Mulling a true return to blogging

I started this blog around this time last year, so perhaps this is the right season for a little writing and self-expression. You probably assumed that I've been too busy to blog, and that's essentially true. This semester I barely had time for my reading project- I'm now 5 books behind and I made a pledge I wouldn’t be taking on more unless I could fulfill this goal. Of course, those of you who have followed my blog in the past know that not having time is a false excuse.

So what have I been up to?

Well, I'm sitting in my hotel in the middle of the jungle in... Argentina! I'm with my parents at one of my dad's conferences at Iguazu Falls. Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly remarked "poor Niagara!" upon seeing Iguazu. I'll try to post some pictures when I get back. 

For now, here's one ripped from the web:

I intend to focus on catching up on books for the first few days. The idea is to create some mental distance, and not think about my past semester or future plans at all. To create true peace of mind, I'm going to write it all down, publish this blog entry, and be done with it.

This is the perfect time for a break. It's the start of summer. I just finished one of my projects, and now I'm gearing up for a final push on a second. And so after I've completed my trip, it's high time to carefully re-examine my goals, work habits, and life pursuits. Blogging will probably be essential.

My craziest semester ever

A quick update on what I've been up to, plus some thoughts:

Manuscript: I wrote my first first-author paper ever, and the revision was submitted yesterday! I mastered techniques an adapted my work habits to dramatically increase the number of experiments I could perform in parallel. My procrastination levels were by far the lowest in my entire life. However, I quickly became aware of my next challenge: I was too busy churning out data, and had not nearly enough time for high-level thinking. In other words, "needs to read more." Time to stretch my abilities, acquire new skills, and experience some discomfort. The goal is to come up with a big idea that I can call uniquely mine.

Presentations: my lack of time for high-level thinking became obvious once I had to prepare my first hour-long presentations on my own research. I struggled to meet this challenge. My earlier presentations were much shorter, and only involved generalities. Even for those, I had to space out my revisions over the course of a month or more. Now I had one week. Of course, feelings of self-doubt arose. Do I truly belong in a PhD program? But I fought through it, and my time invested last year in cultivating productive thought patterns paid off. I took brutally honest feedback to heart. And therefore both presentations ended up as resounding successes.

Teaching: I love teaching. I refuse to blow off teaching as a distraction from my oh-so-important research. So I deliberately approached the department where TA's have the heaviest teaching responsibilities. Yes, there is a hardass professor and a few whiny pre-meds. But most teaching headaches can be addressed by breaking away from institutionalized teaching methods. If one dares to do things unconventionally, one can have the best teaching experience ever. I came up with fun silly metaphors for abstract concepts without any idea of how students would receive them. They were making their own metaphors by semester's end. 

When the professor deliberately made the first exam incredibly difficult to force students to work hard for the rest of the semester (the average was a D and the class is not on a curve) I told my students a personal story of failure and the lessons I learned. By teaching them methods to study more effectively, I convinced them that they need not feel guilty about not being smart enough or not working hard enough, because those were not the core of the problem. They only needed to learn how to learn more effectively, and with that message they became more motivated than ever. No eye-rolls. The result? For final grades, 12 out of 16 A’s and A+’s were in my section. They even made me a card, and I honestly cried when I read it.

The most useful tactic for tackling multiple big projects

From reading above, you might imagine I was hectically moving from one task to the next. After all, student emails arrive at random times, multiple overlapping experiments are going at once, and I have random meetings and seminars at all times of day.

But probably the best advice I got was from Cal Newport, who advises doing everything in series, not in parallel. No rapid switching between teaching and research tasks. One day is entirely devoted to research. One half-day devoted entirely to teaching and answering student e-mails, or one half-day devoted entirely to meetings and small tasks. Labwork needs to be done everyday, so I can't devote a full day to other things, but I try to reach the ideal as much as possible. 

If anything, this greatly decreased my stress levels. Every activity comes with its own anxiety traps, and trying to juggle them all at once causes those anxieties to compound, so its impossible to focus on one thing and do a good job. Better to tackle one mine at a time in an obstacle course than to navigate a whole minefield.

A return to blogging?

With me adding more plans on top of what was a very busy schedule, you might think returning to blogging is ridiculous. But as I recently read, blog material is a natural byproduct of what you do during a PhD, and it takes minimal time to transform it into blog format. In fact, it may even speed up your work, since communication and teaching rapidly clarifies your thinking. As I taught my students, explaining things to others is the best way to make something stick.

A Story Not About Passion

Left for dead on the day she was born because she was a girl, Fawzia Koofi is now the deputy speaker of the house in Afghanistan and running for president in a society where many still do not believe that women should even be educated. She has perservered despite being on the run for much of her life, first from the mujahideen, who killed her father, and then the Taliban, who took away her freedoms and killed her husband and many other family members. Her soul fell as she watched all the progress towards modernization and women's rights crumble under civil war and Taliban rule. She has faced death many times throughout her life, and she still withstands regular assassination attempts.

Clearly, Fawzia Koofi is a remarkable person. But millions of Afghans have gone through virtually identical experiences. How did she become remarkable?

When you listen to Fawzia Koofi now, like during her appearance on the Daily Show, you might think that what makes her remarkable is her mission. The significance of her mission is obvious: poverty, women's rights, political reform, ensure her duaghters do not suffer as she did.

Technically, it is true that Fawzia's mission makes her remarkable. Unfortunately, it would be all too easy to take the wrong lesson from her, just as many people took the wrong lesson from Steve Job's Stanford speech.

Too many people, including me, thought that the lesson is "Find your passion."

"Find your passion" is a terrible, terrible advice.

Or rather, it is highly misleading. Fawzia Koofi and Steve Jobs did not START by finding a compelling mission or purpose. Fawzia started by insisting that she receive an education, even while on the run, and much to the resistance of her family members. She had no time to think of a mission- she was only a child when she had to start fleeing from death on a regular basis. And it was this education that made her unique. At a time when it was nearly impossible for a woman to get an education, she got one. In other words, she had rare and valuable skills.

Notably, she did not originally intend to go into politics. The idea developed relatively late in life. But her skills got her noticed, and she was given the opportunity to run for Parliament, mostly made possible by chance events. Her mission only started developing in earnest many years after she began developing her skills. Even when she was well on her way to fame, she said she felt "mentally lost" and "purposeless."

During this time, she still had to build her skills constantly, in particular in giving speeches. This ability is what ultimately gave her the power to start building women's education centers in conservative villages, to start standing up vocally for women's rights, to get on the international stage. Only now does her mission seem clear. Her passion was a side effect of getting really good at what she does.

In summary:

Wrong: Look inward and decide passion => go follow the passion

Right: look outward and see what skills might allow you to offer value to others => develop skills => explore many missions while developing more skills => find passion. Or rather let passion find you.

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I Know My Passion... Not

I'm 7 books into my effort to read 52 books in 52 weeks. This blog entry was my attempt to explain Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You using the example of another book, Fawzia Koofi's Favored Daughter. He uses many case examples to rigorously debunk "Follow your passion."

You may remember my blog entry "I'm lost. What's my purpose in life?" Cal Newport's book pretty much solves everything. I don't need to feel bad that I haven't found a purpose, because a purpose is only possible after I've spent decades developing valuable skills. My most meaningful career accomplishment will likely be something I never imagined.

I also noted that Cal Newport, being an academic, provided really really good advice for graduate students (and in general, anyone who is trying to create knowledge). I've already begun implementing his paradigm into my work (see below).

Below, I've copied my notes on Cal Newport's book. But seriously, go buy So Good They Can't Ignore You right now.

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So Good They Can't Ignore You

Popular paradigm: look inward and decide your "passion," develop the courage to leave your job and go follow your passion. Then develop passion-oriented skills and do what you love.

New paradigm: Pre-existing passions don't exist. Even if they did, you would first need rare and valuable skills to back them up, called career capital, or you will fail. To find a compelling mission for your life, you need those skills first so you can explore many possible missions. You can develop career capital in nearly any job, because you can usually apply skills to other fields. Start NOW, in your current job. Careful: the more skill you acquire, the more others will try to convince you to help them or follow a traditional path, but stay focused on what you believe will make the most impact. Use your value to demand more autonomy and surround yourself with people you like and work well with. Then, use your autonomous time to develop your own missions. These are tentative missions - anything that seems interesting and important at the time. Your mission will constantly change, so be comfortable with it. Some missions will reveal themselves serendipitously- if you have the skills then you can take advantage of opportunities. Others will be brought to you because of your skills- people want to work with you. Learn as much as you can, brainstorm ideas, and put them into action in small projects. This will allow you to continuously expand, refine, or replace your missions until you believe that you are both working right and doing the right work.

Important: these are not a series of steps. They define a lifestyle. Different aspects are more important to focus on a different times. Career capital is most important for a 20-something, for example.

What Can You Actually Do Right Now?

Bold: Goals

Italics: specific activities that bring you closer to the goals. Do these on a regular basis.

General principles

• Develop career capital - rare and valuable skills that make you so good/interesting that others cannot ignore you
• Explore possible life/work missions - these will allow you to constantly refine your skill set, explore opportunities and develop a mission
• Time tracking - track time spent towards high-yield activities, i.e. those that develop career capital and explore possible missions. These include deliberate practice and feedback, background research, little bets, serious study of others and others' work
• Autonomy - YOU must make time for high-yield activities
• Prioritize these over simple productivity
• Turn down prestigious positions that saddle you with responsibilities
• Surround yourself with likeable and talented people who respect your autonomy

Career capital

• Identify rare and valuable skills that make the most difference in your current field or are generally applicable to any field
• Study people who have rare and valuable skills
• Develop rare and valuable skills:
• Deliberate practice - strain yourself and embrace discomfort and ambiguity
• Seek immediate, clear feedback, esp from mentor/coach

Mission and impact

• Mission: Determine a tentative mission
• Study people who have compelling missions and interesting careers
• Cutting Edge: Do research and constantly scan for your field's next big idea - the "adjacent possible"
• Background research: Learn new ideas in your field through reading, meetings, talks
• Research Bible: Summarize idea-of-the-week in your own words
• Idea notebook: brainstorm own ideas
• Daily walk: free-form brainstorm related to the tentative mission
• Little bets: small exploratory projects (<1 month) to test your ideas
• criteria: must do at least one of the following:
• force yourself to master a new skill
• produce novel results
• grasp the attention of others (i.e. be remarkable)
• Seek concrete feedback, especially from others
• obsess over self-imposed deadlines
• publicize your little bets in a setting where word can quickly spread if the idea is good enough
• Reflection: Evaluate concrete feedback from little bet, alter or replace tentative mission, guide further research, plan next little bet
• Take 1 full day off per month for reflection

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.

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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.

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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...

My only goal for 2013

It was pretty easy to write this blog entry. Essentially, I just consulted my Workflowy goal list that I've been accumulating. I organize my life around Workflowy, using it as my to-do list, idea capture tool, journal, shopping list, and bucket list of things to do. Everything (thousands of items) goes in one simple and elegant document, but it's super easy to find exactly the information I'm looking for at any given time. Much better than a GoogleDoc. Check it out if you're looking for a productivity tool for the new year.

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Why only one goal?

One mistake I made last year was focusing on too many goals at once. I gathered a massive bucket list, pared it down to 3-5 goals per month, and it was still too much. I wanted variety so that I would develop multiple skills and ways of thinking that could synergize, as well as discover new things I was passionate about. That logic still holds- and I still intend on trying a variety of things.

Other than my research, this year I will only focus on one goal, my Major Goal for 2013. Reasons:

1) Spend less time planning, more time doing. Last year I found myself worrying about planning when and for how long I would work on each goal, so I spent more time optimizing my schedule than actually accomplishing anything.

2) Focus and deliberate practice. If something is really worthwhile, then it's worth pushing my limits on it, challenging myself, and taking the time to carefully analyze and optimize every aspect. Rather than just haphazardly grinding through the task so that I can run to my next goal, I will sit and force myself to THINK. What are the essential elements of this goal and which will yield the greatest benefits? How can I continually improve? How can I apply these skills to other activities in an unconventional manner? What mistakes do I make and how do I fix them?

3) Prioritization. Taking the time to identify what is really useful or important will allow me to put less stuff on my to-do list but still get more stuff done. A long, unprioritized to-do list is the best friend of procrastination.

4) Habit for life. Some skills are so invaluable that they ought to be life habits. Yet we often don't do them because we don't prioritize them.

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The Goal

So I can TRY many things at once, but I will only be focusing on ONE GOAL. This one fought off quite a few other contenders from my list.

~Goal: Read one book per week~

That's it. Looks simple on the surface. Check back later for a detailed blog post on my Major Goal for 2013. I'm not going to be reading casually- I will actively improve my actual skill of reading (speed, comprehension, control, deep thinking, etc). One book a week is pretty ambitious for me, so I will adjust as necessary.

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What else might I want to accomplish?

I love variety, so I'm going to try a bunch of other things. But these won't be "goals" where I need accountability, tracking, and analysis. They fall into two categories:

1) Habits I definitely want to continue. No need to focus on them, as the habit has already been more or less established.

Fitness

Journaling

Blogging

Reading scientific papers daily

Generating ideas daily

Introducing myself to random people in cafes

2) Things I may experiment with this year. I may elevate one of these to a Major Goal for 1-5 months (meaning I focus on it, not just try it), but only if I'm comfortably completing one book per week. Again, truly focusing on a goal is an energy- and time-intensive endeavor, involving a lot of research, experimentation, reflection, and analysis.

Lucid dreaming

Learning Spanish

Writing letters or e-mails to scientists that I find unique and intriguing

Thoroughly organize my lab notes at a set time every day

Carry around a pocket notebook so I can capture all my thoughts and observations

Travel to multiple countries (Asia and South America especially)

Learn 20 tunes on a new instrument

Try snowboarding, rock climbing, and/or parkour

Take a couple of online courses

Develop out-of-the-box teaching methods and make them freely available

Write a program to analyze something in lab or get something done faster

Leadership skills

Conference crashing (completely unrelated to my professional/private interests)

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Long-term goals:

Finally, it's a good idea to reflect on what sort of life I want in the future, although my plan is certainly a work-in-progress. Of course, it would be a terrible mistake to fret about whether or not what I'm doing right now will translate towards my vision of my future. This year I learned that "Following your passion" is terrible advice. Instead, I should utilize my current environment to develop long-term skills that can be applied to anything I decide to pursue later.

What I want:

Every single year, I should do at least one big thing where I can say, "Wow, last year I never imagined I would be doing what I am doing right now." Diversity of experiences, both in professional and private life, is most important to me. Career-wise, that means pursuing many different career options, but only one at a time. For example, one decade as a practicing neurologist, one decade focused on basic research, one decade working on startups, one decade part of a large company. At some point, I'd like to be a contestant on Jeopardy!, teach an online course, start my own business, give a TED-esque talk, make a bunch of DIY projects, and go into space. Yes, I'm totally serious about that last one.

A Unified Theory of Albert's 2012

It's been a while since I've blogged. I can feel a little anxiety, a little tightness in my chest, likely representing some silly fears: "How do I choose which blog concept to start off with? What if it takes a really long time to get back into the blogging mentality? What if it's obvious that I'm out of practice? What if…" Actually I found myself struggling to explain the anxiety while writing that, so I'm not so anxious anymore. I let it go.

It often feels like the same problems plague us year after year. Everyone has bad habits they'd rather eliminate (wasting time on the Internet, poor eating, unnecessary arguing with loved ones, anxiety in X or Y situation, etc). A big one: procrastination. I was going to write this blog entry on Friday but I put it off just to watch Netflix. I did procrastinate- just not nearly as long as I used to, and I didn't beat myself up over it. Same goes for everything else nowadays.

So how did I actually write this blog entry? I just started. I told myself, "Let's just see where this goes. Quality doesn't matter. Two paragraphs, go." Now I'm on my third.

Now, "Just start" probably sounds like really trivial advice. I probably heard this "Just start" advice years ago, and it never helped me stop procrastinating for all these years. So why do I claim that this one little trivial statement is now making a marked difference in my life and my work?

Because in 2012, I deliberately and consciously focused on this little piece of advice. It's one thing to be aware of an idea. It's quite another to focus on an idea long enough to realize when it's applicable and then to execute it. I wake myself up frequently from my daily routine and remind myself that I need to "just start." If I can say I accomplished anything this year, it's that I have trained myself to pay attention to what I'm doing, and more importantly, what I'm thinking at any given time. This is way easier said than done. It took a year of recognizing this was the underlying problem and several months of serious work. 

The Actual Grand Unified Theory

So what unifies all my pursuits in 2012 is my awareness of what I'm doing. For the rest of the blog entry, I'd like to break this up into three synergistic ideas and then offer some lessons that go along with each one. It's not particularly organized or detailed, but many received deeper treatment in past posts, and many will in the future.

1. Think about thoughts. You can call it "Mindfulness" if you want, but this essentially allows me to be my own psychologist. This allows me to figure out which thoughts are getting in my way, and which ones will help me achieve my goals.

• Stop repeatedly thinking about things. Pointless. Replaying bad memories, regrets, future fantasies, upcoming deadlines, someone who was inexplicably mean, something wrong in my life. The solution was simple: think about what I can do about the situation today. If I can do something, do it. If not, think about something else.
• Stop stressing. I used to think stress was a necessary evil that helps get stuff done. But stress is only correlative. Thinking objectively about the problem and executing a solution is what actually gets stuff done. Stress hormones only cloud the mind: they're evolved for fight-or-flight. To get stuff done without stress, I re-frame situations to motivate myself positively: treat the task as an opportunity, not an obligation
• Stop judging other people. It's easy to do this subconsciously. These judgments will never make a single difference in the real world. It's a waste of brain power.
• Instead, pay attention to the present. This makes it easier to appreciate what I have, and it prevents me from engaging in the useless thought processes listed above.
• Keep a journal of my thoughts, ideas, important events. I now write down 1 to 5 things a day about my thoughts and daily situations, plus specific things I could have done to handle them better. Then I do them next time.

2. Deliberate Practice. Thinking about thinking allows me remind myself frequently to implement behavioral changes, so I can break old habits and develop new skills. Deliberately expose self to small challenges and then take on progressively more difficult challenges. Treating things as practice frees me to experiment, so I am more likely to make progress.

• Think about thoughts. What, again? Well, the issue is that it's difficult. Or more precisely, it's hard to remember to think about thoughts, and some thoughts are so powerful and ingrained that they take persistence to eliminate.
• Social anxiety. Everyone experiences social anxiety in at least one situation. It can be eliminated through practice. Identify the situation that makes you anxious (eg public speaking). Deliberately put yourself in that situation (offer to give a toast at a party) rather than waiting for some obligation to force you into it (eg best man toast). Observe your anxieties. Acknowledge them. Explain to yourself why they are irrational (they usually are). Think of something specific you can do at the moment (e.g. poke fun at yourself and get the audience laughing). From that point forward, you already win, because you already made progress. Everything else is just fun, and if you embarass yourself, who cares?
• Honesty. I don't just mean not telling lies. I mean revealing things to other people that may bring judgment. I've discovered that when I reveal risky things to people, they will trust me more, not less. No one believes that anyone else is perfect, so revealing a secret won't hurt. This is really difficult, especially society says such things are stigmatized (this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, unfortunately). Difficulty can be overcome with practice.
• Generating ideas and being creative. You can train yourself to be creative. You can train yourself to not accept things the way they are and to constantly ask "what if?" Just practice writing down ideas.
• Take deliberate breaks. If I keep working until I'm exhausted, I'll involuntarily take a much longer break and actually get less done. I also stop thinking about thinking, so I fall back on old bad habits (eg wasting time on the Internet). Instead, I now take frequent, short breaks. It's hard to remember to do this, so I practice it.

3. Life is an experiment. There are no stakes, only opportunities. My brain pays attention at a much deeper level while experiencing or doing something new.

• Try new things, all the time. This felt like the longest year of my life- in a good way, because I deliberately tried lots of new things. Also, trying new things has made discover that I can do things that I always told myself that I couldn't do. I never thought I'd ever be able to walk up to a random cute girl in a cafe and take her out on an instant date.  I never thought I would ever train for a triathlon. I never thought I'd actually have a blog, even though I wanted one.
• Meeting a new person and don't know what to say? Conversation turning boring? Try saying something provocative and risky, something that you personally find entertaining or funny. Play with the other person's reactions. If they are turned off by it, who cares? It's not a person you'd get along with anyways, if they don't share your sense of humor. And if they do find it hilarious, you've just found yourself a friend.
• Make your own way. Don't be afraid to stick out, no matter how uncomfortable it is to have others judging you. Don't get stuck in the mindset "College => job => stable career => significant other => marriage => house in the suburbs." Society tells you that this is what you're supposed to do. You might be 100% happy doing this, but you should do it because of reasons that you have established for yourself, not because society tells you to. If you're doing it for your own reasons, you will get more out of it. And this might not be what you want to do, and you should not let friends or family pressure you into following a set path. 
• Never be afraid of failure. I realized that I was dramatically overestimating the consequences of my choices. Once I started taking risks, I started seeing that small, fun risks are everywhere.

Finally, laugh at yourself. I'm laughing at this blog entry right now.