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
Erhan the taxi driver
Erhan the taxi driver

Last Tuesday I went to Stockholm to do field measurements. I took the first flight down and had booked the last one home. I wanted to minimize the time away from home, but I learned the hard way that it is not worth it. When you are leaving with the first flight, your night sleep is severely disrupted. I woke up before my alarm clock at 04:00. Isn’t it funny how we tend to wake up without an alarm when we have some important appointment in the morning? Anyway, the trip went fine, and I met up with my colleague at the construction site and we worked all day. When at a building site, you are obliged to always wear protective helmet and glasses. I am not used to that. After lunch time, the slight pressure on the sides of my head in combination with the sleep disturbance had set off a headache. A really bad one, that got worse by the hour.

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PhilosophyRikard Öqvisttravelling, taxi, kind, kindness, love, potential, headache, migraine, karma, coffee, authenticityComment
Embrace your weakness
Embrace your weakness

Last week I bought a secondhand computer monitor for the home studio that I am creating. It is a huge Philips 43-inch 4k monster display, one of the very best on the market. I had been looking for a computer monitor for a long time when this behemoth showed up in my feed, close to where I live, for a fraction of the sticker price. However, the ad stated that the previous owner had damaged it by dropping a tool when installing it, which resulted in a big bright dead pixel with white light in the middle of the screen. Here’s the catch: I find dead pixels extremely annoying! My eyes are drawn to that sucker constantly. Even though the price was a bargain, the dead pixel disturbed me so much that it was a no-brainer to walk away. And that is precisely the reason that I bought it.

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Engineering, PhilosophyRikard Öqvistperfection, focus, productivity, it, growth, mindset, engineer, 4kComment
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
What teachers get wrong about e-learning
What teachers get wrong about e-learning

I read some excellent posts and comments this week by Jakob Heidbrink, where he explains the friction he has encountered with the sudden shift to e-learning. More specifically, he described the agonizing process of recording his lectures and how he spent eleven hours to record a 60-minute lecture. Heidbrink is correct in his analysis regarding the required time. I usually say that it takes 10X the time to record and post process a lecture (video editing), compared to just giving it in the classroom. I suspect most teachers that have tried this route will agree with the observation. However, it sounds to me like Heidbrink suffers from the “perfection equals paralysis” condition (also common among engineers). The primary reason for the 10X increase in time he explains, is that he re-records over and over because he stumbles upon words, scratch his nose, cough, and so on – basically just being human. He claims that when a teacher does this in the classroom it is acceptable, but on a recorded lecture such mistakes are not allowed. I disagree and here’s my proposed solution.

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EducationRikard Öqvistelearning, education, educationforall, transformingeducation, distance learning, livestreaming, recording, lecturesComment
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
A change of tool changes your perspective
A change of tool changes your perspective

One of the things that I HATE is to solve a task using an incorrect tool. The perfect example is to use a Phillips screwdriver bit on a Pozidriv screw. Or when you don’t have the bit of the right size. It makes my blood boil! But what if there is a smarter way to complete the task using a different tool? Certain tasks are more inclined to have a “right” and a “wrong” way of doing them, but if we get locked in our minds that there is only one way to solve a problem, we risk stagnation. However, it makes a lot more sense to try out different guitars to play the same song, than to use different screwdriver bits for a given type of screw. The latter would be the equivalent to play death metal on a Harp. If your desire is to play the harp, you are probably better off choosing a different musical genre than death metal.

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Art, Engineering, Philosophy, MusicRikard Öqvisttools, productivity, wacom, drawing, speedsketching, screws, drawing tabletComment
Epic video gaming moments
Epic video gaming moments

What Microsoft has done with Flight Simulator 2020 is nothing but mind blowing. They have digitalized the entire world for us to fly around in. They have used map data with height geometry and flight and satellite photos from Bing and combined it with AI magic that have generated buildings and trees with image recognition technology. The weather is rendered in real time, so if you look outside and it’s a rainy sunset in Umeå, that is precisely what you will experience if you fire up the simulator and take off from Umeå Airport. If you go low enough, you can even see cars driving on the roads. The graphics are nothing short of stunning. It is by far the most beautiful video game I have seen. However, that last sentence will probably age poorly, because I have said the same thing about Super Mario on the NES.

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Travel, Education, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistMicrosoft Flight Simulator 2020, review, gaming, simulator, video game, NES, geography, learning, graphics, AI, machine learningComment
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