Posts in Habits
Practice mind control with livestreaming
Practice mind control with livestreaming

The last week, I have been experimenting with livestreaming instead of vlogging. I have played various musical instruments on FB live. When I play music on a livestream, I have noticed that my mind runs the same program as when I am playing a concert in front of an audience. Time stops. I am so hyper-focused that I am not aware of my surroundings anymore. The best example is when I did a livestream and decided to play Bleed in the original tempo (230 bpm). Bleed is arguably one of the most difficult songs there is. I have been practicing the song for over a year on drums and now guitar, so I knew it well, but I have never been able to play it in the proper speed, only slower. I started the livestream and just played. And I got through the whole song with only minor mistakes. I was NOT expecting that! But because I did it as a livestream, I activated the “live concert program” in my mind which gave me access to untapped potential. I can still hardly grasp that I managed to pull that off.

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Philosophy, HabitsRikard Öqvistmind control, mindset, focus, growth, productivity, trance, hypnosis, livestreaming, musicComment
What is the purpose of 500 vlogs in 365 days?
What is the purpose of 500 vlogs in 365 days?

Last year I attended an online course called the London Real Business Accelerator. The course had a strong focus on video and its importance for online business. A recurring theme throughout the whole course was to record vlogs. I believe most of you will agree with me that it is a strange and scary feeling to speak into a smart phone and publish it to the whole world forever. One of the tasks the first course week was to record 10 vlogs in 10 days. And on the 5th of November last year I recorded my first vlog. I had just finished an awfully long field day of measurements in the south of Sweden and had gotten into my rental car about to head back home. But I knew that I needed to record that vlog before I go, because it was late in the evening. So, after a LOT of resistance, I grabbed my phone and started talking about the thoughts that were in my head at that moment and published it on Youtube and shared the link on my other platforms. I did not stop at 10 vlogs, I just kept going. Now, a year later I am closing in 500 vlogs and the friction is all but gone. Here are some of the most important things I have learned.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistvlogging, habits, discipline, consistency, video, practice, social mediaComment
Build your Ark before the storm
Build your Ark before the storm

We had a storm last week; the worst one I can remember. I had read the forecast and knew that it was about to rain a lot, but I did not notice the wind prediction. I was just expecting a very wet day. Monday came, it was mostly business as usual. However, as I was working, I heard a noise from outside. It was my little façade flagpole that snapped and was thrown to the ground by the wind. Shortly thereafter the power was cut. I realized that I need to go and get my son from kindergarten ASAP, because when darkness falls it could turn ugly. When I stepped outdoors a gust of wind threw my off my feet. The winds were approaching 30 m/s. I got in my car and drove off but I was quickly stopped by a fallen tree blocking the road. And I could see more fallen trees behind it. We were isolated.

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Philosophy, HabitsRikard Öqviststorm, neighbors, community, ark, countrylife, chainsaw, prepper, preparation, relationshipComment
How do you over-book yourself, while keeping space in your calendar?
How do you over-book yourself, while keeping space in your calendar?

One thing that I have clearly noticed as a self-employed consultant is that you always need to over-book yourself. Because even if your schedule is at 125%, things get cancelled, deadlines are moved, and most of the time, my 125% schedule becomes 100%. This has worked fine for me for the last year. However, you also need to allocate time for unforeseen events, which runs contrary to the above statement. Your kid might get sick, your dog needs veterinary treatment or urgent mistakes come to the surface with your clients. These instances may bump your 125% schedule up to 200% if they coincide. These past weeks has been some of the worst ones so far. And it traces back to problems about a month ago. So, what can I do to avoid similar workload explosions?

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Philosophy, HabitsRikard Öqvistmotorcycle, racing, racetrack, scheduling, analogy, planning, consultant, parentComment
Designing the ultimate home studio
Designing the ultimate home studio

When designing a room, you need to balance and prioritize certain aspects against each other. For a home studio, I consider the following three to be the most important: 1) Acoustics, 2) Aesthetics and 3) Functionality. I am currently building my fourth home studio in my garage. Each iteration has had a different priority order and the results have varied accordingly. As with any project, you need to write down the purpose of the room, to understand how the parameters should be rank ordered. In this article, I will describe what I have learned from my different home studios.

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Acoustics, Art, Habits, MusicRikard Öqvistacoustics, home studio, recording, habits, discipline, consistency, creativity, architecture, studio, sound, sound quality, beauty, function, functionality, sound absorbersComment
Discipline equals freedom
Discipline equals freedom

I always write my blog posts on Saturday mornings, but today I am writing this post at a café in my hometown Umeå, around lunchtime. I haven’t gotten enough sleep the past week, and last night me and my wife had an important discussion which dragged on past midnight. I realized that four hours of sleep on top of the already empty sleep account would come back to bite me, when my alarm went off at 04:45. The icing on the cake was that my son had cuddled up next to me in the night, sleeping peacefully. Even my dogs were extraordinarily calm (they usually want to go walking around 05:00). It was that kind of a moment that you only get a handful of in a lifetime and I wasn’t going to miss it. I decided that my blog can wait a couple of hours and switched off the alarm.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistblogging, writing, consistency, flexibility, freedomComment
The one-minute method
The one-minute method

A New Year’s resolution is a good example of a (commonly) failed commitment. Many people promise that they are going to do this and that on a daily basis, and then they do it a couple of times and then they give up. I believe the problem is that they set the bar too high. The solution is to define a daily activity and set your bar so low – I mean extremely low – that you cannot find an excuse not to do the daily activity, no matter what happens. Read that last sentence again. The habit must be performed Every. Single. Day. Because the moment you stop doing it, it is not a habit anymore. And if the bar is too high, the habit forming can be very difficult, because we all have bad days.

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Art, Habits, PhilosophyRikard Öqvistconsistency, habits, discipline, progressnotperfection, growth, routineComment
Live streaming university lectures on Youtube
Live streaming university lectures on Youtube

When I do my university courses, I usually reserve the last five minutes of the final lecture for course evaluation. I have found that the most valuable method is to keep it simple. I ask the class to write down on a small anonymous paper note one (1) thing that was good about the course, and one (1) thing that they wish I do next year. This is a powerful method, because when you are forced to give just one answer, you tend to choose the one at the top of your mind. The most important. On one of the notes I read “I wish that you would record the lectures, so we can go back and repeat them”. When I read those words, it felt like a bolt of lightning had struck my head. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that? I am doing the lectures anyway, so why not add a camera and a lapel microphone and start recording them? If you are reading this post, old student who wrote that note, I salute you. That little note back in 2017, planted the seed of a powerful idea and you have helped hundreds of people by now with their studies in acoustics, and the number is growing. I cannot thank you enough.

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Education, Acoustics, HabitsRikard Öqvistelearning, distance learning, educationforall, transformingeducation, learning, livestreaming, teachingComment
What I have learned from 38 weekly blogs
What I have learned from 38 weekly blogs

I wrote my first blog post on the 6th of December 2019 and have posted an article every week since then. I still remember writing that first post. I was on a business road trip with a very busy schedule and I had decided to get it online before the end of the day, no matter what. I wrote it late that night, after bedtime for most people. I knew that every minute I spent writing, was one less minute of sleep and thus I just wanted to get it online as fast as humanly possible. Which I did, by the way. I don’t remember how much time I spent on my first post, but I am pretty sure it is one of the fastest I have written. In hindsight, that might have been the optimal way to start! Just get it done and move on. When you start out with anything, your first attempts will likely be mediocre at best. Maybe that’s how it should be done? Set a timer and go. Actually, I will do that right now. There. Timer set for 30 minutes. This post must be online before the timer runs out. Let’s do it.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistblogging, consistency, speed writing, focus, productivityComment
How to get rid of unwanted ticks
How to get rid of unwanted ticks

Some common verbal ticks are: “like”, “right?”, “you know?”, “eeeeh…” and they are problematic. I cannot help it, but when I discover that a speaker suffers from a verbal tick, I start to count the number of ticks and calculate the “eeeh per minute” ratio instead of listening to the actual presentation. It even happened to me once that I got seated on the bus next to a couple of girls who said “liksom” (Swedish version of “like”) 37 times per minute. Yes, I measured it. When my measurement and calculation was finished, I looked up and realize that I had got on the wrong bus and heading away from my home. I was too focused on the verbal tick to even realize it. Clearly, we need to get rid of unwanted ticks to improve our own life and everyone around us.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistpresentation, public speaking, ticks, habits, behaviorComment
Why you should dress dapper while driving
Why you should dress dapper while driving

About two years ago, I was going to do a presentation the next day for some VIPs in another town about five hours drive away. I had prepared an exquisite suit combination and packed it in a travel wardrobe. Some two hours into my road trip, I realized that I had forgot my presentation outfit at home. You know that feeling when you realize something like this, it is like someone just poured an ice-cold bucket of water over your head. Should I turn around and get it, and loose half the night’s sleep? The presentation was scheduled early in the morning before the stores opened up so I had no choice but to do the presentation in my driving clothes. And then it hit me… Driving clothes! I was wearing an odd combination with a jacket, pocket square and a knit tie and I thought “just go ahead and do your presentation” and then I relaxed. At the presentation the next day, I still was the best dressed man in the room even with my driving clothes.

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Habits, StyleRikard Öqvistdresscode, style, dapper, travelling, casual, mensfashion, driving, habits, car, suit, pullover, knit tieComment
A beautiful home gives a beautiful mind
A beautiful home gives a beautiful mind

Yesterday I had an epiphany when I realized that I haven’t changed the air filters in our ventilation system since we moved here a year ago. The thought had never crossed my mind, even though I have lived in a house before and I should have known it. It was not until the rooms had been decluttered and made beautiful, that I could see what had been in front of me all the time. It is a testament to the power of cleaning one’s room.

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Philosophy, Style, Habits, ArtRikard Öqvistcleaning, cleanyourroom, jordanpeterson, beauty, focus, productivityComment
How a vlogging habit is formed
How a vlogging habit is formed

I have been vlogging daily since early November last year. I publish a minimum of one video every day on Youtube, Facebook and Instagram. Sometimes I vlog on Linkedin too, but I am much more selective with my content there nowadays. I just did a summation and realized that I have passed 300 vlogs now. Vlogging has been a very effective way for me to discover how a habit is formed. At first, there was a lot of friction every single time before I released that daily video. Now that friction is all but gone. It is because my focus has now shifted to the process instead of each individual building block. To get the ball rolling in the beginning, it can help to create certain support systems to make your life easier. Later, when you got the momentum, you can start to remove the support systems.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistvlogging, blogging, habits, productivity, schedulingComment
Can we hypnotize ourselves?
Can we hypnotize ourselves?

Many of you (including my past self), perhaps think of the entertainers on TV when you think of hypnosis. Not of something that you can use yourself daily. Have you ever experienced that feeling where you are so immersed in something that you are not aware of your surroundings any longer? People can stand right next to you, talking to you, and you don’t hear a single word of what they say. As a musician, I have had this experience several times, however I never chose to enter that state of trance by willpower. It was something that just happened. The idea of hypnotising myself came from a podcast I have started to follow called “Your mind is trying to kill you”, hosted by Alexandros Megas and Vincent Byrne. I was captivated by the thought of entering trance by willpower alone and have been experimenting with it for some weeks now. It turns out it works wonders!

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Habits, MusicRikard Öqvistmeshuggah, bleed, hypnosis, trance, flow, in the zone, learning, concentration, focus, 15 minutes Comments
It’s the small issues that will get you
It’s the small issues that will get you

Yesterday, I was microwaving my son´s lunch and forgot to put the protective cover on, which resulted in me painting the inside of our microwave with baby food. Later in the evening, I was preparing dinner for the boy again while telling my wife about the ordeal and how silly I was to forget the cover and what a mess I had made that I had to clean up. While we are talking, we hear the familiar sound of hot food exploding inside a microwave. I open the oven lid and witness the inside covered in food once again. The protective cover was lying right in front of me all the time, as I was telling the story of its importance. Isn´t it interesting how strange our mind works sometimes?

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HabitsRikard Öqvistsimplify, cleaning, stress, rest, vacation, focus, prioritiesComment
The best of two worlds
The best of two worlds

I have always stood with one foot in the private sector and the other foot in academia. These two worlds are like Yin and Yang. When working as an acoustic consultant, efficiency and rapid progress is the name of the game. Solve the problems as using the fastest and simplest solution, send an invoice and move on. In academia (especially with research), you thoroughly investigate all possible paths and strive for perfection. Quality over Quantity is the name of the game here. I have never felt comfortable living in just one of these worlds. My gut feeling has always told me to keep one foot in each camp, even though it typically involves more work. Well, until now, that is. It is a long-term strategy that is starting to pay off in a beautiful way. The marriage of two diametrically opposite worlds has the potential to create a lot of value.

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Acoustics, Education, Habits, EngineeringRikard Öqvisteducation, online education, civil engineering, video, iterative process, academiaComment
Maintenance is about sacrificing the present for the future
Maintenance is about sacrificing the present for the future

When something has been left in disuse for a long time, mother nature will reclaim it and return it to chaos. The longer left unattended, the more energy will be required to restore it. And leave it for too long, it might be beyond salvation and must be rebuilt. To keep something working properly, you must maintain it regularly. This is also the approach that will require the least amount of total time and energy and yield the best result. A complete restoration of something that has decayed, will require a lot more time and energy. Do a little every day is the way to go. Regular maintenance is about sacrificing the present for the future. However, there is also something extremely satisfying with cleaning and restoring disused things to their former glory.

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Habits, PhilosophyRikard Öqvisttennis, consistency, restoration, diy, maintenanceComment
What “less is more” really means
What “less is more” really means

I believe that the most effective way to achieve massive change in any domain is by incremental improvement. By doing a little every day, you will do a lot in one week, as my grandmother says. There is a lot of wisdom in these words. I am currently in my seventh year of learning new musical instruments, using my own motto: 15 minutes per day. The results of consistent practice every day have been stunning. Other musicians have told me they use the same technique with equally powerful results. A common recommendation seems to be that you should practice for at least 15 minutes every day, never less than that, and if you are in the zone, you can keep going. I am currently conducting an experiment to see if I can go even lower, and learn to draw with only one minute (60 seconds) of practice per day for a year. I want to know what effect the upper time restriction has. Some days ago, I discovered something that will change my life, if it is true.

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Philosophy, Habits, ArtRikard Öqvisthypnosis, trance, incremental improvement, growth, discipline, consistencyComment
Can you acquire a new skill in just one minute per day?
Can you acquire a new skill in just one minute per day?

“I want to learn this or that, but I don’t have the time.” That is an excuse I have heard too often. I personally believe that you have got all the time in the world to learn something new if you really want it. The truth is just that you want other things more and prioritize accordingly. There is no shame in that, and you shouldn’t fool yourself. However, I want to find out how little time of daily practice you must invest to learn something new and become at least decent. My hypothesis is that it is possible to learn a new skill in just one minute of hyper-focused daily practice. One month ago, I started an experiment to find out.

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Habits, Art, EducationRikard Öqvistart, painting, drawing, sketching, speedsketching, 60seconds, illustrationComment
What might work, might work better
What might work, might work better

The other day, I read a book by Michael Pollan, which described how the approach to solving a problem differs between children and adults. A child is more likely to use a novel and unorthodox approach whereas an adult is more inclined to choose a method based on previous experience, that likely works. Therefore, the child is better equipped to solve certain problems that require an unlikely solution. It seems to me that children are higher in openness than their adult selves because they have not developed their fear of failure yet. It is only when you embrace failure that success can truly be achieved. How many times did you fall when you were learning to ride a bicycle? Or who did not sink at first when they were learning to swim?

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Education, HabitsRikard Öqvisttransformingeducation, elearning, teaching, education, educationforallComment