Beneath the three pillars of sustainability
Beneath the three pillars of sustainability

Sustainability is often said to rest on three pillars: 1) Ecological, 2) Economical and 3) Social sustainability. When supporting a structure with pillars, we also need a solid foundation, or the pillars might sink into the ground. In today’s post, I explore what this foundation might look like. The foundation should consist of eternal values. Two such values instantly come to my mind: Beauty and Education. The primary difference between these two eternal values and the three pillars, is that the three pillars need to be optimally balanced against each other over time as the facts on the ground varies, whereas beauty and education unconditionally strengthens all three pillars at once.

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Education, Art, PhilosophyRikard Öqvistsustainability, educationforall, beauty, transformingeducation, architecture, future, equality Comments
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
Done is better than perfect
Done is better than perfect

A trait that is common among engineers is the desire to make things perfect. We find beauty in a system that is well-designed and optimized so that nothing is there that shouldn’t be there. The system does exactly what we want it to do. This desire is a blessing and a curse. Without it, buildings would probably collapse, and airplanes would fall from the sky. But the strive for perfection can also be the reason a building never gets built or an airplane that never flies. Have you ever worked on a project where you have done a perfect design only to realize when you are finished, that you have made incorrect assumptions regarding the foundation? Like proof-reading your doctoral thesis without detecting a spelling error in the title?

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Philosophy, EngineeringRikard Öqvistperfection, motorcycle, electrical, design, conscientiousness, personalityComment
When you know why, how is irrelevant
When you know why, how is irrelevant

Yesterday, I livestreamed and published the final lecture in my introductory course in building acoustics. When the dust had settled, I realized that I have never ever felt such a sense of meaning, in anything I have done in my professional career. There has been a lot of friction along the way, especially with technology. Yesterday’s lecture was a personal record in IT problems. First, I did not click the right button when the stream started, so I accidentally presented the first ten minutes of the lecture to an audience that could not see or hear me, and thus had to start from the beginning again. And then my computer crashed in the middle of the lecture and required a reboot. These are major setbacks, but I am amazed by how fast I could just snap back into it and continue the livestream with a genuine smile on my face. As Nietzsche said, “he who has a why, can bear almost any how”. My livestreaming lecture endeavour was a clear example that he was correct.

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Education, AcousticsRikard Öqvistpedagogy, elearning, teaching, online education, transformingeducation, educationforall, constructive alignment, livestreamingComment
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
Big change comes one step at a time
Big change comes one step at a time

A significant part of my teaching consists of lectures. They often take on the character of a monologue and are therefore the perfect place to start transforming your education to the cloud. Back in 2017 when I was just starting out with online education however, I still felt overwhelmed. There were so many new factors to consider. I wanted to record my lectures with great visual video quality with multiple cameras, crystal clear audio and a screen capture of my slides and preferably live stream it. I have always been interested in technology and find great pleasure in figuring out how things work. But to realize full blown video production in real-time while you are simultaneously giving your lecture was indeed overwhelming. Three years later and that is precisely what I’m doing.

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Education, HabitsRikard Öqvistelearning, teaching, education, transformingeducation, distance learning, livestreamingComment
Education is the ultimate investment
Education is the ultimate investment

Using your money to improve and educate yourself is the safest investment you can ever make. Because the knowledge within you, can never be taken away from you. It is eternal. No collapsing economy, stock market crash or housing bubble can touch it. No corrupt government or criminals can steal it. Not even you yourself can lose it even if you try! And the more you share it with others, the more of it you will have and the more valuable it becomes.

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Education, HabitsRikard Öqvisteducation, teaching, knowledge, value, investment, money, goldComment
Dress like the person you want to become
Dress like the person you want to become

One of the greatest lies I know of, is that it does not matter how you dress. Anyone who has ever worn a dark formal suit on a funeral agrees with this statement by their action. We dress up to show respect for the dead person. There is a saying that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and by dressing and grooming inappropriately, you will have made your first impression long before the words start coming out of your mouth. Combine it with a bad posture and insecure body language and you have the perfect recipe for failure in just about any domain.

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Style, HabitsRikard Öqvistposture, mensfashion, workfromhome, productivity, dresscodeComment
Do you believe in God?
Do you believe in God?

As I learned more and more about physics, mechanics, mathematics, electronics, fluids, optics, etc, I became increasingly convinced that science could find the answers to our difficult questions. But later, when I started my PhD education and encountered the courses in philosophy, especially Philosophy of Science, something changed. When I got my PhD degree in 2017, I had found my way back to God again. I realized that God was the only rational, logical and coherent answer that would explain everything I had learned. Since then, every single area of my life that I can think of have improved. Massively.

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Philosophy, HabitsRikard Öqvistreligion, god, sustainabilityComment
Why I stopped drinking alcohol
Why I stopped drinking alcohol

I am now into my second year since I had my last drop of alcohol. I do not miss it at all. When we were expecting our son back in 2018, I needed to be ready 24/7 to get in the car and bring my wife to the hospital. Any responsible husband, soon to be father would do the same. When our son finally was brought into this world, there where a lot of new habits that needed to be established. We had plenty of new commitments as any parent can attest, and thus there where never any proper time, nor interest to have a drink. Not until I went on a business trip a couple of months later, on the 7th of March 2019. I was staying in a nice hotel and had plenty of time to eat a fantastic dinner. Better yet, I could now enjoy a beer to my dinner, for the first time in months!

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Philosophy, HabitsRikard Öqvistalcohol, food, hangover, drunk, incremental improvement Comments
Cultural nerve gas
Cultural nerve gas

The English language is a gatekeeper to wisdom. To information, to knowledge, to your health, wealth and relationships. I use to say that if you compare a person who knows the English language and knows how to use the internet, with a person who doesn’t know any of these two skills, they are so far behind that they might as well have been a different species. And the gap is increasing with exponential acceleration. Every. Single. Day.

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Philosophy, EducationRikard Öqvistlanguage, globalisationComment
The greatest opportunity
The greatest opportunity

Unused human potential is something that bothers me to the very core. My dream is equal opportunity to proper education for anyone on the planet. Imagine how many potential geniuses there are in poor countries of the world, that currently lack access to education. Maybe there are one million PhDs out there, just waiting to unleash their ideas upon academia? Imagine how this untapped potential could change the world. How it would increase the growth of human knowledge. How many more research papers would be published every month? The value this would bring is incalculable. Big changes bring big opportunities. The virus induced rapid change to distance learning has suddenly made the dream a reality.

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EducationRikard Öqvistonline education, distance learning, virusComment
A cloudy sunrise
A cloudy sunrise

The beauty of nature is often most pronounced during sunrise and sunset. It is a symbol of a beginning and an end, in a cycle that repeats perpetually. Why is it so? I believe it has something to do with contrast. When the sun is close to the horizon, the contrast is maximized in many ways. It is the same bright sphere up in the sky during the day, but when the sun is close to the horizon, the shadows become longer, and the sky is painted in many colours. Everything around us is suddenly portrayed in a whole new way. Those things that used to hold no beauty at all, suddenly can become immensely beautiful for a moment, like a stone, a tree or even a virus outbreak.

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PhilosophyRikard Öqvistnature, virusComment
Failure is not allowed
Failure is not allowed

How would you rate yourself on your ability to drive a car on a scale from 1 to 10 where 10 is the best? There are two ways to answer this question and the answer is determined by your reference points. If you accept the doctrine that failure is not allowed, you should use Lewis Hamilton, Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher as the reference. Consequently, your driving ability is 1, no matter who you are. Expect the same result if you compare your singing skill to Pavarotti, your cooking skill to Gordon Ramsay or your scientific ability to Einstein. The elite, unfortunately, seems to be the most common reference point. The other way to answer this question – the one I prefer – is to compare yourself to everyone else, not just the elite.

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Habits, PhilosophyRikard ÖqvistgrowthComment
Extreme goalsetting
Extreme goalsetting

What happens when you take on an extreme goal? I have found there are many benefits with this approach that can maximize your development in any discipline. First, you will never surpass the level of your greatest expectations. An extreme goal will quickly filter out most of your options until you are only left with one way forward, thus making the problem well-defined and thus easier to solve! I tried this approach out in 2017 for the first time and this was my goal “I am going to sing Nessun Dorma at least as good as Jussi Björling” and these were my constraints “and I shall do it within one year by practising 15 minutes/day.” The results blew my mind.

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Habits, MusicRikard ÖqvistgoalsettingComment
Visualisation of Fear
Visualisation of Fear

You will never surpass the level of your greatest expectations. This is valid for fear too. Your fear will never surpass the level of your greatest expectations either. I have tried to come up with examples where I was afraid of something I was about to do – and then did – where it turned out reality was even worse than my imagination. I couldn’t find a single example. No matter how much fear that grips you in your imagination, reality will turn out better.

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PhilosophyRikard Öqvistsuccess, goalsetting, fearComment
The biggest lie of all
The biggest lie of all

“You are fine just the way you are”. That’s a message that I have heard many times in my life. If I interpret the message in the most positive way I possibly can, it would be something like this: You shouldn’t try to be someone else. Motivation, value and happiness must be intrinsically driven. You should follow your own dreams instead of someone else’s. This is true by definition – If you don’t live your own life, you will live someone else’s.

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PhilosophyRikard ÖqvisthabitsComment
Quantity over Quality
Quantity over Quality

I have always been obsessed with quality. When I was little, I took great care to arrange the Lego pieces in a symmetrical fashion. Just like a Patek Philippe watch, even the pieces inside the Lego build that weren’t visible to the eye had to be perfectly arranged. Maybe it’s not a big surprise that I chose to be an engineer and later pursued a PhD in Engineering Acoustics? Quality is important, but without Quantity, progress becomes impossible.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistblogging, vlogging, writingComment
Incremental progress towards mastery
Incremental progress towards mastery

I have been Vlogging since the 5th of November. I had never ever tried vlogging before and did not know what I was doing or how, I just knew that I had to do it. At the time of this writing, three months have passed, and I have produced at least one vlog every single day, some days even more. How long does it take to create a habit? I read in James Clear’s newsletter that it takes forever, because the minute you stop doing it, it is not a habit anymore. However, I just realized there is another way to look at it. You can create a habit instantly. I created my vlogging habit on the 5th of November because I knew I wouldn’t skip a single day no matter what happens. Today I reached a critical milestone in my habit.

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HabitsRikard Öqvistvlogging Comment