Meditation on a plane! Blogging on a phone. In Vegas for TAM9 but today is just walking around the strip. Should I play poker or write presentations or oh wait harry potter 7 part 2???????
I discovered I don't like typing more than a few words on this phone at one time. Or thought I did, it's getting better with practice.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Hunter
I decided to do walking meditation today, in the sun. Focused completely on teasing apart the sensations and motions in my right foot. I found 6 separate physical sensations, each of which (with effort and balance) I could stop after, labeled (in some cases prematurely) down heel roll ball push lift. I also spent some time paying attention to how (say) heel felt, then not walking and calling to mind the same sensations to see what just the mental aspect felt like, then walking again to see the difference between the purely mental part and the mental + physical part.
I went over the draft of my presentation with Ravi. Looks like it's going to work out great! We found some areas to tweak, some to radically improve, one that needs to be redone or cut, and I know of one which I didn't finish the draft for yet... but overall easily done in a couple weeks. Lara, Ravi, and I will go over it Monday so I'll finish up the draft changes and paper prototype at TAM - or I won't, either way. :D
We played Hunter and it went well. For me. I felt on a whole it dragged, but I was holding up my end pretty well. This is in marked contrast to my normal feeling of vague inadequacy while playing a non-game RPG.
The 3 axes worksheet seems right as I remember, and worked well when I tried it.
I went over the draft of my presentation with Ravi. Looks like it's going to work out great! We found some areas to tweak, some to radically improve, one that needs to be redone or cut, and I know of one which I didn't finish the draft for yet... but overall easily done in a couple weeks. Lara, Ravi, and I will go over it Monday so I'll finish up the draft changes and paper prototype at TAM - or I won't, either way. :D
We played Hunter and it went well. For me. I felt on a whole it dragged, but I was holding up my end pretty well. This is in marked contrast to my normal feeling of vague inadequacy while playing a non-game RPG.
The 3 axes worksheet seems right as I remember, and worked well when I tried it.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Frisbee
This morning my stuffy nose was like all grrr and argh. But that didn't stop me and I got in some good practice. I really want to go an hour rather than half an hour, it seems there's a longish ramp-up before my mind calms down, and the most interesting things are always near the end. I'll schedule that for Saturdays and see how that goes.
This Saturday though I will be in Vegas! Who knows what I'll be doing schedule-wise. Yay TAM. Or at least I anticipate yay. I've never been to one before.
I was pretty motivated again today to write up the presentation! Not super-motivated but pretty. I've got a good draft now and I'll go over it with my coworker tomorrow.
Then: Frisbee. After a week off I was so ready. We had a very tight game, 13-15, and I learned (viscerally rather than intellectually) some good tactics involving how to cut and how to clear out in a useful way.
I put together a draft of a worksheet on 3 axes to explore the emotional brain's map near a goal and plan. I'd like to do the worksheet now, but it's late. If I don't then I'll do it tomorrow. If it's fine then I'll send it John's way.
This Saturday though I will be in Vegas! Who knows what I'll be doing schedule-wise. Yay TAM. Or at least I anticipate yay. I've never been to one before.
I was pretty motivated again today to write up the presentation! Not super-motivated but pretty. I've got a good draft now and I'll go over it with my coworker tomorrow.
Then: Frisbee. After a week off I was so ready. We had a very tight game, 13-15, and I learned (viscerally rather than intellectually) some good tactics involving how to cut and how to clear out in a useful way.
I put together a draft of a worksheet on 3 axes to explore the emotional brain's map near a goal and plan. I'd like to do the worksheet now, but it's late. If I don't then I'll do it tomorrow. If it's fine then I'll send it John's way.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Motivation and Dinner
I missed meditating this morning and didn't get to formal sitting until the night. That's unfortunate. Fortunate, though, is that I'm spending time noting more and more during the day - when walking to the restroom or between meetings or at lunch or whatnot. And I noted a thought I've never noted before, "explaining", when a legit reason for a thing I just saw popped into my head. Not rationalizing or story-telling, but explaining.
I was super-motivated during work, wrote up a note-version draft of my presentation, investigated and fixed some good bugs... I attribute it to talking about and getting excited about motivation yesterday. We'll see if there are long-term effects, magically! :) (Also this motivation is clearly evident in my log of what I'm doing when the mindfulness chime goes off)
I had dinner with John and then he and I and Ben talked/worked on career planning for a while. I feel like I don't have a good direction on the meta-level, like I never know what to do next when "working on career planning", like it's not broken down enough yet. Taskification. But I did get at least two very important things out of the evening... what I'm doing with my free time now is a choice on the career decision tree, and I have a feeling to investigate that I don't understand which manifests as a huge difference between a within-Microsoft job change and a change to another large software corporation like Google or Amazon. Realistically those two changes are not very different, but I feel far freer when contemplating what it would be like if I were currently at Google than when contemplating what it would be like if I were currently at Bing. I'm pretty sure this is Important and will work on it tomorrow night.
Hah, what are the odds. Fine, I'll enter "blogging" for what I'm doing right now, silly mindfulness chimes. :D
I was super-motivated during work, wrote up a note-version draft of my presentation, investigated and fixed some good bugs... I attribute it to talking about and getting excited about motivation yesterday. We'll see if there are long-term effects, magically! :) (Also this motivation is clearly evident in my log of what I'm doing when the mindfulness chime goes off)
I had dinner with John and then he and I and Ben talked/worked on career planning for a while. I feel like I don't have a good direction on the meta-level, like I never know what to do next when "working on career planning", like it's not broken down enough yet. Taskification. But I did get at least two very important things out of the evening... what I'm doing with my free time now is a choice on the career decision tree, and I have a feeling to investigate that I don't understand which manifests as a huge difference between a within-Microsoft job change and a change to another large software corporation like Google or Amazon. Realistically those two changes are not very different, but I feel far freer when contemplating what it would be like if I were currently at Google than when contemplating what it would be like if I were currently at Bing. I'm pretty sure this is Important and will work on it tomorrow night.
Hah, what are the odds. Fine, I'll enter "blogging" for what I'm doing right now, silly mindfulness chimes. :D
Monday, July 11, 2011
Meetups
I tried having a chime ring every 5 minutes while meditating, but my phone locked after the first chime (I eventually inferred) and I didn't want to stop to try to fix things. I'll get it set up before beginning next time.
Game 4 is written up, so that's good. I'm not sure whether to write up Games 2 and 3 in their original form or with the changes I've thought of or what.
The LW meetup was today and it was very good. This marks the first time I would whole-heartedly recommend someone not invested in LW meetups trek from the eastside with 520 closed. ;) I found out I have a motivation-draining block partway through the pipeline required to prepare my context sensitive spelling presentation for work, and simply finding the block was enough to reconceptualize it away. (It was an anticipation that after writing a draft I would look at the draft and deem the structure unworkable.) Then I chose a couple of methods to increase my motivation in general - breaking out a couple of necessary subparts, and moving the rewards timing sooner (intermediate presentations/reviews with some coworkers I'd already planned but hadn't yet been anticipating any social rewards from).
Talking about motivation was super-motivating. Or maybe it was that Andrew said he read through this blog, then I pictured reading through it, then I realized I've been tapering off in the last week or two weeks. So I quickly planned things to do for the next (short) week and then wrote up the first half of my presentation.
Afterwards David and I talked for an hour or so initially about how some of the games went, and quickly moved to designing a new game aimed at being happy with good decisions regardless of outcome. Turns out what we were doing feels in large part like extracting that aspect of poker from the rest of the game.
Then I went to sleep before writing this up. :)
Game 4 is written up, so that's good. I'm not sure whether to write up Games 2 and 3 in their original form or with the changes I've thought of or what.
The LW meetup was today and it was very good. This marks the first time I would whole-heartedly recommend someone not invested in LW meetups trek from the eastside with 520 closed. ;) I found out I have a motivation-draining block partway through the pipeline required to prepare my context sensitive spelling presentation for work, and simply finding the block was enough to reconceptualize it away. (It was an anticipation that after writing a draft I would look at the draft and deem the structure unworkable.) Then I chose a couple of methods to increase my motivation in general - breaking out a couple of necessary subparts, and moving the rewards timing sooner (intermediate presentations/reviews with some coworkers I'd already planned but hadn't yet been anticipating any social rewards from).
Talking about motivation was super-motivating. Or maybe it was that Andrew said he read through this blog, then I pictured reading through it, then I realized I've been tapering off in the last week or two weeks. So I quickly planned things to do for the next (short) week and then wrote up the first half of my presentation.
Afterwards David and I talked for an hour or so initially about how some of the games went, and quickly moved to designing a new game aimed at being happy with good decisions regardless of outcome. Turns out what we were doing feels in large part like extracting that aspect of poker from the rest of the game.
Then I went to sleep before writing this up. :)
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Space Alert: The Doubling
Today I did some hard running and then meditated in the park. Seattle in summer is good times.
I put together my resume. Such a simple thing but it was like pulling teeth. This area... I haven't found out what's so bad about it. But I haven't tried PJ's 8 directions thing either... Ugh is a very good name for ugh fields.
We played Space Alert with 10 people. That was basically great. But almost all of the greatness came from Space Alert, not the fact that we were playing two at once. In all I'd say the variant isn't up to snuff and probably won't be, there's just not that much room for improvement in the game.
Agh and somehow I missed writing up Game 4. Since tomorrow's Sunday I might as well do that now...? :( I should not, actually. Fine, I missed it for real.
I put together my resume. Such a simple thing but it was like pulling teeth. This area... I haven't found out what's so bad about it. But I haven't tried PJ's 8 directions thing either... Ugh is a very good name for ugh fields.
We played Space Alert with 10 people. That was basically great. But almost all of the greatness came from Space Alert, not the fact that we were playing two at once. In all I'd say the variant isn't up to snuff and probably won't be, there's just not that much room for improvement in the game.
Agh and somehow I missed writing up Game 4. Since tomorrow's Sunday I might as well do that now...? :( I should not, actually. Fine, I missed it for real.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Desires
I woke up late this morning, so I switched meditation to walking after lunch. At the end I checked for how long it took just standing to be able to visualize - after 5 minutes I could not. I tried again later that night, sitting, with the lights out, and I was getting something dim at 2:30 and got a sharp image of a taco at 3:40.
Yesterday I used Quixey to grab a random-alarm app for my machine at work. Today I noted what I was doing every time it went off - I'm distracted more than I thought!
At home I finished writing up Game 1 and posted it. Also I'm declaring the instilling-desire experimentation phase complete. A week of just noting did not move me toward a desire to clean the restroom, then another week of smile-reinforcement got me there easily. And a week of smile-reinforcement got me the desire to take a cold shower but did not remove my dislike for cold showers, so I'm guessing in general it's not a great plan to use this method on activities you know you actively dislike, just those you're fine with but hate to start. On the other hand Critch mentioned plugging his lust into grading...? I'll have to ask about that.
Yesterday I used Quixey to grab a random-alarm app for my machine at work. Today I noted what I was doing every time it went off - I'm distracted more than I thought!
At home I finished writing up Game 1 and posted it. Also I'm declaring the instilling-desire experimentation phase complete. A week of just noting did not move me toward a desire to clean the restroom, then another week of smile-reinforcement got me there easily. And a week of smile-reinforcement got me the desire to take a cold shower but did not remove my dislike for cold showers, so I'm guessing in general it's not a great plan to use this method on activities you know you actively dislike, just those you're fine with but hate to start. On the other hand Critch mentioned plugging his lust into grading...? I'll have to ask about that.
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