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Finished reading: Measure What Matters by John Doerr 📚
Great look into the ‘origin story’ of OKRs as well as specific examples of them in action. Very helpful to understand the how and why behind OKRs, since many shorter posts gloss over the fundamentals and skip right to ‘building a spreadsheet.’
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Dune: Part Two, 2024 - ★★★½
An incredibly cool story that comes across a bit unclearly at times. I really enjoyed the premise — the technology design fits the world very well and it truly seems to be a vast story. But it can be difficult to follow the introductions of new characters and concepts, as well as story development on a first watch. I'd say, ultimately, this movie got me excited to add the books to my reading list.
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Finished with Journal V ✅ Onto the next one ✒️
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Finished reading: Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins 📚 The right story at the right time. A call to action that resonated deeply within me, with a story that challenges the reader to be the best.
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May 2024 Ballroom Dance Showcase at the Franklin Theatre! youtu.be/5YZ2DRxlS…
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Finished reading: Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger 📚
‘Follow up and follow through’ is a great mantra and possibly my favorite takeaway. More reflection to do on the ideas around setting a vision for everything I do and being fully accountable to said vision.
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Green Bananas
The best way to throw out bananas is to not eat them.
The best way to not eat bananas is to wait until they’re ripe (read: forget about them until they’re way-past-ripe).
Honestly, I prefer bananas they’re just a bit green. I really enjoy the bit of bite (can I say al dente?), the not-super-sweetness, the peel that doesn’t leave strings along the banana.
What this also means is that I get first choice — over everyone who waits for them to ripen.
It’s the same with opportunities – after all: the early bird gets the worm [when it] seize[s] the day.
Not because that bird is inherently better or because the worm is inherently tastier.
But that the bird already got that worm, and the rest is pure profit even if it’s at the same rate as the other birds.
Opportunities you recognize first are often also ones where you can capitalize better than others.
That’s not to say go eat a tree branch because it’ll grow a banana someday.
That’s to say: go do that 100%, IF AND ONLY IF you also enjoy that.
More than an adage to wake up early, maybe ‘the early bird gets the worm’ is a testament to that bird knowing its comparative advantage.Because the bird that stays up late enough beats out the early bird in some cases — after all, clocks are circular and night becomes day just as day becomes night.
That’s to say, the goal is to recognize the game (or banana) that fits your tastes, rather than to align your tastes with the banana.
The former is coherence, the latter is compliance.
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Americas Competitiveness Exchange - Michigan
Wow! That’s the only word that can adequately summarize last week as part of the Americas Competitiveness Exchange delegation.
Surveying the Michigan landscape and all it has to offer, checking out specific companies driving change, and seeing the schools that are delivering some proud alums (thankfully I’m not blue/green colorblind 😂).
The people, though, were the true highlight of my experiences (surprisingly and controversially, even over the 6:30a daily departures). Decision makers from across and some beyond the Americas where the passion for supporting our respective economies and communities was deeply apparent.
I look forward to continuing the conversation as we work to grow the healthcare and entrepreneurial ecosystems spanning the continents!
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Death, Lonely Death — Crooked Timber
Voyager stored its internal data on a digital tape recorder. Yes, a tape recorder, storing information on magnetic tape. It wasn’t designed to function at a hundred degrees below zero. It wasn’t designed to work for decades, winding and rewinding, endlessly re-writing data. But it did
What we build and how we build it matters… even if we don’t know the what, how, or why just yet… but sometimes we find ourselves pleasantly surprised
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Joker, 2019 - ★★★★★
Awesome movie! Really enjoyed it and kept me wondering (and attempting to guess) what comes next. Portrays the Joker in a really interesting light in comparison to the rest of the city at large.
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The Hunger Games, 2012
Watched on Sunday February 4, 2024.
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Argylle, 2024 - ★★★½
Watched on Friday February 2, 2024.
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Jon Hamm Narrates Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Updated for the Timeline Era
Plato’s allegory is extended to our present age, where we’re mediated by devices and social media algorithms into individualized shadowy caves of our own
Super cool video, reminds me that I need to re-read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
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Hello, world! I’m playing around with micro.blog
Concept I’m thinking about now, from the book Goodbye, Things: instead of focusing on organization techniques, focus on minimizing first
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2022: The Year of Alignment
Review - 2021: The Year of the Chisel
Lots of change and learning. Graduating, going full-time on Augment, throwing balance to the wind, overwhelming myself. Joining ZeroTo510 cohort, moving to Memphis, and more.
Overall, 2021 gets a thumbs up. Deducting a few points for COVID-related transgressions.
Close of the year, feeling good. The Year of the Chisel had a threefold focus. Artisan Tools, Hammer, and Stone.
Artisan Tools
The artisan tools dimension. Using specific tools for specific jobs. Unbundling the functionality of my devices and services.
Software side: tools are starting to cover everything. Each specializes in a very particular way.
Hardware side: lots of room for progress. Phone remains multi-tool-y. New Focus mode features and widgets are promising. Created special settings for “Work” mode and other modes. Next trick: making sure I actually use and engage with them.
Hammer
Hammer dimension. Improving my systems. Craft and Todoist: core knowledge and task management tools, respectively. Used them for a few months. System unwieldy. Also added friction. Great at capturing things. Not at surfacing them.
Online research. PARA and PPV systems surface. Weekend after Thanksgiving, total overhaul time. Short mental panic — “wow I have no clue how to use this, system is burning down, need to undo everything.” Things start clicking. Week or two later, much more efficient and on top of everything.
Finally. Things have a place. Thing places make sense. Notes and projects live in Craft. Action items in Todoist. Smooth. Invisible value from seeing projects in one place, prompts a little progress. Would have forgotten about them before.
Stone
Stone dimension. Prioritizing creation.
Worked on Augment Health. Probably created value. Partially top secret.
Worked on neurosurgery project with Mayo Clinic. Created new medical device concept.
Very happy with this year’s Jaredigms articles. Didn’t complete full 30-day blogging challenge. Some interesting pieces still came out of it. 16 posts since Year of the Chisel post, including 3 long-form posts.
Hoping to continue into 2022. Goal: 4 long-form posts this year.
2022: The Year of Alignment
Second half of last year, relatively tumultuous time personally. Working off a short time horizon. Scale of months, incredibly different from 4-year horizons of high school and college.
Also working wrong. Not sure if there’s a “right” way to work. Definitely did it wrong. Ended up all-consumed, also making less progress than usual. Icing on the cake: friends told me I needed to find balance. Proceeded to ignore. Some lessons need to be learned the hard way. Others, the even harder way.
This year: finding the trajectory for the next undetermined amount of time. Developing the habits, systems, and relationships to continue that track. Finding balance. Ensuring my actions and behaviors are aligned with who I am and what my goals are.
Setting the destination
First element: finding the “you are here” marker. Puzzle of figuring out who I am, how I think, why I am. Also includes identifying my strengths and weaknesses.
Interested to experiment. First, leaning into strengths while dealing with weaknesses. May be better than struggling to turn weaknesses into strengths. Second, plotting activities and functions on strength/weakness and enjoy/dislike axes.
Creating the route and following the path
Next element: putting things in motion. Identifying habits and practices to drive myself forward. Also involves optimizing systems to support those activities and minimize friction.
Major question this year is relaxation and decompression. My best ideas come from time and space to think. Appears to be echoed across history.
Another experiment, gathering feedback. Better understanding how others see me. For comparing to self-image.
Looking forward to what my Year of Alignment brings.
Here’s to a great 2022 🎉 🎉
Thoughts, ideas, or feedback? Would love to hear it 😄
∃
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Twenty-two
Age is amusing. Getting older is a continuous process. We've made it a stepwise function. "Years" are the discrete blocks to gauge it by.
Nevertheless. Birthdays are points to reflect. To think about age and time. And, theoretically, they're unique. More unique than temporal holidays like New Year's Day.
People evolve and grow over time. I (currently) believe our past selves change alongside our present selves. Not the factual events that took place. The story we tell ourselves changes. Our view of the past changes. Our story that connects the dots between then and now changes.
Graphically, the dots themselves don't move. We redraw the curve through them. We uncover more information to improve the curve. Or, maybe, we've reasoned that the new curve makes sense. Even if we don't have the data to back it quite yet. The curve changes. Our trajectory shifts as a result.
Age is a conveniently discrete timepoint. Which means I get 22 dots to plot out before I connect them.
The dots
My game pieces. The set of events such that (A) they stick out in my mind and (B) age[event] = floor[time_alive[event]].
0 - the origin, I was born on Long Island, in New York.
1 and 2 - driving my parents crazy, probably.
3 - started playing basketball.
4 - started playing soccer.
6 - went to see The Black Crowes, my first concert. didn't get the memo that you sleep after the concert, not during.
9 - went to CSI sleep away camp. called my parents crying because I felt alone. also got my hands on iodine – camp instructors weren't as impressed by my metallic orange hands as I was.
13 - decided to go from public school to private school.
14 - started high school, learned what an AP course was, got my first laptop.
15 - became terrified of Chemistry.
17 - tore my ACL, went to therapy (physical and mental), rehabbed. Wrote my first line of code, went to the Galapagos Islands – my first time out of the country, built a computer. Moved to Atlanta, started college.
18 - joined an immunoengineering cancer research lab, competed in my first hackathon, started journaling.
19 - started ballroom dancing, took my first job at a startup, launched my personal site and blog, and planted the seeds of my own startup.
20 - took my second and third jobs at startups. also, COVID-19 pandemic!
21 - went full-time on my startup; learned a lot about leadership, relationships, and work-life balance. Moved to Memphis, started learning salsa :)
The current curve
4 years ago feels like forever. 3 months ago feels like a lifetime.
Bitbucket Journal Jared, Journal I Jared, Journal II Jared, and Journal III Jared are completely different people. Journal IV Jared will be similarly unique.
I remember each of them, though. Reading the lines brings me back. To both good times and bad times. But they all remain my times. And I can smile at all of them. They taught me so much.
I'll never forget opening an even older notebook to see the words "BREAK FREE" scrawled in all caps and underlined. I had forgotten writing them until then. I was immediately reminded of how I felt at a low point during my ACL recovery.
That low point was a positive inflection point. From there, I worked to understand my values. I identified what I wanted to change. I was able to build my own foundation.
The people I've gotten to know as friends have been so amazing and supportive.
The teams I've been so fortunate to contribute to taught me how to lead and deliver results.
The relationships and subsequent breakups taught me so much about communication, people, and myself.
The mentors in my life have guided me through so many decisions.
Resilience, gratitude, and love. The three parameters that define the current curve of my life.
My trajectory
Here I am, 22 years after being born.
I feel like my trajectory points up. It's currently positive. For that, I'm grateful.
I'm incredibly excited about the vision we've set at Augment Health.
I also have 5 personal goals for the next 5 years of my life:
- Grow my relationships. Become closer with my existing friends, while also making new ones.
- Positively impact 1000 people's lives.
- Be healthy.
- Spend 500 hours volunteering.
- Be fluent in Spanish.
I have no clue what the rest of Journal IV will say. But I can't wait to read it and start inking Journal V.
Quotes
I'll close with a few pieces of "wisdom." From myself to myself. All written out of love and compassion. Extracted as reminders for me. Maybe helpful to someone else.
"The only thing worse than being bad is not showing up" (January 12th, 2019)
"But perhaps that's the blessing of these moments. You can have great moments, but the greatest moments are the endings because they mark a new chapter" (June 18th, 2021)
"I need to always finish strong, because I might not get a redo" (February 14th, 2021)
"Don't let "what if," get in the way of "what is," looking back. Don't let "what is," get in the way of "what if," looking forward" (June 17, 2021)
"It'll be a big week this week. It always is. Let's do this" (March 3rd, 2019)
Thank you
Thank you for joining me on this journey. Thank you for everything - past, present, future, and everything that's drawn in between.
Here's to the future. Here's to twenty-two.
∃ -
What’s Next?
A Memory
“Stand up if you’re living the dream.”
The speaker’s voice echoes through the auditorium to the new students.
I stand up, smiling. My internal monologue acknowledges that this wasn’t the exact plan, but it’s my plan now and I get to own that.Ferst Center at Georgia Tech is where my journey over the last 4 years began. Maybe not physically or administratively, but mentally.
At that moment, I separated myself from the past. I knew what needed to change personally and I was ready to do that.I ended high school with a list of things I wanted to change. I found myself at the intersection of multiple friend groups, but not particularly close with many people. I also realized that I was living to work on meaningless assignments that took up my time but didn’t stoke my desire to learn or to live.
Georgia Tech was not on my list of schools until 5 days before the application deadline, when a friend asked, “are you applying to Georgia Tech?” And I thought, “yeah, why not!”
A Reflection
In May, I had the honor of graduating from Georgia Tech. Words can only begin to describe how grateful I am for the family, friends, teammates, and mentors that have supported my growth over the past four years. Even more so, I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to watch those around me grow and move towards their goals, both personally and professionally.
It’s been incredible to work on so many projects during my time at Georgia Tech, from researching how we can engineer the body’s immune system to treat cancer, to improving stroke treatment at Motus Nova, to collaborating with the Mayo Clinic on a noninvasive intracranial pressure monitor, to name a few. I’ve learned a ton, including sales at a recruiting SaaS startup.
It’s also been amazing to live in Atlanta for four years. I’ve loved the city (despite the humidity) and I’m so happy to see it continue growing.
A Lesson
I truly believe that a few core principles have helped me to reach the place I am.
- Seize the path and make it your own.
- Talk to people and lead with value. Help others and show you care in every interaction. The people you meet and interact with are the ones that will help support you and create the future.
- Please take care of yourself first and then really think about what you’re optimizing for. Your GPA (insert any other metric here) doesn’t matter if you don’t make it through.
A Mission
As I reflect on my life so far and where I want to go, I’ve put words to what’s been on my mind for a long time: help people at a fundamental level.
I believe that this statement embodies virtually everything I do. Whether it’s helping a friend in need, developing a new technology, or even yo-yoing, I’m working to bring positive energy into the world.
A Look Forward
I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to say I’m still living the dream.
Maybe “what’s now and what I am dreaming about” is a better title. I have no clue what my life looks like 3 months from now. And that’s okay. Better than okay actually — incredibly exciting. Here’s a quick rundown of what I’m doing and where I want to go:
My main focus moving forward is Augment Health, where we’re working to improve people’s experiences with medical care and treatment, so people can live holistically healthy lives instead of being held back by their medical conditions. We’re starting by giving people back their bladder sensation so they can get rid of urine collection bags.
In tandem, I’m working on outlining my next steps for personal development. I’m rebuilding my journaling practice, working on reading more books, and improving my personal productivity systems. I’d also like to continue yo-yo-ing, ballroom dancing (let me know if you want to learn or are looking for a partner) and learning yoga (Apple Fitness+ has really gotten me into it).
I’m excited to continue working on Jaredigms, my own little microcosm that hopefully lets people gain a glimpse into my mind and my life.
I would also like to give back to the community. I learned delayed gratification only works for so long and I know I need to make an impact now, while still investing in the future. I’ve been mentoring at hackathons and taught beginner ballroom dance lessons during my last semester at Tech, which was a good start. I want to do more.
Above all, I want to continue meeting people, building relationships, and learning what motivates everyone.
If we haven’t spoken in a while, I’d love to catch up. If we’ve never spoken, I’d love to learn more about what you’re working on, what you’re trying to do, and if there’s anything I can help out with (bonus points if you mention this article 😄). I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
∃ -
Minimum Viable Education
Generally, more information helps people make better decisions. If that's the case, it makes sense for people to gather as much information as possible.
However, acquiring and processing information takes time. Time is a fundamental resource and currency. As a result, time spent acquiring or processing information that doesn't impact the person is wasteful, similar to dumping clean water into the ocean. In the water case, it's easy to see the waste. In the information case, we often don't know what information we will or won't need in the future. Measuring the added value from the learning process also complicates matters.
It appears that we're crowding out spontaneous, real-time learning that comes from living life for structured, pre-emptive lectures that go too deep without connecting the high-level dots. This might make sense in higher level and specialized education, once someone has an interest in learning more in a particular direction. For children, curiosity, critical thinking skills, and a basic amount of information are vital.
Right now, it seems like we use schools to bombard people with information in the hopes that some of it sticks. What if we change that up? Instead of framing it as "let's throw this at the wall and see what sticks," and increasing the amount that sticks by throwing more at the wall, can we frame that as "what's the minimum amount of information we need to stick," and optimize for stickiness?
This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge. The theme for this article was "Waste." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!
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Yes
When I was younger, my dad would regularly listen to music in our living room. Music playing also meant I'd be asked who created a particular song. Correct answers usually included Eric Clapton or John Mayer. Particularly infuriating answers would include The Who and Yes, due to the nature of their names.
"Who's playing right now?"
"I don't know, Eric Clapton?"
"No, The Who!" (but asked like a question – thanks dad)
"I already told you, I don't know"
"It's The Who!" (again, intentionally phrased as a question)
or
"Who's playing right now?"
"I don't know, Eric Clapton?"
"Yes"
I'm happy because I got it right
"No, not Eric Clapton, the band Yes."
Well that's annoying.
It was surprisingly difficult for me to figure out which person or group was playing a song. I generally guessed from the pool of people I'd already heard of. I was much better at remembering the lyrics. Later, I looped albums enough on my own to remember the songs by their first few notes and associated those songs with the album artist (especially John Mayer and Pearl Jam's albums).
Today's theme made me think of Yes's "Shock to the System." Here are a few other songs by Yes that I've really enjoyed over the years:
- Lift Me Up
- Silent Talking
- Angkor Wat
- Wondrous Stories
- Roundabout
This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge. The theme for this article was "Shock." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!
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Finding the next piece
When I was younger, I really enjoyed building LEGO sets. I would open the box, take out the bags, and proceed to empty those bags onto the floor. Then, I'd sit or lie on the floor, with the instructions on one side, the current state of the set in the center, and the shallow pile of colorful pieces on the other side.
The most difficult part of building these sets was digging through the pieces to find the one I needed for the next step. Extensively organizing the pieces seemed to take too long and this was before the pieces were split up into sequentially numbered bags for ease of building. Usually, finding pieces is easy – you scan the pieces and find the one you're looking for.
However, sometimes I'd spend what felt like an eternity looking for a single piece (looking at you, 4865b).
Then I'd stand up. I'd walk around the shallow pile of LEGOs, surveying it as I moved, and quickly notice the piece I couldn't find before.
Standing up and moving around meant that I was physically changing my perspective looking for the piece. It helped me to break out of my limited mental image of the LEGO pile, which I had created from only a single angle, and look at drastically different versions of that pile. Once I was in these new situations, it was very straightforward to find that piece.
It's surprising how effectively this can apply to any aspect of problem solving and even life. By shifting perspective, both physically and mentally, we can find ideas and solutions that we would never have noticed from our previous vantage point.
The ability to shift perspective is a skill in itself and requires effort to practice. That activation energy makes it very easy to forget about its power. Actions as simple as getting up and walking around have helped me with shifting physical perspectives.
I've personally found writing and especially journaling are effective tools for achieving mental perspective shifts. They enable me to give each perspective their own space on a page so I can go put on a new lens without forgetting the old ones.
Effectively shifting and leveraging perspectives to analyze problems is vital for creating the best solutions.
I wholeheartedly recommend walking and journaling (although maybe not at the same time) as a way to build and improve the skill.
This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge. The theme for this article was "Perspective." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!
Photo by Xavi Cabrera on Unsplash
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Do you wear your watch on your left wrist or your non-dominant one?
For a long time, I've wondered whether the proper way to wear a watch is on my left wrist or on my non-dominant one.
According to Wikipedia, this wouldn't be a problem for about 90% of people (source), because those two are the same.
The problem is, I'm left-handed.
On the one hand, watches are typically made to be worn on the left wrist. The crown sits to the right of the watch's face, so it is easily accessible with the right hand. Since right-handedness is so common, this really opens up the number of watch choices I have. However, on my Apple Watch, using the scribble feature is a simultaneous test of both my patience and my dexterity since I'm forced to use my right hand to write.
On the other hand, it makes sense to keep the watch out of the way of day-to-day activities by putting it on my non-dominant (right) wrist. If I'm writing, there's no watch case or band preventing my wrist from resting on the table. Also, I'm much more dexterous with my left hand than my right hand, so the crown and other features would be easier to manipulate.
To keep my options open, I could just flip the watch and have the crown face away from my hand. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be as cool as Jimi Hendrix's playing an electric guitar upside down.
I typically wear watches on my left wrist because it feels "right," although now I'm thinking about trying it out on my right wrist for a week or two. I didn't wear watches very often when I was younger, but the Apple Watch has made a much more compelling case for me to wear it.
This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge. The theme for this article was "Watch." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!
Header photo by Tadeusz Lakota on Unsplash
Picture of Jimi Hendrix from Wikipedia.
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The luckiest people in the world
If you're reading this, you probably exist. If you're human, that means you were probably born.
I want to take a moment and recognize the chances of your birth. What are the odds that a single living cell originated from the early Earth's primordial soup? What are the odds that single cell would form a symbiotic relationship with an absolute powerhouse of a cell (the mitochondrion!) and then group together with other cells to form a multicellular organism? What are the odds that small multicellular organisms would grow into the thoughtful beings we are today. And what are the odds that, once all that happened, you would be born?
You, as an individual, are beautiful, smart, and unique. You also have a distinct perspective and set of experiences that you can share with the world. There's nobody else like you. Based on my preliminary calculations, the odds of someone else being exactly like you are 1 in 7.8 billion, at best. Probably orders of magnitude closer to zero than that. Yet here you are.
I feel like our birthdays might be the luckiest moments of our lives. On top of that, we get to live now. That means we also have the unique opportunity to change the future. This is actually the only point in time that can do that. Not only are we incredibly lucky for existing, but we're incredibly lucky for the opportunity in front of us.
We've already built a lot of incredible things during our time here. There's still a long way to go. Let's do it together.
This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge. The theme for this article was "Chance." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!
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Trajectories
Wake up. Sit up. Get up. Brush teeth. Change into video call clothes. Get on video call.
End result: all set for meeting.
Sometimes slip into the alternative: Wake up. Check phone. Sit up. Check phone. Get up. Check phone. Brush teeth. Check phone. Change into video call clothes. Check phone. Get on video call. Check phone.
End result: still ready for call. Different trajectory. Routine time expanded. More rushed now. Rushing causes mistakes. Attention may be split or key decisions under-analyzed.
New alternative: Wake up (earlier). Sit up. Get up. Brush teeth. Write morning pages. Change into video call clothes. Get on video call.
Same end result. New trajectory. Less rushed, more thoughtful. Longer routine time, but spent mindfully. Better start today.
Humans react to situations. Reactions follow a trajectory set by routines. Choose the right routine for the desired reaction, then carefully tune and examine. Start in the morning - it's easier to start a trajectory than divert it.
This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge. The theme for this article was "Routine." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!
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The density of fun
The density of matter is defined as the amount of mass per unit volume. This is expressed as m/V. This gives us an idea of how heavy a certain volume of a material may be.
In the same way, there's a density of fun. Here, we can define it as the amount of satisfaction per unit time. This is expressed as s/t. This theoretically gives us an idea of how fun a certain activity will be.
Eating chocolate will be much more satisfying than eating a rock. Eating a rock will also probably take you a lot longer. As a result, eating chocolate has a higher "fun density" than eating a rock. In theory, we'd always prioritize high-density fun over low-density fun. Why would you ever eat a rock if you can eat chocolate instead?
The problem is that, while physical density remains relatively constant under similar conditions, fun density can vary a lot. Maybe you're craving a rock today, so its satisfaction level increases by a thousand.
Not to mention the economics principle of diminishing marginal returns. Maybe that first bite of rock gives you fifty thousand satisfactions but you break a tooth on the next bite so you get negative ten thousand satisfactions. In two bites, your satisfaction level has changed by sixty thousand.
Depending on how many bites it takes you to get through that rock (and how many teeth you have left at the end), you could have hundreds of different satisfaction levels associated with the same activity. That's hard for your brain to keep track of, so it can be hard to actually figure out how many satisfactions an activity will give you until you do it.
Also, your satisfaction-ometer is broken – thanks evolution. Flashing lights max out the needle because paying attention to rapidly changing signals, like a landslide or a bear running at them, helped your ancient ancestors to survive. Now, the computer in your pocket can put those rapidly changing signals on overload. Before you know it, you're looking at pictures and videos of people and animals doing crazy things. For an hour. Oops, two hours.
That first video was probably really funny. In 15 seconds, you might've gotten two hundred satisfactions. That's a fun density of 13.333333333333333333333333333 satisfactions per second (SPS) – not bad. After 2 hours, you probably don't quite remember anything you've already watched. And now the pressure of the work you've been procrastinating is starting to get to you. You got the +200 at the beginning, but now you're at a net -1000 satisfactions. That means you're at a net fun density of -1.39 SPS. The flashing lights and the first video tricked your brain into sticking around.
Contrast that with going for a walk or a run. For me, walking has a pretty linear fun function. Let's put it at 600 satisfactions per minute. In 15 seconds, you'll only get 150 satisfactions. The video clearly wins. But if you go for a 15 minute walk, your net fun density hits 10 SPS. Upon further analysis, walking is way better than getting sucked in by The Almighty Algorithm.
In addition to the high variability in satisfactions and your broken satisfactionometer, there's the problem of quantization of fun time. Rather than being continuous, time exists as packets. It probably doesn't make sense to go for a 5-second walk. There's also some prep time involved. As a result, fun density has to be considered with the packets of time required to achieve that fun. For a walk, 10-15 minutes is probably a good block. Other things may take more time. This acts as another barrier when analyzing an activity's SPS. Rather than fully analyzing free time, we often only analyze what's in front of us.
15 seconds fits way more easily than 15 minutes into anyone's day. But then that 15 seconds becomes 5 minutes in the same time block and can extend to 30 minutes or more over the course of a day. Reorganizing the day to create a continuous 30 minute block would enable you to sieze so many more satisfactions!
In summary, diminishing marginal returns, big flashing lights (really little flashing lights flashing synchronously), and short-sighted time packet analysis make it very difficult for our brains to determine what is high-density fun and what is low-density fun in the moment. It requires much more deliberation and conscious thought than I thought.
Overall, I expect that taking some time to analyze the satisfactions per second distribution function (SPSDF) will actually serve to increase your daily intake of satisfactions and lead to a much more enjoyable life, where you can actually learn to cook, to ballroom dance, or to yoyo.
If you're interested in funding or conducting research into the quantisation of time, the satisfactionometer, or rock-eating, let me know.
This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge – this week is a warmup and the full challenge will kick off in March. The theme for this article was "Play." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!
Photo by Artem Kniaz on Unsplash
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Paul's perfect picture
Paul pulled out his phone, expanding the button on the back to more easily hold it in his hand. He presses the screen and the camera app opens. He pulls a lens attachment from his pocket and puts it over his phone camera with a flourish. Turning around, his attention on the window into the world created by his screen, Paul searches for the perfect scene.
The window pans across the evening landscape – it crosses over a village in the distance, a bright and sandy beach with a glistening ocean, the beginning of a forest with young but sturdy trees. The moonlight beams down, almost as though it follows the phone's lens. Paul pulls a mini tent from his pocket and perches it over the lens to block the moon's direct light.
Paul walks towards the beach and saunters over to the edge of a short cliff, finding a nice vantage point over the beach. Instantly, he sees his target. A turtle was in the middle of the beach, laying eggs.
He opens his bag using the extra-grippy zipper attachments. They make it so much easier to open the bag. He pulls out his organizer cube and grabs the tripod. Placing the tripod on the ground, he slots the phone's grip into the connector.
Having perfected everything, from his lighting, to the camera position, to his bag's ease of use and organization, he quickly aims the phone at the turtle's nesting spot and presses his SuperFast PictureTaker2000™ to take a picture. The camera makes an audible "click."
Paul taps his phone to open the picture he had taken so expertly. His jaw dropped as he beheld the small sand bump at the center of the screen. Looking up, he realized the turtle had disappeared and that small bump in the sand was the only remaining evidence of its prescence.
After taking a few moments to gather all of his belongings and pack them into his bag, Paul set off to return home before midnight.
Arriving home, Paul unloads his pockets before running to his room and turning on his computer. He opens the Valdivian Dawn store, searches "faster camera setup and aim," and clicks the first result for the SuperFast AutoFocus 9000™. Paul adds it to his cart, selects 2-day shipping, and hits the "buy" button. Paul smiles, glad that he'll never miss an incredible photo again.
This post is part of the Daily Blogging Challenge – this week is a warmup and the full challenge will kick off in March. The theme for this article was "Accessories." Thanks to Chris Hannah for sharing the challenge and Jeff Perry for organizing it!
Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash
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