The best way to start the day

Today is a ridiculously busy day. I still need to prepare my lesson for teaching at 1pm, and today is one of the few days this week that harbors a continuous block of time to get lab work done. And I want to read some papers and get some planning done. And all this needs to be done before I pick up the guest I'm hosting for PhD recruitment weekend. Since I need to take him around campus tomorrow to all his interviews and events, I won't be able to do much tomorrow other than grade papers and maybe read my 5th book. Anxiety is rising.

But I'm taking a little time to slow down and gather my thoughts for this morning on this blog. I went down to the cafe, selected their newest roast, and sat down in the comfortably spacious common area. I suppose I could've looked out at the heavy snow and temperature drop from 50 to 20 degrees as a frustration and a blockade to productivity. But I'd rather gaze out of the big bright windows, see the beauty from my warm chair, and purposefully enjoy my coffee. I let my mind settle on comfort and charm of Ann Arbor and the feeling of being at home. Simultaneously, I wonder about everything else out there on this planet and all the experiences awaiting me in life.

I like slowing down at the beginning of the day. It is all too easy to see one's massive to-do list and rush straight into work. But paradoxically, this leads to less work getting done. It's hard to focus on one's work if you just think "I have to do this today," rather than "I want to do this today." It's hard to be creative unless your mind wanders a little and brings new resources to bear on the problems you're solving. And without taking some time to think, it's easy to fall into the trap of doing urgent stuff, rather than important stuff. And that is a form of procrastination far worse than delaying your work for 30 minutes.

Since sitting down, I've determined the #1 thing I need to do this morning is perform a literature search and determine the list of gene expression assays I want to design. Then, the #2 thing I need to do is plan my teaching. Also, I need to go to the gym since I won't be able to go later. Exercise is not something I'm willing to compromise on, no matter how I busy I am. That's it for this morning until my discussion section. Nothing else will enter my mind.

Taking some time to prepare the mind will cause one's most important priorities to float to the top, where they are ripe for picking.

High-Yield Practices to Prepare Your Mind
Sometimes one can get up without direction for 30 minutes and stumble upon an idea or practice that changes one's life. Not likely, however. Some default choices for what to do to gather one's thoughts for the rest of the day:

Create. 

I created this blog entry this morning. Write, build, draw, create a connection with another human being.

Focus on a simple joy. 

Just for a few minutes, nothing else in the world can get between you, your cup of coffee, and your thoughts.

Exercise.

Work hard enough to feel discomfort. Embrace the discomfort- that attitude makes you feel ready to tackle challenges for the rest of the day. Eat some protein afterwards.

Make something sparkly clean.

But don't rush it. Consider your environment's effect on your mind.

Read something unrelated to your work.

Try to learn a new idea. Or engage yourself in a new story. Important: Don't read the news.

Generate ideas.

Doesn't matter how stupid they sound. Write them down. Create. If nothing comes to you, read something first and really consider it. Anyone can become creative if they practice being creative.

Finally, after you're all done, either plan the rest of your day, or go straight into your #1 most important and most difficult task of the day. Look at it as an opportunity.

Update: 2013 Reading Goal

It is now January 10. I am 10 days into my goal of reading 52 books in 2013. Last night I finished Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill, which was decent. I already agreed with the author that happiness is a skill (see prior blog post), and many of the chapters seemed redundant. If you're looking for a better and more succinct version, read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I did however enjoy the science chapter where they use fMRI and EEG to understand the physical basis of happiness. The author is a scientist-turned-monk, after all. Before that I finished The 4-Hour Chef, which gave me a lot of ideas on how to learn to read more effectively (it's a book about learning, not cooking per se). I have lots of ideas for holding myself accountable, making the project interesting, and deliberately improving my reading skills.

For the rest of the month, I intend to read two of the following:
The Emotion Machine
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion
Catching Fire
The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People
So Good They Can't Ignore You. I hear this one is a good read if you're trying to "Find your passion" and are getting nowhere.

If I find a book is very long, I may give myself two weeks to read it. And then I will make that up by reading 2 short books in 1 week.

I've been pretty busy between research and teaching, so I haven't been able to write up a post on the specifics of my goal plan. But it'll come. I promise!

Let's try an experiment

Let's do an experiment. If no one responds, I'm happy. If a hundred people respond, I'm happy. I've never asked for a specific response to a blog post before, so simply asking is a victory.

Today, I will share the ideas that influenced me in 2012- the ones that I considered, tried, and kept. The Internet is a deluge of information, and I've encountered a lot of BS in process. Right now the best way for an average Internet user to promote another person's idea is to like it or share it (or maybe collaborate with them). So share it I will.

I'd like you to pick one of the 5 links I've listed below, read the article or watch the video, and post your response as a comment (or you can e-mail me at albertchen42@gmail.com). You can simply write a one-sentence summary if you want. Or, what do you think of the idea? Enlightening? Unrealistic? Naive? What's your favorite?

The List:

Altucher Confidential 

Scott H Young

TED talks (Amy Cuddy) 

Zen Habits 

7 Habits of Highly Effective People (this is a book, so extra credit if you do this one! Assuming you haven't read it)

I'd also recommend exploring the other articles/videos on these sites.

Top: James Altucher, Scott H Young, Leo Babauta.
Bottom: Amy Cuddy, Stephen Covey
Oh yeah, and there's Usain Bolt.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Altucher Confidential 

I don't agree with some of Altucher's specific ideas, but I support anyone willing to publicly challenge conventional wisdom. James Altucher's method is the best way to get unstuck. When I have momentum in my work and in life, I have no problem. But eventually I get in a rut and do almost nothing for a week. This is usually because I burn out in one or more ways: physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually (in the loosest sense of the term). With a mindset resembling the Daily Practice, I tell myself I just have to do one thing to take care of each of these dimensions. Very little demand, since I'm burned out. But then I rebuild the momentum and it gets easier and easier to do more and more.

Scott H Young

There are advanced techniques out there for learning. Watching video lectures, reviewing notes, and rewriting notes are some of the least effective methods, yet they seem to be staples among students. Scott H Young is dedicated to educating people on how to learn far more effectively so they can recall the information years later. He also rejects that an official diploma is the right fit for anyone trying to learn a major new skill or field. It's nice, but not necessary. That a diploma takes too long and too much money to obtain shouldn't be an excuse not to just learn the material yourself. Scott and his MIT challenge was one of the main inspirations that reignited my love for self-learning this year.

TED talks (Amy Cuddy)

One of the most touching talks I've seen all year. The practical, scientific information in this talk will instantaneously improve one's body language and help one deliberately engage others in any situation (one of the most important skills in life that I unfortunately neglected all my life). I do this whenever I'm feeling down and I need a quick boost in a social situation. But this talk has an even better inspirational message on becoming the person you want to be.

Zen Habits

The best ideas are the ones you initially resist. When I read this post I almost unsubscribed. Live a life without goals? Then how can you ever get what you want? How can you ever move forward? But I was wrong. I initially thought No Goals = Sitting on My Butt- because that's where I was coming from. When I encountered Zen Habits, I was in the process of getting off my butt. If you're going to follow a "No Goals" philosophy, you need to already be off your butt.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Obviously, a longer read, but a good one to start off 2013 with if you've never heard of it. This book revealed to me that most if not all of the misery that people experience come from themselves, or more specifically their own reactions and perceptions to what happens to them. It is all too easy to brood over both real and perceived insults from other people, to spend time wondering why other people can be so irrational or horrible, to devote more energy to wishing that life was different than energy actually living life. Usually this persistent mood does far more damage to your mental well-being than anything the world can throw at you. Think about it this way: if someone tries to hurt you physically or emotionally, they are really trying to hack into your sadness system and cause it to fire incessantly. Don't let them do that. Just because someone who you depend on is being a jerk to you and completely violates your trust, doesn't mean you need to be sad. It might be really really difficult to not be sad (especially in cases of clinical depression) but it's doable. I've been fortunate enough to have a pretty good life, but I know that I blow some small things way out of proportion. The only way to fix that is to deliberately change my own perceptions. This is a truly freeing idea: that you control your own happiness.

_________________________________________________________________________________

There are some more ideas from other sources that I'm still pondering. They may be the subject of future posts.

I'll end with an observation. If you explore more of these authors' articles, you'll start realizing that they often touch on each other's themes but in differnet ways. Could it be that I liked one of them and started seeking out similar ideas, or they all inspired each other? Or my brain is fusing very different ideas into one big picture, so that it just seems like they're saying the same thing? Or is there something more fundamental going on...