Posts tagged focus
A forgotten cup of tea
A forgotten cup of tea

I recently picked up my old habit of painting. Several nights in a row, when the kids have gone to bed, I bring out my trusty old iPad pro with the pencil and start sketching. I bring a cup of tea to the table to complete the little ritual. It’s been over three years now since I stopped painting regularly and sometimes it is perhaps a good idea to take a break, because I am having a ton of fun now when I picked up the pencil again. I have entered the magical flow state many times lately. I know this for a fact, because I have found myself time and time again with a cup of cold tea next to me.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistflow, focus, habits, painting, attentionComment
The 3-point list
The 3-point list

Even though it is still vacation, as a house owner it is important to keep the momentum going with regards to long-term improvements. It is not enough to just deal with the daily upkeep, one also must invest some time in improvement and development of the property. I have a long list of things that I know should be done, because they will bring about many quality-of-life improvements. However, they are not mission critical like moving the lawn, house cleaning or buying groceries. A method I have used to great success is to define three special tasks that deals with development, and make sure that I execute them the next day. It brings about a very good gut feeling when I tick off these three boxes, because they are clear progress towards a larger aim.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistfocus, habits, priorities, productivity, vacationComment
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
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
The greatest gift
The greatest gift

One week ago, we were blessed with our third kid, our first daughter. The first few days are magical and there is a saying that an infant is the closest thing to seeing the face of God. That one is absolutely true. There is nothing that can come close to it. I have managed to check out temporarily from work these two weeks and for that I am very grateful. It is a rare occasion to have something in front of you that is important for real and not just a misplaced priority.

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FamilyRikard Öqvistfocus, children, kids, lifeComment
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
KISS - Do not disturb!
KISS - Do not disturb!

One of the things that come with the package of self-employment is the inability to take prolonged vacations. On one hand, it is obvious that it would be amazing to check out from work 100% during the Christmas and new years holidays. To completely get rid of that nagging feeling that you always have some mandatory “homework” can really bring peace of mind and well needed rest. On the other hand, working when everyone else is in vacay mode, has made me realize how brutally my productivity is destroyed by constant interruptions.

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Habits, PhilosophyRikard Öqvistfocus, habits, productivity, mindfulnessComment
Priorities
Priorities

When consistency has been established in any domain, it becomes very difficult to break it. However, habits that are so perfectly chosen, that they should stay with you for life are few and far between. The very first habit that comes to mind is marriage. I cannot figure out any conceivable path that would be better in any way shape or form. There might be a handful more, and I can think of a couple of them that work for me personally, but I cannot think of anything more generally applicable. So how do you know when the time has come to ditch one or two of your habits?

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HabitsRikard Öqvistconsistency, focus, christmas, family, timeComment
Extreme learning
Extreme learning

One of the drawbacks with acquiring a PhD is that you “lose” around five years of work experience, because you are busy studying. It’s the same with all forms of education a.k.a. sacrificing the present for the future. I felt this very strongly during my first years as an acoustician. My friends who went straight to a private sector employment had several years head start on me, so by the time I was finally ready to start working for real, I was far behind, and I was frustrated by the feeling that colleagues assumed that my experience would be great and not comparable to a fresh recruit. Of course, when you have a good education/toolkit in your mind, it is only a matter of time before you catch up and take the lead, and in my case, I reckon it took around ten years in total (including PhD studies). During my insane quest to learn the drums, I realized something similar the other day with regards to music.

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Education, MusicRikard Öqvistdrums, music, learning, habits, education, school, focusComment
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
Sunken cost fallacy
Sunken cost fallacy

Back in July 2023, I began my fifth year of daily practice to nail the song Bleed by Meshuggah on the drums, as a beginner drummer. The insanity of this project is of epic proportions, which can be verified by anyone who has ever heard the original. Many people have asked how I am able to be so consistent with my practice, and if I interpret them correctly, it seems like they would have given up long ago. However, I have finally reached the stage where I cannot keep up my 15 minutes per day. It is simply too difficult. That’s why I have now decided to double my efforts.

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Habits, MusicRikard Öqvistdrums, focus, incremental improvement, habitsComment
Pod detox
Pod detox

Earlier today, while repainting our garage, my wife came up with the expression “Pod detox”. We have been painting for days on end now, often more than 10 hours per day. Neither of us have listened to any music, audiobooks or podcasts during these days. Usually, I listen constantly to conversations or audiobooks, so it has been a new (old) experience for me to only listen to silence. It is just like it was before, only that I had forgotten how to do it.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistpodcast, music, audiobook, silence, focus, diyComment
I failed
I failed

For the past ten years, I have been practicing a musical instrument for 15 minutes per day. But in the past couple of days, I finally faced conditions too challenging to prevail. On the night between Wednesday and Thursday, both my boys decided to reenact Gary’s puking scene from Team America simultaneously. It was without a doubt the worst I have ever seen with regards to stomach sickness. And shortly after the boys had re-generated, it was my turn to do my own interpretation of the classic scene. As horrible as stomach sickness can be, I had a real eye-opening experience.

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Diary, HabitsRikard Öqvistmeditation, focus, health, habitsComment
How to get 1% more of something that has infinite value
How to get 1% more of something that has infinite value

The most invisible form of wasted time is doing a good job on an unimportant task. This quote comes from James Clear, and I like it very much because it hits so close to home. When doing a good job, I usually feel good or even great afterwards. Hence, it becomes very easy to soldier on without much afterthought. The key issue here is how to determine what is an important or unimportant task. For that, I think you need some kind of judgement. And I have never had any better judges than my kids.

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Philosophy, ParentingRikard Öqvistfather, children, focus, prioritiesComment
Memory triggers
Memory triggers

I read somewhere that smell is one of the strongest sensations we have, and that it is strongly connected to memory. Indeed, I can easily remember the smell of things, when I was as young as my own son is now. And perhaps even further back in time than that. I do not know whether this is true or not, but if smell is one of the senses that evolves first and that it serves an important function to protect us from danger, it makes sense to me. This weekend I had several strong memories wash over me induced by odor sensation. Combine it with some auditory sensation and you can get very powerful memory triggers.

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DiaryRikard Öqvistsense, sensation, memory, smell, sound, focusComment
Lessons from man’s best friend
Lessons from man’s best friend

Recently, my sister had to put one of her beloved dogs to sleep abruptly. Things can change fast. What seemed to be a healthy guy and ran 15 km on the spring ice in the archipelago, was gone a couple of days later after an extremely aggressive cancer diagnosis. It wasn’t really expected because he was only seven years old and hadn’t shown any suspicions signs. Sad as it is, it is also a healthy reminder that the same rules apply to us humans, albeit over a somewhat more extended timeframe.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistdogs, health, life, habits, focusComment
Keep your eyes on the prize
Keep your eyes on the prize

When I became active on social media a couple of years ago, I discovered the phenomenon of so called “haters”. They exist both in real life and online, but it sure seems as if they are more common online. The pattern often repeats like this, the first weeks or months (depending on your virality), the comments section usually becomes active with people who try to bring you down. My best example is when I have been documenting my progress of learning how to play the drums. Negative comments were more common in the first year, but from year two and onwards, it feels as if they have vanished. I guess it is not that fun to harass someone who couldn’t care less even if he tried.

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Music, HabitsRikard Öqvistdrums, consistency, focus, inspiration, practiceComment
Accelerate, it might work!
Accelerate, it might work!

For a couple of months now, I have occasionally been a bit angry with myself, struggling to stay focused for prolonged periods of time. I have had this problem for as long as I can remember, and it does not serve me well. Well, there’s probably some kind of upside even to that, but I can’t think of it at the moment. However, I have found a quick fix for this problem that was blatantly obvious. I have put a small photograph of one of my sons on my desk, just below my computer monitor. That way, he will never leave my field of vision ever. And every time my eyes pass by, it puts a smile on my face and instantly guides me back to the right path again. As soon as my mind starts to drift, I look at him and remember that whatever I am thinking of, it is probably not as important as finishing what I am working on ASAP so that I will get a couple of more minutes with the family.

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ParentingRikard Öqvistfocus, parenting, priorities Comment
Don’t think, just dad
Don’t think, just dad

Last weekend I learned a secret dad technique. I have been working on a small IT central in our walk-in closet for a while, with a patch bay, router etc. Basically, the hub of our home network connecting all the rooms and buildings. I had a small shelf system that was supposed to carry a couple of devices, but it had been lying around for several weeks and it annoyed me more and more every time I put my eyes on the unfinished project. But this time, something snapped in me. I couldn’t stand looking at that mess anymore, so I simply grabbed my tools and ruthlessly started working. Meanwhile, our two sons and Labrador retrievers were busy tearing the home apart. It’s standard practice and the primary reason why the IT central was still unfinished. My wife was screaming for help, but I just replied, “No, that’s your problem now, I am busy” and locked the door. To say that it wasn’t popular, is a slight understatement. But sometimes you must make a choice. Take a hit now or suffer death by a thousand cuts. I chose the former. And it was a good choice.

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Diary, ParentingRikard Öqvistfamily, relationship, kids, priorities, focus, network Comments