Life important lessons
26 Jul 2014I just came accross the last issue of Hacker Monthly. There was an article by Derek Sivers, about the Meaning of Life. It is actually the transcript from a video of one of his talks. I highly recommend you click that link and read the text.
It made me realise that there are things that may seem obvious in retrospect, but that we often forgot in the heat of the action of living. Here are a small list of those that resonate with me.
Be future focus. Try to do things to make life easier for the future you. Learn new skills, put some money aside, prepare for when you'll be older and would like things to be easy.
Try to get in "the zone" as much as you can. We call "the zone" that moment when you're focused on what you do and everything is nor too easy, nor too hard. You have the feeling that everything goes well, you know what you're doing, you know where you're heading, and you know why you're doing it. Avoid work that gets you away from the zone, and look out for those that gets you in that state of mind.
Remember that our brain has had billion of years to evolve. From bacterias to fish, to monkeys, to us. The new parts of our brain, the one that differenciate us from other animals are the one about prediction, language and logic. But the old ones are all about fear, gut feeling and instinct. Our old brain has been here forever, the new one is still in beta. Even a $5 machine can beat as at Math. But no machine is yet able to have instinct or gut feeling. Trust the part of your brain that has been in production since the dawn of time.
Choose what is important over what is urgent. Important is learning new skills, keeping in good shape, giving undistracted attention to the one you love. Urgent are emails, text messages, tweets. It begs for being done right now, but won't give you much after. Important things won't yield results in a forthnight, but they will last forever.
Change routine often. In a few years, when you'll look back at your past, you won't remember the simple days. You'll remember the changes, the moment you took important decisions. Changing job, moving away from you appartment, going abroad. Change course often, change routine and break monotony. You'll have more, better, memories.
And don't let others tell you what your good or bad at. No-one is ever good at anything the first time. You have to try, fail, work, practice and succeed. No more "I'm not good at math" or "I'm naturally good at that". Everything can be learned given enough time and practice.
This are all important lessons that one should not forget.
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