Posts in Diary
Train or airplane?
Train or airplane?

This Monday, I had a morning meeting in Gothenburg. Since I am a tired old man nowadays, I detest the morning flights, especially with connections. It means waking up before going to bed and feeling like a flipper ball with all the transfers, security checks and stress. I sincerely hate it. However, a mate of mine advised me to grab the night train. When the train works, it is fantastic. There are two killer features with the train. No connections and when you wake up you are precisely in the city center.

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DiaryRikard Öqvisttravelling, train, flying, business tripComment
An antidote to stress
An antidote to stress

A week ago, we christened our daughter. We had just left for the church with not much extra time to spare when I realized that we had forgotten an important detail – The christening gown… After the child, this is perhaps the second most important thing for the ceremony, so forgetting it at home is quite the achievement. In a case like this, you better make sure that you left too early because doing an unplanned detour back home to pick something up costs a lot of time that you do not have. At least that is the obvious solution; never leave at the last minute but instead wait a while at the destination. That will give you the margin you need. But i think there is another way that is even more important, at least for me.

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Diary, HabitsRikard Öqviststress, preparation, habits, efficiencyComment
Period correct hardware and friends
Period correct hardware and friends

Last weekend we did a trip down memory lane; a LAN party using period correct Windows 98 hardware and four old (also) period correct friends. I played a ton of LAN parties back in the day and was often the organizer of large ones, sometimes up to about 20 people. Then there was a big gap when everyone was busy building families and careers for a decade or two. But rest assured, it is still just as fun today as back then. It might be even more fun today, because grumpy old men like us have now learned to value time in a completely different way. I am hard pressed to come up with any better way to spend time than an event such as this.

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Computer, DiaryRikard Öqvistfriends, retro computers, gaming, tinkering, cultureComment
Difficult problems are also Easier
Difficult problems are also Easier

Two months ago, I became a father for the third time. I have heard countless times that “when you become a parent, you will never have any more time of your own again” or something similar. Which is a big fat lie, of course. It just requires priorities and planning. A very good approach to a problem that seems too difficult is to realize that the reason you are stuck is because the problem is too easy. By increasing the difficulty level, you eliminate more of your options, until only a handful or preferably only one option remain. If you only have one choice, then the path forward becomes rather obvious.

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Diary, HabitsRikard Öqvisthabits, routine, consistencyComment
Vacation crescendo
Vacation crescendo

The usual pattern again. Everyone wants to deliver important projects before the vacation and the final weeks up until the last Friday feels like a metronome that speeds up exponentially. Let us also throw a couple of urgent surprise problems that require you to drop everything and hyper-focus without interruption for 8 hours straight. No, we are not saturated enough, we also need sick kids that must go to the emergency room, dogs with wounds, and a computer that blows itself up in the middle of an important delivery. Then I went outdoors, the rain started pouring and I inhaled a mosquito and almost puked. What a wonderful day!

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Habits, Family, Parenting, DiaryRikard Öqvistpreparation, parenting, computers, mindfulness, focusComment
To-do lists and vacation
To-do lists and vacation

Vacation is rapidly approaching, and there are 10X more things to do compared to available time. The usual approach has been to go for the more boring list and as a house owner there is an endless supply of things to attend. I have things on that list that has been there for five years. But one has to prioritize… Me and my wife just tried a new approach. We wrote both a “chore list” and a “fun list”. Consequently, this shall be our best vacation ever, Inshallah.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistscheduling, vacation, planning, habitsComment
Less is more
Less is more

After finding my destroyed Airpods a week ago, I did a little experiment and dug out my unused pair of cable headphones that came with the phone. Now I have been using them for a week and I have made some interesting observations. In a full week, I have used them only two times. I took a phone call while walking, and I listened to some Youtube stuff tonight for around 10 minutes. And it is not that I have improved my self-control. Simply put, the cable headphones are lightyears worse than wireless Airpods. They are extremely bad from a usability perspective. Paradoxically I can now confirm that it is also their greatest strength.

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Diary, HabitsRikard Öqvistapple, airpods, focus, habits, disciplineComment
Good riddance!
Good riddance!

Some months ago, on a dog walk this winter in a rough snowstorm, I dropped my Airpods. I didn’t notice they were gone it until I got back home. I instantly returned and backtracked to look for them. But a white Airpod case is near invisible in snow, and even though I was back in the same place just a couple of minutes later, they were already buried. They were gone. And that turned out to be a very good thing.

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Habits, DiaryRikard Öqvistapple, airpods, habits, coffee, attention Comment
Sleep habits in the land of the midnight sun
Sleep habits in the land of the midnight sun

I listened to a long podcast about the importance of sleep and to keep a solid routine for your circadian rhythm. It was nothing new under the sun, except for a couple of eye-opening facts such that shift workers die 15 years earlier on average (!). A proper sleep habit with enough hours in bed gives massive, massive health benefits and reduced risks for just about everything. It all sounds great on paper, but to apply it up here in the north of Sweden is slightly frustrating…

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Diary, HabitsRikard ÖqvistComment
Quality time
Quality time

My oldest son (5yo) is a petrolhead and loves anything with an engine. That’s why I got the brilliant idea of using up a bunch of airline and hotel bonus points to book a father-son weekend in Stockholm. We would go on an airplane, buses, trams, trains, and metro. Those things that I usually couldn’t like even if I tried, but with petrolhead junior, just about any boring chore can be fun again. What a blessing it is to experience it all once again through him. We threw in a couple of museums and a zoo into the equation too.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistparenting, travellingComment
The importance of a clean mind
The importance of a clean mind

One of the most important lessons I have learned from my weekly writing is the importance of a clean mind before writing. The first hundred posts or so, I wrote first thing in the morning. And the past few months it has usually been the final activity before bed. That implies a very high probability that I have recently used my smart phone just before writing. Or watched something on YouTube or read something… whatever. It doesn’t matter because the effect is the same. It feels almost impossible to come up with something original topic when you have saturated your mind with someone else’s thoughts.

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Habits, DiaryRikard Öqvistwriting, focus, habitsComment
Dreams and stress
Dreams and stress

I just exited a streak of around ~100 work hours in nine days. It has been quite high stress level in general and intense periods of focus. It is fascinating how the body enters a high alert state and how I have been able to function in a state of sleep depravation with sometimes down to 4 hours per night. But today, when I finally lowered my guard and rest mode activates, I was unable to stay awake at all. The mental realisation that the crunch is over for now, takes a bit of time to process into a physical realisation. It is a damn nice feeling though when it happens.

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DiaryRikard Öqviststress, burnout, work, healthComment
To long for the dentist
To long for the dentist

Two weeks ago, I tried out a proper toothache for the first time. It was just as enjoyable as it sounds. I don’t know why it is perceived worse than for example a pain in a leg or an arm? I’ve had my fair share of those, and I don’t recall it to ever being as bad. Maybe it is because pain in your teeth is inside your head, and if you ask anyone where they “are” in their body, I guess that many would consider their brain as the most important part of the machinery where your soul resides. And in that case, the closer any physical pain gets to the perceived center of your soul, the more painful it becomes? You can’t hide from it or think about something else when you have a migraine.

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DiaryRikard ÖqvistComment
Tech-savvy kids
Tech-savvy kids

This weekend I had a big wow experience. I introduced my five-year-old son to Minecraft. I just put a gamepad in his hands, and a short time later, I glanced at the screen and stopped in my tracks. He had just built a little house with a kitchen and a library, with an additional lookout tower complete with an internal ladder to get to the top. To keep the monsters away, there were some bonfires and torches. The learning curve will never cease to amaze me. It is not too long ago that he was pushing the go pedal in Mario Kart straight into a wall. Fast-forward 1-2 years and he beats me. And now he’s creating things in Minecraft. Playing a first- or third-person game is more challenging than understanding a racing game. It is mind-boggling how fast it happened.

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Computer, Diary, ParentingRikard Öqvistminecraft, computer, gaming, parentingComment
Why routines are critical
Why routines are critical

Oh, how easy it is to lose a habit. This is my 218th weekly blog post, but a couple of weeks ago I stopped caring about which day I should publish it. It used to be Mondays, almost without fault for a couple of years. And here I am, Sunday evening, in the final hours of this week before my habit is officially broken. It is interesting that these things always seem to gravitate towards “I’ll do it later”. But later usually never comes. Obviously, it can never work if you don’t follow a routine. Lesson learned.

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Diary, HabitsRikard Öqvistblog, writing, habits, consistencyComment
A fresh perspective
A fresh perspective

One of the items on my bucket list this Christmas was to play Nintendo Wii with my boys. However, when you do not own a TV, it becomes a proper challenge. I did have a quick and dirty solution in my sleeve, though. In my drum rehearsal room, I have an old 37” TV mounted on a speaker stand with a VESA mount, to use as a practice teleprompter. This was a simple “drag and drop” operation and the couch gaming was on. But when the holidays ended, we realized that it is quite nice to have a big screen in the living room. We haven’t seen this many movies in ages, so there is a lot of catching up to do. The primary reason we do not own a TV is that our living room floor plan cannot provide a proper setup or placement of the TV/Sofa combination if you aren’t prepared to accept some feng shui from Hell. But we finally figured it out, by thinking outside the box.

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Acoustics, DiaryRikard Öqvistgenelec, home cinema, TV, nintendo, homeComment
A miracle
A miracle

A couple of days ago, my car thermometer showed -34 C when I was on my way to pick up some fresh groceries. This is very cold even for someone like me and should be treated with respect. A car breakdown in the middle of nowhere can be dangerous. I was driving in my snowmobile clothes, with an extra jacket in the back, just in case. Nothing dramatic happened. While driving in my air-conditioned home cinema on four wheels in weather conditions that start to resemble another planet, I couldn’t stop thinking about how unbelievably grateful I am for pretty much everything. The planet does its best to kill me every single day, especially so during the insane cold, and still, I can go about my day without issues, in comfort that kings of the past could not even dream about. Honestly, it is a miracle that anything works at all. And not only that, but it also works really well too, for the most part. This is clearly something to be grateful for.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistwinter, cold, grateful, countrylifeComment
Sleep
Sleep

Today I felt about 10-20 IQ points smarter. I suspect there is a strong correlation to me getting a full ten hours of sleep with my boys. They had been on a vacation over at the grandparents, and on Friday I went to pick them up and stayed over the weekend. It is quite rare to get that amount of sleep as a parent and dog owner, so I made sure not to miss the occasion. Now, a funny thought has stuck on repeat: I probably did not get smarter by sleeping. I have simply got a glimpse of my normal self in contrast to the regular sleep deprived guy.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistsleep, winterComment
Physical meetings will never be replaced, pt II.
Physical meetings will never be replaced, pt II.

Last Saturday we threw a surprise 40-year anniversary party for an old friend. At the event, I met a whole bunch of my old friends. The wise saying that “you will never gain any new old friends” comes to mind. Anyway, let’s elaborate further on last week’s topic of physical vs online meetings. An event like this is the definite proof of how irreplaceable real social interaction is.

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Diary, ParentingRikard Öqvistfriends, friendship, time, kids, parenting
An analogy between drum practice and a career
An analogy between drum practice and a career

Five weeks ago, on day 1539 of learning Bleed, I doubled my efforts in drum playing from 15 minutes per day to 30 minutes per day. Up until the 9th of October, it felt as if I had almost stagnated for about 6-9 months. It is very nice to see the results now and wow, what a difference it made to increase the efforts. For the past 36 days I have finally felt steady progress again. I suspect that after 4-5 years of daily practice I had reached a skill level on the drums where 15 minutes just isn’t enough to advance anymore. It’s an interesting observation because I have seen similar patterns in my professional life.

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Diary, PhilosophyRikard Öqvistfocus, skill, practice, habits, career, drums, acousticsComment