though still staying away from fast food! The result has been nice experience-wise and has resulted in no change on the scale (good but also bad wanting to achieve a better BMI). The week has thought me to not be so strict that it ruins the good food experience, but also that it is one of my weak spots that I need to somewhat keep a check on… I might experiment with intermittent fasting (done so in the past with great success), but also incorporate a “cheat day” to get a better balance toward the goal.

Work (Game Development)

This one is a bit odd. At the start of the week, not having a schedule for game development made me not do it at all for the first 3 days (the extra social activities during the week also contributed). At first, I got a bit discouraged that Game development might not be my new passion after all since “I don’t want to do it”. However, after the 3 days, I began to have a “longing” to work on the game at odd hours (often afternoon/night), and when I first sat down based on want, I sat there for a longer time than my planned 4 hours a day. Last day of the week (Sunday), for the first time I think I was truly “in the zone” of game-development feeling so much joy. So It seems the fixed game-development schedule is not working at the moment and I should react purely on desire here (seems to produce roughly the same amount of progress, but at odd hours and in bursts instead).

On top of game development, I also think it is soon time to experiment with my second passion; Agile Development Processes… More on that in later posts…

Social

While still in Introvert and social stuff is “tiring”, the extra of it this week really felt great and gave more variation to the week, so I will go the extra mile and out of my way to try and “dare” to participate in more social stuff… So far I have only been positive despite being “scary” and out of my comfort zone… Small steps…

So that was everything for this time… I’m going to run this week the same as the last, but only write about it, if the is a dramatic change; else this is a new way forward that fit me best at the moment

Have a nice week everyone and thank you for all that follow my ramblings here…
(I’m still overwhelmed that so many find value in what is just “therapy writing” for me) 😉

Week 7: Happiness?

Warning: This week’s post ended up being all over the place, so might not be too coherent, but the process of writing all the topics gave me too much to throw any of it away, but now you are warned 😉

Are Structure, Routine, and Ambition killing Happiness?

Above is an open question and not a conclusion, as I honestly don’t know, but lately, I’ve been reflecting on how I spend my time and why I spend it the way I do.

Those who know me, know I’ve always been very structured and leaving little to chance. In my previous job that was absolutely key as there was so much to do that it made me on the one hand successful, but on the other hand, slowly contributed to the burnout.

So when I left back in October and wanted to start anew, I knew that at the start I should experiment a lot and try new things and different ways to do them… I did that and while odd in the beginning it was liberating.

But slowly I got a handle on things and the new normal started to form (see Week 5 blog post for more), and with that came structure; perhaps a bit too much structure…

Hardest boss I ever had…

I’m now my own boss in everything, and this boss has an enormous ambition level!

  • Make an awesome Tower Defense Mobile Game and make it a success!
  • Become in you best shape of your life!
  • Do it all while being mindful to yourself and others!

So I do not have a “real” job anymore, but in the last few weeks, the structures and goals in place are resulting in me “working” all 7 days a week toward the above goal, and doing little more than the following every day

  • Morning Routine
    • Wake up @ 07:00
    • Meditate
    • Morning Run
  • Work (Unity Game Development)
  • Fitness
  • Evening Routine
    • Evening Walk
    • Meditation
    • Read
    • Sleep @ 22:00

I’m not saying that above is not nice and privileged that I can do this instead of work, but I’m unsure if this much structure is not killing spontaneity and true happiness???

As an example; even in my busy life before the change I saw TV series and Movies from time to time; something that has not happened in the last 1.5 months of freedom because there was “no time” on the schedule for it… (I am making it a bit black and white here; I have participated in entertainment, but just in a different way because “free time” and “work time” are so mixed up).

Looking back to my leaving announcement on LinkedIn I wrote this:

“So I need to re-balance; I need to find the spark again; I need something that consumes me less…“

Well, I for sure re-balanced something, and I am in pursuit of the new spark (Unity Game development is a good candidate for sure), but “the nature of me” might have thrown the balance scales off to something that is equally unbalanced, and consuming me too much…

What is happiness?

Yes, I know; All the above is 1st world problem, but it truly is a balance, and It is easy and privileged “not to work” but is it happiness?… what is happiness in general? If you google it you get this?

But my logical brain is not happy with that statement; So am I happy enough?; How to check? What is my happiness score and how do I compare to others (because of cause my ego wants to rank high)?…

This article is a good try at least to answer that and a recommended read, but being a subjective topic I will never get my “Score”.

My “worst-case scenario thinking” brain ruins everything!

I mentioned it in passings before, and people that know me best, know I have a severe case of “worst-case scenario thinking” and while I will explore this topic in a future blog post, I do believe at it is one of my great “enemies” in the pursuit of happiness, especially when it comes to social and relationship…

Peaked too early?

This one might be odd, but I sometimes “wish” I was in my 60s and soon to go on retirement, as I could look back on what I have accomplished (success, money), and now start my retirement “happy” that I would be done “performing”… But I’m not in my 60s, I’m in my 40s and there are 20 more years till I should think this way, and I find it scary that I need to come up with 20 years more of “brilliance” (yes; the ego sure does not find average good enough!) of contributions to some community like I did in the SAP Business One community… I try to convince myself that this is not that important, but in weak moments fail to do so.

Week 47 Experiment: A week without plans!

So I started this post with a question: “Are Structure, Routine, and Ambition killing Happiness?“, and to “find out”, I’m going to try and leave structure, routine, and ambition behind (as much as possible) for the week 47, and instead try and live these days on pure desire and “wish” instead of need on everything, and see where that takes me… Gonna be interesting to see if that is possible and where it will lead me to…

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Appendix: Here are the new and previous goal results

Week 6: AMA

Hi all, not much to share from last week, other than plan described last week are being followed and Weekly goals are being met (except for weight goal, where I’m stuck again and need to research why that is as I think I’m doing all the right things)…

Because not too much to talk about this week, I’ve decided that this post would be an AMA (Ask me Anything), so if you have a question to the blog, the journey or me, please ask them in the comments below (or ask them on LinkedIn)… Don’t be shy 😀

Disclaimer: I will not answer questions on behalf of Boyum IT Solutions, as it is not my right to do so…

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Appendix: Here are the new and previous goal results

Week 5: The new normal

Hi, all. In today’s post, I will try to describe my new life and what I spend my time on now vs before leaving.

Time distribution

As mentioned earlier, before leaving, I spent way too much time working and too little on everything else… Here is an approximation of the average time spent per day in percentage. aka not a good work-life balance.

Average time spent % per day before Leaving

After leaving and the adjustment period things have changed and there is much more diversification to my day, and a lot less work… One thing hower is that since I am in 100% control of my own structure the workdays vs weekends are blurred aways, so not making any distintions at the moment (I’m still evaluation if that is a good or bad thing…)

Average time spent % per day after Leaving

Let me describe each area in greater detail…

Work (45% >> 20%)

Work time is roughly cut down to half, simply prioritizing other things. Right now the “work” is Unity Game Development, which is more school than work at the moment, where I follow an online set of courses. The training plan is as follows

While hard (long time since I was in school mode) I have promised myself to stick with learning before I start my own project, which is a hybrid of Diablo and Tower Defense set in a time-travel theme. The goal is to make the game a get it published, with long long-term goals of making a cross-over board game with the same theme… More about the project when we get closer…

Sleep (23% >> 33%)

I slept way too little in the past thinking I could get by with 5-6 hours a day (and now known after a recent lecture on sleep that that self-estimation of enough sleep is an illusion the mind trick you into thinking). So I have a fixed Sleep schedule of 23:00 >> 07:00 every day including weekends with an hour wind down from 22:00 when my devices enter Screen Time mode making them impossible to use. Instead before bed, I do 15 min Meditation and 30 min of reading a book (right now I’m reading the Rama Series)

Me time / Household (30% >> 30%)

I’m maintaining current “Me time” that covers personal time, household chores, cooking/shopping, and that sort of things, so nothing special to report there other than trying to keep down watching TV/Streaming services and spending time on making healthy food over fast food… Generally making the Me timer more qualitative!

Health/Fitness (1% >> 10%)

This is one of the big new ones. Where in the old days did a short run 3 times a week and an occasional walk, I now run every morning, have a walk almost every day, and fitness center multiple times a week. The goal is to cause weight loss I’ve spoken about before, but also to build up a much better base of healthiness with a sustainable way of living as I get older reducing chances of lifestyle diseases.

Mindfullness (0% >> 5%)

While I in the past was fasinated with the practice, I never “did something about it”. Now I do 2x 15 min of Meditations (Morning and Evening) and and ad-hoc during the day in the small moments.
I’m also investing time in understanding the theory behind the practice (as much as that can be done). I also try (and often still fail) to be more “in the moment” and being better at just listening to others instead of being obsessed with feeding the ego (it is so so hungry still 😉)

Social (1% >> 2%)

I’ve never had the need to big social things (being an extrovert), but I’m forcing myself to do more online/in person events/lectures/gatherings to be better at it and to compensate for not having colleages anymore.

So ther you have it, what I’m doing in my new life.
Feel free to leave any questions or comments below;
See you next week 😊