I noted the other day that me and my wife had been getting along better than average, for a couple of weeks. That is something you seriously should pay attention to and figure out exactly why. Happy wife, happy life, as the saying goes. She had made the same observation, and after some soul-searching we came to the same conclusion: Couch gaming.
Read MoreA wise old mate of mine once said that one of the most important things you learn when you get older, is the ability to “snap back to normal” when you get upset, angry, anxious, or whatever other negative feelings that wash over you. I can totally relate. When I was younger, I could get stuck in a negative thought loop for days. And that is very pointless. Currently at 41 years of age, I have improved significantly in this regard. It is much rarer that I get stuck in the same way. There might be two reasons for this. 1) My “snap-back ability” has improved and 2) Maybe I don’t get nearly as angry nowadays? If you decrease the amplitude, you won’t have to cover as much distance to get back to normal. Could it perhaps be that most of it comes back to reason 2)? In that case, it would certainly feel as if 1) comes with the package.
Read MoreOne 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.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreOne 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.
Read MoreWhen 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?
Read MoreChristmas rush at work, a man cold, and severe sleep depravation after a morning flight. And a whole bunch of sleep depraved nights before that. I am quite sure that the cold is a consequence of an immune system that is just as tired as me. A bit of proper sleep would probably do the trick, if there were enough clock hours. The energy reserves are gone, I am running on fumes now just hanging in there for the final check out on Friday. It is times like these that things are really put to the test. How much do I really want to write this blog post and practice my drums? To go to bed right now, is the easiest sell in the world.
Read MoreToday 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.
Read MoreLast 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.
Read MoreHave you ever had that feeling in a Teams meeting where you interrupt each other by starting a new sentence “simultaneously”? And then you realize your interruption, so you go quiet, wait a little and start again because it seems as if the other person is giving you the que to go ahead, only to interrupt each other again. This almost never happens when you are talking to someone in the same room. I think the crucial difference here is latency. Over Teams, you introduce a handful of precious milliseconds, and they can make a world of difference. This is analogous to playing music in a band. To play in time, “tight”, the latency must be very low. This is also the reason why it is almost impossible to play music together online.
Read MoreOne 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.
Read MoreFive 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.
Read MoreOne of the best things about kids is that you get an excuse to dust off your old Nintendo games and play together. Especially around Christmas when I have the time to do so. My boys have a couple of old Nintendo DS’s, and yesterday I was attending some online auctions to complete our game library with some mandatory classics for couch competition. My wife also wanted to complete her library but couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw that her desired game went for 1500-2500 SEK today. Consequently, she brought her Nintendo box and started to check online auctions to see if she had some desired and valuable game. Several of them were indeed quite valuable at around 700-1500 SEK. But the most inconspicuous game of all we found in the back of a drawer in an old cabinet. A mint condition Game and Watch, Mario the Juggler. Her reaction after searching for the title in some auctions was priceless.
Read MoreIt’s been a couple of weeks now with late work-nights. A temporary reduction in sleep hours is usually no problem, but it is annoyingly easy to get stuck in a loop where you are active later in the evening or night, which both makes it harder to fall asleep and reduces the quality of the hours you get. Consequentially, it will be increasingly harder to get up in the morning and/or you will lose focus during the day, which will reduce productivity. And then you will need to work even longer hours to compensate, which only adds yet more gravel in the delicate machinery. It is a dark spiral. How do you break it?
Read MoreToday I got my ass handed to me in Mario Kart on the Nintendo DS by my 4-year-old son. I knew this milestone would come sooner or later, but honestly, I wasn’t expecting it so soon. Even though I had chosen Bowser, who´s kart was supposed to be the fastest one, I could only win one race out of five. And I won it by a tiny margin, courtesy of the almighty blue shell. I did not “play nice” either. I gave it all I had, but I just couldn’t keep up with the little guy. It was a weird and amazing feeling at the same time. I have never been so satisfied by losing at something.
Read MoreA couple of days ago, I finally received a package I had been expecting for about two months. It contains some spare parts to restore and repair a 20-year-old GPU. An ancient piece of E-waste. Why on earth would anyone want to spend their precious time on a project like that? I talked to my wife about it this morning and her instant reply was “Nostalgia”. She is partly correct, but I think there is another driving factor.
Read MoreBack 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.
Read MoreTwo hundred weeks of consecutive blog posts tonight. Solid proof of the power of incremental improvement. Of course, I do not expect anyone to read all my 200 brain dumps. That was never the purpose. The purpose was to improve my writing skills. And it is impossible to not improve if you do something for 200 weeks straight. And by the way, it is also impossible to not deteriorate if you commence in harmful activities for 200 weeks straight. The only difference is that it is a lot easier to be consistent with bad habits. Consistency with activities that improve your life and the life of everyone around you is very hard.
Read MoreThe other day, my son was playing Mario Kart on his 3DSXL in the sofa, and I sat down beside him to watch. It was quite enjoyable and relaxing. After a while however, I started thinking about screen time in general and why this experience was pleasant, whereas other forms of screen time are often downright annoying?
Read MoreYesterday I had one of the most memorable meals in my life. A perfectly prepared medium/rare entrecote steak and a glass of water. There’s a Swedish saying that “hunger is the best seasoning”, and few truer words have ever been spoken. My spice of choice was a 26-hour gut-rest fast with only H2O to hydrate and nothing else. I don’t think I have ever been without food for so long before, and that made my meal a religious experience. The fasting put a whole new perspective on eating, and I was not aware that a piece of meat could ever taste that good. It opened up a whole new dimension.
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