The people around you have a profound impact on the way you behave. As I write this, it seems like quite an obvious statement, but many interesting discussions start with observations of the obvious.
I had the opportunity to hang out at a house party of an American friend that just recently moved into downtown Tokyo. The crowd was markedly international, with people hailing from Australia, the UK, Korea, South America, Taiwan and more. It was a great party and even if everyone didn't speak perfect English, none of us cared the least bit. There were elder and younger people, but we all just hang out together talking about whatever and I thought it was kind of great to have this sort of free flowing conversation.
Perhaps, I might not be fluent enough with my Japanese to have the kinds of conversations I would like to have in Japanese; I often tell my friends that I am much more interesting when I speak in English. I am far more free to use the full richness of the English language to make conversation interesting and lead conversations subtly in interesting directions. There used to be a philosophy essay topic that I once read before in high school, that went along the lines of "you cannot describe something for which you do not have the words for." Compared to the English language, I still find my depth of expression in the Japanese language to be somewhat limited, but I would not limit the breath of communication to simply words. I have so far found from my experiences that if there is a will, even without the words, there will be a way to make yourself understood. This comes from my experiences when traveling to places to non English speaking countries.
More importantly, I believe that culture, whether be it the culture of a small group of people or a nation that has an immense influence on the way and of the topics which people communicate about. In my 5 years in Japan, I have probably seen a wider breadth of Japanese culture that perhaps most people would Japanese would see. I've been out to the countryside and spent time with the old folk planting rice in the fields and learning a bit about agrarian life, I've hung out with Japanese people that have traveled, I also hang out with the underground culture crowd and I also hang out with the geeks and your typical Japanese people.
I've seen many walks of Japanese life that I probably could not relate with my usual co-workers, what might be fine in a different sub-group might not easily be accepted in another. It's kind of unfortunate in that sense, but I guess, that is my biggest gripe about traditional corporate culture, not just Japanese culture in general.
I've never been a big fan of hierarchy, especially a system that has been imposed through largely seniority. I can agree that there is correlation but just because someone is older does not necessarily mean that it is right. We see this happening in recent US business culture as startups being run by smart young people trampling over the older corporate types. Times are changing because the amount of capital to start a company is rapidly declining (depending on your field of course). There is probably a lot I would like to talk about with them, but I already know that what I have seen is so wildly different from what they are used to, that they wouldn't understand. What I am talking about reminds me about an essay about "What you can't say" written by Paul Graham. A good read if you have the time.
I believe it is more of a class of values than anything else. I enjoy going off and doing my own thing, working on little projects in the hopes of making something new and interesting instead of slogging at doing the same things over and over again. I can't really generalize the whole corporate experience because I do have much more freedom then I would have first expected, I do have specific tasks that I need to get done but other then that I pretty much have free reign. I do have to deal with bosses from time to time that like to micromanage or get a little academic than practical when it comes to getting work done in a timely manner but I'll accept that as the natural progression of things. I do feel that there is a lack of a pioneering spirit, the kind of feeling that I used to have when working with friends back at UBC. Then again, we were young back then and pretty much everything that we did before when we were young was pretty much new to ourselves. We didn't know any better. I've gotten a little older since then, but I do miss having the crazy ideas and friends to work on them with.
There is also that too, being with the right people, in the right atmosphere, the right people often can draw out the best of us. With the right group of people, I've felt happier, more alive, filled with more interesting ideas and less inhibited. In the "zone" as some might say. I was with the right group of people a few weeks ago when just hanging out, and it felt great for once. I really wish that the working environment was like that, but I am willing to venture a bet that most working environments aren't like this, not by a long shot even back at home.
If I were to start something, I would like to have something that breaks those barriers, a chance to work with a productive, smart and creative group of people. With the right kind of skills when put together would allow us to make pretty anything happen. Maybe it's a pipe dream, and I am being idealistic and there will be rocky parts and disagreements, but I would say that I am willing to work around that. As you get older, the opportunity to meet with many people and work with them on small projects dwindles quite quickly compared to the times when at university. I would say that I miss that part of university, because it gets a little harder to meet people after that.
It turns out that this post is getting much longer than I anticipated so I'll end it here. It's what happens when I finally the chance to take a day off doing nothing and spend it thinking. It's been a great day of doing close to nothing.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Annual income vs Hourly wage
While I am going into my 3rd year working for a large corporation, there is the sticky thing of dealing with pay raises. Ideally, I would eventually aim for a $100k kind of salary and it is starting to be evident to me that with the current rate of pay raises, that it might be not really possible working as a regular employee (but then again that should have been obvious from the start).
Supposing that one does have a $100k kind of object, what would be necessary to achieve it? Would be the necessary question to answer. I have done some very rudimentary calculations. Assuming that there a re 52*5 weekdays - 15 company holidays and about 12 personal holidays, I yield about 233 working days. Assuming that you work about 8 hours/day for these days, I've plotted the hourly salary vs targeted annual income. The graph is posted below:
To earn about $100k/year, you are required to earn about $53/hour. I would consider that $53/hour is a fairly high hourly salary, though not entirely out of the realm of reason. I used to do tutoring in my university years and could easily pull $25/hour when tutoring. I might sound nonchalant when I say that it shouldn't be so hard to double this, I could possibly cut a deal to tutor 3 students at the same time and reduce my individual rate for a student resulting a rate of about $50/hour for me. The problem about tutoring is that the problem is to sustain that rate of income over 8 hours, which might be the tricky thing (and might be the reason why tutors can charge in this range).
Even thinking about working for about 8 hours/day for me isn't an entirely ideal kind of situation for me because the more time I spend time working a "job" the less time I have to think about new ways of making money and go after that. I am starting to see why manager-types are often so well paid because these guys are the "idea" people that get other people to implement their ideas, which hopefully make them money, while they think about other ideas. I pity the peons that get stuck at the bottem working for these guys honestly and that is the kind of predicament that I find myself in.
The trick to getting out of it is to start finding your own revenue streams to get out of this kind of predicament. It almost sounds like a slave trying to buy their own freedom, but technically the system seems like that it is setup like that.
Fortunately, it's sort of the equivalent of a spring break for most workers in Japan so I am going to take the time off to do some thinking.
Supposing that one does have a $100k kind of object, what would be necessary to achieve it? Would be the necessary question to answer. I have done some very rudimentary calculations. Assuming that there a re 52*5 weekdays - 15 company holidays and about 12 personal holidays, I yield about 233 working days. Assuming that you work about 8 hours/day for these days, I've plotted the hourly salary vs targeted annual income. The graph is posted below:
To earn about $100k/year, you are required to earn about $53/hour. I would consider that $53/hour is a fairly high hourly salary, though not entirely out of the realm of reason. I used to do tutoring in my university years and could easily pull $25/hour when tutoring. I might sound nonchalant when I say that it shouldn't be so hard to double this, I could possibly cut a deal to tutor 3 students at the same time and reduce my individual rate for a student resulting a rate of about $50/hour for me. The problem about tutoring is that the problem is to sustain that rate of income over 8 hours, which might be the tricky thing (and might be the reason why tutors can charge in this range).
Even thinking about working for about 8 hours/day for me isn't an entirely ideal kind of situation for me because the more time I spend time working a "job" the less time I have to think about new ways of making money and go after that. I am starting to see why manager-types are often so well paid because these guys are the "idea" people that get other people to implement their ideas, which hopefully make them money, while they think about other ideas. I pity the peons that get stuck at the bottem working for these guys honestly and that is the kind of predicament that I find myself in.
The trick to getting out of it is to start finding your own revenue streams to get out of this kind of predicament. It almost sounds like a slave trying to buy their own freedom, but technically the system seems like that it is setup like that.
Fortunately, it's sort of the equivalent of a spring break for most workers in Japan so I am going to take the time off to do some thinking.
3 weeks in to the diet
Tomorrow will mark the 3rd week of my diet. The first 12~13 days of my diet have been phenomenal in terms of the amount of weight lost, but it appears after the 2nd week, there is some bounce back occuring as shown in the graph below.
I've been doing some intensive bicycle riding over the weekends, usually a 30~35 km ride out to the beach from where I live. I've also bought a bicycle computer as of recent which displays current, min, max speed and distance traveled. It's a wonderful gadget to have attached to a bike since the information it provides is fairly useful, all that for the low low price of about $12.
What I have noticed recently is that my appetite has grown somewhat after starting this diet and I've been eating bigger portions, especially for dinner. Though I am trying to keep things under control, it has recently gotten a little tricky to control myself from indulging even on the healthy stuff. I practically wolfed down about 1/3 of a long stick of French bread topped with hummus (both being really healthy), but I am sure that it'll add up to a lot of carbohydrates which my body will probably retain.
I've also broken down a little bit and started making chili with ground beef. I've done my best to strain out the excess fat using a strainer (and there is plenty of fat I've been able to remove) but I have come to the feeling that I am not getting all of it out, leaving plenty of fats for my body to absorb.
Another interesting thing is that my body is reacting to the diet and appears to be doing it's best to extract the most nutrients out of the foods I've been eating as of recent. Meaning the number of times I have bowel movements and the quantity being removed from my body has been significantly reduced.
In general, however, I am feeling a little more energetic after starting this diet + exercise routine and there has been some physical changes over the last 3 weeks. I am starting to lose excess body fat around my body and I have found that my pants have come a little looser and my upper waist is starting to slim down. The amount of fat around my front stomach also seems to be thinning down a little as well.
I will have to redouble my efforts at reducing carbohydrates and focus more heavily on eating more vegetables to reduce my caloric intake, while trying to keep up my protein intake to improve muscular build. Hopefully, I'll see some further physical improvements.
I've been doing some intensive bicycle riding over the weekends, usually a 30~35 km ride out to the beach from where I live. I've also bought a bicycle computer as of recent which displays current, min, max speed and distance traveled. It's a wonderful gadget to have attached to a bike since the information it provides is fairly useful, all that for the low low price of about $12.
What I have noticed recently is that my appetite has grown somewhat after starting this diet and I've been eating bigger portions, especially for dinner. Though I am trying to keep things under control, it has recently gotten a little tricky to control myself from indulging even on the healthy stuff. I practically wolfed down about 1/3 of a long stick of French bread topped with hummus (both being really healthy), but I am sure that it'll add up to a lot of carbohydrates which my body will probably retain.
I've also broken down a little bit and started making chili with ground beef. I've done my best to strain out the excess fat using a strainer (and there is plenty of fat I've been able to remove) but I have come to the feeling that I am not getting all of it out, leaving plenty of fats for my body to absorb.
Another interesting thing is that my body is reacting to the diet and appears to be doing it's best to extract the most nutrients out of the foods I've been eating as of recent. Meaning the number of times I have bowel movements and the quantity being removed from my body has been significantly reduced.
In general, however, I am feeling a little more energetic after starting this diet + exercise routine and there has been some physical changes over the last 3 weeks. I am starting to lose excess body fat around my body and I have found that my pants have come a little looser and my upper waist is starting to slim down. The amount of fat around my front stomach also seems to be thinning down a little as well.
I will have to redouble my efforts at reducing carbohydrates and focus more heavily on eating more vegetables to reduce my caloric intake, while trying to keep up my protein intake to improve muscular build. Hopefully, I'll see some further physical improvements.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
On Women
Life would be quite simple if there was "the one" when it comes to meeting women and then having things working out and then sticking to it. Unfortunately, if that was the case, all of humanity would be pretty much doomed. As one of my friends best put it, if there was "the one" and you had to find them out of several billion people, you'll probably never be able to meet all the people in the world in a life time to find him/her and die. The world population would probably shrink like crazy until things became more manageable. And so, for humanity to survive, there is no "one person" that you are compatible with, but a bunch of them. A whole genre of romance movies and novels should be killed by this simple concept, but if this romantic concept comforts other people (mainly women?), I'll leave them to it. Men however, have a different ball game to deal with.
This post is going to be something that I am going to use to help formalize some underlying notions that I have been having recently about male-female relationships and what should be my motivations be for making behavioral decisions. Consider this to be somewhat of a rough draft....
The Role of a Man
As much as modern society would like gender equality between the sexes, things are still not 100% equal, especially when it comes to who has to make the first move (and usually it is the man, though I would not consider it a bad thing). I consider myself a modern man, generally politically correct and respectful to the equality movement between men and women. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have taken things too far in when it comes to male-female relationships that I end up treating most females like ordinary friends and that is what I usually get. If you could stereotype me, I would probably come off as "the nice guy" and usually the nice guy isn't the kind of guy that choose his women, they end up choosing him... which seems to be another characteristic of my past experiences (though not all of them have been that way). Things, however have started changing.
As of January, I have found myself free from a 9 month relationship, though not going into full details, it was with someone that I liked but I knew that I couldn't marry for some reason. Emotions defy logic so I am not going to even try explaining. But after a dry spell of meeting people I have started attending various social events again and as a result, meeting many interesting people (what a blessing) and I have somehow managed to come to the situation where there will be several candidates that might make for good girl friends in the future and I have started running thought experiments in my head.
Finding the right person
I have had the pleasant experience of meeting many couples over the course of my life, some of them are couples that work really well together and it is quite obvious to me that the both of them are quite happy. I do believe that it is my responsibility to be active in finding the right person that I would like to spend a considerable amount of time with. I do believe that it should be the dutiful responsibility of everyone else to do the same. Unfortunately, somehow, it is easy to be unaware of the graveness of finding the right person as if things don't work out, things can get very messy down the road.
When it comes to initiating any sort of formal/informal relationship with a person of interest, it is up to the man to make the first move. Of course there can be plenty of prior cursory interaction that might give some indication of the character of the candidate, but it really boils down to spending time with them to understand the values, the characteristics and how well does each person fit together in a relationship. Because not everyone is a good fit for each other, it usually is necessary to go through several/many people to find the right person.
The numbers game
As a sweeping and inaccurate generalization, men are often chided upon for being "players" or wanting to go after whatever hot chick that might come their way. I wouldn't blame them, because if they didn't, women would be bitching about men not making the first move (which also seems to be a prevalent problem). Damned if you do, damned if you don't. So if you're going to be damned anyways, I'd say make the first move and it seems to me that is has been somewhat genetically programmed into the male species (though sometimes suppressed by more educated people). I would say that this is very wise advice, since it is statistically very improbable to find a close to ideal match for you without taking a big enough sample size of people.
An obligation to yourself-- against a stacked system
I read somewhere about an old guy giving advice to his soon to be adult grandson. The whole story is pretty much about how kids and women are generally protected in modern society, however when it comes to being a man, there isn't a whole lot of mechanisms looking out for you and I would have to agree with that.
There has been plenty statistics out there that 50% of marriages end in divorce and of these divorces 2/3's of them have been initiated by women. In addition if children are involved, the women will generally get custody and the couple will generally split financial assets and the man will end up paying for child support. If the divorced female fancies another guy, she may make the decision not to marry so that she can continue to receive financial support from the male and enjoy the companionship of her new boy-toy. In other words, have her cake and eat it too.
I have read about many of these kinds of scenarios and come to the opinion that marriage is a very dangerous proposition for the man. The man has a lot to lose and the woman has a lot to gain from such an arrangement. As an interesting aside, a lot of Japanese women are pretty much the "head of the financial household," where many men generally give all their income to their wives for them to "manage" and the hard working men get "allowances" from their wives to spend on as they wish. I had an interesting conversation with a female friend of mine last week about that when it came to possibly marrying a Japanese girl and I responded, if that was the case I'd rather become a playboy instead of getting married to anyone. My response might have come off as a bit of a shocker, but it made perfect sense... I still have no idea where this notion of the man giving all his money to the wife historically came from, but I'll leave it as a side project to figure out.
For those of you that have followed this blog, I have a keen interest in personal finance as financial planning is crucial for the long term life planning. I for one, do not want to spend any more time than I have to working at job because I have to and would rather spend time on things that I want to do. In order to achieve these goals, I require many years of hard work and good financial management. I obviously don't want to be set back by a bad divorce, (and people say that is what a prenuptial is for, I am still on the fence about it however).
With these risks in mind, I obviously have to set very high standards for women that I would consider marrying. We would be very well suited for each other, I would have to be damn well confident that I could trust her. Women in general would want their man to honestly tell them that they are for "the one" for them... and considering the risks, I would damn well have to consider them "the one" if that were the case. It would not come easy, because it would be absolutely necessary that my trust be earned.
So when it comes to finding the right woman, I have no apologies for being the measured man that I should be.
This post is going to be something that I am going to use to help formalize some underlying notions that I have been having recently about male-female relationships and what should be my motivations be for making behavioral decisions. Consider this to be somewhat of a rough draft....
The Role of a Man
As much as modern society would like gender equality between the sexes, things are still not 100% equal, especially when it comes to who has to make the first move (and usually it is the man, though I would not consider it a bad thing). I consider myself a modern man, generally politically correct and respectful to the equality movement between men and women. Unfortunately, perhaps, I have taken things too far in when it comes to male-female relationships that I end up treating most females like ordinary friends and that is what I usually get. If you could stereotype me, I would probably come off as "the nice guy" and usually the nice guy isn't the kind of guy that choose his women, they end up choosing him... which seems to be another characteristic of my past experiences (though not all of them have been that way). Things, however have started changing.
As of January, I have found myself free from a 9 month relationship, though not going into full details, it was with someone that I liked but I knew that I couldn't marry for some reason. Emotions defy logic so I am not going to even try explaining. But after a dry spell of meeting people I have started attending various social events again and as a result, meeting many interesting people (what a blessing) and I have somehow managed to come to the situation where there will be several candidates that might make for good girl friends in the future and I have started running thought experiments in my head.
Finding the right person
I have had the pleasant experience of meeting many couples over the course of my life, some of them are couples that work really well together and it is quite obvious to me that the both of them are quite happy. I do believe that it is my responsibility to be active in finding the right person that I would like to spend a considerable amount of time with. I do believe that it should be the dutiful responsibility of everyone else to do the same. Unfortunately, somehow, it is easy to be unaware of the graveness of finding the right person as if things don't work out, things can get very messy down the road.
When it comes to initiating any sort of formal/informal relationship with a person of interest, it is up to the man to make the first move. Of course there can be plenty of prior cursory interaction that might give some indication of the character of the candidate, but it really boils down to spending time with them to understand the values, the characteristics and how well does each person fit together in a relationship. Because not everyone is a good fit for each other, it usually is necessary to go through several/many people to find the right person.
The numbers game
As a sweeping and inaccurate generalization, men are often chided upon for being "players" or wanting to go after whatever hot chick that might come their way. I wouldn't blame them, because if they didn't, women would be bitching about men not making the first move (which also seems to be a prevalent problem). Damned if you do, damned if you don't. So if you're going to be damned anyways, I'd say make the first move and it seems to me that is has been somewhat genetically programmed into the male species (though sometimes suppressed by more educated people). I would say that this is very wise advice, since it is statistically very improbable to find a close to ideal match for you without taking a big enough sample size of people.
An obligation to yourself-- against a stacked system
I read somewhere about an old guy giving advice to his soon to be adult grandson. The whole story is pretty much about how kids and women are generally protected in modern society, however when it comes to being a man, there isn't a whole lot of mechanisms looking out for you and I would have to agree with that.
There has been plenty statistics out there that 50% of marriages end in divorce and of these divorces 2/3's of them have been initiated by women. In addition if children are involved, the women will generally get custody and the couple will generally split financial assets and the man will end up paying for child support. If the divorced female fancies another guy, she may make the decision not to marry so that she can continue to receive financial support from the male and enjoy the companionship of her new boy-toy. In other words, have her cake and eat it too.
I have read about many of these kinds of scenarios and come to the opinion that marriage is a very dangerous proposition for the man. The man has a lot to lose and the woman has a lot to gain from such an arrangement. As an interesting aside, a lot of Japanese women are pretty much the "head of the financial household," where many men generally give all their income to their wives for them to "manage" and the hard working men get "allowances" from their wives to spend on as they wish. I had an interesting conversation with a female friend of mine last week about that when it came to possibly marrying a Japanese girl and I responded, if that was the case I'd rather become a playboy instead of getting married to anyone. My response might have come off as a bit of a shocker, but it made perfect sense... I still have no idea where this notion of the man giving all his money to the wife historically came from, but I'll leave it as a side project to figure out.
For those of you that have followed this blog, I have a keen interest in personal finance as financial planning is crucial for the long term life planning. I for one, do not want to spend any more time than I have to working at job because I have to and would rather spend time on things that I want to do. In order to achieve these goals, I require many years of hard work and good financial management. I obviously don't want to be set back by a bad divorce, (and people say that is what a prenuptial is for, I am still on the fence about it however).
With these risks in mind, I obviously have to set very high standards for women that I would consider marrying. We would be very well suited for each other, I would have to be damn well confident that I could trust her. Women in general would want their man to honestly tell them that they are for "the one" for them... and considering the risks, I would damn well have to consider them "the one" if that were the case. It would not come easy, because it would be absolutely necessary that my trust be earned.
So when it comes to finding the right woman, I have no apologies for being the measured man that I should be.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
It is tough to moonlight
Coming home from a job and trying to do another job in the evenings is tough stuff. I have so far have not found the will power to try and work on other career related projects after coming home (programming and what not). I have been quite busy with my dieting and exercise project that I haven't had too much time to do much else.
I came home at about 8 pm tonight, spent a good 45 mins ~ hour going to the supermarket, loading up on a ton load of food. Bringing that home, doing some cooking (+1 hour), some cleaning (+30 mins) some eating (+30 mins) before having some time to exercise (+30 mins). By the time I finished all that, it's already 11:30 pm. I suppose that it should be OK since I did make enough food for the next 3~4 days but still, time is a precious commodity when you have a 9~7 pm kind of job.
Fortunately a long holiday is coming up and I am looking forward to spending some quality alone time to do some studying and work on some projects.
On a side note the exercise and dieting is starting to pay off. I've already noticed a subtle loss in fat around the waist and about 2 kg loss in weight over the last 2 weeks. I ate some particularly heavy food and took in a lot of liquid before weighing myself, but I expect to lose that in a day or so. Hopefully the trend continues and levels off when I start gaining significant amounts of muscle.
I came home at about 8 pm tonight, spent a good 45 mins ~ hour going to the supermarket, loading up on a ton load of food. Bringing that home, doing some cooking (+1 hour), some cleaning (+30 mins) some eating (+30 mins) before having some time to exercise (+30 mins). By the time I finished all that, it's already 11:30 pm. I suppose that it should be OK since I did make enough food for the next 3~4 days but still, time is a precious commodity when you have a 9~7 pm kind of job.
Fortunately a long holiday is coming up and I am looking forward to spending some quality alone time to do some studying and work on some projects.
On a side note the exercise and dieting is starting to pay off. I've already noticed a subtle loss in fat around the waist and about 2 kg loss in weight over the last 2 weeks. I ate some particularly heavy food and took in a lot of liquid before weighing myself, but I expect to lose that in a day or so. Hopefully the trend continues and levels off when I start gaining significant amounts of muscle.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Exercising and Dieting Week 1
Following up with my plan to get in to shape, I've been recording my weight since last week to see if there's been any physical changes since taking up some regular exercise and changing my diet. I've already discussed the kinds of foods that I am aiming to avoid and optimize for in a previous post. For this week, I've focused on reducing my meat intake and switched over to a diet which is high on beans, rice, white fish and some vegetables to reduce the amount of fat and calories I take while keeping myself full. I've been eating for cod and mackerel for lunches while at work, rice at home and stewed chili with crap loads of vegetables and some ground beef for dinner for when I get home.
After work, I am currently alternating between riding my new cross-bike for about 30 mins, covering a distance of about 10 km or training with weights at home to build some muscle. I think there has been some modest physical changes around my butt as I now have to wear a belt or else my pants start sagging. My stomach has also started flattening out as well so I consider this a pretty good week in exercise.
In terms of weight loss, I've done better than my target of losing 500 grams (or 1 lb) per week, and managed to lose 1 kg (or about 2 lb). I have started a routine where I weigh myself right after dinner with minimal clothing to keep my measurements consistent. I have about a 600 gram weight difference depending if I've already eaten dinner or not (meaning the consumption of solid foods and liquids). Not bad for 1 week's worth of results. A small image of my tabulated weight data week 1 is posted below:
It will be interesting to see what happens next week as I continue on my exercise + diet routine.
After work, I am currently alternating between riding my new cross-bike for about 30 mins, covering a distance of about 10 km or training with weights at home to build some muscle. I think there has been some modest physical changes around my butt as I now have to wear a belt or else my pants start sagging. My stomach has also started flattening out as well so I consider this a pretty good week in exercise.
In terms of weight loss, I've done better than my target of losing 500 grams (or 1 lb) per week, and managed to lose 1 kg (or about 2 lb). I have started a routine where I weigh myself right after dinner with minimal clothing to keep my measurements consistent. I have about a 600 gram weight difference depending if I've already eaten dinner or not (meaning the consumption of solid foods and liquids). Not bad for 1 week's worth of results. A small image of my tabulated weight data week 1 is posted below:
It will be interesting to see what happens next week as I continue on my exercise + diet routine.
Connecting work to money
In the R&D world, I feel that there is a disconnect between the work a researcher does and their ability to make money from it. No doubt that I believe that doing R&D is important, but it is hard to gauge the impact a person has on a product/society when working on a large project.
I've been working on several different aspect of my project over the past few years. I've been trying to improve power efficiency by manipulating device structures to improving reliability by testing out new materials to make sure they don't start degrading when used in environments where there are electric fields and strong sources of light.
I have a work evaluation coming up in a week and just started preparing stuff to discuss with the boss during my interview and the my angle is to try and connect the work I do either some monetary value or some impact it has on the project. The bigger the value/impact the better prospects of me getting a bigger bonus. I've been looking through some of the internal company grading schemes and it turns out that people are generally graded on a 7 step scale with most people ranked at the middle. You are then ranked higher if your boss has a positive perception of the work you do.
For a person in my position, if I am ranked at a 4 and ranked up to a 3, I'd probably get about $800~$1000 more for my seasonal bonus (my summer one). Japan has an interesting system where that everyone is paid a monthly salary and then 2 bonuses throughout the year (one in the summer and one in the winter).
The monetary bonuses are generally equivalent to about 2 months worth of salary and can be more or less depending on the performance of both the company and the individual. I generally view positive performance as the ability to find more efficient ways of doing things, thus improving the quantity and quality of output. My strategies usually involve finding ways of multiplying my output over what the average person is able to produce, thus I generally believe that financial incentives should scale with output. Unfortunately, that isn't generally the case when it comes to R&D.
When it comes to R&D, we are generally looking at either developing new technologies or improving current systems. The number of experiments and the amount of data you are able to crunch is usually inconsequential unless you produce good results. I come from the camp that if you are able to run more experiments and are able to analyze/manage large data sets effectively, then you should eventually hit on a good result sooner or be more informed when planning experiments.
The other question that one needs to ask, how much is a good result worth? An extra $800~$1000? In the real commercial world, that good experimental results are worth more, and I believe that people are generally short changed when it comes to work, simply because they do not understand the value of the work they are producing.
Interestingly, just writing a patent application will net a person $100. If the patent turns out to be an OK one, you might get $1000~$3000 ish for it after review. Exceptional patents get $10,000 in bonus cash. But here is the thing, if you created an enabling technology that created a multi-million market, wouldn't you think that a $10,000 pat on the back is a little cheap? Especially when they pay you after the fact? I think so.
I sometimes miss the times when I used to be a tutor, because I knew exactly how my work equated to monetary reward. I would eventually run an exam preparation program which was sort of an idea borrowed from the days I was part of the Math Club at UBC that sold solution packets to old first year exams. These guys would easily make $5000/term and was one of the richest clubs on campus. I took my experiences from working with their business and created a Physics version of their business and added a lecture section to the business and netted the Engineering Physics club a $4500/term income stream just for teaching first year students how to prepare for first year exams. When you get students to pay $15 for a 3 hour lecture, it is amazing how well they shut up and pay attention. Professors would easily be in envy of how I was able to keep control of my classes, because they knew that this was coming out of their pockets.
After lots of initial setup, teaching these courses would probably earn the lecturer about $400/hour as I used to have 150 students attend a single seminar. And compared to other lecturers like "Dan the Tutor", my lectures were damn cheap -> $15 compared to his $25. If I jacked up the price a little more I'd make incredible profits. But I was young and could never wrap my head around large financial numbers, so I tended to be modest when charging people. In the business world, things are quite different however.
I miss those days, when I could directly equate my work to money. I rather dislike airy-fairly corporate evaluations when in comparison. After the project I am working on ends, I'll be looking for ways to bring me back in touch with finding ways of directly producing value to people.
I've been working on several different aspect of my project over the past few years. I've been trying to improve power efficiency by manipulating device structures to improving reliability by testing out new materials to make sure they don't start degrading when used in environments where there are electric fields and strong sources of light.
I have a work evaluation coming up in a week and just started preparing stuff to discuss with the boss during my interview and the my angle is to try and connect the work I do either some monetary value or some impact it has on the project. The bigger the value/impact the better prospects of me getting a bigger bonus. I've been looking through some of the internal company grading schemes and it turns out that people are generally graded on a 7 step scale with most people ranked at the middle. You are then ranked higher if your boss has a positive perception of the work you do.
For a person in my position, if I am ranked at a 4 and ranked up to a 3, I'd probably get about $800~$1000 more for my seasonal bonus (my summer one). Japan has an interesting system where that everyone is paid a monthly salary and then 2 bonuses throughout the year (one in the summer and one in the winter).
The monetary bonuses are generally equivalent to about 2 months worth of salary and can be more or less depending on the performance of both the company and the individual. I generally view positive performance as the ability to find more efficient ways of doing things, thus improving the quantity and quality of output. My strategies usually involve finding ways of multiplying my output over what the average person is able to produce, thus I generally believe that financial incentives should scale with output. Unfortunately, that isn't generally the case when it comes to R&D.
When it comes to R&D, we are generally looking at either developing new technologies or improving current systems. The number of experiments and the amount of data you are able to crunch is usually inconsequential unless you produce good results. I come from the camp that if you are able to run more experiments and are able to analyze/manage large data sets effectively, then you should eventually hit on a good result sooner or be more informed when planning experiments.
The other question that one needs to ask, how much is a good result worth? An extra $800~$1000? In the real commercial world, that good experimental results are worth more, and I believe that people are generally short changed when it comes to work, simply because they do not understand the value of the work they are producing.
Interestingly, just writing a patent application will net a person $100. If the patent turns out to be an OK one, you might get $1000~$3000 ish for it after review. Exceptional patents get $10,000 in bonus cash. But here is the thing, if you created an enabling technology that created a multi-million market, wouldn't you think that a $10,000 pat on the back is a little cheap? Especially when they pay you after the fact? I think so.
I sometimes miss the times when I used to be a tutor, because I knew exactly how my work equated to monetary reward. I would eventually run an exam preparation program which was sort of an idea borrowed from the days I was part of the Math Club at UBC that sold solution packets to old first year exams. These guys would easily make $5000/term and was one of the richest clubs on campus. I took my experiences from working with their business and created a Physics version of their business and added a lecture section to the business and netted the Engineering Physics club a $4500/term income stream just for teaching first year students how to prepare for first year exams. When you get students to pay $15 for a 3 hour lecture, it is amazing how well they shut up and pay attention. Professors would easily be in envy of how I was able to keep control of my classes, because they knew that this was coming out of their pockets.
After lots of initial setup, teaching these courses would probably earn the lecturer about $400/hour as I used to have 150 students attend a single seminar. And compared to other lecturers like "Dan the Tutor", my lectures were damn cheap -> $15 compared to his $25. If I jacked up the price a little more I'd make incredible profits. But I was young and could never wrap my head around large financial numbers, so I tended to be modest when charging people. In the business world, things are quite different however.
I miss those days, when I could directly equate my work to money. I rather dislike airy-fairly corporate evaluations when in comparison. After the project I am working on ends, I'll be looking for ways to bring me back in touch with finding ways of directly producing value to people.
Garbage bin + a dehydrator?
Spring is coming up and usually that means that biodegradable waste has a tendency to start stinking in the garbage bin. I used to just use a plastic bag I kept under a table to throw out waste and take it outside after the bag got full, this was usually done a weekly basis and the interesting thing I've noticed is that keeping biodegradable waste in an open garbage bag smells less worse than keeping it in a closed garbage bin. I would accredit this phenomena to the escaping moisture from the thrown out bio-waste making it harder for things to rot and smell rancid.
Now just imagine if you could incorporate a dehydrator into garbage bin and thus expelling out moisture from all your waste thus making it harder for things to rot. The most ideal environment would be to create a very dry environment for garbage storage, possibly with some heat (but not much, because things may end up smelling again due to the warmth).
Now the trick is, could you make the bin cheap enough that the average person would want to buy?
Now just imagine if you could incorporate a dehydrator into garbage bin and thus expelling out moisture from all your waste thus making it harder for things to rot. The most ideal environment would be to create a very dry environment for garbage storage, possibly with some heat (but not much, because things may end up smelling again due to the warmth).
Now the trick is, could you make the bin cheap enough that the average person would want to buy?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Doing what you believe in
The biggest trap that most people find themselves in is working in a job where the pay is good but they aren't doing something that they really believe in. If you had a high paying job and was doing something that you didn't really care about/felt somewhat dubious about would you give that up to do something else (which you don't know yet?)
The calculus of making decisions without knowing everything is a tricky one and it is sometimes with people that have a healthy disregard of thinking too far into the future that can make interesting decisions.
I came across an article written by an ex-MIT student working for a consulting company, which sometimes equated to being a monkey looking for data to support some predetermined conclusion that someone wants proved. Numbers are jiggled to make thing work out, but despite being paid really well, the author had some moral reservations. Maybe being fresh out of university and being idealistic is a factor at play here, but for older people with mortgage and a family, it really becomes a calculus of knowing what they can get by on that forces many people into a trap of doing things they might not really enjoy out of necessity.
A job's a job as some people might say.
To be honest, I believe that people lose a part of themselves when they come to the point of accepting a job out of necessity instead of what they want to be doing. I think that it is unfortunate that many people don't or haven't the opportunity to try and find the things they might enjoy doing as a job. Many of the most interesting business or things made have been made through an act of curiosity or passion. I've written about this before when it comes to finding/doing what you love.
As much as I like quantitative analysis and working on optimization problems, how does one do a price/performance calculation on sacrificing money to something enjoyable, I simply do not know. But there is a value in knowing how to follow one's feelings.
As for me, I ironically work on display systems stuff that will be used for TVs. I haven't owned a TV or watched anything regularly in the last 5 years, but here I am doing what I do. All that I know is that I shouldn't be doing this forever and will need to move on to do something I really care about, but there are some interesting events coming up in the future that is keeping me around for this project for the time being.
There are times when you just can't do what you want, when you want to. As much as I would like to come up with some golden rules or something, there just aren't any. It's all about knowing how to make the "right" decisions, but that might be a topic for a different post.
It's 2:30 am and I have work tomorrow...
The calculus of making decisions without knowing everything is a tricky one and it is sometimes with people that have a healthy disregard of thinking too far into the future that can make interesting decisions.
I came across an article written by an ex-MIT student working for a consulting company, which sometimes equated to being a monkey looking for data to support some predetermined conclusion that someone wants proved. Numbers are jiggled to make thing work out, but despite being paid really well, the author had some moral reservations. Maybe being fresh out of university and being idealistic is a factor at play here, but for older people with mortgage and a family, it really becomes a calculus of knowing what they can get by on that forces many people into a trap of doing things they might not really enjoy out of necessity.
A job's a job as some people might say.
To be honest, I believe that people lose a part of themselves when they come to the point of accepting a job out of necessity instead of what they want to be doing. I think that it is unfortunate that many people don't or haven't the opportunity to try and find the things they might enjoy doing as a job. Many of the most interesting business or things made have been made through an act of curiosity or passion. I've written about this before when it comes to finding/doing what you love.
As much as I like quantitative analysis and working on optimization problems, how does one do a price/performance calculation on sacrificing money to something enjoyable, I simply do not know. But there is a value in knowing how to follow one's feelings.
As for me, I ironically work on display systems stuff that will be used for TVs. I haven't owned a TV or watched anything regularly in the last 5 years, but here I am doing what I do. All that I know is that I shouldn't be doing this forever and will need to move on to do something I really care about, but there are some interesting events coming up in the future that is keeping me around for this project for the time being.
There are times when you just can't do what you want, when you want to. As much as I would like to come up with some golden rules or something, there just aren't any. It's all about knowing how to make the "right" decisions, but that might be a topic for a different post.
It's 2:30 am and I have work tomorrow...
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Nutritional Data and Objectives
In continuance of my project to lose fat and gain muscle, I have started looking into the nutritional value of foods that I usually/should consider consuming to attaining my dietary goals.
I will be following the objects laid out here to aim for about 1 lb/week weight (mainly fat) loss for the first few months. I currently weigh about 152 lbs and will be aiming for a 1600 kcal/day diet.
In point form, the daily diet I will be aiming for is the following (from this webpage):
-Caloric intake: 1600 kcal/day,
-Fat intake: max 10% of caloric intake ~ 160 kcal/day
-Protein intake: ~ 1g protein / lb body weight -> 150 g protein/day
In order to attain this goal, I've started looking into the nutritional values of food to figure out the right combination of foods to attain the above dietary goals. I've started looking at nutritional data provided at nutritionData.com, which is a search able database of many common foods and compiled a short list of foods that I consume on a regular basis.
The optimization problem that needs to be solved here is finding foods that are high protein and low in fat. From what I have found so far is that meats tend to be very high in protein, however also very high in fat content. In general, when trying to lose fast and gain muscle, these are the kinds of foods that you want to avoid, unless you have a high metabolism that allows your body to consume fat calories very quickly.
The nutritional table of foods that I commonly consume is posted below:
A quick glance at the food table here, it is quite easy to acquire calories only by selecting for grain based foods like rice, pasta or bread. Given that there is a degree of freedom in calories, it is necessary to find a way to consume the target amount of protein amount of 150 g without going over the caloric and fat intake budget. To get and idea of the kinds of foods that I would be selecting for, I have also added % fat and protein(g)/calorie(kcal) columns to the the provided table.
Since I am aiming for 150 g protein/1600 kcals for a single day my selection criteria for foods high in protein will be a grams protein/kcals ratio of greater than 0.09 at minimum. The obvious sources for protein is meat but protein from meat tends to be high in fat. The best out of meat group is chicken, with the lowest of fat content at 38.7% and the highest ratio of protein/calories of the meat group.
Doing some quick calculations, basing a diet around chicken for my nutritional goals is impossible if I were to get all of my protein from chicken (consuming 750g/day) would yield about 380 kcals in fat putting me over my fat intake limit. Thus consuming meat is out and I'll leave meat eating to social events.
Looking at the list closely, good sources of protein that are low in fat is seafood, most notably white meat seafoods, including pike, cod and mackerel (salmon and tuna, however is high in fat). The winner of this group is cod with a fat content of 7.6% and a protein/calorie of 0.22. With this fish I could consume 750 g/day for my protein intake and would have plenty of space left in my daily calorie budget to eat anything else (grains and vegetables).
Obviously, I won't be basing my protein needs from a single source but it gives me a good idea of the kinds of foods I need to be consuming to attaining my dietary goals. Oddly enough, for the diet I am looking at, I am quite certain that I won't be eating less, but just as much or even more compared to what I eat now. Which seems somewhat counter intuitive. You just have to eat the right foods to stay lean instead of less.
The focus of this diet will be to move my protein intake to fish and supplement my caloric intake with nutrients from vegetables to keep fat consumption low. I have started taking daily weight measurements to see how things go and will be looking to post preliminary results after taking a month of data.
I will be following the objects laid out here to aim for about 1 lb/week weight (mainly fat) loss for the first few months. I currently weigh about 152 lbs and will be aiming for a 1600 kcal/day diet.
In point form, the daily diet I will be aiming for is the following (from this webpage):
-Caloric intake: 1600 kcal/day,
-Fat intake: max 10% of caloric intake ~ 160 kcal/day
-Protein intake: ~ 1g protein / lb body weight -> 150 g protein/day
In order to attain this goal, I've started looking into the nutritional values of food to figure out the right combination of foods to attain the above dietary goals. I've started looking at nutritional data provided at nutritionData.com, which is a search able database of many common foods and compiled a short list of foods that I consume on a regular basis.
The optimization problem that needs to be solved here is finding foods that are high protein and low in fat. From what I have found so far is that meats tend to be very high in protein, however also very high in fat content. In general, when trying to lose fast and gain muscle, these are the kinds of foods that you want to avoid, unless you have a high metabolism that allows your body to consume fat calories very quickly.
The nutritional table of foods that I commonly consume is posted below:
A quick glance at the food table here, it is quite easy to acquire calories only by selecting for grain based foods like rice, pasta or bread. Given that there is a degree of freedom in calories, it is necessary to find a way to consume the target amount of protein amount of 150 g without going over the caloric and fat intake budget. To get and idea of the kinds of foods that I would be selecting for, I have also added % fat and protein(g)/calorie(kcal) columns to the the provided table.
Since I am aiming for 150 g protein/1600 kcals for a single day my selection criteria for foods high in protein will be a grams protein/kcals ratio of greater than 0.09 at minimum. The obvious sources for protein is meat but protein from meat tends to be high in fat. The best out of meat group is chicken, with the lowest of fat content at 38.7% and the highest ratio of protein/calories of the meat group.
Doing some quick calculations, basing a diet around chicken for my nutritional goals is impossible if I were to get all of my protein from chicken (consuming 750g/day) would yield about 380 kcals in fat putting me over my fat intake limit. Thus consuming meat is out and I'll leave meat eating to social events.
Looking at the list closely, good sources of protein that are low in fat is seafood, most notably white meat seafoods, including pike, cod and mackerel (salmon and tuna, however is high in fat). The winner of this group is cod with a fat content of 7.6% and a protein/calorie of 0.22. With this fish I could consume 750 g/day for my protein intake and would have plenty of space left in my daily calorie budget to eat anything else (grains and vegetables).
Obviously, I won't be basing my protein needs from a single source but it gives me a good idea of the kinds of foods I need to be consuming to attaining my dietary goals. Oddly enough, for the diet I am looking at, I am quite certain that I won't be eating less, but just as much or even more compared to what I eat now. Which seems somewhat counter intuitive. You just have to eat the right foods to stay lean instead of less.
The focus of this diet will be to move my protein intake to fish and supplement my caloric intake with nutrients from vegetables to keep fat consumption low. I have started taking daily weight measurements to see how things go and will be looking to post preliminary results after taking a month of data.
More Signal, Less Noise
As mentioned before in a previous post that as you get more users inputting information onto a website, the more that quality degrades, we have admission of this happening here from Arstechnica, a technology website that I've frequented for quite some time.
And there you have it. So the million dollar question (that probably google is out to solve) is how does one separate good information from the bad? In any circumstance if you're good at it, then there's plenty of money to be made for you."Today, I would like to discuss with our community the recent decline in both quality and civility in our front page news discussions/comments. While I remain proud of our community discussions on articles, and while I acknowledge that they are far superior to the status quo online, things have taken a turn for the worse in recent months.
As much as we might like to believe that it is related simply to controversial topics, such as the iPad or climate change, the fact is that we see the problem all over the place, in all sorts of topic areas. And it's not just the staff. In recent months, long-time readers (people who have been here for nearly a decade or more) have complained publicly and privately about the decline in quality and civility." - Arstechnica: More signal, less noise: cleaning up our comments
Friday, April 09, 2010
Going to start a new diet + exercise plan
Still in the works of doing research but it has been requested of me from a girl that I gain some muscles. In addition to doing some more extensive work out, I've also started looking into setting up a new diet to help me bulk up a little by first losing some excess fat. I might be skinny, but I do seem to have plenty of fat around my body.
I've found lots of information from this website which I think is pretty reliable source of information. The guy makes some really corny videos, but still, they seem fairly useful. Apparently, it takes about 1 year to build 5~10 pounds of muscle, so toning up the body is doing to be an extensive process. However, losing fat is achievable by reducing caloric intake.
I weigh about 165 pounds and the target caloric intake for me is about 1700 kcals/day. I've started charting out a wide variety of food that I consume and have come to the conclusion that I should reduce my consumption of meats and concentrate on vegetables and beans. Fish and poultry is okay but sparingly.
In order for my body to keep up with muscle growth, it is also recommended that I take in about 1 gram of protein / pound of body weight. The trick is to find ways of getting the protein without eating fatty food or foods high in calories. I have so far found that pike, chicken and tuna make great candidates since they have a high protein/caloric ratio.
I will be actively avoiding junk food, foods with high sugar content and foods with high fat calories to achieve my goal of reducing my body fat percentage. Hopefully after building some muscle mass, I'll be able to increase my metabolic rate and start eating like a regular person and not get fat, but it looks like it's going to take a few years to achieve.
I've started charting my body daily bodyweight as of yesterday and it will be interesting to see what happens!
I've found lots of information from this website which I think is pretty reliable source of information. The guy makes some really corny videos, but still, they seem fairly useful. Apparently, it takes about 1 year to build 5~10 pounds of muscle, so toning up the body is doing to be an extensive process. However, losing fat is achievable by reducing caloric intake.
I weigh about 165 pounds and the target caloric intake for me is about 1700 kcals/day. I've started charting out a wide variety of food that I consume and have come to the conclusion that I should reduce my consumption of meats and concentrate on vegetables and beans. Fish and poultry is okay but sparingly.
In order for my body to keep up with muscle growth, it is also recommended that I take in about 1 gram of protein / pound of body weight. The trick is to find ways of getting the protein without eating fatty food or foods high in calories. I have so far found that pike, chicken and tuna make great candidates since they have a high protein/caloric ratio.
I will be actively avoiding junk food, foods with high sugar content and foods with high fat calories to achieve my goal of reducing my body fat percentage. Hopefully after building some muscle mass, I'll be able to increase my metabolic rate and start eating like a regular person and not get fat, but it looks like it's going to take a few years to achieve.
I've started charting my body daily bodyweight as of yesterday and it will be interesting to see what happens!
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Cherry Blossom Season In Tokyo
Well, it's April and spring has finally hit Japan. It's still kind of cool but the cherry blossoms in Tokyo sprung out last week.
What this means is that it's time for everyone to go out for drinks in the parks. Japan is rather amazing in the sense that it is legal for people to be walking around town drinking. In most western countries, you'd get a warning or some kind of ticket for that kind of behavior. Banning of public consumption of alcohol in Japan is just unimaginable. The other amazing thing is that when even drunk, everyone is still very well under control -- even after a drunken picnic outside, almost everyone is able to leave without a trace of garbage behind.
Cherry blossom picnics out here look something like this and there was plenty of it over the weekends. Still recovering from all the beer I've consumed.
What this means is that it's time for everyone to go out for drinks in the parks. Japan is rather amazing in the sense that it is legal for people to be walking around town drinking. In most western countries, you'd get a warning or some kind of ticket for that kind of behavior. Banning of public consumption of alcohol in Japan is just unimaginable. The other amazing thing is that when even drunk, everyone is still very well under control -- even after a drunken picnic outside, almost everyone is able to leave without a trace of garbage behind.
Cherry blossom picnics out here look something like this and there was plenty of it over the weekends. Still recovering from all the beer I've consumed.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Bad habits I need to kick
I waste too much time. I keep nagging myself that I need to get more things done, usually my brain is hyper-active with all sorts of things that I want to do while not at work, but by the time I make it home. I end up vegging out reading (useless) stuff on the internet. I am going to have to find ways of reclaiming my after hours time to do more productive things.
From personal experience, my most productive times have been when I've been on the move and needed/really wanted to get things done and usually most of these times have been when I've been traveling. Probably getting out of the house and going to places where I have to leave things behind have contributed to cutting down surrounding distractions. Simply, I think getting used to some place/rhythm is bad for me.
Changing habits via external influences
I think it's the familiar surroundings of home that makes me unproductive. I generally have everything I need in my compact room. I have a fridge, desk for my computer, a table setup for cooking (because we don't have a kitchen in our dorm rooms) and a bed. It's easy to just get home and have everything I need within a 5 meter radius from my computer. It's also pretty sick that I have one of those chairs with wheels which I can just glide around my room to get anything I need.
I pretty much live in an environment that makes me lazy. Though the rent is cheap, I have been contemplating moving out a little early to get myself into a new environment. The problem about using external factors to impose (inflict?) change upon one's self generally costs money, for example when it comes to say moving out or hiring people (ie like a trainer) to enforce better habits.
Changing habits via internal influences
Finding ways of changing habits internally is honestly tough. I'm kind of surprised after so many generational iterations of the human species, that we haven't been instilled with better will power, but that would sort of be defeating the question. Imposing internal changes on myself is the hardest and the idea that "people being a product of their environment" rings quite loudly here. Why change if things are going OK and you are used to the surrounding environment, right?
I'd write more about figuring out how to improve will-power at the moment but I am at a loss for ideas at the moment. For now, I'll probably start charting out how my time is allocated during the week and figure out actions of recourse.
Anyways, need to get over my damn cold. The cherry blossoms are going to be in full bloom this weekend and it's going to be a busy weekend since I'll be hosting 2 cherry blossom parties.
From personal experience, my most productive times have been when I've been on the move and needed/really wanted to get things done and usually most of these times have been when I've been traveling. Probably getting out of the house and going to places where I have to leave things behind have contributed to cutting down surrounding distractions. Simply, I think getting used to some place/rhythm is bad for me.
Changing habits via external influences
I think it's the familiar surroundings of home that makes me unproductive. I generally have everything I need in my compact room. I have a fridge, desk for my computer, a table setup for cooking (because we don't have a kitchen in our dorm rooms) and a bed. It's easy to just get home and have everything I need within a 5 meter radius from my computer. It's also pretty sick that I have one of those chairs with wheels which I can just glide around my room to get anything I need.
I pretty much live in an environment that makes me lazy. Though the rent is cheap, I have been contemplating moving out a little early to get myself into a new environment. The problem about using external factors to impose (inflict?) change upon one's self generally costs money, for example when it comes to say moving out or hiring people (ie like a trainer) to enforce better habits.
Changing habits via internal influences
Finding ways of changing habits internally is honestly tough. I'm kind of surprised after so many generational iterations of the human species, that we haven't been instilled with better will power, but that would sort of be defeating the question. Imposing internal changes on myself is the hardest and the idea that "people being a product of their environment" rings quite loudly here. Why change if things are going OK and you are used to the surrounding environment, right?
I'd write more about figuring out how to improve will-power at the moment but I am at a loss for ideas at the moment. For now, I'll probably start charting out how my time is allocated during the week and figure out actions of recourse.
Anyways, need to get over my damn cold. The cherry blossoms are going to be in full bloom this weekend and it's going to be a busy weekend since I'll be hosting 2 cherry blossom parties.
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