akratic, wow, sounds exactly like me... I focus on the future so much my hobbies make often make me feel guilty. Which leads to periodic binges of magnificent proportion.
Been searching for this balance point since I was a kid, and have yet to find it.
akratic's ERE journal
The top tier of starcraft players make six figures, and the second tier make five figures. Source: http://sc2earnings.com
I just started messing around with the game, so I'm not that good right now, but I believe I could be one of the top US born player if I dedicated myself to it after ERE. All of my strengths and all of my weaknesses come together to make me better at gaming than pretty much anything else in life. And the field for top US player is wide open. Too bad I would have to give up effectively everything else to do this.
I played quake 2 competitively in high school and was *very* good at it, although this came at the expense of most other aspects of my life.
I just started messing around with the game, so I'm not that good right now, but I believe I could be one of the top US born player if I dedicated myself to it after ERE. All of my strengths and all of my weaknesses come together to make me better at gaming than pretty much anything else in life. And the field for top US player is wide open. Too bad I would have to give up effectively everything else to do this.
I played quake 2 competitively in high school and was *very* good at it, although this came at the expense of most other aspects of my life.
Remember when I was afraid to commit to the PP for months and months because I didn't want to buy 30Y bonds?
Since investing about 1.5 months ago, my performance has been:
-8.44% Equities
+2.10% Gold
+19.19% 30Y Bonds
+0% Cash (about)
-6.49% VP (div stocks + REIT)
======
+1.63% Total
I know that I mentioned this before, but it's really starting to become ridiculous. I can't time the markets at all.
Since investing about 1.5 months ago, my performance has been:
-8.44% Equities
+2.10% Gold
+19.19% 30Y Bonds
+0% Cash (about)
-6.49% VP (div stocks + REIT)
======
+1.63% Total
I know that I mentioned this before, but it's really starting to become ridiculous. I can't time the markets at all.
@jacob, yeah that sounds like a reasonable prediction. I've given up on predicting though.
===
I can't update my journal because google docs broke their charts.
For months they've been trying to get me to upgrade to their ugly new version of charts that look terrible when they're small. And now the non-upgraded charts are completely broken.
Google Docs is my best option, because I update my finances spreadsheet from lots of places: work, my laptop, my girlfriend's laptop, etc. But it's pretty annoying that Google can break the thing under my feet.
===
I can't update my journal because google docs broke their charts.
For months they've been trying to get me to upgrade to their ugly new version of charts that look terrible when they're small. And now the non-upgraded charts are completely broken.
Google Docs is my best option, because I update my finances spreadsheet from lots of places: work, my laptop, my girlfriend's laptop, etc. But it's pretty annoying that Google can break the thing under my feet.
September 2011
(I made a chart in Numbers to get around the broken Google Docs)
This is the first month since I started that my net worth in dollars went down. My investments lost a lot, even more than my salary. But I'm staying the course.
== EXPENSES ==
I thought this might be a record month, because there were no travel or transit expenses at all, but a number of bulk purchases all fell on this month:
- $100 for five months of cell phone
- $130 for massive Costco food stock up
- $50 for massive Aldi food food stock up
- $100 for six months of protein powder for my breakfast smoothies
The only bad expense this month was lunch-packing laziness, resulting in going to Subway too many times.
== INVESTMENTS ==
The PP got kinda crushed this month, along with most other asset allocations. This wiped out all the gains from last month, leaving me about scratch since I put my money to work in August.
I've been lurking the Crawling Road forums though, and if anything I'm getting more PP-minded, not less.
I'm getting rid of my international diversification (VEU) and putting it into VTI. (KevinW, your old posts convinced me!). I'm also going to sell my REIT (VNQ) from the VP and rebalance that money. So I'll go to a 90% PP and 10% VP (dividend stocks).
And I got my cash allocation straightened out:
- BoA checking and Vanguard MMF for convenience
- I Bonds
- EE Bonds
- SHV
== OTHER ==
I watched this TED video by Martin Seligman, and it kinda rocked my world a bit.
He divided happiness into three tiers:
- pleasure: good feelings, hedonism, George Clooney, etc
- flow: engagement, absorption, deep focus, losing track of time, etc
- meaning: Mother Teresa, service to something larger than yourself
If I were to rate my life on a 1-10 scale, it would be something like:
- pleasure: 6.0
- flow: 9.9
- meaning: 1.2
I flow constantly, both at work and in my favorite activities. In fact, I so prefer flow to pleasure that it makes pleasure less appealing. Why have pleasure when I could have flow?
I work in an environment (trading) where sometimes people get spontaneously rich (seven figure years, etc). It's been interesting for me to observe successful traders as they've become rich. The main thing I've noticed is an increase in the pursuit of pleasure. Going out to eat at $100/entree places, buying expensive bottles of wine, fast consumption travel, and luxury apartments. But the pursuit of pleasure has always seemed kind of pointless to me, both for the reasons pointed out in the video: the enjoyment of pleasure is Hereditary and Habituates -- but also because pleasure is so inferior to flow.
I love how this video gives me a new perspective on happiness, and a new vocabulary to talk about it. I'd heard of flow, and of course meaning before, but I'd always smashed them together with pleasure into one vague happiness/eudaimonia term. For example, when I asserted earlier in my journal that I could be an extraordinarily good Starcraft player if I wanted to be, it's precisely because I flow so easily and so often during activities like Starcraft. 14 hour a day practice sessions would wear other people down, but because I'm completely flowing while playing, I wouldn't even notice the passage of time.
But here's the real take away from the video: meaning is an essential component to a good life, and my life has no meaning. I've known this for a while of course, ever since rejecting religion at an early age. I think the search for meaning is why I majored in philosophy in undergrad. But even hearing all the ideas for a meaningful life from all the great philosophers, I never really found one that worked for me.
I'm not affiliated with any positive institutions. I'm not serving anything larger than myself. I don't even believe charity and handouts are particularly beneficial.
My life philosophy until this point could be summarized as:
- do no harm to others
- focus on yourself and the people close to you
- the end
Which has led to a good life, but a meaningless one.
(I made a chart in Numbers to get around the broken Google Docs)
This is the first month since I started that my net worth in dollars went down. My investments lost a lot, even more than my salary. But I'm staying the course.
== EXPENSES ==
I thought this might be a record month, because there were no travel or transit expenses at all, but a number of bulk purchases all fell on this month:
- $100 for five months of cell phone
- $130 for massive Costco food stock up
- $50 for massive Aldi food food stock up
- $100 for six months of protein powder for my breakfast smoothies
The only bad expense this month was lunch-packing laziness, resulting in going to Subway too many times.
== INVESTMENTS ==
The PP got kinda crushed this month, along with most other asset allocations. This wiped out all the gains from last month, leaving me about scratch since I put my money to work in August.
I've been lurking the Crawling Road forums though, and if anything I'm getting more PP-minded, not less.
I'm getting rid of my international diversification (VEU) and putting it into VTI. (KevinW, your old posts convinced me!). I'm also going to sell my REIT (VNQ) from the VP and rebalance that money. So I'll go to a 90% PP and 10% VP (dividend stocks).
And I got my cash allocation straightened out:
- BoA checking and Vanguard MMF for convenience
- I Bonds
- EE Bonds
- SHV
== OTHER ==
I watched this TED video by Martin Seligman, and it kinda rocked my world a bit.
He divided happiness into three tiers:
- pleasure: good feelings, hedonism, George Clooney, etc
- flow: engagement, absorption, deep focus, losing track of time, etc
- meaning: Mother Teresa, service to something larger than yourself
If I were to rate my life on a 1-10 scale, it would be something like:
- pleasure: 6.0
- flow: 9.9
- meaning: 1.2
I flow constantly, both at work and in my favorite activities. In fact, I so prefer flow to pleasure that it makes pleasure less appealing. Why have pleasure when I could have flow?
I work in an environment (trading) where sometimes people get spontaneously rich (seven figure years, etc). It's been interesting for me to observe successful traders as they've become rich. The main thing I've noticed is an increase in the pursuit of pleasure. Going out to eat at $100/entree places, buying expensive bottles of wine, fast consumption travel, and luxury apartments. But the pursuit of pleasure has always seemed kind of pointless to me, both for the reasons pointed out in the video: the enjoyment of pleasure is Hereditary and Habituates -- but also because pleasure is so inferior to flow.
I love how this video gives me a new perspective on happiness, and a new vocabulary to talk about it. I'd heard of flow, and of course meaning before, but I'd always smashed them together with pleasure into one vague happiness/eudaimonia term. For example, when I asserted earlier in my journal that I could be an extraordinarily good Starcraft player if I wanted to be, it's precisely because I flow so easily and so often during activities like Starcraft. 14 hour a day practice sessions would wear other people down, but because I'm completely flowing while playing, I wouldn't even notice the passage of time.
But here's the real take away from the video: meaning is an essential component to a good life, and my life has no meaning. I've known this for a while of course, ever since rejecting religion at an early age. I think the search for meaning is why I majored in philosophy in undergrad. But even hearing all the ideas for a meaningful life from all the great philosophers, I never really found one that worked for me.
I'm not affiliated with any positive institutions. I'm not serving anything larger than myself. I don't even believe charity and handouts are particularly beneficial.
My life philosophy until this point could be summarized as:
- do no harm to others
- focus on yourself and the people close to you
- the end
Which has led to a good life, but a meaningless one.
Hey akratic - I know what you mean about flow. It's one of the biggest reasons I enjoy programming.
However, it's elusive. About 80% of the programming I do is basically drudgery, or I'm just not able to 'get into it'. The remaining 20% is flow. I'd love to increase that ratio.
Have you found any ways to facilitate flow?
However, it's elusive. About 80% of the programming I do is basically drudgery, or I'm just not able to 'get into it'. The remaining 20% is flow. I'd love to increase that ratio.
Have you found any ways to facilitate flow?
I might not have the greatest answer to increasing flow, because I've never really had to make a conscious effort to do so.
My great strength and my great weakness is that I flow very easily.
For example, I'll often flow even during routine, repetitive coding, as I seek to write and rewrite things in the most elegant way possible. For example, we have a lot of C# code, and C# lets you extend the language with, uh, Extensions that you can chain together. I'm getting a real kick out of building up a powerful set of these things, and making even boring code as elegant, readable, concise and clear as possible.
I'd say the one thing I've done that's really helped me flow at work is to get a set of dj headphones. These things scream "leave me alone", and being left alone is one of my only preconditions for flowing.
PS: I'll let you in on a secret. Often times when I have my headphones on I don't even have music playing. I just wear the headphones so people won't talk to me.
My great strength and my great weakness is that I flow very easily.
For example, I'll often flow even during routine, repetitive coding, as I seek to write and rewrite things in the most elegant way possible. For example, we have a lot of C# code, and C# lets you extend the language with, uh, Extensions that you can chain together. I'm getting a real kick out of building up a powerful set of these things, and making even boring code as elegant, readable, concise and clear as possible.
I'd say the one thing I've done that's really helped me flow at work is to get a set of dj headphones. These things scream "leave me alone", and being left alone is one of my only preconditions for flowing.
PS: I'll let you in on a secret. Often times when I have my headphones on I don't even have music playing. I just wear the headphones so people won't talk to me.
Well I've been thinking about this "increasing flow at work" question a little more, and I have another answer:
I need autonomy to flow.
When I'm micro-managed or put on projects that I don't like, I can't flow.
What I do is take advantage of the fact that skilled software engineers are extremely rare and force myself into positions with autonomy and projects that I like.
Every manager I've ever had has found me extremely difficult to manage, but they put up with it because I'm productive.
I need autonomy to flow.
When I'm micro-managed or put on projects that I don't like, I can't flow.
What I do is take advantage of the fact that skilled software engineers are extremely rare and force myself into positions with autonomy and projects that I like.
Every manager I've ever had has found me extremely difficult to manage, but they put up with it because I'm productive.
It seems that people actually invested in the PP gravitate toward a vanilla 4x25 as originally described by Browne. Variants and more complex allocations tend to be hypothetical proposals with no money behind them (PRPFX excepted). I think there's something to that.
For me, having a level of difficulty in the sweet spot is a hard requirement for achieving flow. Programming and strategy games like Starcraft both have the property that a practitioner can control how many steps ahead they're thinking of, and thereby modulate the level of difficulty to stay in the sweet spot.
So one suggestion for maintaining flow is to be aware of when you're starting to get bored, and start planning further ahead or using higher levels of abstraction at that point.
For me, having a level of difficulty in the sweet spot is a hard requirement for achieving flow. Programming and strategy games like Starcraft both have the property that a practitioner can control how many steps ahead they're thinking of, and thereby modulate the level of difficulty to stay in the sweet spot.
So one suggestion for maintaining flow is to be aware of when you're starting to get bored, and start planning further ahead or using higher levels of abstraction at that point.
October 2011
(Google Docs *still* has broken charts. Grrrrr. And gtalk hasn't been updated in years. The beginning of Google's fall from grace?)
== Expenses ==
This was a good month, with few irregular expenses:
-$88 for the new kindle
-$110 for ten new shirts, aka, a replacement of almost my entire wardrobe. I'm disappointed that my last batch of ten shirts only lasted this long. Perhaps it's time to stop nuking my clothes in the dryer. These new shirts are pretty stylish, so this is the best dressed I've ever been.
I canceled my home internet this month because it was too expensive, and I was wasting too much time on it. Since canceling I have read many thousands of pages on my new kindle, so I would say the experiment was a success! However, my girlfriend is annoyed by the lack of internet, so we're signing back up for it.
== News ==
The startup that I worked for immediately after college was sold to Oracle this month! The stock options that I purchased will result in me getting a check for about one year's living expenses. It's great having low expenses. The payout was less than my friends at the company were hoping, but I'm personally psyched about this addition to my net worth.
== Job ==
My job has been really interesting this month. I may hit my net worth targets before getting sick of this job.
Who knows though, as I seem to be almost bipolar about the job depending mostly on what project I'm working on. I'm currently trying to crack the puzzle of the modern currency market, and it's fascinating work.
== ERE TODO list ==
- choose optimal checking account to replace bank of america with
- learn how to cook beans in a pressure cooker so that they come out better than from a can
- acquire bread maker and learn how to cook bread
- move cash from checking and vanguard money market into SHY and SHV
- read MMM back to the first post
- download and listen to more of the Harry Browne radio show
- convince ERE forum posters to spend more time on IRC
- figure out how to make a SIMPLE IRA for my self-employed income, and buy more IAU with that money
(Google Docs *still* has broken charts. Grrrrr. And gtalk hasn't been updated in years. The beginning of Google's fall from grace?)
== Expenses ==
This was a good month, with few irregular expenses:
-$88 for the new kindle
-$110 for ten new shirts, aka, a replacement of almost my entire wardrobe. I'm disappointed that my last batch of ten shirts only lasted this long. Perhaps it's time to stop nuking my clothes in the dryer. These new shirts are pretty stylish, so this is the best dressed I've ever been.
I canceled my home internet this month because it was too expensive, and I was wasting too much time on it. Since canceling I have read many thousands of pages on my new kindle, so I would say the experiment was a success! However, my girlfriend is annoyed by the lack of internet, so we're signing back up for it.
== News ==
The startup that I worked for immediately after college was sold to Oracle this month! The stock options that I purchased will result in me getting a check for about one year's living expenses. It's great having low expenses. The payout was less than my friends at the company were hoping, but I'm personally psyched about this addition to my net worth.
== Job ==
My job has been really interesting this month. I may hit my net worth targets before getting sick of this job.
Who knows though, as I seem to be almost bipolar about the job depending mostly on what project I'm working on. I'm currently trying to crack the puzzle of the modern currency market, and it's fascinating work.
== ERE TODO list ==
- choose optimal checking account to replace bank of america with
- learn how to cook beans in a pressure cooker so that they come out better than from a can
- acquire bread maker and learn how to cook bread
- move cash from checking and vanguard money market into SHY and SHV
- read MMM back to the first post
- download and listen to more of the Harry Browne radio show
- convince ERE forum posters to spend more time on IRC
- figure out how to make a SIMPLE IRA for my self-employed income, and buy more IAU with that money